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“JOSEPH MCWILLIAMS WW2 ACTIVIST BY WEEGEE NYC Old Photo Negative 255A”

“You are bidding on a guaranteed authentic 4X5 original negative as shown- This negative is from the PM New York City Daily News between 1940 – 1948.”

All words and images above are copied from ebay.

Sold for $45.00

The seller will even sell you a print (8×10 – 24×36) of the negative, and for $35 send you a CD of the “Photoshopped” image “that you can use for your reproductions.”

Activist? “JOSEPH MCWILLIAMS WW2 ACTIVIST” according to the ebay seller… Fascist, yes… Don’t think McWilliams has been called a World War Two activist in a long time… “Fascist-type candidate for his American Destiny party for Congressman…” is how PM referred to McWilliams on July 8, 1940…

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Daily News, January 27, 1941 (Probably Weegee photos.)
Hundreds Cheer Heroic Rescue
Firemen wait anxiously outside loft building at 45 W. 14th St. Smoke pours from windows. Inside a female is in distress. But, ah, Our Hero is on the job. And here he comes, by gosh, (applause) with the Heroine. She’s just a dummy, but she’s a woman. It was a two-alarmer and no one was hurt.”

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Daily News, January 23, 1937 (Foto by Fellig)
“G.M. MOVES TO END TIE-UP. – President Alfred P. Sloan of G.M. is amused on arrival in New York yesterday, as reporter shows him paper. He stated company hoped to reopen its plants.” [“Early in 1937 Mr. Sloan encountered one of the major crises of his business life when newly organized workers in General Motors plants staged a 44-day sitdown strike to obtain union recognition…” NY Times, February 18, 1966]

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Weegee’s Weirdies, 1958, pp. 16-17
“Photographer Weegee, the man with that crazy, mixed-up camera, asked us to let him do a set of pictures about himself and his models for this issue. Knowing his taste for the unusual, we hoped his models would be likewise – and we weren’t wrong. And here it is! A set of pictures by Weegee at his wildest.”

PM Daily, newspaper, 1940
PM, June 18, 1940, p.1

“I had been doing freelance for Acme ever since I had left my job with them in 1935 [!!!]. I went to work for PM in 1940. When the word had first got around that a newspaper like PM was being formed, every newspaperman and photographer in the country tried to get on the staff. Except me. I figured that, if they wanted me, they could come and get me. Sure enough, about a month before publication, I met the editor. He said, “Weegee, you’re doing wonderful work. Be sure to bring your pictures to me.” I replied, “Give me a guarantee, and the bet’s on.” The upshot was that I had a roving assignment from PM for the next four-a-half years. I picked my own stories. When I found a good one, I brought it in. All they had to do was to mail me a weekly check for seventy-five dollars… which they did.
[According to an online inflation calculator, $75 in 1940 has the same buying power as $1,271.44 in 2015.]

PM Newspaper, 1940
PM, July 28, 1940, p. 17

Sometimes PM didn’t see me for weeks, I was happy; I got my check every week. When finally I would come into their offices in Brooklyn they would greet me with, “Welcome home, Weegee! Where have you been, on vacation?” I’d say, “Look, what do you want me to do, go out and commit a murder?”

One of the reasons PM eventually folded was that it was ahead of the times. There were not quite as many eggheads around then as there are now. All the lost souls used to read PM and swear by it. You could tell PM readers on sight. They looked like people from another planet waiting for somebody to take them to their leader… which of course, was PM.
Weegee by Weegee, 1961, pp. 85-86

PM Daily, newspaper, 1940
PM, June 19, 1940, p. 19