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“This is my brain child . . . handle care please” or “A Book is Born”

July 19, 2015
1945, Naked City

Since we are in the second day of the 70th year since the publication of Naked City…

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Naked City, pp. 11-12

“A Book is Born

One just doesn’t go up to strange men, women, children, elephants, or giraffes and say, “Look this way please. Laugh- cry show some emotion or go to sleep underneath a funeral canopy.” They would have called me crazy and called a cop who would have called the wagon with the guys in white and I would have wound up in the psychopathic ward at Bellevue Hospital in a strait jacket.
For the pictures in this book I was on the scene; sometimes drawn there by some power l can’t explain, and l caught the New Yorkers with their masks off. . . not afraid to Laugh, Cry, or make Love. What I felt I photographed, laughing and crying with them.
I have been told that my pictures should be in a book, that they were a great social document. As I keep to myself, belong to no group, like to be left alone with no axe to grind, I wouldn’t know. Then something happened. There was a sudden drop in Murders and Fires (my two best sellers, my bread and butter). I couldn’t understand that. With so many millions of people, it just wasn’t normal, but it did give me a chance to look over the pictures I had been accumulating. Put together, they seemed to form a pattern. I pasted the photographs up into a “dummy” book and left it with the publishers with a note “This is my brain child . . . handle care please.”
The people in these photographs are real. Some from the East Side and Harlem tenements, others are from Park Avenue. In most cases, they weren’t even aware they were being photographed and cared less. People like to be photographed and will always ask “What paper are you from, mister, and what day will they appear,” the jitterbugs and the Sinatra bobby-sock fans even want to know on what page it will appear. To me a photograph is a page from life, and that being the case, it must be real.”
Naked City, pp. 11-12

c_1945

“…these pictures of people sleeping on the fire escapes, and kids and little girls holding cats…”

July 18, 2015
1945, Naked City, PM

Perhaps today marks the 70th anniversary of the publication of Naked City. To commemorate this historic event… Starting with what might be the first “rave notice” in print:

pm_1945_07_18_18-19c_copy-2
PM, July 18, 1945

LETTERS From the Editor
Rave Notice
“There’s a new book in the stores today by Weegee, who bills himself as “the famous” – and is.
It’s a book of pictures – pictures such as you’ve never seen before, except maybe in PM. It is called Naked City, published by Essential Books, sells for $4 – and is worth it.
I’ve been through my copy now three times, and every trip there’s something new.
The book is a collection of the better pictures Weegee has taken in the years he has spent as a freelance photographer, mostly of murders and fires, but sometimes of love. Many of them have appeared as news pictures in PM, and you’ll remember some of them – certainly the ones of Joe McWilliams, the Nazi lover, with the rear end of his horse, and Mrs. George Washington Kavanaugh with the late Lady Decies and their jewels at the opera.
It is unfair to use a single illustration as typical, but I’m using the one in the next column of the Bowery floozy’s gam because I like it, and because I like Weegee’s caption: Ladies keep heir money in their stockings…
Weegee is a rumpled, heavy-set, cigar-smoking man with a camera who lives with one ear at a police radio. He rather likes to pass himself off as a character. He is, but not exactly the same one.”
-John P. Lewis
PM, July 18, 1945, p. 19

Naked City by the numbers:
Inspired by the quote: “Many of them have appeared as news pictures in PM” and being naturally curious, we decided to investigate the publication history of the photos in Naked City.
Naked City: 246 pages with 247 photos
Photos published before their publication in Naked City:
78 photos were published in PM
6 significant variant photos were published in PM
4 photos were published in The New York Daily News
3 photos were published in Life
2 photos were published in The New York Post
1 photo was published in The New York Herald Tribune

The earliest photo that we could conclusively date in a publication is “Balcony Seats at a Murder,” published in the New York Post, on Nov. 17, 1939.
The latest photo that we could conclusively date in a publication is “Opening Night at the Opera,” published in PM, on December 3, 1944.

To be continued…

Weegee Daily… Balcony Seats At A Murder… November 17, 1939

November 17, 2014
1939, murder, New York Post, Weegee Daily

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New York Post, November 17, 1939
“Street Scene in New York
After the guns ceased barking and the gunmen fled, neighbors peered from the fire escape and almost every window last night for a glimpse of the body of Anthony Greco, slain in front of his own cafe at 10 Prince Street.
Associated Press Photo”

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Ceegee, November 17, 2014
Balcony Seats At A Brunch… Balcony Seat While Shopping in Noho…

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New York Post, November 17, 1939
“Street Scene in New York
After the guns ceased barking and the gunmen fled, neighbors peered from the fire escape and almost every window last night for a glimpse of the body of Anthony Greco, slain in front of his own cafe at 10 Prince Street.
Associated Press Photo”

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LIFE, November 27, 1939
Murder in New York
“After dusk on Nov. 16, Angelo Greco stood smoking outside his cafe in Manhattan’s Little Italy. Emerging from the darkness, a man drew a gun, fired four shots, fled into the night. Greco tumbled dead in his doorway. From windows above, heads popped out. Police cars screamed into the street. Close in their wake arrived Arthur Fellig, famed free-lance photographer (LIFE, April 12, 1937) who sleeps behind police headquarters, has a short-wave radio in his car. He listened briefly while neighborhood folk stolidly disclaimed knowledge of the murderer, then stepped back and photographed this dramatic street scene.”

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Weegee, Naked City, pp. 78-79, 1945
“Balcony Seats At A Murder
This happened in Little Italy. Detectives tried to question the people in the neighborhood… but they were all deaf… dumb… and blind… not having seen or heard anything.”
Weegee, Naked City, p. 79

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“Street Scene in New York
After the guns ceased barking and the gunmen fled, neighbors peered from the fire escape and almost every window last night for a glimpse of the body of Anthony Greco, slain in front of his own cafe at 10 Prince Street.
Associated Press Photo”
New York Post, November 17, 1939

Murder in New York
 “After dusk on Nov. 16, Angelo Greco stood smoking outside his cafe in Manhattan’s Little Italy. Emerging from the darkness, a man drew a gun, fired four shots, fled into the night. Greco tumbled dead in his doorway. From windows above, heads popped out. Police cars screamed into the street. Close in their wake arrived Arthur Fellig, famed free-lance photographer (LIFE, April 12, 1937) who sleeps behind police headquarters, has a short-wave radio in his car. He listened briefly while neighborhood folk stolidly disclaimed knowledge of the murderer, then stepped back and photographed this dramatic street scene.”
LIFE, November 27, 1939

“Balcony Seats At A Murder
This happened in Little Italy. Detectives tried to question the people in the neighborhood… but they were all deaf… dumb… and blind… not having seen or heard anything.”
Weegee, Naked City, 1945, p. 79

“One of the best pictures I’ve made… I got up nine o’clock one night, and I says to myself, I’m going to take a nice little ride and work up an appetite. I arrive right in the heart of Little Italy, 10 Prince St…. This was a nice balmy hot summer’s night… Some of the kids are even reading the funny papers and the comics… To me this was drama, this was like a backdrop. I stepped all the way back around 100 feet, I used flash powder… Of course the title was “Balcony Seats at a Murder”… That picture won me a gold medal [see below]… I try to humanize the news story. Of course I ran into snags with the dopey editors…”
Famous Photographers Tell How… ca. 1955
(Weegee talking about how he made his amazing photo can be heard on the Weegee’s World website.)

“At 6:45 P.M., on November 16, 1939, A Lone Gunman Shot Angelo Greco in the doorway of his candy store at 10 Prince Street in Little Italy. Greco who had a long history of arrests, fell dead with four bullets to the head. The gunman dropped his weapon beside the victim and disappeared into the panicked sidewalk crowd… police dutifully recorded the interior of Greco’s poorly stocked store and the location of the body…”
Murder Is My Business, p. 72

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Weegee Dans Ls Collection Berinson, pp. 188-189

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Murder Is My Business, pp. 72-75

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A few years ago we made this related post, that pointed out the Editor and Publisher News Photo Contest prize award on the wall above his bed, in his home:
Balcony Seats at a Prize… Freelancer Fellig’s a Winner!


Popular Photography, May 1940, pp. 44-45
Freelance cameraman Arthur Fellig’s a Prize Winner! (Perhaps not surprisingly, Fellig’s the only freelancer, and May 1940 is before he was widely known as Weegee…)
“Balcony Seats at a Murder” is included in the 5th Annual Exhibition of the Press Photographers’ Association of New York and Editor and Publisher News Photo Contest…
(You won’t see this one on too many bibliographies…)
Is that the Alan Fisher? A future colleague at PM? And the William Klein? And the Joseph Conrad?
A pre-PM free-lancing Fellig was understandably proud of winning the Editor and Publisher Prize… In February 1941, the beginning of his most productive year as a photographer, the award was still on his wall…


Weegee, [self-portrait], 1941

Several years ago we made this related post:
Balcony Seats at a Blog…

Weegee, Naked City, 1945
Balcony Seats at a Murder…
10 Prince St. New York, N.Y. ca. 1939


10 Prince St. New York, N.Y. March 3, 2008


10 Prince St. New York, N.Y. Septemeber 17, 2011

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10 Prince St. New York, N.Y. Septemeber 17, 2014

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Weegee, Naked City, pp. 78-79, 1945
“Balcony Seats At A Murder
This happened in Little Italy. Detectives tried to question the people in the neighborhood… but they were all deaf… dumb… and blind… not having seen or heard anything.”
Weegee, Naked City, pp. 78-79

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Weegee (and Ceegee), Not the Naked City, pp. 78-79, 1945 – ca. 2010

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Weegee (and Google Maps), Not the Naked City, pp. 78-79, 1945 – ca. 2010

(to be continued…)

Naked Naked City

November 13, 2014
1945, Naked City, PM

pm_1945_07_18_18-19c_copy-2
PM, July 18, 1945, p. 19
LETTERS
From the Editor
Rave Notice
“There’s a new book in the stores today by Weegee, who bills himself as “the famous” – and is.
It’s a book of pictures – pictures such as you’ve never seen before, except maybe in PM. It is called Naked City, published by Essential Books, sells for $4 – and is worth it.
I’ve been through my copy now three times, and every trip there’s something new.
The book is a collection of the better pictures Weegee has taken in the years he has spent as a freelance photographer, mostly of murders and fires, but sometimes of love. Many of them have appeared as news pictures in PM, and you’ll remember some of them – certainly the ones of Joe McWilliams, the Nazi lover, with the rear end of his horse, and Mrs. George Washington Kavanaugh with the late Lady Decies and their jewels at the opera.
It is unfair to use a single illustration as typical, but I’m using the one in the next column of the Bowery floozy’s gam because I like it, and because I like Weegee’s caption: Ladies keep heir money in their stockings…
Weegee is a rumpled, heavy-set, cigar-smoking man with a camera who lives with one ear at a police radio. He rather likes to pass himself off as a character. He is, but not exactly the same one.”
-John P. Lewis

That’s a great little review or notice. Now we know Naked City was published on July 18, 1945, sold for $4…
Inspired by the quote: “Many of them have appeared as news pictures in PM” and being curious, we decided to investigate the prepublication history of the photos in Naked City.
Naked City: 246 pages with 247 photos

Before publication in Naked City:
78 photos were published in PM
6 significant variant photos were published in PM
4 photos were published in The New York Daily News
3 photos were published in Life
2 photos were published in The New York Post
1 photo was published in The New York Herald Tribune

The earliest photo that we could conclusively date in a publication is “Balcony Seats at a Murder,” published in the New York Post, on Nov. 17, 1939.
The latest photo that we could conclusively date in a publication is “Opening Night at the Opera,” published in PM, on December 3, 1944.

(to be continued…)

Naked City…

November 2, 2014
1945, book, Naked City

naked_city_02-2
“Naked City” (screen shot from the Internet)

“To You
The People of New York
&
Mark Sherwin
my favorite picture
Editor who always
forgets to put this
famous TRADE MARK
‘Credit Photo by Weegee The Famous’
under my pictures,
& thereby(?) tortures my soul!
Weegee July 1945”