Alexander Hamilton makes some suggestions for his replacement on the ten dollar bill
The news that founding father Alexander Hamilton is to be replaced by a woman as the face of the ten dollar bill has received wide media coverage with mixed reviews. Continue reading
Even A Vicious Gangster Is Loved By His Mom
If you’ve seen 1987’s hit movie The Untouchables or HBO’s Boardwalk Empire you probably came away with the impression that Al Capone king of Chicago’s underworld during the 1920’s and early 1930’s was a cold blooded killer that few could love but many feared. Movies and TV shows convey only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Capone’s ruthlessness.
Capone could often be generous with the poor and downtrodden but he also displayed a hair-trigger temper and would personally kill or order killings with the slightest of provocations.
Even with all the horrible things Al Capone was responsible for or blamed for, his mother Theresa still loved him.
She fought valiantly to get her son out of prison after his 1931 conviction for income tax evasion. First in 1937 Theresa asked a judge to set aside an additional one year conviction of a misdemeanor and $20,000 fine and again in 1938 Theresa sought Al’s complete release. The caption to this news photo above reads:
Capone’s Mother Seeks His Release
Chicago – Attorney’s representing Mrs. Theresa Capone, mother of Al Capone have filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in Federal court in Chicago seeking the release of the former gang chief who was sentenced to ten years in prison for income tax evasion in 1931, and is now in Alcatraz. The petition claims that time is allowed off for good behavior, and that Capone is entitled to 1,320 days credit and has therefore completed serving his sentence. The above photo shows Al Capone and his mother Mrs. Theresa Capone, at Al’s Miami home before his fall from power. credit line: ACME 4-2-1938
Theresa’s efforts were rewarded and Al Capone was released early from Alcatraz prison January 6, 1939 and was transferred to Terminal Island, a Federal Correctional Institution in California, to serve the one year misdemeanor sentence. Continue reading
City Hall Newspaper Row Buildings (l-r) World Building (aka Pulitzer Building), Sun Building, Tribune Building – all demolished. New York Times and Potter Buildings are still extant
New York City real estate developers will always knock down a building if a buck can be made. So it really should come as no surprise that these buildings were demolished because they outlived their usefulness or more often than not, the land they sat upon was deemed more valuable than the building itself.
Nathan Silver’s must-own book, Lost New York (1967) Houghton Mifflin, was the first book to explicitly point out what New York City had lost architecturally over the years. If you have never read it, you should.
For our short postcard essay, there are hundreds of examples we could have chosen from and we picked 20. We omitted places of worship, theatres and restaurants which are the most transitory of buildings.
We’ve covered hotels before, and we could do another story on all the historic hotels that have been torn down, but we’ve included a few in this retrospective.
Rather than comment extensively on the buildings, a brief summary will suffice and the images should convey what we have lost. These postcards have been scanned at 1200 dpi in high resolution, click on any postcard to enlarge.
Singer Building – 149 Broadway (corner Liberty Street), A gem by architect Ernest Flagg, built 1908. Once the tallest building in the world. The Singer Building was elegant and sleek. Demolished 1967-68 and replaced by a ugly box of a building built by the Unites States Steel Corporation.
Produce Exchange – 2 Broadway between Beaver and Stone Streets. Architect George B. Post’s splendid work of grace was constructed between 1882-84, and demolished 1957.
Gillender Building – northwest corner Wall Street and Nassau Street. Architects, Charles I. Berg and Edward H. Clark, built in 1897 at a cost of $500,000. The Gillender Building was the tallest office building in the world for a brief time. The 20-story tower lasted only 13 years. In 1910 it was the first modern fireproof building to be demolished and it was done at breakneck speed, in under 45 days. The Gillender Building was replaced by the Bankers Trust Tower. Continue reading
When we ran our story about Chinatown last week we knew it was inevitable we would cover the section on Little Italy as well. It has the same anti-immigrant undertones as the section on Chinatown.
It is probably best not to read the unpalatable descriptions and have modern judgments on 19th century attitudes. What would seem outright racist or prejudicial today was merely the predominant “native” view of anyone who was not a WASP or other accepted creed.
Once again, the guidebook we quote from is Rand, McNally Handy Guide to New York City, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and other suburbs included in the Greater New York edited by Ernest Ingersoll (1898). This section is from the same one as Chinatown and is called “A Ramble At Night”, where the visitor to New York is directed to tour the areas of New York that are off the beaten path after 9 p.m. The purpose of the night ramble is to “give some hints as how the dark, crowded, hard-working, and sometimes criminal portions of the city look at night.” Reproduced below is the section on the Little Italy. Continue reading
An Incredible List of Things That Movies Were Not Allowed To Portray In 1921
Famous swimmer, Annette Kellerman was the first “star” to do a nude scene 1916 “A Daughter of the Gods”
Looking at what was prohibited in the state of Maryland from being shown on movie screens in 1921 is overwhelming in its restrictiveness. It includes, but is not limited to: indecorous dancing; over passionate love scenes; exhibition of feminine underwear; gruesome murders; birth control; disrespect for the law; use of opium or other habit forming drugs; executions; profanity; excessive drunkeness especially in women; and maternity scenes.
The complete Maryland censorship rules is a laundry list of vice and of how people really behaved. Basically real life was prohibited in the movies.
Because there was no film industry set of standards, individual states set up their own board of censors to either insist on cuts to movies or block films from being exhibited entirely within that state.
In 1921 there were only six state censorship boards, and that number would greatly expand throughout the 1920’s. What was okay in one state, may not be playable in another. This set off a quagmire of problems for producers of films who needed to be able to show their films to the widest possible audience without having to make special edits to satisfy each state’s censorship board.
Rather than risk the creation of a national censorship board, the film industry eventually self monitored and created its own censorship code and a board to enforce the rules.
One of the last pre-code films. 1933’s Roman Scandals with a young Lucille Ball in the chorus as a slave girl
The Hays Code (1930) and Joseph Breen, head of the Production Code Administration standardized censorship rules and staved off an official national censorship board.
But even after the Production Code went into full effect (1934), local authorities or the Legion of Decency could still condemn a film and keep it from being exhibited. The city of Boston was a prime example of banning films with objectionable content.
Below is the complete list of Maryland’s censorship restrictions. Continue reading
May Day Parade 1934
While this may look like a group of Nazi women dressed like stormtroopers marching up Madison Avenue it is actually just a bunch of American socialists resembling the sieg heiling Nazi’s.
The original caption for this news photo reads as follows:
The Red Flag of Socialism
A general view of the parade of the Socialists up Madison Avenue in New York May 1. A group of women Socialists carried red flags and sang and shouted as they marched. Parades were held throughout the city by various groups but there was no disorder of any kind. (Associated Press Photo 5-1-34)
In the first half of the 20th century, every May Day in New York would bring thousands of activists out into the streets to march and promulgate their ideas . Many were just plain old Socialists, however there would be smaller parades of Communists, anarchists, Industrial Workers of the World, or other labor groups who had a concern or cause.
In 1932, the Socialist party presidential candidate Norman Thomas received 884,895 votes, a little more than 2% of all ballots cast.
Mostly the May Day marches in New York Continue reading
My Dear, You Smell of B.O.
Lifebuoy Soap Ad – Schenectady Gazette March 13, 1933 (click to enlarge)
“What a kill-joy B.O. is!” says this 1933 Lifebuoy comic strip ad.
“Perhaps its your fault,” says Auntie to Mrs. B.O.
Nothing like being direct.
The Lifebuoy ad warns that B.O. make life miserable for its victims. I like that it is whispered in parenthesis in case you don’t know that B.O. stands for body odor.
And to add a dramatic flair, B.O. “threatens their jobs, social positions – even their homes!”
Fortunately of course there is a Continue reading
Broadway looking north and west between 80th & 81st Streets. 1898 photo: H.N. Tiemann
Up until the late 1800’s Broadway above 59th Street still retained much of its sleepy Dutch ways and was still called the Boulevard which followed the course of the Old Bloomingdale Road. The upper west side neighborhoods had their own unique character which were based upon the villages of Harsenville, Striker’s Bay, Bloomingdale and Manhattanville.
In the photo above from 1898 we see the Boulevard looking north and west from 80th Street with horses lined up along the curb. Building is sparse with low profile two and three story buildings. Commercial structures might contain blacksmith’s, grocery shops and tailors. Open land and farms were still nearby. In thirty years the change would be striking.
Land speculation and the coming of the subway would end the ruralness of the area.
Broadway looking north and west between 80th & 81st Streets. 1928 photo: H.N. Tiemann
This photograph taken in 1928 from the median of Broadway and 80th Street and looking in the same direction as the previous photo shows that almost everything from 1898 has vanished.
We see automobiles, but no horses. The trees that lined the street are gone and there is quite a bit of pedestrian activity along the street. Commercial stores line Broadway and 80th Street to the west and the north. The white building in the foreground is still standing today and now contains Zabar’s.
Batman’s Adam West Is One Of Many Actors Who Were Offered The Role Of Agent 007 James Bond, But Turned Down The Part
“The name’s West, Adam West”
There is a little of James Bond in every actor. That does not mean that every actor wants to play James Bond.
Bond is an expert in a wide range of subjects, an outstanding athlete and fighter, can drive any vehicle, land, air or sea and seems to have a way with the ladies. There are some critics who have complained that James Bond is a misogynist. If so, he has rarely used his “license to kill” on women. Out of 370 people Bond has killed on screen, only three have been women.
Recently while watching Diamonds Are Forever (1971), the extra features on the DVD mentioned that before Sean Connery agreed to return to the role of James Bond, several actors were considered to play 007 and some turned it down. The reasons varied, but I doubt that any of the actors regretted their decision.
The most surprising decline to me was Adam West who had brilliantly played the campy title role on Batman, ABC’s hit series which ran from 1966-1968. I can see how the producers considered him for the role, but I cannot imagine Adam West being James Bond. But then again neither could West and he was smart enough to pass on the part. On the other hand, some of the actors who turned down James Bond, I could see playing 007.
So here is a slideshow of just some of the actors who turned down the role of the world’s most famous secret agent.
A little more about Patrick McGoohan who had he accepted the role may have been the best actor to ever play the part. But it was not only the womanizing McGoohan objected to; he truly despised the character, calling Bond “contemptible and simplistic.”
McGoohan, a man of very strong ethics said in a 1960’s interview Continue reading
The Nation Mourns After Learning of the Death Of F.D.R.
This is how the New York newspapers announced the death of F.D.R. on April 12, 1945.
70 years ago today when the 32nd President of the Unites States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt died suddenly of a massive stroke at the age of 63 in Warm Springs, GA there was an overwhelming outpouring of grief across the globe.
With the exception of Adolf Hitler and a few die hard anti-FDR Republicans most of the world was saddened to learn of Roosevelt’s death. Roosevelt was held in high esteem by most Americans, even those that did not agree with many of his policies. There were also those who could not stand the man, but were in awe of Roosevelt as a shrewd politician and the job he had done in seeing the United States through the Great Depression and World War II.
It was especially sad that Roosevelt never got to witness the end of the war which brought final victory to the Allies. Less than four weeks after Roosevelt’s death, Hitler and Mussolini were dead and Victory in Europe Day was celebrated May 8, 1945. Japan unconditionally surrendered on August 15, 1945.
What I cannot imagine happening now in today’s world of partisan politics is having a universal outpouring of sorrow if a President were to die suddenly while in office. There is so much outright hatred and disrespect in modern politics that we will never see anything like this again.
FDR’s funeral procession in Washington D.C.
The Brooklyn Eagle Continue reading