Tag Archives: Arthur Sasse

Miss Bra Queen Contest 1954 and Albert Einstein Sticking Out His Tongue By Arthur Sasse

Sometimes It Is A Slow News Day

News photographers take pictures that are assigned to them by editors based upon events that might merit coverage.

The caption to this January 5, 1954  Acme news phtograph is “Photographer Arthur Sasse was assigned to cover a contest for the title of Miss Bra Queen of 1954.”

The top portion of the photograph shows Sasse taking the photo that apppears in the bottom panel.  Miss Bra Queen was a bust as far as news coverage goes.

Sasse was an accomplished photographer and three years previous to Miss Bra Queen, he took one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century. Today, young people would probably think this was photoshopped, but of course it wasn’t.

It shows super-genius Albert Einstein had a humorous and mischievious side to him.  March 14, 1951 was Einstein’s 72nd birthday and he had just gotten into a car to be driven home with Frank Aydelotte and his wife. Sasse was asking Einstein to smile but Einstein had smiled many times that day for the photographers and was sick of it. So he stuck out his tongue instead. Sasse snapped the photo and the iconic image was captured.

Einstein loved the photograph after he saw it and ordered nine copies of it for his personal use. The original photo sold for $74,324 in 2009 at auction.

This is the scene in the moments leading up to the famous photograph being taken and the original uncropped version.

  

 

 

The Agony of Defeat

The Day After The Yankees Were Swept in a Late Season Doubleheader – 1954

The day of September 13, 1954 was not a happy one for Yankees fans as can be seen above. Reality sank in for eleven-year-old Walter Golle as he sat in front of Yankee Stadium. The dejection shown in Walter’s face reflected the fact that the Yankees would not be in the World Series for the first time since 1948 when Walter was five-years-old. The Yankees had won five consecutive World Series from 1949-1953.

The day before, on September 12, the Cleveland Indians had swept the Yankees in a doubleheader in Cleveland. The games were witnessed by 86,563 fans, the largest crowd to ever see a baseball game in the cavernous Municipal Stadium.

September 12, 1954 Municipal Stadium Filled

Bob Lemon won the first game 4-1 for his twenty-second win of the year and Early Wynn triumphed 3-2 in the second game for his twenty-first victory. The Yankees ended the day being 8 and a half games behind the Indians, reducing Cleveland’s magic number for clinching the pennant to three games.

The Indians would go on to win an American League record 111 games. They finished the season eight games ahead of the Yankees.  Miraculously the New York Giants defeated the heavily favored Indians four games to none in the World Series.

Walter eventually got over the Yankees 1954 failure. Maybe that is an assumption.

Here is what Walter looked like 46 years later in 2000 featured in The Norwood News Inquiring Photographer section.