Tag Archives: News – Press Photo

Chimpanzees In Old News and Publicity Photographs

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Monkey See, Monkey Do

People find chimpanzees amusing, especially when they are doing non-chimp activities. News organizations, on a slow news day would send a photographer to see if a good photo-op would come about. Hopefully no one had their face ripped off.

Whatever background information is known, is written below the chimp photo. (Click any photo to enlarge.)

Chimpanzee photographing swimsuit models. Circa 1960’s. (He doesn’t have the viewfinder in the right place, does he?)

Bobby John, chimpanzee tennis player, Rockledge, FL November 20, 1973

“Jiggs” the chimpanzee, on the movie set of  “Her Jungle Love” with Dorothy Lamour. 1938

Chimpanzees eating zeppoles. Circa 1950’s.

Jacko (I swear that is his name) the London Zoo chimpanzee. Circa 1930’s

“The beret hat from Northern France is becomming very popular in London and one was introduced to Jacko the chimpanzee at the London Zoo”

Chimpanzee dressed elegantly, entering a limousine. Circa 1920’s.

Tommy Dorsey Swings It For Chimps – 1939

“Philadelphia – Tommy Dorsey, band leader, gives baby chimpanzees at the zoo here an earful of his trombone music during an experiment to determine the effect of music on animals. Attending the jam session put on by Dorsey and his players were psychologists who studied the animals’ reactions but made no immediate conclusions. January 31, 1939.”

Babe Ruth’s 1920 Uniform Sells For $4.4 Million At Auction

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Babe Ruth, King Of The Sports Memorabilia World

Nearly sixty-four years after his death, Babe Ruth set another record on Sunday May 20, 2012 . His circa 1920 Yankees road jersey sold at SCP auctions for a staggering $4.4 million.

Photo © SCP auctions

This eclipses the previous highest amount paid for a piece of sports memorabilia, a Honus Wagner baseball card, which sold in 2008 for $2.8 million.

To put the amount of the sale price in some perspective, Babe Ruth earned approximately $910,000 during his entire major league baseball playing career from 1914 -1935. This of course does not account for inflation. In modern dollars with inflation Ruth would have earned $15.3 million.

Also Ruth made vast amounts of money during the off-season, barnstorming and doing various product endorsements and personal appearances.

How would Ruth have felt about his uniform selling for more than he made his entire career? I’d like to think Ruth would have had a good laugh at that fact.

Babe Ruth, second from left, with his Yankee teammates, early 1920’s

Here is a photograph of Babe Ruth early in his New York Yankee career during spring training, possibly wearing the multi-million dollar uniform.

On a side note

The Kansas City Royals defeated the New York Yankees last night, May 21 at Yankee Stadium by a score of 6-0.  What made me notice this otherwise unremarkable game was what the New York Times said today in the sports section:

But the clutch-hitting woes of the Yankees — not just their wheezing All-Star first baseman — remained for another game, a 6-0 loss to the Kansas City Royals in front of 39,229 fans.

Anyone attending or watching the game on television knows the announced attendance of 39,229 was a joke. Looking at the mostly empty stadium, there were probably no more than 8,000 people attending the dreary game, which was played under a constant, steady rain.

The idea that baseball attendance is counted not by clicks of the turnstile, but by tickets sold is ridiculous. It’s another slight problem in a laundry list of things that MLB should address before baseball becomes completely irrelevant.

Squealer’s End

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What Happens To Squealer’s

This is not The Sopranos or The Godfather.

75 years ago, gangsters did really nasty things to you, if you talked to the cops.

The back of this Acme news photograph sums it up:

Trussed from head to foot, the body of Samuel Silverman is examined by Deputy Medical Examiner Romeo Auerbach. The victim was found in a car parked in Brooklyn, N.Y. with three bullets in his skull. Police believe Silverman was killed for “putting the finger” on other men involved in a hold up, for which he was out on bail.  July 16, 1937

Silverman , 25, who lived at 869 Hopkinson Avenue, Brooklyn, was found in front of 324 East 91st Street, Brooklyn on July 15, 1937. The body was discovered at 5 pm by a youth who happened to glance inside the parked car.

Silverman had been arrested Continue reading →

Bill Moose Skowron Dies at 81 – An Appreciation of a Kind Man

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Casey Stengel and Bill “Moose” Skowron

Bill “Moose” Skowron died today, April 27, 2012 of congestive heart failure in Arligton Heights, IL.

In this news photograph above, the caption says, “Bill Moose Skowron reports for his first day, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, September 19.”

The only problem with this is that Moose’s first game was April 13, 1954 and it was not at Comiskey Park.  And the Yankees did not play in Chicago on September 19, 1954.

So what is the answer to this problem? Continue reading →

Walter Alston Managing

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Dodgers Manager Goes Through Various Emotions – 1955

2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the Los Angeles Dodgers playing at Dodgers Stadium. For the first fifteen of those years at Chavez Ravine, the manager was Walter Alston who was most notably retained by the Dodgers management on a series of one year contracts throughout his career.

Alston started managing the Dodgers in 1954 when they were still in Brooklyn and retired after the 1976 season at the age of  64. During that time Alston won seven NL pennants and four world championships.

This news composite photograph shows Alston managing on June 16, 1955 in Brooklyn against the Cincinnati Reds. Alston shouldn’t have worried so much. After the Reds tied the game 4-4 in the top of the ninth, the Dodgers won the game 5-4 in the bottom of the 9th on a Duke Snider solo homerun, his second homer of the game. Clem Labine picked up his 9th win and the attendance was 6,655.

The Brooklyn Dodgers won only one World Series while in Brooklyn.  1955 would see Alston and the Dodgers defeat the hated New York Yankees in seven thrilling World Series games, sending all of Brooklyn into a delirious state of happiness.

Walter Alston was inducted to the Baseball Hall-of Fame in 1983 and died in 1984 at the age of 72.

When Ballplayers Spent Time With The Fans

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Bobby Thomson and A Young Fan

Sure it’s just a posed publicity photo, but there was a time when ballplayers actually did interact with fans.  At the New York Giants’ spring training home in Phoenix, Arizona,  Bobby Thomson demonstrates to a little cowboy, Dennis Filan age five, the proper way to grip a baseball bat on March 6, 1953.

Thomson, who will forever occupy a spot in every Giants fans heart for hitting the most famous homerun in baseball history the  “shot heard ’round the world” in 1951, was typical of  many ballplayers before astronomical salaries became the norm for baseball.  These players spent time among the fans.

Not only that, most players worked other jobs in the off-season to make ends meet. They lived among regular people, who went to the ballgames and had daily interactions with them. In New York and many other major league cities, most players took public transportation or walked to the ballpark from their homes. The players were an integral part of the community they played in.

It’s one of the reasons baseball is so screwed up today. Continue reading →

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

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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 Best Woman Presidential Candidate Ever

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Comedienne Gracie Allen Enters The 1940 Presidential Race

In this newswire photograph, Gracie Allen, the zany half of the Burns & Allen comedy team “tosses her hat into the ring” to run for President in 1940.

Gracie put out a very funny book after her tongue-in-cheek Presidential run entitled How To Become President (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1940) which has enlightening chapters such as:

Government Jobs Pay Big Money

How Not To Offend Anybody

Buying A Good Used Platform

Secrets of Unsuccessful Speechmaking

Even though the candidacy was a plot line for the Burns & Allen weekly comedy radio show, Gracie did a whistlestop tour by train and over 300,000 Americans came out to hear her make campaign speeches in cities along the route.

After “dropping out” of the race in the middle of 1940, Gracie still ended up receiving over 42,000 write-in votes in the November election.

The forgotten story of her candidacy was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. Click here to listen.

The New York Mets 50th Anniversary: A Look Back At Casey Stengel

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Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?

Casey Stengel photo © Niels Lauritzen

Writer Jimmy Breslin claimed that “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game,” was Casey Stengel’s lament during Casey’s first year managing the Mets in 1962. Breslin later admitted he made up the quote. But it would have been an apropos summation of the Mets first season. Continue reading →