LIFE IS A CIRCUS

It's no hallucination—that's Marilyn Monroe on a pink elephant.

This colorized shot that’s made the rounds online shows Marilyn Monroe yesterday in 1955 riding a pink elephant at a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus charity event at Madison Square Garden. It was a season opening show before the circus went on its national tour, and was a benefit for the Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation. While the expression “seeing pink elephants” has a gone out of vogue, back then it was a euphemism for alcoholic hallucinations or delirium tremens. These days, most would wonder if DTs were the reason people thought of painting an entire elephant, but it was a different time in terms of animal rights. There are many photos from this event made by photographers ranging from Arthur Fellig to Erika Stone. We have a few below, and they all show Monroe doing what she did better than anyone—looking like she’s having a ball.

Hey, buddy! You can't be dead here. We have a zero-tolerance policy toward lifelessness in this city.

This image shows the body of New York City gangster David Beadle, aka the Beetle, outside the Spot tavern in Manhattan, where he was gunned down by men who emerged from a passing taxi. Beadle took at least a few bullets in the head and died instantly. As gangsters go he wasn’t very high in the rackets, but his fame surpassed his stature posthumously because Arthur Fellig, aka Weegee, photographed his corpse. Another shot appears below, and you can see how back then the integrity of crime scenes was a malleable concept. Changes between the shots include the sheet, the position of Beadle’s hands, and the arrangement of debris in the gutter.

And in fact, the top shot shows Weegee himself, seeming to make an adjustment to the corpse, possibly to make for a more pleasingly composed shot. The first photo, therefore, was made by an unknown, though it’s often credited to Weegee. He made the second shot himself. Most of his archive, including these, reside at NYC’s International Center of Photography, to which Weegee’s longtime companion and caretaker Wilma Wilcox donated 16,000 photos and 7,000 negatives, as well as transferring all copyrights, in 1993. You can see many of them at the Center’s website here.

Gangster life has great benefits but the retirement plan leaves a lot to be desired.

It seems like the same lesson is imparted by nearly every vintage Mafia photo we run across—ambition is a double-edged sword. Dominick Didato, aka Terry Burns, who you see above in a photo made by Arthur Fellig, aka Weegee, lies dead on a New York City street where he was gunned down today in 1936. He was killed for interfering with rackets run by Lucky Luciano. It was a low percentage play. Luciano was literally the most powerful mobster in the U.S. at the time, and as the saying goes, you come at the king, you best not miss.

It's not a party until someone gets their brains blown out.


The above photo shows the murder scene of a mid-level gangster named Joseph “Little Joe” La Cava, and occurred in New York City on Mulberry Street at the Feast of San Gennaro today in 1939. We’ll go out on a limb and say the festive atmosphere took a fatal hit too. Luckily, the celebration usually went for a week, so we suppose it was salvaged. La Cava was gunned down along with Rocco “Chickee” Fagio, who you see below. These images were made by Arthur Fellig, aka Weegee, and are especially well known because the ever clever lensman angled himself to get a photo of Fagio ironically sprawled beneath a scungilli restaurant sign that says O Sole Mio!—which means “my sun,” after the famous Neapolitan song. He used the same trick when shooting other murders, because hey, if it works, just roll with it. Also interesting, cops being cops, the flatfoot closest to La Cava looks incongruously jocular as he chats with a higher-up. If this wasn’t the most unforgettable Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy’s history it had to be close.
Gangsters try to steal Robert Ryan's boxing future.

In film noir there are procedural cop movies. The Set-Up is a procedural boxing movie. It tries to take viewers behind the scenes of the violence, bloodlust, and money to focus on the nuts and bolts of the fight game. Starring Robert Ryan as an aging heavyweight and Audrey Totter as his fretful girlfriend, most of the first half of the film takes place in a claustrophobic locker room as boxer after boxer goes out for subsequent bouts of a six card program like gladiators in Rome’s Coliseum. Ryan is the main event, and when his name is called the action shifts to the ring for his fight, which is shown in something close to real time.

Ryan is hoping a win over an up and coming young fighter will earn him one last shot at fortune and glory, but he has no idea the fix is in. Somebody should have told him, because if he wins the bout he’ll be in heaps of trouble. This is a good flick. It was helmed by Robert Wise, has some fantastic directorial extravagances, and looks spectacular in general, like the gritty documentary photos of Arthur Weegee Fellig, which is no small feat for a film shot entirely on an RKO backlot (Weegee, incidentally, has a cameo as a timekeeper). In the realm of boxing movies The Set-Up stands toe to toe with most. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1949. 

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1918—Wilson Goes to Europe

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sails to Europe for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, France, becoming the first U.S. president to travel to Europe while in office.

1921—Arbuckle Manslaughter Trial Ends

In the U.S., a manslaughter trial against actor/director Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle ends with the jury deadlocked as to whether he had killed aspiring actress Virginia Rappe during rape and sodomy. Arbuckle was finally cleared of all wrongdoing after two more trials, but the scandal ruined his career and personal life.

1964—Mass Student Arrests in U.S.

In California, Police arrest over 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover and sit-in at the administration building in protest at the UC Regents’ decision to forbid protests on university property.

1968—U.S. Unemployment Hits Low

Unemployment figures are released revealing that the U.S. unemployment rate has fallen to 3.3 percent, the lowest rate for almost fifteen years. Going forward all the way to the current day, the figure never reaches this low level again.

1954—Joseph McCarthy Disciplined by Senate

In the United States, after standing idly by during years of communist witch hunts in Hollywood and beyond, the U.S. Senate votes 65 to 22 to condemn Joseph McCarthy for conduct bringing the Senate into dishonor and disrepute. The vote ruined McCarthy’s career.

1955—Rosa Parks Sparks Bus Boycott

In the U.S., in Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott resulted in a crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city’s African-American population were the bulk of the system’s ridership.

Cover art by the great Sandro Symeoni for Peter Cheyney's mystery He Walked in her Sleep, from Ace Books in 1949.
The mysterious artist who signed his or her work as F. Harf produced this beautiful cover in 1956 for the French publisher S.E.P.I.A.
Aslan art was borrowed for many covers by Dutch publisher Uitgeverij A.B.C. for its Collection Vamp. The piece used on Mike Splane's Nachtkatje is a good example.

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