URBAN DECAY

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.

New York City, International Center of Photography, David Beadle, Weegee, Arthur Fellig, Wilma Wilcox, murder

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

April 23

1986—Otto Preminger Dies

Austroâ€“Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

April 23

1998—James Earl Ray Dies

The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray’s fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King’s killing, but with Ray’s death such questions became moot.

April 22

1912—Pravda Is Founded

The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country’s leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid.

April 22

1983—Hitler's Diaries Found

The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler’s diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess’s flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison.

April 21

1918—The Red Baron Is Shot Down

German WWI fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as The Red Baron, sustains a fatal wound while flying over Vaux sur Somme in France. Von Richthofen, shot through the heart, manages a hasty emergency landing before dying in the cockpit of his plane. His last word, according to one witness, is “Kaputt.” The Red Baron was the most successful flying ace during the war, having shot down at least 80 enemy airplanes.

April 21

1964—Satellite Spreads Radioactivity

An American-made Transit satellite, which had been designed to track submarines, fails to reach orbit after launch and disperses its highly radioactive two pound plutonium power source over a wide area as it breaks up re-entering the atmosphere.

April 20

1939—Holiday Records Strange Fruit

American blues and jazz singer Billie Holiday records “Strange Fruit”, which is considered to be the first civil rights song. It began as a poem written by Abel Meeropol, which he later set to music and performed live with his wife Laura Duncan. The song became a Holiday standard immediately after she recorded it, and it remains one of the most highly regarded pieces of music in American history.