Weegee's Day at the Beach
For the noir photographer Weegee, bathers at Coney Island had another kind of gritty reality
- By Matthew Gurewitsch
- Smithsonian magazine, June 2009, Subscribe
At 70 years old and counting, the Parachute Jump still stands, a ghost of its former self. Built for the world's fair in 1939, the ride known affectionately as Brooklyn's Eiffel Tower has graduated to the status of official landmark. In Weegee's photograph Coney Island at noon Saturday, July 5, 1942—shot for the visually punchy, commercial-free, left-wing tabloid PM—the overgrown structure looms on the horizon in its glory: a memory within a memory.
Visit the spot today and you will find, raked by the Jump's skeletal shadow, a hotly contested landscape of urban blight. Peering into a crystal ball, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration sees a 12-acre amusement district surrounded by new housing, shops and parks. A civic group is lobbying for an amusement park twice as big as the mayor's, anchored by some landmark attraction as uniquely irresistible as the 443-foot-high London Eye, which hangs over the South Bank of the Thames like the slowly spinning wheel of a Titan's bicycle. A prominent developer envisions time-share hotels and big stores. Reconciling such fantasies could take a while, and in times as tough as these, they all could fall apart. Meanwhile, Weegee's image of teeming humanity invites us to ponder the pursuit of happiness in these United States since the heyday of the Greatest Generation and perhaps to consider the fate of our lonely Spaceship Earth.
Usher (later Arthur) Fellig, a.k.a. Weegee, was born in a part of Austria that now belongs to Ukraine, and landed in New York in 1910. Certainly he never thought of this or any of his pictures in metaphorical terms. His stock in trade was reality, mostly of the after-hours variety, mostly in his adopted Manhattan, and the grittier the view, the better. Metaphor had nothing to do with it. After his freelancing prime in the 1930s and '40s, he coasted on his celebrity in Hollywood and Europe before ending up back in New York, where he died of a brain tumor in 1968 at age 69.
According to Miles Barth, co-author of the book Weegee's World, Coney Island was a bit off our lensman's beat. "When it came to warm weather, Weegee was the last person you could imagine in shorts and sneakers and a T-shirt," Barth told me. "It was against everything he understood. He was doing fires, floods, car wrecks, murders. What interested him was crime." His sensibility chimed perfectly with contemporary film noir like The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key or The Big Sleep, though compared with his hard-edged reportage, stills from the movies can look glamorous to a fault.
When PM began publishing, in the summer of 1940, the mercury was soaring, and the editors wanted to know how Joe Average was coping. Weegee went out and shot individuals sleeping on fire escapes, kids cooling off in the spray of fire hydrants and thousands upon thousands broiling at the beach. Thus the precedent was set for the hot summer of 1942, when Weegee headed back out to Coney Island.
"Whatever it took to get the shot, Weegee did it," Barth says. "That was part of his genius." Barth has it from Louie Liotta, Weegee's longtime assistant, that the boss climbed up on a lifeguard station and screamed and danced until everybody started to look. "And when they did," says Barth, "he took the photograph. It was that simple."
Not that the images Weegee came up with were always simple. What pops in this one, against steep odds, is one man balanced on the adjacent shoulders of two bare-chested sailors in gob caps. "The masked man said he was a laundry man," Weegee wrote, "but would only be photographed incognito. The mask is a gag of his; he calls himself the Spider, and likes to frighten people." That mask looks like the hood of a hangman. Even in broad daylight, he gives you the willies.
Weegee's captions—he wrote his own—read like entries from the police blotter. Crowd at Coney Island, one begins. Temperature 89 degrees.... They came early, and stayed late. What's so hot about 89 degrees?, we wonder today, desensitized by global warming and spoiled by air conditioning. Back then the city must have felt like a furnace. Arriving one day at 4 A.M., Weegee found the sand covered with young couples on beach blankets. "I took pictures of them," he reported, deadpan: "When I asked them their names, they all said, ‘It's just me and the wife,' as they pointed to the girl on the sand."
Coney Island, Barth says, was "originally meant to be a classy place. Over the years, it became middle class and then lower middle class and then working class." Every society needs its glittering playground, where, as the old song says, "the underworld can meet the elite." Like the 42nd Street of legend and like Las Vegas today, Coney Island straddled the chasm, or tried to.
And then it broke down. Weegee gives us Coney Island in its decline, yet kicking with messy life. In our time, plutocrats and civic leaders aspire to a grander future, even as doomsday prophets warn of melting polar ice caps and rising seas. Either way, a return to Weegee's Coney Island may eventually feel like a day at the beach.
Matthew Gurewitsch is a New York City-based writer.
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Comments (5)
July 5, 1942 was a Sunday, not a Saturday, so when was this iconic pic really taken.
Posted by wendy laney on June 30,2009 | 03:45 PM
In the collection of photos dedicated to the Opera House, there are two in which the name of the photographed apareen: one is the Madam G.W. Cavanaugh and the other is Eddie Condonis. This is that interests me. Does anyone know something of this character unless someone well-known not think that would muchosentido that your name appear in the photo? Greetings J.T.M
Posted by Juan on June 2,2009 | 01:19 PM
I was struck by a few things while looking at Weegee's photo, snapped in 1942 - after getting past the incongruous masked man on the shoulders of the sailors. One was the preponderance of men to women in the photo; perhaps the men were just more curious about the screaming, dancing man at the lifeguard station. Secondly, the preponderance of fit and even thin people to overweight people is remarkable. Of course, the beachwear fashion of the day is notable, too. I wonder what a similarly crowded beach scene there looks like today.
Posted by Catherine C. on June 1,2009 | 06:52 PM
Thank you for doing the story on Weegee, he was such a nice wonderful guy. I still have one 8"x10" color transparency that he took of me around 1966 or 67, we shot color slides for two days together doing an experiment with colored lights that were projected onto my body, he had me wear a bikini for this effect, he did about six boxes of slides and gave them to me, unfortunately they were stolen. I'll put this month's Smithsonian with my Weegee color transparency, memories are wonderful things. God bless Weegee such a nice, wonderful man. Again I thank you.
Posted by Aleda Kellgren on May 28,2009 | 08:28 PM
CONTINUATION OF THE BELOW COMMENT BY ME: Even though the area is a bit gritty today it still has its charm and that mystique of wondering about the area and its colorful past. I have never personally been to Coney Island, but this July, I will make my pilgrimage to the area to ride the Cyclone and eat a Nathan's Hot Dog. I will be there to see the lost amusement parks and to see the "Eiffel Tower Of Brooklyn" and to wonder what a ride that must have been. Just look for the bright eyed sixteen year old from Massachusetts who passed up the glamour of Fifth Avenue to come and to imagine the former glamour of a forgotten dreamland. To come from Manhattan and ride and old roller coaster, take pictures of the boardwalk and its attractions and to wonder what ever happened to this great place.
Posted by Dan Cournoyer on May 22,2009 | 08:12 PM
These pictures are awesome. They show the reality of Coney Island, and what it was. Coney Island was that one point of brightness to those people in New York. It was their shimmering city of delights that attracted people of all walks of life. There were amazing rides and inventions created there. The modern roller coaster was invented there. Coney Island was that bright point to the people, it stood as the symbol of fun and innocence in an era that was marked by the great depression and World War II. Coney Island could draw millions on a good weekend, the main reason for people to come was the fact that it was a cheap way to have fun, unlike the modern amusement parks that exist today, where it could be a trip that costs hundreds for one day. Coney Island began its slow demise with the loss of its parks and just this past summer the last of the great Coney Island parks closed, Astroland. THe loss of Astroland was a major blow. Now all that remains of the area is the Cyclone Roller Coaster and the Wonder Wheel and its small park. The ruins of the older parks stand as a silent reminder of the once great amusement area. The rough neighborhood has the chance to revive to its former grandeur if the right person comes along. But as it seems the right person may not come. Coney Island is not about high priced condos or overpriced amusement parks. There is a reason that Coney Island was known as the "Nickel Empire" IT WAS CHEAP GOOD FUN. And that is what we need in this day and age. We need a place where average people can go and have a good time. We need a reminder of the past, not to tear everything down, that is never the answer. There needs to be change, and there has been, with the construction of Key-Span Park, new life has been brought into the area, but the loss of Astroland was a big one. Coney Island needs to be like its old-self, an oasis in this crazy world, just as it was in the picture.
Posted by Dan Cournyer on May 22,2009 | 08:11 PM