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Showing posts with label Press Photograph. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Press Photograph. Show all posts

Meet the Press Leatrice Joy Original Press Photograph 1921

I don't get to use the word exhuberant very often, but this "edited" for publication press photograph certainly is. Nearly more paint than photo. From the flowers on the bonnet to the stripped tie, there isn't a whole lot of honesty left. Leatrice Joy was a glamor celebrity and silent film star. By the time this photo was taken in 1921 she was well on her way to fame with dozens of short films to her credit. Her first films were shot during world war one! She also lived to the age of 91,passing away in the Bronx New York. Leatrice among those credited with popularizing the Bob haircut. Joy came under a considerable amount of flak at the time for being kinda manly or something, but the cut allowed her to play both young men and women in the films. Gossip columnists were big liars then and now, but she does appear to have been one tough woman who didn't take much crap. During 1921 Her films included half a dozen lost features. The following year she divorced big star John Gilbert citing his alcoholism. Original edited by hand Press photograph 1921. Unknown Washington DC News? operation. Collection Dull Tool Dim Bulb

How is your New Years Resolution going? Percy and his Tiny House


A wirephoto press photograph showing Percy Coplon as he prepares for drastic measures to control his weight.  Caption reads "Plans to fast atop 30 foot pole.  Percy Coplon, all 357 pounds of him, stands beside the tiny house in which he plans to fast for 100 days.  
Original 1949 Wirephoto Photograph.  Collection Dull Tool Dim Bulb

VICE RAID





Adult Bookstore Raided!  Charged with obscene and lewd.  Original press photograph by Lucy Ware Morgan 1972 with press copy attached. Collection Jim Linderman

Rubble in Kennebunk Press Photograph of Religious Intolerance Enhanced by Hand




An anonymous artist has touched up the rubble before publication in this original 1940 press photograph of a Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall which was attacked by a mob in Kennebunk, Maine.  I guess the photograph wasn't rubbly enough.  The mugs standing around are.  The photo editor has touched up a few creased pants too...pictures DO lie.

That year, the Supreme Court ruled a school district could require students to salute the flag.  The Jehovah's had a problem with that…and numerous mobs had a problem with the Jehovah's.  The ruling unleashed a torrent of attacks on those who practiced the religion.


According to Wiki, the case "... resulted in a wave of persecution against Jehovah's Witnesses. Lillian Gobitas later characterized the violence as "open season on Jehovah’s Witnesses." The American Civil Liberties Union recorded 1,488 attacks on Witnesses in over 300 communities between May and October 1940. Angry mobs assaulted Witnesses, destroyed their property, boycotted their businesses and vandalized their places of worship. Less than a week after the court decision, a Kingdom Hall in Kennebunk, Maine was burnt down."

Well, it's still standing, so it wasn't "burnt down" but it certainly looks like there wasn't a whole lot of religious tolerance going on.

Original Press photograph, Anonymous, enhanced by hand for publication 1940  Collection Jim Linderman

The Case of the Tasteless True Crime Talisman Lindberg and the Most Famous Ladder in History by Jim Linderman


Gosh, didn't cops back in the 1930s have great coats?  Check them out...thick, rich leather and thigh-length long, with great leather boots too!  You won't see THESE guys on a Segway at the mall.  Anyway, the photo shows two hog-riding constables checking a barn for clues in one of our greatest national mysteries, the Lindberg Kidnapping Case.

I won't go into detail on the crime, as there is certainly enough for you to find yourself...and the tousled-topped national hero turned out to sorta be a creep anyway by nearly aligning himself with THE WRONG SIDE during World War Two. How the...?  At so called America First Committee meetings, the airman apparently lambasted our impending involvement in the war by lecturing others on American Jews and their undue influence.  Well...best left forgotten.
 
This post centers on a small aspect of the crime.  The same one our tuff-dressed crime busters were centered on as well.  They may look like the guys from "American Pickers" entering a honey-hole, but they were trying to find a connection to the central piece of evidence.

The ladder.

Bruno, or whoever, had to climb up to snatch the child, a horrible thing...and he built a ladder to do it.  The ladder became what used to known as "The Macguffin" in Alfred Hitchcock movies.  A recurring element which might mean nothing, but could just mean everything.  Literally the O.J. gloves of the 1930s. 

As the investigation progressed into trial, a spectacle unlike any before due to the nascent and emerging mass-media, slimy vendors sold miniature kidnap ladders outside the courthouse!  That's right.  Tiny souvenir wooden ladders, an early example of crime capitalism gone crazy!  The tasteless newspapers ran tasteless photographs of tasteless spectators holding tiny tasteless ladders for the camera.
I have looked for one of those wee ladders off and on for a long time.  I've owned a few miniature wooden handmade ladders, but had no way to tell if they were a legendary murder talisman representing the double horror of crime and unseemly opportunistic greed,  or simply something a father made for his kid's Farmer Brown playset.

I even consulted a Lindberg Kidnapping expert at one time to see if he knew where I could get one.  He brushed me off, clearly so as not to reveal his own pursuit of the holy grail of true crime novelties.

Guess who else was obsessed with the miniature ladder?  No less than Maurice Sendak!    He apparently traded one of his drawings for one, and used a similar image of a kidnapper's ladder leaned against a window in one of his works. 

Once in a while I do a true crime story.  You can see some of the others HERE.


Original 8 x 10 glossy press photograph March 7, 1932 with Handwritten description Collection Jim Linderman

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A True Crime Tale by Jim Linderman


I am pleased to have the following article published in THE CHISELER this week! The Chiseler is a highly regarded web magazine edited by Daniel Riccuito. It is a site much worth following. Special thanks to Jarett Kobek, who inspired the story, having transcribed "The Oldest History of the World" book and the story from which I originally found the information I used for the story. I purchased the photograph above intending it as a post on the old-time-religion blog...imagine my surprise at learning what was in my hand.



FAITH HEALER LEFT HEADLESS: A True Crime Tale by Jim Linderman


In 1932, according to an AP wire story which ran in several newspapers, including places as far afield as Sarasota, Florida and Spokane, Washington, Robert Harris, a negro and leader of a religious order with a membership of “about 100 negroes in Detroit” confessed to the brutal murder of James Smith, also a negro. Harris admitted that “he crushed Smith’s head with the rear axle of an automobile, then stabbed him through the heart.” Robert Harris apparently dragged Smith to “an improvised altar” in his home to finished him off.


Detroit in the late 1920s and early 1930s had a problem with religious cults.

Three years earlier, on a July 4th weekend, not far from where Harris killed Smith, Paul “Benny” Evangelista, known as a “Divine Prophet” was murdered along with his wife and four children. With an axe. Few axe murders are not gruesome, but this one was particularly so. The entire Evangelista family was hacked to pieces. The bodies in bedclothes. The divine prophet’s head was severed from his torso and placed on a chair in the family living room.

Also “cruelly hacked” was Santina, the prophet’s wife and Jeanne (eight years old) Angelia (nine) Margaret (ten) and the three-year old son Mario. One account puts Mario’s age at eighteen months. In addition to the prophet’s head, one of the girl’s arms was severed. Police suspected that wound was the result of a “miscalculated blow” intended for Santina’s neck, as it too had been hacked but the head was left hanging by a thread. Leaving the house on St. Aubin avenue, in the Italian district of depression era Detroit, the fiend and pervert left a bloody trail for police which went nowhere.

Benny was downstairs in pieces when found by a neighbor, real estate broker Vincent Elias. A friend of the family, just a day earlier Elias had completed arrangements for the purchase of a farm near Marine City, MI for the Evangelistas. Elias opened the unlocked door, saw the head and without looking further ran for the police. The children and wife were found by authorities upstairs.

In an understatement, Wayne county coroner James Burgess called the murder “an unusual case.”

A week later the entire family was wheeled down rain-slicked Woodward Avenue, parade-style, each in a coffin of appropriate size. The public funeral was an opportunity for police to look for the killer in the crowd, but to no avail.

A relative of the Evangelista family living in Coraopolis told police they must have been murdered by members of a “Black Hand” organization.

Benny was Benjamino Evangelista, a Neapolitan immigrant who claimed to be an herb doctor and faith healer. In other words, a criminal and fraud using religious superstition and jargon to steal. Like all “faith healers” he bilked rubes out of savings like a carnival barker, but his tools were voodoo, false claims of health, black magic and superstition rather than sideshow swindles. He overcharged desperate people for “love potions” and promises of cures. He provided “readings” for ten dollars. For these things, it appears, he and his entire family were sent to a violent and blood-sticky end. Benny pissed off a client with an axe.

Prior to being murdered, Evangelista wrote an enormous, self-published book of religious ravings based loosely on the bible. It took him 20 years. “The Oldest History of the World: Discovered by Occult Science” It is unreadable, useless and no one bought it. In the fictional account three prophets travel to “Afra” in order to “see what the colored people were doing…” but all they were doing was eating their food uncooked.

The book has been hand-typed from one of the few existing copies and digitally reproduced by the extraordinary Jarett Kobek. http://kobek.com/

Kobek is a brilliant scholar and is most certainly, despite the extraordinary story of Divine Prophet, himself a better story than the people and events he writes about. He also provides the most complete bibliography of period articles about the crime, and details such as the characters in the book existed also as puppets in a shrine in the Evangelista basement.

The gruesome crime was still unsolved three years later when the “rear axle murderer” above, Robert Harris confessed. Briefly, The police thought the crime solved. So did the press. “Confession by King of Weird Cult clears up Detroit Murder” read one headline, but it was not to be. Harris didn’t do it.

Neither did Angelo Depoli, arrested the day of the murder with a blood covered curved knife used for chopping bananas in his barn. A year later the family dog was still being sought as a witness. Detroit police were so desperate to solve the crime they tried to pin it on a man who escaped from a lunatic asylum and was presumed killed by a freight train two years BEFORE the crime. They didn’t have much, but they did have a pair of bloody fingerprints from the door latch. They were figured prominently in the bulletin from Superintendent of Police James Sprott along with the reward of one thousand dollars which was distributed far and wide to no avail.

The case is as cold as wind from Windsor blowing across the Detroit River in December.

by Jim Linderman

Jim Linderman uses photographs and ephemera from his personal collection to tell true stories. He is author of the Grammy-nominated book / CD Take Me to the Water and the forthcoming Heroes of Vintage Sleaze. His daily blogs are DULL TOOL DIM BULB, VINTAGE SLEAZE, and old-time-religion. He has also self-published a number of books which are available from Blurb.com.




Original Press Photograph Wide World Photos 7/5/29 Collection Jim Linderman

Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books and Ebooks HERE

Mannequin Dummy! Mannekin Manniken Manikin and More


Aieeee! A startling image, but harmless. A photograph taken at a Manhattan Mannequin factory in 1948. Could the Garment district or your local mall survive without them? I guess the only rule is that they be life-sized, or you have to call them dolls.

De Chirico painted them, but he certainly hadn't seen their close relatives the Crash Test Dummy, the CPR Dummy and the sexy blow-up-doll. Remember those fake humans created to allow selfish drivers to use the double occupancy lane? Mannequins.

There is even a psychological condition given to an irrational fear of them! Pediophobia! I'm suffering a bit of it now as I consider Christmas shopping! And of course, there is a term which defines those with an even more creepy ATTRACTION to them, Agalmatophilia. Both are words not recognized by my spell-checking software, but I typed carefully. I'll be sure to use the phrases if I ever put this photograph on Ebay!


The most extensive wiki entry on these dummies is so complete, I suspect it was written by someone who had one of the medical conditions or the other.
If you are ever interested in looking up the things, remember there are countless ways to spell it and all are acceptable! Mannequin, mannekin, mannikin and manikin are all approved.

"Manhattan Mannequin Factory" Anonymous Press Photograph 1949 collection Jim Linderman

Crazy Nude Messiah and Kidnapped Converts (When Pictures do not tell the Whole Story)


Pictures often don't tell the story. A couple of dudes last year coming down from the mountain. So their woman friend dresses odd...lots of them do. Right?

This 1938 picture shows Mark Silverman (left...you know...the guy who looks like a friend of yours) and his "unwilling converts." Silverman was in fact a self-proclaimed "Messiah" who kidnapped the other two (Ms. "Button Pants" and that other guy who looks like a friend of yours) and forced them to live in the hills of San Gabriel Canyon, L.A. for 4 months. After the press was done photographing them, Silverman was taken by the deputy sheriff to a "psycopathic" ward.

Silverman forced the couple (actually his sister-in law and his brother Joe) to live nude in a cave the entire time while attempting to hypnotize them into murder and waiting "for the world's end." Prior to the kidnapping, he had gone to his mother's home where he burned her furniture and clothing. Mom was taken hostage as well, but was released earlier as mountain life wasn't good for her health. Before taking the hostages, Silverman, described as a "religious fanatic" was a shoemaker. Perhaps that explains Joe's spiffy boots! Regardless, Crazy Mark declared himself Jesus Christ and feed the pair walnuts, avocados and raw potatoes.

While being held for an insanity complaint later, Silverman denied being crazy, having queer religious beliefs and also pointed out he did not believe in nudism. Charges against him were dismissed.

Really, I thought it was a Banana Republic ad. Two questions not answered by the photo? Where did one of the victims get bell-bottoms in 1938? And why would ANYONE read fiction? This would have been damn hard to conjure up.


Also posted on my old time religion blog.

Original Press Photograph "Messiah comes out of the Hills with "Converts" 1938
Collection Jim Linderman

The Hard Luck Hand of William Cook


Suspected killer of 8 persons William E. Cook, captured in Santa Rosalia, Mexico and returned to San Diego Ca for a preliminary hearing. His tattooed hand, obviously dark enough to sufficiently startle readers, has been touched up by the photographer or photo editor prior to reproduction. An original press photograph from 1951.

"Hard Luck" Press Photograph, Anonymous, 1951 Collection Jim Linderman

Meet the Press: Woman's Deformed Feet from Improper Shoes


Original Press photograph, 1921. "Imprint of the Feet of a Woman (American) Deformed by Wearing Improper Shoes. Collection Jim Linderman

GOOD DOG! Sit. Staaaaay. GOOD DOG! Dog Photography


Man tries to replicate his best friend in 1940. The pitiful attempt is a 65 pound aluminum Scotty breed named Sparko. Sparko was companion to Elektro, a mechanical man manufactured for the 1940 World's Fair. Pale substitute for the real thing, but then non-allergenic. For a wonderful web museum exhibit of the real thing, see Alan Griffiths show "Nature: Dogs" on Luminous Lint, the premier site for all things Fine Photography. Browse while there...Alan's site is a treasure, and he opens the entire world of photograph collecting.

Original press photograph, 1940 Collection Jim Linderman

Laying Them in the Aisles for Jimmy the Catcher (The Jessup Brothers Religous Healing Act and Show)


The Four Jessup Brothers, Jimmy, Charity, Darrel and Byron, the oldest only 23, are putting on a religious healing show. The boys are literally "laying them in the aisles" as shown in the above photo of a woman patient swooning into the arms of Jimmy, the "catcher" after Charley finished his "cure."

Original 1939 Press Photo, collection Jim Linderman

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