Snapshot circa 1950 Collection Jim Linderman
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Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts
Lurid Magnificence of the Big Little Books and the Forgotten Drawings of Henry E. Vallely
Big Little Books are cool, but I am interested here in one particular artist, Henry E. Vallely. Before I go any further, check out THIS little gem in which scholar "DSK" seemingly proves Batman comic artist Bob Kane swiped from Vallely. Holy smokes, Batman…our inventor is a CROOK!
I swear. No honor among thieves or comic cook Illustrators.
There are literally hundreds of fantastic illustrations by Mr. Vellely in books for children There are nearly that many in one book alone, and all shown here came from just one.
The other problem is that no one can SEE the work of the artist anymore, as if you even touch the spine to read one, the entire little book cracks into a puff of brown paper dust. Wear a mask. Those collectors might as well be wrapping dead fish in their mylar bags…they're not going to last much longer and you can't stop it.
In order to illustrate my profile here of Henry Vallely, I have solved the problem of opening a book to scan it by shelling out four dollars for a completely beat copy of "In The Name of the Law" copyright 1937 by Stephen Slesinger published by Whitman Publishing Co. of Racine, Wisconsin. If they feel I have violated their copyright, I will gladly remove the images here (and ask vigorously what THEY are doing to preserve the work) but my initial check reveals they never renewed it. I'll proceed to tear and scan. Whitman gave up on Little Big Books and concentrated on those blue folders for coin collecting.
I am RIPPING IT APART and RUINING IT Comic book guy! Physics, chemistry and time are going to do it anyway. Someone better scan this work before it goes, and I don't think Google is including the little buggers in their massive book scanning program, deciding instead to concentrate on things no one is interested in while running rampant over copyright laws of their own.
Vallely's work is simple, effective and astounding. Vallely did more with a few black shadows than most artists do with full color. Endlessly creative, not a thing repeated. He did clothing ads, book covers and children's books mostly, but Vallely did Bible stories too. Why doesn't that surprise me? Big Little Books seem to have paid most of his bills.
Now for the biography! THERE ISN'T ONE. Not only unfamiliar and unrecognized today, the ASK ART website indicates there are NO biographical sketches to speak of. According to The Vallely Archives blog, he passed away in 1950…but even that source stopped seven years ago. No Wiki entry. Nothing. It pisses me off, and here I am doing it for free. What the hell ARE Phd. candidates in the arts writing about for their dissertations anyway? Effing BANKSY?
All illustrations by Henry E. Vallely from In The Name Of The Law 1937
Above Text by Jim Linderman
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Whorls DNA Fingerprints and Bernice Pepperling
Whorls DNA Fingerprints and Bernice Pepperling.
Fingerprint and Identification Magazine. Fingerprint Magazine ran for some 50 years, and guess what? The Genealogy Today website is indexing all the issues into their database as fast as they can find them!
The magazine was sold to 16,000 police chiefs who in turn shared it with ten patrolmen. (yes, sold…it was a subscription item your local chief had to pay for.) See the stats on the cover? 16,000 sold, 160,000 readers. In the publishing business that is known as the pass-along rate. "Mac…stop screwing around. Go study the Fingerprint magazine."
They also has curious little news items, like the one here about fingerprints being used to control quarantined Detroit citizens…You'll see they fingerprinted the resident of every rooming house to prevent the spread of smallpox. Sorry privacy advocates. Public Health wins out every time, just like it did back in 1924. Read the piece and you'll see some guys were sending in ringers to give prints for them so they could keep on spreading germs.
Anyway, back to the initial question. Is every fingerprint one of a kind? Turns out it is kinda like every snowflake being different. Wilson Bentley found identical snowflakes, and he only had to look at 5,000. We had that many nearly every DAY last winter on my PORCH. Then Mr. Bentley died of pneumonia. (True)
That is, the uniqueness of a fingerprint is "a working hypothesis" which is why in court they used to pay someone to come in and say it's a science. I guess in the trade the problem is known as "false positives" which is an oxymoron, but it works.
I quote. "Five examiners made false positive errors for an overall false positive rate of 0.1%. Eighty-five percent of examiners made at least one false negative error for an overall false negative rate of 7.5%." For you sticklers, the citation is "Accuracy and reliability of forensic latent fingerprint decisions" by Bradford T. Ulery" National Academy of Sciences. Even better is THIS ONE.
Fingerprint and Identification Magazine September 1924 Collection Jim Linderman
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The Case of the Tasteless True Crime Talisman Lindberg and the Most Famous Ladder in History by Jim Linderman
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 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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BIG Gold Scam The Talk Show Host Gold Fraud Racket and Big Gold
You are probably better off buying gold from this fellow than an advertiser on your favorite conservative radio host's broadcast of unsubstantiated "reporting" for sure. You don't have to look far to find rampant fraud.
Ask yourself this. If you can make money on gold, why are the companies SELLING IT? Are they doing you a FAVOR? And if an "investment" in gold is the safest and best there is, what are the gold sellers buying with your money? Snake Oil?
Sheesh...It is no crime to be stupid or to listen to putrid pundits on the radio...but bait and switch IS a crime and that's how those gold companies make THEIR money. By tricking you into buying coins at inflated prices rather than bars at the going rate. Once you call, your fears of global catastrophe ramped up to a feverish irrational scale by an overfed and over-rich talk show buffoon, you are prime meat to the bullion bilkers.
Anyway, if those talk show hosts were as patriotic as they claim, they would tell you to invest in American T-bills rather than throwing your money away on scams. Your country needs the support.
Photo: Collection Jim Linderman (Untitled, Anonymous Snapshot, No Date)
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Mary Gibney Artist and Collector Mugshots and the Library
One of the tenents of librarianship is privacy. It's why I love librarians...you can ask them ANYTHING and they won't spill the beans. Privacy, the right which we have almost given away for free (witness the growth of Facebook, where one is asked to indicate their "status" on a minute by minute basis for advertisers and anyone else, including divorce lawyers, to plunder). Trust me, all those status updates will come back and chew you a new one someday.
Librarians used to only very, very reluctantly give up circulation records to the feds, even Oswald's! But today folks willingly click "I am reading so and so" instead of keeping their knowledge quests private. For librarians, a noble profession with noble rules, intellectual freedom was paramount.
For decades the only bugaboo in the library privacy record was the checkout card. Anyone could see who else read the book, or at least carried it home. My mother, herself a junior high librarian in her day, used to say every book she checked out had my name on the card. He said modestly. Eh...there were no books about Marxism in the junior high anyway, I found those in high school. Today, I am trying hard to fill my kindle so I can justify buying the new one.
These lovely relics come to me from artist Mary Gibney, and they come with a good story. I received an email from Mary about my recent post of mug shots. It is always nice to receive notes with comments and such, but this one was different. It came from an artist who PAINTS mug shots! I can get behind that...how many cool ideas are left, after all? Mary Gibney found one, and she is doing a good job with it.
Ms. Gibney and I exchanged a few pleasantries, and that she had this collection of library checkout cards came up...so I finagled a few for the blog. They are lovely and odd, and I can't thank Mary enough for sharing. She also has an overdue notice for Victorian potboiler "The Magnificent Ambersons" which is surprising as the filmed version is so, so much better. At least the first three minutes of it. (Seriously!) Why anyone would struggle with the book when an Orson Welles masterpiece is available is beyond me.
I have also cribbed a handful of Gibney's splendid mug shot work. She really deserves a post of her own here, and one day I hope to.
Gibney has a long exhibition history HERE and seems to be doing quite well selling her work. As you can see, the mugshots are done of both celebs and regular mugs, and she has also done a series of works based on the faces shot by Weegee. Gibney is a Minneapolis artist, cyclist, library worker (ah HA!) and collector of odd objects, scraps and castoffs. As becomes an artist, she has a statement.
"I rely on intuition, mixing up, shapely objects, found bits and ephemera, the arcane and the obsolete, mistakes and fortunate convergences. I am fascinated by mugshots, anonymous faces and abandoned photos which I use to make portraits of unknown people. Other inspirations are maps, children's encyclopedia illustrations, paint color chips, sideshow art and theatrical illusions, old toys and unnecessary objects, handwritten signs, ads from old Popular Mechanics and Ladies Home Journals and mid-20th century illustrations of the wonderful future."
Mary Gibney Website HERE
Vintage Library Circulation Cards collection Mary Gibney Paintings by Mary Gibney Private Collections
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Original Mug Shot Photograph New York City Crime 1950s collection Jim Linderman
A striking original mug shot photograph circa 1950 from New York City
Mug Shot circa 1950 8 x 10 Collection Jim Linderman
(Tip of the Hat to Monica)
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Jailhouse Tattoo Billy Cook John Gilmore and Hard Luck, Two Fisted Writing NOT for the Faint (or Kindle)
Every picture tells a story, but this one didn't have one for me. I found it at a flea market. It is a small original glossy press photograph dated on the reverse 1951, with a brief note that the hand belonged to one William E. Cook. I never tried to find out who Mr. Cook was, nor why his apparent jail number was written in the margin of the photo. Obviously, his jailhouse tattoo had been embellished with a pen before publication to make the letters, and the drama, more clear...I knew I could find out who he was when I needed to.
Imagine my surprise a few years later coming across a different picture of THE SAME HAND in a book by John Gilmore! John Gilmore is one of those guys who seems to have been everywhere. I mean, everywhere. Name me anyone with a sleazy Hollywood connection from the last 50 years and I'll bet you Gilmore either met them at a party, slept with them or knew their murderer. He met Kerouac. He met Bettie Page. He met James Dean and may have even boffed him. He knew Hank Williams, Janis Joplin, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Brigette Bardot, Jean Seberg and Jayne Mansfield. I can't even begin to describe him to you, but if you think James Ellroy is tough, if you thought Hunter S. Thompson had a pair, if you imagine Charles Bukowski let his hang low on the pavement and scrape it a bit with each step... get a load of Gilmore. There are a half-dozen books and I have read them all. Real books though...his work is too good and graphic for Kindle.
Gilmore's Wiki entry calls him a Gonzo Journalist. True, but you might find his official website a bit more entertaining. This is some dark stuff, my friends. Be fearless...Gilmore is.
By the way, the hand gets its own page on Gilmore's site, it was indeed Billy Cook's claw and he was a no good drifter. The site has an excerpt...and leads you to Gilmore's other books. You are warned.
Anonymous Press Photograph, embellished by hand, 1951 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
Playing with a Marked Deck
6" x 10" Photograph of marked cards, cropped, dated 1928. Evidence Photograph?
Hand embellished dated 1928
collection Jim Linderman
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