Apache Harry will Tattoo your Social Security Number on your Skin on the Bowery

The color photographs of Apache Harry which ran in Life Magazine in 1936 are fascinating, as color photos of tattoo artists from before World War Two are scarce indeed. I do not think the picture here has ever been shown (at least since 1940) and while not identified by photographer name, it ran in the Volitant publication Laff, an early Life wannabee copycat.

Apache Harry's studio in the 1930s and 1940s was way at the south end of the Bowery.  Today 22 Bowery, at the corner of Pell Street and Bowery in Lower Manhattan is part of Chinatown…which continues to spread north and has eclipsed Little Italy.   He didn't have much space there.  In 1938 he was interviewed by Joseph Adams for the North American Newspaper Alliance (an early wire service) who reported "Hour by Hour, he sits in his little two by six cubicle…" as he lamented the loss of interest in folks asking for tats.  At the time, he was making most his money tattooing social security numbers on folks.

Apache Harry's Dump Today

Harry gives the reporter the business, telling him he's giving up the tattoo business and becoming a coin collector…but he was joking about paying top dollar for a buffalo nickel which "nobody can keep long enough to find out if it has a hump."  Adams sarcastically calls Apache Harry the "tattoo tycoon" and reports on the declining business.

Why would folks pay Apache Harry to tattoo their social security number on them?  Because at the time the "Social Security Law" was new…and for a time it became fashionable for folks hoping to receive their reward in their golden years to be ready with their number inked on them for good.  They did it to prevent amnesia from taking away their claim!  Today, of course, that number is hidden so scammers don't steal your identity, but back then crime was more physical.  Like with a sap in the head.

In 1938, Coronet Magazine picked up the story and ran an article titled "Apache Harry: Who Has Reaped Social Security's Most Generous Dividend."  You see, the naysayers in the ruling class back then never thought the system would work…and they lampooned it using Apache Harry as their shill.  Screw them…it's been seventy five years and the system is still solvent, despite what you'll hear Republican scare-mongers say.

Harry charged from fifty cents to ten dollars a tat.  Presumably, the numbers were the cheapest.  Harry says the late night crowd is still his big money customers, but the social security folks come in during daylight.  They want the simple designs…a small bit of embellishment, not the flourish Harry was capable of.

IN 1936, Apache Harry is reported to "put beauty spots and initials on about a dozen women a day, but still my mail clientele is soldiers and sailors" in the Milwaukee  Journal.  He is also mentioned in the book New York City Tattoo by Hardy Marks which came out in 1997.

Later, Apache Harry did a better business in tattoo removal than in tattoos  According to Laff magazine in 1940, which I cribbed the photo here from, he also specialized in doing make-up to cover black eyes.

I am afraid I do not know who ended up with Apache Harry's original flash.  It looks great.  I also do not know Apache Harry's real name, but I am inclined to think he was no more Apache than the white dudes from Brooklyn who dressed up like Indians for early silent pictures.  He did have some long hair though.

Apache Harry was  rendered by master printmaker Eli Jacobi, the study for the portrait is shown HERE on the Child's Galllery.

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Vintage Art of the Tattoo Gag The Lost Art of the Tattoo Cartoon

(Like a third of the country, I am dealing with frozen formerly cumulus cloud...so here is a post from my other blog from a year ago, "The Lost Art of the Tattoo Gag")


You don't see too many tattoo gags anymore. At one time, the staple of the stapled joke digest, I guess the now all too familiar "tramp-stamp" on women's lower backs helped make the tattoo as a joke topic less funny somehow. I can also assure you if you DO laugh, you won't be seeing it for much longer. Either SHE will pull them up and leave in a huff, or HE will kick your ass.

I'm not quite sure the relationship between the tattoo artist and the cartoonist. Both are certainly adept at drawing babes...but did Sailor Jerry draw cartoons? (His "official" site now seems to be owned by a booze company, so instead you get a link to wiki with no pictures.) Of course tattoo decoration goes back to Caesar...but then busty women were drawn on the walls of caves. Now that I think of it, maybe those early erotic cave drawings were primitive flash and the dens actually parlors.

Tattoos of dames are closely related to the hot babe nose art painted on the cones of WW2 Bomber Planes and pinups drawn on duffel bags. Most platoons had a fellow who could draw hot ones, and they often did in trade for a few cigarettes. It is also a quite common subject category in postcard collecting...both actual photographs of them and goofy cartoon sailors.

Certainly the skill was, and is, interchangeable. Once you can draw a gal with gams, you can put it anywhere. A carny's arm, a sailor's chest or a biker's bicep in days gone by, or on the most friendly gentle person of either gender today, but for the life of me I can not think of a cartoonist who started as a body inker. Of course today there are hundreds of tattoo artists who create paintings and fine art as well.

The stigma is gone. So is the once common "joke" about getting drunk and waking with a decorated arm, the muscles which could be tensed to make a dame on your chest shimmy, and the ship design which "sinks" as a fellow ages.

If anyone out there needs a topic for a doctoral thesis, consider erotic body illustration and how it relates to girly pin-up gags of the 1950s and 1960s.

by Jim Linderman

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Bernard Kobel Photograph Freak and Freak Photographer Tattoo Sideshow Abnormalities and More (Worse?)

I pride myself on collecting unusual photographs, but no one collected more and with more vigor than Bernard L. Kobel. It is a clear case of the freak collecting the freaks!

You see, Bernie didn't just take and COLLECT photographs of medical abnormalities, circus freaks, war atrocities, lurid and lewd crime scenes and such, he reprinted and SOLD them from the back of sleazy magazines! You have likely seen some if you are a bit adventurous...the woman with the world's largest whatevers, the guy with the giant stuff, the bizarre pair of thingamabobs...even I don't want to show them and I'm pretty much immune by now. I'm cheeky but Bernie crossed the line!

You have also seen reproductions of his collection without knowing it. The famous picture of armless and beautiful sideshow performer (and actress) Frances O'Connor who appears on the cover of the Re/search book Freaks (linked at right) is a Kobel photo, even if not taken by him, but he did take plenty himself. Some of the photographs shown on the billboard at Hubert's Museum in Times Square (and later, on the cover of the Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street album) were Kobel shots. His reprints sold fairy well, at least well enough to have entered the sleazy underground where gourmands of gore dwell. They continue to sell long after Bernie moved from Indiana to Florida and then Sideshow heaven, as bootleg reproductions and, I guess, authentic ones on auction websites.

Not all Kobel's photos were gruesome or gratuitous, but plenty were...As you can see here, he advertised kinky tattoo photos in girlie magazines, (often showing far more than the tattoo) freaks and contortionists in entertainment trade magazines, and I suppose he advertised his gruesome war photos in whatever war folks read. A pair of originals are shown HERE.

I do not know much about Bernie, but I know as much as I want. Interestingly, a later advertisement shows he was trying to leverage his collection into a new direction....stamp collecting! "Lists sent, natch...Will trade for U.S. stamp collections."

Natch indeed...one of his catalogs from the 1950s lists nearly 500 photos which I don't even want to print the descriptions of. On the other hand, one of his photographs for sale in a catalog is "The First Official Hair Pulling Contest...held at the Palisades Amusement Park with 24 girls from the Walter Thornton Modeling Agency as contestants."

I'd trade a few stamps to see THAT one.

(A post on Vintage Sleaze the Daily Blog as well)

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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