Tag: Coney Island

Rattling bones since 1927

cladriteLeave a comment

Old movie buffs know that, if you’re watching a picture from the 1920s or early ’30s and it’s set in NYC, there’s a better than even chance there’ll be a scene set at Coney Island.

And whether those scenes are filmed on a backlot, at a Southern California stand-in amusement park, or, as is sometimes the case, at Coney Island itself, they generally preceded by a scene-setting montage of stock footage shot at Brooklyn’s “Sodom by the Seashore.” You can generally count on seeing some shots of Luna Park and often Steeplechase Park, too, as well as some funhouse footage, with those spinning tubes customers are asked to walk through, the rotating platters they try to avoid being spun off of, and those large slides that were navigated while sitting on a potato sack.

(By the way, it pleases us greatly to recall the funhouses of our own youth and realize that they boasted the same basic features the funhouses of the 1920s did. I suppose there are still funhouses like that around today, but we don’t know where they are. Readers?)

What one doesn’t often see in these montages, though, is footage of those aspects of Coney Island that are still extant today. After all, the original Luna Park is long gone; Steeplechase Park, too. But the iconic rides that still exist—the Wonder Wheel, the Parachute Jump (which is no longer functioning but still stands watch over the surrounding festivities, a landmarked monument)—are rarely seen in these montages.

But while watching Bad Girl, a 1931 NYC-set drama directed by Frank Borzage and starring Sally Eilers, James Dunn and Minna Gombell, the other night, we were tickled to see not only the familiar shots of Luna Park and funhouse footage, but a lingering shot of the Cyclone, an old-school roller coaster that debuted in 1927 and is still rattling bones today. The Cyclone, a beloved Coney Island institution, was designated a New York City landmark in 1988, and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. But we don’t think we’ve ever seen it depicted in an old movie. Other Coney coasters, yes, but never the Cyclone.

Here’s the montage we’re speaking of:

If you’ve never taken a spin on the Cyclone, it’s time you did. You’ll exit the ride a bit wobbly-legged and perhaps just a little queazy, but you’ll know you’ve experienced the real deal in the world of roller coasters.

My favorite year

cladriteLeave a comment

One thing we especially love about New York is that not only is it a city with a rich history, its denizens (or, at least, a reasonably high percentage of them) remain fascinated by that past, even as they keep an eye cocked toward the future.

A fellow we used to know, who hailed from London but came to deeply appreciate New York City, once wrote, “Even New Yorkers who have lived here all their lives are happy to sit back and chat away about the place as if they’d just come across it. It’s a regular topic of conversation. And what’s nice is that it’s neither particularly narcissistic nor self-loathing, this chatter, but more curious and delighted.”

Which, for our money, sums up nicely the way many, if not most, New Yorkers feel about the city.

If you’ve even a little interest in New York’s past, present and future, we encourage you to pick up this week’s New York magazine. You can find it at any decent newstand or, one would think, your local library.

It includes a lengthy and multi-faceted feature entitled “The Greatest New York” that is a must-read for anyone with even the slightest affection for the greatest city in the world.

Only a bit of the lengthy feature appears to be available online (after all, they’ve got to move some magaines), but we found one particular section that appealed to us and will interest the Cladrite community, too, we’re convinced.

It’s entitled The Greatest Year to…” and includes such categories as “The Greatest Year to Be a Newspaper Reader,” The Greatest Year to Go to Coney Island,” and “The Greatest Year to Be in the West Village,” among others.

Give it a look and if it piques your interest, you’ll definitely want to pick up a copy of the magazine.

Snapshot in Prose: Richard Himber

cladriteLeave a comment

Richard Himber‘s not as well remembered today as other band leades of the 1930s, but he was plenty big in his day. His music certainly stands up, and we regularly feature his recordings on Cladrite Radio. When this Snapshot in Prose first saw the light of day, in 1935, his orchestra was holding forth from New York’s Ritz-Carlton hotel, and his popular radio program was flying high.

As the story reveals, though, Himber’s origins were more modest than that. A precocious youth, he got his first professional gig playing violin for a Coney Island dance orchestra at the dewy age of 13. Not a bad jump, from Coney Island to the Ritz-Carlton.

P.S. Read all the way to the end of the story, and you’ll find a couple of our favorite Himber recordings awaiting you.

In the best Horatio Alger tradition, the young hero always trudged along a dusty road armed with a knapsack and the grim determination to (a) make his own way in the world; (b) pay off the mortgage on the old homestead; and, (c) always be valorous in his endeavors.
The only difference between the Alger character and Richard Himber, young composer-conductor of the Studebaker Champions program, is that there was no dusty road and Himber carried a violin in place of a knapsack.
Leaving his home in Newark, New Jersey, at an age when most youths are deciding whether to take algebra or commercial arithmetic in the first year at high school, Himber decided that music needed him and that he could get along very well without an academic education.
Apparently he was correct, for at the age of 13 he strolled down to Coney Island, played his fiddle for a cafe manager and, presto, was hired to play with the orchestra. The summer of 1920 over, Dick Himber came to New York with three months of orchestra playing under his belt and very little else.
He was broke, 13 years old, and in a strange town. His pride prevented him his returning to his home in New Jersey. By nocturnal visits to small restaurants where he played for the diners, he managed to pick up enough money to exist. It was while playing at a small restaurant for whatever change the patrons cared to give him that he was heard by Sophie Tucker.

Shortly afterward the famous Sophie went on a vaudeville tour, taking with her the original “Five Kings of Rhythm,” destined to set a new style of music making. Richard Himber, 14 years of age, was the conductor and violinist!

Read More »

In Your Hat, pt. 10

cladriteLeave a comment
In Chapter 10 of In Your Hat, the 1933 tell-all memoir by Hat Check Girl to the Stars Renee Carroll, she shares tales of the various scams, cons, and rackets one was likely to encounter along Broadway back in the day and the characters behind them, including Harry, the Rose Seller, Dick the Bicyclist, and Angelo, the Newsboy.

KNOWING Owney Madden and Rothstein and thinking of them as racketeers of a higher order makes it just a little bit difficult to train your telescope down the line and pick up such characters as “Harry, the Rose Seller,” “Dick the Bicyclist,” “Angelo, the Newsboy” and the others who infest Times Square with petty rackets.

Still, for sheer ingenuity, Faginesque cunning with any of the harder criminal tendencies, these petty workers of the Main Stem take some kind of cake—and it’s probably sponge.
Because I know Broadway so well, from the tallest to the shortest, I’m also personally acquainted with the petty rackets, but maybe I’m exaggerating when I say petty, because if fifty dollars a night as wages is petty, then I’m Clara Bow and Rin Tin Tin was my favorite nephew.
I got to know Dick, who owns a bicycle and wants everybody to know it, because I used to pass him every night on his beat. After a while he came to know me, too, and would stop me and exchange stories, which was quite harmless.
Dick’s right name is Abie Marcovitch and he was born down on Allen Street. He was one of those kids who get wanderlust at the age of sixteen. So one day, bidding his father a penciled note of a good-by, he bought himself a bicycle with the money he had saved from his Saturday job and pedaled away towards New Jersey.
When he came to Harrison he got discouraged (who wouldn’t?) and decided that the great Wets would probably remain so, without any part of him. So he turned around and started to wheel home. But a few miles later he conceived a brilliant scheme. He was going into the petty racketeering business!
He stopped off in Jersey City and began to carry out his plan. First, he traded in his new bike for a second-hand one. It was a sturdy but dilapidated affair that had seen service on the velodrome floor. Then he visited an old bookstore that carried a sideline of curiosities. Here he selected a collection of used postal cards showing the sights of various countries of the world. The postal cards he pasted on a triangular cardboard which he has mounted within a frame and attached to the rear of his bicycle.
Then he bought a second hand aviator’s helmet, a pair of goggles, a windbreaker and a pair of puttees. These he splashed liberally with mud. Later he purchased a knapsack and filled it with a few essentials including a towel and soap.
With this equipment he proceeded on his interrupted journey into New York. Oh, I forgot,—in red ink he wrote across the postcards of his prowess as a wheelman. “New York to San Francisco in Fifteen Days”, “Paris to Rome”, “Moscow to Vienna”, and other phony inscriptions.
When he came to Times Square, he parked his wheel with a friend until nightfall and then went about his plan. He had it figured out that people are gayest at the time that the theater is over, for then the carefree usually start out on their merry-go-round of the evening.
Well, he parked up on Broadway somewhere, just outside the very busy zone but still in the theater district. All he did was stand his wheel at the curb and lean against it. He was a curious sight for Broadway. Spattered with mud and dust, his wheel was obviously the veteran of thousands of miles, his postcards testifying to his integrity. In five minutes a sympathetic crowd had gathered. Some read the postcards or the messages he had scribbled across them from the mayors of the towns he supposedly had visited. Some asked him questions which he answered glibly.
The racket, as he went on to explain to anybody he could buttonhole, was that he was trying to get to Japan and anything they could help him with would be like manna. After the first night’s work, some two hours of standing and talking, little Abie discovered that he had collected almost $25 for his pains. People were very generous and interested. To some he told stories of hardship and privation encountered in his fake travels; other learned of his proposed jaunt to the Orient—and everybody helped.
It seems that most people have a feeling that they’d like to travel and if they find they can’t but are able to help somebody else to do what they’d like to do by donating a dime or a quarter, more than likely they’ll come across. Besides, Abie was a quick talker, and knew whom to talk to longest.
This kept up for about a week, at the end of which time he discovered tat he was a rich man indeed. During that first seven days he had collected $225, more than he had earned in his whole life and more than his father could earn in two months. Unlike other kids of his age he kept quiet about it, stuck his money in a bank, and kept on riding his wheel up to Times Square every night.
After people got to know him they took him more or less as a joke. But figure out for yourself how much $200 a week is for a year and it’s no joke.
Abie kept it up for about fourteen months. He had to be careful. He was getting too well known to the cops and his spiel to the people about getting off to Japan on the next day was a little worn when the same people who slipped him a couple of dollars on more than one occasion came back to ask about it.
Finally, he rode off one night and I haven’t seen him since. As far as I can remember he worked that racket for about $10,000. I’m not sure but I think I saw him once after that on Broadway. He was dressed up in fine clothes and was escorting a nice Jewish girl. I said hello but he gave me a cold stare that froze my appendix to the spot, and the girl looked at him very suspiciously. If it’s his wife I hope he doesn’t try any petty rackets with her. She didn’t seem the type.

Read More »