Here are 10 things you should know about Winnie Lightner, born 123 years ago today. After starring on in vaudeville and on Broadway, she made just 15 films, but her legacy endures.
Tag: Times Square
New York as it was
Frank Oscar Larson (1896-1964) was born in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, of Swedish immigrant parents and lived in Flushing, Queens most of his life. As an adult, Larson spent his days at a branch of the Empire Trust Company (now Bank of New York Mellon), working his way up through the ranks from auditor to vice-president, and spare time on weekends taking photographs of street life throughout New York City.
He was an accomplished photographer who eloquently documented 1950s Chinatown, the Bowery, Hell’s Kitchen, City Island, Times Square, Central Park, and much more.
This exhibition is compiled from thousands of negatives recently discovered stored away in his daughter-in-law’s house in Maine in 2009. Soren Larson, his grandson and a television news camera man and producer, has been scanning and printing the 55-year-old images found stored in over 100 envelopes filled with mostly medium format, 2-1/4 x 2-1/4″ negatives, and neatly noted by location and date in Larson’s own hand.
Frank Oscar Larson: 1950s New York Street Stories is on view at the
The above text is from
Times Square Tintypes: Times Square
In this chapter from his 1932 book, Times Square Tintypes, Broadway columnist Sidney Skolsky profiles not a person, but the Crossroads of the World, the area that gave Skolsky’s book its name—Times Square.
MY STREET
FORTY-SECOND Street and Seventh Avenue . . . Everybody calls it Broadway. The Rialto Theatre. A hanging says it is “The House of Hits”. . . . But the big line is at the Paramount . . . Sightseeing buses . . . Old women sitting in them . . . Making a living as decoys . . . See the Bowery . . . A lecture through Chinatown . . . Why, all the Chinks own restaurants on Broadway . . . There ain’t no Chinamen in Chinatown . . . The chap who is shouting that he is going to point out the historic places . . . Did you know he only arrived here from Portland last week? . . . See the old man selling The Birth Control Review . . . He’s doing it for the wife and kiddies. . . .A million lights that dim the stars. . .”
The Astor Hotel . . . Must have been nice when it was a big farm . . . More people live outside than in . . . That drug store diagonally opposite . . . Gray’s . . . You know, that’s where you buy theatre tickets at half-price . . . Best seats for all the “hits” in town . . . Isn’t that a well-dressed man? . . . Tuxedo . . . High hat . . . He’s got class . . . Sure has poise . . . Must be some big society fellow . . . Wait a moment and his shirt will light up, advertising a brand of cigar . . .
Heart of the World . . .”
Loew’s New York Roof . . . It’s called the old men’s club . . . They go there to sleep . . . Did you know it once had an elegant French name and house the first Ziegfeld Follies? There’s a nut embarrassing couples by trying to make the girl take a rose and make the guy pay for it . . . Another Nedick thirst station . . . Hungry, have a hot dog, too . . . Just like Coney Island . . . A shabby, fate-beaten old man . . . Once was a great architect and built many theaters . . . He now haunts the lobbies of those theaters . . .
A helping hand—they’re all for sale,
On Broadway, Broadway. . . .
A Lucky Strike display situation . . . Try to edge your way near the window . . . The blonde is worth seeing . . . Better than most chorus girls . . . Don’t have to pay $5.50 either . . . The fight at Madison Square Garden round for round in the doorway of a sheet music shop . . . And if you’re interested in art, you can look at the picture postal cards also . . . Childs . . . See them tossing buckwheat cakes . . . This is their Broadway place . . . Only the best performers work here . . . No newcomers . . . The crowd is too large and critical . . . Newcomers always get stage fright . . . Another United Cigar store . . . Say, if they prohibited smoking where would we find telephone booths? . . . The Palace across the street . . . It used to be the dream of all vaudevillians to play there . . . Now if the movie houses don’t get them, they’re there . . .
When you’re on top;
Same crowd hissing you and dismissing you
If you should flop . . .
The photomatic . . . You can take you picture . . . Eight for a quarter . . . They’re all ready to take home in five minutes . . . Say, isn’t this a wonderful age? . . . Let’s get tomorrow’s paper today and see what has happened tomorrow . . . This sure is great . . .
Tomorrow is another day . . .
Here we are at Fifty-second Street . . . Just ten blocks . . . It’s dull from here up . . . Broadway’s a small place, isn’t it? . . . Just ten blocks . . . Ten blocks for all the world to get famous in . . .
The Heart of the World. . . .”
Goodbye to another glorious gal
Remember the photo on the right? Sure you do, we’ve all seen it dozens of times. It was taken by the great Alfred Eisenstaedt on August 15, 1945 — VJ Day — in Times Square, and it captures, as Emma Brown put it in today’s Washington Post, “the relief, euphoria and optimism that Americans felt at the end of a horrible conflict.”
It’s not known just who the sailor was, but the identity of the nurse he’s smooching so enthusiastically was established some years. It was Edith Shain, who died, aged 91, on Sunday, as announced on her web site.
Other women claimed to be the nurse over the years, but Eisenstaedt flew to California in 1979 to meet with Ms. Shain, and after one look at her legs, he said she was the one.
Life.com, the web site for the magazine’s photo archive, released a statement saying, “While Life magazine itself never officially endorsed any of the claims by any of the men or women who came forward saying that they were the sailor or the nurse in the photograph, Shain’s claim is the one that, over the years, has held up best and has been most widely accepted (and most often celebrated).”
Shain, who worked enthusiastically on behalf of veterans’ causes in the years after she’d become widely accepted as the authentic recipient of that famous celebratory buss, is survived by three sons, six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.