Flash--The Making of Weegee the Famous by Christopher Bonanos

Author:Christopher Bonanos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Celebrating the publication of Naked City at Sammy’s Bowery Follies in July 1945.

To accompany its (long, thoughtful, and very warm) review of Naked City that summer, Popular Photography commissioned no less celebrated a figure than Philippe Halsman to make Weegee’s portrait. The two knew each other slightly; Halsman had gone to his lectures, which he said had been hilarious if not especially illuminating. Halsman, who had recently photographed Humphrey Bogart and Frank Sinatra for Life, found himself curious about Weegee’s mix of bravado and sensitivity, and asked him outright: “You sleep during the day, you roam the city by night. Does this kind of life make you happy?” Weegee paused. “No.” Halsman asked him why not. “Too little money and too little love,” Weegee said. “I don’t know why the broads don’t go for me. I wash!”

But Halsman also saw the artist inside the shabby suit. “Weegee, why do you take pictures of murder?” he asked. “Listen, friend,” Weegee responded, “what I look for in a murder is beauty. When I focus my camera, it’s not on the corpse but on the young couple that is holding hands looking on. You see, friend, the real meat of life is beauty.” When it came time for the sitting, Halsman, a master of subtle and complex stagings, paid homage to Weegee’s own technique by shooting him with a single light source, throwing a film noir shadow across half his face. Weegee didn’t ham it up for this one, although he did stick his police press credentials in his hatband, a move he normally disdained (“that’s only done in the movies”).

Positive or mixed, the reviews of Naked City did their job, at least from a commercial standpoint. The book sold well, despite a high cover price of four dollars, about one dollar more than a hardcover novel typically cost. The Chaucer Head Book Shop, a highbrow store on the Upper East Side of New York, filled its window with big prints of his photos and a poster-size book jacket. The Vendome Book Shop, on the West Side, had him in for a book signing. He got into the window at the Fifth Avenue bookstore run by Scribner’s, too, after doing a little nudging. “Look, this will bring in people who have never been in a bookstore before,” Weegee claimed to have told the managers, who replied, “We don’t want that kind of people.” Macy’s, then a major bookseller, sold its copies fast enough that, at one point, when it needed its stock replenished in a hurry, Duell, Sloan and Pearce rushed over a carload by taxicab. A second printing followed, then a paperback run.

It didn’t quite crack the Times best-seller list, but in its first half year, Naked City sold more than fourteen thousand copies. That plus some serial-rights sales brought Weegee a bit more than six thousand dollars. Add that to the amount he was making from newspapers and the wire and syndication services, plus the paperback reprint (which eventually sold about twenty-five thousand copies), and the result was, once again, “a very lush living.

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