#acme newspictures

[fidjiefidjie]

Bon jour et bonne semaine ☕️ 📰

"Spécial late news" ,Whitehall , Londres 🇬🇧 Angleterre 1939

Photo Acme Newspictures

[inapat17]

Weegee : the New York night show

From January 30, 2024 to May 19, 2024, the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson is presenting Autopsie du spectacle : an exhibition of the work of the American photographer Weegee. It is a look back at the first part of his career, depicting a certain aspect of New York nights in the thirties : crimes, accidents, fires and other…

After working for several years at ACME Newspictures, a stock photography agency for the daily press in the USA, Weegee decided to embark on a freelance career to become the only signatory and owner of his photos. For some fifteen years, Weegee sold her photos to various American press chains: Herald Tribune, The Daily Mirror, New York Daily News, Life, Vogue, Sun...

Self-Portrait, Weegee with Speed Graphic Camera, 1950

His favorite subject between 1935 and 1945 was the briefs and New York’s nightlife. Weegee had a radio in his car tuned to police frequencies, so he was alerted at the same time as the cops when a tragedy occurred somewhere. First to arrive, he would capture the action and drama at its most dramatic moment, not hesitating to photograph any moment that seemed the most spectacular: fights, fires, drownings, crimes, arrests, etc. These photographs permitted him to become famous in the sphere of photojournalism (especially that at this time tabloids were on the rise!). Readers wanted to read spectacular, entertaining and sensational things. Weegee confides: "Murders and fires were my two bestsellers, my bread and butter".

Anthony Esposito, Accused 'Cop Killer,' January 16, 1941

New York tenement fire, NYC, 1937

“Joy of Living", chronicles a hit and run death outside a Third Avenue movie theater, 1942

In a way, Weegee was photographing the America of growing urbanization and the years following the stock market crash. They reveal the violence, the poverty, but also the dilapidated appearance of the city and its buildings. As an example, Weegee devotes a series to the fires that regularly ravage the scruffy buildings, spectacularly showing the dark side of this hyperurbanization.

Through his media coverage of New York's dark side, Weegee also analyze the situation in the opposite side by photographing the crowd that scrutinizes the events. He photographed the faces of indiscreet observers who, like him, went to the scene of scandal or drama to see it with their own eyes. As the exhibition’s title, Autopsie du spectacle, states it, Weegee shows us curiosity, which could sometimes be described as voyeuristic... A form of real-life transposition of the public's interest in Weegee's tabloid photos.

Drowning victim, Coney Island, 1940

Some of Weegee's works turn this aspect of the work on its head: he no longer takes photos of onlookers, but becomes one himself, taking photos of people without their knowledge. In particular, he takes a series of photos of concert halls or cinema using infrared filters. The grain of these obscure scenes and the instantaneous aspect allow him to capture the moments and expressions of people in a spontaneous way. However, it seems important to raise the ethical question raised by such a practice: catching people in intimate moments, sometimes sexual, sometimes dramatic, sometimes shameful...

Lovers at the movies, Palace Theatre New York, 1945

I hope I've convinced you to go and see this great exhibition, which looks back at the singular, daring and aesthetically Weegee photographs. His work provides an original point of view of New York in the middle of the 20th century and presents a social critique of the society of spectacle, to which he himself sometimes seems to belong.

[tuntematon-marsalkka]

В 1940е и 1950е в моде были причёски "Атомная бомба".

В 1940е и 1950е в моде были причёски “Атомная бомба”.

Вот как атомная бомба вдохновляла парикмахеров в 1940-х и 1950-х годах. Лилиана Орси, 22-летняя красавица из Рима, Италия, демонстрирует свою новую атомную прическу и фотографию атомного взрыва, который ее вдохновил. Парикмахеру понадобилось 12 часов, чтобы соорудить прическу Лилианы, поэтому она не рекомендуется для ежедневного ношения. (Acme Newspictures – March 8, 1951) Фотография с…

[shihlun]

Taiwan, 1949.

[driveintheaterofthemind]

Vintage Press Photo - Miss Trolly Coach Of 1950

Canadian Beauty Sonia Such With Lansdowne Miniature Electric Bus

ACME Newspictures (June15th1950)

[mudwerks]

There's no date on this interesting shot of a model and a chimpanzee from ACME Newspictures, but since ACME folded in late 1951, we think this was made that year or in 1950, just one of many weird and wacky photos the group accumulated in its thirty years of existence. 

[visionsofour-past]

• Mystery Murder.

Publisher: Acme Newspictures, Inc.

Date: 1946

Medium: Gelatin silver print

~ The body of Edward Ehrecke, 42, Davenport manufacturer, as it was found in the trunk of his auto near here. Deputy Sheriff Tom Carroll, left, and Sheriff Walter Beuse, right, examine the car. Ehrecke was found tied hand and foot with common clothesline, a rubber tube was used to feed the exhaust into the trunk of the car. Police have found no motive for the crime.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

A cheap lunch. This Italian restaurant, seen in 1945, was near the offices of Acme Newspictures, where photographer Ida Wyman became their first female photo printer. Note the cartoons in the window.

Photo: Ida Wyman via the Jewish Museum/Daily Mail

[spaceintruderdetector]

Weegee's Secrets Of Shooting With Photoflash   1953

‘’Weegee served an apprenticeship in the darkroom of Acme Newspictures, then went on to free lance with the street of New York as his studio.... In time the name Weegee became legendary, descriptive of a different kind of photograph...one that captured the exciting drama of life. Pathos, humour, tragedy --all these were senitively etched on film by one who love and understood people. After watching him work on several assignments, I suggested he write the story of how he takes his pictures and that's how this booklet was born. We both hope "Weegee's Secrets" will provide the formula for better pictures.’’  (Mel Harris)

https://archive.org/details/wgPhotoflash/mode/2up

[aryburn-trains]

Burlington Twin Zephyrs at Chicago 4-16-35

Gleaming new Burlington "Twin Zephyrs" at Chicago, 4-16-35. A recent swap meet find- credited as an Acme Newspictures photo. The Fourth Quarter 1984 issue of Burlington Bulletin has a similar picture, whose caption was:

"Prior to the inauguration of Twin Zephyr service, the Q exhibited or operated the 9901 and 9902 together on several occasions. The pair is posed in Chicago Union Station prior to the official christening ceremonies on April 15, 1935."

[miss-rosen]

THE UNSUNG PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE 20TH CENTURY Miss Rosen for Huck

When she was in her 80s, Ida Wyman (1926-2019) shopped a proposal for her memoir, Girl Photographer: From the Bronx to Hollywood and Back. It was the story of her career as one of the few women photojournalists working for picture magazines like Life and Look. Unfortunately, at the time, the publishing industry failed to recognise Wyman’s extraordinary gift, pluck and verve.

Though Wyman flew under the radar her entire life, it never got her down. She was driven to chart her own path from an early age, becoming the first “girl mailroom boy” at Acme Newspictures in the 1940s. After three years she realised she wanted to make features rather than report news, and in 1945 she sold her first photograph to Look. That same year she lost her job at Acme – they let her go to hire men returning home from the war.

Still, Wyman persevered. She joined the New York Photo League, recognising a shared commitment to documentary photography. The Photo League’s progressive politics made them a target for McCarthyists; they were blacklisted in 1947 and forced to disband in 1951. But Wyman pressed on and made her way out to Hollywood to photograph movie sets on assignment for Life.

Read the Fill Story at Huck

Top: Ida Wyman. The Transette, San Antonio, 1948.

Bottom: Ida Wyman. Sidewalk Clock, New York, 1947.

[serafino-finasero]

“Ann Dvorak, motion picture actress, wearing a red and white spectator sports frock, companied by a rol-brimmed sailor hat, to make a colorful picture. Her cigarette case is black enamel marked with red pencil bars.” | photo: Acme Newspictures, New York City, March 10, 1935

[broadcastarchive-umd]

A recent donation to our photo collection:

"Miss Hester Walker Beall, pretty Washingtonian, has the distinction of being the first instructor of radio broadcasting. She is a teacher of vocal expression by profession. Miss Beall, who is hostess at station WRC in the capital, says that distinct pronunciations are the secrets of broadcasting." -- Acme Newspictures (1928)

[interpretingtexas]

Howard Hughes, c. 1938, ACME Newspictures [source]

Howard Hughes Billionaire, Filmmaker, Aviator, Eccentric

Early Life Howard Hughes was born in Humble, Texas in 1905. He always claimed his birthday as Christmas Eve, but the actual date is in dispute. Shortly after his birth, his father patented a drill bit and the family quickly became wealthy. From a young age, he was interested in science and technology and built several machines, such as a radio and motor for his bicycle, and began flying lessons at 14. Hughes mother died in 1922, then his father in 1924. Hughes became an emancipated minor at the age of 19, inheriting most of his family's fortune. The next year, Hughes married Ella Botts Rice and the couple moved to Los Angeles so Hughes could try to make it as a filmmaker.

Hollywood Using his inherited family fortune, Hughes began producing movies as part of a subsidiary of the family tool company. One of the first films, Arabian Nights, won an academy award in 1928. Hughes began working on his next picture immediately. He personally wrote and directed Hell's Angels, as well as acquiring many WWI aircraft for the movie about aerial warfare in WWI. When talkies became popular, he reworked the movie prior to its 1930 release to include spoken dialogue. With his focus entirely on the movie, Hughes neglected his wife and she divorced him in 1929. Hughes continued making movies, including the popular Scarface, but soon turned his attention to one of his first loves: airplanes. 

Poster for Hell’s Angels (1930) [source]

Aviation Hughes started racing old WWI aircraft, but when that got expensive, he created the Hughes Aircraft Company as another subsidiary of the Hughes Tool Company. Hughes set the new department to creating experimental aircraft, which Hughes himself would fly and test. Hughes set several records, including speed records in his H-1 and an around-the-world time record in 1938. During WWII, Hughes tried to get defense contracts, but found difficulty in pitching his plywood "duramold" planes. He did successfully get a contract for the H-4 "Hercules," a plywood boat plane the public nicknamed the "Spruce Goose," but it only flew once, piloted by Hughes himself. He eventually delivered a few aluminum planes, the XF-11s, but only after WWII was more or less over. Hughes invested in the TWA in the 1950s and helped to modernize the company, but Hughes was becoming more and more reclusive and doing less direct managing of his interests.

H-4 Hercules "Spruce Goose," San Diego Air and Space Museum [source]

Eccentric Hughes had always been eccentric, with a severe Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, but he had started to get even more so by the 1950s. He rarely left his home, even spending four months without leaving his home theater in 1958. His increasing pain from his various plane and auto crashes made many activities difficult for him. He founded the Hughes Medical Institute in 1953 and spent much of the rest of his life buying properties to give to the Institute. For the last decade of his life, he moved from hotel to hotel, and country to country. In 1976, with his health failing, he flew from Mexico to Houston to visit the Methodist Hospital, but died en route. Numerous wills and heirs came forward after his death. Legal battles ran for seven years before deciding on more than 20 cousins as heirs and that the Hughes Aircraft Company and a large chunk of the fortune belonged to the Medical Institute.

According to Stan Lee, Iron Man Tony Stark (particularly the MCU Tony Stark) was in part inspired by Howard Hughes, including naming his father Howard.

Howard Stark (left) played by Dominic Cooper, and Howard Hughes (right)

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“First Photographs of Ohio State Prison Disaster Show Graphic Scenes from Drama When 317 Perished,” Toronto Star. April 22, 1930. Page 02. ---- COLUMBUS CITY FIREFIGHTERS STRUGGLE IN VAIN AGAINST SPREADING FLAMES - 150 MORE MAY DIE - CONVICTS ATTEMPT TO REVIVE COMRADE VICTIMS - BELIEVE BLAZE KINDLED BY PRISONERS --- The photographs reproduced here are the first to reach Toronto from the scene of the Ohio state prison holocaust at Columbus, Ohio, where 317 convicts have perished in a blaze and 150 more may die. The fire is one of the most appalling tragedies in the history of modern prisons. Of the 4,500 convicts in the prison at the time of the fire, some 835 were in the burning cell blocks. The origin of the blaze is stated to have been an attempt by convicts to effect a wholesale jail-break. (1) View of the exterior of the huge prison, showing the efforts of firemen to cope with the roaring inferno which had gained fatal headway before their arrival. Troops were necessary to protect the firemen from convicts who resisted their efforts to put down the flames. (2) Convicts are shown attempting to revive a fellow-prisoner, carried from the burning cell block, and (3) this graphic close-up shows convicts trapped on a second-floor tier of the burning cell-block, their escape cut off by the heavy iron screen of the cell doors. These photographs are special print service of the Acme Newspictures, rushed from Columbus, Ohio, to Cleveland, by special aeroplane. From Cleveland a fast train carried them to Buffalo, where a Star staff representative received them, bringing them by motor car to Toronto.

[notinnewhall]

Today is the birthday of Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (November 18, 1787 – July 10, 1851), born 233 years ago in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, Val-d'Oise, France. Happy birthday Louis! . Pierre-Louis Grevedon - Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, 1837, heliogravure, 11 in x 8 ¼ in, The Patrick Montgomery Collection, Object No. 2015.839. . Acme NewsPictures - Daguerre's Birthplace, 1937, gelatin silver print, 8 in x 10 in, The Patrick Montgomery Collection, Object No. 2017.1047a. . D.A. Lancelot - Daguerre's House, ‪rue des Marais, Paris‬, 1839, wood engraving, 3 1/2 in x 6 in, The Patrick Montgomery Collection, Object No. 2012.719. . Yan' Dargent - La Maison de Daguerre, Bry-Sur Marne, 1900, wood engraving, 4 in x 5 3/8 in, The Patrick Montgomery Collection, Object No. 2019.657b . Daguerre Commemoration, Washington, D.C. August 20, 1930, gelatin silver print, 8 in x 10 in, The Patrick Montgomery Collection, Object No. 2013.738 . #daguerre #louisdaguerre #brysurmarne #historyofphotography #photographyhistory #notinnewhall #19thcenturyphotography