Time Squared: Chromium and One-Eyed Midgets
I keep a permanent spot in the limited bookshelf space of our one-bedroom apartment for a tattered, oversized volume that came down to me from my parents. It is called The Face of New York and was published in 1954. Here is what it says alongside photos of Times Square:
“New York’s theater district is not hers alone, it is a recreation center claimed by the whole nation. The crowds moving up and down the street have come from all sections of the county and form a great part of the audience, be it a cheap movie or an expensive stage production….Today it’s a world of chromium, neon lights, cut-rates, and crowds.”
The first time I saw Times Square I was a small child. It was the place described above. My parents took us kids out of Long Island to see The Ten Commandments on the Cinerama screen of the Criterion Theater. After the intermission, I remember feeling confused as we went back to our seats, thinking the movie was already over.
Mostly, though, I remember walking in Times Square itself. It was dusk and we blended in with the teeming crowd to get some dinner, stopping momentarily with shameless awe to watch the perfect smoke rings from the huge Camel sign—a miracle of special effects that surpassed Cecil B. DeMille’s parting of the Red Sea.
Recently, I made room for another permanent entry on my bookshelf, Bob Dylan’s new memoir, Chronicles, Volume 1. I don’t know if it was his idea or someone else’s—but I was intrigued by the photo of Times Square on the dustcover. In the book, Dylan recalls his first impressions of New York with a sharpness for detail that seems almost photogenic itself. New York had a powerful influence on Dylan’s fertile imagination, and the Times Square cover pays tribute to that.
Last week, I saw on a gallery wall a different, well-known photograph that had the same big electric sign for Admiral TV I recognized from the photo on Dylan’s book. In this photo, the neon lights of Times Square shimmer in the background as James Dean, his hands dug into the pockets of his overcoat, walks towards us in the cold night air. Most any other photo of James Dean will focus on him alone, but not this one. It had a feeling of a wider, more sweeping Cinerama epic story, captured in the gait and face of an actor who happened to be out on the sidewalks of Times Square.
The James Dean photo was taken in 1954, the same year as The Face of New York, and also, coincidently when Times Square itself was exactly 50 years old. Longacre Square.was renamed Times Square in 1904 to help promote the newspaper which moved into its new office building that year. The Times saw a promotional opportunity from the new subway system about to begin operation, and wanted the stop at 42nd Street to be named “Times Square Station.”
Times Square, the area generally from 42nd Street to 51st and from Eighth Avenue to Seventh, became the story of different eras tumbling one on top of the other, astounding chapters to one of the great American Dream stories. For fifty years it served the highest functions that a city can in a free society, allowing the catalyst of democratic communities to build upon the capital of their extraordinary human potential for creativity and entrepreneurship.
By the 1920s, the American cultural landscape was forever changed from the activities and cultural changes that took place there. Eugene O’Neil took American theater far beyond the confines of melodrama, the women of the Ziegfried Follies displayed new attitudes towards sexuality and fashion, advertising was displayed at cathedral heights using electric light and dazzling graphics, and nightclub culture was created by Prohibition’s underclass of gangsters and their speakeasies.
At the end of the Depression another wave arrived with 1940’s Oklahoma and its blend of popular arts into a new type of American musical. In the years ahead, Tennessee Williams deepened the scope of themes for American drama, and Marlon Brando put new emotional edge to acting on stage.
By the time Ed Sullivan introduced the Beatles from a theater soundstage on Broadway and 53rd Street, only a year or two remained for the Times Square which was effusively described in The Face of New York. A mix of urban forces that would eventually be felt in almost every American city was shifting Times Square into a different kind of social era, one in which Times Square became known to the world through the backdrop atmosphere seen in Midnight Cowboy, Shaft, and Taxi Driver.
One day, in the twilight period of the earlier The Face of New York era, I was walking with my father in Times Square when he paused a few feet from a blind man who was dressed like an ancient Viking.
“That’s Moondog. He’s here everyday,” my dad said, who worked at the New York Times. “If you want, I’ll introduce you.”
I asked Moondog if he was a real Viking. He answered with a line of poetry. We had a conversation and he offered me to take a tract of his poetry with his photo standing a grassy hill. Times Square was still the kind of place where a blind musician might somehow help stretch out the world of a young teenager passing through with his dad.
Many years later, I would read that Moondog eventually became known as an avant-garde jazz musician with an avid cult following. Back when he was known as the Viking in Times Square he also musically accompanied various performers using his array of homemade instruments. Tiny Tim was mentioned as one of the performers who sometimes played with Moondog.
In Chronicles, Dylan recalls Tiny Tim was one of the performers who helped orient him to the New York scene. Dylan recalls that Tiny Tim sometimes performed at Hubert’s Performing Fleas Circus on Times Square. “I would hear more about that later,” Dylan writes.
Hubert’s was originally established during the Depression in the heart of Times Square on 42nd Street and Broadway. Visitors paid at a booth and descended to the basement to watch a show by unusual performers on one of several small raised stages. In The Devil’s Playground, Jim Traub wrote:
“Hubert’s became for a new generation of alienated souls the One True Place, an underground fastness of the marginal and the grotesque hidden away from the all-devouring world of consumerism and plenty. Lenny Bruce worshiped at the altar of Professor Heckler. And Diane Arbus passed countless hours photographing the midgets and the fake magicians and Congo the Jungle Creep.”
As to whether Dylan made it down those steps at Hubert’s, perhaps the following lines from Ballad of a Thin Man offer a clue:
“You hand in your ticket / And you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you / When he hears you speak…
Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you / And then he kneels
He crosses himself / And then he clicks his high heels…
Now you see this one-eyed midget / Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, ‘For what reason?’/And he says, ‘How?’…”
Today Madame Tousand’s occupies the space once occupied by Hubert’s Performing Fleas Circus. I am told that visitors to Times Square especially like to get their picture taken next to the replica of Donald Trump.
“New York’s theater district is not hers alone, it is a recreation center claimed by the whole nation. The crowds moving up and down the street have come from all sections of the county and form a great part of the audience, be it a cheap movie or an expensive stage production….Today it’s a world of chromium, neon lights, cut-rates, and crowds.”
The first time I saw Times Square I was a small child. It was the place described above. My parents took us kids out of Long Island to see The Ten Commandments on the Cinerama screen of the Criterion Theater. After the intermission, I remember feeling confused as we went back to our seats, thinking the movie was already over.
Mostly, though, I remember walking in Times Square itself. It was dusk and we blended in with the teeming crowd to get some dinner, stopping momentarily with shameless awe to watch the perfect smoke rings from the huge Camel sign—a miracle of special effects that surpassed Cecil B. DeMille’s parting of the Red Sea.
Recently, I made room for another permanent entry on my bookshelf, Bob Dylan’s new memoir, Chronicles, Volume 1. I don’t know if it was his idea or someone else’s—but I was intrigued by the photo of Times Square on the dustcover. In the book, Dylan recalls his first impressions of New York with a sharpness for detail that seems almost photogenic itself. New York had a powerful influence on Dylan’s fertile imagination, and the Times Square cover pays tribute to that.
Last week, I saw on a gallery wall a different, well-known photograph that had the same big electric sign for Admiral TV I recognized from the photo on Dylan’s book. In this photo, the neon lights of Times Square shimmer in the background as James Dean, his hands dug into the pockets of his overcoat, walks towards us in the cold night air. Most any other photo of James Dean will focus on him alone, but not this one. It had a feeling of a wider, more sweeping Cinerama epic story, captured in the gait and face of an actor who happened to be out on the sidewalks of Times Square.
The James Dean photo was taken in 1954, the same year as The Face of New York, and also, coincidently when Times Square itself was exactly 50 years old. Longacre Square.was renamed Times Square in 1904 to help promote the newspaper which moved into its new office building that year. The Times saw a promotional opportunity from the new subway system about to begin operation, and wanted the stop at 42nd Street to be named “Times Square Station.”
Times Square, the area generally from 42nd Street to 51st and from Eighth Avenue to Seventh, became the story of different eras tumbling one on top of the other, astounding chapters to one of the great American Dream stories. For fifty years it served the highest functions that a city can in a free society, allowing the catalyst of democratic communities to build upon the capital of their extraordinary human potential for creativity and entrepreneurship.
By the 1920s, the American cultural landscape was forever changed from the activities and cultural changes that took place there. Eugene O’Neil took American theater far beyond the confines of melodrama, the women of the Ziegfried Follies displayed new attitudes towards sexuality and fashion, advertising was displayed at cathedral heights using electric light and dazzling graphics, and nightclub culture was created by Prohibition’s underclass of gangsters and their speakeasies.
At the end of the Depression another wave arrived with 1940’s Oklahoma and its blend of popular arts into a new type of American musical. In the years ahead, Tennessee Williams deepened the scope of themes for American drama, and Marlon Brando put new emotional edge to acting on stage.
By the time Ed Sullivan introduced the Beatles from a theater soundstage on Broadway and 53rd Street, only a year or two remained for the Times Square which was effusively described in The Face of New York. A mix of urban forces that would eventually be felt in almost every American city was shifting Times Square into a different kind of social era, one in which Times Square became known to the world through the backdrop atmosphere seen in Midnight Cowboy, Shaft, and Taxi Driver.
One day, in the twilight period of the earlier The Face of New York era, I was walking with my father in Times Square when he paused a few feet from a blind man who was dressed like an ancient Viking.
“That’s Moondog. He’s here everyday,” my dad said, who worked at the New York Times. “If you want, I’ll introduce you.”
I asked Moondog if he was a real Viking. He answered with a line of poetry. We had a conversation and he offered me to take a tract of his poetry with his photo standing a grassy hill. Times Square was still the kind of place where a blind musician might somehow help stretch out the world of a young teenager passing through with his dad.
Many years later, I would read that Moondog eventually became known as an avant-garde jazz musician with an avid cult following. Back when he was known as the Viking in Times Square he also musically accompanied various performers using his array of homemade instruments. Tiny Tim was mentioned as one of the performers who sometimes played with Moondog.
In Chronicles, Dylan recalls Tiny Tim was one of the performers who helped orient him to the New York scene. Dylan recalls that Tiny Tim sometimes performed at Hubert’s Performing Fleas Circus on Times Square. “I would hear more about that later,” Dylan writes.
Hubert’s was originally established during the Depression in the heart of Times Square on 42nd Street and Broadway. Visitors paid at a booth and descended to the basement to watch a show by unusual performers on one of several small raised stages. In The Devil’s Playground, Jim Traub wrote:
“Hubert’s became for a new generation of alienated souls the One True Place, an underground fastness of the marginal and the grotesque hidden away from the all-devouring world of consumerism and plenty. Lenny Bruce worshiped at the altar of Professor Heckler. And Diane Arbus passed countless hours photographing the midgets and the fake magicians and Congo the Jungle Creep.”
As to whether Dylan made it down those steps at Hubert’s, perhaps the following lines from Ballad of a Thin Man offer a clue:
“You hand in your ticket / And you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you / When he hears you speak…
Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you / And then he kneels
He crosses himself / And then he clicks his high heels…
Now you see this one-eyed midget / Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, ‘For what reason?’/And he says, ‘How?’…”
Today Madame Tousand’s occupies the space once occupied by Hubert’s Performing Fleas Circus. I am told that visitors to Times Square especially like to get their picture taken next to the replica of Donald Trump.
posted by Paul Cogley at 12:59 PM
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