“New York City’s reaction was a snowstorm of wastepaper that cascaded from buildings as the people shouted and sang in the streets. Others openly wept and prayed on sidewalks… News of the surrender spread like wildfire on Wall Street and set off an all morning celebration by jubilant downtown workers who left their jobs.”
Few Times Square tourists recognize Johnny Broderick, but New York mobsters cringe at the mention of his name. Meet Broadway’s one-man riot squad in his own bailiwick, where the lights are brightest.
The words and deeds of Johnny Broderick were so widely known that visiting politicians would request that he take charge of their security details and the broadcasting moguls wanted to make radio shows celebrating his daring-do. His round-house punch was known far and wide; cops like this one do not come along too often.
This is a three page article concerning the city of New York from Yank‘s on-going series, Home Towns in Wartime.
The Yank correspondent, Sanderson Vanderbilt, characterized Gotham as being overcrowded (in 1945 the population was believed to be 1,902,000; as opposed to the number today: 8,143,197) and I’m sure we can all assume that today’s New Yorkers tend to feel that their fore-bearers did not know the meaning of the word.
New York was the home base of Yank Magazine and this article presents a young man’s view of that town and the differences that he can recall when he remembers it’s pre-war glory (Sanderson tended to feel that the city looked a bit down-at-the-heel).
Click here if you would like to read an article about the celebrations in New York the day World War Two ended.
Read a Vanity Fair article about New York during W.W. I
A well-known writer consulted many different sources about that rarest of species, the New Yorker – he came away with these many different replies:
Yeah. New Yorkers are suckers, all right. They think they are so much smarter than anybody else, but they’re the biggest suckers of them all.
There was some dispute over what killed vaudeville. Some said talking movies. Others said radio. A few cruel critics said it committed suicide. But all agreed that with the fall of its last fortress, the Palace Theater, it was dead… Last week, the corpse that wouldn’t die got up and went home. Sol A. Schwartz, vice president of the Radio-Keith-Orpheum chain (RKO) announced restoration of vaudeville at the Palace, beginning May 18 [1949].
You can read about Chicago Vaudeville here
A travel article written by the former French fighter pilot Jean Murat (1888 – 1968)-who, one year hence, would commence a fruitful career in film acting that would lead to performances in over ninety movies. Mr. Murat was not terribly impressed with New York at all. Murat found the New Yorker’s love for all things French a tad tiresome.
Click here to read about the NYC air-raid wardens of W. W. II…
Delightfully illustrated with seven period photographs, this is a high-spirited read from VANITY FAIR titled New York’s Unceasing Pageantry:
From the First Liberty Loan to the Draft, from the Draft to the period of heatless days and meatless days, New York has showed good temper which used to be considered as but an indication of incorrigible lightness of mind. And as the months have gone by New York’s interest in herself as a military center has grown and deepened, with the growing consciousness of the high part she was to play in an adventure that has done more for her as a social organism than anything else in her history.
Click here to read about the welcome New York gave Sergeant York.
An article about New York’s Broadway theater scene during the Second World War:
Show people will never forget the year 1944. Thousands of men and women from the legitimate theater were overseas in uniform -actors and actresses, writers, scene designers, stage hands – and all looked back in wonderment at what war had done to the business… Letters and newspapers from home told the story. On Broadway even bad shows were packing them in…
Click Here to Read an Article About KKK Activity in New York City
Written for those far-flung, home-sick Brooklynites of yore who were cast hither and yon in order to repel the forces of fascism, this two page article from 1945 is illustrated with seven pictures of a Brooklyn that had been out of sorts since the close of the 1944 baseball season, when the Dodgers had finished 42 games behind.
If you’ve been wandering the internet hoping to get some idea what the fair isle of Manhattan looked like on 1940s color film, then your search is over (for a little while). These color images first appeared in a 1940 issue of Click Magazine and you will get a glimpse of the Bowery, Broadway, and Fifth Avenue -there are also two color pictures of New York at night for all of you wanted to see what the door man at El Morocco wore or the club-crawlers in Harlem.
