Coney Island | Amusing the Zillion

Posts Tagged ‘Coney Island’

Saturday Matinee: “On The Loose” in Coney Island (1931)

Posted in film, video, tagged Coney Island, Hal Roach, On the Loose, Thelma Todd, Zasu Pitts on December 27, 2014| 2 Comments »

Released on December 26, 1931, On the Loose stars the comedy team of Thelma Todd and ZaSu Pitts as two gals whose parade of boyfriends never take them anywhere but Coney Island and they’re sick of it. Giggling as they recall “the refrigerator salesman from Schenectady” and other dates who won the chalkware prizes crowding the mantle in their apartment, they vow that today was their last trip to Coney. Well, of course it wasn’t. By 8:23 in the 20 minute film, the duo are back in Coney Island on a double date with two Englishmen who say it’s “very smart and quite original” and they’re going to do it all.

The gag is that ever since the days of silent movies, Coney Island, with its amusement rides that flung couples into each others arms, has been a popular setting for comedies. Among our faves are Coney Island (1917) with Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton and It (1927), in which Clara Bow plays a shop girl who goes on a first date with her boss to Coney Island, though the film is said to have been made at Ocean Park Pier in California. The Coney Island scenes in Harold Lloyd’s Speedy were shot at four different amusement parks– two in Coney and two in California– according to film historian John Bengtson.

California’s Venice Pier, which like Steeplechase also had a Human Roulette Wheel, rotating Barrel of Love and Giant Slide, was a stand-in for Coney Island in On the Loose. Some of the funniest scenes have ZaSu and Thelma shushing the game attendants who remember them from previous visits and Thelma proving she’s a crack shot at the shooting gallery.

In the last few minutes of the film, Laurel and Hardy make a cameo appearance. We won’t spoil it by telling you what happens when they ask the two woman out on a date to where else but Coney Island. The film was directed and produced by Hal Roach, whose studio also made the Laurel and Hardy and Our Gang comedies.

Photo of the Day: Coney Island’s Tribute in Light to Slain NYPD Officers

Posted in Photo of the Day, Photography, tagged Bruce Handy, Coney Island, lighting, Mark Treyger, NYPD, Parachute Jump, Rafael Ramos, tribute, tribute in light, Wenjian Liu on December 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Parachute Jump Tribute in Light to NYPD Officers Ramos and Liu, December 21, 2014. Photo © Bruce Handy

On Sunday night, the Parachute Jump lights went dark except for two blue stripes honoring the Brooklyn police officers who were ambushed and killed in Bedford-Stuyvesant on Saturday. The tribute in light to the NYPD’s Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos will be repeated on Monday. “Two nights in honor of the two officers,” said Councilman Mark Treyger, who represents Coney Island as well as Gravesend, where Officer Liu lived.

Treyger announced the lighting via twitter just before 6pm and later posted photos calling it a “soaring tribute” and thanking “all of our finest for your courage & sacrifice.” Approximately 300 people attended the candlelight vigil and prayers at the Parachute Jump, said Coney Island photographer Bruce Handy. In attendance were City Council members Treyger and Chaim Deutsch, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, clergy, and community officials and residents, as well as members of the NYPD, FDNY and EMS from South Brooklyn.

The Parachute Jump, which is lit year-round by Luna Park with 8,000 LEDs, went gold on September 5th as part of the Gold World Project to raise awareness for Childhood Cancer. On New Year’s Eve, the Jump’s LEDs will ring in 2015 with a simulated “ball drop” and light show.

Coney Island honors NYC's fallen NYPD officers pic.twitter.com/xJha0d3YDv

— Mark Treyger 🍎 (@MarkTreyger718) December 22, 2014

A symbolic Tribute for our fallen brothers tonight in #ConeyIsland. May they Rest in Peace. pic.twitter.com/oXHNBrgPap

— NYPD 109th Precinct (@NYPD109Pct) December 22, 2014

Art of the Day: David Levine’s Watercolors of Coney Island

Posted in art, Favorites, tagged Coney Island, David Levine, Forum Gallery, painting, Thunderbolt, watercolor on December 13, 2014| 4 Comments »

David Levine at Forum Gallery, Past and Present, 1993, watercolor on paper, 14 13/16 x 10 inches, Collection of The Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA

For this long-time admirer, seeing one of David Levine’s sublime and instantly recognizable watercolors of Coney Island on the cover of Gallery Guide was a joyful moment, knowing it heralded more. From December 12 through January 17, Forum Gallery presents “David Levine: The World He Saw,” the first major exhibition of paintings and drawings by Levine since his passing in 2009. Fifty works are on view including more than 25 of his watercolors of Coney Island, many loaned by private collectors and museums.

Renowned as a caricaturist whose insightful drawings were on the cover of The New York Review of Books for more than 40 years, Brooklyn-born Levine spent his summers painting the bathers on Coney Island beach and the architecture on the boardwalk and adjacent streets. Many of the structures that he painted–pavilions, booths, bathhouses, and amusement rides, have since vanished or were demolished.

David Levine at Forum Gallery, Stauch’s Baths, 1981, watercolor on paper, 10 7/8 x 14 5/8 inches, Private collection, San Francisco, CA

While photographs of Coney’s past attractions tend to put a “then and now” distance between the viewer and the subject, the immediacy of watercolor and Levine’s mastery of the medium makes us see what he saw. Then is now. The ache in the heart upon viewing his watercolors of Stauch’s Baths, the Bank of Coney Island building and the original Thunderbolt roller coaster is akin to phantom pain for a limb that has been lost.

There are also paintings of rides that are thankfully still with us– the Polar Express, the B&B Carousell–and of elderly women whom Levine affectionately referred to as the “Shmata Queens of Coney.”

David Levine at Forum Gallery, Carousel, 1989, watercolor on paper, 11 3/8 x 14 1/4 inches

“Each year they would say: ‘Ya know, lest veek, dere vuss a men chust like you.’ I would patiently tell them that it was me,” Levine wrote. “The ‘shmata,’ or ‘rag,’ not only refers to the head cloth, but also to the bathing suits – faded and misshapen by molding to aged and deformed bodies that have been out under the sun. They are now comfortable with me sketching in their midst and only occasionally ask to see what I do.”

Walter Bernard, a fellow member of the Painting Group, which Levine co-founded with Aaron Shikler in 1958, wrote this remembrance in the New York Times in 2010: “Watching David work was a revelation. He handled watercolors unlike anybody else. He liked to experiment and, as he put it, ‘play.’ He would draw, redraw, ‘schmeer,’ sponge out and paint again. It was not uncommon to see him rub out a work we’d been marveling over, saying, simply, ‘I didn’t get what I was going after.'”

David Levine at Forum Gallery, End of Youth, 1984 watercolor on paper 14 x 22 1/2 inches, Private collection, New York, NY

Levine often painted the 1925 Thunderbolt, which was SBNO (Standing But Not Operating, in roller coaster parlance) since the early 1980’s. The titles of the works are telling: End of Youth, End of Joy, Goya at Coney, and after it was demolished in 2000, The Past.

One of the stories Levine told about the people he met while painting in Coney is this poignant anecdote about End of Joy: “I was seated on a side street, painting the Tinturn Abbey of joy rides, the Thunderbolt. Black and looming, it stood abandoned. A group of children surrounded me. They had just left the beach. Their chattering stopped as they watched my performance. Then, silently, they moved off as a group. When they had walked a short distance, the smallest, a little girl, turned and ran back to me. Without a word, she placed a quarter on my watercolor, then returned to her friends.”

A 72-page, fully illustrated catalogue, with foreword by author and journalist Pete Hamill, accompanies the exhibition.

David Levine: The World He Saw. December 12, 2014 to January 17, 2015. Forum Gallery, 730 Fifth Avenue 2nd Fl. (between 56th & 57th Streets), New York, NY 10019. 212-355-4545. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10am to 5:30pm