favorite favorite favorite favorite

Actually a bizarre little short. It features the Village in 1961. It was a time when Robert F. Wagner was Mayor. He was a man defined by a lot of Villagers as a "nothing" (a suit or party hack) who had turned on his mentor, Carmine De Sapio the Grand Sachem of Tammany Hall. The year following this film this same Washington Square was home of the "Beatnik Riot" that resulted in October of 1961 when Wagner's Park Commissioner, Newbold Morris banned singing in the fountain of Washington Square. On October 10th, 1961, the NYPD arrested ten individuals and cleared out the park.Lois Nettleton, who plays the debutante in this short was an actress who came to NY to study at the famous Actor's Studio, by way of Chicago - where she won the dubious title of Miss Chicago 1948. She was lonely in NY and she was the first call in to Jean Sheppard's late night radio program when it debuted in 1956. She became a regular on that show, known as "the Caller." They actually had a lot in common. "Shep" also was originally from a small Illinois town outside of Chicago. They wound up getting married. Shep did a lot of not terribly cool, but very popular portraits of "Beatnik Culture" in the 50's that made every hipster cringe. Some of them are very funny in a later historical context and also provide the time-place real time of events that were being covered. There was a real tension at this time between the old guard Italians in the Little Italy remnants of the West Village and the "Dirty Beatnik, Commies" - etc. But, much of this was because beat culture was pro-civil rights and establishments like "Cafe Society" broke the color barrier in cabaret entertainment (see Nina Simone). It was this friction that lay behind the political impetus for the Beatnik "riot" which was in fact instigated by Parks Dept. change of policy at the behind closed door request of the Mayor, who was in the Caribbean on vacation when the crackdown was planned. The ACLU came to the Beantniks' defense, and the Parks Dept. and Wagner wound up backing off. There are posters here who conflate a lot of this with the gay culture of the Village also being a target, and they are right to an extent. But, the political pressure from all evidence came more from the "Hunt and Game Club" types against the "Beatnik Kids, sandals and the African American artists and musicians who were welcome and respected by them in poetry, music and art. This is the kind of incredible find that provides the real data of time and place that makes the Internet Archives the treasure it is.- JwPhillips NY 2015 - jwphillips@ live.com