“A Scandal Grows in Brooklyn”

Weegee, Henry Rosen (left) and Harvey Stemmer were arrested for bribing basketball players, July 25, 1945

TIME Magazine, February 12, 1945, “A Scandal Grows In Brooklyn”:

“Three New York detectives were watching the home of one Harry (“The Mustache”) Rosen, suspected Fagin and fence for a gang of teen-age garment thieves. They spotted two youths entering and leaving, followed them to the home of Harvey Stemmer, a second racketeer. The detectives picked up the boys, grilled them at police headquarters. The youths got panicky and spilled a lurid story: they were members of the Brooklyn College basketball team, had pocketed bribes of $1,000 (to be split with three other teammates) to throw a game with the University of Akron; they had also arranged, for an additional $2,000, to toss a later game with St. Francis’ College. Racketeers Rosen and Stemmer, byproducts of the big basketball gambling market, had set their sights on a sure way to slough the bookies.”

Later in the article, a gambler explains why his friends who are used to betting on horse racing are having trouble switching over to basketball:

“This basketball, it gives them all heart trouble. Ya see, a horse race, it starts, then bing, it’s over in a few seconds. But the basketball starts, and boom, one team makes a basket. Boom, the second team makes a basket. Boom, the first team makes a basket. And this goes on for an hour. I tell ya, they’re all getting heart trouble.”

The Butchers of Fort Greene Place

Weegee (Arthur Fellig), “Retail butchers lined up at Ft. Greene Market, Brooklyn, in the early dawn, hoping for a little meat to sell from their shops,” March 19, 1943

On April 17, 1943, at the height of World War II, a short item appeared in the Talk of the Town section of The New Yorker stating that the US government had instructed Hollywood producers to remove any shots of stampeding cattle from their Westerns. Such scenes, it was thought, might stir public unrest over the recently-enacted meat rationing system put into place by FDR’s Office of Price Administration after several years of shortages. The rationing system, which went into effect on March 29, 1943, severely limited the civilian population’s access to meat, as well as butter, margarine, cheese, and canned goods—items badly needed by America’s expanding armed forces. The butchers in Weegee’s image above line up at a Brooklyn wholesale market a week before the ration system was implemented, hoping to restock their shelves after last-minute panic buying by crowds of uneasy consumers.

The entire row of buildings on the right of the image was razed in the late 1970s to make way for the Atlantic Center Terminal Mall. Today the site is home to the Target megastore, which, owing in part to our president’s wartime exhortation to “Go out and shop,” sees its fair share of stampedes and shortages.

[West side of Fort Greene Place, between Hanson Place and Atlantic Avenue], 1978
Thanks to www.brooklynsothermuseumofbrooklyn.com