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From the Vault of Art Shay: Movies

By Art Shay in Arts & Entertainment on Aug 3, 2011 4:00PM

The great mime Marceau Marceau once told me that the thrill of his boyhood was meeting Charlie Chaplin. He then modeled his professional career on that of his idol. "I would observe how waiters carried their trays, how men would greet women, how women would respond to men, how people treated children, what made people laugh. Chaplin had done the entire roadmap of life for me." And for millions of others in theaters across the globe for whom Chaplin was the most recognized human on the planet.

In those halcyon years just pass the turn of that long ago century some of us still, if barely, remember as a succession of yesterdays in our lives, not the deep, irrecoverable past- the flickering image of a funny little man fighting the world with the inadequate tools of his puny body and chirpy mind - flickered across screens from tents in Zanzibar to the movie palaces of Broadway and our burgeoning nation. The movies helped us wipe out our buffalo, tell the story of the Civil War as a Tea Party zealot of the time would- guns, anonymous night-riders, sheets, canted logic and all.

I used to pay my dime at the Elsmere or Ward Theater in the Bronx, and lose myself of a Saturday afternoon with actors I admired or hated from another picture. I hissed the villains who twirled the tips of their mustaches while threatening helpless females with fates worse than death if they didn't come up with the rent- or a roll in the hay, or something in between.

When I was 17 in 1939, and shooting window displays for Hammond Organs on 57th Street in New York, there was real live Cary Grant in front of Tiffany's, looking at his watch that showed from under the sleeve of his houndstooth jacket. Ultimately I deduced he was waiting for heiress Barbara Hutton - but at the time I swung around my gigantic Graflex box and asked, "Are you Cary Grant?"

Cary Grant shook his half-Jewish head (the rumor of his having had a Jewish mother in Australia was rife) and said, "Oh no, my boy, I wish I werrre." In a few years I would learn to shoot first and ask for identities later - on perhaps 50 Time and Life stories. My favorite praise printed in Life by crime writer Sandy Smith: "Shay has the guts of a second-story man on the prowl." Before that smooth Italian picture-sneaker Sr. Paparazzi was born.

The great Walter Huston (of Dodsworth and Rain) bought 2 pictures I made of him bowling at the NY World's Fair of 1939. I had caught the glee of his making a strike on the linoleum paved outdoor alley. He was with his fortyish producer, redhead, Jessie Royce Landis, as she peeled off two fives for me. I was a handsome, athletic kid but it took years for me to understand what Jessie had said to Walter Huston's gorgeous starlet. Jessie touched my shoulder, winked, and asked the starlet, "How would you like some of this waiting for you at home when mother wasn't there?" It would be years before I learned what really lubricated the world of show biz.

Dealing largely through photo and art galleries, one occasionally hears about the afterlife of a favorite picture that has been sold. Daiter Gallery's manager told he that Jennifer Aniston summoned him to her hotel suite and ssat knee to knee with him on the floor discussing which two Chicago images her then boyfriend- who loved Chicago -she should purchase. "Sunday Morning on Madison Street", and "Algren Playing Poker")

David Mamet says he enjoys waking up to my picture of Dawn on Maxwell Street, where he grew up. He also likes "Welcome Democrats" because he was a young reporter on the scene in 1968.

Josh "Birdman" Murphy has just restored and hung my sneaky view of some Mafia guys playing poker in a New Jersey basement.

Actor John Cusack used to live with an early print of this same picture.

My son Richard, a fine fotog, hangs my picture of "Paul Revere and the Raiders". "Because,dad, I was 9 when you took me and my lifelong pal Aaron Katz along on the shoot for Time." About 50 years ago!

If you can't wait until this time every Wednesday to get your Art Shay fix, please check out the photographer's blog, which is updated regularly. Art Shay's book, Nelson Algren's Chicago, is also available at Amazon.