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Rare photo book captures Brooklyn team's magic
of TheColumnists.com
Remember the true
blue view of Sharon Stone sitting in a chair cross legged as
she was being questioned in the thriller, “Basic Instinct?”
Marilyn Monroe shared that kind of scenery about four decades
earlier as she stood on a subway grating while filming “The
Seven Year Itch,” and stiff winds blew her skirt up as hundreds
cheered and Joe DiMaggio frowned.
Now an even better photograph of Miss Monroe’s interior
decorations has surfaced in a brilliant photographic collection
of the work of Barney Stein, the official team photographer of
the Brooklyn Dodgers for 20 years (1937-1957) and a colleague
of mine at the New York Post.
Sportswriter and publicist Dennis D’Agostino and Bonnie
Crosby, Stein’s daughter, have put together his work in
a new book entitled "Through a Blue Lens: The Brooklyn Dodgers
Photographs of Barney Stein" (Triumph Books, $27.95), the
best collection of intimate team photos this old sportswriter
has ever seen.
Why would a heat-inducing photo of Marilyn Monroe make it into
a book about the Brooklyn Dodgers? Because it was a Stein photo,
it was taken at Ebbets Field and it was Marilyn. It shows the
Hollywood legend kicking a soccer ball before a game between
American All-Stars and a team from Israel. Asked which Americans
they most liked to meet, one Israeli player replied, “As
athletes we’d like to meet the Brooklyn Dodgers. As men,
Marilyn Monroe.”
The date was May 12, 1957, just a few short months before the
saddest day in Brooklyn history--September 24, 1957--when the
Brooklyn Dodgers played their final game at Ebbets Field. They
were soon to move to Los Angeles, get Chavez Ravine for a dollar
from the city of Los Angeles and build a new stadium in the golden
west.
Stein’s photos, the text of D’Agostino and the memories
of so many of the Brooklyn players--Duke Snider, Johnny Podres,
Carl Erskine, Ralph Branca, Don Newcombe--make this work one
of the most exceptional collections of Brooklyn nostalgia ever
put together.
Can you explain your first love? Can you describe the joy of
a child, the birth of a grandchild, the pride of accomplishment
of a beloved family member? Of course not. Words can’t capture
those emotions in truth.
And words can never truly capture the intensity of a love affair
between the people of Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Dodgers for over
five decades.
D’Agostino had an old book of photos that Stein had put
out with captions written by broadcaster Red Barber in the early
1950s at the peak years of the team writer Roger Kahn forever
christened, “The Boys of Summer.”
“I knew there were more photos and more memories to explore,”
said D’Agostino, a former PR man with the New York Mets
and New York Knicks, now working and living in Los Angeles as
a freelancer. “First I had to find Barney’s daughter,
the keeper of the pictures.”
Old fashioned detective work located Bonnie Crosby, an actress
and dancer, at her home in Naples, Florida. The memories of her
dad’s days with the Brooklyn Dodgers poured out.
“She had so many old photos and so many more that were still
only negatives, never ever printed and never used anywhere. That’s
what we went for. We wanted to make this like an old family album,”
D’Agostino said.
The book opens with a photo of old Dodger Dolph Camilli racing
home and then shows a comic shot of old photog Barney Stein taking
his cuts at Brooklyn’s spring training headquarters at Vero
Beach.
There’s a wonderful shot of Dodgers Carl Erskine and George
(Shotgun) Shuba sitting with Stein and a young Bonnie. Then there
is a unique picture taken by young Stein of Dearie Mulvey riding
horseback in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Mulvey happened to
be part of the Dodgers ownership family and soon Stein was hired
as the official photographer of the Dodgers. Mulvey later had
a beautiful daughter named Ann who would up marrying a famous
Brooklyn Dodger named Ralph Branca.
Stein’s photos captured all the glory and all the history
of the Brooklyn Dodgers through the 1940s and 1950s, especially
around the historic arrival of Jackie Robinson in Brooklyn in
1947 and the final culmination of the dream in 1955 when the
Brooklyn Dodgers won their one and only title with a seventh
game Yankee Stadium victory by Johnny Podres over the Yankees.
The photos of Podres celebrating after the game and the Dodgers
dancing away the night at the team party at the Hotel Bossert
are gems.
There are marvelous pictures of Erskine, Sal Maglie and Rex Barney
as no-hit Brooklyn pitchers, of Branca lying prone on the steps
of the Brooklyn clubhouse at the Polo Grounds after the Shot
Heard Round the World, of Robinson in his Montreal uniform the
year before he came to Brooklyn, of Gil Hodges on his day and
Pee Wee Reese holding court in the corner of the Brooklyn clubhouse.
Then come the tragic pictures of the last game in Brooklyn, the
auction of Ebbets Field material, the destruction of the ball
park that had been home to the Dodgers and all our dreams for
nearly five decades and the dusty grounds where now stands a
low income apartment building.
Few photo collections can capture the joys and sorrows, the heroics
and the frustrations of a team the way D’Agostino and Crosby
and old Dodgers did in Barney Stein’s works. The Brooklyn
Dodgers meant more to more people over more years than any team
in any town ever did. It is all here.
One other thing. The book only costs $27.95. That picture of
Marilyn in all her glory is well worth the price of admission.
©2007 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001
by Jim Hummel. The book cover illustration is courtesy of the
publisher. This column first posted May 28, 2007.
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