Last Saturday, August 13th, from 6:00-8:00 PM, I attended the special closing exhibit of “Bayou City Noir: The Photography of Marvin Zindler” at the Houston Museum of Print History located at 1324 West Clay in Houston. Single copies of each piece on display were made available by silent auction purchase to attending patrons, with the auction proceeds going to both the host museum and also to Houston Arts and Media (HAM), a non-profit group dedicated to the collection and preservation of local history, particularly as these histories are revealed through the arts and other media.
What a treat to both the memory and imagination of how a certain slice of Houston life used to be at the mid-20th century point of local history. The work of young Marvin Zindler, crime photographer, took us all again for a walk on the wild side of crime scenes, murders, beatings, robberies, car thefts, juvenile delinquency, celebration of life on the lowdown and dirty side, domestic disturbances, and plenty of cops and robbers fashion. Had you wanted to see what the late Marvin Zindler did for a short time in his younger days, you needed to be there to see the exhibit. The pictures spoke loudly for themselves of a time when plain clothes detectives, and even car jackets and street punks. wore sports or suit coats to their arresting moments in time, and they did it in a cultural era when most people smoked and “Bogarted” their cigarettes for the roving eye of the camera.
If an enterprising film maker ever wanted to re-make the old Jack Nicholson film. “Chinatown” and set it all the ancient history setting of mid-20th century Houston, they would simply need to send out a call to actors dressed as the people in Zindler’s photos. They could start shooting the same day.
As a mental health professional who spent some of his later practice time working with some referrals from the criminal justice system, all I can do is confirm that there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to down and out sleaze ball behavior. Bad guys still beat up on their women; crooks still rob grocers and steal cars; and street punks out there will still punch, stab, or shoot you on the drop of a dime. They just won’t wear fedoras or ties and sports coats to the crime scene. The crooks will still be smoking, less so the cops, but the bad guys today will have more tattoos.
One guy in the ZIndler collections was under arrest for bigamy – or as the local paper called it, “for having one wife too many.”
Another photo showed a guy stretched out on a couch, Dagwood Bumstead style. He was all dressed up in a suit and tie – and he first appeared lost in an energy-restoring nap. but not so fast. An expanding blood stain on the upper left hand part of his dress shirt showed that he had been shot dead with a bullet hit to the heart.
My favorite early memory of young Marvin Zindler goes back to my days as a UH undergraduate student when, from 1956 to 1959, I worked
downtown as a floor salesman at a little men’s clothing store on San Jacinto known as Merchant’s Wholesale Exchange. Marvin Zindler was one of our best customers and I loved waiting on him because he was so easy.
Marvin would come into the store and go straight to suits his size. He would just look them over for a few seconds – and then he would start pointing: “I’ll take that one! And that one! And that one! And that one! And, of yes! – That one!”
He wouldn’t even try the coats on. Marvin knew that we already had his custom alteration measurements on file with our next door neighboring tailor, Charlie Manning. All he had to do was point, pay, and go. It was our job to get them back to him, asap. Now, when he came back to pick up the suits – that was the time I earned my money. Helping Marvin pick out the ties and dress shirt accessories proved far more time-consuming than the purchase of the suits themselves.
Marvin Zindler was always kind to me, the little nobody college student retail clerk – and I appreciated him for that fact. I caught up with Marvin at a charity auction about fifteen years ago and asked if remembered his shopping days at Merchant’s Wholesale. Marvin smiled and said, “Oh yes, I remember those days quite well.” I’m not sure how much of that minutiae he really recalled, but he was still the same Marvin that I recalled – a really nice guy.
Bayou City Noir was a real visual treat – and a seam in Houston history that only a guy like Marvin ZIndler could, and did, capture on a steady historical basis. Thanks for this one and all your other generous and more conscious contributions to Houston history. We were lucky to have you here for as long as we did as one of own.
Houston, Baseball, & Other Musings.
The Pecan Park Eagle 