Photo opp
Investigative photos: Marvin Zindler explores the gritty, murderous underbellyof 1950s Houston
"Torrid Toni Goes to Jail," Houston Press, Feb. 1, 1953
Marvin Zindler, early 1950s
"A Homey Scene. Except for Dope," Houston Press, Dec. 9, 1952
"Husband Was 'Acting Cute' - Now He's Dead," Houston Press, May 22, 1953
White picket fences, kids playing in the yard, warm apple pie cooling on the window sill — weren't the '50s great? A current Museum of Printing History exhibition of photographs by veteran Houston journalist Marvin Zindler speaks otherwise, as it ravages through the gruesome underbelly of midcentury Houston.
Zindler (who died in 2007) achieved household notoriety for his consumer affairs coverage for television station KTRK. He reached iconic status for his ability to expose the "slime in the ice machine" of local establishments. That was the midnight blue shades-wearing, white suit and pompadoured dandy Zindler. Decades earlier (and prior to a round of plastic surgery that rendered him unrecognizable), he covered the crime beat for the Houston Press as a freelance photographer.
That's not the alt-weekly Houston Press of today, but the gritty daily (acquired by the Chronicle in the 1960s) that unveiled the stories of Houston's violence at a time when the city was deemed the murder capital of the nation.
We frequently remember Houston as a small town before the high-tide of growth in the 1960s and '70s, but Bayou City Noir: The Photography of Marvin Zindler, paints a portrait of a city that was every bit as familiar with urban squalor as the depths of Hell's Kitchen and Compton. Since their original publication, these images have been largely hidden from public view.
It appears that Zindler possessed a rare talent for finding his way aboard ambulances and into the back seats of police cars alongside recently captured criminals. Many of the photographs on view are accompanied by their original captions, but several are detached from headlines, leaving them all the more ominous. More than an inspired chronicler of the city's breaking news, Zindler is triumphed as an artist for the images' dynamic compositions of cars plunging into bayous, busted "houses of ill repute," blood splattered East End gang brawls and an escapee from a psychiatric ward wildly laughing as he's dragged away by police officers.
The budding photojournalist staked out the city's after hours haunts — viewers will be entertained by two incidences at Pat's Lounge on North Shepherd Drive, where proprietor Pat Bowman once received a phone call predicting a shootout. Bowman learned her lesson, as revealed in a photograph from the following year of the bar owner holding a revolver used to scare away an intruder.
In a recognizable New York Post sensationalist style, Zindler wasn't afraid to cross from yellow journalism over to the glitz of the city's upper echelon. You'll find images of socialite singer Patricia King and twin beauty kings alongside the mugs of heroin dealers. The only equalizer between the depicted indigents, society darlings and keepers of the peace are the scores of cigarettes lingering on all of their lips.
Zindler's Houston is that of a city on the verge, proud of its dazzling Shamrock Hotel yet only beginning to cope with the fragility of a diverse, modern city. In one instance, he photographed an African-American resident who had recently moved to the then predominantly white Riverside Terrace, and was met with a firebomb from neighbors. Another image captures a recently reunited family of immigrants from Hong Kong, separated by years of political strife.
These images foreshadow the dynamic Houston that Zindler devoted the rest of his year to investigating — a city screaming to break out of the photographer's black and white lens.
Bayou City Noir: The Photography of Marvin Zindler runs through Aug. 13 at Museum of Printing History.
