What's in A Number?

What's in a number? More or less, I guess.

The day after the obituary on the death of Winston Moseley, the killer of Kitty Genovese ,who passed awhile at 81 while still in prison for the crime he committed 52 years ago, we are still being treated to follow up stories from the NYT. They almost seem to be doing penance for inventing the number of 38 people who they claim saw or heard parts of the murder taking place and who didn't raise a finger other than to open a window or turn a light on, and perhaps yell here and there, to alert any authorities.

Or, was the number they invented 37, as the headline to the March 27, 1964 front page piece by Martin Gansberg claims were apathetic and inert to a screaming woman's calls of distress?

Anyone who pays any attention to the postings of this blog, (and the number is not as high as 37 or 38) knows I've occasionally been writing about this murder on and off for years, generally when something appears in the paper. And lately, with the Moseley death, there's been another flurry.

The story that hit the print edition of the NYT was in yesterday's paper about a followup visit to the Kew Gardens neighborhood where the murder took place. The reporter Corey Kilgannon does a piece about visiting the streets and buildings associated with the murder. Some interviews are recorded.

To illustrate how sore a point the numbers 37, or 38 have come to live in infamy and take on a life of their own, you only have to read that Mr. Kilgannon walks into a bar in the neighborhood and asks the bartender about Kitty Genovese and is asked to leave. It's not easy getting asked to leave a bar in New York before you've created a disturbance.

That incident reminds me of the time my wife and I were in Ireland in 1977 and stopped by the village of Potahee, Ballinagh, Co, Cavan to visit her girlfriend from her days growing up in the Bronx, who some time ago immigrated to Ireland after marrying someone who was born in Ireland and moved back there with her girlfriend to raise a family and continue working in the construction trade.

When my wife and I stopped in a local pub before getting finite directions to where the friend lived, the bartender easily recognized us as Yanks and asked about what we were in Potahee for?

My wife replied we were there to visit her friend and mentioned the husband's name. The bartender wasn't rude, but he nodded and went as far down the other end of the bar as he could and never strayed back. Having another one, if we even wanted one, would have been impossible. It was clear. Anyone connected with the Yank wife and Yanks themselves, had already been served one drink too many. We weren't going to get another one. We finished and left, understanding the snub.

Looking up how to spell Potahee I just found the death notice for the husband who had passed away. My wife has long since fallen out of touch with her friend-until possibly now. The funeral notice mentioned the four children we knew about, the wife, and lots and lots of loving neighbors and grandchildren who were at the wake.

In addition to Mr. Kilgannon's follow up piece after Winston Moseley's death there was an online NYT 'Insider' piece by David Dunlap that addressed the Genovese murder and the subsequent attention that was paid to the number of people who were reported as being callous. It is a number that has long since been debunked, but remains significant even if the number were truly only one.

Considering the Gansberg piece leads off with a headline of 37 and mentions 38 in the lede, I wrote to Mr. Kilgannon and Mr. Dunlap that surely they knew they were sitting on top of the world's most unadmitted typo. Well, maybe not. But it was reporting at its most confusing, and eventually proved to be its most inventive..

The text off the Gansberg piece goes:

MARTIN GANSBERG MARCH 27, 1964

37 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police

• For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law‐abiding cit­izens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.
• Twice the sound of their voices and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights interrupted him and frightened him off. Each time he returned, sought her out and stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned the po­lice during the assault; one wit­ness called after the woman was dead.

Mr. Kilgannon replied that he was sorry he didn't address the difference in the number in yesterday's piece. Mr. Dunlap gave a little more explanation as to what the numbers meant. Ad when you absorb what he says you realize that you can understand that the numbers actually account for two sets of people, but do, as Mr. Dunlap admits, create confusion. It perhaps wasn't reporting's finest moment. 

Mr. Dunlap points of that the headline tells us of  37 people who witnessed the murder who didn't call the police. The lede tells us of 38 who watched and did nothing. But the second sentence tells us that one of the 38 did call the police, but only after Miss Genovese had died. Thirty-seven plus one equals 38. Well, yes.

Expecting a readership, even a NYT readership, to see a Venn diagram here was really asking too much, especially for so sensational a story.

Continued proof of the life the numbers have taken on is to have read that a Danish filmmaker, Puk Grasten, is cobbling together a feature file on the events titled '37,' a direct read of the headline, but not the more recognized number that lives in infamy: 38. A number that to this day will lead you to not get served in a bar in Queens if you bring up any reference to the story.

I thanked Mr. Dunlap for his explanation and offered that changing the title of the movie from '37' to '38' would be like renaming 'The Magnificent Seven' if we were to find out that Steve and Yul really started out amongst eight horse riding avengers, but one decided to ride on before the story begins.

And if I haven't already proved with the tangential Barney Brady story that we live life on a Mobius strip, consider that the author of the 1967 movie ' The Dirty Dozen,'  E.M. Nathanson has just passed away at 88.

Being of a certain age that would have been amongst the movie-goers who would have seen this movie when it first came out in theaters, the obituary for Mr. Nathanson brought back some memories.

As mentioned in the obituary, the male cast consisted of some Hollywood knowns, and newbies who would become known. The movie was typical of the WW II male dominated action movies that were being produced at the time. Action, and star-studded. There was pre-publicity interest in the film because it was the first film Jimmy Brown, the legendary fullback for the Cleveland Browns was to appear in, having retired from football at what was then thought to be an early age. He's now 80.

So, what's in a number? The obituary has a recent photo of Mr. Nathanson, along with an image of the movie poster, and the cover of his book that sold two million copies. Bruce Weber's obituary mentions some of the cast members who made up the "Dozen." who would go on to become household movie names after the movie: "Donald Sutherland, John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas, George Kennedy, and Charles Bronson."

The movie poster credits, in that distinctive compressed Art Deco typeface, however only list 11 "Dirty Dozen" names, along with two others. Who is missing? Am I going to have to go the Leonard Maltin's book, or the web to find out?

Apparently, Donald Suntherland was no little known at the time his name doesn't make the roster of credits on the poster.

I'm applying Venn diagrams to what I read now.

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