American Experience: Coney Island

Posted: 8/22/2015

Trigger

Just watched American Experience Coney Island (originally released 1991 by Ric Burns). Unfortunately, a few days later Youtube blocked this video with the message “"Coney Island: A Docu..." This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by WGBH Educational Foundation.” According to Wikipedia WGBH Educational Foundation is “The WGBH Educational Foundation (est. 1951) of Boston, Massachusetts is a nonprofit organization that oversees WGBH-TV public television, WGBH (FM) public radio, and other productions.”

Why would this educational foundation prevent this video from being shown?

Here is another link on Youtube. Hope this one will not be blocked!

This is an amazing story about Coney Island. I had no idea! My wife and I visited Coney Island a few times in the late 1990, early 2000s, but then Coney Island was a shadow of its former self.

Some Takeaways

Some of my takeaways are also mentioned in the Wikipedia article about the above documentary.

1. Coney Island was famous all over the world as a theme park or amusement park for everyone. It was called a Nickel Empire or the Riviera for the Poor.
2. First roller coasters and mechanical steeplechase
3. Hot dogs became famous
4. Ladies’ skirts were blown up by wind from below like the famous scene with Marilyn Monroe only decades earlier
5. Luna Park offered a trip to the moon in the early 20th century
6. It was called an Electric Eden for its over 250,000 light bulbs, which were a novelty at the time
7. Dream Land featured some 300 midgets from all over the world
8. Dr. Marin A. Couney permanently installed incubators with premature babies on display for 25 cents “to view the children so parents would not have to pay for the child's medical care. His exhibition at Luna Park opened in 1903.”. Supposedly, this introduced the widespread use of incubators in neonatal care of babies. What a great idea!
9. The infamous electrocution of Topsy the elephant in 1903, who killed a human and where Thomas Alva Edison shot the original footage of the event, happened on Coney Island. By the way, the elephant was also poisoned with cyanide.
10. At the height of its popularity around 1947, Coney Island had 1.3 million visitors on the beach alone.
11. There were many more interesting and astonishing things to see in this documentary!