Coney Island

For this Musical Monday, we take the train out to Coney Island for a trip down memory lane.

Reginald Marsh  Wonderland Circus, Sideshow Coney Island, 1930 (ARTstor)

From 1926, the Five Harmaniacs with Coney Island Washboard Roundelay, music by Hampton Durand and Jerry Adams, words by Ned Nestor and Aude Shugart: 

Jug band not your style? How about some street corner harmony with the Excellents: 

Amusing the Zillions "fave Coney Island song" is Joe McGinty's Million Dollar Mermaid :


Coney Island Tours Coney Island History Project Coney Island USA The Brooklyn Theatre Index, Volume III, Coney Island Including  Brighton Beach & Manhattan Beach is available online at the Coney Island USA Gift Shop.

Cezar Del Valle is the author of the Brooklyn Theatre Index, a three-volume history of borough showplaces. The first two volumes chosen 2010 OUTSTANDING BOOK OF THE YEAR by the Theatre Historical Society. Final volume published in  September 2014.

He conducts a series of popular theatre talks and walking tours.

Now selling on Etsy

Pip and Flip, Coney Island, 1932

Artists have long been drawn to Brooklyn's gaudy "Sodom by the Sea."  Reginald Marsh among the most famous.

Pip and Flip, 1932. Tempera on paper mounted on canvas
(© 2013 Estate of Reginald Marsh/Art Students League, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Working her way down from vaudeville to sideshows was Mrs. Jack "Legs" Diamond, widow of the slain gangster. She worked for Samuel Wagner at the World Circus Sideshow, 1216 Surf Avenue, Coney island. 

PiP and Flip, Jenny Lee and Elvira Snow, were micro-cephalics from Georgia, not Peru. They appeared in the movie Freaks (1932).


On Sunday, July 12, 2015,  Cezar Del Valle, author of the Brooklyn Theatre Index Volume III, hosts the cHURCH OF MONICA, Open Source Gallery, with an illustrated talk on the history of Coney Island theatre.

He is available for theatre talks and walks in 2015-2016: historical societies, libraries, senior centers, etc.

Now selling “vintage” on Etsy.