'Norm!' and his Photo-history Connection

You may have heard that George Wendt died on Tuesday. Of mainly Irish descent despite his German name, Wendt played the everyman character "Norm Peterson" on Cheers, the long-running sitcom of the 1980s and early '90s. At some point along the way, the Boston bar used for the exterior establishing shots, the Bull & Finch Pub, on Beacon Hill, changed its name to "Cheers Boston" for tourists. Actually, it's a franchise now—Paramount licensed the name to Host International, a Marriott subsidiary, for a series of airport bars. Some of the airport bars reportedly feature animatronic robot "customers" based on the "Norm" and "Cliff Clavin" characters (although the robots have different names to provide plausible deniability). Wendt, along with John Ratzenberger, who played Cliff, filed suit based on their right of publicity. The case limped along for a number of years. I haven't quite been able to find out how it ended; my interest flagged. [See Jeff's Featured Comment below.]

Tom and Ruth
So what's the tie-in between George Wendt and photography? Well, Wendt is the grandson of Tom Howard, who was his mother's father. You probably don't know the name. Howard, who ended his career at the Chicago Sun-Times, was the creator of what was at one time one of the most famous pictures in American photojournalism. In 1928, cameras were strictly verboten at executions, but pictures were what the ravenous public wanted. Howard got the assignment to strap a miniature camera to his ankle and smuggle it into the execution chamber at Sing-Sing Prison in Ossining, New York, where he secretly photographed a murderer named Ruth Snyder at the moment of her death in the electric chair. The blurred shot is usually presented heavily cropped, like this copy at the Met (which for some unknown reason I am prevented from showing here*). Some of the blur was caused by Snyder's body convulsing at her moment of reckoning. Shown that way, blurred and retouched, it creates an oddly soft and artistic impression, standing out from other famous news pictures of the 'twenties. The picture caused an immense public sensation in 1928, running on the front page of the New York Daily News two days in a row. Here's what we think is the full frame, making the vantage point—from Tom Howard's ankle—more clear.

Howard was brought in from Chicago so the wardens, who knew all the New York guys on sight, would not peg him for a photographer. He was limited to one shot; the camera on his ankle had a single plate. A cable release ran up his pants leg to a shutter release in his pocket. The picture has understandably been called the tabloid picture of the decade of the Roaring Twenties in America. The camera is in the Smithsonian.

Faraway time
You can read more about the case in Bill Bryson's wonderful One Summer: America, 1927, a cornucopia of rich stories of America nearly 100 years ago that add up to a snapshot of our nation as it was then. It was an eventful year. Bryson's book covers the execution not only of Ruth Snyder but of Sacco and Vanzetti; the transatlantic flight of Charles Lindbergh; The Bambino (Babe Ruth) and the 1927 Yankees; the Great Mississippi Flood; the transition from the Ford Model T to the Model A (hint: Henry Ford didn't want to transition at all: he considered that the Model T was perfect and would remain perfect for America in perpetuity, and Ford's agonizing slowness in offering a new model was what allowed Chevrolet to get a foothold in the market. Not unlike Canikon leaving full-frame mirrorless to Sony all by itself for five years, allowing Sony to become a major player. Also great on the Model T and its cultural significance is E.B. White's book Farewell to Model T from Sea to Shining Sea. White, who wrote Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little for middle-aged children, is still considered one of the great prose stylists. I sometimes read aloud from his essays all alone in my easy chair, hoping to catch some of his cadences as one might catch a cold from another). Getting back to Bryson, he covers barnstormers and the huge crowds they mustered outside of small farming towns; Al Capone and bootlegging; the man-of-few-words President, Calvin Coolidge; the end of silent films and the advent of the "talkies" with the release of The Jazz Singer; the contrast between the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression that was just around the corner at the time; the incubation of suburbia and shopping malls; Charles Ponzi and the original Ponzi scheme; and the party life and personal habits of sports stars and eccentric geniuses. You know how they sometimes say "...and much more"? There's much more. Like Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelly, of New Jersey, creating a sensation by sitting atop a flagpole for twelve days. Skim the gushing "Editorial Reviews" at the Amazon link—all true for once.

Ruth Snyder herself would probably not otherwise be remembered but for being the object of Tom Howard's (and the newspaper's) resourcefulness. She had been perhaps understandably provoked by her husband, who apparently idolized his late fiancée rather extravagantly, without consideration for the feelings of his wife. Ruth and her cheating lover, a married corset salesman named Judd Gray, connived, first, to take out several double-indemnity insurance policies on the husband, and then to un-alive him in a manner that sounds redundant, not to mention laborious—they strangled him with a length of picture wire, stuffed chloroform-soaked rags up his nose, and beat him with a sash weight (the lump of metal on a length of rope used to counterbalance heavy double-hung windows). That he expired on the fatal occasion must have been a relief to Ruth, since, according to Judd Gray, Ruth had already tried to kill him as many as seven times before that, failing on each occasion. (How in the world did he fail to get the memo? There are always more stories behind stories.) As you might expect, given the seven failures, the scheming couple did not carry out their plan totally competently—forgetting, for one thing, to leave behind any signs of forced entry, and hiding some objects in the apartment they later told the police were stolen by the fictitious burglars they helpfully blamed for the murder. Ruth unwittingly brought Gray into it before the police knew who he was; he sung like a canary, and the two thoroughly implicated each other. As we know from the picture, Ruth Snyder paid the price for their crime, nearly fainting when she first spied the grim electric chair. Unphotographed, Judd Gray followed her ten minutes later, in the same chair.

I think I first encountered the once-famous, still gruesome image in one of my favorite books, American Photojournalism Comes of Age by Michael L. Carlebach. I've probably recommended that book three times for every one person who bought one. But it's good. I always liked Michael Carlebach's books. It has a companion, The Origins of Photojournalism in America (one of the reviews for which criticizes the book for concentrating too much on America. A forehead-slapper, that.) By the way, the Bull & Finch Pub was voted Boston's best bar by Boston magazine in 1982, the first year of the television series. Which influenced which, though, I don't know. You can still visit the place today. It's at 84 Beacon Street, Boston.

Mike

*Why and on what legal basis? No clue, but I don't like to give giants bee stings, lest they swat my little black-and-yellow-striped hiney and send me and all my buzzy enterprises to perdition.

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Jeff: "The case was ultimately settled, terms not disclosed. I once lived within a stone’s throw of the Boston bar, a fantastic location adjacent to the Pubic Garden, and conveniently between Beacon Hill and Back Bay. But I rarely went into the touristy bar. Earlier, I had worked for Marriott Corporation, before it sold off many of its businesses, when it was the 9th biggest company in the US with nearly 200,000 employees. Most people had no idea of its breadth outside of the hotel business, including Host as well as restaurants, theme parks, cruise ships, food service and facilities management for businesses and universities, and much more."

Stan B.: "I used to frequent the bar featured in the movie The Verdict with Paul Newman. It was located in New York City's Lower East Side, and I first started to frequent it upon passing one night and noticing that it was occupied by one (1) patron, who was passed out on its distinctive horseshoe-shaped bar. Once the movie came out, you had to stand in line to get in."

Comments

[William Lewis]

Only in America can we still have the fantasy that murdering murderers will stop murder... 🤣

Yes, I've always opposed capital punishment. As Tolkien put it "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends."

[george andros]

....and the prize for the most discursive posting---and comment---of the year goes to...

[Jeff Hartge]

This article is just another example of why I love your site. I just don't support you enough for the level of pleasure your writings bring to my life!

[Chuck Albertson]

Several years ago, a German-themed bar opened down the block from Photographic Center Northwest, where I do all my printing. It was named Von Trapps, which immediately drew a rocket from lawyers for the real Trapp family in Austria ("Sound of Music" fame). After a hasty and expensive re-brand, it has since done business successfully as The Rhinelander.

[Andrew]

"... and then to un-alive him"

Fascinating post, but I have to ask, un-alive? Not, kill or murder? Surely we don't need "un-alive".

[It's kind of a thing on social media. TikTok has a hard filter on words like kill, suicide, and murder, not allowing posts with such words to trend, so unalived has emerged as a workaround for "dead" and so on. One YouTuber uses "pew-pew" for "gun" for similar reasons. I am never trending; I'm just playin'. --Mike]

[Chris Kern]

Mike: Getting back to Bryson, he covers barnstormers and the huge crowds they mustered outside of small farming towns; Al Capone and bootlegging; the man-of-few-words President, Calvin Coolidge . . .

Upon being informed that ‘Silent Cal’ Coolidge had died, Dorothy Parker reportedly responded: “How can they tell?”

[James Weekes]

My favorite Norm line ever was his answer to “ How’s it goin’”. He said “It’s a dog eat dog world and I’m wearing Milk Bone underwear”