#the movie came out in the 50s. the newsies existed in 1899. what if. like. albert went to neverland.

[frombottlealleytotheharbor]

albert dasilva is peter pan. source? I MADE IT THE FUCK UP

[santafeisafantase]

@thattheatrefreak here ya go dood and others. it’s still just a rough draft and not me bashing newsies bc i love it so much, but i was interesting in doing the research so here we go. enjoy!!

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Newsies vs. The Newsboy Strike of 1899

Did you know that back in 1899, the newsboys, also known as newsies, of New York City went on strike? The strike caused massive disruption to the city’s key services. Critical news stopped and strikes and protests halted transportation. At one point even the entirety of the Brooklyn Bridge shut down. This was such an important event in our history that Walt Disney Studios created a movie in 1992, which would later become a Broadway musical in 2012, about the strike called, ‘Newsies’. Disney’s Newsies represented the Newsboy Strike of 1899 inaccurately as evidenced by the fictional characters and plotlines.

Based on the Newsboys Strike of 1899, Disney’s Newsies creates many fictional characters to tell their version of the story. In fact, the main character and “leader” of the Disney’s Newsies strike did not exist in real life but was created to support their interpretation of the story..

Jack Kelly, the alleged leader of the strike, was a charismatic character created to further their story.. His character is loosely based off the actual leader of the strike, Louis ‘Kid Blink’ Balett(i)*. Kid Blink (sometimes referred to as Blind Diamond) was the leader and chief organizer of the Newsboy’s Union Strike Committee. Kid Blink was said to be between the ages of 13-18 and Italian, while Jack was 17 and (most likely) Irish. At the time, Italians were frowned upon, and otherwise not well perceived by others, including but not limited to- the Irish. So, although the change from Italian to Irish appears insignificant on the surface, due to tensions between these groups during this time it seems curious

Both Blink and Jack Kelly accepted a bribe from a newspaper, going back to work. Jack took the bride in order to keep his boys from going to The Refuge (a jail for underaged kids), and while there’s no apparent reason for Blink accepting the bride, it was most likely just for the money. Another difference between Blink and Disney’s Jack Kelly is their mannerisms during the strike. When Kid Blink came across scabs (boys who went against the strike), he would soak them (beat them up) into joining the strike, Jack used his way words to talk the scabs into joining the strike.

His more memorable speech from the Broadway production is as follows, “Listen fellas…I know somebody put yis up to this. Probably paid ya some extra money too. Yeah? Well, it ain’t right. Pulitzer thinks we’re gutter rats with no respect for nothin’, includin’ each other. Is that who we are? Well, we stab each other in the back and, yeah, that’s who we are. But if we stand together, we change the whole game. And it ain’t just about us. All across this city there are boys and girls who ought to be playin’ or going to school. Instead they’re slavin’ to support themselves and their folks. Ain’t no crime to bein’ poor, and not a one of us complains if the work we do is hard. All we ask is a square deal. Fellas…for the sake of all the kids in every sweatshop, factory, and slaughter house in this town, I beg you… throw down your papers and join the strike.” Disney’s Jack is more a verbal peacemaker than brute enforcer.

Along with Jack Kelly, David ‘Davey’ Jacobs, and the entire Jacobs family didn’t exist either. In the 1992 Newsies movie, the Jacobs family took Jack in when David and Les, two brothers, became newsies. Davey suggested the strike and became Jack's right-hand during the strike. Sarah, Davey and Les's sister, was Jack's love interest, but an otherwise unimportant character who was written out in the stage production. The Jacobs parents aren't in the stage version, as well. They’re mentioned a few times, but never shown or talked about in much detail. The family, in the movie, showed Jack what it was like to have a real family, as none of the newsboys really had families. This idea of a perfect family and Jack;s want of this idea becomes a recurring theme in Jack’s storyline. There’s a possibility Davey was based off Dave Simmons, the president of the Strike Committee who was voted out alongside Blink for betraying the strike. Simmons was treasurer for the second half of the strike after being forced to step down from his higher position. Davey could’ve also been inspired by/based off Morris Cohen, who replaced Simmons as president of the strike committee. Consistent with the transition of Jack from thug-ish to more of a charismatic leader, Disney gave Jack more relatable family ties and direction.

Furthermore, Bryan Denton did not write the big stories that won the boys the strike. In fact, those articles don’t exist at all! As well as that, Bryan Denton did not actually exist. He was originated for the movie. It’s likely he wasn’t based off anyone in particular, seeing as though the articles from the time came from all over the place. Bryan served to unify the storytelling in somewhat of a narrator fashion that the audience can rally around.

On the topic of the newspaper reporters, Katherine Pulitzer/Plumber (Plumber having been the name she allegedly published under) did not write for ‘The New York Sun’ or anywhere, for that matter. While Katherine Pulitzer was a real person, she died of pneumonia at the age of 2 years old. In the Broadway musical, she’s written to replace both Sarah Jacobs, as Jack’s love interest, and Bryon Denton, as the reporter for the strike.

Another misrepresentation is the infamous leader of the Brooklyn Newsies, Spot Conlon. Spot Conlon, and the Brooklyn newsies, according to the musical/movie, were major influences on the strike. Disney makes it out like without Spot they wouldn't have won the strike at all. Racetrack Higgins, in Disney's versions, is just a newsie from Manhattan who loves to play poker and bet on horse races, when in actuality, Racetrack was the real ‘voice of Brooklyn’ and is mentioned throughout the papers as a major influence on the strike. He also gave a speech at the rally in Irving Hall, claiming to have confronted the chief of police, as well as threatening the boys if they thought of betraying the strike. Racetrack was temporarily vice-president of the strike committee after Blink and Simmons were voted out.

Disney also claims after Kelly betrays the strike, he joins the strike again to assist in writing and printing their own paper that helps them win the strike. Joseph Pulitzer, the owner of ‘The New York World’, sees the paper and makes Jack and the newsies an offer. He would lower the raise of price by half if they went back to work. Jack rebutted by saying that ‘The World’ would also buy back whatever papers the newsboys don’t sell, full price. In truth, over the two weeks that the boys were striking, ‘The World’ made many offers to which the Union’s Strike Committee turned down. Most of the newsies disagreed with the Strike Committee refusing to accept the offers. Eventually, Pulitzer made an offer to the newsies, not the Official Decision Makers of the strike. Pulitzer offered them 100% return rights. The newsies immediately accepted the offer, agreeing to go back to work, while the Union Committee, who disagreed with their decision to accept to offer, said they would continue to strike.

According to Disney’s Newsies, Pulitzer decided to raise the price of papers because once the war ended, they weren’t selling enough papers. Joseph Pulitzer wanted to put more money into flashy photos and headlines, so they could sell more newspapers. In order to do so, they raised the price of the newspapers from $.50 per hundred to $.60, meaning the newsies would have to sell 10 more papers just to make the same about as always. When the newsies saw the raise in price, they were immediately enraged and decided to strike. When the boys organized their first rally, Pulitzer tried to get the mayor and Snyder (the warden of The Refuge) to arrest Jack and get the rally shut down.

In actuality, ‘The World’, and most of the newspapers in the city, raised the price of their papers during the war, knowing that the headlines were dramatic enough that papers would sell easily. When the war ended, all the newspapers brought the prices back down, except for ‘The World’ and ‘The Journal’. Because the war had ended, papers weren’t selling as well, and the newsies couldn’t make enough money to survive. That being said, the newsies didn’t strike immediately. The war ended in August of 1898, and they didn’t strike until July 1899. They elected a group of boys to lead the strike called the Union Committee which consisted of Kid Blink as chief organizer, Dave Simmons as president, Little Mikey as an orator, and Jim Gaiety, Young Monix, Barney Peanuts, Crutch Morris, Crazy Arburn, Scabutch/Scabooch, and Abe Newman. The intention of Pulitzer was not as ill-intentioned and specific as Disney indicated.

Even the conclusion of the strike was changed to suit Disney’s narrative! They make it out to be more willing and accommodating than what actually happened. So, all that said, Disney’s Newsies represented the Newsboy Strike of 1899 inaccurately as evidenced by the fictional characters and plotlines.

*according to some sources, it could also be spelled ‘Balett(i)’

Works Cited

Anonymous. “‘The Looker-on’ Observing Racetrack Higgins”. Brooklyn Life, 29 July 1899. cityhallpark1899.com/2015/07/29/the-looker-racetrack-higgins/

Nasaw, David. “Read all about it: The story of the newsies’ two-week strike against publishers Pulitzer, Hearst”. New York Daily News, 14 August 2017. nydailynews.com/new-york/story-newsies-strike-titans-pulitzer-hearst-article-1.2858550

Siegrist, Julie. “Newsies the Movie: Is it Historically Accurate?” When I Can Breathe, Blogger, 19 January 2014. whenicanbreathe.blogspot.com/2014/01/evaluation-newsies-movie-is-it.html

Romero, Kristina. “Newsies: The real story compared with the movie/musical”. Calling Extra, WordPress, 24 March 2012. callingextra.com/author/kristina/

Newsboys of 1899, Tumblr.

Torin. “Historical Context Newsies”. The Gilder Lehrman. www.gilderlehrman.org/content/historical-context-newsies

Stern, Liz. “Blast From the Past: Newsboy Strike of 1899 “. History Detectives, New-York Historical Society, 27 July 2012. historydetectives.nyhistory.org/2012/07/blast-from-the-past-newsboy-strike-of-1899/

Morisako, Kira. “Kid Blink”. Extra! Extra! Newsboys Take A Stand: The Newsboys Strike of 1899, Weebly. newsboysstrike1899.weebly.com/kid-blink.html

Anonymous. “Newsboys' strike of 1899”. Wikiwand, Wikipedia. www.wikiwand.com/en/Newsboys%27_strike_of_1899#/Louis_%22Kid_Blink%22_Baletti

Anonymous. “Newsies Historical Research”. Newsies History, Tumblr. newsieshistory.tumblr.com/post/91454605563/some-things-we-know-about-the-real-kid-blink-part

[latestphase]

Interminable Ramblings About “Newsies”

Y’all. Let’s talk about Newsies.

For those unfamiliar, Newsies is an under appreciated Disney live action movie musical made in 1992. It stars Christian Bale, Bill Pullman, and Robert Duvall. There are also a number of familiar faces and voices in the very large cast of newsboys. The story, based on real events, is set in 1899 when Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst were vying for dominant circulation and power of the press in New York City. A major source of newspaper distribution were the newsboys (newsies), who roamed the city shouting headlines and selling papers. In order to increase profits, Pulitzer (and the other newspaper owners, following his lead) raised the price of newspapers for the newsies from 50 cents/100 papers to 60 cents. The outraged newsies took their cue from the local trolley workers and went on strike. A bunch of street urchin nobodies decided to stand up to the most powerful men in New York City. And *spoiler* they won.

This movie first came to my attention at a theater summer program when I was a kid. (We won’t get into how that ended up being the first circle of my personal hell.) The older kids in the program were, for the big performance at the end, doing the opening musical number in Newsies, “Carrying the Banner.” At home, we rented the movie and my sister and I were instantly converted. A few years ago, after getting innumerable requests (apparently) from high schools who wanted to do stage versions, Disney adapted Newsies and put it on Broadway. When the show went on tour, I got to see it. I have many thoughts. So many thoughts, y’all. What brings this to mind afresh is that they filmed the stage version and it is currently streaming on Netflix. I love the movie. Love it. It is ridiculously dear to my heart. The stage version is pretty great, too. Different. And change is...change-y. Also hard. So whenever I watch or listen to the soundtrack of one version, it now makes me think about the other.

One of the themes in this story is family. In the movie version, it’s introduced in the first song (”Carrying the Banner”). The newsies are being serenaded by nuns who are passing out bread and some sort of hot beverage and being nun-like. Into the throng of boys comes a woman, singing to her missing son and looking at the faces of each boy, hoping to find him there. At the same time, the newsies who had been up to this point full of boisterous energy, are pausing and thinking about how much they struggle just to survive. The woman doesn’t even have many lines, but in that one moment the song reminds the viewer that these are just kids--some orphans, others runaways. Many of them are alone, except for the other newsies. The ones that do have families need to work to support them. So the theme of newsies-as-family gets established fairly early in the movie--and even more immediately and overtly in the stage version, which opens with a reworked version of Jack’s “Santa Fe.” In the movie, Jack meeting and being embraced by David and Les’ family is Important, and the existence of these people as actual characters shifts the overall feeling of the family theme. In the stage version, we never meet David and Les’ parents, and the family theme stays centered on the newsies-as-family idea. A family you choose, instead of are born into. But I think in the movie, when Jack meets David’s family and that leads into “Santa Fe,” we see how much of Jack’s yearning to reinvent himself as a cowboy, his lies about his family being out west already, come from his need for family.

[I actually was going to talk about something else first, but I forgot what it was while I wrote the first part of the post. Anyway, I’m going to keep reblogging this as I think of things, but I’ll edit the post so it isn’t super long every time.]

TLDR: Newsies is good. Watch it. Listen to it. I am always happy to talk about it to anyone whenever, constantly and I think about it WAY TOO MUCH.