In this week’s issue of The Nation, there’s an article about E.L. Doctorow’s new novel that seeks to explain the Collyer Brothers‘ story. You might know the name. Homer and Langley Collyer lived in a mansion in Harlem until 1947 when they were found dead inside, among tons of crap they had hoarded over the years. In fact, that’s how I first heard of them, because when I was growing up and my mother decided my room was too messy, she’d say something like, “It looks like the Collyer Brothers’ place in here.”
When the Collyer Brothers story broke, CBS television news was still pretty much a fledgling operation. One of its pre-war pioneers, Rudy Bretz, was then working as a cameraman for the division, and they sent him uptown to get some pictures of the place. Someone then took a picture of Rudy inside the mansion. Here’s the shot:
