Cameraman on the Spot

Plump, sleepy-eyed Photographer Max Peter Haas one afternoon last week was sitting in his office, six floors up from the busy corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street in Manhattan. He had just loaded his camera when he heard shots in the street. Out dashed Photographer Haas, camera in hand, and followed the sound of gunfire toward 35th Street.

A shivery sight met his eye as he turned the corner. On the sidewalk lay two men--a policeman and a cab driver. Another man, wounded, was struggling to rise. Clicking his camera faster than he could think, Max Haas moved toward the group on the street.

Photographer Haas witnessed the end of the most exciting gun battle in many a day on the streets of Manhattan (see p. 75). When he got back to his office, developed his roll of film, Max Haas felt a little faint. In his camera were 14 of the best newspictures ever taken.

Max Haas promptly called the New York Daily News, offered all 14 pictures for $500. The News snapped them up, sold them in turn to the New York Journal & American, LIFE, TIME, Associated Press, Acme Newspictures. When the money started pouring in, the News revised its agreement with Haas, gave him 50% of the proceeds up to $1,450, everything above that. By week's end the pictures had grossed over $1,800--a near-record for spot-news photos.

What made his lucky break all the more gratifying to Max Haas was the fact that he is not a news photographer at all. A nightclub and society lens-snapper, he also specializes in sports pictures. German-born, a naturalized U. S. citizen, 33-year-old Cameraman Haas in 1931 started his own photographic agency, European Picture Service. Today his collection includes some 1,500,000 pictures, 500,000 negatives, of which 150,000 are shots he made himself.

Haas uses only one camera, a Leica, always has it with him. His gun-battle pictures last week climaxed a year of lucky breaks. On Jan. 17, 1940, at Madison Square Garden, Haas caught the first picture of Sonja Henie doing a fall on ice. Three weeks later he was strolling down the street after breakfast, Leica in hand, when Furman Richard Jaeckel fell from a window overhead, landed on a canopy. Max Haas got that one too. He has twice won Leica awards for his pictures--once (in 1936) for a shot of German Fighter Max Schmeling looking out of the dirigible Hindenburg, once (in 1938) for a candid shot of a woman spectator's rump at a Forest Hills tennis match.

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For the first time in 174 and 128 years respectively, New Haven's Journal-Courier (founded in 1766) and Register (founded in 1812) failed last week to appear on sale--100 typographers had struck for more pay. New Haven's chief newsource for a day: the 62-year-old collegiate Yale Daily News.

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