This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/25/2023
WEIL, Joseph (The “Yellow Kid,” 1875 – 1976). Wanted Poster for “Yellow Kid” Weil. New York Post Office Inspector’s office, 1936. Bearing police department mug shots of the famous con man at the upper right, and his fingerprints below, and listing his crimes as the operator of a “fraudulent matrimonial agency,” as well as being a “pay-off swindler,” and as guilty of perpetrating “confidence schemes.” With several penciled and inked notations. Framed to 12 x 12”. See Exemplars, p. 132. Saul Bellow profiled The Yellow Kid in The Reporter 1956, writing, “Of course he was a crook, but the “marks” whom he and his associates trimmed were not honest men. “I have never cheated honest men,” he says, “only rascals. They may have been respectable but they were never any good.” And this is how he sums the matter up: “They wanted something for nothing. I gave them nothing for something.” He says it clearly and sternly; he is not a pitying man. To be sure, he wants to justify his crimes, but quite apart from this he believes that honest men do not exist. He presents himself as Diogenes whose lifelong daylight quest for absolute honesty has ended in disappointment. Actually, he never expected to find it.”