The Electric Rembrandt

[From The Tattooed Stranger (dir. Edward Montagne, 1950). Click for a much larger view.]

Like the detectives of The Tattooed Stranger, we’re traveling from Sailor Kovac’s Epidermal Louvre on the Bowery down to The Electric Rembrant on Brooklyn’s Sands Street.

If Rembrandt was in business on Sands Street between 1939 and 1941, he seems to have eluded the WPA tax photographers. An assiduous reader found a reference to the artist in The Brooklyn Eagle (October 31, 1949). From Margaret Mara’s column “Living in Brooklyn”:

As usual, Sands St. proved fascinating. I discovered Phil’s Tattoo Parlor. Phil calls himself “The Electric Rembrandt.”

Samples of designs for tat[t]ooing fill the window. They are unbelievable! They include numerous pictures of girls with hairdos of the early ’20s, serpent-entwined ladies, skull and crossbones, hearts and flowers, daggers, and even the Rock of Ages.

“Johnny Marseille” must have been the filmmakers’ temporary addition to an already crowded window. You can see the shop with Phil’s name in a photograph from the City Museum of New York. Phil may have been this fellow, Phil Duane, who worked on the Bowery (and perhaps later moved to Brooklyn). Whoever Phil was, he placed at least one advertisement for his wares:

[The Billboard, December 29, 1951.]