Coney Island Burlesque Paves Way For Organ Grinder Chic; Monkeys Most Affected

Italian stereotypes forgotten, visitors to Coney Island will enjoy the return of organ grinders — with monkeys! — when the boardwalk’s high season starts in earnest next month:

Mayor LaGuardia banned them 70 years ago, but organ grinders will return to Coney Island next month — and maybe bring their monkeys, too.

To kick off the amusement mecca’s opening day April 9, dozens of the once-prominent street musicians plan to crank out old-time hits such as “The Sidewalks of New York” on their automatic music machines.

“It’s a lot of great music,” said Coney Island USA chairman Todd Robbins.

. . .

The machines, some more than 100 years old, were once hugely popular in New York, especially in neighborhoods such as Little Italy and the lower East Side, where Italian immigrants settled.

But in a bid to stamp out Italian stereotypes, LaGuardia banned the instruments from the streets.

“This was cranked up by every Italian immigrant who came to the United States, until it became so noisy that Fiorello LaGuardia had to shut ’em down,” said Aldo Mancusi of the Molinari organs that were made in southwest Brooklyn.

In his biography of public-work whore Robert Moses, Robert Caro claims that Moses once called LaGuardia a “little organ grinder,” a charge Moses denied (although Moses did admit to referring to the Little Flower once as “Rigoletto,” albeit lovingly).