This Week in History, 1949: Louis Armstrong is denied a room at the Hotel Vancouver, and John McGinnis photographs it

On Jan. 30, 1949, John McGinnis’ disc jockey friend Jack Cullen phoned to tell him that jazz legend Louis Armstrong had arrived at the Great Northern Railway station from Seattle.

Armstrong was here for a weeklong stint at the Palomar Supper Club, his first local appearance in years. Armstrong was going over to the Hotel Vancouver to book a room, so McGinnis went there to get a photo for The Province.

But when he arrived, he was shocked to see Armstrong being denied a room because he was black.

“This guy came over to the (desk clerk) and said, ‘Get that black ass bastard out of here,’” McGinnis recalled.

“We don’t book blacks, are you nuts?’ This is the Vancouver Hotel! And this kid to his credit was so embarrassed he quietly said, ‘Mr. Armstrong, come outside, I think I can get a place for you across the street.’”

Armstrong and his entourage moved over to the Devonshire Hotel, where they secured a room. While Armstrong was waiting, McGinnis approached him and asked if he could take his photo.

Armstrong said sure, sat down on his bags and started playing his trumpet. And McGinnis captured the scene, complete with Armstrong’s handlers trying to book a room in the background.

It’s hard to say if the photo was ever published in The Province — it isn’t in the paper that was microfilmed and is now viewable on Newspapers.com. But Cullen later used it for an album cover of an Armstrong show he taped and released as a bootleg LP.

McGinnis printed it in a self-published book of his old newspaper photos, I Shot The Queen and Thousands More. He also recounted the Armstrong story in a 2017 article in The Province that reintroduced McGinnis to a younger audience.

McGinnis died Feb. 1 at Langley Memorial Hospital at the age of 92. His death really does mark the end of an era — he was probably the last person alive who had worked on Vancouver newspapers in the 1940s.

McGinnis worked for The Province from 1946 to 1949, for the Calgary Albertan in 1951-52, and for the Vancouver News-Herald from 1953 until it folded in 1957.

He did indeed photograph the Queen — then Princess Elizabeth — in Alberta during the 1951 royal tour. In his decade as a news photographer, he shot a bit of everything: natural disasters, grisly car accidents, and Vancouver’s first rock ‘n’ roll concert, Bill Haley and the Comets at the Kerrisdale Arena on June 27, 1956.

McGinnis had good access because he promoted the show with Jack Cullen. Working for the News-Herald, McGinnis took a front-page photo the paper described as two “real gone gals” lost in the “blaring, blatant strains of rock ‘n’ roll.”

Backstage, McGinnis took some wonderful photos of DJ Red Robinson with Haley. McGinnis and Robinson remained lifelong friends, meeting up only a couple of months ago for lunch at White Spot.

William John McGinnis grew up in a rough-and-tumble Vancouver that was a far cry from the city of today. He was a very funny guy, often talking in a fantastic 1940s slang, like a character from a Dashiell Hammett novel.

A good example was McGinnis describing his parents, who he said were “great friends of Joe Louis.” That was his way of saying “they fought all the time.” Asked what his father did, he replied “drank.”

There were five McGinnis kids, and when John was eight or nine, he was placed in a foster home.

“Right off the street, my sister and I, they snapped us up on the street, on our way home,” he said. “And that was the last we ever saw of the homestead.”

He would live in 13 foster homes before he “took off” at 15 and started working. In his teens, he got a job as an office boy at The Province, and was transferred to the photo department.

After the News-Herald folded, he worked as a freelancer — in the early 1960s he took the Vancouver Canucks team photos when they were in the Western Hockey League. He also shot countless weddings, and ran his own photo stores. He is survived by his wife Sybil, daughters Rachel, Colleen and Debbie, and sons Sean and Darren.

jmackie@postmedia.com