figure of Joey collecting bottles. The brothers head home, arriving minutes before their mother returns. Thinking they have just been sitting inside watching television since she left, she says that, the following weekend, she is going to take them to get some fresh air at Coney Island. Cast Richie Andrusco as Joey Norton Richard Brewster as Lennie Norton Winifred Cushing as Mother Jay Williams as Jay, the Pony Ride Man Will Lee as Photographer Charlie Moss as Harry Tommy DeCanio as Charley Cast notes The lead character of Joey was played by Richie Andrusco, a nonprofessional actor who never appeared in another film, and most of the other parts were also portrayed by nonprofessionals. Director/writer/editor Ruth Orkin has a small role as the woman with a baby on the beach. Actor Jay Williams later co-wrote the "Danny Dunn" series of juvenile science fiction novels with director/writer/producer Raymond Abrashkin. The Coney Island photographer was played by Will Lee, who went on to play Mr. Hooper on Sesame Street. Production notes The film was filmed on location at Coney Island and in Brooklyn using a unique concealed strap-on camera, which made it possible for Engel to work without a tripod or a large crew and allowed him to have thousands of beach-going New Yorkers as extras without their knowing it. This innovation proved to be "the heart and soul of why Little Fugitive was possible." The camera could be seen as a prototype for the Steadicam and was designed by Engel and his friend the inventor Charlie Woodruff, a fellow World War II combat photographer who Engel called a "mechanical and engineering genius." Over the years, filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick and Jean-Luc Godard reportedly were eager to borrow this unique camera. Engel's unique camera Engel was an experienced photo-journalist when he was asked in 1939 by his friend Paul Strand to shoot some motion picture film for his film Native Land using the compact 35mm Bell and Howell Eyemo holding 100 foot rolls that could film about one minute of film. But he was disappointed that Strand put this camera designed for hand-holding on a heavy metal baseplate attached to a heavy wooden tripod.<ref>Joel Schlemowitz, ‘’Experimental Filmmaking and the Motion Picture Camera, Routledge, London and New York, 2019, pp. 153-153</ref> During World aWar II he was a still photographer but he probably was familiar with a handheld 35 mm battery-operated camera