(This is our sev­enth post about the films of diplo­mat John Van Antwerp Mac­Mur­ray. See the first post for more background.)

Mac­Mur­ray and his wife and two old­est chil­dren at a mil­i­tary review in Jan­u­ary 1928 in Tientsin. Left Gen­eral Smed­ley But­ler (John Van Antwerp Mac­Mur­ray Papers, Box 145)

On August 8, 1926, dur­ing a fam­ily vaca­tion in Chefoo (the sum­mer head­quar­ters of the US Asi­atic Fleet), Mac­Mur­ray wrote his mother that her grand­son had prob­lems stay­ing loyal to the Marines in Peking. After doing bat­tle prac­tice on a four-inch gun destroyer he had told his father: “I find that the sailors are as play­ful as the Marines.” As mem­bers of a diplomat’s fam­ily, MacMurray’s chil­dren were well acquainted with the US Marines and Navy in China. The films fea­tured here cap­ture naval ships in Chefoo har­bor and Marines parad­ing at the Peking Lega­tion, as well as mil­i­tary air­planes, artillery, and tanks dur­ing reviews on Marine bases in Hsin Ho and Tientsin. The films include shots of the highly dec­o­rated “Fight­ing Quaker” Gen­eral Smed­ley D. But­ler, com­man­der of the Marine Expe­di­tionary Force between 1927 and 1929.

This film was shot in Chefoo (Yan­tai) and Penglai, where the Mac­Mur­ray fam­ily spent sum­mer vaca­tion in 1926. It opens with elab­o­rate views of ships at Chefoo har­bor, which is fol­lowed by tar­get prac­tice on the USS Pruitt, from which the pre­vi­ous footage was prob­a­bly shot (2:00). After images of a car being trans­ferred across the water, the film con­tin­ues with footage of Penglai, a small medieval town with an inner har­bor and a tem­ple on top of a rock (3:47). The rare footage of air­planes that fol­lows (3:59) was shot at Camp Mac­Mur­ray, the first US Marine air­base in China, which was estab­lished by But­ler at Hsin Ho and named after Mac­Mur­ray. It is not clear when Mac­Mur­ray, who appears to have been taken on a fly­ing tour, vis­ited the base. The last part of the film cap­tures artillery and tanks of the 10th Marine reg­i­ment in Tientsin on an unknown occa­sion (6:57), end­ing with march­ing British troops at Tientsin.

This film opens with a parade of the Lega­tion Guard (abbre­vi­ated by Mac­Mur­ray as “Lagu” Guard), fol­lowed by some brief footage of Gen­eral Smed­ley But­ler (0:19). (For more infor­ma­tion and exten­sive footage of the Lega­tion Guard see our pre­vi­ous post.) The footage that fol­lows (1:19) cap­tures the build­ing of the Sino-American high­way from Tientsin to Peking, a project that took place under Butler’s super­vi­sion in the fall of 1928, when the Third Brigade of the US Marines in Tientsin coop­er­ated with Nation­al­ist troops. A com­mem­o­ra­tive photo album of the project can be found in MacMurray’s Papers (box 147). The films ends with shots of march­ing Scot­tish sol­diers at the Peking lega­tion and more footage of Gen­eral But­ler (1:42).

After some vil­lage and nature scenes in the West­ern Hills, the frag­ments on this film include some more footage of the Lega­tion Guard parad­ing in the Peking com­pound (0:47). This is fol­lowed by what may be a Chi­nese bur­ial pro­ces­sion of some­one of impor­tance, show­ing griev­ing peo­ple car­ry­ing ban­ners and pup­pets of peo­ple and ani­mals (1:33).

Our thanks to Dirk Haig for his assis­tance with iden­ti­fy­ing mil­i­tary images and to Shuwen Cao for her help with the local scenes.

Pre­vi­ous posts about the films of John Van Antwerp MacMurray:

• MacMurray’s films of China, 1925–1929 (includ­ing “Kalgan”)
• Trip to attend the rein­ter­ment of Sun Yat-sen, 1929
• A diplomat’s trip along the Yangtze River, 1928
• Rent­ing a tem­ple in the West­ern Hills
• Marines and Chi­nese armies in Peking
• Trips to the South and the Philip­pines, 1926 and 1929