Although we have a fairly good idea about the class films of the 1920s, there is vir­tu­ally no infor­ma­tion about the class films of the 1930s. The excep­tion is the film of the Class of 1939. That is prob­a­bly not an acci­dent: it was the class of pre­vi­ously fea­tured Fred­eric Fox ’39, who was the first and only keeper of Prince­to­ni­ana from 1976 until his untimely death in 1981. The 16mm film in the archives turned out not to be the two hour long film that was announced in the Daily Prince­ton­ian on May 1938, and it sadly also lacks the sound that was sup­posed to have been a major inno­va­tion. How much the ulti­mate film ‘shat­tered prece­dents’ by depict­ing ‘inti­ma­cies dur­ing cam­pus years’ as the Prince announced in March 1938, we may never know. But one thing is clear: the Class of 1939 had a lot of fun that included women and beer.

The footage is in chrono­log­i­cal order, start­ing with fresh­men foot­ball prac­tice dur­ing days, nights, and in the snow. After this, ath­let­ics (always empha­sized in pre­vi­ous class films) get very lit­tle atten­tion: only foot­ball and row­ing are fea­tured with­out any iden­ti­fi­ca­tions, other than a Yale-Princeton game (6:49). The fresh­men scenes con­tinue with footage about the Vet­er­ans of Future Wars (VFW) (1:50), founded in March 1936 by mem­bers of the Class of 1936 and 1937, which became one of the most famous col­lege pranks in the coun­try. The footage is part of a news­reel of March of the Times, which can be viewed online (with sound!). The three “likely pieces of can­non fod­der” (shown at 2:19 in the chairs), who came up with the idea, are  Lewis J. Gorin ’36, “National Com­man­der” (mid­dle), Urban Rush­ton ’36 (left), and prob­a­bly Richard Waters ’36 (right). Accord­ing to 1939’s class his­tory in the Nas­sau Her­ald, it was the “main event” of the sec­ond term that year, and the move­ment received the freshmen’s “whole-hearted back­ing.” The records of the Vet­er­ans of Future Wars are kept in the Uni­ver­sity Archives.

The Tri­an­gle Club gets quite some atten­tion in the class film, which is under­stand­able: Fred Fox ’39, Mark Hayes ’39 and Sanders (“Sandy”) Maxwell ’39 were involved in three pro­duc­tions, the first two as actors (Hayes played Mandy Mag­num in pre­vi­ously fea­tured Take it Away) while Maxwell con­tributed music. The footage shows scenes from Fol-de-Rol, Triangle’s pro­duc­tion for 1937–1938, includ­ing chorines danc­ing (7:20) and Mark Hayes singing with Fred Fox, who had a lead­ing roll as King Charles II (8:33). It is not pos­si­ble to deter­mine if the party scene with whiskey and bear that fol­lows is related (8:43). Triangle’s 50^th anniver­sary pro­duc­tion Once Over Lightly, in which Hayes and Fox both played lead­ing roles (Sandy Maxwell, Triangle’s direc­tor, con­tributed most of the music), is fea­tured at 16:18. It is not known who the man and woman are who are pre­sented with a gift by Fred Fox at 16:32.

The footage fol­low­ing the first Tri­an­gle show is thought to cap­ture the Junior Prom on March 18; 1938, with music by the swing band of trum­peter Larry Clin­ton (11:14). The prom was attended by 606 girls (all listed by name in the Daily Prince). Fun­nily enough, the one junior stu­dent who is shown alone among the danc­ing cou­ples is Fred Fox (at 10:49 with bow tie and glasses), who was voted ‘most likely bach­e­lor’ in his senior year. In an arti­cle in the Prince 35 years later, Fox explains that he prob­a­bly got the vote because he never had a date until his senior year, when he shared one with his room­mate. More scenes with girls are shown at 5:37 (pre­sum­ably watch­ing a row­ing regatta), as well as at 11:52 and  at the senior house par­ties (21:51).

Remain­ing footage shown must have been shot at the ROTC train­ing camp at Madi­son Bar­racks, NY, in the sum­mer of 1938, at the end of the Junior year (13:10). Sim­i­lar footage is fea­tured in our pre­vi­ous blog, which may even have been shot on the same occa­sion. The footage at 11:59 shows J.C. Hur­d­man ’39 at the micro­phone and Sandy Maxwell at the piano dur­ing a WTNJ radio broad­cast of “Prince­ton On The Air,” fea­tured in the Prince. The film ends with brief footage of the Commencement.