Among the ear­li­est silent films that were shot on the Prince­ton cam­pus are those pro­duced and financed by the classes of 1921 to 1939 (see our pre­vi­ous blog). The first true ‘class film’ was titled “The Class of 1923–its deeds and its antics.” A com­pi­la­tion of footage from this film and of the film “Cham­pi­ons 1922,” with foot­ball high­lights of the fall of 1922, sur­vive in the archives. Be ready to watch the “foot­ball team that wouldn’t be beaten,” the build­ing of a cham­pi­onship bon­fire, a dirty flour fight, Tri­an­gle chorines and more Prince­ton lore.

The two 16mm film reels on which this footage was found con­tain almost all scenes (though in dif­fer­ent order) of the orig­i­nal nitrate base films that were kept by the Grad­u­ate Coun­cil. Accord­ing to the Grad­u­ate Council’s lists of cap­tions or “titles” of the films, the orig­i­nal “Cham­pi­ons 1922,” which was rented out to alumni groups, took up one reel, and the film with the class’ “deeds and antics” took up six. Por­tions of six of the seven orig­i­nal reels were used, with only the class’ com­mence­ment scenes omitted.

Princeton’s three foot­ball vic­to­ries that clinched the cham­pi­onship in the fall of 1922 are found at sep­a­rate places: the Yale game (Novem­ber 18) at 0:00, the Har­vard game (Novem­ber 11) at 3:18, and the Chicago match (Octo­ber 28, 1922) at 11.42. The film fea­tures a live tiger cub (2:33) that, accord­ing to the note found with the film reel, was donated by the father of one of the play­ers “since Prince­ton won (the) Har­vard game.” An arti­cle in the Prince iden­ti­fies the donor as J.F. Howard from Haver­hill, MA, father of Albert “Red” F. Howard ’25, who had caught the cub while hunt­ing in the jun­gles of India. The note indi­cates that the tiger was given to Philadel­phia Zoo after graduation.

To our sur­prise, we had already seen the bon­fire footage at 4:22. It was fea­tured in Ger­ardo Puglia’s 250^th anniver­sary doc­u­men­tary and was thought to be the cham­pi­onship bon­fire of 1926 when it was put online by the Prince­ton Alumni Weekly. Now we know that it was actu­ally the cham­pi­onship bon­fire of Novem­ber 21, 1922. Given the cap­tion on 1923’s Class film, it is easy to under­stand the mis­take: it was tra­di­tion­ally the task of the fresh­men (in this case the Class of 1926) to find wood for the cel­e­bra­tory bon­fires. That this involved quite a bit more than gath­er­ing brush­wood is demon­strated in the film. A photo mon­tage of the events can be found in the Daily Prince­ton­ian of Novem­ber 25, 1922.

Another Prince­ton tra­di­tion depicted on the film is the annual “flour pic­ture,” the first pho­to­graph of the fresh­men class on the steps of Whig or Clio Hall, which was taken after the sopho­mores dumped flour on the fresh­men. The seniors of 1923 were merely bystanders when the Class of 1926’s flour pic­ture was filmed on Octo­ber 30, 1922 (5:40). The footage must have ended up here because the Class of 1923 had taken the ini­tia­tive for the com­bined Motion Pic­ture Com­mit­tee that would coor­di­nate the class films for all four classes, includ­ing the film­ing of the freshmen’s flour pic­ture. (See our pre­vi­ous blog.)

The title that accom­pa­nied the orig­i­nal footage appar­ently was removed:  “Flour (?) pic­ture: 1926 under­goes its bap­tismal rites.” The ques­tion mark indi­cates that more than flour was dumped dur­ing this haz­ing rit­ual, and a year later, the Class of 1926, now sopho­mores, added their own spe­cial ingre­di­ent to the mix: acid! Not sur­pris­ingly, the flour pic­ture was abol­ished imme­di­ately. The Prince wrote solemnly: “This action was neces­si­tated by the degen­er­a­tion of the Flour Pic­ture in recent years until this fall it was a dis­tinctly non-Princeton affair.”  A later arti­cle detailed what may have been mixed with the flour on this footage: eggs, tar, paint, molasses “and what­not.” The flour pic­ture was rein­stated in 1924 with water and flour only, but the inter­est of the sopho­mores waned, and the prac­tice stopped after 1925.

The pho­tog­ra­pher of the flour pic­ture is prob­a­bly Orren Jack Turner, who appears at 6:28, fol­lowed a bit later by B.F. Bunn ’07 (6:36), man­ager of the Uni­ver­sity store and finan­cial adviser to many cam­pus orga­ni­za­tions, who advanced the money for the cam­era pur­chased by the Motion Pic­ture Com­mit­tee. The footage of Bunn is fol­lowed by scenes from the Tri­an­gle show “The Man from Earth” (6:46), the annual show for 1922–1923, with Wally Smith ’24 in the title row, singing “That’s why I left the world behind” (7:36). This is the ear­li­est Tri­an­gle footage in the Uni­ver­sity archives, pre­ced­ing even the footage of “The Golden Dog” of 1929 that was fea­tured in a pre­vi­ous blog.

The remain­der of the footage includes ath­letic teams and  train­ing ses­sions, as well as class offi­cers and mem­bers of the boards. Sports fea­tured include soc­cer (1:21, 5:28), cross coun­try (2:15), base­ball (7:49. 14:31), row­ing (8:25. 17:33) and golf (16:12), while footage of con­struc­tion of the Hobart Baker ice hockey rink can be found at 6:42. The footage includes mem­bers of The­atre Intime (14:00) and the board of the Daily Prince­ton­ian. The lat­ter footage cap­tures another Princeton’s tra­di­tion: the priv­i­lege, exclu­sive to seniors, to sit on the steps of the Mather Sun­dial, in the cen­ter of McCosh Court­yard (16:44).