What happened to Princeton’s silent movies?

Posted on by

ArthurPenrose.jpg Film­ing of the com­edy “Arthur Pen­rose” (1923)  (Photo The Prince­ton Bric-a-Brac,1925)

It started at Yale
On Feb­ru­ary 19, 1920 the Daily Prince­ton­ian announced Yale’s deci­sion to record impor­tant cam­pus events on film, to be kept by the classes and used for reunions. By the end of that year, accord­ing to the Prince, Princeton’s Class of 1921 had estab­lished a “fund by which a class motion pic­ture could be taken, includ­ing scenes which might prove to be of inter­est to the Class in later years.” The film of its grad­u­a­tion week­end in June 1921, fea­tured in our first post, must have been the result. Fol­low­ing the exam­ple, the Class of 1922 appointed a Motion Pic­ture Com­mit­tee at the begin­ning of its senior year to coor­di­nate its own class and foot­ball films, thus start­ing a tra­di­tion  that lasted through the 1930s. Only a few class films have sur­vived in the Uni­ver­sity Archives. What hap­pened to the oth­ers? Do we know what was lost? A recently dis­cov­ered box of records of the Grad­u­ate Coun­cil, part of the yet unprocessed Records of the Alumni Orga­ni­za­tions pro­vides some answers.
Champions1922y.jpgRent­ing a film from the Grad­u­ate Council

The box con­tains cor­re­spon­dence (1921–1950) about Princeton’s class and foot­ball films, which were the prop­erty of the classes. They were kept by the Grad­u­ate Coun­cil on their behalf, which rented the foot­ball films to alumni groups around the coun­try. The records include detailed hand­writ­ten and type­script lists, drawn up in 1931, of sev­enty silent movies, usu­ally one to three reels long. The sum­maries and lists of the film cap­tions or “titles” that were used give a good idea of the con­tents of Princeton’s films of the 1920s (lists of the class films of the 1930s are lack­ing). A few films were listed as prop­erty of the Grad­u­ate Coun­cil itself: some uniden­ti­fied (pre­sum­ably early) foot­ball games, the short lived Arthur Pen­rose (1923), a com­edy pro­duced by film enthu­si­ast Stas Azoy ’14, who seems to have been in charge of the films at the time, and the University’s very first pro­mo­tion film Prince­ton (1921). This five-reel film (85 min­utes), which was revised three times and renamed Just Prince­ton and Prince­ton: a ‘National Uni­ver­sity,’ was rented to high schools and other inter­ested groups until 1926, when it was con­sid­ered out­dated (most of the footage was appar­ently seven years old). The silent movie, which was ini­tially meant to be accom­pa­nied by Prince­ton songs and music, has not sur­vived, but the list of cap­tions in the film pro­vides a detailed account of the scenes (see Prince­ton film.pdf).

The class films of the 1920s

After the Class of 1922’s appoint­ment of a Motion Pic­ture Com­mit­tee  to ensure a memento of its senior year, all classes fol­lowed suit. On Novem­ber 3, 1922 the Prince announced the merger of the four class com­mit­tees into one cen­tral body with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from all four classes. It would film cam­pus events of inter­est to all, so that each class would have a com­plete four-year record, end­ing with its com­mence­ment. The first films taken under the new man­age­ment were shown in the Gar­den The­ater on Decem­ber 7, 1922. They included the Class of 1926’s “Flour Pic­ture” (a haz­ing rit­ual in which sopho­mores dumped flour and water on fresh­men prior to their first class pic­ture) and the foot­ball vic­tory over Yale and cham­pi­onship cel­e­bra­tion in November.

inventoryPYgame1926.jpgThe annual flour pic­ture would only be filmed a few more years, as the tra­di­tion was dis­con­tin­ued after 1925. But the major foot­ball games con­tin­ued to be filmed in the fall. The foot­ball films, which were most pop­u­lar among alumni groups, took up half of the col­lec­tion of the Grad­u­ate Coun­cil. They were the prop­erty of the class in whose senior year they were taken. The foot­ball films for 1926, for instance, were the prop­erty of the Class of 1927 (left). The major­ity of the remain­ing class films were shot dur­ing spring and Com­mence­ment. The spring films usu­ally fea­tured com­mit­tees and groups, cam­pus scenes and sports. Some­times the footage included small skits. In addi­tion to these films, the Grad­u­ate Council’s lists include a few films of row­ing, base­ball, and other sports, as well as some early reunion films.

Who did the camerawork?

With the merger of the four motion pic­ture com­mit­tees into one body in 1922, the new Motion Pic­ture Com­mit­tee became a per­ma­nent FlourPictureExpensesCROPPED.jpgorga­ni­za­tion that was funded by the classes through annual con­tri­bu­tions from stu­dents. In the begin­ning of 1923 the Com­mit­tee pur­chased a cam­era, to be oper­ated by Louis Cray of the Uni­ver­sity Music Shop. For major events, how­ever, the Com­mit­tee hired pro­fes­sional cam­era­men from New York, as had been done on pre­vi­ous occa­sions. Only lit­tle is known about the men who were hired over the years. The early Grad­u­ate Coun­cil records, how­ever, include a bill from one Harry Mason, sub­mit­ted  by Stas Azoy, for the film­ing of the flour pic­ture in 1921 (right). Accord­ing to an arti­cle in the Prince, the footage of the foot­ball vic­tory over Yale on Novem­ber 18, 1922, which was included in the pop­u­lar foot­ball film “Cham­pi­ons: 1922″ (above) was shot by the com­pany of movie mogul Lewis Selznick, father of the pro­ducer Gone with the Wind, whose com­pany would go bank­rupt in 1923.

Another New York cam­era­man who filmed for the Motion Pic­ture Com­mit­tees was the pho­tog­ra­pher  Paul Strand, whose pho­tographs were recently acquired by the Phil­i­adel­phia Museum of Art. Strand approached Sec­re­tary Var­num Lans­ing Collins in 1924 about shoot­ing Princeton’s sport events, claim­ing, accord­ing to Collins in a let­ter to Azoy on April 25, to be the sole oper­a­tor of the Akely cam­era, the “only cam­era that can take ath­letic pic­tures with any ade­quate suc­cess.” Collins was not impressed: “He reminded me very much of that queer bird with whom, we used to deal a few years ago, whose name I have for­got­ten.” Despite Collin’s reser­va­tions, Strand started film­ing the foot­ball matches for the Class of 1926 in 1925. By Feb­ru­ary 1929 he was, accord­ing to a let­ter from Collins suc­ces­sor Alexan­der Leitch, the man who did “all the motion pic­ture work for Prince­ton classes” (2/4/1929). Strand’s name appears on the film lists of the Class of 1926, and of some Class of 1928 film lists. Sur­pris­ingly, two of the 1925 foot­ball films were found among the records of the Class of 1895 (part of the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Class Records).

Other cam­pus films, 1928–1939

in 1931 the new Motion Pic­ture Com­mit­tee decided not to hire cam­era­men from New York three or four times a year, but instead opted for a local pho­tog­ra­pher to film “inter­est­ing hap­pen­ings from day to day.” Lit­tle is known about the class films for the next eight years, but the focus seems to have been on sports fea­tures. Accord­ing to an arti­cle in the Prince, the Class of 1939, how­ever, devi­ated from this trend, and pro­vided a more per­sonal, com­pre­hen­sive review of the Class’ years on cam­pus. The film sur­vived in the Uni­ver­sity Archives and will be fea­tured in a future post.

UndergradMotionPictures.jpgTwo other cam­pus films were shot in 1928 and 1931, both with the name “Prince­ton,” like Princeton’s first pro­mo­tion film, but filmed by under­grad­u­ates. The first was shot by stu­dents who called them­selves “Under­grad­u­ate Motion Pic­tures” (pic­tured right) who, accord­ing to an arti­cle in the Prince, financed the film them­selves. They do not seem to have had any deal­ings with either the Grad­u­ate Coun­cil or the Motion Pic­ture Com­mit­tee how­ever, unlike the 1931 film by Lau­rence B. Rentschler ’32, which was shot under the super­vi­sion of the Motion Pic­ture Com­mit­tee and made avail­able to the Grad­u­ate Coun­cil. Sadly, nei­ther film have sur­vived in the Uni­ver­sity Archives.

So what hap­pened to the films?

The cor­re­spon­dence of the Grad­u­ate Coun­cil allows us to fol­low the his­tory of the films through the 1940s. Like the Dulles news­reel, fea­tured in a pre­vi­ous post, they were recorded on 35mm cel­lu­lose nitrate based film, and hence were highly flam­ma­ble and a risk for insur­ers. In 1931 the films were there­fore moved to the “explo­sives room” in the base­ment of the newly built Frick Chem­i­cal Lab­o­ra­tory on Wash­ing­ton Road. But the mois­ture and the fumes from the chem­i­cals that were also stored there badly dam­aged the con­tain­ers of the films, mak­ing many of the labels unread­able. In 1942, the films, a total of some 170 cans, were moved to Bonded Film Stor­age, a pro­fes­sional stor­age facil­ity in New York. Accord­ing to cor­re­spon­dence in the Grad­u­ate Council’s records, the classes who owned the films were encour­aged to trans­fer their movies to 16mm film, but it is unclear how many classes did so. Thank­fully, enough films sur­vived to give us a visual idea of life on cam­pus in those years.

The adver­tise­ment for rent­ing the 1922 foot­ball film from Prince­ton is from Alumni Weekly (Jan­u­ary 17, 1923). The photo of the mem­bers of ‘Under­grad­u­ate Motion Pic­tures’ was taken from Prince­ton Alumni Weekly, May 18, 1928). Other images are from the records of the Grad­u­ate Coun­cil, part of the the Records of the Alumni Orga­ni­za­tions (box 1).

You must log in to post a comment.