Author Archives: Helene van Rossum

Black alumni looking back, 1996

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Har­vard offered its first degree to an African Amer­i­can stu­dent in 1870, with Yale fol­low­ing in 1874. At Prince­ton, how­ever, the first two black stu­dents grad­u­ated only in 1947 and 1948, after arriv­ing on cam­pus as mem­bers of the Navy’s wartime V-12 pro­gram. His­tor­i­cally the “Ivy League school for South­ern gen­tle­men,” Prince­ton was a lit­tle “tardy,” accord­ing to Cor­nel West (then direc­tor of the Cen­ter for African Amer­i­can Stud­ies) in the doc­u­men­tary fea­tured here (32:01). In the words of Franklin Moore, Asso­ciate Direc­tor of Admis­sions 1970–1980: “If you had a seg­re­ga­tion­ist atti­tude or would like to cher­ish that atti­tude a lit­tle longer before real life hit you after you grad­u­ated, this was the place to come to.” (31:35).

The first two black grad­u­ates, John Howard ’47 and James Ward ’48, are among the 35 alumni who were inter­viewed for the doc­u­men­tary Look­ing Back: Reflec­tions of Black Prince­ton Alumni, which was writ­ten and directed by Melvin McCray ’74 and pro­duced by McCray and Calvin Nor­man ’77 on the occa­sion of Princeton’s 250th anniver­sary in 1996. Most of the alumni inter­viewed are from the 1960s and 1970s, when the admin­is­tra­tion started to make diver­si­fi­ca­tion of the stu­dent body a pri­or­ity. In the doc­u­men­tary Robert F. Goheen, pres­i­dent between 1957 and 1972, explains how the racial riots of 1963 in the South made him real­ize that Prince­ton, which counted only seven African Amer­i­can under­grad­u­ates in 1962, should pro­vide more edu­ca­tional oppor­tu­ni­ties to qual­i­fied blacks (20:52). Goheen’s suc­ces­sors William G. Bowen (Pres­i­dent 1972–1988) and Harold T. Shapiro (Pres­i­dent 1988–2001) are also inter­viewed, as well as Carl Fields (Assis­tant Direc­tor of Stu­dent Aid 1964–68 and Assis­tant Dean of the Col­lege 1968–1972), and the afore­men­tioned Franklin Moore.

The 75 minute doc­u­men­tary, in which alumni describe con­trast­ing expe­ri­ences and feel­ings, is divided into sev­eral chap­ters: “The early his­tory” (2:59), “Inclu­sion” (20:46), “Diverse back­grounds” (25:59), “First impres­sions” (28:44), “A mat­ter of race” (31:57), “Aca­d­e­mics” (43:51), “Nas­sau Hall Protest” (detail­ing the protest of April 14, 1978 over Princeton’s invest­ments in South Africa, 56:40), “Grad­u­a­tion” (1:01:35), “One Word” (1:04:20), and “Part­ing thoughts” (1:05:20). In the first chap­ter Woodrow Wilson’s racism is dis­cussed (6:16). The intro­duc­tion of coed­u­ca­tion in 1969 is dis­cussed at 48:43.

In addi­tion to the inter­views, the pro­duc­ers use his­tor­i­cal footage and pho­tographs (includ­ing mate­ri­als from Mudd Man­u­script Library and pri­vate sources) and ren­der­ings of “Old Nas­sau and “Going Back” by the a capella group “The Persuasions.” The doc­u­men­tary was pro­duced under the aus­pices of the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee for Princeton’s 250th Anniver­sary, in con­junc­tion with the Asso­ci­a­tion of Black Prince­ton Alumni (ABPA) and the Alumni Coun­cil. It won a Bronze Medal from the Coun­cil for the Advance­ment and Sup­port of Edu­ca­tion (1998).

This VHS video is part of the Uni­ver­sity Archives’ His­tor­i­cal Audio­vi­sual Col­lec­tion (item no. 1361).

Card carrying members of the ACLU, 1988

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One of the largest and most fre­quently used Pub­lic Pol­icy col­lec­tions at Mudd Man­u­script Library is the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union (ACLU) records.  (For a descrip­tion of the ACLU and its doc­u­ments, see our pre­vi­ous library blog entry). The ACLU’s Audio­vi­sual Mate­ri­als Series, how­ever, has been lit­tle used, but a few films that were recently dig­i­tized will be fea­tured on this blog in the com­ing weeks. As an intro­duc­tion, here is a pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment (PSA), part of the first tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing cam­paign in the his­tory of the ACLU, a result of the orga­ni­za­tion being drawn into the 1988 U.S. Pres­i­den­tial campaign.

In his nom­i­na­tion accep­tance speech, Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­date Michael Dukakis asserted that the elec­tion would be “about com­pe­tence, not ide­ol­ogy” and dur­ing the cam­paign that fol­lowed, tied his GOP oppo­nent, Vice Pres­i­dent George Bush to the scan­dals of the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion.  Bush coun­tered by por­tray­ing Dukakis as a lib­eral out of the main­stream.  Employ­ing a phrase res­o­nant with one used by the noto­ri­ous Sen­a­tor Joseph McCarthy, he called Dukakis a “card-carrying mem­ber of the ACLU” (a state­ment Dukakis him­self had made in a mag­a­zine inter­view the pre­vi­ous year).  The ACLU decided to use Bush’s attack as a pub­lic rela­tions oppor­tu­nity. The PSA is one of three tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials, pro­duced by the ACLU’s South­ern Cal­i­for­nia chap­ter, in which Burt Lan­caster, Jill Eiken­berry, and Michael Tucker explain why they are card-carrying mem­bers of the ACLU. All com­mer­cials end with the line: ”No one agrees with every sin­gle thing they’ve done. But no one can dis­agree with the guid­ing prin­ci­ple — with lib­erty and jus­tice for all.”The actor, direc­tor and pro­ducer Burt Lan­caster (1913–1994), win­ner of an Acad­emy Award and Golden Globe, was a vocal sup­porter of lib­eral polit­i­cal cases. The actress and actor Jill Eiken­berry and Michael Tucker, a mar­ried cou­ple, are best known for their appear­ance together in the pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion series L.A. Law (1986–1994).

The VHS tape on which this PSA is found is part of the Audio­vi­sual Mate­ri­als Series of the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union Records (Box 2039).

 

Kicking off the $53 Million Campaign, October 1, 1959

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On Octo­ber 1, 1959, Trustees and Alumni gath­ered in Prince­ton for a sig­nif­i­cant event. “This cause we serve is a cause of great impor­tance to all Amer­i­cans and through­out the Free World,” James F. Oates ’21 boomed, before hand­ing over the micro­phone to Judge Harold R. Med­ina ’09 and Pres­i­dent Bob Goheen ’40. The cause was Princeton’s $53 Mil­lion Cam­paign, and the 500 alumni from twelve dif­fer­ent states, the first vol­un­teers for the cam­paign, were attend­ing the kick-off meet­ing of the total solic­i­ta­tion phase.

Oates, the Chair­man of the $53 Mil­lion Cam­paign, may have sounded over­wrought, but the three-year cam­paign was of his­tor­i­cal pro­por­tions indeed. It was Princeton’s first pro­fes­sional fund rais­ing effort, run with the help of the new Devel­op­ment Office (estab­lished in 1956), a fund rais­ing firm, and ulti­mately almost 5,000 vol­un­teers, coor­di­nated by eight regional offices from coast to coast. The finan­cial goal was of his­tor­i­cal pro­por­tions too, and so was the list of projects to be funded, includ­ing $30 mil­lion for new build­ings on cam­pus, includ­ing the Engi­neer­ing Quad, the New Quad, the Wool­worth Music build­ing, and the School of Archi­tec­ture. Thus, the $60.7 mil­lion raised by the end of the cam­paign, pledged by 17,925 donors, enabled the growth and change with which the pres­i­dency of Robert F. Goheen (1957–1972) has come to be associated.

The film, pre­sented as a news­reel for alumni, opens with excerpts of speeches by Jim Oates (0:54 and 4:05), Harold Med­ina (2:09) and Robert Goheen (6:04). It ends with footage of Jim Oates at the open­ing of a foot­ball match later that day, where he announces the launch of the cam­paign and receives a spe­cial shirt as ‘quar­ter­back’ of the cam­paign (8:56).
This 16mm film is part of the Uni­ver­sity Archives’ His­tor­i­cal Audio­vi­sual Col­lec­tion (item no. 0125). For more infor­ma­tion about the $53 Mil­lion Cam­paign, see Gregg Lange’s arti­cle in the Prince­ton Alumni Weekly (Novem­ber 4, 2009).

Combustible Dulles, ca. 1934

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Not many col­lec­tions in the Pub­lic Pol­icy Papers at Mudd Man­u­script Library con­tain audio­vi­sual mate­ri­als. John Van Antwerp MacMurray’s films of China, which were fea­tured over the past nine weeks, and the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union records are an excep­tion. So we were very excited when a preser­va­tion sur­vey led to the dis­cov­ery of an unla­beled film reel in one of the most researched col­lec­tions: the papers of John Fos­ter Dulles, Sec­re­tary of State under Pres­i­dent Dwight Eisen­hower from 1953 until his death in 1959. But the can­is­ter smelled nasty, a sign that it con­tained highly com­bustible nitrate film.

Dulles still.jpgThe film, how­ever, was in sta­ble enough con­di­tion to be dig­i­tized. It turned out to be a Pathé news­reel from around 1934, in which a very young Dulles, an inter­na­tional lawyer at the time who served as Amer­i­can rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the Ger­man Debt Con­fer­ences of 1933–1934, dis­cusses France’s “war debts.” France was one of the many Euro­pean nations who were indebted to the US Trea­sury for loans made dur­ing and imme­di­ately after World War I (a total of over 10 bil­lion dol­lars for all coun­tries). Dulles had par­tic­i­pated in the Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion to Nego­ti­ate Peace in Ver­sailles (1918–1919), and in the Repa­ra­tions Com­mis­sion (1919).

It turns out that British Pathé still owns the news­reels as well as the copy­right. This means that we will not be able to post the news­reel our­selves. If you click the image below you will be directed to the Pathé site instead, where you can not only view the Dulles news­reel but access all other Pathé news­reels too. A fas­ci­nat­ing resource!

Your browser does not sup­port iframes.

For us, the exis­tence of the Pathé archives as well as hav­ing our own dig­i­tal copy means that we can safely dis­pose of the com­bustible news­reel far away from Mudd Library’s holdings.
The Pathé news­reel is part of the John Fos­ter Dulles Papers (box 542)

Rowing in fashion: the 150lb crew team, 1948–1950

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Dur­ing the Class of 1950’s 60th reunion week­end, Ed Lawrence ’50 donated a DVD to the Uni­ver­sity Archives that he had made for his for­mer row­ing crew team­mates from old 8mm movie footage. He gave us per­mis­sion to put it on Princeton’s YouTube chan­nel, although he doubted that any­body other than his friends would be inter­ested. Within two months, how­ever, the film (ini­tially posted with accom­pa­ny­ing music) had been watched over 3000 times. It even almost ended up on CBS’ The Early Show. Why all this inter­est? Appar­ently the row­ers looked very fashionable!

“Great chi­nos and sweaters in action at 2:28. Jack­ets and ties for a trip to Cor­nell at 4:28. White bucks and grey flan­nels at 5:51,” wrote a blog­ger about Ivy style dress. By the time it was picked up by another blog about “preppy” clothes we had reposted the film on YouTube with­out the music that Ed Lawrence had used to accom­pany the footage. Although it con­tained only frag­ments from an old Glenn Miller piano record­ing (which gave the film a bit of a slap­stick feel), Sony had imme­di­ately claimed the copy­right to the music, so the film had to return to what it orig­i­nally had been: a silent movie. Later, when CBS con­tacted us about using the footage, we dis­cov­ered why there was this sud­den inter­est: the “preppy look” is back in fash­ion this fall!  We directed them to ask Mr. Lawrence for per­mis­sion, but unfor­tu­nately, he did not return from vaca­tion in time, so CBS used less his­toric footage.

For the Uni­ver­sity archives, the film is of inter­est for other rea­sons. We have very few audio­vi­sual record­ings that cap­ture stu­dents’ extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties and social life on and around cam­pus. This 20-minute film shows the 150lb crew not only at Carnegie Lake and the Boathouse, but also dur­ing trips and matches, includ­ing a trip to Cor­nell (5:03), Watkins Glenn State Park (6:09), Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity (8:34), the East­ern Inter­col­le­giate Cham­pi­onship Race in Boston (9:54), and the Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia (10:46).
If you have films or videos of your Prince­ton years and are will­ing to part with them, we would be happy to incor­po­rate them into the Uni­ver­sity Archives’ Audio­vi­sual Col­lec­tion. If you have con­verted the footage into a DVD and would want us to share it online, we would very much like to do so too. As long as it does not con­tain music under copyright!
This DVD of silent 8mm films, a gift from Ed Lawrence ’50, is part of the Uni­ver­sity Archives’ His­tor­i­cal Audio­vi­sual Col­lec­tion (item no. 2021)

Escape to the Diamond Mountains in Korea, 1928

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

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“A typ­i­cal group of Korean women gos­sip­ing on the road near Onseiri.” Post­card to Hen­ri­etta V.A. Mac­Mur­ray, printed from a pho­to­graph by Mac­Mur­ray (Box 26, Decem­ber 4, 1928)

This is the last post fea­tur­ing the films that diplo­mat John Van Antwerp Mac­Mur­ray made while serv­ing as Min­is­ter to China from 1925–1929. The film “The Dia­mond Moun­tains, 1928,” which cap­tures a fam­ily vaca­tion in Korea in the sum­mer of 1928, may be a fit­ting end: in the three pre­ced­ing years Mac­Mur­ray had seen the coun­try that he loved come under the con­trol of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s Nation­al­ist Party, a devel­op­ment that he had watched with cau­tion, as did many of his col­leagues in the diplo­matic corps. His thoughts about how to deal with the Nation­al­ists dif­fered from those of his supe­ri­ors in Wash­ing­ton, which made his posi­tion increas­ingly dif­fi­cult. On August 5, 1928, two months after the Nation­al­ists took con­trol of Peking, he wrote his mother about how much he and his wife were look­ing for­ward to the vaca­tion in Korea. “Lois and I are feel­ing very “fed up” and stale and anx­ious to be away from things for long enough to take a fresh start.” The dif­fer­ences of opin­ion between Mac­Mur­ray and his supe­ri­ors, how­ever, ulti­mately led to MacMurray’s res­ig­na­tion from his post in Octo­ber 1929.

 

The fam­ily spent their vaca­tion at one of the pools in the Dia­mond Moun­tains (Mount Geum­gang, now North Korea), where they stayed in a hotel in the vil­lage of Onseiri in the Outer Kongo between August 17 and Sep­tem­ber 18, 1928. The film opens with fam­ily swim­ming, fish­ing, and moun­tain scenes, fol­lowed at 6:35 by brief footage of women on a street near Onseiri, also shown on the post­card above. The footage that fol­lows of vil­lagers and monks is assumed to be shot in the Choanji (Changansa) Monastery, which had the largest col­lec­tion of tem­ples in the Inner Kongo. Mac­Mur­ray and his wife spent a few days there on their own, while their chil­dren were looked after at the hotel.

The John Van Antwerp Mac­Mur­ray Papers con­tain pho­tographs Mac­Mur­ray made dur­ing his trips to the Dia­mond Moun­tains (Box 155–156), some of which he sent as post­cards to his mother (Box 26). Apart from the first post­cards, how­ever, descrip­tions of the scenes are lack­ing. A film shot of a pre­vi­ous vaca­tion in the Dia­mond Moun­tains in 1926, which was recently found, has not been dig­i­tized yet.

World War II training on and off campus

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In the fall of 1941, pre­ced­ing the attack on Pearl Har­bor, under­grad­u­ate enroll­ment stood at 2,432. By Novem­ber 1943, how­ever, only 655 of the 3,742 stu­dents in res­i­dence were civil­ian. The footage on the two silent films shown here was shot a few years before and after the United States entered the Sec­ond World War. The first film cap­tures Prince­ton stu­dents at an ROTC sum­mer train­ing camp off cam­pus. In con­trast, the later footage fea­tures mil­i­tary stu­dents march­ing on Princeton’s grounds. The Prince­ton cam­pus, like many oth­ers in the coun­try, had turned into a mil­i­tary train­ing facility.

Prince­ton had main­tained an ROTC Field Artillery Unit since 1919, when the First World War had ended. The pri­mary objec­tive of the Reserve Offi­cers’ Train­ing Corps (ROTC) was to pro­vide mil­i­tary train­ing at civil­ian col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties to qual­ity them as Reserve Offi­cers in the US mil­i­tary. As part of a four-year elec­tive course in Mil­i­tary Sci­ence (lead­ing to the rank of Sec­ond Lieu­tenant of Field Artillery in the Offi­cers’ Reserve Corps) stu­dents attended a six-week sum­mer train­ing camp at the end of the junior year. The film, which was shot before 1942, cap­tures activ­i­ties at a sum­mer camp at Madi­son Bar­racks, New York, includ­ing a med­ical checkup (1:01), mess (4:05), drills (5:29 and 14:58), artillery prac­tice (7:48), and infor­mal scenes. In 1942 the sum­mer train­ing camp was sus­pended and in the fol­low­ing year ROTC was inte­grated in the Army Spe­cial­ized Train­ing Pro­gram (ASTP), which arrived on Princeton’s cam­pus in April 1943. The footage from 17:27 shows var­i­ous mil­i­tary train­ing units that resided on cam­pus dur­ing the war. More infor­ma­tion is pro­vided with the next clip, which con­tains sim­i­lar footage.

To com­pen­sate for dwin­dling resources dur­ing the war, Prince­ton hosted sev­eral mil­i­tary train­ing schools on cam­pus. In addi­tion to the ASTP (known as the A-12), Prince­ton accom­mo­dated the Army Post Exchange School, the Naval Offi­cer Train­ing School, the Naval Col­lege Train­ing Pro­gram (V-12) for Navy can­di­dates and Marines, and the Navy Pre-Radar School. Dor­mi­to­ries pro­vided bar­racks for the ser­vice groups, and four­teen of the largest halls were occu­pied by Army and Navy trainees. The trainees marched to meals and classes, as can be seen on this footage of var­i­ous uniden­ti­fied train­ing units.  The ROTC returned to cam­pus with the reestab­lish­ment of the Army Unit and the intro­duc­tion of a Naval Unit in 1946 and an Air Force Unit in 1951.

These silent 16mm films are part of the Uni­ver­sity Archives’ His­tor­i­cal Audio­vi­sual Col­lec­tion (item no. 0106 and part of item no. 0092).

Peking friends and family scenes

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

Although most films that have pre­vi­ously been dis­cussed are inter­spersed with fam­ily scenes, shot in and around Peking and dur­ing out­ings and vaca­tions, some of MacMurray’s films are more dis­tinc­tively “home movies.”  Fea­tured here are films of MacMurray’s fam­ily and friends in Peking, includ­ing his domes­tic staff and dogs. The films include rare footage of the Chi­nese dancer Yu Rongling (1882–1973).

This early per­sonal movie, shot soon after the Mac­Mur­ray fam­ily arrived in China in 1925, cap­tures MacMurray’s chil­dren at play, rid­ing bikes and ponies, at a birth­day party, and in the com­pany of ser­vants and of their dogs. The film includes some footage of John Van Antwerp Mac­Mur­ray and his wife Lois Good­now Mac­Mur­ray, as well as group shots of their staff.

 

This 100-foot reel, which was labeled by Mac­Mur­ray him­self, cap­tures a three minute long dance with two swords by the Chi­nese dancer Yu Rongling, the wife of Gen­eral Dan Pao Chao of Bei­jing. Yu, who received a West­ern edu­ca­tion along with her older sis­ter “Princess” Der Ling, had stud­ied dance in Paris and intro­duced West­ern dances to China. There is no cor­re­spon­dence in MacMurray’s papers that doc­u­ments the rela­tion­ship with Dan Pao Chao and his wife.

 

The few frag­ments on this film include footage of MacMurray’s chil­dren, a nation­al­ist flag (0:15), and British Ambas­sador Miles Lamp­son (0:32), who was a good friend of MacMurray.

 

This reel con­tains another frag­ment of the mime per­for­mance by the man iden­ti­fied as José Gal­lostra, who is mim­ic­k­ing the diplo­mats pre­scribed behav­ior at the bier of Sun Yat-sen dur­ing their trip to attend his rein­ter­ment in Nanking. It is fol­lowed by some footage of MacMurray’s chil­dren with an artist and performers.

 

The footage on this reel includes a pic­nic with guests, fam­ily swim­ming, and more footage of the per­form­ers seen on the above reel “1.”

Pre­vi­ous posts about the films of John Van Antwerp MacMurray:

 

Kicking off the McCarter era: Triangle footage 1929-circa 1950

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The Tri­an­gle Club Records at Mudd Man­u­script Library are as rich and col­or­ful as the his­tory of the Tri­an­gle Club itself. Going back to 1883, when the the­ater troupe was founded as the ‘Prince­ton Col­lege Drama Asso­ci­a­tion,’ the col­lec­tion includes a wide range of records, from busi­ness cor­re­spon­dence and pro­duc­tion files (includ­ing scripts and scores) to play­bills and posters, scrap­books, and pho­tographs. In addi­tion, there is a vari­ety of audio­vi­sual record­ings, includ­ing phono­graph records going back to 1924. The date of the old­est film footage in the col­lec­tion, how­ever, was only deter­mined last week, when we were able to view the 16mm films in dig­i­tized format.

The first film shown here opens with a Hearst Metro­tone news­reel, fea­tur­ing Triangle’s famous “chorines” (mem­bers of the all-male cho­rus in drag), in a kick­line for The Golden Dog, Triangle’s pro­duc­tion for 1929–1930. The footage, pre­sum­ably shot before Tri­an­gle started tour­ing in Decem­ber 1929, must have been attrac­tive for Hearst Metro­tone News, which had intro­duced sound to its movie the­ater news­reels only in Sep­tem­ber that year. For the Uni­ver­sity Archives the footage is of par­tic­u­lar inter­est: The Golden Dog was per­formed dur­ing the open­ing night of McCarter The­ater on Feb­ru­ary 21, 1930. Writ­ten and directed by A. Munroe Wade ’30 and Joshua L. Logan ’31 (who became a Broad­way and Hol­ly­wood direc­tor and writer), the musi­cal com­edy was set in Que­bec dur­ing the British siege of  the French and Indian War in 1759. The news­reel opens with John Metz ’30 as Sergeant Pierre DeLouche, joined by the chorines, who are danc­ing to the cho­rus of “Blue Hell” (lyrics by B. van Doren Hedges ’30 and music by Robert W. Hedges ’31). The text and music of the cho­rus can be found at Blue Hell score.pdf.

TakeItAway3.jpgThe footage that fol­lows at 1:55, a trailer for a pro­jected silent movie (“Park Avenue Cow­hand”), was shot for Triangle’s annual pro­duc­tion Take It Away (1936–1937). In this musi­cal com­edy three Tri­an­gle boys are going to Hol­ly­wood to advise Manny Mag­num, pres­i­dent of ‘Pas­teur­ized Pic­tures,’ about a movie ver­sion of Mac­beth. Not know­ing that Tri­an­gle is all-male, Mag­num invites them to bring a female lead for the movie, and the boys decide that one of them, Chester Pipps (Alexan­der Arm­strong ’37), will dou­ble as “Suzette Crepe.” They are found out, how­ever, when Mag­num invites both Chester Pipps and Suzette Crepe to per­form together in ‘Park Avenue Cow­hand.’  The trailer is a clever mon­tage of Pipps and Crepe (both played by Arm­strong when their faces are vis­i­ble), whose faces never appear in the same shot. How­ever, the trailer was never used. It appears in a scene in an early syn­op­sis of the play in which it is shown in a movie the­ater, but does not appear in the final script.
 
Above: Manny Mag­num (Mark Hayes Jr. ’39) with Triangle’s “female lead” Suzette Crepe (Alex Arm­strong ’37). 
 

The footage fea­tured here, found on a silent 16mm film reel that was labeled ‘Old Shots,’ shows kick­lines from var­i­ous Tri­an­gle shows in black and white and in color. The black and white footage, start­ing at 0:56, shows the chorines in Take it Away, dis­cussed above (1936–1937). The sub­se­quent color footage, pre­sum­ably dat­ing from the late 1940s and 1950s, has not been iden­ti­fied. Any Tri­an­gle alum­nus who rec­og­nizes faces, out­fits, chore­og­ra­phy, or gams and can iden­tify these shows, please leave a comment!

These 16mm films are part of the Tri­an­gle Club Records at the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Archives (box 177 and addi­tions).  Mudd Library is thank­ful for the sup­port that the Tri­an­gle Alumni Board pro­vided for dig­i­tiz­ing these films and unlock­ing their con­tents.

Vacation with the Navy, friends with the Marines

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

 

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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: