Ever wonder what James Finlayson looked like off-screen, sans mustache? No? Well, so what? Part of the wonderful few minutes of home movie footage from the early 30s (posted above) is taken at Stan Laurel’s daughter Lois’s second birthday party. Both Finlayson and Ollie were present and it’s quite charming
This vivid, color film reel of various New York City locales in 1939 is, sadly, something of a mystery as the person who posted it on Youtube declined to comment on it or allow comments (due to racist sentiments apparently). Still, it’s quite a find. In three minutes we get
In June 1926 the New York City Subway workers went on strike for higher pay, shutting down the IRT and forcing crowds of New Yorkers to mill about waiting for busses, trolleys and other forms of transportation which were suddenly overloaded with riders who usually used the trains. Strike breakers
Thanks to the Fox Movietone sound-on-film technology, we have documentary views of many strange and interesting habitats with the actual sound captured as well. England, India, the Midwest, Long Beach California–all are pictured in the late 20s/early 30s and are available on Youtube. (By the way, my son just pointed
My dear departed father Frank De Felitta (1921-2016) spent much of the 1960s as a writer/producer/director of documentaries at NBC news. I’ve posted them all on Youtube and I highly recommend (natch) taking a look at them. One of the best is ‘The Battle Of The Bulge’, shot in 1963
If you were sitting around your house in Los Angeles on the night of April 1st 1974 and had the TV tuned (as it once was said) to KTLA Channel 5, you would have seen the above two minutes of ads. It’s the night before the 46th Academy Awards which
To compliment yesterday’s posting of old stock footage of the old Pennsylvania Station (scroll down to see–I don’t feel like pasting a link), here’s a minute of stock footage of Grand Central Station in the 1920s. The footage isn’t speed-corrected, the image quality is execrable and the time code window-burn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4a5sAUJ9v4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjg0hK1G2Nchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1Gm1cCnejM Pennsylvania Station (which connected the biggest railroad in the country to the greatest city in the country after years of New York being accessible only by Ferry after disembarking a Penn train) was built in the first decade of the 20th century and, in an act of monumental vandalism,
It’s late 1953, early 1954. And somebody with a camera and a professional car mount decided to film a little of Hollywood, USA, for no discernible purpose. (I suppose it could be a background plate for a shot where the camera is in the backseat, focusing on the backs of
It’s 1916, see? And we decide to take a ride on the brand new elevated train that travels up Sixth Avenue from the bottom of the Island to 155th. You get me, toots? So you pass your downtown ‘ladies mile’ area, move through midtown (Broadway, land o’ suckers and loafers),