This Week in Universal News: The 1964 Winter Olympics

Are you ready to stay in for two weeks to watch the skiing, figure skating, and curling that comprise the 2014 Olympics? To prepare, here’s a story about the games held fifty years ago. The 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria opened January 29, 1964 and closed February 9th.

From the release sheet:

WINTER OLYMPICS RECORDS FALL AT INNSBRUCK: The eyes of 37 nations are on Innsbruck, Austria as their favorite sons – and daughters – vie for the Gold, Silver and Bronze medals. A Russian husband and wife team win the pair figure skating. The Ski races are highlighted by Egon Zimmerman’s victory in the downhill. Great Britain wins her third Gold Medal in the history of Winter Olympics as the team of Bony Nash and Robin Nixon win by 12/100th of a second. Christine and Marielle Boitschel, representing France, run one and two in the women’s Slalom. Jean Saubert wins Uncle Sam’s first medal – a Bronze – as she places third.

There are only three stories on this week’s reel. You can see the entire release, which also features a NASA launch and the premiere of a Howard Hawks film you’ve probably never heard of, here.

A policeman fluent in ten languages directs tourists at the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria.

About the Universal Newsreel Collection at NARA:

The Universal Newsreel Collection is one of the most used motion picture collections at the National Archives and Records Administration. Universal Newsreels were shown in movie theaters twice a week, from 1929 until 1967, and covered a wide range of American life and history during that time period. Each release usually contained five to seven stories averaging two minutes in length.

In 1974, Universal deeded its edited newsreel and outtake collection to the United States through the National Archives (NARA), and did not place any copyright restrictions on its use (some stories may contain other underlying intellectual property or proprietary use rights).

While Universal disposed of many of the soundtracks, leaving the newsreels incomplete, supplementary material like scripts, shot lists, and event programs can be found in the production files, available for research at Archives II in College Park, Maryland.

Learn more about the Universal Newsreel Collection in this post and in this Prologue article. Watch other Universal Newsreels in our research room, in OPA, and on this playlist.