This week in Universal News, it’s “another great day for the Irish” at the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade. In attendance were Robert Kennedy, Mayor John Lindsay, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and James Farley, Postmaster General under Franklin D. Roosevelt and one of the first successful Irish Catholic politicians in the United States.
From the release sheet:
ST. PATRICK’S DAY PARADE Braving snow and low temperatures, some 120 thousand march up Fifth Avenue in the annual Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. 122,000 marchers trudge the frigid three-mile route while more thousands along the route cheered the hardy procession.
You may view the complete newsreel, including stories about the war in Vietnam, flooding in Australia, a helicopter that can lift a bus, Fashion Week in Rhodesia, the NCAA tournament, a two-year old who is rescued after falling into a well, and others here.
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.