In the past year, staff in the motion picture preservation lab handled nearly three million feet of film. Films might come to us for inspection and repair, photochemical duplication, or digitization. To follow up last year's list, we've identified a handful of films that were digitized in 2015 and found their way to our list of favorites. This year's list … Continue reading Favorite Film Finds of 2015
While it is generally understood that venison graced the table of the first Thanksgiving celebration, the idea of Pilgrims chowing down on turkey is solidly enshrined in the American imagination. The 1930 film The Turkey Business (Local Identifier: 33.364)shows how the "early explorers" of America hunted and prepared wild turkeys. The Turkey Business begins by establishing … Continue reading Gobble Gobble: America’s Thanksgiving Turkey Tradition
This post was written by Criss Kovac. Criss is the supervisor of the National Archives' Motion Picture Preservation Lab. You might remember a fun little post last summer about the Yellowstone Kodacolor discovered within a National Park Accession deposited with NARA in 2012. The Yellowstone Kodacolor is one 453’ reel of 16mm “reversal.” An early … Continue reading An Update on Kodacolor Decoded
There aren’t many schools that include jumping out of an airplane as part of your final exam, but that’s just what these women parachute riggers had to do in 1951. Women sailors in the Navy went through the same training as men at the Parachute Materials School at Naval Air Station Lakehurst in New Jersey. These … Continue reading Spotlight on Veterans: Navy Women in Parachute Rigger Training
Robert Mitchum To the People of the United States, 1943 (Local Identifier: 90.13) More than a decade before he terrorized children as creepy preacher Harry Powell in Night of the Hunter (1955), and two years prior to his Oscar-nominated role as Lieutenant Walker in The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), Robert Mitchum played a grounded … Continue reading Before They Were Famous: Actors Who Appeared in Government Films
Back in June, we published a post about animals in the military. It featured war dogs, bat and pigeon bombs, and monkey saboteurs. We thought we’d covered everything, but almost as soon as that post was published, we digitized a film for our research room that highlights torpedo-retrieving whales. One of these whales is Ahab. … Continue reading Playing Fetch with Pilot Whales: The Navy’s Project Deep Ops
This week we're happy to welcome guest blogger Brian Real to The Unwritten Record. Brian recently received his PhD in Information Studies from the University of Maryland. Brian regularly visits the research room in College Park so we're used to seeing his name on order sheets for reference requests. We asked him to tell us more about … Continue reading The True Story of a Blind Electrician: “Born a Man” as a Document of Disability Rights
A Little-Known Expedition If you know anything about Admiral Richard E. Byrd, you probably know that he was the first to fly over the North and South Poles, and that he led several expeditions in Antarctica. However, you probably don’t know the story of his first Arctic expedition. In fact, most accounts muddy the details … Continue reading The Aviator, the Explorer, and the Radio Man: The 1925 MacMillan Arctic Expedition
If I asked you to tell me what you think of when you think of silent films, one characteristic you may mention is that silent films are black and white. While it is true that most silent films were shot using black and white film, by the time they were projected many had vibrant colors … Continue reading Colorful Chemistry and a Visit to Your National Parks
Donna Anoskey and Dan Rooney contributed to this post. Years ago many government agencies, along with Hollywood and independent film makers, stored film productions with the private laboratories that provided their duplication services. In 2001, one of the premier film facilities on the East Coast, in business for over 50 years, went bankrupt, still in possession of … Continue reading The Tale of the Forgotten Films: An Archival Rescue
