I love this week’s film from the 1950s. A simple haircut produces tremendous drama. Our submitter, Susan S. of Louisiana, USA, sums it up best:

My Dad, Carter, is giving my brother, Stephen, his first haircut and I am sure that Mom is taking the pictures. Dad was always the one to give haircuts, bathe us, trim nails etc. I think he was way braver than mother would have been with those scissors! My brother never did like haircuts but Dad continued to be his barber until the ’60′s when he let his hair grow! I think it’s funny at the beginning of the film, that Dad thought Stephen was going to just sit in that chair with the towel around his neck and be cooperative!

Click the “MPEG-2″ link above for a high-resolution version of this film, available for download and re-use under a Creative Commons copyright license through the Internet Archive.

This week, a charming film from Susan S. from Galveston, Texas, in the 1950s. It’s all about the reactions to those boots! From Susan:

I remember having those red boots! Funny how you remember certain things! Also, I can tell from the wallpaper and a pink rose vase on the table behind me, that we are my grandparents house, Henry and Lillian Schultz, on 49th street in Galveston, Texas. Must have been my 4th birthday so it’s 1953. That is my 1st cousin, Zeb, in the bow tie, and my brother , Stephen, in the high chair. Also in the film is my very handsome Dad Carter Shirey, and my grandparents, paternal grandmother, aunt and uncle. Mother, Betty Shirey, is sitting next to me and helping me unwrap presents. I can’t think of who might be taking the pictures since the whole family is in the film! My grandparents lived in that house until I was 16 – it was built on stilts like most of the houses in Galveston after the storm of 1900.

A reminder that we’re now showing films without sound to more accurately present them in their original form. High-quality raw footage of this film and more is downloadable from the Internet Archive. Click the “MPEG-2″ link above.

Our short hiatus ended up being a bit longer than anticipated, but Lost in Light is back in action. In this second year of the project, we are striving to present films in their original form as much possible, so we’ve decided to present silent films as silent, without our editorial addition of music, and with minimal editing on our part. We return with this wonderful film from the early 1950s U.S. Gulf Coast.Susan S., one of the children in the film, provides this background:

My parents were living around the Gulf Coast area-Galveston, Texas City, Sabine. I think that the sawfish is on the beach in Galveston. I remember my Dad telling us about the things that the fishing boats would drag up that was caught in their nets. Anytime it was something big , a crowd would be gathered around taking pictures. Once it was a huge whale that had beached itself. I am the topless brunette so it’s about 1951. Mother is the beauty getting into the car. About New Orleans, Mother doesn’t remember but I think there are some things in the film that you can’t see in New Orleans anymore – will need to do a little research!

If you have observations about parts of New Orleans depicted in this film that don’t exist anymore, please leave them in the comments. Certainly the city has changed overwhelmingly since this film was taken – makes me appreciate films like this all the more.

Interestingly, sawfish are now an endangered species and international trade is banned.

As always, a complete, high-resolution version of this film is available for download at the Internet Archive. Click “MPEG-2″ above for the link.

Paul shares some details in an email to Casey:

These pictures were taken at the St. Louis Zoo in the summer of 1954. I was either stationed in Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri, or had just been separated from the service and had a civilian job on the post for the summer before heading for Norman, OK for law school. Grandmother and I took your mother in a buggy and went through the zoo. The chimp act was spectacular, and was well publicized at the time. We had a great day at the zoo. Your mother was only a few months old, so I don’t think she cared much one way or the other about the chimps. The chimps acted as though they were really enjoying showing off for the people in the audience.

View a high-resolution version of this film and others from Casey’s collection at the Internet Archive. See the MPEG-2 link above.

Music: Edgar Mallaran, “The Carnival Clown Balloon Popper” from the Podsafe Music Network.

This week, some pretty adept piloting of a cropduster near Emmetsburg, Iowa, circa 1953. This pilot really has some sweet moves as he swoops overhead, narrowly avoiding an unwelcome meeting with the road below and the heads of onlookers.Contributor Casey T. in Virginia, USA, asked his grandfather (and cameraman) Paul H. of Waukee, Iowa, to recount some stories about this footage, and here’s what he said:

George Bryant was the manager of the Emmetsburg, Iowa airport, and was the pilot of the plane. He did a lot of crop spraying. Obviously he was a very good pilot. He was able to fly over telephone lines, cross the country road and fly under the electric line.

He sprayed herbicide on the corn. When he landed on the road after spraying, your [Casey's] great grandfather, Paul L. Huscher, who is in one of the pictures by the plane, jokingly asked George if he was detasseling corn. Hybrid corn was detasseled for cross pollination. George flew so low that corn tassels were pulled off and hung on the spray bar.

Great grandmother Nellie Huscher, and great grandfather Ray Wright, were there that day watching. Grandmother and I were there also. I think George showed off a little.

As a little side note, George Bryant and my father, Paul L. Huscher had a little car accident in Emmetsburg some time after these pictures were taken. I figured George was a better pilot than he was a driver. All were still friends.

Also, as a side note, George had trained your great grandfather Ray Wright, to fly. Unfortunately Ray hadn’t told your great grandmother, Louise Wright, about this, and when the private pilot’s license came in the mail, Louise saw it first and burned it. I don’t think Grandpa Wright flew much after that anyway.

High-quality raw footage of this excerpt and more from this reel of home movies are available for download and reuse under a Creative Commons license at the Internet Archive. See our File Directory for a link.

Music: Cinema Volta, “2005-11-03″ from the Podsafe Music Network

My Dad, Capt. Frank Dobronte, was stationed aboard the USS Tarawa in the Atlantic out of Rhode Island during the late 50’s. The ship has been decommissioned but it was quite an incredible experience to be on board. – Dad was one of the dentists aboard this aircraft carrier and we were guests in the Officers dining room and film room sometimes.

The first USS Tarawa (CV-40) was one of the Navy’s potent new 27,000 ton aircraft carriers and sister of the Essex, Shangri-La, and Princeton. The first Navy ship so named, Tarawa was built at the Norfolk Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Virginia, and launched in the Elizabeth River on May 12, 1945. [ed. note: this information comes from the official Navy website of the USS Tarawa; see more fascinating history of this ship and its successors at http://www.tarawa.navy.mil/]

My Dad loved to take film of the planes taking off and landing but this clip is of destroyers coming along side during some rough seas. These are Buckley Class destroyers: DE-702 USS Earl V. Johnson and DE-669 USS Pavlic (APD 70).

They practiced various maneuvers on a regular basis and in this one they actually transfer someone along a rip cord from destroyer to carrier. Quite amazing considering how rough it is and even more amazing that my Dad caught it on film because the joke was that my Dad suffered from terrible sea sickness.

For more information about the USS Tarawa (CV-40), see the Wikipedia entry, Navy photographs, and the USS Tarawa Veterans’ Association website.

See our File Directory for a link to the full resolution film, which can be downloaded from the Internet Archive.

Contributor Diane Dobronte from California adds some detail:

Part of the Dobronte Family at the Sugar Cane Fields on Oahu, Hawaii in the early 1950′s…

My father, Dr. Frank Dobronte, shot this when we were invited to the factory to watch the process and tour. We lived in Hawaii from about 1951 – early 1955.

I don’t know if they still burn the fields now but the whole process started by a dramatic controlled burning of the fields prior to harvest. Then the cane was collected, washed and squeezed by heavy presses to extract the sugar cane juice – the juice went through a series of dryings… they gave us little cotton bags about 4in x 4in of the pure raw cane sugar. it was so delicious… I can still taste it. Not like the white sugar we are used to.

My Dad is filming and I’m with my Mom in the clip – don’t know where my other sisters are but there are 4 of us, and then 5 when my brother was born – in fact my Mom is probably pregnant in this film. In the clip is my Mom, Mary Dobronte, and myself, Diane. Great memory and I can still smell the wonderful sweet smell of the whole experience………..so glad to have found this!

As always, see our File Directory for a link to twenty five minutes of high quality footage of the Dobrontes’ experiences in Hawaii, available at the Internet Archive.

Fishing on the Zambezi ca. 1953-55

We begin this featured bit of home movie with my brother Timothy running around in Lederhosen. It was filmed at our home in Pretoria, South Africa. We lived in Pretoria while my father was a member of the air crew of the aircraft assigned to the U.S. Embassy. My father would have purchased the Lederhosen one of the times the plane was taken to Geneva Switzerland for annual maintenance. I remember Dad saying that they were free to travel for about two weeks. Whenever our father pointed his movie camera at us, my brother and I usually performed one of three actions: run in circles, pretend to fight, or climb a tree. My brother chose to run around in this solo performance. He looks to be around four years old so this would have been filmed in 1954. I am now thankful that I didn’t get Lederhosen as well. This short immediately preceded the fishing trip on the film reel and we thought it would be a humorous short subject to lead into the feature.

This piece of film is labeled only “Fishing on the Zambezi” and was filmed between 1953 and 1955. Since the Zambezi is the fourth largest river in Africa (2,574 km) and stretches from Zambia to Mozambique on the Indian Ocean, this isn’t very precise. My father flew into many airports along the path of the Zambezi which further complicates pinpointing the location. The fish you see on the pole are tiger fish. Tigers are common so they are not much help in identifying the location. A Google search on “tiger fishing” shows that they are still a popular sport fish. One web site says that the “Tigers are strong and fast and come from the wrong side of the tracks.” Tigers are edible though bony.

My father is the man filmed by himself and wearing a blue jacket. I noticed that his safari hat has a band which would place the trip after a safari he was on in 1952. If anyone knows if he is wearing an Air Force L2A flight jacket that would help me with the date since that jacket was stolen from customs in Geneva.

I going to make an educated guess that this fishing trip took place on the upper Zambezi which is above Victoria Falls. My father was in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) many times and hunted there. I’ve looked web sites that feature tiger fishing on the Zambezi and I much prefer what I see here. I’m not sure how I would feel if I was fishing there myself but I love the boat they used. I think of Humphrey Bogart and the African Queen. Now you see modern houseboats and fishing boats. Toward the end of the film a native in uniform is seen on the bank.

If anyone can identify the uniform please leave a comment. If I know where the film was made I can figure out the date from other records.

For more from the Lundys’ collection of home movies of Africa, please click the “Africa” category on the right. And be sure to check out our File Directory for a link to a full-resolution version of the complete home movie featured in this post, available from the Internet Archive.

Music: Tshokwe_Angola_1

Capetown Vacation, March 24 – 27, 1954

This movie opens with a shot of the U. S. Air Force C-47 assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa. My father was a TSgt in the U.S. Air Force and the radio operator on the aircraft. This footage was probably shot before the aircraft took off for Cape Town since it comes first and it looks like preflight maintenance is taking place. I became slightly obsessed trying to identify the type of aircraft in the background but had no success. I wanted it to be a Vampire jet which I remembered was flown by the South African Air Force but it didn’t have a tail wheel.

The next scene is a wall of the Castle of Good Hope (Kasteel Goede Hoop in Afrikaans) with Table Mountain in the background. According to Wikipedia, Castle was was started by the Dutch East India Company in 1666 and is the oldest building in South Africa. With all this history, I’m amused that my father only filmed a small part of an outside wall, apparently preferring to focus on Table Mountain. There is logic to the shot though. The camera pans to the right, across the wall. At the end of the pan, you can see a whitish blob on Table Mountain. This is the upper cable station for the cable car. Then you get a close-up of the cable station and the camera pans down to the base of the mountain, then scenes of Cape Town, and finally the cable car moving down to the lower cable station.

The woman is my mother, then around twenty-eight years old. Contrast how she is dressed compared to what you see tourists wearing now. I asked her about wearing a dress while clambering around on the top of a mountain and she told me that pants were seldom worn and shorts never. There is a long pan across Cape Town. Unfortunately it is a bit cloudy but you still get an idea of what Cape Town looked like in the 50s–considerably less built up. If you look at the same scene today you will see tall buildings, something not seen then.

The movie switches from the mountain to the shore. I believe my mother was filmed on the north-east shore of the Cape of Good Hope though my evidence is all inference: I used Google Earth to look at the coast line around the bay; my parents did travel out to Cape Point on this trip; and they were in Cape Town only two full days. A wider shot would have been nice here. Mom is still climbing on rocks wearing a dress though it appears she has added pearls this time.

Visit the File Directory page for a link to a high-quality version of the original home movie on the Internet Archive. More footage from the Lundy home movie collection here, here, here, and here.

Music: cdk, “The Raven”

Viewing the home movies from Africa, identifying the locations and activities of the scenes, and writing descriptions of selected clips for Lost in Light has been an engrossing project. The scenes of us leaving Africa have generated a nostalgic and sentimental response that I find odd and not a little unsettling after fifty years. This was a remarkable time for my family. We experienced a lifestyle inconceivable for an Air Force enlisted man – very nice house, large landscaped yard, two live-in servants, a social life that included diplomats. My mother learned to drive an American car on the left side of the road. I attended a private boy’s school, Waterkloof House Preparatory School where I wore a uniform and played cricket, football (soccer to Americans), and rugby and I returned to the U.S. nearly ten years old with a British accent that my Virginia grandmother had a difficult time understanding (Why is the boy saying “tow mah tow?”)

Looking back with an awareness of history and modern sensibilities, I feel some guilt now, knowing that apartheid was in full force while we lived in Africa. But I also know that my parents treated the Africans who worked for us fair and well. They had stockings on the mantle at Christmas and Piet, the gardener/handyman, cried when we left and would have followed us back to the U.S. if we could have taken him. My parents would have extended this tour of duty if they could have done so. I now wish that I had attended school there longer, learned another language while I was living amongst those who spoke it, and been older when we left so that the memories would be stronger.

But here we are leaving South Africa from Capetown on the African Endeavor – seventeen days to New York City. Here is an odd present meets past coincidences involving this ship. Some forty later, my parents were in a restaurant in Florida, one of those places with lots of things on the walls. Above the booth where they were seated was a life ring from the African Endeavor. Cue the Twilight Zone theme.

You first see a pan shot of the ship with Table Mountain in the background.

Interspersed with my mother, brother, and me boarding the ship are a man and woman throwing streamers. They are Bill and Bunny Hall, friends and neighbors. Career military families have to be able to move on recognizing that they have to leave friends forever but I know this was particularly hard on my parents and was the first of several for me.

As the ship leaves you see another view of Table Mountain.

My memory of the ship was that it was much larger. It probably was to a lad nine and three quarters years old but I have to say that the pool looks pretty small and unappealing now. Maybe that is why everyone seems to be reading or playing shuffleboard.

A little over two and a half minutes into this clip you will see us sail past an island. This is St. Helena Island. Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled here between 1815 and 1821. Google Earth and Wikipedia confirmed what I remembered.

Before we crossed the equator, I remember being taken outside at night to see the Southern Cross constellation. My father told me I wouldn’t see it again unless I traveled south of the equator again.

Toward the end are some general shipboard scenes and a lifeboat drill. I really like the firing of the line launching gun. It doesn’t look like it went smoothly at first try.

The clip ends with us sailing into New York harbour and seeing the Statue of Liberty in the mist.

I’ll close with a “kids say the darndest things” family story that happened after we returned. My father had acquired a case of South African brandy and he discovered that there would be a problem bringing it through customs. So he and some shipboard acquaintances decided that it would be a shame to waste it and proceeded to see how much they could
consume before we landed. We get back to Virginia and visit my father’s teetotaler aunt and she asks if we were sea sick. I admit to having been sick. She then asks if my father was sea sick as well and I replied “no, but he was drink sick.” I’m sure there was an awkward pause after that.

Visit our file directory for a link to high-quality footage of the entire trip, plus more home movies from life back in the States. More of Mack’s Africa footage here, here, and here.

Music: “Electro-Mortgage Blues” by Gurdonark