Here in West Michigan, my student, Evan, brought me a box of wonderful footage of his family’s home movies, a number of which we’ll be featuring here. The first is the wedding of grandparents in the late 1940s, and includes images of Evan’s great-grandparents – one of those amazing events to have preserved on film.

Evan explains:

It’s the wedding of Ken and Jan Rattenbury (maiden name – Baxter)
The date is actually Sept. 18th, 1948 at St. Benedict’s in Chicago.
Behind the camera is Gardner Kreiser, the bride’s 2nd cousin.

Evan also shared the emails his grandparents sent with more details about the wedding (I love emails from grandparents):

Dear Evan, The pictures are Mine and your Grandmother’s Wedding on Sept 18, 1948. The pictures were made by Jan’s Uncle Gardner. The pictures are mostly the family. The two old ladies are your great-grandmothers. The lady with the pink flowered hat is my mother (Alice Rattenbury), and the car was our good friend Eddie Roger’s who took us away. Hope that is enough. Love grampa

Hi Evan: It’s your gramma. I just saw the movies and they are super. Haven’t watched any of them since your folks first sent the VCR’s. Terri Spies was my maid of honor, Uncle Bruce (Rattenbury) was Best Man (lady in red and the guy next to her in the second shot of her), my grandmother and Grampa’s grandmother were the oldest people in the movie. So many of our friends and relatives are gone!!! My dad (John Baxter) was the one with the sexy mustache, The church was St. Benedict’s down on the corner where we lived in Chicago.

Click the “MPEG-2″ link above for a high-resolution version of this film, provided by 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.

Things I love about Old Christmas’: Ashtrays, metal toys, stockings for Porky, miniature bowling alleys, blinding light, ice in tumblers, gravy boats, modeling for moms, Cookie Monster slippers, babies trapped in rolling apparatus, aunts, AM radios, weapons, little bakers, mesmerizing toy packaging, cat tails, typewriters, ez bake ovens, kids buried in wrapping paper, 6-packs, 60 lb. radio controllers, floral house coats, moms who like everything, and easy to please grandpas.

Music: “Blue Christmas” by Jack, Tanner, and Anja. More songs here. Check out Anja’s website which is chock full of her beautiful original artwork, vintage clothes, found photos, and fun blogs.

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

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.

This week’s post is a beautiful, relaxing family get together from 1948, sent to us by Diane Dobronte in California. She offers some background:

This film is a real treasure for my family as it is the only record I’ve found of my Grandparents. It was shot in 1948 by my Dad, Frank Dobronte, on a visit to see his family in Trenton, NJ. My Grandparents: John and Rose Dobronte migrated to the United States from Hungary in 1906. They married in 1911 and went on to have 10 children, five sons and five daughters. They were all hardworking, tireless and had a lot of fun together.

This looks like a Saturday or Sunday at 940 Franklin St, Trenton – my grandparents house. Four of the five handsome sons are there: as they come out the door, Ernie, Bill, Zoil, Frank (my dad) and Grandpop (son John is missing). Three of the daughters, Maggie, Ethel and Bette are there as well as three of the wives: Zoil’s wife, Lorraine, and Ernie’s wife, Audrey with their baby son, Erniejr… always known to me as “little Ernie”; and Sylvia my Uncle Bill’s wife (daughters Helen and Rose are not in the film).

My Grandpop was known as a wonderful gardener and he shows some of his garden off in part of this clip. The little boy with the fireman’s hat on is James Schultz, son of Maggie… (we always called him Sarge-I’m not sure why)… he didn’t become a fireman. My Grandpop was a poet and wrote poems to the love of his life, Grandmom. Unfortunately I did not learn to speak Hungarian and missed a lot of what they said to me… but there were always smiles, laughter and lots of delicious Hungarian dishes whenever we visited – I remember a feeling of deep love.

In the clip they are all coming out of the side door that went into the kitchen… lots of good things were made in there!

Be sure to visit the Internet Archive for a full-resolution version of this excerpt and additional footage.

Music: “Sisterhood” by Langhorne Slim

This week’s film comes from a truly amazing collection of footage, submitted to us by Mack Lundy in Williamsburg, Virginia. This excerpt takes us to Rhodesia, 1952, for a glimpse at a hunt: climbing trees to search for game, scenes of the hunting camp and grass gazebos, the hunters with their prey, skinning an elephant, a zebra, and a cape buffalo. The footage was shot by Mack’s father, Mack A. Lundy, Jr.

Mack fills us in:

How did my father, an Air force TSgt, happen to be on safari In Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) in 1952? He was a crewman assigned to the Air Attache in the American Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa where we lived for four years. We being my mother, brother, and me. The staffs of the embassy and Air Attache were small and socially not much distinction was made as to rank. There were quite a few perks to being associated with the diplomatic corps. I have the actual game licence issued to my father showing all the fees were waived. It was an exciting event for a boy from south-west Virginia only seven years out of a German POW camp. His hometown newspaper printed a story about his safari. He went on other hunting and fishing trips in Africa but later in life, he regreted the trophy game he killed and never really hunted again after we returned to the U.S. He preferred to use a camera to record wildlife. Some of the trophies taken during this safari have survived fifty years of moving and I have the lever-action rifle he used for smaller game.

The unedited Internet Archive version of this film includes the safari as well as footage from Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda, complete with elephants, hyenas, hippo, cape buffalo, and other scenes of wild Africa.

Music: Ephat Mujuru, “The Lion (Shumba)” from Journey of the Spirit