Newsreel, TV Stock Also Endangered

Feature films are not the only endangered items in the UCLA Film and Television Archive; historic newsreel and television footage also needs saving.

Some of the archive’s most precious film is the 27 million feet of Hearst Metrotone newsreels donated to the university in 1981.

The footage, the second-largest newsreel collection in the country, was recorded by cameramen working for the Hearst news organization from 1919-67. It documents such key events as the 1930s Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the 1940 Russo-Finland War and the bombing of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War. It also chronicles social trends ranging from jitterbug dancing to fashion shows.

However, about 10 million feet of the original prints are on deteriorating nitrate stock that is slowly disintegrating despite the frantic efforts of the archive’s two newsreel preservationists. Funded by an annual budget of about $120,000, the two technicians restore and preserve about 10 hours of film a year, out of a total stock of 5,000 hours.

“This is not only a visual record of the 20th Century but a reflection of how the stories were told,” said Blaine Bartell, head of the UCLA newsreel preservation program. “There’s almost a greater urgency with newsreels because there are no multiple copies, and if we don’t preserve the film, it’s gone forever.”

Hearst’s cameramen originally shipped their footage by rail, ship or air to New York, where it was edited into 10-minute newsreels distributed to theaters across the country.

Besides a shortage of funds, the newsreel preservationists have been hobbled by the old Hearst news department’s practice of cutting up finished stories into bits and pieces for future use as stock footage. Compiling a complete reel is like reconstructing a huge jigsaw puzzle.

Bartell said a 1986 restoration of a 12-minute reel of the May, 1937, explosion of the Hindenburg airship cost about $3,000 and took nearly two years of painstaking labor.

But the finished prints offer a fascinating glimpse of a time long past.

“It’s interesting to see the way they reported the Nazi book burnings,” Bartell said. “It was like, ‘Hey, Hitler’s boys are having a hot time tonight.”’

Other restored film includes Marian Anderson’s 1939 concert in front of the Lincoln Memorial, an event sponsored by Eleanor Roosevelt after Anderson had been banned from singing at a Daughters of the American Revolution function because of her skin color. There is also footage of 12-year-old Robert Kennedy heading to England with his family in 1939, Babe Ruth signing a contract that contained a pay cut, President Franklin D. Roosevelt welcoming Admiral Richard Byrd home from Antarctica and the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1941.

The archive’s television department, meanwhile, has assumed growing importance.

Dan Einstein, the department’s only preservationist, presides over a $25,000 annual budget seeking to collect and preserve a growing inventory of about 40,000 titles. About 90% of the collection is American and includes anthology dramas, sitcoms, children’s programs, documentaries, local newscasts, cablecasting and live shows.

Before 1956, most television programs were recorded on a kinescope, a camera with motion picture film. Then came the jump to two-inch videotape and a progression of changing video formats. But Einstein says video is no better than nitrate; the material often peels, images deteriorate and the quality fades after copying.

The center preserves from 30 to 150 programs a year depending on funding.

“We’re almost more concerned with getting material before its thrown away,” Einstein said. “There’s been so much dumping over the years by the networks and producers who didn’t know any better.”

But Einstein says a new consciousness is emerging that television programs, like feature films and newsreels, are cultural assets worth saving.

Some of Einstein’s favorite restorations include one of the most honored television programs in history, an early 1958 color video titled “An Evening With Fred Astaire,” segments of the Watts riots from the Big News--a 1965 newscast with Jerry Dunphy and Ralph Story--and a montage of Grammy award shows from 1963-70.

The department is currently working on restoring a color videotape of the Nixon-Khrushchev kitchen debate in 1959.