September 5, 1936 was the first day of the National Air Races in Los Angeles and Sam Greenwald of Paramount was one of the newsreel cameramen assigned to cover the race.

Well an airplane crashed during the race and Sam swung his camera around to filmed it. But a Department of Commerce employee had other ideas and worked to prevent Sam from filming. During the fight between Greenwald and the Department of Commerce employee, Sam kept rolling on the scene with one hand and swung a 12 inch lens at the government man to keep him away. In trying to pull Greenwald off his sound truck, the unnamed Department of Commerce man ended up nearly completely ripping off Greenwald’s pants in front of a crowd of 85,000 spectators.

Sam was further humiliated by the Department of Commerce man for daring to film the crash by ordering a soldier to drive his sound truck off the airfield.

British Pathe has a newsreel online that shows the crash that Greenwald was trying to shoot and the Department of Commerce did not want covered that was filmed by the Pathe News photog who also was assigned to cover the air races (the package starts at 2:42 in the video at the link).