Fred “Red” Felbinger of Paramount News writes about his experience of covering the Ohio River flood of 1937 with only bad moonshine to drink.
The photog Felbinger described who fell into the river and had to be rescued was Emile Montemurro of Fox Movietone. I have not figured out who the other cameraman Felbinger was with that was pulled out of retirement name was.
THIS is a saga of water…the big water of ’37…or as I have seen, and am told, the biggest flood in the history of the river…it is also a saga of the biggest army of lens snoopers ever mobilized in boots to tell the tale, pictorially.
I sit here in my room with two other men assigned to the big flood. One is an old vet from my class…the other is an older vet from a generation past. The older one is sitting at the phone…he is calling his New York editor and explaining what he has shot today. He doesn’t sound like a newsreeler of my generation but more like a newspaper “leg-man”…as he sounds off a list of scenes that he has made this day and has just shipped by the quickest way out of this water-soaked community.
This man has not been on a news assignment in many a year…but here is a picture of an oldtimer…not a picture of a man coming back…but a picture to prove “once a newsreel man, always a newsreel man”…he is taking particular delight in outlining his day’s material to the big boss…all he talks about is the stuff “in the can” and on its way to New York…what he is not talking about is how he got the stuff and under what conditions.
There are three of us in this hotel…we have no water with which to bathe…shave…or perhaps even wash our faces in…we have no clean linen…for drinking purposes we have managed to cajol a quart of the worst “Cookin’ whiskey” that ever came out of the Kentucky Hills over the river…with some special water for “wash” purposes. I said “special water”…the label on the bottle discloses, “exceptionally fine for gout and rheumatic pains”…not that we have these ailments but drinking water is at a premium and one cannot be too particular here. So we down a few shots of the “cookin’ whiskey.” We do so because we can use them…We have just come off of the “River”…and it is that trip on the River that the old timer forgot to mention over the line to the big boss at New York.
It’s been a big long day…the water is lashing over the second floor stage of business buildings and homes…a twenty mile an hour current is flowing down stream…carrying complete houses in its path…destruction is on a rampage…and in the wake of this roaring torrent rides the biggest newsreel army in history…men are spotted from Pittsburgh all the way down to Memphis…every angle is being recorded on celluloid…and it is a rare treat to be thrown in, once in a while, with a few brother competitors on this story of the big water of ’37…Traveling alone and unaccounted for, days at a time…no warm meals…no regular means of transportation…it’s a big story and it’s gotta be got…therefore it’s like being with the home folks, when one meets another pal, out there on this water…We three were thrown together today by chance meeting at an intersection where the coast guard was launching rescue boats to proceed on missions of mercy back to the deep waters…
We three were thrown together in the same coast guard boat and made the long tedious trip up stream to record the havoc of the old devil River…house tops floated by the coast guard cutter plentifully…whole towns were submerged…houseboats were tied to roof tops, blocks back from the main stream…gas tanks were upset…churches and schools were submerged…occasionally we passed other coast guard cutters carrying Red Cross workers and refugees…It was as impressive a sight as it was pitiful…Words cannot describe the desolation and havoc of the power of the Old River as it assumes and asserts its supremacy over man…but the newsreel cameras keep on grinding…the boys are out there along the entire stretch and breadth of the River…their pictures will tell a far more powerful tale than the printed word is going to convey…these are thoughts running through my mind as we move along…I make a few scenes here and there…sometimes I watch as the other two grind away…we have not had any lunch this day…and not more than a cup of coffee for breakfast…it is now four p. m….We ask the skipper when he intends to turn back…we have pictures…but pictures do no good unless you can get them off to New York…the skipper does not know…perhaps we will tie up somewhere out in this sea of desolation all night…so here we are stuck…God, if we only had a drink of water…water all around but not one drop fit for drinking purposes…finally we spot two coast cutters coming down stream…we arrange a transfer…the story must be shipped…We are making good time now downstream…on the cutter we have transferred to…the Cincinnati skyline is looming up ahead…a few more good shots…we are grinding away…
Rhe boat hits the whirlpools near the big bridge…a sudden lurch of the boat throws the newsreeler next to me into the drink…all but the ankle of one leg, which is pinned beneath his Akeley camera which has fallen top of him…the skipper swerves the boat, 1 while another guard throws the throttle of the engine…the newsreeler is submerged…two of us have pinned his leg down with the camera…a coast guard hauls away trying to get him back into the boat…if we lose hold of him he is gone…whirlpools…traveling at around thirty miles an hour…our boat is drifting fast toward a row of factory buildings…it’ll be ground to pulp as soon as we hit…but this newsreeler must be placed back into the boat…or he’ll be lost…we succeed in getting him back…he has been drenched in the icy, polluted waters…he is okay outside of slight shock…and his camera has been saved…
Then we proceed down a street, under eighteen feet of water…as we pass a corner…or what once was a Cincinnati street corner…in the business section…we hit another whirlpool of water…our boat is carried sideways with another lurch…and we bang into a submerged telegraph pole…breaking the tiller off the boat…we are floating downstream…helplessly…while the skipper and his crew work frantically to make emergency temporary repairs, to get us back to safety, a distance now, of three blocks…we make a mental note of which telegraph pole we are going to pick…as we spy another coast guard crew rushing our way…finally we manage to master the stream…we are again proceeding but at great caution…the skipper is boiling now…he is offering to throw an oar at the first newsreeler that aims a camera…until we make the treacherous street corners, of which three remain until safety is reached…finally he slows down and yells, “Okay, you lugs, go ahead and make your stuff now”…we do…I am getting a wet foot…it’s from the newsreelers clothes who has fallen into the dirty drink…then we rush to the hotel…we ship our film…the newsreeler that has had the ducking manages to dig up another pair of dry pants…the wet clothing cannot be sent down to the valet…this department is closed for the duration of the flood…so the oldtimer is sitting there phoning his big boss back at New York…and he is telling him exactly what scenes he has made…the other newsreeler, that has gotten wet, is complaining to me about the quality of the “cookin’ whiskey” we are forced to drink…and I am taking a swig out of my glass…figurin’ and making a mental note that this really is about the worst “cookin’ whiskey” I have also ever tasted…but jeez at least you can’t get typhoid from it…like you do from River water…at a time like this…Yes, sir!…I guess the old timers are right…this is worst flood in history.
Newsreel footage of the floods: