Seventy-six years ago, the exclusive media rights to the 1936 Rose Bowl was sold to a local Los Angeles firm and the five major newsreel companies were told they were restricted to only using 100 feet of film in their reels.

Newsreel cameramen didn’t particularly appreciate being told what they could film and how much feet they could shoot, and well, they decided to retaliate…

Norman Alley related how the boycott came about:

Something akin to the Indianapolis episode happened a few years ago, at the world-famous Pasadena Tournament of Roses. I say world-famous, since the five chief newsreels have contributed much more than their share toward making it known from Nome to Pretoria.

Two things happen every New Year’s Day at Pasadena, California – the celebrated Parade of Roses in the morning, and the East-West football game at the Rose Bowl in the afternoon.

The Rose Parade is a two-hour procession of festive floats (you’ve seen ’em in the newsreels) while the football game brings together the champions of the Pacific Coast Conference and (theoretically) the most outstanding winning team of the year, coming from east of the Continental Divide.

It was somewhere between Christmas and New Year’s, when the Los Angeles representatives of the big five – Hearst-Metrotone, Fox Movietone, Paramount News, Universal Newsreel and Pathé News – presented themselves, as annually, at the Rose Bowl football headquarters for their usual quota of working-passes, badges, and what-not. Imagine their feelings when they learned that the rights to film the big game had been gobbled up by some local firm!

“But,” solaced the football committeeman, “here are your passes, with one proviso. You can make pictures, but you can only use as much as one hundred feet. Agreed?”

Agreed? Where did he get his stuff? However, the boys took the passes, said nothing more, and bowed politely out of the office.

Once outside, they ran to the nearest bar and went into a huddle. Three Pasadena fruit punches later, they had a solution. They marched in a parade of their own and called on the parade committee. The boys forthwith told that august body that insofar as they couldn’t have camera carte blanche at the game, well – they’d just have to forget photographing the parade.

Dynamite in December! The old year was dying, and the parade promoters looked as if they too had dates with the undertaker! Judging by the color of their faces, it looked as if Pasadena was about to have its first white New Year’s. They fussed, they fretted, they fumed, they pleaded – but the five photogs were adamant.

Then the parade committee went of on that bromidic “Am I my brother’s keeper?” tack. Oh, come now, cajoled the Pasadenans, surely you wouldn’t do this to us after all the plans we’ve made, because of what the football crowd does?

Wouldn’t we, though? Well, we’ll show you, was the seed the five cinemen planted. And they left, feigning a first-class huff.

As soon as the movie makers had gone, the parade people got into a huddle. They finally concluded with cocksurety that come New Year’s morning, so also would come the newsreel cameramen.

They lived to be very wrong.

The parade wasn’t photographed. Neither was the afternoon game. However, the boys used the passes and watched the game like regular people.

The following December, the rose impresarios sent a love gift of forget-me-nots to each of the five newsreelers. Tucked inside the baskets were promises what what happened the year before will never, never happen again…and oh yes, they also sent along a couple of choice extra tickets for the lensers’ friends.

P. S. The picture the local firm made was poor and, instead of paying fat percentages, it went begging.