He had the eyes of a fighter pilot and the legs of a dancer. At least that’s how Sam the Cameraman saw it back in 1936. Trouble was, not everyone was ready for a newsreel man so prone to pirouetting. So Sam tried to lay low, which was a tough gig for a jet-setting fellow like him. Once, while perched on a car roof covering the National Air Races, a passing beat got the better of him and the dancer in Sam came out. Years later, an investigative committee would point to a visiting pep band for sparking the melee that followed. But Sam must shoulder some of the blame, for it was he who tore his eye away from the action, removed much of his restrictive britches and attempted to introduce a Depression-era crowd to the concept of ‘Jazz Hands’. Tragically, a group of Merchant Marines was also in attendance that day and, after watching the oddball photographer break several social mores at once, pulled Sam off that sedan and beat him senseless. Sam survived that brutal attack, and while he continued to schlep glass across much of the Twentieth Century, he never so much as broke out another Foxtrot… Hmmm? That’s NOT how the whole thing went down?

Oh well. Leave it to Amanda Emily to let ‘the facts‘ get in the way of a good story.