Fred “Red” Felbinger of Paramount News writes about his fellow newsreelers cameraman Norman Alley and soundman Jerry Altifleish’s tagging along with the Hutchinson family’s flight attempt across the Atlantic Ocean. The aircraft that Alley and Altifleish were aboard went down in the sea near Greenland on September 13, 1932 and the Chicago newsreel crews thought the two were goners for a while.

Years ago I used to pal around with a bunch of hombres what had a little sailin sloop…Well sir! Up in the harbor where they kept the boat they had another trim little craft that was the apple of the eye of many an amateur sailor like myself…That other little boat kinder fascinated me…her lines…her riggin.

But what kinder got me the most was her name…That sorta always perked at me…a strange name, too, it was…especially to one what never had much of a chance to learn what names meant out of a book, but hadda kinder git the drift of names or words by learnin em straight from life…a slow but mighty sure process of buildin up the meanin of your own vocabulary. Well, that’s kinder gittin away from the name of the boat.

“Intrepid” she was christened…and intrepid she remained…I never knew what her name meant…wouldn’t know now…but I always do try to follow up and find out the meanin of things that sink in a little deeper into my skull than most things…so I borrowed a Webster Dictionary in the hopes maybe that word was kinder marked in the English language…and sure enough I found it defined there.

Meant “undaunted” or “brave.”…Well, right away I knew the fascination of that word, and I wondered if it were possible to use a word like that for other things besides trim little boats.

That was years ago…The word sorta slipped out of my memory…I got mixed up in this lens snoopin business…became a rookie in the camera grindin business…grew up in it by and by…and in so doin met a awful lot of “undaunted” and “brave” men that kept grindin away in the face of all dangers…I said I was a rookie.

Well, that was quite a few years ago…but at that time I met a hombre what already was a old timer in the business…Norman Alley…they called him a ace behind a camera…and that was long before Sound, Depressions and cuttin down.

Well, my new work kinder got me mixed up with this Alley person…and pretty soon I got to learn the meanin of the word Ace in the racket I had picked…I stood beside this guy on levees what was shakin from flood waters what had just cut through another crevasse.

I saw him climb up steel work for odd angles what might thrill a audience, while he was makin a picture, a thrill picture of a new skyscraper goin up.

And Alley always went up a little higher than the steelworkers what was performin for him so’s he could get the thrill angle on his story…I saw Alley get a wire from his editor on an endurance flight story askin him to make a picture of a stunt man going down a rope ladder with a microphone suspended on a cable of a sound outfit from a plane and get a sound interview with the Endurance fliers in their plane durin a refuelin of their ship.

I saw Alley get turned down by a stunt man on the deal…and then have Alley go up himself and do the trick personally, successfully, while another cameraman, Eddie Morrison, ground from the ship above showin Alley danglin on the rope ladder…carryin the microphone…danglin on that fifteen foot rope ladder…and Eddie Morrison figuring it was fifty miles long on Alley’s climb back to the ship where Eddie was grindin from…with Alley never whimperin or cryin for screen credit…just killin another assignment.

Later on I met another bozo in this racket…a noise ketcher…a real guy…Jerry we called him…last name didn’t mean much to my gang…Last names never mean much in my racket…It’s the bird himself what counts…Jerry, too, could face danger without talkin about it, professionally, or “off” the job.

News men can always court danger, even in their spare moments…They live by it, unconsciously…By and by I learned Jerry’s last name was Altifleish…So I saw Norm and Jerry work with the gang for years . ..and I knew they were of the stuff bozos outside of the racket referred to as brave, as undaunted.

And then a few weeks ago I picked up a paper to read that Norman Alley and Jerry Altifleish had taken off on a flight across the Atlantic with “The Flying Family” because they had received it as an assignment of their profession…and then I found out another use for that word I had seen on that boat years ago…”Intrepid.”…I knew the meanin of the word for years…brave and undaunted.

I knew a lot of fellows that were that…Fellows that I have met in the newsgame…But I never did use the word Intrepid for anything but that boat I had seen years ago…So when the plane of the Hutchinson’s, The Flying Family, took off on its transatlantic flight two Intrepid Newsreelman accompanied it to record for posterity on celluloid, for the first time in history, a flight across the Atlantic…which would be somethin new in the newsreel business…a cameraman and sound man accompanyin the actual journey…an Intrepid venture…just another assignment for two newsreelers.

The take-off of Jerry and Norm was quite a surprise to buddies in their callin…It was the topic of many conversations the first few days of the flight…which was bein made in easy stages…via the northern route…but newsreelmen have other things crop up that takes the edge off of things that happen one day.

Several days and the hot news of today becomes the history of yesterday. So the flight of Norm and Jerry became an accepted fact and the boys felt that in time they would see the celluloid that passed through Norm’s camera flickerin on some screen in some theater they might be visitin.

Then suddenly the headlines of the newspapers shrieked, “Flying Family Down-Believed Drowned”…and anxious newsreelers grabbed at hurriedly bought editions…and they read of their buddies…an S-O-S by Jerry Altifleish, actin as the radio operator at the moment…S-O-S, an emergency cry for help, in navigation…a story in newswork…newsmen ever alert for news.

Tragedy for Two Buddies

S-O-S…maybe a big story…But the Flying Family…S-O-S…more than news…impendin tragedy for two buddies…and for the first time…S-O-S…a real definition and feelin of those three strange letters…to men otherwise immune to feelins.

Tragedy only tugs at the heartstrings of those nearest…S-O-S…Jerry’s fingers nimbly dashin out the tragic cry…Then silence…headlines…postmortems…news…suspense…great suspense for newsreel buddies…more headlines. Flying family still missin…more suspense…silence…from Arctic wastes…Two buddies now among those missin…among the silent…Anxious buddies…waitin for flashes…flashes of hope…but only silence now…silence…that slowly and strangely becomes accepted as final tragedy…but eternal hope…Hope when friends are concerned.

NO!…Forget it…Newsreelers always come through. But other flights…then sadness gives birth to tributes…Hope becomes despair…Despair breeds Eulogy…when friends are concerned…Silence.

Norman Alley and Jerry Altifleish have joined the missin…Two intrepid newsreelers…missin on assignment…But news goes on…other assignments come up…Other news must be covered…and Jerry and Norm become a sad memory.

Breaking a Mouthpiece

Hope goes on and on…Then an assignment…A baseball team cinches a pennant…news…news throws a group of newsreel buddies together…competitors…but nevertheless buddies under the skin…The talk drifts to Norm and Jerry…too bad…”hope they crop up suddenly”…false hope…what a lousy business…the eternal cry of the newsreeler…But he never gets out of it…his heart loves that “lousy business”…workin, loafin, danger, tragedy.

Newsreelers gather…Norm and Jerry are discussed…two buddies down in icy waters…silence…a telephone…a newsreeler decides to call a news syndicate.

“What is the latest dope over the tickers on the Flying Family?”…Suspense…hope…two buddies.

“WHAT WAS THAT?

“THEY FOUND THEM? ALL SAFE?”

The mouthpiece on the telephone is broken…Those mouthpieces always did break easily even with opening a ginger ale bottle…the phone has dropped to the floor.

What a goofy gang these newsreelers are?…Funny birds…News…assignments…A flight across the Atlantic…an assignment…Norman Alley and Jerry Altifleish.

Two intrepid newsreelers…I often wondered what that name meant on that boat every time we sailed by it…anchored there in Belmont Harbor in Chicago…”Intrepid”…finally I looked it up…A dumb dome like mine can be enlightened after all, you know…so I looked up “intrepid” in my dictionary…Webster’s dictionary…I found it there, too…”Intrepid-undaunted, brave.”

Norman Alley and Jerry Altifleish.

Random note for my newish visitors: Norman Alley, the photog that Felbinger is waxing poetic about, was once a household name that even eclipsed Edward Murrow (yes really, a photog upstaging a reporter). Many a little boy was entranced by Alley when he became a headliner shortly before the outbreak of WWII, and when they came of age in the early 1950s and found it was a thousand dollars initiation fee to join the newsreel union…went into shooting television news instead.