Covering the Fair

October 27, 2013 photog blogs

chicago_crewsFred Felbinger writes about the Chicago crews covering the 1933 World’s Fair.

To the east of proud old Michigan Avenue, in Chicago, a new magic world has come into being….A Century of Progress…The World’s Fair…It’s a symphony of wonders to the visitor…Unique architecture aspiring to the skies…and at night a melody of color…all the marvels and the romance of the world blended into the modern spectacle…The World’s Fair…Daily hundreds of thousands make the pilgrimage, to be conquered by the glamour of Modern Progress…and in that happy holiday army of tourists passes an unseen army of tired Knights of the Celluloid, the 666 Newsreelers…They’ve been at it night and day…burning up miles and miles of the old Supersensitive…it’s the heaviest grind that has hit that weather-beaten gang from the Windy Village…they’re popping fast over at the Fair now for the gang!…Come along, watch the old guard with the biggest headache ever handed them from the work angle…Here’s an assignment that’s going to last five months for them…a new yarn busting every few minutes…all in the Fair Grounds…Here’s Jack Barnett and Charlie Geis batting out a little feature story on the first wedding in the Midget Village…Look up there, the west tower of the Skyride…What are those two specks at the tip of it…600 feet up in space !…Why, no specks at all, just Eddie Morrison and Sheik Lippert dangling from an eye-beam, exercising the hand cameras on a few thrill angles to chill movie audiences into what a spectacle the show is looking down from the highest point in town…There’s Tony Caputo and his dial twister, Ralph Saunders, taking in the “Streets of Paris”…with their equipment, of course…Quaint old “Belgian Village”…with the native folk dances…that’s Emilie Montemurro perched up on the balcony making impressions on celluloid for posterity…Look at those two boys trying to chauffeur trucks through that sea of humanity…it’s just Wayman Robertson with the Paramount truck and Phil Gleason, behind the wheel for Fox, trying to edge down to the other end of the park for another setup…Why there’s old Herford Tynes Cowling over there taking in the Fair with his Eymo…Six P. M. now…no wonder Martin Barnett is hotfooting it for the ‘phone booth…Martin’s a married man now…gotta call up the little woman and explain that he just simply won’t be able to make it for dinner tonight…Floyd Traynham is just dashing for the gates to ship in his stuff on a little feature he has batted out…and now the gang is ankling over to the opening of “Hollywood at the Fair”…this is supposed to be the movie exhibit at the Fair…There’s Charlie David up on a parallel…Inkies are blazing from all directions…just like a genuine Hollywood premiere…Charlie’s the official cameraman at the Hollywood exhibit…Wallie Hotz is dial twister in the same park…Billy Strafford, the 666 helmsman, is cooling off with a stein of 3.2…but his dogs are not so cool…Billy makes the round trip almost daily through the park…and with the big thermometer in the center of the grounds reading 100 doesn’t help the puppies any, complains Billy…inside of “Hollywood” you spot a couple of newsreelers who have grown desks and white collars…Charlie Ford, of Universal, has the missus out tonight…and Norman Alley, one-time Eymo genius, but lately Mr. Alley, Picture Editor for a local sheet, is sporting a white suit…mebbe he’ll be wearing a cane next…providing the weight guesser muffs him by three pounds… Around midnite drop over to the “Streets of Paris”…watch the old film foggers draw up in rickshaws…just sailors on a day off…It’s the World’s Fair…night and day…the old gang of Newsreelers are making it…sometimes a mammoth headache to them…story after story…sometimes a lot of play…but it’s the show of shows…worth seeing…worth crossing the continent for…Those 666 Newsreelers won’t admit it…but it’s colossal.

Photo on the upper left is of an unidentified Fox crew waiting for the arrival of former President Hoover and his wife at the World’s Fair. The newsreel story itself that they were shooting part of has surfaced on Youtube and should be embedded blow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5uZLSt7fx0