This Yesterday’s Newsreel film (episode 61) offers the viewer “television highlights of the news of yesteryear” by providing vintage clips of famous people and events from the first half of the 20th century. The newsreel begins with footage of the destruction caused by an earthquake in the Balkans on 8 March 1931 (00:45). Buildings and homes in towns like Valandovo and Gorovo are reduced to rubble. Homeless families wait in makeshift camps; children sit around a fire and eat. In Belgrade (01:44), men remove rubble as they look for survivors. In the next segment, viewers see spectators fill the seats of Cambridge Bowl at Harvard College in 1924. The spectators and Harvard graduates throw confetti at each other. In “1915: California, Here I Call,” viewers see a shot of the Sierra Nevadas from the back of a train. San Francisco mayor James Rolph (03:13) makes a transcontinental phone call to his Boston counterpart, Mayor James Curley. The next segment shows men and women dancing the lindy hop in Harlem. That is followed by “1922: Personalities,” featuring Ethel Levey and daughter Georgette M. Cohan (04:45), Broadway immortal Daniel Frohman (05:14), and French actress Lili Damita as she arrives in America and is greeted by Hollywood’s Will Hays. Next, viewers watch as Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are escorted to and from court in Massachusetts (06:13), where they are found guilty of murder. Actress Theda Barra stars as Theodosia Goodman in 1915’s The Vampire. The next segment, on aviation, shows Igor Sikorsky on 21 February 1925 as he is about to fly his 11-passenger airplane (08:55). On England’s coast, Secretary of State for Air Samuel Hoare climbs aboard a plane for a flight. In “Fashions Of The Day,” viewers see the jewelry in vogue in 1923 Paris. The episode ends with a segment on sports that features two events: the Drake relays in Des Moines (10:42), where Notre Dame sprinter Jack Elder wins the 100-yard dash, and 1939 Running of the Santa Anita Handicap (11:30), which is won by Kayak II.

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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com