This Yesterday’s Newsreel film (episode 19) 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 episode begins with footage of the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. People take to the streets in Madrid as they prepare to defend against the forces of Francisco Franco (00:17). A government tank sits idle in a street. Franco insurgents push forward with rifles. Rebel artillery fires on the city of Irun, and the city quickly falls to Franco’s forces. Franco smiles as troops march past him. Italian war planes assist Franco by bombing Madrid. The episode shows shots of Madrid’s damaged streets. At the University City Subway Station, people pass out rifles to make a stand against Franco’s invading forces (02:31); footage shows the station reduced to rubble. Franco planes fly overhead. The Spanish government surrenders and a victorious Franco speaks to his followers in Madrid (03:38). In the next segment, viewers watch an airplane race in 1910 at the St. Louis, MO fairgrounds: a Wright biplane takes on a modified French monoplane named Dragonfly. Dragonfly closes in on the Wright plane and passes it, wining the race. In the segment on the personalities of 1928, the episode features Adolphe Menjou (star of The Three Musketeers) and his wife as they see the sights in New York City (05:00), Albert Einstein as he is greeted at City Hall by Mayor Jimmy Walker and Columbia University President Nicholas Murray Butler (05:27), and opera singer Ernestine Schumann-Heink as she performs for American troops in Palo Alto, CA. The next segment, “1927: The S-4,” shows the salvage operation of the sunken U.S. submarine S-4. Ships raise the submarine, and divers are brought back up from the water (most likely Thomas Eadie and Frank W. Crilley). Secretary of the Navy Curtis D. Wilbur is aboard the Falcon and congratulates the divers. Pontoons bring up the S-4. The USS Sagamore tows the S-4 to Boston Harbor. Footage shows the S-4 in a drydock (07:28). Aboard the USS Bushnell, men pay respects to the S-4 men who died. Elsewhere, a man demonstrates a new “rescue lung” to be used during diving rescue operations. The next segment takes viewers to 1919 and the police strike in Boston. Members of the state militia patrol Boston’s streets on horseback. Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge (09:03) addresses the strike. Police march as part of the strike. A new police force is recruited. In the film’s “Fashions of the Day” segment, 1914 outfits are shown, including a corduroy riding outfit, a skating suit, and a fur hat. The episode concludes with a segment on sports from 1917. At Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, Ralph De Palma celebrates his auto race win (10:27). In Vermont, ski jumpers compete before a crowd of spectators, and several skiers crash during their jump. Champion Strand Mikkelson smiles for the camera.
