This Yesterday’s Newsreel film (episode 120) 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 French troops training near the Maginot Line in 1939. Footage shows troops going through bunkers and tunnels along the Maginot Line. Soldiers ride a subway system. Soldiers man the line’s Central Fire Control. Anti-tank steel spikes protrude from the ground along the line. Soldiers load shells into artillery guns. In the next segment (02:47), viewers see European strongman Zishe Breitbart in 1923 as he bends iron bars, breaks chain links with his teeth, drives nails into wood planks with his bare hands, holds a motordrome on his torso while two cyclists ride motorcycles on it, and lies on a bed of nails and braces himself against two plank sections laid over him, which then have horses and a baby elephant cross on them. In “Personalities” (04:58), viewers see newly appointed Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas as he receives congratulations and then poses with his family, U.S. Army General Billy Mitchell standing with his wife and infant child, and John J. Raskob standing outside a building prior to being named chairman of the National Committee of Democrats. Next, the episode shows footage of the aftermath of a 1922 fire at the Big Show Circus’ winter headquarters in Bridgeport, CT (06:24); viewers see the charred remains of circus wagons, and standing water that remains after water was dumped on the flames to put out the blaze. In Norristown, PA (07:12), boys learn to sew with needle and thread and sewing machine. The following segment features the Queen Wilhelmina battleship being given to the Queen Wilhelmina and the Netherlands in 1942 at Washington Naval Base (07:56). In the “Aviation” segment, Connecticut Governor John H. Trumbull sits on a glider at an airport before flying. The glider takes off but quickly crashes back down, injuring Trumbull. In “Fashions of the Day,” viewers see Jessie Jim of the Blackfeet Tribe or Blackfoot Tribe (crowned Princess America II in 1926) being sketched by an artist in Glacier National Park prior to leaving for Atlantic City for the Miss America Pageant. In “Sports,” Finland’s Paavo Nurmi runs to victory at the 1925 Penn Relays in Philadelphia (10:30), George Simpson wins the 100-yard dash, and a pole vaulter from Yale wins that event. The episode concludes with footage of tennis player Helen Wills Moody playing for her seventh national title at Forrest Hills, NY in 1931 (11:32); she volleys back and forth with whom the narrator identifies as a “Mrs. Bartosh” of California, presumably Dorothy Weisel Hack.

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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