This Yesterday’s Newsreel film (episode 124) 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 opens with a short bio on King Gustav V of Sweden. Footage shows a young Gustav standing in a box, presumably overlooking the funeral procession of Oscar II in 1907. Viewers see Gustav making awards at the 1912 Olympics, visiting a cathedral with wife Queen Victoria in 1925, reviewing troops on horseback, hunting for moose in Scandinavian wilds, visiting Stockholm’s Exhibition of Applied Art in 1930 (01:42), meeting with the Prince of Wales, sitting with daughter Astrid, and walking with Prince Leopold (King Leopold III of Belgium), the late Astrid’s husband. In 1938, he greets his subjects; he is shown riding a horse while reviewing Swedish troops. Gustav plays tennis as an eighty-year-old. He sits and embroiders, and then he is shown meeting with Eleanor Roosevelt in 1950. In the next segment, viewers see a man in Stone Harbor, NJ test out a homemade diving suit (04:03). German Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz in 1930 (05:07), New York Metropolitan Opera star Frances Alda, and musician Paul Whiteman (posing as a train engineer in 1929) are featured in the episode’s “Personalities” segment. That is followed by footage of the damage to several homes in Braintree, MA following the in-air crash of two Naval Reserve planes. Joseph Eliason nears Hollywood during his 1924 400-mile “diet” walk (06:48). Next, the film shows the laying of the cornerstone for the Delaware River Bridge (later renamed Benjamin Franklin Bridge) in 1925 (07:30). Pennsylvania Governor Gifford Pinchot, Philadelphia Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick, and bridge builder Ralph Modjeski are present for sealing up the cornerstone. In 1926, the bridge opens with a ceremony featuring speeches by New Jersey Senator Walter Evans Edge, NJ Governor A. Harry Moore, Camden Mayor Victor King, and Pinchot. Cars drive across the bridge, then pedestrians pack the bridge as they cross the Delaware. In the “Aviation” segment, viewers see a hot air balloon race in 1921 France (09:20). “Fashions of the Day” shows men and women bathing in DeSoto Falls on Alabama’s Lookout Mountain (10:15). The episode concludes with a look at Billy White cracking his 70-foot bull whip in Melbourne, Australia (10:48) and an outboard boat race on the Hudson from Albany to New York City, with driver Wilkinson winning in his B1 boat.

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