Tag: footage research

Madmen for Ike!

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Eisenhower Answers America! The first Presidential campaign TV ads.

Ike seems like an unlikely TV pioneer, but this former soldier had a hunch that TV would be an important feature of modern political campaigns. Dwight David Eisenhower’s 1952 Presidential election campaign hired Rosser Reeves, a Madison Avenue advertising maven, to produce these groundbreaking television spots. The pitch’s specific approach: a candidate addressing voter concerns directly in a (studio simulated) one-on-one setting. The voter “interviewing” the candidate approach lives on in today’s TV town halls, where candidates come face to face with live voters’ everyday concerns.

This particular TV commercial is well-known and has been written about extensively, but the vast majority of historical moving image content at the National Archives and its’ Presidential Libraries remains under-described and inaccessible to all save those willing and able to conduct research in person. Please remember: “searching” does not equal “researching”. Don’t depend on an production assistant or intern to find the images that add polish and impact to your production! Hire an archival media professional!

An “outtake” for a reason

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Universal Newsreel outtake footage of a Harry S Truman re-election campaign speech at Charleston, West Virginia from October 1, 1948

Today’s feature is especially topical while those of us in the United States are in the heat of the Campaign 2020. This film, an outtake, is part of the Universal Newsreel film collection, which was donated in its entirety to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in 1977. The deed-of-gift included Universal’s copyrights to this unique (and voluminous!) collection.

This film illustrates perfectly why some outtake content remains just that: outtakes. The image bounces slowly, probably due to a poor transfer, a camera malfunction, or film misthread. The speech itself is classic Truman populism, an excellent illustration of how he came from behind to win re-election in 1948. In normal times, a film copy would likely be available in the research room, but thanks to the COVID19 pandemic, those research rooms have been closed for six months. In the meanwhile, this copy represents this particular newsreel assignment.

This content is not described or identified in the National Archives On-line Catalog. It was not identifiable to anyone not able to physically access a card catalog in the National Archives Research Room in College Park, MD. “Searching” is not researching; don’t depend on a Google search conducted by an intern or production assistant to find you the exact images and sounds you need to add impact and polish to your production. Hire a professional archival media researcher!

Flying Tigers!

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From the National Archives’ Record Group 306 (The Records of the United States Information Agency), this footage was found in a collection called “Library Stock Shots”. Apparently no logging exists of the thousands of rolls in this collection. It includes pre-war footage of various domestic U.S. scenes, inherited from the wartime “Office of War Information”, as well as wartime footage from multiple sources, including the U.S. Armed Forces, Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union and Italy. These rolls may exist in multiple other collections and archives, but without detailed description, locating imagery is a matter of hard work, and sometimes, serendipity!

This particular roll contains footage of the “American Volunteer Group” operating out of Kunming, China. Note the distinctive “tiger teeth” livery on the aircraft and the lack of U.S. emblems on the uniforms of the volunteers. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the volunteers were folded back into the U.S. Army Air Forces, becoming known as the 23rd Fighter Group. Their commander, Capt. Claire Chennault, appears in the film.