Old home movies
I recently bit the bullet and finally sent out some reels of old home movies to be converted to video files. I was worried that the films would be lost or destroyed, or the lesser but still significant worry that the copies would be of very poor quality.
Neither fear came to pass. But the anxiety was very real because these films are quite literally irreplaceable. No doubt you have old films, too, and they are irreplaceable, but mine are especially valuable, I think. And it’s not just because they’re mine, but because they are so very old. I have home movies of both sides of my family taken in the 1920s, when home movies were exceedingly rare.
On my father’s side, his brother was a camera buff and that explains it. On my mother’s side, some friend happened to take a reel of my family and gave it to them, and it ended up spliced on the larger reel. Everyone in these films is dead, sometimes long dead. Many of them – my paternal grandparents, for example – I never met.
My paternal grandfather died in the late 1920s while still in his fifties. I only have two photos of him, studio portraits of a dark, elegant, slender man with high cheekbones and a solemn look. But there are about twenty seconds of him in the movie – sitting, turning, smiling a small smile, talking to my grandmother (who also died before I was born, although in the 1940s), and looking a tiny bit less inscrutable because I can see his body language in a movie, something invisible in the photos.
He smokes what a friend told me looks like a cheroot. In fact, in this particular reel of film (running about 15 minutes and going from the 1920s to the 1940s) half the people are smoking. The rest of the time they are eating, often cakes. And yet they are quite slender for the most part, perhaps because of all the smoking.
They are also tremendously well-dressed. My grandfather, who had financial struggles, is at the park. And yet he wears a rather nice-looking suit. The women are dressed in dresses throughout, and heels, even for fairly casual occasions or a child’s birthday party. They look like models, very elegant.
And young. So achingly young. My parents wedding reception (1940) takes up a goodly portion of the film, and it chokes me up to see their youth and innocence.
And don’t get me started on my other grandmother, the one I knew and loved, who died when I was nineteen years old. Even writing this brings tears to my eyes.
Watch out for those old movies; get out that box of Kleenex.
I wish we had some. My late uncle took some, but his family is dispersed and I don’t know who has them now….Nobody else could afford a movie camera!
My uncle’s stepson made a movie of his centenarian grandmother, which included home movies from the 1930s. Existence of home movies made me think that the 1930s were not Depression years for them- especially since some of the home movies were of trips to Europe. Excellent movie.
I have slides. 35mm slides. Some of them are of various family members, including my sister and me when we were kids. But…the majority of them are slides from the trip my parents took when my Dad retired. They started in Japan, then went – somehow – to Europe, then to Great Britain, I think, and then home. I think Dad started taking photos himself, but when they got to Europe he apparently started buying slides that were available for tourists. These are from the 60s. Anyway…if anybody knows anybody who might be interested in 35mm slides of Europe in the 60s…I’m looking for a home for them! I have a hard time throwing stuff like that out – and I really need to let them go!
Oh yeah….keeping the family ones. I might never get to really _see_ them, but I can’t throw them out…just can’t.
All my siblings and I have are photos, including our paternal great grandparents. We have had them all restored. Every once in a while I spend the time to look through them. Seeing them doesn’t bring tears, but memories both happy and sad are valuable.
I’m working (slowly) on digitizing some old home movies. I got a device which can be used to digitize them at home, but it’s very slow, best to send or take them out.
Also have a lot of slides; it’s frustrating since many are not labeled and you often can’t tell what is a picture of what, except what year it was taken.
Also have some photos in a weird Kodak format called Photo CD, seems like might be a bit of a project converting them to something more modern.
In my first year of retirement, I created an 85 page memoir about my early life, my family, friends, genealogy, where they were buried. I included copies of family photos, photos of places we lived, photos of people and places that were important to me at the time. I knew that when I died, my kids would only know one aunt and uncle, as all the others were dead, and they had met none of them–or were too young to remember them.
The saddest thing I feel some days is that no one on earth will remember my Aunt Peg, Uncle Matty, my paternal grandparents when I die. My hope is the memoir and photos will at least keep them alive for my kids and grandkids.
Regarding your remarks.
There is a Russian made digitizer for converting 8mm film that is under 500 bucks. However it is possible that your family had 16mm cameras if they were especially well-heeled.
On saving important things when the opportunity arises. AKA striking while the iron is still hot: You are wise to do so.
If you don’t: Well, as I probably mentioned before, many of the personal musical recordings made by my paternal uncle and my younger father and their band, were ruined by my significantly older but idiot cousins; who, apparently saw everything in every closet in my uncle’s house house as a g-ddamned plaything. http://www.phonozoic.net/recordio/
And as the older, and married brother, my uncle kept it all “safe” with him. As a result the recording disks now look as though they have been treated with sandpaper. And the very earliest ones, apparently with some kind of glass rather than aluminum cores, were broken to fragments.
In the mid fifties he bought a Grundig tape recorder, and recorded on that, instead of the transcription machine.
Of course, the little hellions dragged that out while the pater familias was away, and experimented with recording TV shows … over the top of previous recorded family talk and music. So now, if you try and listen there are nice jarring transitions from say, “Blues In the Night” to a theme song like Johnny Yuma was a Rebel, or some equal waste product of cosmic history.
I think that Aristotle was right in his assessment of certain people. They are not much better now, as they seem to believe that the proper marks of putting something to good use, and deriving full value from it, is seeing it broken.
Weight and dress: Another cousin, this one on my mother’s side, upon reviewing some early/mid to late 60’s home movies he had converted and distributed, remarked in amazement regarding our parents that : “They all look like movie stars”. And within very reasonable limits he was right. Certainly many of the aunts, then in their late 20’s to 30’s were as good looking as the better looking (if not most famous) actresses – with none of the flooziness – while the men invariably were fit and masculine looking.
Personally I hated dressing up for those get-togethers as a child. But at least I didn’t have to wear a bow tie with my blazer, as some did. I got to wear big boy pants and a neck tie, even when I was a little boy. Thanks Mom!
A running theme during these events -and captured on film – was our mothers trying to keep us from getting grass stains on our flannels or rips in the knees. Generally, images or films taken after the first hour or two show us standing paused in an obvious agony at being corralled for a picture, red faced with hair mussed and with shirts half untucked. I still remember that feeling of being overheated, and the wildly desperate need to escape back to the outdoors or into the chaos of the basement roughhousing.
Yeah. It brings it back.
DNW:
Nearly all my films are 16mm, because they were taken prior to the use of 8mm. The 16mm films were higher quality , I believe. They needed huge banks of floodlights when indoors. It was quite a production.
Family films were just not featured in my family. Our mother was just crazy, ultimately was hospitalized and had shock treatments. Our father, the ex-war hero, was occupied with much younger girlfriends and gradual descent into alcoholism. My sister and I almost were left with uncles and aunts; maybe that would have been better.
Well then, those should be excellent quality and full of interesting details even for those who’ve never known your family.
I remember the almost mesmerizing experience of doing darkroom work with old negatives, and how as you expanded the projection field to a couple of feet, all of the sudden that world came into real focus as a “world”; with identifiable stuff in discernible condition: Car bodies, carpet and wall paper patterns, fabric textures, front porch steps and shrubbery, the number of cigarettes in ashtrays, the amount of beer in the glass, the model of early TV, or the value of the hand of cards someone was holding.
Geez. I’m sorry to hear that. Truly. Sounds plenty rugged and depressing. Reading comments left here over the years reveals that you are not alone. Still, it was a rotten deal. No one reading your comments would ever guess.
Regarding the lack of obesity observed in these old films, remember they didn’t have the benefit of processed foods and all of the modern conveniences that obviate the need to be physically active.
“And don’t get me started on my other grandmother, the one I knew and loved, who died when I was nineteen years old. Even writing this brings tears to my eyes.”
If that’s so you best not click on this even though it’s from a wildly different time and culture:
http://americandigest.org/riley-green-and-friends-sing-i-wish-grandpas-never-died-annotated/
If you do choose to listen take the second video version.
Years ago, with the advent of cable, my uncle became a local access host with the sole interest of showing his home movies, which he then taped on Betamax.
and then he quit.
If one had lots of wives, family films would be replaceable. “Who was that who went with me to Tahoe?”
I agree with all those who say it is impossible to throw these away. It seems an insult to the deceased to throw them out. How can grandpaw’s face—looking up at you—be carted away in the blue can?
Always save everything that is sentimental and let your kids or grandkids throw them away when you croak….we all turn into dirt eventually. Not comforting.
I am thrice blessed, I was adopted and my two grandmothers from my family that raised me lived to be in their 90’s, slender and dad’s side small old ladies and two years ago I discovered my birth mom, same thing, slender small little old lady died at 93. I was told years ago by a doctor that it was about 90% genetics that will determine what you look like and how long you will live.
I have made it to my mid 70’s and I consider that a win. By the way, we do have a few goofy old movies from the 1940’s that show people moving around outside and they appear to be very self conscious but I love that stuff.
I have greatly appreciated your commentary and thoughts for years. Particularly your effortless blend of sharing thoughts about politics, the arts, and personal reflections like this.
We have dozens of 8mm movies from the mid-50s to the early 70s gathering dust at my mother’s house. I digitized a few of the better ones into a sort of 40-minute highlight video, but it was just so time-consuming to pick through them to see what is worth digitizing. The alternative is to spend probably $thousands to just digitize all of them en masse. The result would likely be that they would just gather dust as well.
We also had slides from those years. At some point I got a scanner that had an attachment for slides. But again, it was just so time-consuming that I gave up.
We’re having the same problem with still photos, both from back then and from the last 20 years. They’re in albums and shoe boxes, very disorganized. It seems hopeless.
And finally, we’ve got a bunch of VCR cassettes that have to be put onto DVDs or some other format. It never ends.
My father began making home movies in 1948 and I have many from when I was 10 until adulthood. Years ago, I had them converted to DVDs but I loaned the DVD to my sister about four years ago and she seems to have lost it. I may have to do it again.
Everybody used to marry young. Remember that in 1900 the average life expectancy at birth was about 45 years. In the twentieth century vaccines and antibiotics raised life expectancy to about 75.
https://www.seniorliving.org/history/1900-2000-changes-life-expectancy-united-states/
“Lack of obesity”
Smoking
After converting a few old films to DVD format, I saw parts of my parents’ 1943 wedding reception, glimpses of my grandparents so happy, then, in a later portion, my 3 year-old self traipsing around the Wright Brothers memorial on Wright-Patt Air Force Base where my father worked. Yes, there were tears.
My maternal grandfather, my dad and his brother all took movies and slides of family events. I had most of them moved to a videotape a couple of decades ago, mostly to entertain my mother. She recognized everyone, of course, and enjoyed watching it. Once. Then it was in the box with the videotape. What does one do with memories on a physical medium? After watching it once, I mean.
Ray:
Way back as far as I can trace, my ancestors had a marked tendency to marry much later than average.
F:
Well, with an mp3 file, you can give other relatives access to it and they can watch it. You can also watch it in slow motion and notice things you never noticed before. And of course, if your descendants are at all interested, they can watch it.
What service are you using to make the transfers?
I have home movies ranging from the 40’s to the early 70’s.
And I also have several suitcases of Kodachrome slides taken by my just deceased mother during her junior college year in Europe in 1951. Imagine France about the time Gene Kelly was making “An American in Paris.”
If you want an easy way to share rare family photos and stories, the LDS Church’s Family History cloud is open to everyone.