Vintage film, TV, documents, and photographic footage from down the years

[Brigantia]

This is a fascinating account of how the sleepy village of Heathrow was turned into an airfield - the inhabitants turfed out due to wartime requisition and never given any compensation even when it turned into a commercial airport - its history, lovely vintage photos and old map data that gives a very good impression of how it looked before being covered over with concrete. It seems strange that one random tiny village's name has become so well known to international travellers around the globe.

I love seeing footage of 1950s construction workers at their labour wearing a shirt and tie!

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gNEVStCCVUE

[Tintin]

Posted by Miller (here)
Me too I wonder if we passed each other every day!

Do you know what? It's entirely possible.

Anytime between 1996 - and 2005/6 and then between 2009-2014. It's a small world, even in a crazy place like London.

When the cycling craze took off there was a fair peloton going on, on the bridge. Pretty nuts actually, and many of them clueless with road/pedestrian etiquette too. However, we survived

[Tintin]

1943 football/soccer match between Spartak Moscow and Dynamo Stalingrad

Fabulous The game was devised as a way to rehabilitate from the only recently ended siege, today, 81 years ago

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Posted by Tintin (here)
...and here's some video from a much safer distance. One assumes the photographer (above) was stationed somewhere towards the right of this video

Not actually a video. It's a rapid succession of still photographs taken by amateur photographer Gary Rosenquist. The frames were stitched together to create this sequence, with a sprinkling of AI thrown in. And he was far from a safe distance at the time. Rosenquist (with his camera) survived only by the skin of his teeth when the pyroclastic flow, thundering his way, was deflected by topography at the very last moment!

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Remarkable piece of footage here, thought to be the very earliest in existence of a working aeroplane.

The Wright Flyer first took to the air in 1903. Though still images exist of those inaugural flights, the first motion picture recordings did not appear until it undertook a demonstration flight in France, in 1908. The footage below precedes that.

****

Wilbur and Orville Wright, five years out from their historic first flight at Kitty Hawk, decided to make a bid for the government contract. Tests of the Wright Flyer were first held at Fort Myer, Virginia, in September 1908, ending with a tragic crash that killed Army Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge and gravely injured Orville Wright. A recovered Orville resumed tests at Fort Myer with a new aircraft in July 1909.

[4k, 50fps, colorized] (1908) First Airplane Flight filmed: The Wright Military Flyer

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9SszsNHDCfI

[Tintin]

Another quite charming piece of work here by Claude Friese-Greene showing a compilation of clips of the United Kingdom being filmed between 1924 and 1926 called: The Open Road.



For photo and film buffs who may already know this it is perhaps important to emphasise that this is not colourised footage, but a pioneering colour process invented by Claude Friese-Greene. A snippet from the Wikipedia entry here:

Claude's father William began the development of an additive colour film process called Biocolour. This process produced the illusion of true colour by exposing each alternate frame of ordinary black-and-white film stock through two different coloured filters. Each alternate frame of the monochrome print was then stained red or green. Although the projection of Biocolour prints did provide a tolerable illusion of true colour, like the more famous Kinemacolor process of George Albert Smith it suffered from noticeable colour flicker (a potentially headache-inducing defect known technically as 'colour bombardment') and from red-and-green fringing around anything in the scene that moved very rapidly. In an attempt to overcome these problems, a faster-than-usual frame rate was used.

After William's death in 1921, Claude Friese-Greene continued to develop the system during the 1920s and renamed the process Friese-Greene Natural Colour then the Spectrum Colour Film process. Claude went on to be a highly-respected cinematographer on more than 60 films from 1923 to 1943 and a was one of the first to shoot in Technicolor in Britain

[Brigantia]

If only roads were this quiet today... this is a Blue Peter clip from 1965 on the newly-built M4 that sped up the journey to Heathrow from central London. Much of it is also 'jolly good' according to the presenter. (Six minutes long.)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=1slvQX39x6c

[grapevine]

WILLIAM JOYCE (LORD HAW HAW) HANGED

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=QtUcGR0Og6c

(1:42)
Note that William Joyce has the "duelling scar", often seen on SS Officers, which was a symbol of the commitment to the values and ideology of Nazism. Some of the comments under the YT video are wryly telling; one is "He would get his own show on BBC now"


"Nasty" Newsreel With Lord Haw Haw (1939)
Sound over title of the radio signal and music that preceded every broadcast from Germany by Haw Haw (William Joyce). M/S Actor impersonating Haw Haw reading a comic version of the type of broadcast that Haw Haw gives over the radio. L/S and M/S of barrage balloons rising.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZZz48paS-2Q

(3:49)

[Brigantia]

This is a lovely montage of photos of Surrey 100 years ago taken by amateur photographer Cecil Brown, who clearly had a good eye for his hobby. It's not a county that I know well but is probably of great interest to those that are well acquainted with it. Just 3 minutes long.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=U4Y4bAyHod8

[Tintin]

Photograph from 1880 - the last survivors of the Battle of Waterloo

My goodness

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Amazing Tintin!

I discovered this prestigious photograph has a cousin.



This is Emmanuel Louis Cartigny, a Frenchman who fought (as a young lad) under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte in the Battle of Trafalgar (August–December 1805). At the time of the photograph (1891) he was the last known survivor. One of the medals on his chest is the Legion d’honneur, the Legion of Honour, the highest French Order of Merit.

He was born in Hyères on September 1st, 1791 (three months prior to the death of Mozart), and died at the age of 100 on March 21st, 1892.

[Tintin]

Posted by Mark (Star Mariner) (here)
Amazing Tintin!

I discovered this prestigious photograph has a cousin.

Attachment 53281

This is Emmanuel Louis Cartigny, a Frenchman who fought (as a young lad) under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte in the Battle of Trafalgar (August–December 1805). At the time of the photograph (1891) he was the last known survivor. One of the medals on his chest is the Legion d’honneur, the Legion of Honour, the highest French Order of Merit.

He was born in Hyères on September 1st, 1791 (three months prior to the death of Mozart), and died at the age of 100 on March 21st, 1892.

Simply staggering. It really puts things into such an interesting historical context when being able to mention Napoleon and Mozart in the same paragraph too

[Jamie]

Posted by Brigantia (here)
This is a lovely montage of photos of Surrey 100 years ago taken by amateur photographer Cecil Brown, who clearly had a good eye for his hobby. It's not a county that I know well but is probably of great interest to those that are well acquainted with it. Just 3 minutes long.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=U4Y4bAyHod8

What a wonderful thread. I've lived most my life in Surrey so that video was lovely to see. Adding a photo taken by my Grandparents when they lived in Sunbury or Surbiton (before I was born so not sure, as those are the towns they lived in).
It's of their neighbour and friend with his Union Van.
Love the look of some of the older vehicles shown in these video & photos.

It's like we went from smooth stream-lined vehicles in the earlier days, to clunky square shaped vehicles.
My first car was a Ford Fiesta MKII (copy and paste that into Google and see its loveliness ). Nowadays we've thankfully gone back to the curves.

[Mike Gorman]

Posted by Brigantia (here)
If only roads were this quiet today... this is a Blue Peter clip from 1965 on the newly-built M4 that sped up the journey to Heathrow from central London. Much of it is also 'jolly good' according to the presenter. (Six minutes long.)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=1slvQX39x6c

A Zcar can be dispatched to any trouble....anyone else remember the old TV series "Z Cars" in the early 60's? Nostalgia for Brits

[Brigantia]

Posted by Mike Gorman (here)
A Zcar can be dispatched to any trouble....anyone else remember the old TV series "Z Cars" in the early 60's? Nostalgia for Brits

Yes I do - I was too young for it in the early 60s but remember it from the 70s. I looked it up and it ended in 1978 - I can still remember the theme tune!

[Tintin]

Tearful Margaret Thatcher Leaves Downing Street for the Last Time (1990)

An historical moment for sure and I can't quite remember what I felt at the time. I do have a vague recall that it all felt like she'd been stabbed in the back and a sense of just how unfair that all seemed. Back then as a young somewhat naive 20 year old and also somewhat left leaning then, I wasn't a fan of her policies. As one has matured my view of her has softened somewhat.

Aside: I was walking through Chester Square (Belgravia) after work one evening on the way to The Orange Brewery - a very good pub, still, by the way - and she walked right past me followed by her female bodyguard. This may have been either the late 1990s or early 2000s, I don't quite remember exactly when.

------



Description from ITN Archive on YouTube:

On 28 November 1990, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher left Downing Street for the last time, having been ousted following a rebellion in her own cabinet and party. After fighting back tears during a brief farewell speech outside Number Ten, the Prime Minister made her way to Buckingham Palace with her husband, Denis Thatcher, to offer her resignation to Queen Elizabeth II. That done, the Thatchers made their way to their new residence, 11 Hambledon Place, in Dulwich. Speaking to the press on the driveway, Mrs Thatcher joked about having traded Number 10 for Number 11. And she said she would be in the House of Commons the following day, to organise her office as a backbench MP.

[Brigantia]

Posted by Tintin (here)
Aside: I was walking through Chester Square (Belgravia) after work one evening on the way to The Orange Brewery - a very good pub, still, by the way - and she walked right past me followed by her female bodyguard. This may have been either the late 1990s or early 2000s, I don't quite remember exactly when.

That reminds me of my 'Thatcher Cabinet' moment - walking in central London one day, in the late 80s I think, and passed Francis Pym, who held top Cabinet posts including Foreign, Defence and Northern Ireland Secretary, and Leader of the House of Commons. He didn't even have a bodyguard.

[Tintin]

Posted by Brigantia (here)

Posted by Tintin (here)
Aside: I was walking through Chester Square (Belgravia) after work one evening on the way to The Orange Brewery - a very good pub, still, by the way - and she walked right past me followed by her female bodyguard. This may have been either the late 1990s or early 2000s, I don't quite remember exactly when.

That reminds me of my 'Thatcher Cabinet' moment - walking in central London one day, in the late 80s I think, and passed Francis Pym, who held top Cabinet posts including Foreign, Defence and Northern Ireland Secretary, and Leader of the House of Commons. He didn't even have a bodyguard.

How cool

Another anecdote but unrelated to politics but perhaps interesting: on the London Overground back in 2016 heading towards Brockley station and I was chatting with my then housemate, Gloria, who is an actress. We alight and she's terribly excited: "Do you know who was stood right next to us?" "No, do tell!" was my response. "Charlotte Rampling!" who was clinging on to the ceiling mounted hand supports, and reading a book. (Quite the feat as those of us know this from experience could attest to.) I'd never noticed. Gloria could hardly contain herself though. That certainly made her trip I think

[avid]

Reading whilst strap-hanging? Good grief, I was too busy kneeing the gropers in those days, good exercise though.🙄

[Tintin]

Posted by avid (here)
Reading whilst strap-hanging? Good grief, I was too busy kneeing the gropers in those days, good exercise though.🙄

"strap-hanging": ah, thankyou, that's the phrase I was really after My diminutive yet brilliant and comparatively strong sister bypassed the kneeing malarkey and just shoved some berk right off the train once upon a time for pestering her; Mile End tube I think it was. No messing