Stringer: Portrait Of A Newsreel (1979)

Heat. Heat. On November 15th, 1932, the Motorcycle Club of Toledo rode to the edge of town to make a newsreel story with Mike Giddinger. Fox Movie Ton had approved the story with one condition. It had to be more than an ordinary motorcycle race. Well, that was no problem for Mike. He never did anything that was ordinary. Mike found a farmer who agreed to let the men race to his turkey flock, catch a turkey, and return to the starting [Music] point. As the motorcycles finished their run from the group of turkeys, they would come down this old lane to a gate. Then, as they passed, this is the camera that I used to to photograph them at the finish line. Being out here where we made the news wheel story of the motorcycles catching turkeys today is a considerable difference. It's a matter of fact. It's a bit shocking, quite surprising. The turkeys are gone, the fence is gone, the farmer's gone. I'm still here. How do you do ladies and gentlemen? This is Graeme McName broadcasting the latest event as a Universal News Real talking [Music] reporter. For more than 20 years until the beginning of television, Americans saw the outside world through the eye of a newsreel camera. Before each Hollywood feature, the news reel brought images of disaster, violence, and the absurd. Many of these came from the camera of Mike Giddinger. Mike was a stringer, a freelance cameraman who shot film for all the major news reels. For freelance men, money came only when the film was used. And if no news was breaking, Mike would search for the absurd. And he'd usually find it. The news reels always took a fancy to what was termed a novelty and that would cover animals, children or odd inventions. Fort Wayne, Indiana police get a preview of the traffic eye, a camera sleuth that convicts traffic violators. The driver controls the shutter from the wheel. He sets the lens and we're ready for the test. The speedometer on the fender is in range of the camera and registers the speed as the police chase a culprit. Be careful how you weave on the highways for from now on it's your word against the camera and pictures don't lie. Oh yeah, buddy. Tell it to the judge. But your honor, I was only doing 20. Why that old car won't do 40? Besides, I had my hand out. That's what he says. Well, you better come across with your fine partner. The traffic eye has the goods on you. Like the traffic eye, this anti-skid device never caught on. The idea was simple. Mount a steel runner under your car. A simple press of the floor button and the runner drops into position, ready to guide your car through the turn. Back on the straight road, just pump the floor pedal and the runner returns to position. The advantages are obvious if you drive on dirt roads. For people with small apartments might found this space-saving convenience. A kitchen table, perfect for entertaining. And after the guests are gone, just cover the attached stove, lift the tabletop, and here's a beautiful bathtub. Slide the tub out and you're ready to bathe. [Music] A newspaper article led Mike to this man, the inventor of the ultimate energy saver, a current generating perpetual motion machine. With a perpetual motion machine in your living room, you'd have electricity light lamps while you work. Heat your iron or power your vacuum cleaner. Activated by a metal cylinder, this rumbling collection of chains, gears, wires, and storage batteries shook the floor so much that Mike had to shoot the story twice to get a steady image on film. Bulletproof materials developed by Toledo's glass companies were a regular source of newsre invention stories, and there was a steady stream of people willing to trust the glass for a chance to be in the movies. proof that the female of the species is just as daring as the male. Even Mike spent some time on the other side of the glass. Before I got into the newsreel activity, I was um managing uh dry cleaning and laundry. And uh there come a time when we sold it. Then I about the same time read an ad in a magazine to become a motion picture photographer. And uh I answered the ad and it wound up that I took a correspondence course. And uh then I after finishing the course, the uh school sent a sheet listing the newsreel companies that uh I was to contact, which I did. Then it turned out that my immediately my first assignment was um a bathing beauty contest at Cedar Point, Ohio. [Music] It was rather simple that you couldn't do anything with bathing beauties except to let them [Music] pray. Anything out of the ordinary was a good bet for a story. And when a troop of performing dogs stayed with one of Mike's neighbors, he grabbed his camera for a shot of the blindfolded tightroppe [Music] walker. The first recreational vehicles were novelties. This group called themselves the tin can tourists of the world. And when they held their annual convention in Sunduski, Mike was there to record it. Budl's restaurant, the famous restaurant where one could be insulted. For years, the Budluke restaurant attracted people with their circus atmosphere that included mistreating their customers in every conceivable way. No one ever knew how their food would be delivered or how their cream would be served or what other plans the waiters might have dreamed up for them. Now, this is a ketchup. They put squirt ketchup on this man's head. Then they put the plunger on it. As a matter of fact, they couldn't get the plunger off. They had to punch a hole in it. About once a week, the waiters would throw someone out of the restaurant. Caught with silverware in his pockets. And they had a habit of filling your pockets before you left and then they'd catch you outside. An early attempt at central air conditioning caught Mike's eye in 1934. An entire office moved into a huge refrigerator for a week during a summer heatwave. A shopping trip with a pet pig was a natural. Mike followed with his camera as the pig went in and out of stores and stopped for a [Music] snack. Strikes weren't usually novelty material, but Mike found an exception. grade school students on strike protesting the firing of their teacher. [Music] One of the most unique uh uh timely stories in my career was the blizzard in northern Michigan, Munising, Michigan. It had appeared on radio and in the newspapers and I wired uh the news company to let me go and make a make a picture and they suggested that I wait till it get closer. Well, two of my friends talked me into going anyway that traveled considerable with me. So, we packed up and left Toledo at 4:00 in the afternoon. We drove all night and made our way the next noon up into Munising and up through the blizzard. And in many instances, we followed the snow plows. And in many instances, the snow was 40 ft high. So when we got into Munising on location, I asked the editor if he still wanted the story. Uh I wasn't sure whether I was the only cameraman there yet or not. So he w remember I said when I wired I said hello and I asked him for an assignment and he wired back and he says hello yourself. Upper Michigan towns are marooned by the worst snowstorm in years. At munising they wear smiles even though getting food to homes cut off by the drifts is a serious problem. Crews dig through 20ft drifts to get aid to those who are isolated off the rooftops. It's an unexpected holiday for the kids, just an amateur. Blizzards could be more savage. Shooting in 20 below zero winds on the Sunduski Bay Bridge, Mike froze both of his ears and had to be hospitalized. Another frozen bridge gave Mike an unexpected opportunity for a novelty story. It makes no difference how good a driver you are. This is how you feel when you hit Highland Bridge around the first freeze of winter. The road's solid ice and the best way to drive over under these conditions is to walk. But a few of the boys out of work make a little hay before the sun shines too hard and pick up some honest dollars helping the drivers get started. The approaches are upgraded and the cars can't get any traction. That's why it's such tough sledding. The police will be here later to straighten things out, but meantime there's plenty doing. Unexpected opportunities weren't always light-hearted stories. New Year's Day, there was a sheet of ice on the highway and my children were outdoors playing and I could hear them hollering that there had been an accident. So they come and told me that there was an accident across the street and I had just put away a hand camera cleaning and checking it. So it was loaded and I took my hand camera. I don't know why because I couldn't imagine an accident worth of news coverage so close to home. But when I had gotten to the uh grocery store, there was a car with three children pinned in the back seat. The car had skidded up against a high fence and the door was against the fence and a high wire had fell utility pole. They hit the utility pole and the wire had broke and fell on the other door and it was arcing excessive at the ground and uh I started taking pictures and to my right I saw a body and uh it seemed like his shoes were separated from his body and his hands were separated. Uh after I had shot the footage and got in closer, it happened to be a neighbor who was a was not aware of the hightension line and he thought that he could save the children and in so doing he grabbed this hight tension line. I wired the editor after I had exposed the film what I had and what I should do with it and I was ordered to ship it immediately. That particular story never did appear in the news reel. Several months later, it appeared in Universal's Breathless Moments. It was a subject that was contributed to the cameraman. The thrills of a cameraman. Rivers swollen by thors and torrential rains. The Ohio River floods of the late 30s were major newsre stories. For Mike Gettinger, the floods meant overnight drives through storms and high water. Getting around in flood areas was another major problem. Mike once lost three finished rolls of film when his boat capsized. The floods also meant extra money. As a freelance man, Mike wasn't obligated to shoot for just one company. One year Palmroy, Ohio had uh was the only town that had seven blocks submerged in water. And as I remember the staff men all were waiting at Cincinnati after there was a picture in the paper and I did it freelance all the way. I made uh five freelance stories for five news reels. After I had submit submitted the film, I decided to um submit five expense accounts of which I did and they were paid and there was nothing said. I recall on the footage that I had made for the 1936 floods, for the 4 hours about that I put in, I collected $640. The labor strikes of the 30s were another subject that relied heavily on the freelance cameraman, and they were the most dangerous to cover. Two people were killed during the strike at the Electric Auto Light Company in Toledo, and Mike's job was to stay as close to the action as he could. What you would run into with the auto light strike so far as the cameramen were concerned would be the unexpected. You never knew at all where there was going to be any trouble. And where there was trouble, there was always something flying in the [Music] air. The Monroe Steel Strike was another example of um you might could call it, as history does have it, it was bloodshed. Uh the thing that uh was hazardous in the Monroe steel strike was gas bombs that were steel pointed and when they would hit a person it would break the flesh. Not only was there hazards in the flying gas shells, the vigilantes picked up the automobiles that were planted in the lane toward the factory and they turned them over and actually half of them they just pushed over in the river raisin. Mike covered the Monroe Steel Strike for Path A, but when his equipment broke down, a Fox Movie Tone man loaned him his backup camera. Mike shot the story with a borrowed camera while the Movie Tone crew was forced into their sound truck by tear gas. Strike Breakers are operating the plant of the Federal Trioing Company in Toledo while company police protect the property. Four striking unions. Mike once faced an unexpected problem with violence. The use of strike. There was gunfire and shooting and it only happened it only happened a very short period of time and by the time I got an assignment to go out there was no violence at all and I had spent a number of days with the strikers and it was evident that uh I wasn't going to be able to get any violence. So, I asked the strikers if they would mind uh throwing rocks at each other or throwing something at each other. They could hide behind a pile of ties and bob up and throw. Well, they faithfully did it, but then that wasn't enough action to make a news real story. So, I suggested maybe they could chase each other. Well, they agreed to do that willingly, but they didn't agree on who would chase who. They worked the chasing bar part out and uh then they succeeded in giving me a good chasing scene. Then I had to remain until the end of the day at which time the strike strike uh breakers came in on a gondola. They moved across the uh lot real slow. And in this gondola they had loaded a lot of ammunition things that they threw at each other. And the strikers uh told me that's what they do. And if I could get an elevated shot, I could I could get the picture. Well, that would be enough to make a newsreel story. Staging all types of stories was common practice in the 30s with the company's approval. They would encourage a cameraman to u let's say manipulate or put things together to make a story uh something that uh would be funny. They were always interested in something that had a laugh to it. Then again, the picture material or the subject matter had to be uh quite unusual in nature because there are a lot of laughs that wouldn't be accepted nationally that might work good locally. Uh, for example, at one time I took a pair of skates, three rockets, and I found a man that would put the skates on and wear the rockets. The idea was just drafted out of just common thinking. The problem would be to get somebody game enough to wear the to wear the skates and and let them and wear and hold the rockets. Prince Michela straps on his rocket invention that is to upset the old technique of ice skating. The rockets filled with high explosives are ready and the prince gets away with a bang. It takes more than snow to quench the fire of genius. No one carried any further. You could have you could have propelled yourself on skates with rockets. Mark feature stories that involved animals was always a very good success with news reels as well as magazine reels. Um, and suddenly I thought of possibly having a cat and chickens put together on a on a hen's nest. So I took my equipment, went out uh East Toledo Pickle Road and stopped at a farmhouse where there was a little girl and some children and they told them what I'd like to have. We built a nest in a barrel. We set a fulls size barrel, laid it over so the sun would shine on the end. We took some stall and made a nest. They gathered some eggs and it so happened that uh right at the time they had some little chicks that was about a week old incubator and they had a pet cat. So the cat was very tame. We put the cat on the nest and the cat stayed on the nest and we put eggs on it and built the eggs around the cat and then I grabbed a shot of the cat sitting there with the eggs showing. Well, now the eggs had to hatch. So we tried some chickens and the little girl went and got some chickens and they put the chicken on the egg. I come to the point where I'd like to have the cat leave the nest and willingly come back on the nest. So I asked for a piece of bacon and they got me a piece of bacon and they called the cat when the camera was running and it was lying real comfortable and the cat moved up and left and I didn't follow the cat with the camera. The cat just ran out of the scene. Now the point to get the cat back on its own. So, while the camera wasn't running, uh, the little girl held the cat while I took the bacon and smeared a little bit on an egg. And then she stuck the cat in and the cat smelt the egg and wanted to get in there. So, I run to the camera quick and got the camera going. She dropped the cat and the cat ran right on the nest. So, we got the cat to return to the nest. Animals weren't always cooperative. Mike's wrestling match between a dog and a cat took dozens of shots to get enough fighting to edit into a story. [Music] Humans were easier to direct and Mike always had a new idea. I passed a bathing or I passed a um beauty salon one morning and I looked at an ad in the window and suddenly the idea occurred that how about putting men in the beauty salon instead of women. It used to be that barbers would complain when women came into the shop and now the girls are getting even. Sometimes they have to wait for hours until the men are all dialed up. Nothing's sacred to the fair sex anymore. Well, strikes me baldheaded. Look at this now. Husband's excuse will be, "Sorry, I'm late. I had to wait hours at the hairdress." The bulletproof cloth was um of course that was unbelievable. Uh the bulletproof cloth consisted of nothing more than a white pair of cover holes. Using a low power air rifle and pretending to drill and saw the cloth, Mike put together an outlandish story that was swallowed by an army officer who actually wrote for details on the cloth. Now if I were to ask how I happen to think of it, I I can't answer it. Those thoughts just come automatically. of the variety of sharp shooting news stories that I managed to get out through the 30s, I decided on using a oh little girl around 6 years old and uh I decided to pick on my first cousin who at that time was living in Michigan and she had never had a gun in her hand at all. [Applause] Daddy Lou Ginger, a big shot even though she's only a little girl. Her abilities even more remarkable when you consider the terrific pressure behind a cannon like that and how she seems to have solved the problem of recoil. She picked it up quite by accident, and she's not a bit spoiled by her new fame. As a matter of fact, she doesn't like it. She'd rather play with her doll than go shooting at it. Even the cameraman has a lot of confidence in her. Whoops. He missed. But just once. After all, she's only five and she makes up for it. He'll be a champ when she grows up. Sure is shooting. Mike's 82year-old grandmother was another sharpshooter. According to Universal's description, she vied in her early days in Texas with Calamity Jane and Annie Oakley. The filming technique was the same. A drop of oil was placed in her pistol to make it smoke. And the light bulbs held by her grandchildren were shot by a rifle out of camera range. The thought had come to me uh how could I really make a story on our highle bridge under construction and a bridge is a bridge and there are very few bridges that would stand out nationally as being worthy of news a national news release. So as time passed, I kept giving it thought how I could uh improve the uh value of a national release, show the bridge and put some unusual human interest. And that's that's how I got the idea of uh using the chorus girls. [Music] It was kind of hard for him to get any kind of rhythm without any sound. You know, this picture makes me laugh. I can't comment on it. You should have showed me the picture first. Well, today it would take a hell of a lot of nerve, wouldn't it? I don't think you could get the construction people to go along with you today, let alone people on the stage. See, those were the years where everybody was flexible.