Searching For Missing 1948

When East Hampton Town celebrated its tricentennial in 1948, Riborg Mann, a village resident who was an executive of Path‚ News, arranged to have a film crew on hand to record the parade and the historic pageant that followed.

Organizers of the 350th anniversary would very much like to see that old two-reel movie, to help in the planning of this year's celebration.

There's only one problem. The film has been missing for years.

"The last time I saw it was around 1950," said John Meeker, a retired East Hampton School District Superintendent, who narrated the film from a script written by Enez Whipple, then the director of Guild Hall.

"At that time it was kept at Village Hall, which was an old bank. They still had a vault where they kept some of the memorabilia. They lent it out to local organizations for several years until it disappeared."

"Everybody talks about it, but we haven't been able to find it," said Bruce Collins, who heads the commemorative celebration.

While the anniversary committee has searched for the film, it has apparently overlooked a valuable source right under its nose.

"We represent Path‚," said Joe Lauro, a partner in Historic Films, an archival service based at Goodfriend Park in East Hampton. "If anyone will have it, it will be us."

Mr. Lauro promised to research the newsreel company's archives to see if he could find the footage, but did not hold out great hope.

"A lot of that stuff has turned to dust," he said.

According to Mr. Lauro, Path‚ typically filmed national stories for its weekly newsreels shown at theaters across the country.

"But if a big event was going on in a certain area, they would shoot a special edition and only show it locally," he said.

Mr. Meeker doubts that many copies of the film were made.

"There's a possibility that some of it was shown as part of their news," he said, "but I think Riborg Mann . . . did it as a favor to the village."

The committee did receive another kind of pictorial windfall, however, when James Strong, the retired owner of the Strong Insurance Agency, turned over about 30 slides he took on Parade Day 1948.

Mr. Strong, home from the University of Michigan, grabbed his Argus 35-millimeter camera and strolled down to the parade route on what was a bright, sunny day.

"I sat in one spot and took pictures of the parade going by," he said. "It was only one roll."

And a good roll it was. His photographs captured floats including impeccably designed models of Home, Sweet Home, the East Hampton Methodist Church, and a working blacksmith shop.

There are shots of Judson Bannister, the East Hampton Village Mayor at the time, the East Hampton Town Trustees riding, appropriately, in a dory, military honor guards, and Girl Scouts. There is a fine one of Norman Gould, an East Hampton dairyman, milking a brown Swiss cow while riding on a float.

The anniversary committee has had prints made of the slides.

"We want to put them in a book and show them to groups in town and let them know what was done," said James Brooks, chairman of the parade committee. "When you look at the work that went into some of those floats, it's amazing."

While the anniversary committee has been so far unable to track down the professional film, it has landed a pair of amateur films, one of the 1984 parade, sent by Mary Louise Crommett of Tarpon Springs, Fla., and another with brief footage from the 1924 celebration of the 275th anniversary, showing a pageant on which some of the later celebrations were loosely based.

"Whether [the 1948 film] can be used in any capacity, I don't know," said Mr. Collins. "The problem of trying to show it is, it goes by very quickly."

Averill Geus, a committee member, agreed the parade passed by too fast, but said the film provided valuable glimpses of a number of other events that took place during the celebration, including a pageant that followed, a clambake overlooking Gardiner's Bay in Springs, and the dedication of the town's Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett.

"The only thing missing is the strawberry festival in Wainscott," Mrs. Geus said.

Yet another film showing portions of the 1924 celebration and scenes from East Hampton life in the '20s that was made by Hamilton King, an East Hampton artist, has so far eluded the committee.

But Ralph Carpentier, a member of the East Hampton Historical Society, said he believed the film would be found in the society's collection.

"We showed that film at the firehouse in 1980, or maybe a little before that, and it was turned over to the society," said Mr. Carpentier. "Maybe they don't know they have it."

According to Mrs. Geus, for years, "it was stored in the basement of The Star, but Everett Rattray discovered the stuff was highly flammable."

The editor, fearing the film could burst into flame and destroy the paper's wooden building and its collection of old newspapers and photographs, had it removed for reprinting onto more stable film stock in the late 1950s, Mrs. Geus said.

Mrs. Geus said there was other archival material as well that would be useful to the committee.

"There was a photographer from Life magazine," she said. "This woman was everywhere, she was on top of buildings, she was on her stomach, taking pictures all day. And no one has ever seen a single shot."

Mr. Brooks said he had already written to Life, requesting a check of its archives for any material it may have.

"I'm very surprised they didn't make more copies of this stuff," he said.