Grandpa's Film Archive: Act One

I recently wrote and posted a video about my grandfather's collection of slides, home movies and film projection and editing equipment that my cousins gave me (see November 24, 2021, "Grandpa's Film Archive: Opening Scene"). Today I will provide a a more detailed look at the trove.

Looking through the items, the first thing I learned about my grandfather, Al Bogert, that I didn't already know was that he was damn good at record keeping. He was my mother's father, and he died in 1986 when I was 21 years old. I only saw him a few times a year at best, as my grandparents lived in New Jersey, and I grew up in Connecticut.

The first item I looked at more closely was the small filing cabinet drawer, which is jam-packed with index cards.

"Is there a card for each film reel in the collection?!" I wondered out loud. I thumbed through the cards filed behind the BASEBALL heading. There's one for my great-uncle, Bill Lohrman, who pitched nine seasons in the big leagues, on teams including the Philadelphia Phillies, the New York Giants, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds.

There's also one for Carl Hubbell, a Hall of Fame pitcher who wheeled and dealed alongside my great-uncle for the Giants from 1928 to 1943.

"Am I sitting on lost footage that could have some value to hardcore baseball fans?" I thought to myself.

There were plenty of other headings that intrigued me. RODEO + THRILL CIRCUS, for instance.

I've been to one rodeo -- during my honeymoon in Jackson Hole in 1997 -- and had a great time. I've been to a few circuses, and always had fun. I also thoroughly enjoyed the Joie Chitwood Thrill Show when I was a teenager, at the Big E in West Springfield, Mass. I love that my grandfather was into that same kind of stuff!

There are dozens of reels of film, of varying sizes, in the crates that my cousin gave me. I realized I needed to prioritize things to get digitized, in order to share with friends and family. Looking more closely at the trove of films, I realized that, contrary to what I initially thought, they're not all things my grandfather shot with his camera. For instance, there is official NASA footage of the Apollo 11 mission.

I've love to see that moon-landing footage! More important, though, is the reel labeled, "1955 VACATION TRIP WITH JOAN." I believe that's the trip that my mother took with my grandparents out West. There is also a reel indicating that my sister, Beth, and my cousin Gail (who handed over all of these great treasures), are featured. There is also one labled "BEHMS," which is the name of a farm my mother and her parents used to visit during summer vacations in upstate New York.

(There are actually two reels of that Western vacation.)

In addition to the old movie reels, there is a box of my grandfather's slides.

My cousin Wayne's daughter, Rachel, had some slides digitized a number of years ago. I have copies of some of those on a thumb drive. I'm guessing that at least some of the ones in this box, however, are ones I don't have.

Other items include a projector and a film editing/splicing rig. The thing that has really captivated me, though, is a Steno pad in which my grandfather chronicled his day-to-day life from 1978, when he was 74 years old, until shortly before he died in 1986.

His entries are short and to the point, talking about outings to go bowling or fishing, taking neighbors to doctor appointments, eating out at restaurants, taking vacations. Each one is accompanied by the mileage on his car for that given day. Looking through these journals, I had an epiphany: I had been thinking about transcribing my pandemic diaries, but figured people would find them long-winded and boring. But I realized that I could include my grandfather's diaries with my own, as well as those of my other grandfather, George Brigham, Sr., whom I never met. He wrote his in the 1920s.

And so a new project was launched....

Make sure to check back as I try to figure out how to look at the footage on these old reels.

Grandpa's Film Archive: Opening Scene

I've become the Library of Congress for both sides of my family, the repository for old photo albums, diaries and instruments. I like this job; it suits me. I love poring over pictures of, words by and information about long-gone ancestors, trying to understand better who they were, what their times were like.

Over the years, my cousins on the Brigham side have given me their father's banjo; family photo albums, including one that our grandfather filled with photos from trips to Europe, Russia and Japan; and diaries written in both English and French by our grandfather. I also have a photo album compiled by a great-uncle on my grandmother's side (the LaVentures) who I never met. It's filled with photos of equestrian events and military camps from WWII and it's absolutely fascinating.

From my cousins on the Bogert side of the family, I have inherited an accordion that belonged to our grandfather and, most recently, a treasure trove of home movies, slides and film equipment that also belonged to him. That's the subject of today's post, and others to follow.

(My grandparents at what appears to be a terrific picnic.)

I've written about my grandfather, Al Bogert, before (see January 5, 2015, "Take My Grandfather, Please"). He was a fun-loving guy who livened things up when he and my grandmother would visit my family, usually around the holidays. He would pull quarters from behind our ears, do card tricks, take part in games, play the piano and brighten up the whole place. My grandmother, Mildred, was sweet as could be and much quieter, but she was always quick to smile and laugh along.

Grandpa Bogert was good with his hands, and fixed TVs and radios on the side to make money. He also loved trains; one of my fondest memories of him is hanging out in his attic with my brother, running his model trains around the room. Perhaps my grandfather's greatest passion, other than family, was making home movies and taking pictures. I have a clear vision of him taking photos with a Polaroid in my childhood backyard. I was fascinated when the photo would emerge from the bottom of the camera, and so excited to see what it would look like when it had fully developed after a minute or two.

My mother talks a lot about how much she enjoyed watching her father make movies, especially around Christmastime. With the help of my grandmother, my grandfather would make movies of himself dressed as Santa, emerging from the fireplace (a cardboard prop). These movies were silent, so he would film intertitles indicating what the story was, and then offering credits at the end. If he was driving somewhere, and he saw a train approaching, he would call out, "Mil! Mil! Get the camera!" according to my mom. My grandmother deserves more credit than she gets for being his sometime-cinematographer, co-director and craft service provider.

Below is a short video I made soon after my cousins handed over our grandfather's film archive. Stay tuned for updates as I go through stuff more closely, and select movies to convert to digital files.