Star Wars fans rejoice! It’s May 4th, an excellent excuse to show off your memorabilia and wish your friends “May the 4th be with you!”
If only we could celebrate by taking a ride in the spaceship recliner featured in the 1982 Neiman Marcus Christmas Book, complete with a mini bar and wireless phone.
Take a look at the chair in action in the following news story on the 1982 Christmas Book. Also featured in the video: dog sunglasses!
Today is #NationalPuppyDay so we’re bringing you a story about a puppy, only this Puppy is a bear!
After “nipping” a man, Puppy the Sun Bear was charged with a potential death sentence. The judge did not sentence Puppy and he was allowed to live out his days scarfing down his favorite snacks of fruit and Dr. Pepper in a DFW backyard.
All of our remaining undigitized UMatic tapes (1,924 total) are currently at an off-site vendor. We’re very excited to begin showing you more footage from the late 1970s and 1980s soon, including the first story that aired about Puppy in 1983.
[News Clip: Bear trial] on The Portal to Texas History.
On March 30, 1964, four months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, his Civil Rights Act finally entered into the Senate for debate only to be filibustered for over two months. In late May, just a few blocks from the Texas School Book Depository, Clarence Broadnax decided to grab a late lunch at the Piccadilly Cafeteria in downtown Dallas. Upon standing in line, he was quickly approached by employees and told that black people weren’t served at the Piccadilly, but Broadnax refused to leave and was taken to jail. Released immediately, he returned to the Piccadilly and was arrested a second time. This time, they held him until the restaurant closed. Upon returning to the closed Piccadilly, he was met with local reporters and interviewed about the incident. Dallas NAACP leader, Juanita Craft, saw the interview and contacted Clarence that night to organize an estimated 350 protesters to meet him at the Piccadilly the following day, May 30th.
[News Clip: Demonstrators] on The Portal to Texas History.
Protesters gathered at the Piccadilly Cafeteria for 28 straight days. Led by Broadnax, along with the Reverend Earl Allen and Bishop College student Ted Armstrong, they endured several injunctions to leave, along with hundreds of counter-protestors, including the Jaycees of Dallas and Mississippi who marched a street-wide Confederate flag down Commerce Street.
[News Clip: Hearing] on The Portal to Texas History.
During the protests, on June 19, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed both houses of Congress. Following an agreement made by the manager of the Piccadilly Cafeteria and Rev. Allen, the demonstrations ceased on June 27. On July 2, President Johnson signed the act into law.
We were excited to re-discover this footage and we hope that it will shed new light on an often forgotten portion of the Civil Rights Movement in North Texas. We are happy to report that footage of the Piccadilly Cafeteria protests will eventually be included in the Dallas Holocaust Museum’s new “Upstanders” exhibit upon the opening of their new permanent location.
Further resources:
View additional footage of the Piccadilly protests and their corresponding news scripts in the NBC 5/KXAS (WBAP) News Collection.
View a 2008 panel discussion at the Sixth Floor Museum featuring Rev. Allen and Mr. Broadnax
Would you buy remaindered candy for your sweetheart on Valentine’s Day? In 1982, people “poured” through the doors of the Candy Outlet seeking discount goodies for themselves and their loved ones.
Today we celebrate National Popcorn Day with NBC 5/KXAS footage celebrating a beloved Dallas popcorn seller. Marvin (Pete) Colgrove volunteered selling popcorn at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in Dallas, from 1984 through his last year of life in 1994. The money earned from the sales went to the Volunteer’s Auxiliary which purchased equipment for the hospital and provided activities for the children.
Archival footage from the NBC 5/KXAS Television News Archive was recently featured prominently in several television productions. These uses of archival news footage highlight the diverse and creative uses for footage, as well as the significance of preserving historical footage for future use. In November 2017, Sundance TV aired a two-part documentary series on the 1959 Clutter family murders that inspired Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Although the murders took place in Kansas, 1950’s archival footage from the north Texas NBC affiliate was used generically to illustrate various events in the film.“Cold Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders” was part of an entire weekend of true crime programming on the Sundance channel.
True crime programming continues to be a steady source of licensing activity in NBC 5/KXAS Television News Archive. In last half of 2017 footage from the archive was used in support of True Conviction and 1980’s: The Deadliest Decade (both airing on the Investigation Discovery channel).
Footage form the archive was also featured on Vice News, a documentary news program airing weekly on HBO. News programming schedules are often on tight deadlines, which can make the use of archival footage difficult. In the case of the Vice News request we had only a 24 hour turn around time to deliver the master files to producers in New York. A turn around time like that is usually impossible for us as it takes significant time to locate the physical media, digitize it and produce digital files for producers. In this instance the footage requested (coverage of the 1980 church shooting in Daingerfield, Texas) was already digitized and accessible through the digital library.
We are also continuing work on several other major documentary projects which will be completed in 2018.
Today we share a two part news story that provides a snapshot of how Dallas perceived the threat of AIDS in November 1985. The logbook title given to this story is “AIDS/Lifestyle,” which references the belief that the gay community, one of the first populations hit by the AIDS epidemic, caused the disease with their “alternate lifestyle.” In the 1980s and 1990s, those afflicted with HIV and AIDS experienced extreme ostracization, due to fear that they could easily spread the disease through casual contact. Reporter Bob Siegel’s story attempts to dispel these fears by putting a human face on the AIDS epidemic. As a doctor interviewed for the piece states, “The question is whether we choose to compound the epidemic of illness with an epidemic of fear and of ignorance and repression.”
Our current exhibit, Threads of Remembrance, further explores Dallas’s response to the AIDS crisis. It can be viewed Monday – Saturday (excepting Thanksgiving weekend) from 9 AM – 5 PM through December 15, 2017. Or you can browse our online exhibit.
You’ll notice a few visual flaws in the footage presented here. These flaws result from the recording medium, 3/4 tape, also called “U-matic” tape, which is prone to significant degradation. Luckily we were able to save this important story before a total loss.
[News Clip: AIDS/ Lifestyle (Part 1)] on The Portal to Texas History.
[News Clip: AIDS/ Lifestyle (Part 2)] on The Portal to Texas History.
Producers for the ESPN “30 for 30” series contacted UNT Special Collections this year for help in locating footage of the 1988 Dallas Carter Cowboys football team. Archivists working with the collection provided extensive archival footage which was eventually incorporated into the film, “What Carter Lost,” which aired on ESPN on August 24. The story of the 1988 Carter Cowboy’s is both fascinating and tragic– and perfect example of the way sports can be a reflection of social and cultural values. Much of the footage which was digitized in preparation for use in the documentary is now available online in its original format. Footage for this production was primarily from the years 1988-1989, and was still on the original Beta SP cassettes. Footage research in this time period relies on the use of video log books. The log books preserve a record of every segment that aired each day during multiple daily news broadcasts. Although the log books are digitized, they can be difficult to use and navigate, as this example shows. Stories are often only identified with one or two word “slug lines” which in this example was “Carter Parents.”
[News Clip: Players Arrested] on The Portal to Texas History.
The “Year in Review” compilation is a tradition of many news organizations, created as a way to look back on the top stories of the previous year. The earliest “Year in Review” in the WBAP/KXAS archives was compiled from 16mm footage recorded throughout the year 1952.
The “Year in Review” compilations present some challenges to archivists working with this collection. One challenge is description— the majority of early film footage is silent, and we have not been able to locate scripts associated with most “Year in Review” reels. Many of the segments in the reel are then difficult if not impossible to identify. Another challenge is how to best present this content online for researchers. While most news segments are less than three minutes long, the “Year in Review” reel can be well over 10 minutes in length, making it more difficult to locate relevant footage.
We will continue to experiment with different ways to describe and present this content online, and welcome your feedback and questions.
Year in Review – 1952 (film, 10 min)
Year in Review – 1953, 1954, 1955 (film 27 min, 34 sec)
Year in Review – 1956-1957 (film, 27 min, 34 sec)
Year in Review 1958 (film, 18 min, 15 sec)
Year in Review 1959 (film, 21 min)
Year in Review (News) – 1961 (script)
Year in Review (Sports) – 1961 (script)
It’s France’s la Fête nationale (“national holiday,” otherwise known as “Bastille Day” to English speakers) and in celebration of our nation’s longtime ally, we’re sharing two scripts that document when Dallas and the eastern-central French city of Dijon became sister cities in October 1957. Notice the news anchor’s pronunciation notes handwritten in pencil on the script. We haven’t yet digitized this footage but we will update this entry once we have! If you’d like to support the on-going digitization of the NBC 5/KXAS news archive, please consider donating.
The visiting French dignitary mentioned in the script, Félix Kir, was mayor of Dijon from 1945 to his death in 1968. Kir was a parish priest who became involved with the French Resistance during World War II. He was arrested and sentenced to death by the Gestapo for helping 5,000 prisoners of war escape the Langvic camp but was eventually released because of his position. After the war and his election to mayor, Kir became an advocate of the “twinning” movement wherein geographically distant cities formed a social bond in order to promote peace and encourage trade. A local Burgundy drink traditionally known as blanc-cassis was renamed in honor of Kir, who was fond of serving it to visitors. A glass of kir consists of white burgundy wine (traditionally aligoté) mixed with crème de cassis, a blackcurrant liqueur.
Dallas is also “twinned” with five other cities: Brno (Czech Republic), Monterrey (Mexico), Riga (Latvia), Saratov (Russia), and Taipei (Taiwan).
On October 13, 1957, KXAS was on hand to witness the many French celebrities arriving in Dallas to attend Neiman-Marcus’s lavish “French Fortnight” and the twinning ceremony:
