300 not out

Two hundred articles ago, I wrote that “I hope that we have enough material to provide another hundred articles.”  This Friday’s article, a podcast on my friend and colleague Paul Wyand, will be my three hundredth article.

Since August 2010, I have written about British Movietone News, GTV9 and ABV2 in Melbourne at the start of television in Australia in the mid 1950’s, UPITN, Motorsport, a series of articles on my Colleagues and a strand of articles called Cameraman tales about the sometimes humourous, sometimes tragic tales I have either witnessed or I have had recounted to me about incidents in the life of cameramen from as long ago as the 1930’s.  Recently I’ve recorded over forty podcast episodes about Movietone called “The Movietone Years”.

What I never imagined, when I started this website, was what would happen as a result.  Last January I travelled to Paris to record an interview for The 1952 Show for the BBC, recalling my and Movietone’s involvement in filming the Funeral of King George VI in 1952.  I was also interviewed for BBC Radio to mark the 50th Anniversary of the consecration of Coventry Cathedral.  I recorded a long interview for the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia’s Oral History Program about television in the 1950’s and early 60’s.  The website is being archived by the Australian Pandora Archive as well as the British Library.  Last year film historian Luke McKernan wrote an article about me and this website, entitled The Newsreel Man.

I have made contact with colleagues John Freney Mills and Don Calder from ABV2 and Ron Collins from Movietone.  I’ve heard from relatives of colleagues, where, sometimes this website is the only place that recalls their career.

Being interviewed for the BBC’s 1952 Show in 2012.

Perhaps one of the most pleasing aspects of researching articles for this site is discovering new information about friends and colleagues that I never knew before.  In my article on Richard S. Clark, my boss at UPMT,we discovered a photograph of him sat next to Walter Kronkite at the Nuremberg Trials, where they were both working for United Press.  We discovered Frank Few’s extraordinary exploits during the Guadalcanal campaign during World War Two.  Although I regularly met and exchanged letters with Ian Grant, I never knew he wrote the book Cameramen At War and during WW2 was a member of the Army Film and Photographic Unit – he was filming on D-Day and was the first cine cameraman to film the liberation of Bergen-Belsen.

I’ve also had great co-operation from friends, Derek Evans has written a series of articles about working at Movietone, New Decade, Southern Television and Visnews.  I’ve had co-operation, information and photos on articles from cameramen, Jan Borg, Ron Collins and Sir Mohinder Dhillon.

There are still articles to come, though I’m sure not enough for another hundred, I’m currently researching a series of articles, entitled: Movietone At War, and still have stories to tell about my time at UPITN.

As always I appreciate the feedback and interest from followers on twitter and Facebook and look forward to your thoughts in the future.

© Terence Gallacher and terencegallacher.com, 2013.  Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Terence Gallacher and terencegallacher.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.