Hindenburg Disaster Newsreel Footage (1937)

Genre:

Court | News

Intrigue:

Film of the famous airship explosion.

Plot Keywords:

Disaster | Airplane | Newsreel | Transportation Disaster | Blimp

Récompenses:

1 win

Avis des utilisateurs:

"Get this, Charlie! Get this, Charlie!"

Ensemble

Herbert Morrison

...

News reporter (voice)

Pays:

USA

Langue:

Anglais

Couleur:

Noir et Blanc

Son:

Mono

Lieux de tournage:

Lakehurst, New Jersey, USA

Anecdotes:

Five newsreel services (Fox, Hearst, Pathe, Paramount and Universal) sent staff cameramen to Lakehurst, New Jersey to photograph yet another routine arrival of the Hindenburg to the United States. As the airship arrived late due to bad weather, the Universal cameraman had already left to see a Broadway play in New York City. The remaining cameramen captured what has become some of the most famous news footage ever filmed.

Guillemet:

Newsreel reporter: It's practically standing still now. They've dropped ropes out of the nose of the ship, and it's been taken a hold of down on the field by a number of men. It's starting to rain again; the rain had slacked up a little bit. The back motors of the ship are just holding it, just enough to keep it from...
[he Hindenberg suddenly explodes]
Newsreel reporter: It burst into flames! Get out of the way! Get out of the way! Get this, Charlie! Get this, Charlie! It's fire and it's crashing! It's crashing terrible! Oh, my! Get out of the way, please! It's burning, bursting into flames and is falling on the mooring mast, and all the folks agree that this is terrible. This is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world! Oh, it's crashing...
[...]

Connexions De Film:

Référencé sur Employee of the Month (2006)

"Get this, Charlie! Get this, Charlie!"

It's extraordinary to hear Herbert Morrison's classic journalistic instinct coming into play almost immediately after the LZ 129 Hindenburg spectacularly erupted into flames on May 6, 1937 at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. The narration starts off with a routine introduction, with Morrison sounding a bit bored, as the Zeppelin comes in to the mooring dock; then – unexpectedly – "it burst into flames! Get out of the way! Get out of the way! Get this, Charlie; Get this, Charlie!" At this point, the 31-year-old Chicago reporter (on assignment from WLS radio station) thought of nothing but capturing the moment for all prosperity, in the process immortalising himself and making the Hindenburg disaster one of the most recognisable air disasters in history. Though Morrison's on-the-scene commentary has become inseparable from the newsreel images of the Hindenburg's fate, the images and audio were recorded entirely separately, and were not synchronised until many years later; most newsreels of the day accompanied the footage with over-dramatic title cards or studio-recorded narration.

After watching 'The Zeppelin Hindenburg (1936),' a rare compilation of amateur footage that covers one of the airship's successful trans-Atlantic crossings, I was prompted to seek out the more exciting footage that has burnt itself into history. Since there are many newsreels of the disaster to be found on the internet, I watched a brief selection: 'Hindenburg Explodes (1937),' filmed by Pathé cameramen; 'Hindenburg Explodes, Scores Dead (1937),' released by Universal Newsreels (even though their cameraman wasn't present at the incident) and two alternative clips with Morrison's commentary dubbed over the footage. In one of the clips, Morrison's voice is surprisingly high, suggesting incredible panic and anxiety, though this can likely be attributed to the footage being recorded at a slower frame-rate, meaning that playback has been misleadingly sped up. Engineer Charlie Nielsen also played a crucial role in capturing the incident, lowering the cutting head back to the recording disc after it was dislodged by the shockwave from the explosion. In total, 36 people lost their lives in the disaster – and Charlie got it, all right!