12/01/2024
Back in June I published an article about three very rare 16mm films that were discovered by NSSA-NSCA member Gerald Quinn in a trash dumpster when Re*****on closed their Conneticut location and moved to Wilmington, Delaware. Suspecting that those films may be of value, Gerald boxed and sent them to The National Shooting Complex in San Antonio.
A few months later, I, along with Phil Murray and Matt Smith were doing exhibit work in the museum and noticed the films on the shelf. I read on one of the reels “First National S***t Matches, 1935 Cleveland”. That film is clearly of historical significance, as well as the reel titled, “Lordship, 1935. The third reel was titled “G.A.H. & National S***t Cleveland 1935”. That reel contained footage from the Grand American Trapshoot in Vandalia, also from 1935. I suggested to museum curator, Glynne Moseley, that we should get the films immediately digitized to preserve the history. These were previously unknown to exist and have most likely not been viewed in nearly 90 years. We had valuable clay target shooting history in our hands.
With priority speed, we sent them to one of the best-known film digitizing services in the country. And with equally fast speed they were returned with a note that said the films were too far deteriorated to even consider running or digitizing. We tried two other similar services, all with the same result. Typical nitro-cellulose film has a life span of 70 years, when stored in ideal conditions. These were at least 90 years old and were most likely stored in a closet. Were we just going to write them off as lost history?
We were not ready to give up. What did we have to lose? So, we decided to try it ourselves. Now to find a 16mm projector to borrow. That was not as easy to do as we thought. After months of searching, we found two at a local high school football coaches office that had not seen the light of day in 30 years. Success! Or so we thought. We fired one up and heard that familiar flutter sound we all remember from high school. We turned on the lamp, and NOTHING. A blown bulb. On to the second one. It worked! We started to load the reels, and saw the films literally break at every turn. We started hand feeding short segments of film through the projector to see something. Plus, the deteriorating film was throwing white power dust everywhere, typical of film in its last stage of life. But we were able to get numerous long sections to project.
There in front of us, probably seen for the first time since 1935, was actual footage of the first NSSA World Shoot. Our hearts skipped a beat as we watched history from long ago being made and previously unseen. But we still had the issues of continuous breakage and white powder being everywhere. How were we going to do this?
We knew that we had ONE SHOT to do this as the film could not survive more than one trip through the sprockets and light. We set everything up, checked and double checked, threw the switch and hoped for the best. We soon discovered that a take up reel would not work, and we literally let the film run onto the floor in a tangled mess. But we were getting images a bit at a time. It took us a full day to run a 10-minute reel with all the breaks and stops. After over two days, we had many small pieces captured digitally.
We then took those pieces and carefully and tediously reassembled them in an editing program. Are they a bit rough? Definitely. Are they significant history? Most defiantly. Are they now the only viewable copy? Yes. But we have them! What did we see? We totally saved the flavor of all three events, showing the fun, the fashionable clothing styles, the smiles, the first vendor row, the awards ceremony, and the champions, including a 13-year-old Dick Shaughnessy in his first major win, a 16-year-old Robert Stack, and 28-year-old L.S. Pratt, the FIRST National NSSA Champion. Also seen is a smiling, 17-year-old Abby Ingalls, known as “Miss S***t”.
I have included below a short sample of the roughly 41 minutes of history that we saved. We hope to be able to feature the films in their entirety in the NSSA-NSCA Museum and HOF soon.
Steve Ellinger
