8mm Home Movie Blessing Fleet Gloucester Rockport 1952 Conlan

This sale is for 8mm home movie film on a 5-inch film reel in an aluminum canister. A label on the aluminum canister reads "Texas - Rockport", but scratched in the canister is "Texas Rockport NYC DC." The Texas clip appears to be exclusively a beach scene, and the New York City segment is a brief clip near the United Nation plaza. Based on an image of a Texas license plate, the Texas clip dates to 1952, and the others all look early 1950's. The film on the five inch real consists of multiple smaller reels spliced together. The are scenes of two boys playing on a beach, pretend drinking bear, skin diving, on a battleship tour, and a big family piled in a tiny boat. Most of the clips appear centered around Rockport, with the highlight being a segment on the blessing of the fleet parade in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Good family life scenes of the era. The film was made by William Henry Conlan.

The film is a bit better than average home movie quality in terms of lingering on subjects and framing, and including occasional helpful place signs. It has the typical occasional overexposed starts to each segment. Its leader is broken off, and one of the old splices broke during playback and was imperfectly taped back together. Another splice was poorly done and the film had to be advanced around it. The images shown here were screen captures from a video recorded of the film was projected on a white board, so the quality and focus is better than shown here. A five-inch reel can hold 200 feet, or about 12 to 14 minutes of play time. The aluminum canister is dented. Old 8 mm movies can now be scanned digitally frame by frame at a reasonable cost, so this reel can provide some nice 1950's stock movie footage of these places and subject matters.