The Reel History of Janesville

(From the Janesville Messenger, 5-6-07)

Even though I was a communications major in college, my favorite classes – the ones that stick with me today – were my two history electives. So entranced was I by those two learning experiences that I gave serious thought to changing my major to history and becoming a teacher of that subject. Obviously, I decided not to, but my love of all things historical continues to this day. So when the Rock County Historical Society presented me with the opportunity to add narrative to the 1940 “Janesville In Reelife” film, it was a thrill.

“Janesville In Reelife” was shot by a traveling movie-making company, Reelife Films, toward the end of 1940. They went from town to town offering to shoot footage documenting everyday life in the community. Once a financial sponsor was found – in this case, it was The Janesville Daily Gazette – the crew got to work shooting everything from teen dances to Lions Club luncheons. The big attraction was that they shot with full color film, still a novelty in 1940.

The crew shot their footage over the course of a week, took a day to edit it, and then premiered the finished product the following evening at the Jeffris Theatre downtown, which stood next to the Monterey Hotel. What happened to the film after that remains a mystery. It disappeared until several years ago an old reel turned up on a shelf somewhere and found its way into the hands of the Historical Society.

Representatives of the Society showed it to local videographer Dave Haldiman, who said the film was fairly worn with damaged guide holes, bad splices that fell apart and minor dirt and scratches. He recommended they send the film to a lab to clean it up and transfer it to video.

Once that was done, the film was shown to the public at the Helen Jeffris Wood museum. While it was fascinating footage, it was missing something: sound. Plus, there were several scenes that were in need of identification. What exactly were we watching?

When I was approached about working on “Janesville In Reelife,” my resume already included two local history research projects. One was the opening night play for the Janesville Performing Arts Center, “Janesville In Stages,” a history of the Janesville arts scene and the JPAC building. The other was a “Jeopardy” parody for the School District of Janesville featuring questions about the district’s history and using district historical figures as the contestants. So getting the job to research, write text and add narration to “Janesville In Reelife” was like the third chapter in my “Janesville History” trilogy. It’s not exactly George Lucas’ “Star Wars” trilogy, but hey, Darth Vader didn’t live in Janesville.

Fortunately, the Historical Society had copies of newspaper articles from the week of the filming that detailed all the places and events that were being shot each day. That was a perfect place to start. Many scenes were easily identified, particularly footage shot inside General Motors and Parker Pen. Long stretches of factory footage were easy to narrate as there is no lack of documentation about those two corporations.

However, there was also about three minutes of footage inside the Rock River Woolen Mills. Information about that company was frightfully scarce; it’s like the great lost corporation of Janesville. The Woolen Mills was a major employer, at one time the fourth largest in town, but you would never know it even existed here, in the building along the Rock River that was used for years by Panoramic and now houses Rhyme Business Products and Schuler’s Furniture. Ultimately, what information I was able to glean came from personal anecdotes of former workers there.

Personal stories also played a role in identifying footage inside the old Janesville Gazette and WCLO building that was torn down in the late 1960’s. Gazette publisher Skip Bliss, whose father and uncle appear in the film, arranged for me to show the film to employees who had worked there in the 1940’s.

Overall, the film is in tremendous shape. The color scenes, thanks to the work of both the film lab and Dave Haldiman, look crisp and bright. Although a professional outfit produced this, it definitely has a ‘home movie’ quality to it. There is a lot of smiling and mugging for the camera, and what appears to be an obviously staged scene where fire trucks emerge from the fire station and speed through the old Corn Exchange. There is also priceless footage of a Janesville High School play at what is now JPAC, and a live WCLO broadcast celebrating the 20th anniversary of commercial radio (WCLO itself had only been around for 10 years).

The most poignant scene, incredible now in light of what happened since, is of Janesville’s National Guard unit posing in front of the Armory a day before being shipped to Fort Knox for training. These young men, grinning from ear to ear for the camera, were stationed in the Philippines after the United States entered World War II and became the “Janesville 99” on the infamous Bataan Death March. Only 35 of the 99 returned home from captivity at the hands of the Japanese. I’ve watched this footage a thousand times now and it still doesn’t fail to move me.

There are some things we still don’t know. For example, the film had no titles or credits of any kind, and several of the scenes listed in the newspaper as being filmed are missing. It seems obvious that this footage was not the finished product. The speculation is that this is a reel of outtakes or perhaps specific scenes that were edited onto a different reel for unknown reasons. Also, some of the scenes were shot in black and white, begging the question of whether all of this film was really part of the color Reelife project. I believe it may have been, based on the fact that the black and white scenes were listed in the newspaper articles as events that were being filmed by the Reelife crew.

Where is the actual finished movie that was shown at the Jeffris in December 1940? We may never know. But at least we have this, and it was an honor to be asked to put the finishing touches on what I believe to be a pretty important piece of Janesville history.

(Click here to hear my WCLO interview about "Janesville In Reelife")