Images from the past, coming soon to a theater near you

During summer vacations in the 1950s, Wilt Chamberlain was working as a bellhop at an affluent hotel named Kutsher's, nestled against New York's Catskill Mountains.
    In a newsreel playing in the nation's theaters in those days, the skinny, 7-foot-1 high school senior is wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the hotel's name, shooting hoops against a plywood backboard. Insiders will know that it was at Kutsher's grand resort where Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach would later spot the talented teenager (even though once in the pros Chamberlain never played for the Celtics).
    But it's not yet clear in the reels that the boy will become one of America's basketball greats. At the time, he was also an accomplished track and field star.
    "Remember the name Wilt Chamberlain," the newsreel announcer proclaims. "It'll probably make big sports copy for years to come."
    This and thousands of other historical newsreels chronicling 20th century sports legends, world wars and other news events may once again be playing in theaters.
    GlobalStar Media, with headquarters in Salt Lake City, is partnering with Los Angeles-based SPPN Images to market the Sherman Grinberg Collection, regarded as one of the world's largest privately held film archives. Among the strategies is to repackage newsreels that would be rented to independent theaters and shown before movies.
    "With GlobalStar's help, we essentially have the ability to bring the world's oldest and most famous footage back to life and reintroduce it to the public," said Karen Clark, president of SPPN Images, which owns the collection.
    Proceeds are intended to help preserve the collection, made up mostly of nitrate reels that are unstable and highly flammable. As the old films deteriorated, some were placed on polyester copies, and today they're being preserved.
    "We're raising money to restore the 20 million feet of film and digitize it," said Clark. "We have remarkably experienced only about 5 percent to 10 percent loss of the library. However, it is a priority to get the nitrate repaired and digitized."
    The idea of renting newsreels was tested late last year when GlobalStar began surveying 1,200 Salt Lake moviegoers after showing them bits of history. People were asked if they remembered any of the commercials typically shown before movies, and most did not. But audience retention of ad messages improved when the pre-movie commercials also contained historical news.
    Each 15-minute package included four one-minute sections of historical footage interspersed with three to four commercials.
    Often watching the audience reaction was GlobalStar founder Edward Payne, who also produces "Music and the Spoken Word," the weekly live broadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
    "People would lean over to each other and say, 'I didn't know that,' " he said. "I also noticed that men stopped chatting when sports newsreels were shown, while women often keep talking."
    Company research showed that newsreels appealed to teens and young adults, particularly fashions of the times, technology breakthroughs and historical events.
    "The younger generation wants to know what it was like for their parents and grandparents. They want to connect," said Payne, who also is senior producer in the Audio-Visual Department for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known for its emphasis on genealogy.
    Theater owners have the option of choosing from an array of newsreels by era and subject, depending on audience tastes.
    For instance, they may see newsreels from the 1920s or from a specific month, say May 1942. In the latter package, moviegoers could see the 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth, then heir to the British throne, dressed primly in a suit and matching hat, while inspecting her troops as "the empire is at war," an announcer intones. And from Tacoma, Wash., another newsreel shows smiling high school students hoeing fields as replacements for what the announcer calls "the exodus" of Japanese Americans - who in reality were imprisoned in remote internment camps.
    Subjects can be matched or mixed, but the historical value of the newsreels is undeniable.
    If you've seen newsreels in theaters as a child or watched documentaries, many probably are from the Grinberg Collection, which has footage dating from 1896 to the 1960s. Among the images are Chicago strikers battling police in 1937, Jimmy Doolittle describing the first American bombing strike over Tokyo in 1942 and the "Industry on Parade" television series from the 1950s.
    There also are 40 years of TV commercials and Quickie Quizzes from the 1940s and '50s, asking questions about history.
    The collection is named for Sherman Grinberg, a movie and television producer who acquired the RKO Warner Pathe documentary film library and Paramount newsreels in the 1960s. He marketed the footage and is credited with helping pioneer the archived news film footage industry.
    Newsreels were a theatrical mainstay, particularly during the first half of the 20th century. In one of the most famous movies ever made, "Citizen Kane," a fictional newsreel is shown that summarizes the life of the title character, Charles Foster Kane. Footage for the 1941 movie was prepared by RKO's actual newsreel staff.
    The Grinberg collection had a series of owners after Grinberg's death in 1982, including a company that went bankrupt. A group of investors formed SPPN, or Sarnoff Paramount Pathe News Images Inc., in 2005 to purchase and preserve the images. Among the shareholders is Daniel Sarnoff, grandson of David Sarnoff, founder of RCA and NBC.
    dawn@sltrib.com