Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives Moving Images Collection

This collection is comprised of approximately 40 hours of motion picture film, comprising 193 separate segments that document the activities and history of the labor movement and left or progressive organizations, mostly in New York City (although Philadelphia, Barcelona, Geneva, and a few locations in France are also represented/depicted/included). It consists, with a single exception, entirely of 16mm film—primarily in black and white, but with a significant amount in color--and of the 51 videotapes to which these film materials were transferred, to create surrogates to allow screening while protecting the originals. Almost all of the materials in the collection were produced by and/or for labor, left, or progressive organizations or associated individuals in the United States. About a dozen documentary films, a similar number of television programs (kinescopes), and a dozen and a half filmed press conferences form the core of the Collection, but a larger proportion consists of outtakes and edited sequences from these productions, as well as a unedited footage and a small amount of stock footage shot, acquired for, or associated with, these productions.

The largest share of the materials in the Collection (84% --168 of the 193 segments) is the film archive of the Transport Workers Union of America (TWU) -- a national, New York City-based labor union whose members are mainly bus and subway workers. The TWU materials stretch from the 1930s through 1967 and document the union's own activities as well as of some of its friends and allies, including mass meetings, conventions, speeches, negotiation sessions, picket lines, demonstrations, parades and press conferences. It is also notable in illustrating the TWU's pioneering embrace of television as a public relations tool for trade unions. The remainder of the Collection--the non-TWU footage—while it represents a much smaller amount, is more eclectic and international in scope. It includes footage ranging from the 1920s through the 1960s documenting organizations or individuals associated with the three main strands of left-radical politics and culture: Communism, Socialism, and anarchism, as well as footage of, or produced by, other labor organizations, both U.S. and foreign. Also represented are New York City May Day parades in color and black and white, New York City and state politicians, and the daily life of poor, homeless, and working-class children and adults in New York City during the depths of the Depression, as well as such occasional random surprises as a shot of the dirigible Hindenberg flying above Madison Avenue on the day it later crashed and burned. While the footage in this Collection documents events and activities specific to labor history and radical and progressive movements, it also documents topics unrelated to these. A wide range of activities, locations, occupations, subjects, attitudes and emotions was incidentally captured, in addition to the intended themes. For example, the same footage that documents union activities in New York City in the 1930s shows street scenes in working-class neighborhoods in Manhattan and other boroughs that are seldom seen in moving images; while picket lines snake around the block and soap-boxers inveigh, in the background and foreground everyday life goes on; in front of tenements and brownstone stoops, children frolic and parents push baby carriages, and a horse-drawn cart and a bicycles ride through the frame (in some of these scenes exact locations are even thoughtfully provided—because the addresses appear on the signs carried by union members picketing in front of the homes of more than a dozen individual TWU members who have "deserted" the union). Similarly, a panoply of the feet and shoes (only) of ordinary New Yorkers on Fifth Avenue can be seen as part of a sequence whose purpose was to illustrate the effectiveness of a 1950s transit strike by showing the public walking instead of riding public transport. These unintentionally-recorded, usually fragmentary, documents of social history can be of particular value because they are candid and unposed, in contrast to the staged official activities which were shot to document and promote the activities of the organizations that commissioned them. Other "unintended documents" in the Collection include footage of public meeting places such as hotels and auditoriums; office, restaurant, and workplace interiors; mass transit, including subway trains and buses, subway and bus passengers, train stations and an airport; power plants and industrial equipment; the deserted waterfront of a New Jersey port; the changing streetscapes and neighborhoods of New York City, as well as some of its landmarks (the interior of the old Pennsylvania Railroad Station and its clock, New York Public Library, and St. Patrick's Cathedral, Coney Island's Cyclone rollercoaster, and facades of businesses such as a Horn and Hardart Automat, and the Peck and Peck women's clothing store); track and field events, team sports recreation and resorts; parades and marching bands; voting; social dancing; stenographers, shoe shiners, television camera operators, reporters, police, waiters, musicians and teachers at work. Also: racially-integrated social and organizational gatherings in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s; rhetorical styles and oratory of politicians and union leaders; demeanor and dress of ordinary middle-class and working-class Americans in the mid-twentieth century; and performance styles on early public affairs television programs.

Each film segment described in the container list below has been assigned a unique Tape # and Tape Hour # (T# and H#). These T# / H#'s can be found in the container list. All segment titles have been supplied by archives staff except those in italics, which are the original titles given by the film's creator(s). Please note that running times for segments are approximate only, not exact. The container list consists of brief descriptions of each segment that includes a title, the location where the segment was shot, whether it is black and white or color, whether it has sound or is silent, footage type (these include complete film, part of film, filmed press releases, and "footage," by which is meant edited sequences, outtakes or unedited footage -- or combinations of these), date and approximate total running time; it can be used to browse the entire contents of the Collection. For more information on any individual segment, more detailed descriptions are available, including shot-by-shot descriptions of the contents with "in and out points" for each shot (e.g., showing approximately where a shot in the segment begins and ends), and for whom or what entity the segment was produced. Please contact Special Collections at special.collections@nyu.edu for access to these detailed descriptions.