NFL's 'Holy Grail' Recovered!

[klondike]

Recording of Super Bowl I restored!

NewsCore --- David Roth and Jared Diamond, WSJ

Football fans know what happened in the first showdown between the NFL and AFL champions in Super Bowl I on Jan. 15, 1967 — the Green Bay Packers stomped the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10. But unless they were at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that day or watched the game live on NBC or CBS, fans never actually have seen the game because a tape of the historic football match was not preserved by either TV network.
All that survived of the broadcast is sideline footage shot by NFL Films and roughly 30 seconds of footage CBS included in a pre-game show for Super Bowl XXV. Somehow, the game seen by 26.8 million people had, for all intents and purposes, vanished — that is until now, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
The long search finally may be over though. The Paley Center for Media in New York, which had searched for the game footage for some time, has restored what it believes to be a genuine copy of the CBS broadcast.
The 94-minute tape, which has never been shown to the public, was donated to the center by its owner in return for having it restored. It was originally recorded on bulky two-inch video and had been stored in an attic in Pennsylvania for nearly 38 years, the Paley Center said.
The two reels of two-inch quadruplex tape were warped and slightly beat up. To restore the recording, the Paley Center worked with a consultant with expertise in crude tape machines used to record them and hired New Jersey-based film preservation house Specs Bros. to do the work. Ron Simon, a curator at the Paley Center, said the sequence of plays shown, the announcers and graphics that appear and the general look of the production leave no doubt that the tape is real. "I've seen faked games before, and this is not one," he said.
The tape is not perfect. The halftime show and a large chunk of the third quarter are missing. The person who recorded it skipped over some breaks in the action. The image pixelates on occasion, the sound quality varies and there are occasional eruptions of white static at the side of the screen. Regardless of the less-than-perfect quality, "this is one of the great finds... (it) is an amazing document," Simon added. HBO executive Rick Bernstein, who produced a two-part history of sports television in 1991, is one of many who have searched for a tape. He says his team chased numerous leads, from a reported copy in Cuba to rumors that Hugh Hefner might have recorded the game on a videotape machine in the Playboy Mansion. Nothing turned up. "It's the holy grail," Bernstein said.
The long search may finally be over. The Paley Center for Media in New York, which had searched for the game footage for some time, has restored what it believes to be a genuine copy of the CBS broadcast. The 94-minute tape, which has never been shown to the public, was donated to the center by its owner in return for having it restored. It was originally recorded on bulky two-inch video and had been stored in an attic in Pennsylvania for nearly 38 years, the Paley Center says. Ron Simon, a curator at the Paley Center, said the center's archivists had issued "most-wanted" lists in the past for lost tapes it coveted, and the Super Bowl I broadcast was always on them. Mr. Simon says the sequence of plays shown, the announcers and graphics that appear and the general look of the production leave no doubt that the tape is real. "I've seen faked games before, and this is not one," he says. Mr. Simon likens the tape's emergence to the center's discovery of lost episodes of "The Honeymooners." "This is one of the great finds," he says.
It seems preposterous now, in the DVR age, that a telecast shown by two major networks could go missing. But in 1967, "people just didn't have video recorders at home," Mr. Simon explains. He says the networks didn't develop consistent policies for preserving programs until the 1970s and that while they did a good job of preserving prime-time programs, other shows–daytime shows, morning shows, and sports–weren't usually preserved at all. Representatives from both CBS and NBC confirmed the networks do not have copies of their broadcasts.
The 94-minute tape, which has never been shown to the public, was donated to the center by its owner in return for having it restored.
The tape's owner said through his attorney, Steve Harwood of Norfolk, Va., that the recording had been shot by his client's father, who recorded the broadcast by WDAU-TV in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on a videotape machine at his workplace in hopes the tapes might someday be valuable. In the summer of 2005, Mr. Harwood says that the tape's owner found out that Sports Illustrated had named the missing Super Bowl broadcast one of the "lost treasures" of sports and estimated the tapes were worth more than $1 million. Mr. Harwood says his client decided to approach the Paley Center about restoring the tape.
Doug Warner, the Paley Center's director of engineering, remembers the day when the unthinkable happened. "This guy showed up with a shopping bag that had Super Bowl I in it."
The two reels of two-inch quadruplex tape were warped and slightly beat up. To restore the recording, the Paley Center worked with a consultant with expertise in crude tape machines used to record them and hired New Jersey-based film preservation house Specs Bros. to do the work. The center says it was allowed to keep a copy but cannot show it without the owner's permission. (The still photographs accompanying this story and the short clips available on WSJ.com were provided by Mr. Harwood).
The tape, which is in color, is an absorbing time capsule. It contains vintage commercials for McDonald's (then boasting of "Over Two Billion Served") and Muriel cigars ("So much more cigar for just 10 cents"). The first touchdown in Super Bowl history—a 37-yard pass from Green Bay's Bart Starr to backup wide receiver Max McGee—is shown in a replay where the words "video tape" appear on the screen. There's some understated commentary from CBS broadcasters Jack Whitaker, Ray Scott and Frank Gifford ("Dawson... Sideline... Burford... Incomplete.") and a rare postgame grin from Packers head coach Vince Lombardi.
The recording also includes a shocking sight for a Super Bowl: empty seats. The game didn't sell out, even with ticket prices that topped out at $12.
The tape isn't perfect. The halftime show and a large chunk of the third quarter are missing. The person who recorded it skipped over some breaks in the action. The image pixelates on occasion, the sound quality varies and there are occasional eruptions of white static at the side of the screen.
Mr. Harwood, the attorney, says he contacted the NFL in 2005 about the tape. He says the league sent him a letter on Dec. 16, 2005 claiming the NFL was the exclusive owner of the copyright. Mr. Harwood says the NFL offered his client $30,000 for the tape and his client declined. Mr. Harwood said his client would like to sell the tapes and make them available to the public if the legal issues can be resolved. Whatever its fate, the tape's discovery is the first strong evidence that one of the lost treasures of sports may not be lost after all.
"This is an amazing document," Mr. Simon says.

[knitwit45]

DAD GUM IT! I thought I'd hidden that ^^**###**@@@@ tape but good! phooey. And you didn't STOMP us...you just won the game.......by a rather large and embarrassing margin....

[klondike]

Hey, Nance, I'm more on your side than you might guess - my youngest son, Morgan, is a die-hard Arrowhead.
I still recall the day he & I had to confer with his Jr. High vice principal over his confronting a female classmate who had (admittedly) stolen his Chiefs windbreaker; the VP said that although he "sympathized", Morgan was still guilty of "ungentlemanly behavior".
It's never easy negotiating with an authority who's not an NFL fan!

P.S: To this day, at age 29, Morgan still harasses that now-adult gal over his never-returned jacket whenever he sees her on the street!

[knitwit45]

Let me know if you want anything...we have to kick Chiefs stuff out of the way to shop for anything else!

[pvitari]

If Filmmakers Directed the Super Bowl :) :)

http://www.slatev.com/video/if-filmmake ... uper-bowl/

[ChiO]

Godard made me laugh, Lynch made me really want him to direct a Super Bowl broadcast, and...then....

HERZOG! Yes! Perfection, indeed! Always leave The Best for last.

[klondike]

If Filmmakers Directed the Super Bowl

http://www.slatev.com/video/if-filmmake ... uper-bowl/

Loved it!
Of course, if you wanted to wrap the whole thing up in 72 minutes, @ half the budget, with threat-heavy color commentary and a Bob Seger soundtrack, you should definitely turn it over to John Carpenter.

[laffite]

[quote=klondike post_id=77804 time=1296961919]
Recording of Super Bowl I restored!

NewsCore --- David Roth and Jared Diamond, WSJ

Football fans know what happened in the first showdown between the NFL and AFL champions in Super Bowl I on Jan. 15, 1967 — the Green Bay Packers stomped the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10. But unless they were at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that day or watched the game live on NBC or CBS, fans never actually have seen the game because a tape of the historic football match was not preserved by either TV network.
All that survived of the broadcast is sideline footage shot by NFL Films and roughly 30 seconds of footage CBS included in a pre-game show for Super Bowl XXV. Somehow, the game seen by 26.8 million people had, for all intents and purposes, vanished — that is until now, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
[snip...]

I [laffite] attended the game and it never occurred to me that I was a part of the 'Holy Grail" of football. Folks are often amazed and look at me as if i were some kind of celebrity. For those who don't know this was the first Super Bowl ever, retroactively named Super Bowl I. The idea here is that there is not a complete recording of the game. Something was finally discovered with some of the game missing and poor video quality. It was, understandably, easier to acquire a Super Bowl ticket THEN than is is NOW. If you are an ordinary football fan, this really means you have to 'know somebody.' The owner of my favorite watering hole was able to purchase tickets and let us buy at $20. We went up on a bus and we sat in the end zone but close to the action at our end of the field. Read the full post of the OP and he relates how he was able to somehow 'restore' the original film.

So you were a part of the "Holy Grail," ---of what?---Football? Big Deal. All sports are frivolous. One should be reading The Great Books. Good Grief!