The Marceline Historical Society had the first showing of a portion of the 1939 home movie “See Yourself and Your Town in the Movies” on Monday, January 29 at 2pm in the Walsworth Community Center. About 15 Marceline residents were in attendance, and we worked through about 22 minutes of the 54 minute film over the one and a half hours we were there.
Georgia Smith identified her father and step-father in the first part of the film, and one couple that stood out as newlyweds in the film were soon identified as Mary Helen Ford and Glen Bernard Othic, who were married on August 6, 1939, which further confirms the date of filming. In this first showing more than 20 people were recognized by the wonderful people of Marceline.
We’re planning on repeating this event at the next monthly meeting of the Marceline Historical Society on February 26 at the Walsworth Community Center at 2pm. We’ll continue where we left off, and look forward to identifying more people and places around Marceline. The more people who join us for these sessions, the better the memories are, and the more accurate the information is, because of the group confirmation. We hope to see you there.
Our plan is to identify as many people and places in the film as possible, then release the film on our website, to share with current and future generations. We’ll be sharing individual images from the film as well to prompt discussion and confirmations of the names proposed. “It’s very exciting and fun to see these people and places in Marceline from 1939” said Joyce Clapp, Library Director for 33 years now.
Spread the word about our monthly meetings on the 4th Monday of each month, usually held at the Marceline Carnegie Library at 2pm. Also, visit our website at www.MarcelineHistory.org – and sign up for email reminders. If you have old photos, slides, home movies, or documents from Marceline’s history, please consider loaning them to us so we can scan and digitize them for inclusion on the website – we’ll return them promptly.
See you in the future.
