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Health & Fitness

From the Archives: NBC News Archives Houses Rare Fort Lee Film Footage

Rare Fort Lee FIlm Footage Discovered in NBC News Archive in Manhattan

The better part of my professional career after college was spent in the archives of two major US networks.  The first position I held was in NBC News archive which was stored in Fort Lee at the time in the then Fort Lee Film Storage building on Jane Street.  This gothic like structure, built by film pioneer Jules Brulatour in 1922, currently is the home to Bonded Film Storage, part of Iron Mountain.  Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s I worked in this archive and was fortunate to be able to cull through much historic footage.  By the early 1990s I had moved on to ABC News Archives on Columbus Avenue and 66th Street.  For a decade I was able to research and work in an archive that spanned the 20th century in scope.  I was fortunate to work with a long time ABC News film archivist Marty Levinson.  Marty taught me about orphan films, film footage overlooked and actually part of no other connected film.  Though our work involved providing access to archive footage to ABC News programs we also were aware of the intrinsic value of portions of the collection that rarely saw the light of day.

This brings me to our present exhibit in the Fort Lee Museum on Palisades Amusement Park.  As frequent readers of this weekly archives piece know, this exhibit is based on the recently published St. Martin’s Press book Palisades Park by Alan Brennert.  As stated in previous pieces, Alan created a fictional family who he places in the park from the 1920's through the 1971 season when the park closed.  The magic of this book is Alan’s use of real characters from Fort Lee’s past that populate this book.  Alan researched in our Fort Lee Museum / Fort Lee Historical Society and Fort Lee Film Commission archive two years ago while doing research for this book.  One example of this research that made it into the book is the personality of Fort Lee’s Bunty Hill.  You can learn more about Bunty in a previous Patch piece.

The book is a testament to the magic of Palisades Amusement Park and the way the author brought real life people back to life is amazing.  The character in the book that stays with me is of course Bunty.  This led me on a recent search for any existing film footage of Bunty.  Bunty died 39 years ago and I was a 13-year-old kid at the time.  The image of him remains vivid and somewhere in my memory I recalled a film taken of Bunty.  About three weeks ago through research I discovered that NBC News archive has footage of Bunty from an NBC News piece in 1971.  The news segment is on the heritage trail along the Hudson River in Fort Lee under the George Washington Bridge. I made contact with the NBC News Archive via email and within a few days I scheduled an appointment to come in and view the footage.  As I crossed the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan I thought of Bunty on his beloved dock below the bridge and the years he spent along the river and as chief lifeguard of the Palisades Amusement Park pool.  Soon I was entering 30 Rock and sitting with a film archivist in the bowels of this iconic Manhattan landmark.  I felt at home as the digs were very cramped and cluttered with cans and reels of film, much like my experience with ABC News.   Though this is the digital age, most film has not yet been digitized so there is a real need to keep film archives funded and in operation.

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As the archivist loaded the film on the Moviola I was crossing my fingers that there would be actual footage of Bunty visible in this loop of film.  The description on this archive film reads:

George Washington Bridge shown from New Jersey side. 70-year-old Bunty Hill seen hiking on trail with walking stick.  Hill, a native of Fort Lee, NJ, has been hiking along the Palisades since the age of five.  Hill say he hikes because it keeps him healthy.  View of hiking trail and Hudson River.  At ceremony NY Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and Interior Secretary Rogers B. Morton dedicate 29 new hiking trails, which will be preserved.

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Immediately as the first images flashed on the small screen I saw something I hadn’t seen in 39 years, Bunty Hill alive again and walking along the Hudson on the trails under the George Washington Bridge in the Fort Lee section of the Palisade Interstate Park.  He had his shillelagh in hand and that very shillelagh is currently on exhibit in the Fort Lee museum.  Soon the B-roll cut to a close-up of Bunty as he discussed his life along the Hudson River in Fort Lee.  For a few magical seconds I was no longer in a cramped film archive at NBC but I was a kid with my friends spending a summer’s day on Bunty’s dock listening to him tell us tales of the Hudson River and hearing that voice that I hadn’t heard in almost 40 years.

The Fort Lee Film Commission is working with NBC News to bring portions of this footage in copy form into our Fort Lee archive and we hope at some point to make this footage available to be viewed by the public at a special Fort Lee Museum event.  Another element of our Fort Lee history surfaces in of all places the archives of the National Broadcasting Company.

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