Fred Bayliss, Paramount News

Most newsreel men during World War Two, enlisted to serve in the Signal Corps or their respective country’s version. Fred Bayliss of Paramount News, however, was one of the few who remained a civilian cameraman during the European Theater.

After covering the Spanish Civil War, Bayliss was assigned as the first cameraman with Paramount to cover the hostilities in France. At the Battle of Dunkirk, Bayliss nearly lost his life along with losing his camera, truck and rations when three German tanks fired upon him. He got out alive after jumping onto a passing British tank and hiding behind the turret. After the incident at Dunkirk, Bayliss was reassigned to cover action in the Mediterranean by Britain’s Eighth Army.

On the eve of Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, Bayliss boarded an army transport plane in the Western desert of Egypt to head for Sicily to cover the landings. Bayliss never made it to Sicily. While attempting to land, his plane caught fire and Bayliss was burned to death. He left his wife, daughter and sister as his survivors.

British travel still photographer James Allan Cash recalled Bayliss, “Freddy was a grand fellow, completely fearless and quite mad.”

Fred Bayliss is one of the cameramen pointed out to the Newseum by the site editor for the Journalist’s Memorial

Heavy cameras, sound news and a bitchfest.

Ray “Swede” Fernstrom of Paramount News and the only account the site editor has found complaining about the arrival of sound news and the motorization of cameras that came with it asides from a flippant anonymous complaint in another book in her library about photogs being reduced to “button pushing monkeys.” An example of one of the 300 pound cameras Fernstrom bitches about can be seen in this post.

…Suddenly my greatest fears were realized. I was called back to New York to learn about shooting with sound. This would mean splitting my expense money with some square sound man and toting heavy junk, cables, batteries, and other mysterious paraphernalia in a truck. Oh Lord, what was happening to the fun we had? But I worked hard, studied, and learned. My first sound engineer was Glen Glenn, and the truck was a monster. I taught Glenn our angles and he schooled me in their job because without cooperation no organization can build, especially in our field. I learned to pick subjects in which sound enhanced them.

We received newer and lighter trucks and the sound equipment was lightened and reduced in size, but the cameras remained as large, heavy, cumbersome and as Rube Goldbergish as ever. They were designed by engineers and mechanics who neither had to lift or use them in the newsreel world. Western Electric designed the sound end and Akeley the camera, but it appeared both forgotten everything they ever knew. The new Akeleys had a much heavier trip and legs, which had been strengthen, all adding to the busting down of the newsreel cameraman. Along with this came cables for the camera motor, sound light, recorder and mixer. It seemed we were being entangled and wrapped in cables. But this situation began to clear up as we became a better team with more actual working experience. But one time we were too late fastening the cables.

I now had a regular sound man and a little three-quarter-ton sedan delivery truck, a Wolverine built by Reo and painted blue, red and gold, the Paramount colors, with silver touches here and there. The vehicle was a beefed-up little beauty, with overload springs and oversize tires. Every inch of the interior was crowded with equipment stacked away by newsreelmen who really knew how to design an area to hold the utmost.

My sound man was Leslie Norman, middle name Charles, who in later years became Charles Norman and worked as a sound engineer with NBC. But to me in our happy newsreel days, he was Les Norman. Les was half English and half Swede. We had a grand time together, and the expenses were doubled with him along. He was happy-go-lucky, and as let-go as any newsreelman I’d ever met. He’s deceased now; probably died in a dull bed somewhere. But during our escapades, he was a true buddy.

…Newsreels were rapidly loosing their grip on the people’s imaginations. The crash of the stock market had taken the starch out of so many things, and the arthritis in my back was killing me. Those goddamned heavy sound cameras (or was it the moonshine) had taken its toll. Norm accepted a great position out West as a sound engineer at NBC Radio in Hollywood, California, and E. Cohen told me to see the Paramount doctor about my bent spine. The doctor strongly suggested I moved to a warm climate, so the boss gave me three months’ advance salary and said, “Go and get your health back, then come back to Paramount News.”

Fernstrom ended up leaving the newsreels for good and went to Hollywood to work as a cinematographer.

The Salisbury Riots

On November 28, 1933, in the aftermath of the lynching of George Armwood Governor Albert Ritchie of Maryland sent the National Guard to arrest the suspected lynchers of Armwood. Four of them were caught and held at the First Regiment Armory in Salisbury, Maryland. Word of the arrests got around town and a riot broke out during the attempts by the residents of Salisbury to free the four men.

Paramount News sent cameraman Harry Tugander to Salisbury along with a sound truck to photograph the ensuing violence engulfing the town. Tugander described in a photography trade magazine, International Photographer, what happened after he arrived in Salisbury:

As we were nearing Salisbury we saw eight buses of troops rushing out of the town towards Baltimore. Behind the troops we saw a photographer we knew. As he passed in his car he waved his hand, but we didn’t know whether he was trying to stop us or was just saying hello. Behind him was a sedan filled with four tough looking men that seemed to be escorting him out of town.

We didn’t quite know what to make of it, but continued on towards Salisbury. We had no sooner arrived in town than we saw a mob chasing someone down a street. We started to follow the mob when a Western Union messenger jumped on the running board on one side of the truck. “Get that truck out of sight – your lives aren’t worth a nickle!” he yelled. The messenger was still shouting at us when a reporter for a local newspaper jumped on the other running board and said: “The mob is after reporters and photographers. Get out while you can get out.”

We turned the truck into a side street and about half way up we found a garage. We put the truck away in the back where it couldn’t be seen easily. Then I walked back to the corner. I could see the mob smashing up a car down the street. While I was standing on the corner, a red-haired boy came tearing down the street leading a mob. They were heading for the garage in which the truck was parked. There was no stopping them. It would have meant fighting the whole town. In a minute they had the truck and were pushing it down the street. I followed them. When they got to the west side of the Wicomico River, they pushed the truck over an embankment head on. It went into the river out of sight. $25,000 of equipment gone!

Paramount  sent additional crews to backup Tugander in the aftermath of his truck being pushed into the Wicomico River and to help cover the story despite the difficulties caused by the rioting citizens.

The Salisbury riot story ended up requiring being shot by the Paramount crews on silent handheld Eyemos.

The Mad Latvian

From 1906 to 1950, first with Pathe News and later Paramount News, John Dored filmed many of the major news events across the European continent. His colleagues nicknamed Dored “The Mad Latvian,” for he was able to obtain access to events and public figures that one would have to be “mad” to even attempt.

Among Dored’s scoops was the only foreigner to illegally film the funeral of Lenin – which earned Dored an arrest by the KGB and a stay in a Soviet prison. He was only released after intervention from both the British and US governments.

During World War Two, Dored was assigned as the cameraman for the USA newsreel pool in addition to his usual duties with Paramount News. Dored took his job very seriously as a letter he wrote to US Army Major Pelegrin in 1944 requesting transportation after another group of journalists took his car to flee a battle that was to take place shows.

Dear Major,

Usually I always try to get along with my work without troubling anybody, but this time I have to. Hope and expect you can help me out of my present difficulty. It is transportation difficulty. When I left your PRO coming up here, Capt. Hotchkiss said the car has not to return and I can use it as long as I want. Along with me came five journalists who also were supposed not to return to your PRO but would stick around until we all reached Paris. I hoped therefore we all had the same idea and working program and I would not run into transportation difficulties. What really happened, is this: on the very first evening reaching 36 Div. C.P., we all got a briefing and were told – a serious battle is going to take place. Seemingly some of the journalists got cold feed and wanted to leave the place. All five had a conference between themselves and the outcome was, they all left the C.P. half an hour later to an unknown destination and asked me what I intended to do. I had just one answer – I will remain here. Had to unload my equipment and they left in a hurry with the car and trailer and thus, absolutely unexpectedly I was left where I stood without any transportation. I had not seen those men since. As you know, dear Major, I am representing the USA Newsreel Pool and as such have a very great responsibility placed upon me. How can I work and do my duty in a proper way without transportation? Simply, it is not possible. I hope you realise that. The C.P. here is really very kind to me and does all they can for me, but they are very short of transportation themselves and cannot produce a jeep every time I badly need it to go to locations of interest to my film work. Thus, I am loosing very important material. It simply can’t go on like that. I must have transportation, and, with no journalists on board to share it. I trust, you will find a way to satisfy my legitimate request.

Expecting your urgent and kind reply and decision, I am,
Respectfully yours,

John Dored
Paramount News and Newsreel USA Pool

Dored retired from Paramount News in 1950 and spent his remaining years living in his wife’s native Norway.

Years later in his memoirs, Dored summed up his career in two sentences – “I’ve always felt limited by scripts and staging, I always yearned for freedom. I became a film reporter to shoot footage of those things for which our Father in Heaven writes the screenplay.”

Al Mingalone goes for a ride

“Lawn Chair Larry” Walters wasn’t the first man to take flight via balloons. Walters had an accidental predecessor a few decades earlier in the small town of Old Orchard Beach, Maine on September 28, 1937.

A company by the name of Dewey & Almey of Cambridge, Massachusetts, recently got into the business of manufacturing latex balloons that can be inflated to a diameter of ten feet and were designed for weather observation. The public relations rep of Dewey & Almey sent a press release about the new balloons to Phil Coolidge, a photographer with Paramount News and the wheels started spinning in Coolidge’s head over the possibilities of these balloons and how they could be used in a story.

Phil Coolidge along with his son and fellow newsreel photographer, Jake Coolidge, hatched up the idea that sending a photographer aloft with a few of these balloons would make for a novel angle for shooting film of the local scenery – “house hopping with weather balloon” was the name of the special feature, and thus he needed a shooter who was both small and light.The plan was to attach a dozen or so of these balloons to a harness, and then send the photog aloft to a height of 100 feet, with the harness and balloons being ultimately anchored to the ground via a rope tied to a car bumper.

The person Phil Coolidge chose for this assignment was Al Mingalone. Mingalone was young, small and crazy enough to go along with the stunt. But he also was married with three small children at the time, and took one look at the original location chosen – Old Orchard Beach alongside the Atlantic Ocean, and promptly vetoed the location. If something went wrong and he went sailing off over the ocean, the next dry spot of land was Europe. The location was then moved three miles inland to the golf course.

At the golf course, Mingalone was strapped into a harness tied to a bumper of a car with a hundred feet of line and Phil Coolidge started to inflate balloons and tie them to Mingalone. One balloon at a time was attached and after twenty-seven were tied on, Mingalone still could only jump about twenty-five feet into the air – not high enough to shoot the footage needed for this feature, he needed to be 100 feet up. It was cold, wet and the harness was starting to chafe and Mingalone was getting tired.

One of the spectators at the golf course was the priest of a local church, Father James J. Mullen. Jake Coolidge had invited Father Mullen to come watch since he was interested in aviation and newsreels. Much ribbing went on and Mingalone was told there was nothing to worry about since a priest was present. While they were kidding, they didn’t realize how true their joking was to be.

“The devil with it”, said Mingalone in exasperation, “this time lets put on a load for a decent jump and get it over with.” Coolidge inflated five more balloons and tied them to Mingalone’s harness and he jumped and started to rise.

As Mingalone rose above the country side, he wound up his eyemo and started to roll. Seconds later the rope he was tied to pulled taut and snapped. Mingalone kept on rising. Mingalone recalls what happened during his ascent:

“I’d entered the lower bank of a quick rising fog, and couldn’t see a thing. I tried to pull myself up the ten feet to the balloon lines. Part way, cramps grabbed me and I stopped. A sudden squall struck. I was jerked backward and dropped to the end of my harness. My camera fell free. Having lost twelve pounds of ballast I shot skyward again. My clothes were wet. The air was cold and raw. I must have been about 700 feet of the ground.”

Father Mullen, who happened to be an expert sharpshooter, ran to his car along with Jake Coolidge and headed to the church to grab his rifle and they sped off after Mingalone. Near Wells Beach, they caught up with Mingalone and Mullen fired several shots at the balloons. Mullen’s aim was good and the balloons started to slowly leak and lower the frighten Mingalone to the ground, some thirteen miles from the golf course where he originally ascended into the sky.

Mingalone, without a scratch from his adventure, quickly ripped off the harness and watched it ascend into the fog clouded sky. As they watched the balloons going skyward, Mingalone began to grieve that he didn’t wait until the men had arrived before he let the balloons go, as he wanted to take four of them home to his kids.

Twenty years later, Mingalone would find himself on the streets of New York City as a television news cameraman for ABC Telenews, reminiscing the less hectic days of a newsreel cameraman.

A newsreel photog’s opinion on TV news

Newsreel veteran Al Mingalone, formerly of Paramount News, voices his opinions on his new career path as a TV news photog for ABC Telenews and reminisces of the past.