Sunday, March 19, 2017

Ukulele on a Wire, 1929


From the amazing Moving Image Research Collections at the University of South Carolina, here are outtakes from a 1929 Fox Movietone newsreel showing tightrope walker Jimmy Terry walking 39 (45?) stories up between two buildings in Chicago.

Jimmy plays the ukulele and sings "I ain't gonna walk ropes anymore" to the tune of It Ain't Gonna Rain No' Mo' at around 7:30. Keep watching for the moment when he drops the uke.

The full Movietone newsreel plays from 10:30 on.

Link to Video

Image of Jimmy Terry's walk from Modern Mechanix, January, 1930

2 comments:

RitonMousquetaire said...

Great find! And there are even more uke-related videos on that website. The fact that these movietone films were shot in direct sound gives them a charm that's absent in many of the newsreels that were shot in the following decades.

Gary said...

I plan to dig out more of the ukulele videos from that site. You're right. Several gems in there.

 
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