JUDITH HELFAND: -- From the newsreel company about this—
HAROLD TERHUNE: Yeah.
HELFAND: -- view.
TERHUNE: Well, I'll, I'll pull my glasses out, it will have a good effect. Ok?
HELFAND: Ok, and just what you are saying before is perfect.
TERHUNE: Oh, I don't remember what I said.
GEORGE STONEY: Ok, alright, go ahead.
HELFAND: Sir, if you were going to be sending the negative, the positive to the
newsreel company, how would you describe it? You were telling me about the form. How would you describe (inaudible)?STONEY: And incorporate her question in your answer.
TERHUNE: Well, I would describe what you just asked me --
STONEY: No, no start again because you-- we don't want to have to cut out her voice.
TERHUNE: You don't want to cut--
[break in video]
M1: Hold on, hold. Take you hand off the glasses. Take your hand off the
glasses, look at the picture. Action.TERHUNE: All right. Now this picture, made a Calloway Mills down at LaGrange,
00:01:00if I was to shoot some stuff here for the newsreel, I would first pick out all the different things that I know, in order to make a buck, that the newsreel would want. Here's a -- here's a fella that's very animosity-looking. He's -- he's glaring. And there's another one with his fist and another one over here actually waving a club like if he got to me he'd hit me with it. And that's what the newsreel wants. Now when you send the raw negative exposed, you don't send it any otherwise except under special circumstances like we did with this particular thing. You send in the raw negative and you have one of their forms. You better have or they're not going to buy it. But their forms are listed in a sequence to where you explain to them, like a telephoto shot, a wide angle, a 00:02:00medium shot and for them to look at so-and-so. For instance, a person that's vicious like this one waving the club, ah, he is really a vicious-looking person. And that's what they're looking for. And there's another one. You would list telephoto shots of union people, which they can spot because they're dressed different and they immediately turn around from the camera. Now you usually catch 'em turning around, so they'd know that. And some of the others, then they would want also to show some that were just there for effect, they were not doing anything, they didn't really want to be there. This is the general work people from the mill, and they're not into this. And that's -- that's the way you do it. You don't write a caption for it. You use their form and you fill it out that way, then you stand a better chance. And me being a stringer, I needed the buck and I'd try to adhere strictly to what their 00:03:00instructions were. Now, of course, the cameramen that are really hired by the newsreel companies, ah, they can do anything they want. They can write anything they want on 'em, but they still better follow the instructions or the editors of the film will just toss it aside. They don't care how good it is. They might save it for the archives, but they wouldn't use it and they wouldn't get paid for it. So that's the way that handles for the narration.HELFAND: NOW before you started to say, "I would say a general view of strike
and blahdy-blah, close up of such and such, he a rabble riser wide shot of this group…" You had started to list very succinctly. Could you do that again for us?TERHUNE: This could go on till next week.
HELFAND: It won't though, this is the last question.
TERHUNE: No I'm sorry, go ahead. Ok, now do you want me to start it off that way.
HELFAND: Yeah, and please look at me.
TERHUNE: Ok. I look at you. Hi Jake. Uhhh, on this picture, if I sent -- was
00:04:00sending one of their newsreel forms so they would know what it was all about, where it was, it's all on one of their forms -- your location, your date, your time. Everything is taken care of at the top part of it. Your name, and they'd better spell it right. And then usually you start off with a wide angle shot. I mean, you know, they do that in the movies. You started with a wide angle shot and you put on there "wide angle shot, general view and panorama of the striking crowd" with union people interspersed inside of this crowd. Then on the next one you would probably go to a medium shot, and medium shot would not be a pan shot of it. A medium shot would be of a group and you'd put "medium shots" and you would list like "just general workers really not interested, they 00:05:00want to get back to work." And then they could spot like this person holding a club. "Here is the people that are really mad. They want to get in and tear everything up, even if it means their own job." And then the close-up shots with the telephoto, telephoto shots, "union people", which they can spot because of the way they are dressed. And they would probably be gradually turning around till you couldn't see too much of their face. And then you would show the people that were really, probably brought in from outside, trying to incite a riot. And that's -- that's the way it works.STONEY: Ok.
HELFAND: Great.
TERHUNE: Now did I slobber? (laughter)
STONEY: You did fine. Now let's—
[break in video]
MAN ON NEWSREEL: -- to prevent the reopening of the Newnan Mills.
M1: Let me rewind this.
STONEY: Ok. Ok.
TERHUNE: Now you want me to comment after the sound—
STONEY: After, after. You'll kill it. You'll kill it right after
the—right after it says uh, just after it says uh, and the, the government's 00:06:00paying for it.(crosstalk)
HELFAND: Wait I'll tell you when.
M1: Ok, standby please.
[break in video]
STONEY: All right. Mr. Terhune, I'm going to show you a typical newsreel
segment about this strike. We're going to watch it and you watch it and then comment on it. Okay. Let's go.NEWSREEL NARRATOR: Adopting the textile strikers' flying squadron methods,
National Guardsmen at Newnan, Georgia round up a group of pickets and place them under arrest. Women as well as men are taken in the militia's net. The strikers submit peaceably and are hustled off before bristling bayonets. State highway trucks are used to transport the prisoners, numbering about 200, many of them women and girls. This drastic action, authorities explain, is taken to prevent threatened violence. Specifically, those arrested are charged with attempting to prevent the reopening of the Newnan Mills. Reminiscent of World War days is the hastily constructed internment camp in which the strikers are 00:07:00confined. This one is in back of Fort MacPherson at Atlanta. Armed guards patrol the barbed-wire enclosure surrounding the camp while the prisoners learn how it feels to be on the inside looking out. Chow time finds a lot of healthy appetites and the incarcerated ladies make the best of their predicament. It's good old Army grub, plain but nourishing, and the state is paying for it.STONEY: Well, Mr. Terhune, what do you think about that?
TERHUNE: Well, I can say that's the way it was, because back in those days, in
the '30s, is when that, ah, the unions were violent. And, ah, then it would depend on some on politics because the governors of the state, they had to be sure that they was on the right side. And if they saw some rabblerousing or somebody trying to incite a riot, they would immediately want to arrest 'em. Now I can honestly say I believe that part of these -- most of these people, and 00:08:00especially the women -- there may be one or two, but most of 'em were just innocent victims of violence. The union wanting 'em -- see, the unions wanted to show 'em arrested and wanted to show that the -- the National Guard comes in and would haul them off in a truck. And then they mentioned that it's a state-owned truck that's doing it, so that that's helping the union, see, because the union wanted to show that they were just taking these people off, no -- actually all these people wanted to do was go back to work. But the troops were there. They were called in, and they would have to have been called in by the governor. And then once the troops got in there, you get people who get a little authority, then they want to show their authority and they start knocking people around. And that's what the union wanted. They wanted to show that, that these people that owned these mills and everything, while they were not that way, they wanted a peaceful settlement, they wanted to show that they were 00:09:00trying to just keep these people as slave labor, which they were not really doing.GEORGE STONEY: Did the union have any influence over the newsreels?
TERHUNE: As far as I know, the only way that I can answer that is--
GEORGE STONEY: Incorporate my question into your answer.
TERHUNE: Well, as far as the newsreels or the union having any influence on the
newsreel, that's a pretty hard question to answer because there are a lot of newsreels and I don't think they could influence the newsreels because there was too many back in that day, and those newsreels were fighting for their product to be on the screen because the major companies would not show a feature picture in most theaters unless they would show their newsreel. And, ah, that was always a big battle there. And the National Guard coming in there was something 00:10:00that, ah, really inflamed a lot of people and it made a lot of people who were law abiding citizens, they -- they would get violent because they were mad and they was made at everybody because they were -- they were being used, they were being downplayed and they were -- they were really the victims of circumstance. And the newsreels would eat it up. And, of course, that's the way I made a buck now and then, was something like that, you know, a riot, a strike, or any major disaster, whatever it was, was newsreel material. So, ah, that's -- that newsreel shows one side of it. It shows just one side of it. It doesn't show, and, of course, still today it's the same way -- they never show the other side. And the other side has a right as well as what you see on the screen. And I would say that the cameraman there did a good job, but he probably did shoot 00:11:00some of the peaceful people, but the newsreel edited it out. That's the way they would do, but he had sense enough to do that.STONEY: Now I notice that the narration made it look like a picnic and the
girls are seen being fed by the Army and so forth. Do you think that the newsreel cameraman had an attitude that he was trying to make this look like it wasn't so tough on the strikers?TERHUNE: Well, ah, for a cameraman to, ah, ah, try to slant, ah, a news, ah,
reel in any way is difficult to do. Now when I saw that scene just a minute ago, I immediately thought, "Why did they show this? Why would they show that sort of thing?" Because these women sitting there were all innocent victims, as 00:12:00far as I know. I would not have shot that. I would have shot probably some lady in tears, knowing that she was being, ah, mistreated. But to show 'em in an Army atmosphere with hand-outs like they were prisoners of war, that's just a little unreal to me. I don't think the newsreel should have put that. That should have been edited out entirely because you do have to show both sides of it, but do not -- like, you know, at the strike at the Calloway Mills at LaGrange, when I told you what I shot there, I shot some people who did not want to participate. They were against it. You had both sides there and it's the same in this newsreel. They just showed, and I notice they were all close-up shots -- really, for a medium shot, they didn't show any of the people outside of it at all, which they should have. They would probably have picked up a lot 00:13:00of people who resented the National Guard being in there, the Army, whatever it was. They should not have been in there in the first place. That was a political gesture. That was strictly political and, of course, the newsreel would just eat it up.STONEY: Ok, I'm gonna go back and I want you to look at it again, and we
better fix the sound cable.M1: (inaudible)
[break in video]
M1: Rolling.
NEWSREEL NARRATOR: Adopting the textile strikers' flying squadron methods,
National Guardsmen at Newnan, Georgia round up a group of pickets and place them under arrest. Women as well as men are taken in the militia's net. The strikers submit peaceably and are hustled off before bristling bayonets. State highway trucks are used to transport the prisoners, numbering about 200, many of them women and girls. This drastic action, authorities explain, is taken to prevent threatened violence. Specifically, those arrested are charged with attempting to prevent the reopening of the Newnan Mills. Reminiscent of World War days is the hastily constructed internment camp in which the strikers are 00:14:00confined. This one is in back of Fort MacPherson at Atlanta. Armed guards patrol the barbed-wire enclosure surrounding the camp while the prisoners learn how it feels to be on the inside looking out. Chow time finds a lot of healthy appetites and the incarcerated ladies make the best of their predicament. It's good old Army grub, plain but nourishing, and the state is paying for it.TERHUNE: Now watching this tape, the narrator on this tape, to me, used his
voice to make like this, ah, was a picnic. And it wasn't. But he was using his voice not so much as he was watching this, but for the people in the theater. He wanted -- when that hit the screen, he wanted them to feel all kinds of emotion -- some mad, some laughing -- because I noticed in the tape the one of 00:15:00the girls that was sitting there, when she was being fed, they were put there particularly for the newsreel camera. And I notice one of 'em couldn't help but smile and she was getting something to eat and probably wasn't even hungry. And it was just a staged shot. Now the cameraman staged that shot and never should have been done, because it wasn't that way. Now the militia or National Guard or whatever, they should never have been there either. And the narrator played up every little -- and I say that 90% of that shot there, they were staged. They were staged, except maybe where the truck came around. But even then they probably held the trucks till he got set up so he could show what he wanted in the camera. And that was not to help the strike or the people there. That was strictly for the theater audience. Like the newspaper slants it now, he was slanting all his shots. And his voice carried over momentously with that to 00:16:00show, you know, "This is like back in the World War" and all that, you know, with the barbed-wire and all that. I mean that's, to me, almost like a fake because that's the way it impressed me. I don't think that should ever have hit the screen.STONEY: Cut! Beaudtiful.
[break in video]
STONEY: Did you ever hear anybody talk about lint heads? And, if so, what was
your attitude towards them?TERHUNE: Yeah, sure. Now?
STONEY: Uh hum.
TERHUNE: Well, back in those days the people that worked in the cotton mill,
ah, regardless of what, as you know, in those days the environment was terrible. I mean it was terrible. I've been in many of 'em and --STONEY: Sorry, you have to start over cause them not cotton mill—
[break in video]
TERHUNE: Run that by me again.
STONEY: You were saying them, them, them, instead of lintheads and mills--
TERHUNE: Alright ok, alright, but then you want me to describe the lintheads?
STONEY: That's right.
00:17:00TERHUNE: Alright. Well now, back in the days of the cotton mills when they were
first brought in and they were in full swing, in fact, you know, cotton was the king, King Cotton, well, the lint heads that worked in the mills -- well, the lint heads were the people that worked in there and the reason they were called lint heads was if you have ever been in one, the lint was just -- the atmosphere was like it was snowing and it would naturally get in their hair. And after it got in there for a while, you know, it was hard to get out. And they'd finally just ignore it. Well now, some of 'em would wear caps and that sort of -- hats or a handkerchief over their head and all that sort of thing, but the -- that was the reason they were called lint heads. And at first they resented it, but then I believe it was one of those things that finally nobody paid any attention to it. They'd say, "Well, so-and-so's a lint head." Well, that just meant he worked in the mill. There was nothing derogatory about it at all. In the -- in 00:18:00the mills the environment was really bad because the -- the air circulation was bad. They just had windows all the way around, and I'm sure you would recall if you'd drive by one, it was just a mass of windows and they'd be open. Maybe where some of the preferred workers worked, there would be a fan that would blow it a little bit, but it didn't do any good. And the people that worked there felt like zombies, I believe. They really felt that way because they were trying to get ahead, but there was no chance for advancement, none whatsoever. You'd get in there and, of course, I'm sure it affected their lungs tremendously. Cancer would come up and breathing, their respiratory system would just be all out of whack. And, to me, it was always -- now I've been through many of those mills and, to me, it was -- it was sad, it was sad because 00:19:00management cared for the almighty buck and that's the way it was. Now I'm sure of 'em didn't maybe, but most of 'em did, and they probably did the best they could with the machinery they had, but they were not too much on safety or the environment for air circulation or any of that sort of thing. And, of course, that stuff went out into the atmosphere. You know, you could see it coming out of the windows. So it was kind of a -- a sad part of that era.STONEY: Were you ever hired to make stills or films in the mills?
TERHUNE: Yes, I -- I was, ah, hired, ah, to make some films in the -- in the --
several of the mills. In fact, the ones out at Clarkston, Georgia, the other side of Decatur, now those people out there were, I would say, sort of top-notch trying to show the workers that they were trying to care for them because they 00:20:00did not stage any shots. They'd say, "We need a shot showing these people working" and, ah, you would just set up your camera wherever you could get the best angle. You'd make a wide or a medium or close-up, but you -- you could see the lint coming around. They did not try to hide anything. And would show 'em on their picnics. They give 'em a picnic ever year and we'd go shoot that for 'em. And then we'd put the voice on it later. And what they would do, and it was sort of a public relations thing, you'd show as many people as you could and, you know, if you try to do that, if you leave one out, your name is mud. So, ah -- but then when they finished the narration on, they would be calling these people by their first name and you would have the manager or one of the vice presidents, or something, actually doing the narration because they related to him. And that was one of the main reasons that they would do this, and I 00:21:00did. I shot some film there and I believe we had what we called the Georgia Newsreel at the time. And I was the newsreel and the fella that was the salesman, he was the salesman -- he was the other part of it. But, ah, it -- it was a good morale builder. That's what it was all about. And that was done of the most interesting things, I think, because they were gradually coming up with the idea, "We need to do something for the worker" and the only one I did, of course, was out in Clarkston out there and that was a nice experience there.STONEY: Do you still have that film?
TERHUNE: Oh, no. Gosh. (laughs) No. No. No stills. That was strictly
film, didn't make any stills on that.STONEY: What year was that?
TERHUNE: Well, that was -- let's see -- down there -- that must have been in
about -- that was in the '40s. Yeah, that was in the '40s and it must have 00:22:00been, ah, about '44 or '45, something like that.