MOVIEMEISTER: "Grandpa" Gustave A. Martens, 1900-1977, of College Point, New York.
FILM STOCK: Kodak Kodacolor.
LENGTH: Approximately 600 feet, or one and a quarter standard homemovie reels.
RUNNING TIME: 17 to 20 minutes, depending on how slow or fast Grandpa ran the projector. (Most 16mm home movie projectors had variable speeds). The digitized version clocks in at 17:00.
DATE: Judging from the reddening trees, most of this footage was filmed in the Autumn of 1939, just before the fair closed for the 1939 season and, interestingly, just a few weeks after World War II had started in Europe.
WHO'S IN THIS MOVIE: Mr. Gustave Albert Martens, his wife Margaret Martens ("Grandpa and Grandma" to me) and their son, the future Reverand Warren Gustave Martens (Dad!), plus a typical day's crowd of World's Fair visitors.
CONDITION: Scratched in places but, considering how often Grandpa played this movie for us kids, it's condition is quite good. The saturated blues and reds characterisic of Kodacolor are vibrant as ever, but the greens have faded a little. The film bears a trace of the "vinegar odor" charactistic of aging acetate film stock.
DIGITATION: This movie was digitized by DuART FILM AND VIDEO located on 245 West 55th Street, New York, NY. 212-757-4580. My personal thanks to Mr. Lou Gangiano for his knowledge and service in the digitizing of this footage.
ABOUT THE TITLES:
Most of the photo captions were transcribed by me from the filmed titles
created by Grandpa. I added a few captions on my own to identify Gus,
Marg and Warren, but otherwise decided to let the pictures tell the story.
Grandpa created the orginal titles by typing onto marbled gray paper and photographing them at a magnified range. At some point after the fair - maybe the 1960's - he replaced all but two of them with new ones created with a title kit. I chose not to include most of those later titles on this website because nearly all of them were framed badly. Grandpa apparently did not screw the camera onto the tripod tightly enough and it drooped as he filmed. Such are the accidents that characterize home movies, though in Grandpa's case such mishaps were rare.
THANKS:
To the aforementioned DUART FILM AND VIDEO for digitizing this movie.
And to my brother Daniel Martens who had kept Grandpa's movies in good storage for over 30 years before entrusting them to me for their further preservation. Visit Daniel's website: MarwoodMedia.com!
ABOUT THE FAIR:
If you seek historic and factual details on the 1939 New York World's Fair, I recommend the following websites:
THE
PREMINGER ARCHIVES
Contains more than an hour's worth of color movie footage
of the 1939 Fair!. A bit slow downloading but worth it for 39WF enthusidasts.
A TOUR OF THE
1939 NY WORLD'S FAIR
Extensive documentation of the fair with many B&W photographs,
including interior scenes, administration buildings and even a view of
the parking lot.
http://websyte.com/alan/nywf.htm
A good directory of links related to the 1939 WF.
And if you're a fan of the 1964-65 Worlds Fair, this is the website to visit!
I am the grandson of G.A. Martens and although I was born 16 years after the fair ended, I spent many a happy visit there thanks to Grandpa's "picture parties".
Please visit 
to
see more of his home movies!
