Streaming Media
Title
State Teachers College at Bridgewater, Massachusetts Commencement, June 1940
Files
Date
6-1940
Description
Length: 03:22
Color, Silent
The first 39 seconds show Governor Saltonstall and his entourage, limo, and State Police motorcycle escort. Footage of the academic procession follows, showing the new graduates, faculty, and guests leaving the Horace Mann Auditorium to take their places outside the Administration Building. From 01:07 to 01:14, college President John J. Kelly is standing on the right of a group of four men. A trumpet call from the entrance doors of the Administration Building precedes a procession of members of the Junior Class down the steps of the building. A second trumpet call precedes the procession of the 1940 graduates, who take their position standing in rows on the steps of the Administration Building. The graduates are conducted in a song, which is followed by several unidentified speakers. The final footage is of the graduates arrayed in a circle on the quadrangle, surrounded by a larger circle of members of the Junior Class, followed by graduates, friends, family, and spectators intermingling.
Recommended Citation
Bridgewater State Teachers College, "State Teachers College at Bridgewater, Massachusetts Commencement, June 1940" (1940). Multi-media Selections for the Archives. 6.
https://vc.bridgew.edu/media_sel/6
Comments
Massachusetts Governor Leverett A. Saltonstall (1892-1979) gave official greetings from the State at the Centennial Graduation exercises of the Bridgewater Teachers College class of 1940. The main address was given by Arthur L. Gould, Superintendent of the Boston Schools and a 1900 alumnus of Bridgewater State Normal School. Other state officials in attendance included Walter F. Downey, State Commissioner of Education, and Patrick J. Sullivan, Director of the Division of Elementary and Secondary Education and State Teachers Colleges.
This excerpt is from a 50-minute 16mm compilation film that was made in the early 1950s. The compilation film consists of both color and black & white segments, most filmed without sound, dating from 1935 to 1950. The BSU Archives and Special Collections has not uncovered any documentation or additional information about the compilation film and who produced it.
Sometime in the mid-1980s a VHS video recording was made of the projected 16mm film in an attempt to archive it, and the original film reel was probably discarded. The VHS recording was transferred to a digital format in 2015.