I could immediately tell this box was packed. Much heavier than what I had opened before.
Thirty six slides packed in a box of 12.
Fun day, theater 1946 and some more illegible scribbles. Joel’s handwriting is at times challenging.
After scanning, I was able to group this in mostly three subjects. Checking the Pacific Review for clues was not much help. There’s no Pacific Weekly in the Digital Archives of UOP, there’s a gap from 1944 all the way to 1950.
Oh well.
One intriguing observation is that some negatives are duplicated. I first thought these were subsequent shots, but no, they are exact copies. We’ll talk more about this in a subsequent post.
Firs subject are negatives shot at what appears to be a dress rehearsal for a theater play or alternatively, a few skits. I can’t pinpoint the theater, this might not be SJC/COP related.
the stage is actually smallish with low ceilings and the lighting seems to have come from Joel’s lighting spots.
I believe all these images were posed, this is, held upon cue, during the performance to give Joel an opportunity to frame and properly set aperture and shutter speed.
I know from experience that photographing a dress rehearsal is a somewhat stressful event.
In 1946 there was little concern about using black face on stage.
I believe the next images are a different play/skit.
“THE END”
We were not able to find out anything more about these 6 negatives. The COP 1946 Pacific Review only mentions 8 plays for 1946 without going into any detail that would allow us to attach a play to the above images.
What I did pick out thumbing through the 1946 Pacific Reviews, is that 48% of the 1946 enrolled students were WWII Veterans. Second tidbit is that the bulk of now Veterans had left the campus in or around March 1943 to either go to training or directly to the battlefields.
Next blog post we’ll look at what Joel described as “Fun Day” on the lid of the Eastman Film press negative box.
Cheers !
Finding Joel Pahl Dardis 