1929 St. Petersburg comes into focus in historic film

ST. PETERSBURG -- A steamboat glided within sight of the Vinoy Park Hotel. Seconds later, the Million Dollar Pier emerged. The year was 1929.

Nearly 50 people were at the Nelson Poynter Memorial Library Friday to watch a little history -- a home movie of the city taken by a regular visitor more than 70 years ago.

The scenes were reminiscent for some. "Very nostalgic," Mary B. Christian said. "My brothers and I used to swim in the Vinoy basin."

Said Betty Jean Miller, newly elected president of the Society for the Advancement of Poynter Library: "It's a treasure to have this (film) fall into our laps. Just a flood of memories came back."

The SAPL learned of the film last August. Phyllis Jordan wrote historian Ray Arsenault about her father-in-law, John P. Jordan, a New York City engineer who loved to visit St. Petersburg.

He had shot the 16mm movie with one of the first Kodak movie cameras sold for public use, and now Phyllis Jordan wanted to know if anyone was interested in the film.

"Ray passed the letter on to me, and of course I contacted Mrs. Jordan immediately," said Kathy Arsenault, director of the Poynter Library at the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg and wife of the historian.

University librarian Jerry Notaro researched film preservation companies and chose Cinema Arts Inc. of South Sterling, Pa., a company noted for duplicating old, fragile and deteriorating film. Cinema Arts has handled film dating to the 1890s and determined the age of John Jordan's movie.

"This movie is so old it smelled of mothballs," Miller said.

There was fear that passing the fragile film through a projector might damage it.

Notaro said it would have cost nearly $5,000 to copy the movie frame by frame, with 18,360 frames in all. Cinema Arts ultimately reproduced the film in three forms: a 1-inch standard broadcast copy and Betacam and Super VHS versions.

"It was a four-month endeavor," Notaro said. "Our major concern is to preserve it as an archive and present it to the public. It was all very, very, very inexpensive: $239."

Cinema Arts returned the original film after the university had received the copies, avoiding the possibility of losing everything in one shipment, Notaro said.

"The fact that someone was able to take this film and digitize it is a miracle," said Charlie Kaniss, who narrated the 17-minute movie.

In 1925, four years before the film was made, Kaniss came to St. Petersburg. He was 12. He later served as a City Council member (1951-1955) and a county elections supervisor (1967-1989).

"When Betty Jean Miller asked me to narrate this, I said, "Why me?' " Kaniss said. "She said, "Why not?' and so I'm here." The former jeweler and the father of five children grew up around many of the sights featured in the film.

"If you had the money, you could buy one of those cars there for under $600," Kaniss said as the film rolled. "The deluxe models were $600. But all many had to live on then was love, a pale moon and fish."

As Kaniss continued his narration, pelicans flew over water. A boy dressed in knickers appeared and fed one of the long-billed birds.

The sight of saurians resting at the alligator farm at Coquina Key brought "Oohs" from viewers.

Then came a well-known sign of the times: people sitting on green benches downtown. "We had green benches from Ninth Street to the waterfront," Kaniss said.

In subsequent frames, Spanish moss cascaded from trees at Williams Park. Beneath the trees, a crowd relaxed, all wearing hats. "The moss here was marketed and used to stuff mattresses," Kaniss said.

During final scenes, viewers vicariously experienced the muscle of a local tropical storm.

"The film looked so pristine," said Christian, a St. Petersburg native. "It was so special to see the city again in its infancy. This was a wonderful place to grow up."

-- Scott Taylor Hartzell can be reached at hartzel@msn.com

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