Vol mania seems to get bigger every year, which makes sense when you consider enrollment at the University of Tennessee gets bigger every year. And as they say, once a Vol, you’re a Vol for Life (with a few exceptions who need not be named).
Knoxvillians have cheered on the Tennessee Volunteers football team since the program was founded in 1891. Back then, there was no stadium, and the games drew small groups of spectators who sat on a slope rather than bleachers. Both the sport and the team began growing in popularity in the early 1900s, and by 1921 Shields-Watkins Field was created. Though radio was commonplace by the 1920s, coverage of the games wasn’t broadcast, and the only way you could find out what happened on the field was through attending, hearing about it secondhand or reading a newspaper account. News reels were still several years away from being shown in movie theaters.
Fortunately, there were several people in Knoxville who would film portions of the games with 16mm cameras, then show them in their homes or at theaters. The Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound (TAMIS) has several of these fan-shot films in its archive, dating from the 1920s through the 1970s, offering a variety of unusual views of the game, sometimes from on the field itself.
For many years, the archive’s earliest footage of the Vols in action was a 1928 reel from the collection of local businessman F.B. Kuhlman. Filmed from the upper stands, it offers a good panoramic view of Shields-Watkins Field, where capacity at that time was 6,800. It’s interesting to see how surprisingly close several houses are to the field, and UT’s steam plant juts up against the back of the stands, its smokestack towering above the fans.
An article in a 1927 issue of the Knoxville News-Sentinel mentions that popular local photographer Jim Thompson filmed a game that season, so we knew an earlier film existed. TAMIS has an extensive collection of Thompson’s home movies and football games, but this one is not among them, so we assumed this reel was lost, decayed or misplaced sometime in the distant past. Recently, however, it resurfaced in a donation to TAMIS.
The four-minute reel contains excerpts from the 1927 Vanderbilt vs. UT game that ended in a 7-7 tie. This was Coach Robert Neyland’s second year at UT, and although the Vols didn’t win, the game broke UT’s six game losing streak against Vandy and began a seven-year streak of ties and wins against the Commodores. It also happened to be the only game they didn’t win that year.
On Thursday, Nov. 13, from 7 to 9:30 p.m. at Xul Beer Co. (213 E. 5th Ave.), this 1927 reel of the UT-Vanderbilt game will be publicly screened to a crowd for the first time in almost 100 years during “Vintage Vols and Know-It-Alls,” a fundraising event for TAMIS hosted by the Friends of the Knox County Public Library. Other archival Vols footage will be shown, including a fascinating look at the 1939 team’s cross-country train trip to Pasadena to play in the Rose Bowl, as well as visits to director Clarence Brown’s ranch and the backlot of the Studios at Paramount.
This homecoming week celebration will also feature live trivia with Vols questions sourced from the TAMIS film, video and audio archive. Former voice of the Vols Bob Kelsing will emcee the event, and Heath Shuler will be in attendance, as well.
This event also celebrates 20 years of TAMIS, which was founded as a nonprofit in 2005 and became an official part of the McClung Collection at the Knox County Public Library in 2013. It continues to be an unparalleled resource in preserving the audio-visual history of Knoxville and East Tennessee, and we hope it continues to be for decades to come.
dawson@blanknews.com
