This film is part of Free
Universal Talking News No. 487
A curious Scarborough skipping custom and other intriguing happenings from around the world.
Overview
What a joy it is to see fully-grown adults skipping! Not such an unusual sight in Scarborough, especially come Shrove Tuesday, when jumping rope is as integral to the celebrations as pancake eating. Fantastic shots of the crowds gathered on the South Bay seafront are the highlight of this eclectic newsreel, which also features stories on a French lemon festival, shawl making on the Shetland Isles, a lifeboat wreck at Casablanca, terrifying-looking altitude experiments, the land speed record-breaker Bluebird, and a sneaky peak at RMS Queen Mary under construction.
Sadly, this edition of Universal Talking News is no longer talking, having lost its soundtrack. But the imaginative camerawork and variety of material more than makes up for it and it remains an intriguing snapshot of world events in 1935. Scarborough's curious shrove-tide skipping custom, of unknown origin, is still going strong today.
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