Here are two quite unusual images from the file labeled “Homecoming 1951”:
Well now. What to make of this? I’ve never seen anything like it. What alumnus could merit a microphone on the tarmac, not to mention special trip out to the airport by Miss Sarah Lane?
One of the envelopes inside the folder had a name on it: Jack Glenn. He turns out to be precisely the fellow in the center of the top photograph. In addition to his local fame as president of the Rice Institute’s class of 1926, Glenn was famous as the producer of “The March of Time,” a newsreel series that was shown in movie theaters for several decades. I’ve had a look at a few of the episodes on YouTube and they are difficult to categorize. It’s not really news, exactly, but something more like short, opinionated documentaries narrated by a man with a booming voice. In a turn of events that has left me a bit dazed, “The March of Time” has a Facebook page. If you like messing around with things like this it is well worth your while:
https://www.facebook.com/themarchoftime/?target_post=10154789475400203
All of this is interesting but as usual it’s something else that has caught my attention. It didn’t take long discover that Jack Glenn’s papers (142 boxes worth!) are preserved for some reason in the archives of the University of Wyoming. Most of the collection is his professional papers and film but there are several entries in the finding aid that are clearly Rice related including—hang on—a scrapbook from his student days.
I need to go there.
Bonus: Come see our new display in the trophy case in the RMC and think about coming to the panel on February 18th too. With a topic like this it can’t fail to be interesting.
http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth230882/m1/1/
Thanks, Grungy.
I’ll tell you something else, I’ve seen those beanies somewhere before. It will eventually come to me.
Also, doesn’t that look like Judy Ley right in front of the guy in the cowboy hat?
It is, according to the article in the Thresher.
More in a ’55 Thresher.
I thought the name was familiar – I’ve met him – at a Homecoming game.
He was still leading cheers into the ’70s.
He’s also the founder of what became the Rally Club
http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth231004/m1/10/
Glenn was also editor of both the Thresher and Campanile.
His return to Houston in 1931 to write a book about his travels and experiences led to a glowing front-page Thresher article in the May 15 issue. (https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/65321/thr19310515.pdf?sequence=1)
It began:
>>> The man who “scooped” the Lindbergh story in 1927, who edited both The Thresher and Campanile, who created the Rally club, who served as head yell leader at Rice for three years, who roved around the world as a movie cameraman, has come back to Rice and Houston.
The man in this story is Jack Glenn, perhaps the most popular and surely the best-liked student In the history of the university.
Believe it or not, Glenn has been in Houston since last January, but his whereabouts were veiled in secrecy until he dropped in at the Rally Club smoker Monday for a casual visit.
Jack has been in seclusion writing his travel book, “Reeling Around the World,” the manuscript of which he mailed to the publisher this week.
The manuscript deals with Jack’s part in getting the Lindbergh scoop, one of the greatest newspaper stories of all time, and his association with Christopher Morley in the Hoboken dramatic revivals.
Glenn has a lifetime Job with the New York Herald, as a result of his work on the Lindbergh story, although he is at present a free lance writer.
According to Jack, who has seen a great deal of the world since he left here a curly-haired blonde lad, out for adventure and to see the sights, Rice is still the greatest school in the world. …. <<<
That mic is dope
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