This edition of the PDD Video Lab features a panoply of Duluth film footage from the summer of 1967. The segments were made by taking scenes from an 18-minute silent film titled “Visit to Duluth,” breaking them up and adding music.
The first segment features scenes from Chester Bowl Park and Skyline Drive, with views of Peace Church, the Aerial Lift Bridge, Minnesota Point, Enger Tower and so on, set to Marvin Gaye’s mid-1960s hit song “Wonderful One.”
On Jan. 6, 1983, Grant Elementary School reopened after a six-month, $1.4 million renovation project. WDIO-TV’s Nancy Taggart has the report.
“Wild” Bill Cooper, the outlaw snowmobile adventurer from Willow River, was a guest on the CBS television game show To Tell the Truth roughly 50 years ago.
Twenty years later and they’re still going strong.
For your flag-waving Independence Day viewing pleasure Perfect Duluth Day presents the “Gonzo USA Theme” from Jim Richardson’s public access television show circa 2001. The music is by Craig Minowa of Cloud Cult fame; Richardson, of course, is now alternatively known as Lake Superior Aquaman.
Thirty years ago today nearly 30,000 residents of Superior and neighboring areas were evacuated after a Burlington Northern train derailed on a bridge over the Nemadji River, causing a benzene leak from a derailed car.
The video clip above is from KBJR-TV’s News 6 Nightside with anchor Michelle Lee and reports from KBJR’s Heather Filkins and Laura Bergan and KARE-11 reporter Rick Kupchella on the catastrophe that came to be known as “Toxic Tuesday.”
Gathered here is silent WDIO-TV b-roll footage dated June 20, 1972. Note there was a “Patio Park” at the time, next to A&E Supply — long before anyone had coined the term “parklet.”
This 50-year-old film is a sort of unproduced mini-documentary about Duluth’s Goldfine family, with particular emphasis on their roles as civic leaders. The family’s entrepreneurial story in Duluth goes back to 1922, so it can be viewed today as marking a full century of Goldfine family enterprises in the city.
The aerial view of Bayfront Park during its yellow canopy days at the five-second mark of this 1991 Duluth tourism promo is perhaps the highlight.
Sam Tuthill put together this documentary from select performances during the 2017 Homegrown Music Festival.
This video tour of Superior’s Old Firehouse & Police Museum was given by one of its founders, Leonard Rouse, in the early 1990s. The station closed Oct. 4, 1982 and later became a museum. The video was shot by Tad Matheson.
Among the achievements of the late food magnate Jeno Paulucci is the invention of the pizza roll, a pizza and egg roll combination dubbed “Jeno’s Pizza Rolls.” Paulucci died in Duluth ten years ago today, Nov. 24, 2011.
The 1968 television commercial embedded above was created by Stan Freberg and was a spoof of the “Show Us Your Lark” cigarette commercials of the day, which also utilized “The William Tell Overture,” music that was, of course, the theme music to the television series The Lone Ranger.
Forty-one years ago, WDIO-TV‘s Liz Wagner filed this report from the Bayfield Apple Festival.
On Oct. 15, 1969, a “Peace March and Moratorium” was held in Duluth to protest the Vietnam War. Participants marched from the campus of the University of Minnesota Duluth to the Duluth Civic Center. This clip is raw 16mm film of the event pulled from the WDIO-TV archives.
The Tamburitzans, the longest-running multicultural song and dance company in the United States, has rehearsed in Lake Nebagamon for its national tour since 1947. Mary Ellen Miller had the story for KBJR-TV in 1978 when the Tammies invaded the Lake Nebagamon Village Auditorium.
