Tonight the University of North Carolina Tar Heel men play a game of basketball against UC-Santa Barbara.

My image scanning and processing this month has consisted of mostly basketball photographs,  and  according to a rough estimation they outnumber the usual celluloid suspects — bears, battleships, and pageant queens — by a significant margin. Therefore I have many pictures to choose from, and I feel slightly overwhelmed by all the options, all of which are excellent.

Thanks to a long tradition of basketball movies, I have been given the impression that basketball is about more than slam dunks and court-side gesticulations. Hugh Morton’s photos do not dispel this perception: in the collection there are a host of photographs from locker rooms, press conferences, dinner parties, and airplanes.

Here is an optimistic photograph, to begin with: a very backstage shot of a very sleepy men’s basketball team returning home on an airplane after their 1982 NCAA championship victory in New Orleans. (Note the young Michael Jordan two rows back on the left, and that looks like James Worthy in the front right, cuddling with his pillow).

Here is another off-court shot, of a very despondent, soda-drinking player in the locker room. The man, presumably a coach, assistant coach, or general father figure, is trying to encourage him in vain.

Moving on in the basketball summary, here is a highlight from the collection of on-court photographs. After seeing this, I wonder if maybe basketball really is just about slam dunks.

Carolina, in a game against Duke, is trailing slightly (36-42 according to the scoreboard), but I wonder, did this momentous dunk-in-progress by Michael Jordan change things? Was this one of the seminal Carolina-Duke match-ups, or merely another entry in the tally of this legendary rivalry?

My idea on this photo is that, because it was taken in the Greensboro Coliseum, it might be from the ACC tournament on March 10, 1984. If so, then Duke ended up winning, 75 to 77. But I can never be sure, as the photos I process often come to me in the form of loose, undated and unlabeled film negatives, and I have no context for the picture aside from embedded details (nametags and calendars are always welcome!). Can anyone help me identify the particular game?

To close, I have a photo from Hugh’s grandson Jack Morton, who has apparently inherited his Tar Heel photographer’s pass, and is documenting the exploits of current UNC basketballers. More of Jack’s photos from the Nov. 15 Carolina-Penn season opener can be viewed here. It is pretty neat to see the family continuity, isn’t it?

I became familiar with WBT Radio announcer Grady Cole’s lovable, memorable mug early on in my work with the Morton collection, but haven’t been able to find out much about him (other than the fact that a civic center in Charlotte bears his name).

There is a brief bio of Cole on page 50 of Making a Difference in North Carolina (where the image above also appears), which reads in part:

WBT Radio’s greatest star (and money maker), was an original, laid-back performer who dominated the morning air waves for over 25 years. “He talked with people, not at them,” says Charles H. Crutchfield, “and listeners believed in him and whatever he was selling.”

Then I discovered the wonderful website BT Memories, an archival web project by and for former employees of WBT/WBTV Charlotte. This well-designed site is a treasure trove of photos, videos, articles, and reminiscences from the Jefferson-Pilot-owned stations. It’s here that I found a hilarious recording of Cole made during his noontime farm report. (Go to the Sound Vault and scroll down to “Breakups and Screwups” if you want to listen, but be warned — the clip contains some spicy language).

What a voice, and a personality! I can see why he was so popular.

Perhaps former WBT employees can share some Grady Cole stories, or help identify the some of the folks in the image below, taken at the celebration of Cole’s 25th anniversary at WBT (in what year)?

UPDATE, 11/10/08: Following up on Lew Powell’s comment about the pinback button — Linda Jacobson from the NCC Gallery provided me with the scan below, and it IS in fact the one worn by the woman in the photo above. Yahoo!

Two of Hugh Morton’s most famous portraits popped up in NC newspapers today. The first is in a News & Observer column by Jim Jenkins, entitled “Walk the line to Grandfather’s top,” about Johnny Cash’s visit to Grandfather in June of 1974 to perform at “Singing on the Mountain.” Jim (with the help of Hugh’s grandson Jack Morton) recounts the events surrounding Morton’s portrait of the Man in Black holding aloft a tattered American flag. (Hugh also tells the story of Cash’s visit on pages 126-129 of Making a Difference in North Carolina). The online version of Jenkins’ column doesn’t include the photo, so here it is (uncropped):

The second is a reference in Wilmington’s Star News to Andy Griffith’s 1953 monologue, “What is was, was football,” the popular comedy routine that is generally credited with launching Griffith’s mainstream career. Morton’s photo of Griffith performing the monologue at halftime at UNC’s Kenan Stadium (below) has been widely published, including on page 130 of Hugh Morton’s North Carolina.

(Note: the Star News website doesn’t seem to be loading at the time of this posting).

I don’t follow or play golf myself, but I did hear the news this weekend that the United States won its first Ryder Cup since 1999. That reminded me of some Hugh Morton images from the 1951 Ryder Cup, played in Pinehurst, N.C. (which the U.S. also won).

I have a list of the team members (below), but can anyone help me attach names to faces in these images? I know a few of them, and could probably fill the rest in a bit of research, but I thought I’d test the golf knowledge of our readership.

Team United States (list from Wikipedia): Sam Snead (Captain), Clayton Heafner, Ed Oliver, Ben Hogan, Jack Burke, Jr., Henry Ransom, Lloyd Mangrum, Jimmy Demaret, Skip Alexander

Grandfather Mountain’s Mile High Swinging Bridge was dedicated 56 years ago on September 2, 1952 by then-Governor William B. Umstead (pictured above at the ceremony at center, with his daughter, WBT Radio announcer Grady Cole on the left, and Hugh Morton on the right).

The bridge was one of several projects Morton took on during the early years of his oversight of Grandfather, designed to turn it into (according to the slogan he coined) “Carolina’s TOP scenic attraction.”

An Oct. 1, 1978 article about Morton from the Greensboro Daily News recounts the following:

The swinging bridge was one of two options when Morton decided to get visitors from the gift shop-museum parking lot to the rocky overlook. “We had to have some way to get them across, and we could either have a stationary bridge or a swinging bridge,” he said. “We decided the swinging bridge would be more fun, and would make a good conversation piece.” Some 30 percent of women visitors, and a smaller percentage of males, however, think it best not to cross the bridge.

Crossing the bridge is one thing (speaking as a “woman visitor” who has done it, in 95-mph winds, even!); building it is entirely another, as you can see in the picture below. This is NOT a job I would have taken on.

The Mile High Swinging Bridge proved not just a promotional boon for Morton, but a photographic one as well. He took many beautiful images of the bridge over the years—enveloped in mist, framed by vivid fall leaves or blooming rhododendrons, encased in rime ice. I find the (cropped) image below particularly “striking.”

This, unfortunately, is the second post I’ve written about a fire at an NC cultural institution destroying irreplaceable costumes and artifacts. The good news is that today’s subject, The Lost Colony outdoor drama of Roanoke Island, is currently celebrating a renewal.

The September 2007 fire destroyed the costume shop and its contents, requiring renowned designer William Ivey Long and his crew to painfully reconstruct and “age” the approximately 1,000 costumes lost—a task Long described as “the greatest challenge and . . . the greatest assignment of my entire life.”

The Hugh Morton image below shows some of those beautiful costumes in detail—and, you just might recognize the young lad on the right.

This image appears on page 281 of the 1988 book Making a Difference in North Carolina, with the following caption:

The lanky, tousel [sic]-headed Sir Walter Raleigh is Andy Griffith, a former drama major and PlayMaker at UNC-Chapel Hill. Paul Green’s great outdoor drama, The Lost Colony, was just beginning its long run to success when Griffith won the audition for the role. He moved to Manteo and played Sir Walter for the next six years. The drama was, and is, valuable experience and summer employment for summer actors and actresses.

In the wake of the fire, Griffith donated his sword (shown above), initially thought destroyed, back to the production.

The image below shows the costumes in full color (though they look slightly altered from the earlier image), worn by later versions of Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter.

Memorial Day seems a most appropriate occasion to highlight some of the images documenting Hugh Morton’s World War II experiences. The broad strokes of the story are well known: aware that he would end up in the military and hoping to receive an assignment in photography, Morton enlisted in October 1942 and was first posted at the U.S. Army Anti-Aircraft School at Camp Davis, taking pictures for training manuals.

When he was sent to New Caledonia to report to the 161st Army Signal Corps Photo Company, he was surprised when his captain looked at him and said, “Morton, you look like a movie man.” (This was the first time he picked up a movie camera, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last—future blog posts will explore some of Morton’s later adventures in filmmaking). Since his wartime film footage went directly to the Army, we don’t have any of it in the collection here at UNC—but we do have a small number of still images taken by and of Morton during these eventful years.

Here’s Morton, in a photo by an unknown photographer, with his movie camera atop a B-24, the “Go Gettin’ Gal“:

In 1944 Morton obtained an enjoyable assignment covering Bob Hope, Frances Langford, and Jerry Colonna as they entertained the troops at New Caledonia. In the booklet Sixty Years with a Camera, Morton described these as “three of the happiest days of my life…I rode in the same car with Bob and Jerry…during which they were cracking jokes and practicing their lines. It was a fun time.”

From there, he was sent briefly to Guadalcanal and Bougainville, which may be when the following images were snapped (the first is by Morton; the second shows Morton with his camera and a group of Pacific island children, taken by an unknown photographer):

Morton then got his most intense assignment when he was sent to photograph the 25th Infantry Division as they invaded Luzon, in the Philippines, in early 1945. He obtained a few still shots of combat, and covered General Douglas MacArthur when he came to Luzon to inspect the 25th Division:

Shortly after MacArthur’s visit, Morton was wounded in an explosion—an incident for which he received a Purple Heart and Bronze Star, with citation, for exposing himself to danger in order to obtain high-quality, closeup images of the front lines. Morton recounts the incident in UNC-TV’s “Biographical Conversations” (video available online), claiming that the Speed Graphic camera he held in front of his face helped save him from further injury.

A note of interest: the Library of Congress holds the papers and photos of another member of the 161st Photographic Company, Charles Rosario Restifo. Be sure to check out Restifo’s detailed autobiography, wherein he discusses his training, camp life, and experiences in the Pacific, many of which would have been similar to or the same as Morton’s. I don’t believe Restifo is in the picture above, and he doesn’t mention Morton by name in the memoir, but it sounds like they were on many of the same assignments—in fact, if you look on page 98 of Restifo’s book, the image of MacArthur appears to be the exact same image as Morton’s (above)! Not just similar, but identical. Not sure how this happened.

One last Memorial Day musing: Morton didn’t leave his WW2 experiences behind him when he left the Pacific. As I discussed in a previous blog post, he deserves a lot of credit for the establishment of the USS North Carolina as a memorial to North Carolinians who died in WW2 service.

Wilmington’s 61st annual North Carolina Azalea Festival kicks off next week (April 9-13). Hugh Morton played an integral role in the event’s founding: while only in his twenties, he was selected to serve as president of the inaugural festival in 1948. (A letter from Morton on the festival’s website explains that when he missed a committee meeting, they responded by electing him president). As Susan Taylor Block writes in “Clan MacRae,” an article in the 4/2007 issue of Wrightsville Beach magazine, Morton deserves credit not only for Wilmington’s Azalea Festival, but also many of its azalea plants:

Morton had worked diligently since 1946 to make the 1948 Azalea Festival debut a success. He encouraged Wilmingtonians to plant azaleas, persuaded the local government to plant an additional 175,000 azaleas at Greenfield Lake and recruited garden clubs to transplant azaleas from their own private gardens to public spaces. Morton encouraged the festival fathers to be careful stewards of the event’s ticket take, seek out quality in celebrity guests and make the azalea itself the guest of honor. He knew that if the first festival ended up in the red, it would be the last.

North Carolina Azalea Festival negatives in the Morton collection are numerous and mostly in good shape, but not well-documented. The early years of the festival (from 1948 to about 1958) are best represented, but little identifying information is provided other than the year (if that). Fortunately, we have at least one good source to work from—historian Block’s 2004 book Belles & Blooms, heavily illustrated by Morton’s photos. Block’s time line will help us pin down some of the major details, like who was queen in what year, what celebrities attended, etc.

In the meantime, though, we’re asking you to help us put names to faces in some of these early shots.

Judging from the enormous fur coat and all the cameras pointed at them, I’m guessing that these people are famous. But who are they?

The image above was taken at the 1950 Azalea Festival. I can’t read any of the name tags, but I do see that the man on the far right (in the headdress) has a program from “Unto These Hills” (an outdoor drama performed at Cherokee, North Carolina) in his pocket.

The man in this photo is Grady Cole, talk radio celebrity with WBT Radio in Charlotte, North Carolina (and frequent Morton photo subject in the early 1950s). But who is the woman—and is she the same woman from the previous photo? Most importantly, why are they holding up what looks like an x-ray of somebody’s spine?!

In Stephen’s post from last November 6, New Orleans, 1945, he mentioned a set of big band photos (featuring Benny Goodman) that Morton took sometime in/around his college years. Having sorted through most of the negatives at least once, I’ve been wondering where the heck those big band photos were . . . until last Thursday, when I found at least some of them, in an envelope labeled “Orchestras” and smushed in the bottom of a particularly dirty, messy box of film. [Editor's Note: You may not find "smush" in your dictionary, but a Google search found 384,000 references in 0.07 seconds and a jazz piece must be hep—even if the word goes back to the early 19th century.]

None of the “Orchestras” photos are labeled, however, and my knowledge of jazz history is severely limited. I was able to identify Goodman (above) thanks to the clarinet, the big “G,” and—duh—the fact that Morton photographed a poster for the event that touts the Benny Goodman Orchestra’s “First Time on Any Washington Stage”:

The strip of images below proved a little more tricky, but not much. When I zoomed in on the kick drum, I was able to read this inscription: “‘To The Bobcats—Jeff Keate.” A bit of Googling revealed that Jeff Keate was a cartoonist, and the Bobcats (or Bob Cats) were a Dixieland group made up of members from the Bob Crosby (brother of Bing Crosby) Orchestra. This information led me to identify Ray Bauduc on drums and Bob Haggart on bass, and to discover that Bauduc and Haggart wrote two big hits in the late 1930s: “South Rampart Street Parade,” and “Big Noise from Winnetka” (a bass and drums duet, which they were probably performing when Morton took these very photos). Thanks to YouTube, you can watch a fully orchestrated 1943 performance of the song! (Keep an eye out for that kick drum, and stay tuned for the Haggart/Bauduc solo in the middle). [OK, another Editor's Note: you just have to check out the YouTube clip!]

Unfortunately, such helpful visual clues are few and far between. So, I decided to make this the inaugural post in a series I am inventively titling “Who Am I?” I picked out a few of Morton’s jazz photos, and am hoping to enlist readers’ help in identifying some of the musicians pictured below. I’m not sure if these were groups/artists that played in North Carolina (e.g., at UNC-Chapel Hill), or if Morton traveled to see them (as he did Goodman in Washington DC). I have no idea if these are big name players or unknown locals, but I am fairly certain that they were taken in the 1940s or early 1950s. Any ideas?

UPDATE, 3/3/08: Here are two more photos that may shed additional light on the Jo Jones/Herschel Evans/Count Basie Orchestra possibility. The first image below was taken at the same event as the saxophonist image above (looks like a house party of some kind), and shows some of the other players. The second image below was taken at the same event as the image above with the drummer (Jones?) sitting behind his kit. (This event appears to be in an auditorium).