Hashtag: #HistoricalVideos
Videos: Bermuda ’80s Tourism Heydey
As former Premier Sir John.Swan and commentator Larry Burchall have pointed out, 1980 represented Bermuda’s “golden peak” for tourism — with 609,000 visitors generating more than $300 million on the island. In 1980, tourism was bringing in $317 million while the Bermuda Government was spending $120 million in that year [a contemporary... Read more of this article
Video: Bermuda Buddy Cop Film
It was a Bermuda-based “buddy movie” with a difference — two cops working on a complex case together on the island loathe one another at first sight before forming an unlikely professional partnership and friendship. The 1994 NBC TV movie “Bermuda Grace” starred William Sadler and David Harewood in a light comedy-adventure... Read more of this article
Videos: Exploring ‘The Bermuda Depths’
“The Bermuda Depths” is part ghost story and part love story with a touch of Japanese monster movie thrown in to the eerie proceedings for good measure. And this unlikely combination of elements has ensured the ABC TV movie — filmed completely on location on the island in 1978 — retains a worldwide cult following more than... Read more of this article
Video: Rudyard Kipling’s Bermuda Stories
Best remembered today for tales set against the vastness of British India in such works as “The Jungle Book”, “Kim” and “The Man Who Would Be King”, author and poet Rudyard Kipling used colonial Bermuda’s intimate scale to striking effect in two stories written towards the end of his life. Kipling [1865–1936],... Read more of this article
Mark Twain’s Christmas Eve Heartbreak
On Christmas Eve, 1909 a heartbroken Mark Twain — who had returned to his Connecticut home from Bermuda just four days earlier — put pen to paper to eulogise his youngest daughter who had died just hours earlier. Jean Clemens [1880–1909] was the youngest of the three daughters of Samuel Langhorne Clemens — better known by his pen... Read more of this article
Videos: Bob Hope’s Bermuda Christmas
It was Christmas time in the city — the City of Hamilton, to be precise — when Bob Hope and Dixie Carter serenaded one another with “Silver Bells” on the comedy legend’s final NBC seasonal special in 1990. Mr. Hope’s Christmas shows were television institutions on NBC for almost 50 years — and a trademark... Read more of this article
Videos: Humperdinck’s ’74 Bermuda Show
Superstar Englebert Humperdinck swapped the glittery showrooms of Las Vegas for some quainter Bermuda settings in a 1974 TV special which featured Canadian songbird Ann Murray and local acts Hubert Smith & The Coral Islanders and the Clayhouse Inn Steel Band. Featuring the singer duetting with Ms Murray in the back of a horse-drawn carriage, sitting... Read more of this article
Video: 1959 ‘Portrait Of Bermuda’
Iran’s former empress, New York’s mayor and the Duke of Edinburgh are among the celebrities filmed against Bermuda backdrops in a 1959 promotional film extolling the island as a dream location for vacationing photographers. “Portrait of Bermuda” was released by the Bermuda Trade Development Board, aimed at the mushrooming market... Read more of this article
Videos: College Weeks Reunion Planned
Bermuda was where the girls were. During the island’s annual College Weeks festivities — a tourism pernennial from the 1950s through the late 1970s — up to 10,000 students would spend their spring breaks in Bermuda, the overwhelming majority of them female. “There are so many girls you can take your time to pick one ho’s... Read more of this article
Videos: Rare ’50s Bermuda Colour Films
A vintage 1950s travelogue shows Bermuda shortly after World War Two, when cars were not only still a novelty on the roads but the island’s trademark surrey-fringed taxis and other vehicles travelled both ways on Queen and Reid Streets. It was produced by International Harvester which brought a group of employees on a cruise to the island and... Read more of this article
Video: Million-Selling ‘Bermuda’ Single
A novelty song about the island written by a California teenager who had never come within 3,000 miles of Bermuda ended up selling a million copies in the early 1950s — and was later to launch the career of one of the biggest musical acts of the ’60s. The Bell Sisters — Cynthia Strother, 16, and Kay Strother, 11 — were discovered... Read more of this article
Historical Video: Mandrake’s Bermuda Adventure
A good magician never reveals his tricks — including the geographic sleight of hand which allowed the pilot episode of a proposed TV series based on comic strip conjurer/adventurer Mandrake to be filmed largely in Bermuda despite the fact the story takes place in the US. The 1954 “Mandrake The Magician” pilot starred professional stage... Read more of this article
Video: 1930s Colour Bermuda Footage
Rare colour home movie footage of the island shot by a passenger aboard the luxury liner ”Monarch of Bermuda” in 1939 features the island during its pre-World War Two heyday as a resort for wealthy vacationers. Featuring short scenes of various island locations and sights — including the Bermuda Railway running along Front Street... Read more of this article
1961: Pan American’s Bermuda Tourism Film
Fifty years ago Bermuda’s tourism industry was arguably at its zenith. By 1961 Bermuda had rebounded from a sharp decline in visitor arrivals which briefly threatened the island’s longstanding dominance as the luxury resort of choice for wealthy North Americans. The introduction of jet airliners in the late 1950s had allowed previously remote... Read more of this article
1920s Video: Bermuda At Dawn Of Tourism Age
A glimpse of Bermuda at the dawn of the modern tourism age has been preserved by a Canadian film archive. Scenes of Hamilton, the South Shore beaches and various other Bermuda locations are featured in the historic footage, recently posted on-line by Nova Scotia’s provincial government archive. The film is believed to have been shot by Allen... Read more of this article
Historical Video: ‘Neptune’s Daughter’ Resurfaces
Almost a century old, film footage of Bermuda shot for a silent-era mermaid fantasy has resurfaced in an Australian movie archive. Long considered a lost film, the 71-minute movie about a mermaid who falls in love with the surface-dwelling king.was shot on location in Bermuda in 1913 and made an overnight star out of Annette Kellerman, an Australian-born... Read more of this article
