I just got pointed towards a snippet of footage of the late great Frank Manning, social dancing in the Savoy Ballroom in 1937!  I have so much vintage footage in my collection (over 2,000 short clips on my laptop alone), that sometimes it seems impossible that I could ever stumble across another gem.  Actually, it happens all the time, but rarely this wonderful. I know it’s only a few seconds of Frankie, but he looks so young and happy, and I was just delighted to see footage of the bandstand in the Savoy Ballroom (I’d only seen photos). And the girls swinging out, in full-length ballgowns!!  Wow, just so wonderful!

The footage is from Time Inc’s newsreel, The March of Time, on  February 19, 1937. This was a current affairs newsreel, shown in cinemas before the main feature (remember, this is before television). HBO is restoring all that archival footage, good for them! That particular ‘episode’ happens to be about swing music as a ‘current trend’. You can see Frankie dancing in “dark Harlem’s hot and noisy Savoy” at 0:46.