Newly discovered film footage of baseball legend Babe Ruth is scheduled to roll in Old Town Orange this evening.
Author and baseball historian Chris Epting hosts the free 6 p.m. screening at Moonlight Graham, the Americana and pop culture retailer next to the historic Orange Circle at 401 W. Chapman Ave.
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Epting got the footage of Ruth from Carolyn
Thomas, whose grandfather founded the Long Beach Auto Co. and was a close friend of the the ballplayer who often visited him in Southern California. The pair
is shown relaxing in Huntington Beach and other places around Orange County
during the late 1920s, while other scenes show the Yankee great playing with a small dog, draping a
line of freshly hunted ducks around his neck in a silly pose, tossing a
ball to a small child, enjoying food cooked over a fire, and sitting
with the men after a long day in the field. Charlie Chaplin and other notable
celebrities of the time pop up at some points.
“This
new footage of Babe Ruth is a truly amazing find and shows a rarely
seen, off-the-field side of The Babe,” says Bart Silberman, Moonlight Graham's founder, in an event notice. “This footage shows the fun-loving and even
mischievous side of the legendary player through several candid home
movies.”
Epting will be promoting his new book, Baseball in Orange County (Images of America), published by Arcadia Publishing. His other books include Roadside Baseball: A Guide To Baseball Shrines Across America
(McGraw Hill), James Dean Died Here (Santa Monica Press), Roadside Baseball and The Ruby Slippers, Madona's Bra and Einstein's Brain–The Locations of America's Pop Culture Artifacts
(Santa Monica Press).
He also writes a weekly Huntington Beach Independent column and has contributed to the Los
Angeles Times, Westways and Travel + Leisure magazines.
More information on the event is at: http://www.moonlightgraham.net. See the flier on the next page . . .
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.