Most Famous Unknown Pers...

[DirectorDave]

There was a thread a couple of months back about famous unkown people and someone raised a point about war footage and not knowing the name of the video clip of the First World War of a soldier carrying a injured comrade on his back looking back while into the camera and how we don't know who this person is.

My grandfather is in a well used clip of the Dunkirk evacuation (The Peti-Officer looking into the camera when the soldier are boarding a boat). Is there any oraganisation that would be interested in this information?

I just get the vision of relatives of the guy from the trenches seeing him on screen saying "Oh there is uncle so and so..." but never telling anyone.

I was recently able to give footage to a guy of his great grandfather playing football in 1920, which has somewhat sparked my interest.

[Adam Went]

Hey Dave,

Fascinating and excellent idea.

I think they have tried to do similar things in docco's before, a program titled "The Unknown Hero" or something along those lines, but i'm not aware of any actual organisation that tries to do this.

There must be tens of thousands of unknown heroes who we've all heard about but who have gone unrecognised by name for decades throughout all sorts of historical events.

Cheers,
Adam.

P.S. Did they ever find out the identity of the bloke who stood in front of the tank at Tianenman Square?

[kensei]

Adam,
On the Tianenman Square guy- Sorry I don't remember names but I do clearly remember one of the well known American female tv journalists- Diane Sawyer? Connie Chung?- doing an interview with the leader of China shortly after that happened, and showing him a picture of the guy standing in front of the tank and asking him, "Can you tell me what happened to this man?" The answer was a stone-faced, "No comment."

[Adam Went]

Kensei:

Ah....doesn't sound at all promising for him then, possibly accounts for why he's not been tracked down.

Cheers,
Adam.

[DirectorDave]

Cheers guys, not found anywhere that keeps a record of this stuff.

And Adam "possibly accounts for why he's not been tracked down." he was standing in front of a tank.....perhaps not the best use of that turn of phrase.

[Adam Went]

You know I didn't even realise that, Dave.....LOL!

But, but....the tank stopped!!

Cheers,
Adam.

[Mayerling]

You know I didn't even realise that, Dave.....LOL!

But, but....the tank stopped!!

Cheers,
Adam.

Yes, for that moment.

I just got a magazine called CIVIL WAR TIMES (issue for October 2011) and on page 33 is a one page article with illustration of a photo from an archive of an "unknown" Civil War soldier who was finally identified by some details overlooked in the picture. Granted it was not a journalistic photo but a studio portrait, but still it shows identification is possible.

On a darker note, photos at Lincoln's second inauguration (March 4, 1865) show John Wilkes Booth nearby (and possibly Lewis Powell / "Paine" standing in a bunch on the ground near the platform). Also Adolf Hitler has been found in a July 1914 photograph cheering in a crowd that Austra-Hungary had declared war on Serbia.

Jeff

[Adam Went]

'Tis a wonder Adolf didn't end up painting the scene....

Cheers,
Adam.

[Phil H]

'Tis a wonder Adolf didn't end up painting the scene....

Fact is, he wasn't any good at painting people. He could do buildings quite well, though.

Phil

[Phil Carter]

'Tis a wonder Adolf didn't end up painting the scene....

Fact is, he wasn't any good at painting people. He could do buildings quite well, though.

Phil

Yeah, one room, two coats, in one day.

(it's a variation on an old Peter Sellers quip, via the Parkinson show, 1974.)


kindly

Phil

[Phil H]

Ah yes! The old Schickelgruber story.

I can assure you that far pre-dates Sellers or Parkinson.

Phil

[Adam Went]

Yes, "Heil Schickelgruber!" might not have worked so well for him....

Take out the last 15 years or so of his life and his younger days actually make a fairly interesting study.....

Cheers,
Adam.

[Mayerling]

Actually, Kenneth Mars utters a similar joke in the original THE PRODUCERS by Mel Brooks. Mars (as Franz Liebling, the Nazi dramatist) is knocking Churchill as a painter compared to Hitler (and says the "two coats" line) and then adds Hitler was better dressed, told funnier jokes, and could dance the pants off Churchill.

And in one of Moe Howard's two clever appearances with his stooge partners as "Moe Hailstorm" ["Hail, Hail, Hailstorm!" is shouted when he appears] he is introduced painting a house.

You realize, in his mutual hatred-rivalry with Joseph Stalin, it actually was not Hitler v. Stalin, but Schicklegruber v. Djugashvili.

Jeff