Lost Kansas City home movies found: See stunning glimpses of fun in the Roaring Twenties

When Leawood resident Joe Tomelleri first approached The Star about looking at some old home movies he’d stumbled across, it was hard not to get excited.

After all, very few moving pictures of Kansas City from the 1920s and 1930s are available.

Home movie cameras, which were introduced by Kodak in 1923 weren’t cheap. Film stock often degraded over time. And more professionals newsreels usually concentrated on disasters or staged events.

Nonetheless, Joe’s “discovery” could have been a big disappointment.

But it wasn’t disappointing. at all.

In fact, the old film reels he’d acquired on eBay far exceeded expectations. The range of images in them was startling, often well shot, and flat out fun.

So we quickly reached out to local historians and the staff at Missouri Valley Special Collections to get their reactions.

“As an archivist, I think this is a treasure trove,” Chuck Haddix, curator of UMKC’s Marr Sound Archives, said after viewing just part of the 90 minutes that have been digitally transferred.

Historian William Worley concurs. “The chance to see moving images thrills me. This is much more than I’ve ever seen,” Worley said.

And now we have a way to help share it.

“Reel Rare: Found Films from Old KC” is a 5-part video series built around different themes.

For the 4th installment, the theme is recreation—what people in the era seemed to be doing for fun. Not so much the bawdier side of the Roaring Twenties, but glimpses of circuses, golf, baseball and boating captured on camera for one reason or another.

In fact, footage of a Kansas City Blues game from 1927 is what first caught Tomelleri’s attention. While watching his purchase, he noticed the scoreboard said Muehelbach Field. He knew the ballpark had been located at 22nd Street and Brooklyn Avenue.

Then another reel containing a 1929 game popped up. Joe’s research showed that game (just 3 weeks before the stock market crashed) was part of the Little World Series for minor league teams.

“That’s really cool, because for me it’s not just seeing people in the stands,” Tomelerri said. “It’s knowing the date. It’s knowing who the manager is that’s hitting fungos to the players. And who’s #6 out there on the field?”

Jeremy Drouin, the library’s special collections manager, was struck by the footage of men pounding tent stakes for the Sells-Floto Circus. He called the flurry of action “spectacular.”

And though air travel at this point wasn’t practiced by many, seeing Municipal Airport’s primitive beginnings can be equally intriguing.

“It’s a snapshot of middle class life in the 1920s,” Worley says of Joe’s collection. “You get to see some of what they thought were points of excitement.”

Having trouble viewing the video? Watch it here.