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Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Joe Tiffenbach, one last bit . . . or better late than never


 While preparing today's earlier series on Joe Tiffenbach's life, I was in touch with fellow blogger Tom of a nekkiddays.  He generously offered to share some movie clips made by Mr. Tiffenbach that he had posted.  Due to my own technical limitations and an abortive root canal, I didn't manage to get this movie into the series when I placed it in the queue.  Anyway, here it is now, and here's a link to Tom's collection of Joe Tiffenbach's work at Gymnos Studio:  

https://nekkiddays.blogspot.com/search/label/Gymnos

While there, you all should also check out the rest of his excellent blog.  Thanks, Tom!

4 comments:

  1. He seems to be getting a little bit hard in some scenes.

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  2. Tom writes: "When I first saw this clip, I was close to the same age and same build as the young man with the hose. The biggest difference was that back then, I had never been naked outdoors or in front of a video camera." I was also that build, but I did end up on video. I ran for England and was asked by the AAA (Amateur Athletic Association) to attend one of the first athletics clinics in the country, where an ex-Navy doctor and surgeon was attempting to improve our national competitiveness by studying performance and diet. Then, as now, if you were an Olympic hopeful, one of your options was to join the Army, where you were left alone to practise as long as you could salute and look sufficiently daft in front of the top brass. There was an army base on Salisbury Plain not far from my boarding school and we would drive up and load their video camera and monitor - used by their training officers - onto a flat bed and ride to the clinic. Video cameras were simply huge in those days and, like steam radio, you had to shovel coal into the back. We were all filmed running on a treadmill or rowing or lifting weights in just a jockstrap against a chequered background in order for the doc to see how our musculature and skeletal build worked together on the move. We all had a whale of a time. Unfortunately, video tape is easily wiped and so I have no idea if my semi-naked young me still exists.

    Thanks so much for posting this and for the Joe Tiffenbach series, it brought the old times back - if only for a while.

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    Replies
    1. Glad you enjoyed the series, and thanks for sharing an interesting personal story. I had an early home video camera, and it required a very heavy backpack to do mobile shooting. And yes, we did have to shovel coal in the back, lol.

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