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| 1. L to R: Clark Kerr, Emile Mrak, Pat Brown |
Browsing Davis topics on eBay, I recently acquired at
auction a reel of 8 mm home movies that included about two minutes of 1965 UCD
Picnic Day scenes.
Among other moments and views, there are shots of Pat Brown,
Clark Kerr and Emil Mrak riding together atop a long convertible, of Aggie
males chasing panicked greased pigs, and of the elaborate floats student groups
made for the parade.
I was quite struck by the perhaps two dozen scenes making up
the film and I think they are worth sharing. I have therefore converted it to
the MP4 digital format, enhanced it, slowed the some two minutes to a more
viewable 8-minutes, and uploaded the result to YouTube, here:
Most striking to me is the fact that we are looking at California post-WWII boom and exuberance at their height and this exaltation is
-- at the same time and outside these views -- starting seriously to come
apart.
The trio of Pat Brown, Clark Kerr and Emil Mrak had, by
1965, been key in constructing the premier higher education system of the
world. Pat Brown is special in that he, as much as anyone, was at the center of
creating modern California.
But, as we view these men here at their height, we are forced
also to recognize that Brown and Kerr are near the end of their major careers. The
epoch-marking Berkeley Free Speech movement began only months before this day
in April. California conservatism was on the rise and Ronald Reagan would
defeat Pat Brown for the governorship in 1966, only a little more than a year
from this day.
Then, Reagan and company would fire UC president Clark Kerr
about a year later, in 1967.
But, in this footage, these and other shocks of “the Sixties”
are not seen and have barely begun. What we view here are pieces of one of the last days of an
Eisenhower world in which female students can be organized into troops of “Denim
Dolls” and male students can be sent scurrying after terrified greased pigs.
The times are fine, Davis is booming, and life is good -- or so it appeared.
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| 2. Greased Pigs Chase |
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| 3. Float |
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| 4. Welcome to Malcolm Hall |
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| 5. El Rodeo, 1965, page 108 |
