Home Movies Offer A Glimpse Of Sag Harbor In the 1960s

A series of home movies, shot in Sag Harbor in the early to mid-1960s by Nada Barry, an owner of the Wharf Shop, have been posted to YouTube, and they provide a revealing glimpse into the modest past of what was once a working-class community that just happened to be on the waterfront.

A total of 23 short films have been posted to the Sag Harbor History Fan channel, which was started by Barry’s daughter and business partner, Gwen Waddington, who has been digitizing her mother’s many old 8mm films and posting those that involve public celebrations like Memorial Day parades and the earliest Old Whalers’ Festivals.

Barry, who is 90 years old, said she has been taking photographs since her childhood in London, where she lived until the eve of World War II.

“My favorite present was my Brownie,” she recalled of the early Model T of film cameras popularized by Kodak.

Over the years, Barry continued to upgrade her camera gear and eventually got her hands on a movie camera at a time when making home movies was still something of a novelty, and not the popular hobby it became with the arrival of the video camera in the 1980s — or the afterthought it has become with the introduction of the smartphone in the early 2000s.

“My photography was not posing people,” Barry said. “I was just snapping people.”

She followed that same candid approach with her movie camera in the short films, which usually last three to four minutes, and cover events such as the annual Memorial Day parade and some of the original Old Whalers’ Festivals.

A film labeled “1963 Sag Harbor, NY Mem parade” begins with a shot of a small knot of Brownies waiting on Bay Street in front of the Sag Harbor Yacht Club for the parade to begin. A crowd gathers in front of the American Legion, with a few children arriving on their bicycles.

A woman, identified possibly as Mary Menaik, dressed in a dark blue Sag Harbor Community Band uniform with gold shoulder cord, a horn in her hand, crosses the street. Most of the men are wearing suits and ties. Nancy Simonson, dressed in what appears to be a white American Legion Auxiliary uniform, waves to the camera.

Band director Fred Hines gives last-minute directions to girls holding the Pierson High School marching band’s banner, and the band itself, captured in better shots in a 1966 Memorial Day film, is surprisingly large.

Cut to Main Street, where the parade heads south — the opposite direction it follows today.

Even though cars are parked on the west side, the street seems wider, as double rows of late-model Cadillacs and Lincolns carry dignitaries, including Bob Barry, Nada’s husband and a captain in the 101st Airborne Division, down the street.

The only German car to be seen is a Volkswagen Beetle; the rest are American, and they would be considered classics today. Likewise, the only scallop to be found at what is now the Italian restaurant Tutto il Giorno is on the sign of the Shell gas station that once occupied the site.

Shots of widely spaced marching bands, most with majorettes twirling batons, follow, as do clips of military veterans marching in rank, and members of the fire department standing at attention.

A 1966 Memorial Day parade film includes footage of the construction of what is now the John Ward Windmill at the foot of Long Wharf.

The Old Whalers’ Festival is also featured, with shots of international rowing competitions, men dressed in broad striped T-shirts carrying one another down to the water’s edge for a ceremonial dunking — and even a few glimpses of the writer John Steinbeck, who made the village his home late in life, and agreed to serve as the chairman of the initial Old Whalers’ Festival, which lives on today as HarborFest.

Gwen Waddington said she had been inspired to post the films after seeing similar films posted by Bruce Backlund on a private Facebook page. Some of his films also appear on YouTube.

Barry said she continued to photograph and videotape village events, from parades welcoming home Pierson High School athletic teams to Halloween parades and just about everything in between, for many years.