Louis-Conn 1 full fight?

No one has seen the full reel, it's not online either, as is the case with every fight from that era.
If the full thing still exists, it's probably sitting in a storage room at ESPN.

 

I distinctly remember reading a newspaper article several years ago (coinciding w/ the fight airing on espn) saying that, like a lot of fight films from that era, it was chopped up to create a highlight reel to be shown in movie theaters & the remaining footage was simply lost or discarded.

 

There were no live TV broadcasts back then. They would film the fights like a movie, chop them up and broadcast them in the cinema. So most likely - there is no footage of the full fight. I think the best you can do is find a radio broadcast.

 

Max Baer Vs Louis Nova in 1939 was the first boxing match to be televised, shown on WNBT-TV.
However, even for that fight you can only find the theater edited reel instead of the whole fight.

 

Were the devices enabling you to record the broadcast from TV even invented yet back then?

 

VCR's are a 70's invention if I'm not mistaken.

 

Kinescopes were created by setting up a motion picture camera placed in front of a television screen and filming the screen.

The only early television broadcasts are available today is someone decided to film them as they were broadcast live. There wasn't any way to preserve them except this way.

If you are young and don't know what a kinescope is, they look like this.

This content is protected

So, in answer to your question, someone may have put a film camera in front of a TV and filmed it when Baer fought Nova, because it was shown on live TV.

Louis-Conn wasn't shown on live television, that I know of. So there probably isn't full length film of that.

https://www.funnyyouneverknew.com/news/2019/2/5/whats-a-kinescope

 

I'm young, but not that young to not know what a kinescope is But thanks for that!

 

This is why I tend to not watch too many fights from that era I have thing about watching the full fight I can't stand missing rounds puts me off watching it.

 

It's like the wax master discs they used to make 78 rpm records from; all those priceless recordings that could have been saved for posterity and reissued with excellent quality were either reused and recorded over or simply thrown away. There was no sense of historical preservation in those days, which is sad.

 

No expert here but I’ve read of phonovision - direct, real time recording of tv signals to disc but for sound only. It seems it might’ve been a short lived, novel practice with only 6 or so said recordings still in existence.

So, since it wasn’t televised, perhaps a good chance Louis-Conn 1 was filmed in full and shown in theatres?? - a complete film with multiple copies also in existence at some point?

Interestingly, the existing footage of Jeffries-Sharkey is actually a bootleg - filmed in a theatre that was playing the original film version.

One give away as to it being a theatre bootleg, IIRC, is that the fighters appear disproportionately large as compared to the nearest spectators - spectators who weren’t actually at ringside - rather, they were simply theatre goers sitting in the front seats, nearest to the big screen.

 

It was initially filmed in full, but then chopped up to be shown in theaters, as was standard practice back then, & the unused parts were discarded or lost. I read a newspaper article several years back (when the fight was airing on espn) that confirmed this.