NFPF in the News: Herbert Hoover Home Movies Preserved in Iowa
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President Herbert Hoover playing Hooverball, from Hoover Kodacolor Home Movies (1928–30).
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In 2015 the NFPF awarded a grant to Iowa's Herbert Hoover Library-Presidential Museum to preserve a collection of 16mm home movies taken primarily by President Hoover’s wife, son, and daughter-in-law. Depicting family travels and various White House activities during the time of Hoover’s administration, the footage was shot in Kodacolor, a complicated early color process that required a special projector to show the films, which otherwise registered as black and white.
An NFPF grant allowed for the Hoover Library to send the films to Video & Film Solutions, which scanned and digitally decoded the films to restore their original color before preserving them on regular color filmstock, so they are now viewable in their original form. Acclaimed as perhaps the earliest color images of the White House grounds, they have been recently featured in The Washington Post, CBS This Morning, and USA Today. Additionally, the footage is freely available for online viewing. The project’s success exemplifies the benefits of the NFPF grant program: an orphan film of historical importance, once difficult to view in its original form, is now available for public access.