Random Shots Filmed by D.T. McCluskey

This home movie compilation, filmed by D.T. McCluskey between 1945 and 1949, blends color and black-and-white 16mm footage into a charmingly eclectic postwar scrapbook. In color, it captures older folks sniffing bush flowers, motorboats slicing across a lake, and nurses exiting a brick institution—perhaps a hospital or school. A cheeky black-and-white detour, titled “Glamorous Exciting Stars,” splices in a light burlesque sequence with mild erotica from another source, alongside shots of a grand European-style public building—possibly Italian—and old men loitering out front. Back in color, a quaint streetscape unfolds—tree-lined lawns, a man tipping his hat—followed by driving POVs through an industrial Midwestern city, likely Omaha, Nebraska (a Storz Beer sign nods to the locale), or Des Moines, Iowa, with trolley tracks and a new Studebaker gleaming. Nature shines with parrots, squirrels, and a red car with whitewalls, while suburban life peeks through a woman trudging through snow to a small house. The 1949 Drake Parade in Des Moines dazzles with floats—“Za-Ga-Zig Des Moines,” Shriners in red Fez hats—and Harold Lloyd, the silent film star and Imperial Potentate, waving from a convertible. A jarring note: locals in blackface mimic tribal Africans. Hunting scenes close it out—a woman fires a pistol, a man a rifle—blending leisure and Americana in McCluskey’s roving lens.