Story by Michael T. Lynch
 The opening title frame of the Mille Miglia Film. Credit: Motorfilms Quarterly
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When I arrived in Kansas City, one of the first people I met was Fred Myers, who was a year ahead of me in high school and had an MG TD. He introduced himself at school, when he saw that I had a copy of George Monkhouse's Motor Racing with Mercedes Benz. Through Fred, I met other car crazies, some of who had graduated from hot rods to sports cars, while others had succumbed to the imports from direct infection by Road & Track. As we became a clique, our allegiance was not to any high school, but to avocations such as sports cars, chess, jazz and dreams of living in places like New York or San Francisco.
The madness was intensified when SCCA Nationals were held at Fairfax Airport in Kansas City on the Labor Day weekends of 1954 and 1955. In 1954, the legendary Jim Kimberly took the feature in his magnificent cut-fendered Ferrari 375 Mille Miglia with which he dominated SCCA racing that year. The following year saw a duel between the still potent 375s of Dale Duncan and Sherwood Johnston. The icing on the cake was that Duncan, who was Masten Gregory’s brother-in-law, provided a hometown winner.
We devoured everything in print we could find about road racing, constantly toured the dealers where sports cars were sold and haunted the shops where they were serviced and repaired. Myers' father realized what sick puppies we were. He somehow found out that oil companies and other motor racing sponsors would provide racing films at no cost for enthusiast groups. Dummying up a letterhead for an ersatz sports car club, he was able to obtain these for us.
When Jim Kimberly won the SCCA National in Kansas City in 1954, his Ferrari 375 MM was the most impressive car the boys from Myers' basement had seen until then. Michael T. Lynch Photo.
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Our absolute favorite was a film made for Shell Oil by Brit Bill Mason depicting the 1953 Mille Miglia. Mason was the father of Pink Floyd drummer, vintage racer and all-round good guy, Nick Mason. His father's Mille Miglia film had the look and feel of the great Italian classics of neorealism like Rossolini's Open City and De Sica's The Bicycle Thief, cinema made for the type of people who liked sports cars and jazz.
(If you want to see excerpts from some of the great Italian films that were made immediately after World War II, when Alfa was having its greatest post-war race glory, Ferrari was just beginning and Maserati was rebuilding and occasionally taking a win and even a championship from Ferrari, rent My Voyage to Italy. This documentary, created by famed director Martin Scorsese, limns the great Italian directors of that generation who defined Italy’s post-war malaise for the world. )
Back in Kansas City, the true believers would gather in Myers’ basement, fueled by large quantities of beer, and watch the Mille Miglia movie over and over. It was all the more appealing to us because of a remarkable jazz soundtrack. Parts of the dialog were incorporated into the lexicon of our secret language, which we used to confuse civilians. There was footage of Giannino Marzotto picking up his Ferrari 340 Vignale roadster from Cliente Assistenza, exiting the old Scuderia building and laying rubber down the Viale Trento Trieste. The narrator said, "They say it will go one hundred and eighty-six miles per hour, and what better place to try it out than the street in front of the showroom." Peter Collins's Aston DB3 is shown being overtaken by Tommy Cole’s Ferrari 340, which had started quite a bit later, "The Aston was up in seventh, and has now lost some twenty minutes. A bad blow to British hopes." Fangio had steering problems in his Alfa 6C3500 Coli coupe, and the narrator intoned a report of Fangio passing through Piacenza, "People say the car is steering with only one wheel, and …(pregnant pause)… it’s beginning to rain."
Our adventures at the races, particularly Sebring, which became a fifteen-year destination between the mid-fifties and the early seventies until private school tuitions and mortgages slowed the disease a bit, continued. Some of us still go to vintage races together. Fred Myers and I, along with other diaspora from his basement, were at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2000, when Formula One racing returned to America. Fred and Bob Peters had their sons, Bo and Justin with them as well. Another generation will take our place.
The author in the era of the basement films. In Kansas City MO, this was considered being a phony. In Cambridge MA, it was considered cool. Credit: Patricia Anderson
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To this day, we never get together that we don't discuss the Mille Miglia film. Some had searched for years but could never determine where we could find it. Others reported in when they would see snippets of it on Speed TV or in other historic footage.
At some point I read about a series of historic films compiled by Brit historian Doug Nye and film guy, David Weguelin. The series is called, Motorfilms Quarterly and promised, "The very best movie footage from a Century of Motor Sport." It sounded like a great idea, and even though I saw them advertised in English vintage magazines, I never checked to really understand what was available. One day when I was perusing the wares at Paul Zimmerman’s The Motorsport Collector site, I came across some of the volumes and read the descriptions. The most recent volume is twelve. Each has ninety minutes of archival material, broken into from four to eight segments. The higher segment volumes usually have more period commercials and movie trailers. The films are available in both USA and Euro formats on either tape or DVD.
Some of the featured footage in the series includes a colour lap of the Nurburgring with Hermann Lang aboard a 1937 Mercedes-Benz W125, a lap at Oulton Park in 1963 aboard Jim Clark's Lotus 25, a fabulous color movie of the Cummings Diesel Special at Indy in 1952, full color footage of Moss and Fitch winning the 1955 Tourist Trophy at Dundrod, Rover-BRM at Le Mans in 1963, the Sebring Three Hours and Twelve Hours, 1964, Monte Carlo Rallies, Alpine Rallies, and even the first-ever national Grand Prix - at Le Mans in 1906.
I was thunderstruck. One of the episodes in Volume Six was described thusly, "Bill Mason’s legendary Shell Film – ‘Mille Miglia 1953’ – Part 1". My hands were almost shaking as I typed the email inquiry to Zimmerman. Did he have Volume Six in stock and which volume had Part 2?
He informed me that Part 2 was on Volume 7 and that he would have both in stock in a week or two. I sent my purchase information and waited.
The DVDs finally arrived. I couldn’t even wait until cocktail hour. I immediately put Part 1 in the player and was astounded at the quality of the print. I allowed myself only five minutes so I could watch it later with my wife, Vicki, who had heard about it for years. Unlike so many things in life, it was even better than I remembered.
Age and various medications now prevent the intake of the calories and carbohydrates that large quantities of beer provide, but I will admit to having a couple of glasses of wine before I viewed the film on the evening of arrival. It all came flooding back. Having competed in and covered the modern Mille Miglia, the settings were even more familiar. The crowds at the technical inspection, better clothed then than now. The sign painters putting perfect numbers on the cars freehand. The cars rolling down the ramp on Viale Rebuffone. Ferraris and Maseratis overtaking Fiat Topolinos on the road. One entrant dropping the scorecard that had to be stamped at a control and watching it blow away in the wind. The fantastic duel between the Alfas and the Ferraris, and Marzotto’s ultimate victory. It was all there, one hour and twenty-six minutes of nostalgia, and better than ever. This treasure is safe in my house now and when I called Fred Myers, he had also bought his DVDs, acting on my telling him they were available. His family home is long sold, but we agreed we would get the old gang together for a viewing the next time I’m in Kansas City. The basement may be missing, but the spirit will be there.
If you have special motorsport memories, you owe it to yourself to check out Motorfilms Quarterly. I can't say for sure that you will find something that will move you as much as Mason's Mille Miglia footage moved me, but I’ll guarantee that you’ll find something that will interest you.
Motorfilms Quarterly's site is (www.motorfilms.com)
The Motorsport Collector is (www.motorsportcollector.com)
