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Princeton Meets the Near East: John Van Antwerp MacMurray’s Ambassadorship in Turkey
By Diana Dayoub ’21 The connections between Princeton and the Near East are not self-evident. My tentative effort to uncover some link between the North American university I consider home now and the part of the Orient where I was born and raised seemed almost futile until I discovered the John Van Antwerp MacMurray Papers…
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Escape to the Diamond Mountains in Korea, 1928
(This is our ninth and final post about the films of diplomat John Van Antwerp MacMurray. See the first post for more background.) This is the last post featuring the films that diplomat John Van Antwerp MacMurray made while serving as Minister to China from 1925-1929. The film “The Diamond Mountains, 1928,” which captures a…
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Peking friends and family scenes
(This is our eighth post about the films of diplomat John Van Antwerp MacMurray. See the first post for more background.) Although most films that have previously been discussed are interspersed with family scenes, shot in and around Peking and during outings and vacations, some of MacMurray’s films are more distinctively “home movies.” Featured here…
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Vacation with the Navy, friends with the Marines
(This is our seventh post about the films of diplomat John Van Antwerp MacMurray. See the first post for more background.) On August 8, 1926, during a family vacation in Chefoo (the summer headquarters of the US Asiatic Fleet), MacMurray wrote his mother that her grandson had problems staying loyal to the Marines in…
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Trips to Southern China and the Philippines, 1926 and 1929
(This is our sixth post about the films of diplomat John Van Antwerp MacMurray. See the first post for more background.) Photo of Igonot carriers, taken by MacMurray in October 1926 on the trail between Baguio and Bontoc and sent to his mother as a postcard. John V.A. MacMurray Papers (MC094), Box 26. In…
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Marines and Chinese armies in Peking
(This is our fifth post about the films of diplomat John Van Antwerp MacMurray. See the first post for more background.) When watching MacMurray’s peaceful films of China, it is easy to forget that the country was torn by civil war for most of the time he served as minister. The films labeled “Peking Misc(ellaneous)…
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Renting a temple in the Western Hills
(This is our fourth post about the films of diplomat John Van Antwerp MacMurray. See the first post for more background.) Detail of MacMurray’s German map of the Peking surroundings. The Pa Ta Ch’u valley, with Ta Pei Ssu, the temple rented by MacMurray (no. 41) is shown at the left of the center above…
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A diplomat’s trip along the Yangtze River, 1928
(This is our third post about the films of diplomat John Van Antwerp MacMurray. See the first post for more background.) On February 24, 1928, MacMuray, his Chinese secretary, and a naval attaché started a six-week trip along the Yangtze (Yangzi) river to inspect consulates and ports between Tsingtao (Qingdao) and Chungking. MacMurray, who took…
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Trip to attend the reinterment of Sun Yat-sen, 1929
(This is our second post about the films of diplomat John Van Antwerp MacMurray. See the first post for more background.) On June 1, 1929, the body of Sun Yat-sen, leader of the Nationalist Party, who died and was buried in Peking (Beijing) in 1925, was reinterred in a new mausoleum in Nanking (Nanjing). The…
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MacMurray’s films of China, 1925-1929
American diplomat John Van Antwerp MacMurray (1881-1960) began filming in 1925, two years after Kodak introduced the Cine-Kodak Motion Picture camera, which made production and display of motion pictures possible for amateurs. The John Van Antwerp MacMurray Papers at Mudd Manuscript Library contain twenty-eight silent 16mm films, which MacMurray shot while serving as Minister to…
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