Wire Photo Wednesday | Fritz Watches Harry Wrestle

Good Wednesday to you, friends.  WPW leads off with a classic shot of the B1G football coaches meeting prior to the 1931 season (see above). This photo, from the Big Ten meetings prior to the 1931 season, is probably worth its $44 auction price.   On the floor you’ve got M headman Harry Kipke with Purdue coach (and former player under Rockne) Noble Kizer demonstrating life in the trenches.    Minnesota’s Fritz Crisler, who would replace Kipke later that decade, watches from the back.   Amongst the men seated is Illinois legend Bob Zuppke sitting next to the one & only Amos Alonzo Stagg.  Great shot.  Dress code in ‘31?  White shirt, tie, Brylcreem in the hair (except for Stagg).

Benny Friedman 1926 201047600870

I don’t know when wire photos started to be distributed to newspapers, but this has to be a fairly early one (from 1926) featuring the great Michigan quarterback and NFL HOF’er Benny Friedman.   The seller claims it is an original and wants a mere $30.  If it’s truly the original it’s worth over $100 easy IMO.

2 Comments

  • Bando

    Wire photos were being distributed to newspapers as early as the 1910s, particularly as part of special rotogravure sections (usually printed in the Sunday paper) that printed dozens of pictures across several pages. There would be a bit of a delay between when photographs would make it to far-off newspapers (I’ve seen gaps of as long as several weeks between when pictures originally showed up in New York papers and when they were printed elsewhere), but it was a good way of showing what was going on in the rest of the world in newspapers that didn’t normally print a lot of photographs in their daily editions.