[rollei_list] Re: A TLR Rolleiflex in the Everest
- From: Marc James Small <marcsmall@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:10:26 -0400
At 04:03 PM 10/26/2009, CarlosMFreaza wrote:
>Marc, at least you rejected any possibility about an official
>Rolleiflex in the expedition during an old discussion, the Rolleiflex
>used by Alfred Gregory was used officially for official photographs
>independently if it was -or not- a Gregory personal camera and Gregory
>was the expedition official photographer. BTW it's a known fact
>mentioned in several Rollei books from the fifties that there was a
>Rolleiflex in the expedition, Alec Pearlman mentions it in his Rollei
>books, but when I mentioned it in the old discussion, you ignored or
>questioned the source, now I have Gregory like direct source and the
>_official_ photographs taken with the Rolleiflex.-
Carlos
I first read THE ASCENT OF EVEREST around 1959
and have never doubted since that Gregory took
his Rolleiflex TLR to the South Col, though, at
age 9, I wasn't certain just what a Rolleiflex
TLR was. This was not the official Expedition
camera: the official cameras were Contax
II's. The film shot by Gregory on his personal
cameras was not under the control of the Everest
Committee and thus did not come under the RGS
restrictions. The films but not those shot by
Hillary at the summit were smuggled out by the
TIMES correspondent, James (now Jan) Morris with
the assistance of the Indian Army. Morris has
written about this as well, as did Tenzing.
All I have ever said was that the Contax II's
donated by TIME-LIFE were the official 1953
Everest Expedition cameras. If I ever suggested
doubt that Gregory had his personal Rolleiflex
TLR along, I apologize: I have known better for fifty years.
Hillary tried to get Morris to smuggle out the
summit pictures but Lord Hunt intervened and
seized the film as an official record, and thus
these pictures now come under the control of the RGS.
My grandmother did ask Hillary about his summit
film when she met Sir Edmund in 1963, at my
request. Hillary laughed and referred to
Brigadier Hunt as "an unstoppable force" when it
came to the good of the Expedition. But, then,
Hillary was always happier climbing with Shipton,
just as Tenzing was happier with the Swiss
climber, the late Raymond Lambert, with whom he
was paired in the two 1952 South Face Swiss
climbs, when they finally equalled the high
points set by Finch in '22 and Norton in '24 on
the North Face. Hillary and I corresponded about
the film a decade or so back, and I will try to
dig out my copy of the letter: I believe it is
in the case of my signed Douglas MacArthur
autobiography along with other such correspondence.
The actual photographer of many of the official
pictures in '53, by the way, was Gregory's
assistant, Tom Stobart. The shots of Gregory in
'53 show him as rather frail, and I am surprised
on reflection to realize that he made the South
Col. Stobart made it up to CVIII.
As late as 1985, we still had three survivors
alive from the '24 climb, when Mallory almost
certainly summitted. Today, the only survivor of
the '53 climb is Gregory and all of the earlier
lads are sitting in some Mountaineer's Valhalla,
eating pickled peacock's brains and such
delicacies and discussing the Second Step and the Hillary Notch.
I apologize if I gave you the impression I
doubted the presence of a Rolleiflex TLR at the
South Col in 1953 in earlier exchanges. I was
only trying to say that this was a private camera
carried high by the official photographer, not
that it was not present with the Expedition.
Marc
msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!
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