Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

First, allow me to preface this by saying I am by no means an educated football researcher. But I'm an avid collector and I enjoy the hunt and the research more than anything else. I've found a few items that I wanted to share with the board. One, I'm hoping to get your collective expertise on. But since I didn't want to show up empty handed asking for help, I've also got another piece that I think some people here will enjoy. Let's start with the more modern piece, a trading card from a 1936 French multisport set depicting a play from the 1935 week 1 game between the Packers and the Cardinals.



The easiest, of course, was #18 on the Cardinals, Bernie Hughes. He was an All-Pro corner the year before in his rookie campaign. After some deliberation and a lot of help from folks on another forum I feel comfortable that the lead blocker is Buckets Goldenberg. Where it gets tricky is identifying the ball carrier.





Here's what we know about the individual game statistics:

Johnston gained 30 yards on 4 attempts
Blood gained 16 yards on 3 attempts
Bruder gained 30 yards on 11 attempts
Goldenberg gained 5 yards on 2 attempts
Laws gained 2 yards on 2 attempts
Hutson gained 0 yards on 1 attempt
Herber lost 12 yards on 1 attempt

From these stats and the look of the play (which looks like it will gain positive yardage), I think we can safely eliminate Goldenberg, Laws, Hutson and Herber. That leaves three possibilities for the ball carrier -- Johnston, Blood, and Bruder. Obviously, the photo quality is less than ideal. But if anyone here has any experience/expertise in these three players or just has an opinion either way I would be very interested in hearing it. Thanks in advance for any input.

As I said, I have something to share, as well. This is a sport magazine from France dated January 3, 1903. The cover story is about American football and inside there's a 3-page article about the sport. I don't speak French so I can't be of much help in regard to what the article says but I found the photos interesting with one devoted to Yale's Olcott and another to Princeton's H.E. Poe, grandson of Edgar Allen (and relative to 1894's Mayo Cut Plug Poe). I'm not sure who it is on the cover but I can't help but think of Belichick having a Nicholson Overlook Hotel New Year's Eve Ball photo moment. Hopefully this material will aid someone in their research somehow.





















Arthur

Welcome to the forum. Not a criticism but a suggestion - could you please show these each of these pictures or pages in their entirety as opposed to cropping them or showing portions of the pictures or pages? It's difficult to follow the three-page French article which is broken up into 19 different pictures. Not being critical, just trying to be helpful. My French is not good; I took it so long ago my last French teacher was once a contestant on the Groucho Marx "You Bet Your Life" TV show back in the 1950's because she was fluent in 17 languages. There are online language translators that should be able to help with the French-to-English if you can't get a direct translation.

Holy bigness. Apologies, I didn't realize the pics were that large. Let me work on resizing them and getting this is proper order. I promise there was a method to the madness.

Arthur

That's better. Sorry about that. Had no idea the original images were 4kx3k-ish.

Arthur

XanaduNow wrote:Holy bigness. Apologies, I didn't realize the pics were that large. Let me work on resizing them and getting this is proper order. I promise there was a method to the madness.

Arthur

Don't worry. We all remember the night we lost our PFRA virginity.

Welcome aboard! I'm a member on the other board where this was discussed. I was hoping Blood was the ball carrier, so I reached out to Ralph, but he didn't think so. I don't think there's another football card from the 30s that has game action, there's photos of course, but if you prefer cards, this is a really nice find.

I've never tried to upload photos before, so I hope this works.

Attached (I hope) are photos of Johnny Blood,Hank Bruder, and Swede Johnston. I tend to think the runner might be Bruder, but it's awfully hard to tell.

Thanks for the welcome, gents!

Another thing to consider is size. Buckets Goldenberg was 5" 10" 215 lb.

Swede Johnston was 5' 10" 197 lb.
Hank Bruder was 6' 0" 199 lb.
Johnny Blood was 6' 1" 188 lb.

The camera operator appears to be in a seated position, creating an upward POV at the two men. Obviously, neither of them are standing up straight. What we can tell though is how much skinnier the ball carrier is compared to Goldenberg. Legs, waist, torso, and shoulders are all significantly smaller on the ball carrier. I think these facts, and the facial picture, make it safe to rule out Johnston, yes?

Arthur

ETA: I thought it would be easier to add the photo again down here.

I think you're probably right about ruling out Johnston based on the height comparison. I think I would recognize Johnny Blood even in a photo of this quality, so that reinforces my thought that the runner is Hank Bruder. I think you're quite right in identifying the lead blocker as Buckets Goldenberg. When the Packers had a game in Milwaukee in the late '40s and early '50s, my Dad and I, usually with Art Daley and the Packer PA announcer, would eat at his restaurant. He'd sit with us for a while and talk about his days with the Packers. He was a great story-teller.

BTW, I wonder who that "H.E. Poe" is in one of the other photos? I'm fairly certain that Edgar Allan Poe had no children, so he couldn't have had a grandson. There were six Poe brothers who played football for Princeton, but they were the poet's cousins and none of them had the initials "H.E." (But there was an Edgar Allan among them!)

Someone much more experienced than myself believes it's Arthur Poe, who, apparently, was famous for a number of long scoring runs. He's far left in this picture.



Arthur