Guide to the Glenn R. Walters collection, 1893-1999
Overview of Collection
| Repository: | University of Dayton. University Archives and Special Collections |
| Creator: | Walters, Glenn R. |
| Title: | Glenn R. Walters collection |
| Dates: | 1893-1999 |
| Bulk Dates: | 1954-1999 |
| Quantity: | Approximately 126.3 linear feet (including 995 video segments on 256 DVC Pro tapes) |
| Abstract: | Collection of video recordings produced by Glenn Walters and his production company, Valdhere, Inc., during his active career as a non-theatrical film and television producer. The recordings cover topics of business and industry throughout the twentieth century. In addition to video footage, the collection includes scripts; shooting, editing, and sound mixing notes; and pre-production research. |
| Collection Code: | SC 15 |
| Language: | English |
Biography of Glenn R. Walters
| Date | Event | |
| 24 August 1930 | Birth date. | |
| June 1948 | Graduated from Oakwood High School, where he was senior class president. During high school, he was president of the Oakwood chapter of the National Forensic League and a state champion in the National Forensic League's Humorous Declamation contest, in which he placed second in the national finals. He was also a state champion in the Prince of Peace oratorical contest. | |
| June 1952 | Graduated from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, with a B.A. in English. While at Denison, Glenn was a member of the Dean's List, vice president of the student government, president of the Denison Christian Emphasis Association, and a member of the national leadership honorary society, Omicron Delta Kappa. He also served as head resident for freshmen men's residence halls Curtis and Stuart. | |
| 1953 | Worked as a teaching assistant at Stanford University. | |
| 1953-1954 | Was assistant district traffic superintendent for the Ohio Bell Telephone Company in Dayton, where he managed the outward long distance operations office and the Ohio Bell Southwestern Regional Film Library. He also organized and managed the Ohio Bell Dayton Area Speakers' Bureau and Toastmasters Club. | |
| 1954 | Founded Valdhere, a Dayton-based video and film production company. | |
| 1956 | Began daily 16mm color film processing services. He provided film services for Dayton's three commercial television stations and provided sports film services for more than 40 high schools and universities. | |
| Began producing the television series Enterprise, which broadcast live. The documentary series ran for three years on Dayton's WHIO-TV, Channel 7, and received the highest Arbitron ratings of any locally produced program at that time. | ||
| 1959 | Produced Venture into Space, a six-week special series on WHIO-TV, Channel 7. This program was the Air Force's first official release of information about their preparation of pilots for space flight. It featured weightlessness flight tests, Zero Gravity blood flow studies on the Wright-Patterson centrifuge, the Human Factors Research Laboratory (now Armstrong Laboratory), space nutrition studies, and America's first communication satellite. | |
| 1960-1961 | Built the Valdhere studio facility and incorporated the company as Valdhere Films, Inc. | |
| 1961 | Produced a film for Huffy Bicycles, entitled The Singing Wheels. This was the first in a series of more than 40 films he produced for the bicycle industry over a span of 10 years. The Singing Wheels featured the first public media appearance by Dr. Paul Dudley White, cardiologist and personal physician to President Eisenhower, to endorse the health benefits of bicycle riding. The second film in the series, The Magic of the Bicycle, was produced as a 28-1/2 minute free TV time filler, a very widely used genre at that time. It was distributed by Association Films, and in its first six months of release, it set an all-time record for the greatest number of bookings and the highest total television viewership (36 million viewers) of any industrially sponsored documentary film produced up until that time. | |
| This overall series of films produced and distributed during the 1960s and 1970s for the bicycle industry was widely recognized for having a major impact on the industry. In 1960, total U.S. output of bicycles was less than 2 million units per year, and the average retail sale price per bicycle was $65.00. By 1972, the total U.S. output of bicycles was more than 12 million units per year, and the average retail sale price per bicycle was $135.00. There were no significant marketing increases by any U.S. bicycle company during that time; thus, the film series has been credited with affecting such a great change. | ||
| 1970 | National Football League team Cincinnati Bengals selected Glenn to serve as their film director and contractor. He set up and managed a crew to film all home and away games and managed a laboratory operation for processing, editing, and printing all the films in order to exchange prints to other league teams and to the league office. | |
| 1972 | The Valdhere style of coverage and method of editing were mandated by league rules as the standard for all NFL teams. | |
| 1980 | As a consultant, Glenn designed and installed a corporate video center for Monarch Marking Corporation. This included interviewing, selecting, and training personnel to operate the center. | |
| 1985 | Selected by the league office and NFL Films to evaluate and refine a proposed format being advanced to replace film for NFL coaching uses. The format was component BetaCam, and after substantial modification during its use in 1985 and 1986, it was adopted. He set up and trained a video crew for the Bengals and retired from the NFL in 1986. | |
| 1985 | Earned a Master's degree in communications at the University of Dayton with the completion of his thesis, "Organizational Identification, Job Satisfaction and Productivity: A Study of Correlations." | |
| 1987 | Worked as a consultant for the University of Dayton's Center for Economic and Business Research (CEBR) to design and manage the installation of the CEBR Usability and Testing Facility in the Anderson Center. | |
| 1992-1993 | Developed a video lecture on Orson Welles' 1938 radio production of War of the Worlds, featuring a series of newsreel and radio clips from the 1930s to reveal to students the emotional, cultural, and social environment that made the famous radio play have such a dramatic impact on its audience. A video report on this teaching technique was presented at the 1993 Popular Culture Convention in collaboration with colleague Alan Hueth. | |
| 1994 | Completed the first draft of a multimedia text on the history of electronic media. The text, entitled The First Century, consists of a 25-minute video with numerous clips of historic films and radio and television shows. A CD-ROM reference work accompanies the text. | |
| 1995 | Wrote Visitors, an adaptation of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds. It was produced with student actors and broadcast on April Fool's Day, 1996. The experimental radio play is set in today's world and offers a social commentary on some key issues for the new century. | |
| 1999 | Retired. | |
| Valdhere was acquired by the Cincinnati-based visual communications company Curtis, Inc. Valdhere had provided video production, post-production, and graphics services, as well as the region's only 16mm film reversal processing, printing, and digital film-to-tape transfer. | ||
| 2009 | Glenn Walters is media executive in residence at the University of Dayton and resides in Bellbrook, Ohio. |
Scope and Content
The video recordings and associated materials in the Walters collection mainly deal with topics of business and industry throughout the twentieth century. The collection as a whole is a resource for the history of local video and television production in the second half of the twentieth century.
In addition to video footage, the collection includes scripts; shooting, editing, and sound mixing notes; and pre-production research. All materials in the collection were produced by Glenn Walters during his active career as a non-theatrical film and television producer, between 1954 and 1999. Additionally, there are some antique media materials dating back to 1893.
The most prominent subjects in the collection are as follows: Enterprise, soap manufacturing, industrial equipment, television production, printing, economics, metal casting, telephone directories, computers, supply centers, bicycles and bicycle racing, metal stamping, human factors research, music, construction, and the University of Dayton. The most prominent keywords in the collection are as follows: Hewitt Soap Company, Diconix Inc., L. M. Berry Company, University of Dayton, and Dayton Progress Corporation.
Statement of Arrangement
A searchable Access database contains information about the video recordings. For each video segment, the following information is recorded: title, date, coverage date, running time, description, original box number and format, source code, technical notes, controlled vocabulary (subjects), keywords (companies and people), and rights. The database is still in the process of being updated and is subject to additions in the future. The scripts, original film formats, and other materials are currently unprocessed.
Search Terms
The following terms have been used to index the video segments in the Walters Collection Database.
Personal Names
Corporate Names
Subjects
Titles
Administrative Information
Access to Materials
Accessing the Walters collection requires the permission of the donor. Please contact the Archives and Special Collections if you are interested in accessing these materials.
Copyright
The materials in this collection are protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code). Copyright for materials produced by Glenn R. Walters and Valdhere, Inc. is retained by Glenn R. Walters.
Technical Requirements
The video recordings were originally on various film media and were transferred to DVC Pro format for preservation. Some of the tapes have also been transferred to DVD. Some formats may require special equipment. Please contact the Archives and Special Collections in advance of your visit.
Acquisition Information
The Glenn R. Walters collection was donated to the University of Dayton by Mr. Walters in 2000.
Processing Information
This collection is still undergoing processing. All information about the video segments is contained in the Walters Collection Database, which was created in 2000 by Shannon Michalak, Derek Freed, and Glenn Walters.
Preferred Citation
Glenn R. Walters Collection, 1893-1999. University Archives and Special Collections, University of Dayton Libraries, Dayton, Ohio.