Clifford P. Cyr Home Movies
Film and media vault shelves, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana. Courtesy Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana. Image subject to copyright.
CONSERVATION & CAPTURE
Grant year: 2025
Grant category: Al Larvick Regional Grant
Grant recipient: Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana
Collection title: Clifford P. Cyr Home Movies
Primary maker(s): Clifford P. Cyr
Original format: 8mm, black and white, color, silent
Circa: 1940s-1960s
Collection size: 36 film reels, 4700 feet of film
Grant support: Cleaning and repair and digital capture of approximately half of the collection
Digital capture format: 2k resolution scan
Lab: Preserve South
Status: grant in-progress
Online Access: Coming soon
Creative Commons License: Coming soon
GRANTEE
Archives and Special Collections (ASC) at the University of Montana's Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library was formally established in the 1960s with the goal of documenting the history of Montana, and in particular Western Montana, through collecting, describing and providing access to published and unpublished primary source materials. Among our collecting strengths are Montana politics and politicians, regional land use, and the people and places of Western Montana. Formats we collect include (but are not limited to) diaries, letters, business records, oral histories, architectural drawings, maps, rare books, film and photographs.
ASC is professionally staffed and follows best practices for collection security, description and access. We are open to the public and strive to make our collections, and information about them, available online. We use Archives West to share guides to our archival collections, and use the Montana History Portal and the university’s institutional repository, ScholarWorks, to make digitized content available. We use Preservica to ensure the long-term preservation of and access to digitized and born-digital content from our collections. Over the last several years we have undertaken extensive media preservation activities, including re-housing our 8mm and 16mm film collections.
Examples of some of the many uses of our collection materials include genealogy, building restoration planning, conservation research, local journalism, storytelling, documentary film making, History Day projects, creative art projects and to inform scholarship and publication.
filmmaker
Clifford Cyr. Cyr’s senior portrait featured in the University of Montana's 1940 yearbook. "The Sentinel, 1940," Associated Students, Montana State University (Missoula, Mont.) (1940). Courtesy Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana. Image subject to copyright.
Clifford Paul Cyr was born in Missoula, Montana, on October 10, 1915, to Paul and Laura Cyr. He attended Missoula County High School. He graduated from the University of Montana (then called Montana State University) in 1940, with a degree in music. While at the university, he was a member of the Music Club and the university’s Grizzly band. After graduating, he taught at Treasure County High School in Hysham, Montana.
Cyr enlisted in the Army during World War II and played trombone in the Army Band. Cyr served in the United States and Germany. He married Herta Wilhelmine (Tuertke) Hohendorf of Elbing, Germany in the town of Wiesbaden, Germany, on September 22, 1949, and they had a religious ceremony in Missoula, Montana, on January 22, 1950.
After retiring from the army, Clifford and Herta Cyr moved to Amarillo, Texas, where he worked for the United States Postal Service. Upon his retirement, they moved to Missoula. Clifford Cyr was a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Lodge and the American Legion. He died in Missoula on March 20, 1991. Herta Cyr died in Missoula on February 18, 1999. They had no children.
Cyr Collection Shelf at the Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana. Courtesy Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana. Image subject to copyright.
Collection
8mm still frames: Welcome to Montana Sign, crossing from Idaho into Montana on the Lewis and Clark Highway (U.S. Highway 12), ca. 1950s. Courtesy Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana. Image subject to copyright.
The Clifford P. Cyr Home Movies collection at the Mansfield Library’s Archives and Special Collections consists of 36 reels of 8mm motion picture film ranging in date from the 1940s to the 1960s. The films, shot by Clifford Cyr, are home movies of vacations, places and events. A number of short films were taken in the Missoula, Montana area.
Other Montana locations depicted are Flathead Lake, Hungry Horse and Anaconda. Also included are films captured while Cyr was on vacation in the United States and films captured likely while he was enlisted in the US Army during and after World War II.
The motion pictures are in color with no sound, with the exception of one reel which is in black and white.