"On the Firing Line with the Germans" Film Annotations (2017)

had spent his money as fast as he earned it, never saving for or worrying much about the future. But he
found for the first time that with the Depression he faced a situation that sorely tested even his
optimistic outlook and persuasive personality. By mid-1930 he was struggling as a medicine salesman
and his home in the Philadelphia suburbs went to sheriff’s sale in December 1931. As he struggled
through the middle of the Depression as an independent businessman pitching creative advertising for
radio, the financial strain finally reached a breaking point in 1936. His wife Molly moved west with their
young son Robert to live with her family. At some point during the Depression his much-loved Stutz
Bearcat was sold at a Cleveland auction after being stored in a suburban Cleveland barn by the NEA.
One hopes that it resides with a collector somewhere.
Durborough continued to struggle through the onset of World War II until America’s entry into the war
brought an expanding war economy with increased employment opportunities. In the summer of 1942
he moved to Utah to reconcile with his family in Ogden and obtain a civilian personnel position at the
Hill Field Army Air Base. He quickly found he couldn’t adjust to living at the high altitude which made
him physically ill and in the summer of 1943 he managed to transfer to a position at the San Bernardino
Army Air Base in California. In 1945 he left this position to work for the independent air base Civilian
Employees’ Association and also do some advertising and promotion consulting for local businesses. But
again and for the last time this career move was cut short when he died suddenly in San Bernardino on 4
April 1946 at the age of 63.
Prior to his death, Durborough started a writing project intended to be a memoir of his earlier life which
he never finished. Initially it appears he drafted short sections about an important episode or part of an
episode during his career consisting of 4 to 7 typewritten pages. He wrote them as contemporary
conversational dialogs, streams of thought or reflection, likely modified consciously or subconsciously to
enhance his role. It appears he wasn’t attempting to write it as carefully documented history and it
doesn’t appear he was working from personal contemporary diaries. Rather he was writing to tell the
story of his exciting life and experiences as a photojournalist and cinematographer.
Although his manuscript now residing in the Manuscript Collection of Library of Congress often only uses
last names with misspellings and many vague date references, typos and two section 13s, all the major
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