You will possibly have some base-fog (grayish tint on sprocket "strip" and lower contrast. After 50 years gamma rays tend to fog it a bit. The rule of thumb for me is to drop the speed a stop/decade. If the film was rated 100 ASA 50 years ago, you can expect about 20-25 ASA now. The filmbase might be a bit brittle, but it should be OK. You need to get some Kodak Anti Fog #2 pills. This is Benzotriazole, an antifog agent. You use 1 tablet per 1000 ml (you have to crush them and let them dissolve in water prior to adding them to the developer). It will cut the fog dramatically, although it will not eliminate it. longer printing time and upping the contrast a bit will help with this.
If you can find Benzotriazole in powder form, you can mix a 1% solution (1 gram of Benzo/100 ml water - use hot water as benzo dissolves badly in cold.) Add 10 ml of this to your developer (1000 ml) and this will help. Dont add more of it as that will slow the film down even further!
As fo developer, use something like D 76 or Rodinal (with Rodinal I would try first with a 1:50/ 10 minutes and see what shows up). Load up about 30 exposures worth in a cassette and bracket wildly. Start of at nominal speed 100 ASA and keep opening up one stop for each shot (that would give you 50/25/12/6 asa). Shoot a variety of scenes, bright, cloudy and dark. Run the film and you will see what works.
Some films store very well, I have Tech Pan that still is labelled SO 115 (1978) and it works fine. Panatomic X from the early 80' is OK although a bit slower (25 ASA) and my piece de resistance four rolls of Kodak Black and White with a July 1930 Expiry date on it. I suspect the speed now is around 1 ASA. Bpth the Panatomic X and the 1930 film is part of a summer project to shoot. The faster the film, the more sensitive it is to aging.
Please post any results as we all want to see what it looks like!
