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GLOBAL
CINEMA
Researching
Newsreels
Local, National and Transnational
Case Studies
EDITED BY
Ciara Chambers, Mats Jönsson and
Roel Vande Winkel
Global Cinema
Series Editors
Katarzyna Marciniak
Department of English
Ohio University
Athens, OH, USA
Anikó Imre
Division of Cinema and Media Studies
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Áine O’Healy
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
Loyola Marymount University
Los Angeles, CA, USA
The Global Cinema series publishes innovative scholarship on the
transnational themes, industries, economies, and aesthetic elements that
increasingly connect cinemas around the world. It promotes theoretically
transformative and politically challenging projects that rethink film studies
from cross-cultural, comparative perspectives, bringing into focus forms of
cinematic production that resist nationalist or hegemonic frameworks.
Rather than aiming at comprehensive geographical coverage, it
foregrounds transnational interconnections in the production,
distribution, exhibition, study, and teaching of film. Dedicated to global
aspects of cinema, this pioneering series combines original perspectives
and new methodological paths with accessibility and coverage. Both
‘global’ and ‘cinema’ remain open to a range of approaches and
interpretations, new and traditional. Books published in the series
sustain a specific concern with the medium of cinema but do not
defensively protect the boundaries of film studies, recognizing that film
exists in a converging media environment. The series emphasizes a
historically expanded rather than an exclusively presentist notion of
globalization; it is mindful of repositioning ‘the global’ away from a
US-centric/Eurocentric grid, and remains critical of celebratory notions
of ‘globalizing film studies.’
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15005
Ciara Chambers • Mats Jönsson
Roel Vande Winkel
Editors
Researching Newsreels
Local, National and Transnational Case Studies
Foreword by John Corner

Editors
Ciara Chambers Mats Jönsson
Department of Film and Screen Media Department of Cultural Sciences
University College Cork University of Gothenburg
Cork, Ireland Gothenburg, Sweden
Roel Vande Winkel

University of Leuven
Leuven, Belgium
Global Cinema
ISBN 978-3-319-91919-5 ISBN 978-3-319-91920-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91920-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018946656
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Foreword
The job of a Foreword writer is to address a book’s readers by giving a

positive launch to its contents, a launch based on their own reading of
what it contains and their knowledge of the energies and purposes that
went into its construction. This I can do with great, authentic enthusiasm,
since the topic of this collection seems to me to be both culturally impor-
tant and intellectually stimulating, while the academic events that were
involved in its preparation were a model of international scholarly
cooperation.
From a perspective within the hyperactive flows of contemporary media
culture, ‘newsreels’ can seem no more than a quaint bit of history, of only
antiquarian interest. How odd they look and sound! How unintentionally
amusing they often are! How frequently crude in their address to viewers!
Even to scholars who have welcomed the development of studies in Early
Cinema, an interest in this area can seem very much of marginal signifi-
cance. Such a view, often condescending in its expression, is one which
fails to recognise both the importance of newsreels in the development of
modern media forms and the historical and cultural value which follows
from giving them close, critical attention. Newsreels take us back to for-
mative moments in the shaping of mediated visibility, in the use of the
camera and microphone to link the space of the cinema with the spaces of
the world. Embedded as they are in the ‘modernisms’ of social structures,
technology and aesthetics, they connect us back to an earlier junction
point in the possibilities of ‘public communication’, a point which power-
fully shaped the world in which we now live. I want first of all to say some-
thing briefly about newsreels as a form, anticipating the many more
v
vi FOREWORD
detailed examples and arguments in the following chapters, and then to

discuss related questions of use and function.
Many writers, including some contributing to this volume, have situ-
ated newsreels as occupying a space intersecting the idea of ‘news’ and that
of ‘documentary’. Certainly, the emphasis is on offering a glimpse of ‘new
events’ (or ‘nearly new’), both of the formal political world, the social
world and the world of sport and recreation. This is nearly always offered
as a ‘lively look’, one to stimulate the eye and ear. In that sense, the con-
nection with the earlier ‘cinema of attractions’ is a strong one—newsreels
are often clearly a part of show business, they involve ‘theatricality’, what-
ever more sober journalistic mission they may also give themselves. While
their visual rendering of the world can sometimes be captivating in its
fluidity and the sense of spaces, exotic and domestic, it provides, the sus-
tained visual exploration associated with many documentary productions
is simply not available due not only to production constraints on the use
of camera and microphone but the need to sustain narrative pace across a
range of topics. A sense of urgency is often generated, a sense linked to the
importance of the events portrayed but also a consequence of their sheer
topicality. This feeling is frequently cued by the distinctively declamatory
style of newsreel commentary, ‘rousing’ the audience to interest and
excitement in the parade of themes being placed on the screen, to the
thrill of occupying the position of distant witness to the world from the
vantage point of the darkened auditorium. In considering the whole
‘affective profile’ of newsreel, it is important to note the often-crucial role
performed by music, a role which begins with the stirring score which usu-
ally accompanies title sequences and continues as an accompaniment to
the kinds of seeing and hearing which are provided. This narrative drive
makes the depictive range very different from that of news photography,
whose capacity to surprise and shock with the power of the intense, caught
‘moment’, exposed to the gaze, is nevertheless often an influence on
newsreel camerawork.
Given this combination of visual and aural stimuli, the link with ‘propa-
ganda’ has often to be made alongside the link with ‘news’, documentary
and entertainment, even allowing for the fact that there is a long history
of these terms showing considerable convergence and overlap, right
through to contemporary debate about the flows of social media. Certainly,
newsreels do not offer opportunities for a quiet, individualized evaluation
of events; their address is communal and often vigorously nationalist in
tone. The audience is constructed into membership of a ‘group viewing
FOREWORD
vii
experience’ by an address which easily shifts into hortatory mode, doing

the viewers’ work of evaluation for them. Celebratory at points, quietly
affirmative at others, items can also be strongly critical and condemnatory
(forms of ‘badness’, quite often that found in ‘foreign’ parts, exposed).
As many of the contributions point out, it is the thematics of newsreels
which hold great interest, especially if the themes are subject to an analysis
sensitive to matters of production and form. They show us how specific
political and social circumstances were projected as ‘realities’, a projection
which powerfully worked with the physical (buildings, squares, harbours,
airports, crowds, parades, military frontlines, eminent persons, etc.) but
also then, cued by commentary, with the ideological (beliefs, assumptions,
frameworks of value, perceptions of threat and of hope, of togetherness
and of difference). They constitute a remarkable record of mediated his-
tory, unsurprisingly one much used in the construction of documentary
accounts.
As well as considering thematic and formal variety in its varying con-
texts, some of the chapters here give their attention to the newsreel busi-
ness as an important sector of the media industry at different points in its
development. It is a business that was profitable and also quite often
fiercely competitive—the array of ‘wars’ and alliances that have happened
within it offer an illuminating insight into later struggles around televi-
sion. There is the related ‘business’ question of its own sense of its audi-
ences: Was it giving them what they wanted? How was it responding to
the changes happening in other media at home and abroad? To what
forms of official direction and censorship was it variously subject? What
was its real scope for handling the controversial and for activating the
‘critical eye’ so celebrated in many national versions of ‘documentary’?
The chapters also frequently raise and pursue down different routes the
question of the ways in which study of newsreel can proceed. To be sure,
one part of most approaches, deployed to different degrees, is a textual
analysis drawing extensively on achievements in film and television studies.
There is, of course, much more to say about the aesthetics at work than a
perception of newsreels as ‘basic’ and ‘simple’ forms would suggest. Then,
alongside this, following on from bodies of work on journalism and on
documentary, there is a sharp recognition of the particular terms of refer-
entiality in play and the specific contexts of circulation and reception.
Here, historical detective work of an established kind, working with
archives and varying secondary sources, is essential. Such a connecting
back of newsreel as text to newsreel as, so to speak, a public speech act in
viii FOREWORD
a specific public moment, is a vital part of scholarship and one of the key
ways forward in fitting newsreels into the broader, dense interconnections
of media and sociopolitical history.
More visibility for newsreel archives, and increased access to them, is a
theme taken up by some contributors and it is here that programmes of
digitalization, recently underway in many countries, are vital to the exten-
sion of the resource base.
It is worth noting, finally, that across all the dimensions of approach
and focus the possibilities for comparative work are great. Looking at how
different national newsreel systems portrayed ‘international’ incidents,
including conflicts, gives us a sense of the different ‘structures of feeling’
at work in a way which is sharper and more provocative than can be
achieved by most studies based exclusively on newspapers or even on
radio. The newsreel imperative to ‘show’, however contrived the manner
of its execution, takes us into the dynamics of political and social percep-
tion in a manner which other pre-television media cannot achieve.
The central project of this book is to establish the importance of news-
reel studies, building on previous work and presenting a range and depth
of research to act as a stimulus and a guide for future inquiry. This project
it achieves admirably across the diversity of its scholarship and I am very
pleased to have been given the task of introducing it to what I believe will
be an extensive and appreciative international readership.
University of Leeds John Corner

Leeds, UK
John Corner is visiting professor of Media and Communication at the

University of Leeds and professor emeritus at the University of Liverpool.
He has written a range of books and had articles published in international
journals since the 1970s. His recent books include Theorising Media
(2011), the co-authored Political Culture and Media Genre (2012) and
the co-edited Soundings: Documentary Film and the Listening Experience
(2018). Recent articles or chapters have included work on opinion polls
and political journalism, the new documentary economy, forms of televi-
sion talk and the fake news debate.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Ciara Chambers, Mats Jönsson and Roel Vande Winkel
2 Wofull Newes from Wales: Details at 11. News, Newsreels,

Bulletins and Documentaries 15
Brian Winston
3 The Newsreel Audience 35

Luke McKernan
4 Around the World: The First Norwegian Newsreel,

1930–1941 51
Rolf Werenskjold
5 The Commentary Makes the Difference: An Analysis

of the Suez War in East and West German Newsreels,
1956 77
Kay Hoffmann
6 Martin Luther King’s Assassination in Spain’s

NO-DOs and in Bulgaria’s Kinopregledi 93
Lyubomir Pozharliev and Danae Gallo González
ix
x CONTENTS
7 Matrices for Non-Fiction: Dziga Vertov and the

Kino-Nedelia Newsreels 119
John MacKay
8 More Than Goebbels Bargained For: Nazi Newsreel

Dissemination in Occupied Denmark and the Golden Age
of Danish Documentary 143
Lars-Martin Sørensen
9 Screening War and Peace: Newsreel Pragmatism in Neutral

Sweden, September 1939 and May 1945 157
Åsa Bergström and Mats Jönsson
10 The Legal Settlement and Reconstruction in the Norwegian

Newsreel Norsk Filmrevy, 1945–1949 183
Idar Flo
11 Advertising and Self-Reference in the West German

Newsreel Neue Deutsche Wochenschau in the
1950s and 1960s 203
Sigrun Lehnert
12 Newsreel Production, Distribution and Exhibition in

Belgium, 1908–1994 231
Roel Vande Winkel and Daniel Biltereyst
13 Researching the Issued Content of American Newsreels 247

Scott L. Althaus and Kylee Britzman
14 The Irish Question: Newsreels and National Identity 265

Ciara Chambers
15 If You Build It, Will They Come? Researching British

Newsreels 285
Linda Kaye
Index 301
Notes on Contributors
Scott L. Althaus is Charles J. and Ethel S. Merriam Professor of Political

Science, Professor of Communication and Director of the Cline Center
for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois Urbana-
Champaign. His research examines the communication processes that
support political accountability in democratic societies and that empower
political discontent in non-democratic societies. His research on the
American and British newsreel systems emerges from current book proj-
ects about the dynamics of public support for war and the role of strategic
communication in shaping news coverage about war.
Åsa Bergström is a PhD student of Film Studies at Lund University. Her
dissertation analyses how Sweden has addressed and represented the
Holocaust in moving images. The project involves archival research and
the primary source material consists of newsreels, documentaries, docu-
dramas and fiction films from the Second World War up until today. Her
present research includes projects and publications on factual theatre, chil-
dren’s film, newsreels, media representations of humanitarian organiza-
tions and Swedish docudrama on screen, stage and television.
Daniel Biltereyst is Professor of Film Studies and Media History, Ghent
University, Belgium, where he also leads the Center for Cinema and Media
Studies. He has recently edited Silencing Cinema (with R. Vande Winkel,
2013), Moralizing Cinema (with D. Treveri Gennari, 2015) and a special
issue on Cinema-going and Memory for Memory Studies (with A. Kuhn
xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
and Ph. Meers, 2017). He is currently working on the Routledge

Companion to New Cinema History (with R. Maltby and Ph. Meers, 2018)
and on Mapping Movie Magazines (with L. Van de Vijver, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2018).
Kylee Britzman is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Lewis-Clark
State College, specializing in the study of American political behaviour
with a focus on political communication, political psychology, women and
politics, and democratic citizenship.
Ciara Chambers is Head of Film and Screen Media, University College
Cork and author of Ireland in the Newsreels (2012). She has contributed
chapters on newsreels and amateur film to various journals and edited col-
lections. She is a member of the IAMHIST council and the Irish Screen
Studies Board and is associate editor of the Historical Journal of Film,
Radio and Television. She has worked on a range of archival projects and
digitization initiatives with the Irish Film Archive, Northern Ireland
Screen, Belfast Exposed Photography, UTV and BBC. She was script-
writer and associate producer of Éire na Nuachtscannán (Ireland in the
Newsreels), a six-part television series broadcast on TG4 in 2017 (www.
irelandinthenewsreels.com).
Idar Flo is Associate Professor in Journalism at the Faculty of Media and
Journalism, Volda University College. He is co-editor of Norsk presses his-
torie I–IV (The History of Norwegian Press I–IV) (2010). His PhD study
explored The Norwegian Post-war Legal Settlement and Reconstruction in
the Norwegian Newsreel 1945–1949.
Danae Gallo González is research associate in Hispanic and Lusophone
Cultures and Literatures at the Institut für Romanistik (JLU Giessen).
Her work has focused on gender and queer studies and exilic life writing
in contemporary Spain, and on cultural memory on the Spanish Civil War,
Franco’s dictatorship and the Spanish transition to democracy in various
media. Her book, ¡Recuerda! Scribo ergo sum(-us): La escritura del yo de
los exiliados politicos de la Guerra Civil en la Argelia colonial, is forthcom-
ing. She has also led interdisciplinary research groups working on the con-
cepts of identity and alterity at the International Graduate Center for the
Study of Culture. She is currently interested in the politics of (auto-)rep-
resentation of coloured bodies in contemporary audiovisual products of
Brazil and the Hispanic and Francophone Caribbean.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
xiii
Kay Hoffmann is a film journalist, historian and head of research at the

Documentary Film Center in Stuttgart since 2007, where he has worked
since 1995. He was a collaborator on a research project on German docu-
mentary history before 1945 and is currently co-ordinator of the German
Research Fund (DFG) project on the history of German documentary
1945–2005 (www.dokumentarfilmforschung.de). He has organized
numerous conferences and film and TV festivals and has published and
co-edited books and journal articles on documentary, film history and
digitization.
Mats Jönsson is Professor in Film Studies at the Department of Cultural
Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He has written three mono-
graphs, co-edited six interdisciplinary anthologies, and contributed to
numerous international peer-reviewed periodicals and anthologies. In
addition, he has initiated two international research networks: ‘The
Newsreel Network’ and ‘Scandinavian Media Culture 1814–2014’.
Currently, Jönsson is mainly occupied with establishing a digital media
platform for collaborative urban research and education within the human-
ities, ‘Gothenburg Cultures on the Town 1621–2021 (GPS400)’ (http://
gps400.gu.se).
Linda Kaye is a film archivist and historian. She has worked for the
British Film Institute, Tate and, most recently, for Learning on Screen as
Head of Research where she managed News on Screen. Her research
includes early British sound newsreels, newsreel cinemas and cinemaga-
zines produced by the British government. Her publications include
Projecting Britain, The Guide to British Cinemagazines (co-edited with
Emily Crosby, 2008). She is a regular contributor to television and radio
programmes on newsreels and cinemagazines, including The Story of
British Pathé (BBC4).
Sigrun Lehnert is a scientific assistant in Journalism in Hamburg,
Germany. She received her PhD from the University of Hamburg with a
project about newsreels and television newscasts in the 1950s. Her PhD
was published as Wochenschau und Tagesschau in den 1950er Jahren
(2013). Her research interests are film and television history, newsreels,
documentaries, archiving and film heritage.
John MacKay was born and raised in Northern Alberta, Canada, and
attended high school in Fairview, Alberta and college at the University of
British Columbia, where he received a BA in English. After studying
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Russian in the Soviet Union and teaching at a community college, he

came to Yale in 1991 to pursue studies in Comparative Literature. He
completed his PhD dissertation on Romantic and post-Romantic lyric
inscriptions in 1998, under the direction of Geoffrey Hartman and Tomas
Venclova. He began as an assistant professor in Yale’s Department of Slavic
Languages and Literatures the same year, and has over the years taught
courses on film and media theory, Soviet cinema, Chinese cinema, Russian
culture, slavery and serfdom in US and Russian literature, Marxist theory,
Chekhov and other topics. He has a particular interest in exploring histo-
ricizing modes of interpretation, primarily, but not exclusively emerging
from the Marxist and psychoanalytic traditions, in their application to a
variety of different kinds of nineteenth- and twentieth-century cultural
production.
Luke McKernan is Lead Curator, News & Moving Image at the British
Library. He is a media historian with a particular interest in silent film,
newsreels and audiences. His newsreel publications include Topical Budget:
The Great British News Film (1992) and Yesterday’s News: The British
Cinema Newsreel Reader (2002). Between 2000 and 2007, he managed
the British Universities Newsreel Database (now News on Screen), a major
online resource for the study of newsreels and cinemagazines.
Lyubomir Pozharliev is a research associate at the Department of
History of Eastern Europe at JLU Giessen, under the DFG-funded Project
Transottomanica, and was until recently a scholarship recipient at the
International Graduate Center for the Study of Culture. His work is
focused on the cultural history of technology, transport and infrastructure
in former Yugoslavia, and socialist period Bulgaria. His most recent post-
doctoral project investigates the steam-shipping industry in the Black Sea
region in the nineteenth century. His latest research and publications
cover highway construction in Southeastern Europe, nationalism and
imagined geographies, communist and socialist studies, and newsreel
research.
Lars-Martin Sørensen is Head of Research at the Danish Film Institute.
Sørensen is co-founder of The Newsreel Network and author of Censorship
of Japanese Films During the US Occupation of Japan (2009), the Danish-
language monograph Danish Film During the Nazi Era (2014) and
Editor-in-Chief of the online film journal Kosmorama.org.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
xv
Roel Vande Winkel is Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies

at the KU Leuven (Institute for Media Studies) and at the LUCA School
of Arts. He is a board member of the DocNomads programme and associ-
ate editor of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. His work
was published in international academic journals such as Javnost,
Communications: the European Journal of Communication Research,
Critical Studies in Media Communication, Historical Journal of Film,
Radio and Television, Filmblatt, Historical Reflections, Journal of Film
Preservation, Film International and Journal of Scandinavian Cinema.
He edited the volumes Cinema and the Swastika (with David Welch,
Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, rev. 2011), Perspectives on European Film and
History (with Leen Engelen, 2007) and Silencing Cinema: Film Censorship
around the World (with Daniel Biltereyst, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
Rolf Werenskjold is Professor of Media Studies at the Faculty of Media
and Journalism at Volda University College, Norway where he teaches on
Media Studies and Media History. He received his doctorate in Media
Studies and Journalism from the Department of Media and Communication
at Oslo University, Norway. He is a historian and media scholar who has
published several studies on media and protests during the year 1968,
modern American history, Norwegian media and the Spanish Civil War,
and Norwegian foreign news journalism during the Cold War. His latest
book is The Nordic Media and the Cold War (2015), which he edited with
Henrik G. Bastiansen. Werenskjold is a member of the Norwegian National
Board of Media Studies.
Brian Winston has been involved with journalism and factual screen
media since 1963. In 1985, he won a US prime-time Emmy for documen-
tary scriptwriting and he has written 19 books on news, documentary,
freedom of speech and media technology. Most recently, he has edited The
Documentary Film Book (2013) and (with Gail Vanstone and Chi Wang)
The Act of Documenting (2017). He holds the Lincoln Chair at the
University of Lincoln, UK.
List of Figures
Fig. 4.1 The Around the World vignette. Credit: NLN; OCA/OCA,
Around the World vignette 55
Fig. 4.2 The self-presentation of Oslo Cinematographer as part of the
Around the World vignette. Credit: NLN; OCA/OCA, Around
the World vignette 56
Fig. 4.3 The Paladsteateret at Karl Johansgate in Oslo: the first Nordic
special movie theater for newsreels. Credit: Photo rights
Aftenposten/Scanpix58
Fig. 4.4 Movie ads for Around the World in the daily newspaper
Aftenposten. Credit: Aftenposten Morning Edition 31 August
1936, p. 13 62
Fig. 4.5 Number of news items by country with more than 100 reports,
1930–194064
Fig. 4.6 Total numbers of news reports from the Nordic countries
1930–194064
Fig. 5.1 Protest at Trafalgar Square in London against the British
involvement in Suez from Neue Deutsche Wochenschau Nr.
354 from 9 November 1956. Source: Deutsches Wochenschau
Archiv Hamburg 82
Fig. 5.2 French troops embarking the Jean Bart to fight at Suez from
Neue Deutsche Wochenschau Nr. 354 from 9.11.1956.
Source: Deutsches Wochenschau Archiv Hamburg 84
Fig. 5.3 Israeli soldiers conquer the Sinai desert from Neue Deutsche
Wochenschau Nr. 354 from 9.11.1956. Source: Deutsches
Wochenschau Archiv Hamburg 84
xvii
xviii LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 5.4 The landing of the British troops in Port Foud and the
occupation of the cities from Ufa Wochenschau Nr. 16 from
14.11.1956. Source: Deutsches Wochenschau Archiv Hamburg 89
Fig. 6.1 Threatening faces, NO-DO 1319 B, 7’:41”. Credit: ©
Filmoteca Española 103
Fig. 6.2 Burnt shop, NO-DO 1319 B, 7’:58”. Credit: © Filmoteca
Española104
Fig. 6.3 Lincoln’s monument, NO-DO 1319 B, 9’:58”. Credit: ©
Filmoteca Española 106
Fig. 6.4 The dead body of Martin Luther King. Newsreel 17, April
1968108
Fig. 6.5 Martin Luther King delivering a speech. Newsreel 17, April
1968109
Fig. 7.1 Soldier in a blizzard, from Three Songs of Lenin (1934/1938).
Source: Probably taken from Kino-Nedelia 32 (24 January
1919)124
Fig. 7.2 Reactions to the camera from Kino-Nedelia 5 (2 July 1918
[RGAKFD 549]) 127
Fig. 7.3 Reactions to the camera from Kino-Nedelia 27 (10 December
1918 [RGAKFD 12644]) 127
Fig. 7.4 Dynamics entangling mobility and stability of film footage 133
Fig. 8.1 Von Hake, Head of Ufa Copenhagen until autumn 1942 144
Fig. 8.2 Head of Nordisk Film Carl Bauder (left) under way to
negotiations in the Reich Film Chamber in early summer 1940.
Behind him is Heinz Graff, member of the German Nazi Party
and head of Nordisk Film’s lab 147
Fig. 8.3 Heinz Graff (left) posing for the camera during a business trip
to Berlin as negotiator and newly appointed head of Nordisk
Film’s lab in early summer 1940 151
Fig. 9.1 Screenshots from newsreel SF1027A, 1939. Courtesy of
Sveriges Television AB 161
Fig. 9.5 Screenshot from newsreel SF1257, 1945. Courtesy of Sveriges
Television AB 172
Fig. 9.6 Screenshot from newsreel SF1257, 1945. Courtesy of Sveriges
Television AB 173
Fig. 9.7 Screenshot from newsreel SF1259A, 1945. Courtesy of
LIST OF FIGURES
xix
Fig. 9.8 Screenshot from newsreel SF1259A, 1945. Courtesy of

Fig. 11.1 New fire engine for Heligoland Island—a VW transporter 207
Fig. 11.2 Presentation of a new car model: Mercedes 180 208
Fig. 11.3 The on-board service of Lufthansa 211
Fig. 11.4 Miss Niedersachsen and the stocking brand ‘Opal’ 213
Fig. 11.5 Cinematographer Horst Grund in Moscow 217
Fig. 11.6 Cinematographers play themselves in a sketch 219
Fig. 11.7 Horst Grund sitting at a skyscraper construction 220
Fig. 11.8 NDW title at a cutting table monitor at Photokina 222
Fig. 12.1 La Semaine Belge 233
Fig. 12.2 1937 advertisement for Fox-Movietone236
Fig. 12.3 Opening credits of Flemish Events, made by Clemens De
Landsheer’s one-man firm Flandria Film 238
Fig. 12.4 Belgavox: World News seen by the Belgians 240
Fig. 12.5 Congovox: a Belgavox newsreel for Congo 242
Fig. 12.6 Westvlaamse Actualiteiten Films, abbreviated as WAF,
corresponds to the onomatopoeia ‘WOOF’. Hence the logo
featured a dog 244
Fig. 13.1 Annual story counts for American Pathe, Hearst, Paramount,
and Universal Newsreels 255
Fig. 13.2 Mean story summary words per year 256
Fig. 14.1 The Shelling of the Four Courts and Sackville Street in Flames
(Pathé, Dublin, 1922) 270
Fig. 14.2 Ulster’s Great Day (Pathé, Belfast, 1921) 270
Fig. 14.3 Production stills from Éire na Nuachtscannán. Courtesy of
LMDÓC/Patrick Jordan/Roman Garcia Albir 278
Fig. 15.1 The virtuous circle 291
Fig. 15.2 The two-way digital highway 296
List of Tables
Table 4.1 Ticket revenue and numbers of audience Around the World,
1935–193967
Table 13.1 Data structure for the 26 August 1963 issue of Universal
Newsreel248
Table 13.2 Newsreel story counts and average stories per issue/year 254
Table 13.3 Average words per story summary record 256
xxi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Ciara Chambers, Mats Jönsson and Roel Vande Winkel
This volume originates from the work of The Newsreel Network (TNN),
a group of scholars brought together by Mats Jönsson. After conducting
a comparative research project about newsreels in Scandinavia,1 he initi-
ated regular meetings between international scholars to discuss, compare
and analyse newsreel research. The inaugural meeting of TNN was held
at Lund University in Sweden in October 2012 and the first international
conference took place at the same venue in May 2013; the following two
were held in the Danish Film Institute. Today, more than thirty scholars
from ten different countries are linked to TNN and the network contin-
ues to encourage individual and collaborative research projects focusing
on the underrepresented area of newsreel studies within broader histori-
cal media studies. TNN’s existence would not have been possible without
C. Chambers (*)
Department of Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
e-mail: ciara.chambers@ucc.ie
M. Jönsson
Department of Cultural Sciences, University of Gothenburg,
Gothenburg, Sweden
e-mail: mats.jonsson@gu.se
R. Vande Winkel
University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
e-mail: roel.vandewinkel@kuleuven.be
© The Author(s) 2018 1

C. Chambers et al. (eds.), Researching Newsreels, Global Cinema,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91920-1_1
2 C. CHAMBERS ET AL.
support from the Swedish Foundation for the Humanities and Social
Sciences, the European Regional Development Fund Interreg IVA, Lund
University, the Crafoord Foundation, the Danish Film Institute, and
Einar Hansen’s Research Fund.
What are newsreels? As Luke McKernan points out, the name is ‘too
often used as a catch-all term for any sort of news or actuality film’ but
actually applies to a ‘specific form, namely a selection of news stories with
a shared topicality, held on a single reel of film, and issued regularly (usu-
ally once or twice weekly in cinemas)’.2
News or actuality films are as old as cinema itself. To attract audiences in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, ambulant exhibitors com-
bined fictional shorts with actualities, preferably shot in or near the region
in which they were to be projected. Such actualities were occasionally filmed
by the exhibitors themselves. This was relatively easy since apparatuses such
as the cinématographe were not just projectors: they could be used to record
an event as well as to develop the film. Apart from actualities, exhibitors also
included ‘newsfilms’ in their programmes. Such items were individual short
reports on newsworthy subjects: disasters, sporting fixtures or war reports.
In the early days of moving-image production, travel was time-consuming,
leading the newsfilms of the day to be full of the ‘aftermath’ of events.
Because it was often impossible to get a cameraman to the scene on time to
capture the unfolding action, it was sometimes tempting to use staged foot-
age to enhance a film’s appeal. In 1897, for example, Georges Méliès staged
a naval battle and sold it as footage documenting the Greco-Turkish War.
Producers often used shots of one location to stand in for another and,
sometimes, faked footage proved more popular with the general public than
authentic material. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, the
Biograph company constructed a miniature set of the city, set fire to it and
captured the model burning on camera. The resulting film was so successful
that even the city’s mayor was fooled. As Raymond Fielding explains, ‘ironi-
cally, but not untypically, an authentic motion picture record of the disaster
which had been filmed by the early San Francisco film-exchange operator
Harry Miles was said to have failed at the box office because it was released
after the fake Biograph production’.3
Early news films proved popular with audiences, but it was only when the
French production company Pathé started experimenting with the regular
production of compilations of topical events—spliced together on one reel
of film—that the concept of the newsreel was born. It is no coincidence that
this news format appeared in various countries between 1908–1910, because
INTRODUCTION 3
this was the time when the rise of cinemas (purpose-built or established in
converted older buildings) turned film-going from an occasional experience
into an easily accessible and regularly-repeated recreational activity. This
shift in movie-going practices created a demand for a more regular output
of newsfilms, which inspired Pathé Frères to introduce Pathé-faits-divers
(1908, Pathé News Items), initially only distributed in Paris. From early
1909 onwards, renamed Pathé Journal, the newsreel was distributed
throughout the whole of France and abroad. As the very first of its kind,
Pathé’s newsreel defined the main characteristics of the genre. A number of
short (inter)national topics of general interest was crammed into one reel
and distributed in a serial (usually weekly or bi-weekly) fashion. Pathé, an
international firm with an aggressive expansionist policy, valorized this nov-
elty in the following years on a global scale. The company adopted a twofold
approach: on the one hand, it exported its newsreel to smaller foreign ter-
ritories; on the other, it created similar indigenously produced newsreels in
bigger markets. The Pathé newsreel only briefly enjoyed its pioneer posi-
tion. In the early 1910s competitors in France and abroad copied the con-
cept and launched rival newsreels.4
The rise of the newsreel more or less coincided with the international
acceptance of the multiple-reel film, which came to be called the feature.
Newsreels competed for the audience’s attention with other shorts, car-
toons and information films screened alongside the main feature(s) in the
standard cinema programme. Against this background, it is important to
note that the internationally active newsreel-producing companies were
actually primarily occupied with the production of feature films for the
global market. For them, the production and distribution of newsreels was
more about gaining indirect publicity and adding prestige to their trade-
mark than about making direct profit (from newsreel rental) or providing
news. The international dimensions of their activities allowed such large-
scale companies to undersell domestic businessmen, thereby inhibiting
many locals from setting up their own newsreel company. It was only in
relatively large countries like Great Britain, Germany and the United States
that local companies were able to withstand strong international competi-
tion and produce indigenous newsreels. As the American film industry
boomed internationally and eventually seized pole position from its French
competitors, American newsreels asserted their dominance in the market.
The First World War played an important role in this economic process.
By shutting down the European film market for several years, the war had
allowed the American film industry not only to conquer the US market
completely, but also to strengthen its international position. This trend

naturally influenced the newsreel sector and it was intensified by the advent
of talkies (1927) and the following demand for sound newsreels. The
American Fox company jumped at the opportunity to release sound ver-
sions of its newsreel (the conversion was made clear by the change in title
from Fox News to Fox Movietone News—renaming sound-newsreels would
become a trend) in France (Actualités Fox-Movietone, 1929) and Great
Britain (British Movietone News, 1929) before Gaumont, Pathé or other
local competitors made the leap. Fox, which had built up an international
network of cameramen over the previous decade, began to set up overseas
branches to produce local sound versions of its newsreels. The company
soon saw its example followed by other American tycoons such as
Paramount. Like silent newsreels, sound newsreels offered a combination
of current affairs, sport and ‘lighter’ items (which focused on celebrities,
quirky inventions or fashion). However, sound brought a new dimension
to newsreel stories, which were now accompanied by ‘a noisy musical
score and a high-speed, invisible narrator’.5 Commentators were often
employed for their ability to speak quickly and audiences soon found
themselves bombarded with voice-overs and sound effects that could be
very persuasive.
As the newsreels were exhibited in a place of entertainment, it was
important for cinema owners that their patrons were not upset or offended
during their visit to the cinema. This, combined with a need to capitalize
on the relaxed censorship of newsreels in some countries outside wartime,
contributed to the newsreels’ desire to avoid controversy. For the most
part, they endorsed the national status quo, supporting the regime in
command and reflecting contemporary social norms. As Penelope
Houston suggests, the newsreels spoke ‘with the authority not of impar-
tiality but of public relations’.6
The 1930s saw the rise of ‘cinemagazines’. These were: newsreel-like,
periodically (often monthly) released short productions that journalisti-
cally dealt with one or more topical events in greater depth than the aver-
age newsreel. This genre was popularized by The March of Time
(1935–1951), an extremely influential product of the American publish-
ing firm Time Inc., which anticipated docu-drama’s combination of re-
enactments with authentic footage. The March of Time, which was
distributed across the industrialized world, had many followers and occa-
sional brushes with authorities over its dogmatic portrayals of politicians
(played by actors).7
INTRODUCTION 5
Nicholas Pronay argues that newsreels held a ‘peculiar power’ which

would not later be associated with television news: ‘newsfilm could act upon
the audience somewhat like a demagogue, it could reduce the individuality
of the people in the audience and substitute a mass response for a critical and
individual assessment’.8 Whether or not the newsreels’ persuasive capacities
were increased by their distribution to groups (compared with the newspa-
per which was read by individuals), the 1930s were marked by increasing
political interest in newsreels. Labour unions, political organizations and
national governments were all keen to use newsreels to their advantage, in
order to share their views on current events with the rest of the world. The
political and propagandistic (ab)use of newsreels associated with both war-
ring camps (and their respective foreign supporters) during the Spanish
Civil War (1936–1939),9 led to increasing interest in newsreels from film
audiences (and censors) all over the world. Authoritarian regimes such as
Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain and the Soviet Union all
invested in the establishment of their own newsreels. In more democratic
countries, governments also increased their interest, support and (often)
control over newsreels. This process was galvanised by the Second World
War, when all warring nations (and many neutrals) paid great attention to
the presumed effect of newsreels and documentaries on public opinion.10
The end of the Second World War was closely followed by the com-
mercial introduction of television, which invaded the living rooms of ‘civi-
lized’ societies over the following decades. Television news would
eventually make newsreels obsolete, but it took nearly four decades before
the medium had vanished entirely. In 1952, following a request from its
subcommission on freedom of information and of the press, the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
published an international survey into newsreels and the services they pro-
vided.11 Although implicitly influenced by the Cold War and restricted by
scarce information on the Soviet Union and countries under its influence,
this international assessment of the (post-war) newsreel industry is the
only of its kind and remains an extremely important source of information
on its subject. Based on data that had been gathered since 1949,
Peter Baechlin and Maurice Muller-Strauss estimated that about one-
tenth of the global population (215 million spectators: 45% USA, 33%
Europe, 10% Asia, 5% Soviet Union, 4% South America, 2% Africa and 1%
Asia) attended the cinema on a weekly basis. Most of the roughly esti-
mated 100,000 cinemas they went to were believed to show newsreels as
a regular part of their programme.
Due to the time-consuming nature of newsreel production and distri-

bution, they have always been much slower than other communication
media and were therefore never the first to report on any given event.
Unlike the radio and printed press, however, they were able to provide
moving images, which for several decades were their main attraction. It
was only logical that once this unique selling position had been removed
by television news, cinema newsreels would disappear: the final American
newsreel, Universal News, vanished in December 1967. Elsewhere news-
reel production, in particular the production of titles that partially or
entirely relied on government funding, lasted several years longer. Apart
from some exceptions, the newsreel medium seems to have disappeared
completely by the mid-1980s.
Are newsreels still relevant? Newsreels have left behind an important
heritage, preserved in archives all over the world and regularly used in
historical programmes and other audiovisual media documenting aspects
of twentieth-century history. Nevertheless, research about the history (the
production, the distribution, the exhibition or the reception) of newsreels
has never enjoyed immense popularity among scholars. There are various
reasons for this.
Firstly, a tremendous amount of material has been lost. The competi-
tion between newsreel companies did not prevent the negotiation of
agreements on pooling and content sharing in order to offset the high
cost of producing newsreels and the proportionally low revenues they
generated. In their global distribution and exhibition strategies, the major
newsreel companies also frequently repackaged their products in various
ways: by dubbing voice-over commentary, other forms of content editing,
and, in particular, by incorporating locally-shot material. These economic
and industrial structures meant that relatively little attention was paid to
the preservation of newsreels. Because of their topical nature, the life
expectancy of newsreels was deemed to be a lot shorter than that of fea-
ture films, which could be re-released years later. Moreover, those news-
reels that were preserved were often recycled by television makers,
documentary filmmakers and other interested parties who used the bits
and pieces they found interesting, without feeling any obligation to restore
or preserve the original source material. By consequence, many newsreels
are lost, partially preserved, or left languishing as respliced, uncatalogued
incarnations in the vaults of archives. (It was only in 1993 that FIAF, the
international Federation of Film Archives, organized its first symposium
about the preservation and cataloguing of newsreels.12)
INTRODUCTION 7
Secondly, the production and distribution history of newsreels is hard

to reconstruct. The lively debates about newsreel form and content that
can be traced through analysis of trade papers hint at audience interaction
with the newsreels, but do not fully illustrate the nuances of disparate local
attitudes to national newsreel industries. Audience studies are also prob-
lematic and while some work on viewers’ responses to the newsreels was
undertaken on a sporadic basis,13 details of the practicalities of which
newsreels were shown, where and when, often remain elusive.
As a source of evidence, film has been treated with suspicion by histori-
ans. Penelope Houston articulates the tensions associated with moving-
image sources that are ‘untrustworthy, superficial, vulnerable to every kind
of distortion: and at the same time irreplaceable, necessary, a source mate-
rial that no twentieth century historian ought to disregard, though many
still seem prepared to’.14 However, when subjected to rigorous academic
scrutiny, the newsreels’ value lies in the fact that ‘they are records of what
the public was told about the events, the politicians and the policies of the
day’.15 This was demonstrated, for instance, by Histoire Parallèle/Die Woche
vor 50 Jahren. In this series, which ran for 12 years (1989–2001) on French
and German television, historian Marc Ferro and his invited guests showed
and discussed how newsreels from different origins presented similar or
different views on topical events.16 Furthermore, their operation as vehicles
of propaganda during periods of conflict offer huge insights into the nature
of information warfare, and many of the news values associated with the
newsreels at the height of their popularity can still be observed in news
presented on an ever-expanding variety of platforms today.
The spread of the internet, and the possibilities presented by digitization,
have offered opportunities but also challenges for archives all over the world.
This applies, in particular, to film archives and their newsreel collections. In
many ways, digital technologies have bestowed a ‘second life’ upon the
newsreels. Burgeoning digitization initiatives have released a plethora of
newsreel content from the archive to new audiences online. In this way the
cinema newsreel has transcended its original distribution circuit and been
consumed via viewing opportunities never even imagined by its original
producers. As a trailblazer, Pathé digitized its British collections and
streamed the material online in 2002 on a tailored platform where viewers
could create an account and store chosen clips free of charge.17 Movietone
soon followed with a similar venture and now both are bringing newsreels
to new viewers daily through dedicated YouTube channels.18 These chan-
nels showcase the material by hosting online exhibitions of content curated
by theme, event or personality. This offers a convenient portal for research-

ers seeking to reuse material in a production context and also attracts the
general viewer interested in the curiosities of the archive. Newsreel material
is available through a range of other digital channels as well, such as the
Internet Archive, EU Screen and Creative Commons.19
However, this digital tsunami of newsreel material is not without its own
problems. Firstly, digitization has not taken place on a consistent basis. The
idyllic infrastructure facilitated by the British Universities Film and Video
Council for researchers of British newsreels (explored in Linda Kaye’s
chapter in this book) has not been replicated elsewhere. Internationally, the
landscape of digitized content is patchy and in some cases the material has
been poorly or incorrectly catalogued. Added to this is the fact that a large
proportion of newsreel material in the twenty-first century is brought to
audiences in repurposed form, often as illustrative material in documenta-
ries, or in composite videos on a range of platforms.
Nicholas Pronay contends that newsreel companies would have been
lost without access to their own libraries of previously-shot footage: ‘with-
out them it would not have been possible to issue regular newsreels twice
a week, given the technical conditions of the age’.20 However, these
practices of recycling have led to the resplicing of rolls of film that are
often left separated from their original production context. When this film
is mined once again, often original details pertaining to dates or location
are blurred. The remediation of incorrectly catalogued material perpetu-
ates cataloguing errors and dilutes the efficacy of the form to offer a snap-
shot of history. Just as problematic are aesthetic elisions employed to
mediate source material for subsequent audiences. As Luke McKernan
qualifies: ‘the additional vices of films run at the wrong speed, picture
cropping and soundtracks added to silent footage all rob the original
material of its full message and integrity’.21
But there are, of course, also several positive results of the remediated
and extended access to newsreels of old. One has to do with an increased
interest in this material amongst undergraduate and postgraduate students
in the wake of ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ debates; students, as engaged
citizens, are becoming increasingly interested in the concept of news gen-
erally, and most specifically how news has been mediated historically in
different forms and contexts via various channels of communication.
The chapters in this book reflect a variety of ways to research newsreels.
Some contributors revisit the definition of the newsreel and/or its locus
within film or media history. Brian Winston, for example, locates the
INTRODUCTION 9
newsreel within the broader context of visual journalism and non-fiction

cinema, highlighting its importance as both a reflection of the changing
norms of the twentieth century and a cultural marker of the development
of news values that are still prevalent today. Luke McKernan explores cin-
ema spectatorship and consumption, illustrating the importance of the
newsreel audience in unlocking our understanding of the newsreels while
drawing attention to the fact that there is much more to be discovered
about this important subject.
Rolf Werenskjold challenges the very definition of a newsreel, and
whether or not it has changed over time. Newsreels were often made by
splicing together self-produced items with items that were bought from
other producers and were also usually exhibited as part of a larger pro-
gramme, which was, in turn, spliced together in order to run through the
projector as smoothly as possible. So where should scholars draw the line
between a newsreel and a newsreel programme? In his case study of
Around the World (Verden Rundt), which was screened at a prestige
theatre in Oslo, Werenskjold demonstrates the complexity of producing/
exhibiting newsreels and thereby prompts that question. Exchanging
(swapping, selling or buying) images was a standard practice of newsreel
companies, who often added their own touch by re-editing the footage
and/or rewriting or re-recording the commentary. This also allowed par-
ticular subjects to be present or framed in very different matters. This
subject, which is also touched on by Werenskjold in the abovementioned
chapter, is demonstrated by Kay Hoffmann, who compares the propagan-
distic impact and ideological function of soundtrack and voice-over in East
and West German newsreels during the Suez crisis in 1956. His chapter
reveals the national and global significance of state-supervised newsreel
rhetoric during one of the most volatile and aggressive periods of the Cold
War. Danae Gallo Gonzalez and Lyubomir Pozharliev also offer a com-
parative study, analysing how the assassination of Martin Luther King in
1968 was depicted in fascist Spain and communist Bulgaria, respectively.
While reporting the same event, the newsreels in both countries inserted
misinformative voice-overs and altered sequences in a similar way, yet for
diametrically opposed ideological reasons. John MacKay’s chapter is situ-
ated in the early twentieth century and is also related to the historical
problem of investigating newsreel footage that was cut and re-edited. His
study examines the newsreel output of Dziga Vertov with a particular
focus on the canonical director’s work on the Kino-Nedelia newsreels of
1918–1919 and its effect on later Soviet non-fiction film. Although little
is known of the provenance of the footage used in Vertov’s early compila-

tion films, such as the largely lost History of the Civil War (1921), MacKay
argues that much of it came from the aforementioned newsreels.
Given the great attention that warring and neutral nations alike paid to
newsreels in the Second World War, it should come as no surprise that
some chapters focus on that era. Lars-Martin Sørensen exposes complex
ideological, financial and personal newsreel collaborations between Nazi
Germany and occupied Denmark during the Second World War which,
among other things, would prove to have long-term and surprisingly posi-
tive consequences for the development of Danish documentary filmmak-
ing. Åsa Bergström and Mats Jönsson study how newsreels screened in
neutral Sweden depicted war and peace in September 1939 and May
1945. Their chapter focuses on the way in which political and commercial
criteria governed the self-conception and image of the nation in the state-
controlled domestic newsreel output. Other chapters focus on the devel-
opment of newsreels after the end of the Second World War. Idar Flo
analyses how post-war newsreels produced and exhibited in Norway
reported on how the Norwegian government and judicial system treated
citizens that were either accused or found guilty of collaboration with the
German occupying forces. As Flo demonstrates, the Norwegian authori-
ties expected the Filmavisa newsreel to support and disseminate the
notion that the ‘Reconstruction’ of Norway was necessary and successful.
In her chapter on Neue Deutsche Wochenschau (NDW), the first post-war
newsreel in Germany to be made under German management, Sigrun
Lehnert analyses how the producers referred to themselves and the
production of their newsreels and it was believed that this process of self-
referencing would engage audiences more effectively.
The lack of domestically produced newsreels—something which often
faces smaller nations—was usually considered problematic. On the other
hand, the existence and production of a national newsreel could also be
problematic. Roel Vande Winkel and Daniel Biltereyst, in their case study
of newsreel production, distribution and exhibition in Belgium
(1908–1994), analyse how difficult it was for a Belgian enterprise to create
and sustain the production of a domestic newsreel that could cater for the
French- as well as the Dutch-speaking communities. Belgium had a sub-
stantial network of cinemas, which were for several decades dominated by
imported newsreels that only rarely included local items. Government
support for a local newsreel came late, but lasted for a long period, with
the result that Belgium continued to produce newsreels as late as 1994.
INTRODUCTION 11
Using the partition of Ireland as a case study, Ciara Chambers considers

the newsreels’ construction of national identity and examines the com-
plexities of addressing audiences with a shifting range of political sensibili-
ties. She also explores how the recycling of newsreel material opens up the
archive to new readings, particularly as modern Ireland reflects on its his-
tory as it celebrates a ‘decade of centenaries’.
The challenges and possibilities of digitization are also reflected in sev-
eral chapters. Scott Althaus and Kylee Britzman’s chapter traces the devel-
opment of the CineScan database, a resource which includes records of
around 90,000 story summaries produced by Pathé, Hearst, Paramount,
Universal and The March of Time. The resource can be accessed as a digital
database at the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University
of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA, and it is hoped that in the future it
will be available to researchers online. Linda Kaye explores the legacy of
the newsreel resources produced by the British Universities Film and
Video Council (now Learning on Screen), demonstrating how the digital
utopia created in the United Kingdom might well act as a model for best
practice in approaching the preservation and dissemination of newsreel
collections in other countries. Kaye also interrogates the British newsreel
research ecosystem, arguing that there are opportunities to exploit these
impressive resources further and speculates on how students of the future
might best interact with digital collections.
There is a tentative, but encouraging interest in newsreels amongst the
next generation of researchers, such as the PhD students included in this
volume. By approaching their source material from new and comparative
perspectives, they contribute novel insights into the global production,
distribution and reception of newsreels in ways that should be expanded
upon in the near future. Consequently, there is still much that needs be
done within newsreel studies, and this volume only constitutes a first, yet
necessary step towards a more sustainable and interdisciplinary research
framework within the humanities and social sciences. With these case stud-
ies we have gathered together a sample of some of the current work being
undertaken in this field in the hope that this volume will spark a renewed
interest in newsreel studies so that other researchers will be inspired to
address some of the representational gaps in geography, culture and local
and international production and exhibition contexts.
Notes
1. Sørensen, L-M., M. Jönsson & T. Helseth (2012) ‘Nazi Newsreel in the
North: The European Masterplan and Its Nordic Inflictions’, pp. 285–
298 in Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, 2 (1).
2. McKernan, L. (2008) ‘Newsreel series: United Kingdom’, pp. 983–985, in
Aitken, I. (ed.) Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film. New York; London:
Routledge.
3. Fielding, R. (1972) The American Newsreel: 1911–1967. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, p. 42.
4. Vande Winkel, R. (2008) ‘Newsreel series: World Overview’, pp. 985–991,
in Aitken, I. (ed.) Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film. Routledge:
New York; London.
5. Fielding, R. (1978) The March of Time: 1935–1951. New York: Oxford
University Press, p. 3.
6. Houston, P. (1967) ‘The Nature of the Evidence.’ Sight and Sound,
Spring, reprinted in McKernan, L. (ed.) (2002) Yesterday’s News: The
British Cinema Newsreel Reader. London: BUFVC, p. 297.
7. Fielding, R. (1978) The March of Time: 1935–1951. New York: Oxford
University Press.
8. Pronay, N. (1976) ‘The newsreels: The illusion of actuality’, in Smith, P.
(ed.) The Historian and Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
p. 99.
9. Aldgate, A. (1979) Cinema and History: British Newsreels and the Spanish
Civil War. London: Scolar Press.
10. Vande Winkel, R. (2008) World War II, pp. 1480–1491, in Aitken, I. (ed.)
Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film. New York; London: Routledge.
11. Baechlin, P., Muller-Strauss, M. (eds.) (1952) Newsreels across the World.
Paris: UNESCO. The report is available online at http://unesdoc.unesco.
org/images/0003/000301/030104eo.pdf (accessed 5 July 2018).
12. Smither, R., Klaue, W. (eds.) (1996) Newsreels in Film Archives: A Survey
Based on the FIAF Newsreel Symposium. Wiltshire: Flicks Books.
13. See for example: Mass Observation reports on newsreels, 1940: http://www.
massobs.org.uk/mass-observation-1937-1950s (accessed 5 July 2018).
14. Houston (1967), p. 298.
15. Pronay, N. (1971) ‘British Newsreels in the 1930s: Audiences and
Producers’, in History, 56, p. 411.
16. Meyer, J (2015) ‘Histoire Parallèle/Die Woche vor 50 Jahren (La SEPT/
ARTE 1989–2001): Newsreels as an Agent and Source of History’ in
VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture, 4. See also the
series The Story of British Pathé (2011), directed by Katy Homan, Bill
McLeod, Jenny McLeod and Kath Pick for the BBC.
INTRODUCTION 13
17. http://blogs.bl.uk/thenewsroom/2014/04/pathé-goes-to-youtube.
html (accessed 5 July 2018).
18. https://www.youtube.com/user/britishpathe; https://www.youtube.com/
channel/UCHq777_waKMJw6SZdABmyaA (accessed 05/07/2018).
19. https://archive.org; http://www.euscreen.eu; https://creativecom-
mons.org (accessed 5 July 2018).
20. Pronay, N. (1972), ‘British Newsreels in the 1930s: Their Policies and
Impact’, in History, 57, p. 71.
21. McKernan, L. (1993) ‘Witnessing the Past’, in Ballantyne, J. (ed.)
Researcher’s Guide to British Newsreels Vol. 3. London: BUFVC, p. 35.
CHAPTER 2
Wofull Newes from Wales: Details at 11. News,

Newsreels, Bulletins and Documentaries
Brian Winston
There is a basic, and erroneous, belief about the newsreel:
Throughout its history, the principal function of the American newsreel …

was neither journalistic nor artistic … it was hardly ever considered a source
of news, either by its owners, its audiences or by professional journalists.1
Thus, the doyen of American newsreel studies, Raymond Fielding, with a

reflection on newsreels that goes beyond just the borders of the United
States. But the problem is that in play here is a limited ahistorical and,
ultimately, somewhat obfuscating, view of the news and—therefore—of
newsreels, too. It speaks to a cognitive dissonance, one that acknowledges
newsreel’s limitations against some vision of journalism as a truth-telling
Anon (1607) Wofull Newes from Wales, or the lamentable loss of divers Villages and
Parishes (by a strange and wonderful Floud) within the Countye of Monmouth in
Wales: which happened in January last past, 1607, whereby a great number of his
Majesties subjects inhabiting in these parts are utterly undone. (qt. in Jackson,
Mason (1885) The Pictorial Press London: Hurst & Blackett, p. 13.)
B. Winston (*)
Lincoln School of Film and Media, Lincoln, UK
e-mail: BWinston@lincoln.ac.uk
© The Author(s) 2018 15

C. Chambers et al. (eds.), Researching Newsreels, Global Cinema,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91920-1_2
16 B. WINSTON
cultural phenomenon while at the same time claiming it as ‘The Story of

the Century’—the title of the conference at which Fielding made this
remark. But its value to the historical record lies exactly in the vividness of
the insights it gives to our understanding of the mentalité of the times. It
does tell ‘the story of the century’; but the significance of this cannot be
determined if it is considered (Fielding’s term) ‘quasi-journalistic’.2 Any
proper understanding must integrate the newsreel into the development
of both visual journalism and non-fiction cinema.
Newsreels and Newspapers

The news is a collection of reports (aka, significantly, ‘stories’) provided
for a mass media audience giving new information about things that are
happening, or have happened in their world. Implicitly, Fielding’s is an
instrumentalist approach that assumes that, because the newsreel necessar-
ily lacked immediacy and was cavalier with the sobriety news media are
supposed to display, it was somehow not news. But news, and newspapers,
have never been sober or even particularly bound by fact or totally depen-
dent on immediacy.
Since printed news—in the form of pamphlets, ‘news-books’—first
appeared within decades of the fifteenth-century introduction of move-
able type to the West, the so-called news agenda has been determined by
a mixture of serious information (stemming from the dispatches of royal
ambassadors and bankers’ factors) and a potpourri of gossip and titillation
(stemming from perennial human curiosity). These news-books slowly
metamorphosed over the next two centuries into regular, unbound publi-
cations not limited to one story per issue. In English, by 1670, they were
collectively known as ‘newspapers’. By the nineteenth century, the publi-
cation of opinion had been transferred to their editorial pages from its
original printed home in the pamphlet (e.g., those that initially prolifer-
ated during the sixteenth century upheavals of the Reformation).
Competition between titles forced increases in the periodicity of a paper’s
delivery. In some instances, this became daily very early on and the press
was to be increasingly dependent on the ‘freshness’ of the information it
provided. Into the twentieth century, such dependence was to be a major
driver of technological developments in printing, but these factors did not
define ‘news’ as such. News is certainly about things that ‘are happening’,
but it is (and always has been) also about things that ‘have happened’. The
WOFULL NEWES FROM WALES: DETAILS AT 11. NEWS, NEWSREELS… 17
newsreel had its own mythology of intrepid crews rushing to secure images
and rushing them back for processing; but issues around distribution
unquestionably put the reels out of competition with the papers. Yet nei-
ther this nor the newsreel’s limited range of topics and its often less than
sombre tone afford any prima facie reason to deny its journalistic inheri-
tance—not even that it, in contrast to print, is illustration rather than text.
The 1485 printed pamphlet Dracole Waida/The Devil Prince is likely
unknown to most, but its subject is not. The ‘devil prince’ in question is
the Prince of Wallachia, and on the cover of the pamphlet he can be seen,
in a crude woodcut, calmly taking a meal at an open-air table, uncaring of
the forest of impaled corpses behind him.3 And this is how Vlad III is
remembered—Vlad the Impaler—Dracula. His behaviour was news—or at
least it was so sold as such to the world at the behest of Matthias Corvinus,
king of Hungary and Bohemia, for whom the (supposed?) murderous
deeds of his rival neighbour were well worth broadcasting. Such news-
books appeared with increasing frequency in the following century. And
they sold; they were ‘vendible’, not least because of their sensationalist
woodcut illustrations. The public had a demonstrable thirst for them—that
ever-present human desire for news and information but also for gossip and
sensation. The earliest English printed news-book was an account of the
Battle of Flodden between the English and the Scots in 1513:‘HEREAFTER
ENSUE THE TREWE ENCOUNTRE OR BATAYLE LATELY DONE
BETWENE ENGLANDE AND SCOTLANDE. IN WHICH BATAYLE
THE SCOTSHE KYNGE WAS SLAYNE…. Emprynted by me, Richard
Faques, dwelling in Poulys Churche Yerde’.4 The crucial word here is ‘trewe’
(true); as the century progressed, however, that became as much a brand—
a selling point—as a guarantee of veracity. Flodden, of course, actually
occurred but the victorious English king, Henry VII, nevertheless com-
plained about Faques’ inaccuracies5: ‘although the effect of the victory was
indeed true’, stated the official printed rejoinder, ‘yet the circumstances
in divers points were in some parte over slenderly, in some parte untruly
and amisse reported’.6 ‘True’ was never to be a guarantee of accuracy—or
of ‘truth’.
The news-books’ taste for illustration was fed by natural disasters.
Floods, for example, as in the image of crudely drawn drowning people in
the 1607 flood that occasioned the Wofull Newes from Wales. Murders
too. The woodcut illustrating The Crying Murther: Contayning the cruell
and most horrible Butchery of Mr. Tate (1624) has the murderers wander-
18 B. WINSTON
ing about carrying the severed limbs of the unfortunate Mr Tate. Such
imaginative reporting seamlessly moved ‘amisse reported’ to being simply
and endlessly ‘untruly reported’. This is not surprising given that news of
miracles and witches were a news-book staple. All purveyed were ‘verita-
ble’ accounts. A canard, as such publications became known in France,
reported the appearance of a dragon in the skies above Paris in 1567,
claiming in its title that its report was ‘véritable’. It was not alone:
More Warning yet. Being a True Relation of A Strange and Most Dreadful
Apparition Which was Seen in the Air By several Persons at Hull, the third day
of this present Sept. 1642.7
Strange things in the sky persisted, including a Fiery Apparition in the Aire
Seen over London seen on 11 May 1710.8 And they persist: see The Daily
Telegraph, for example, which seems to be somewhat obsessed by UFOs.9
This is not to say newsreels were given to mendacity, only that it is ahis-
torical to think of news becoming debased at some recent point in time.
Despite the current moral panic, ‘Fake News’ is no creation of the Trump
era. It is as old as news itself and there never has been a ‘golden age’ when
journalism was—or even was seen as being—only sober and truthful. It
has always been Janus-faced, certainly looking in that direction but also
smiling on tittle-tattle, prurience, sensation and (when the lawyers allow
or it can be otherwise gotten way with) rumour or mendacity. As James
Gordon Bennet, one of the nineteenth-century pioneers of the tabloid
press, said (reportedly): ‘Many a good newspaper story has been ruined by
over verification’.10
Newsreel was born long after newspapers and magazines, but it fol-
lowed the same path, the papers—Posts, Packets and Telegraphs—were
becoming, with half-screen images, The Daily Graphic (New York, 1880)
or The Daily Mirror (London, 1903).4 Photography massively enhanced
the popular press’s centuries-old penchant for the startling image. They,
like the newsreels, ‘were providing information in a house of entertain-
ment … They were building a world of images.’11 Between Wofull News
from Wales and the newsreels there is only continuity.
Denying the newsreel as journalism not only ignores the history and
nature of the press; it also implicitly buys into the notion that the newspa-
pers are not, as Tony Smith suggests, somehow in the entertainment
industry. This is a matter of not inconsiderable ideological moment.
During their heyday, the newsreels’ ‘object is not to present news, but to
breed a race of society gossipers, sport-maniacs, lickspittles and jingoes’.12

But, in this, the newsreels’ ‘object’ was much the same as the newspapers.
Fact, truth (what you will) aside, the ideological role of mainstream media
was to influence the public. The ‘breeding’ of opinion as much as the
transmission of information was the driver. Denying the printed press as
entertainment obfuscates its role by reinforcing its (spurious) authority
with a suggestion of inherent sobriety. But the truth of the matter has
been long known. Even as the news-books were turning into ‘diurnals’,
‘gazettes’ and ‘corantos’ in the early sixteenth century, Ben Jonson saw
this clearly. In his satire on the printers of such new-fangled publications,
The Staple of News, one printer/editor is unashamed in justifying his
enterprise:
Why, methinks, Sir, if the honest common People

Will be abus’d, why should not they ha’ their pleasure
In the believing Lyes, are made for them.13
In fact, there is a perfect line of ‘lyes’—and truths, of course—made for

‘the common people’ from the news-book through the papers and maga-
zines to the newsreels. (And beyond to radio bulletins, network televi-
sion’s promise of ‘details at 11’ and the news channel’s—repetitive—delivery
of details 24/7.)
Newsreels and Cinema

By the mid-nineteenth century, at least in the Anglophone world, the
struggle to establish a printed press independent of direct political control
had been won. This, however, did not mean a victory for free expression
as a general right for all media. Even as the principle of a ‘free press’ was
being enshrined in English law in the eighteenth century, at the same
time, 1737, direct censorship was imposed on the stage.14 Despite the
general claim of a free speech right, as exemplified by the First Amendment
to the US Constitution, this was not in practice as universal as it has been
assumed to be. It was far from inevitable that the free press concept would
be carried over to any of the new media of the twentieth century. They
could, just as easily, have followed the theatrical model of control. There
was, then, no assumption that new medium of film would share print’s
‘freedom’.
20 B. WINSTON
By 1895, when a refined photographic moving-image technology was

introduced as the cinema, still photography was well established as a
method for documenting news. The technology of printing had had the
capacity of reproducing such photographs en masse for decades. So, of
course, cinema was quickly recognized as source de l’histoire, merely pro-
viding moving images rather than still ones of events and people. Its ability
to record actuality was self-evident.15 After all, cameras had been intro-
duced as an instrument of science so successfully (‘the camera cannot lie’)
that their status as a creative tool was at first seriously disputed—with
profound impact on the development of a photographic industry.16 The
same question was also raised in connection with film. Indeed, in the
United States, this was a legal issue: was cinema ‘expression’ at all? And, if
not, how could it be entitled to First Amendment protection?17 That it
was so unprotected was formally unresolved until the 1950s.
By that time in America and elsewhere, the authorities, hysterical as ever
at the supposed potency of any form of mass communication, had put direct
state censorship in place (e.g., the French official visa licensing system); or
had the industry itself put its equivalent in place (e.g., the Hays Office in the
United States with its production code or the British Board of Film Censors
with its classification system). The censorship and classification of licensed
films confirmed the fundamental truth that, at a working level, as evidenced
previously by the theatre, free expression was no universal right.
Clearly then, on the one hand, film could be used to provide news; but,
on the other hand, how free it would be so to do was a question. (After
all, the newsreel’s mass audience was assembled—dangerously in authori-
ty’s eyes—in theatrical rows.) So, while the newsreels must be seen as
‘slow’ journalism because of technology, the hostile, censored environ-
ment of the cinema itself played a role in their editorial pusillanimity. This
had nothing to do with equipment. Cinema censorship pounced on ‘con-
troversial’ material of any kind—and news, however much it tried for
blandness, was particularly susceptible to being seen as such. The censors
might have been, by and large, obsessed by sex and drugs, but they also
took notice of the political. The British censorship board insisted that ‘that
films should not address issues of “political controversy”’, thus, for exam-
ple, denying the public screening of the pro-Communist Battleship
Potemkin/Bronenosets Po’tyomkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925).18 Zéro de con-
duite (Jean Vigo, 1934) was denied a visa because of its anarchy. The US
Hays Code prohibited anything that could cause ‘willful offense to any
nation, race or creed’ or ‘sedition’ at home.
If the newsreels were largely free of such attentions it was only because of
a lack of journalistic nous and ambition and an instinctual tendency to con-
servatism. Nevertheless, they were close enough to the news agenda that
trouble could not be totally avoided. In 1933, the British home secretary
censored an imported American newsreel which re-enacted a murder trial on
the grounds that it was purveying ‘objectionable news pictures’.19 Any whiff
of the political was, of course, fraught. Fielding offers some further emblem-
atic examples: screening footage of an autoworkers’ strike was banned in
Ontario by the provincial governor and His Majesty’s Government and with
the help of Joseph Kennedy, the US ambassador in London, images of for-
mer Prime Minster Ramsey Macdonald with Hitler in 1938 were kept off
American newsreel screens.20 It can be argued that the pitfalls of censorship
actively dissuaded the newsreels from pursuing a more vigorous editorial line.
(This is without prejudice to their undeniable journalistic spinelessness with
or without the censor at their back.) Nevertheless, for all that they largely
avoided censorship rows, the reels did consist of material that unquestionably
fell within the news agenda and can largely be best described as news fea-
tures: natural disasters and politicians arriving at (and or leaving) meetings,
cute animals and advances in science, sport and fashion—nothing not to be
found in the press. The descriptor ‘newsreel’ was not misplaced; however,
their lack of integrity in the public mind was greatly stimulated by censorship.
The underlying frippery and constrained conservative editorial stance in
every word of commentary meant, in the UK for instance, that although
newsreels were indeed considered a species of journalism, it was one that
offered ‘a quite distinctly tainted source of news … with a tolerance for
“reconstruction” and a taste for trivialisation’.21 The chief UK film censor
boasted in 1937 that: ‘We may take pride that there is not a single film show-
ing in London today which deals with any of the burning questions of the
day.’22 Those ‘questions’ then included 1.5 million unemployed in Britain,
the Spanish Civil War, the Abyssinian Crisis, etc. The newsreel’s news agenda,
which pretty much ignored those stories, clearly left many a significant stone
unturned. There were no strong connections to journalism (except for the
odd Hearst or Luce who saw in newsreels a news business opportunity with
little risk of rivalry)—and, in such an environment, there was less than no
reason to establish any. So, it was not just the comparative ‘slow’ technology
of film that led newsreels to be generally considered by the public as an irrel-
evant news source. The regulation of the cinema’s right of free expression
also played a role in making them into the ‘series of catastrophes ended by a
fashion show’ that Oscar Levant famously described them as being.23
22 B. WINSTON
Newsreels and Documentaries

Among the British public identifying the newsreels as journalism in the
1930s was the documentary film pioneer John Grierson. Unlike the press
barons, Grierson, struggling to find a niche in the media landscape, saw
the newsreels as a very serious threat to the documentary project. His
stance reflects Fielding’s other charge against the newsreel: not only was it
(supposedly) not ‘journalistic’; it was also not ‘artistic’. Grierson agreed
enthusiastically. If newsreels were not ‘artistic’ actualities, then documen-
tary actuality would be artistic. His motivation for taking this position was
transparent. It was simply a question of doing down a commercial rival the
better to raise public funds for his own filmmaking. He needed a taxon-
omy which singled out his concept of the documentary from all other
non-fiction film types: ‘interests’, ‘travelogues’, ‘nature films’—as well as
newsreels. He was at pains to stress that his films sought to achieve the
‘ordinary virtues of an art’, not ‘just a speedy snip-snap of some utterly
unimportant ceremony’—which was the slur he hurled against the news-
reels.24 The worry was that ‘unimportant ceremonies’ could include,
notably, the Battle of the Somme, newsreel footage of which had been
assembled into—by any definition—a documentary seen by millions in
1916 (The Battle of the Somme, Geoffrey Malins & John McDowell, 1916).
That—and much other non-fiction newsreel-style material now buried in
the archive (e.g., The Russian Famine of 1921 made by G.H. Mewes for
the Save the Children fund)—was to be ignored. More commercial travel-
ogues and nature shorts were not much worthier of attention either. They,
he said, ‘describe, and even expose, but in any aesthetic sense, only rarely
reveal’.25
It should not be forgotten that Grierson was a PR practitioner of rare
brilliance and his claims about documentary need to be heard in that light.
The works of the ‘Documentary Film Movement’ went, he asserted,
beyond ‘the plain (or fancy) descriptions of natural material, to arrange-
ments, rearrangements, and creative shapings of it’.26 Whatever this means,
it disrespected the newsreels. In effect, the rhetoric situated documentary
as generally delivering the poetics of, say, Night Mail (Harry Watt & Basil
Wright, 1936) when far closer to the norm (and to the aesthetics of the
newsreel) was the anti-romanticism of, say, Workers and Jobs (Arthur
Elton, 1935) or (to stick with the canon) Housing Problems (Arthur Elton,
Edgar Anstey [and Ruby Grierson],1935). Grierson’s concern at the
newsreel’s challenge, though, was not unfounded. At the outset of the
Second World War, the British Ministry of Information (MOI), in serious

need of a flow of films, both fiction and non-fiction, to bolster morale
turned to newsreel companies for the non-fiction. After all, the newsreel
had been watched by the massive cinema audiences of the time, however
much they were despised.27
By contrast, the films of the Documentary Film Unit were not seen by
many; and when they were, despite their carefully tended artistic reputa-
tion in some circles, they too did not escape scorn (Forman, 1982:
229–231).28 Documentary? … ‘an educational film about the iron and
steel industry’ as the novelist Dorothy L. Sayers characterized it in 1937.
The Griersonians (the man himself being by this time in Canada) eventu-
ally triumphed, however. In the event, the failure of vision that had char-
acterized the editorial approach of the newsreel failed also to meet the
challenge of the war effort and the MOI turned to the documentarists
after all. Be all that as it may, to persist with a Griersonian assumption
about the newsreel’s lack of ‘artistry’ is as obfuscating as insisting that they
were little tainted by journalism. A newsreel aesthetic is buried deep within
the classic documentary’s DNA.
Moreover, the argument is ahistorical in that it writes out of documen-
tary history the role of the newsreel as a primary site for experimentation
in the non-fiction cinema. It ignores the fact that, before Robert Flaherty
elaborated ways in which actuality footage could be made to conform to
the norms of Hollywood’s fiction in Nanook of the North (France/Canada,
1921), others were exploring a more avant-garde agenda. Dziga Vertov, in
John MacKay’s view,29 was applying his kino-glaz—film-eye—to penetrate
beyond the surface realities of the world as early as the ignored Goskino
Kalandar/State Kino Calendar newsreel series.
The western newsreel’s aesthetic norm might indeed have been a prosaic
utilitarianism. For example, a typical British newsreel (Topical Budget)
story, contemporary with Kalandar, covering a British royal wedding is
basically static long-shots with occasional limited pans and has an intertitle
on almost every cut. Vertov, on the other hand, was already exploring in
Kalandar a range of possibilities: dissolves instead of cuts, kiltered angles
and changing points of view, masking, rhythmic cutting and superimposi-
tions. Intertitles were limited. These techniques were to be so flamboyantly
a part of the Kino-Pravda newsreel series that followed (Dziga
Vertov/Elizaveta Svilova & others, 1922–1925). And, with Kino-Pravda,
special effects and shots of the film editor apart, Vertov also consciously
expanded the newsreels’ scope and tone. But, equally, some special editions
24 B. WINSTON
of the series we would have no trouble is classing as documentaries (e.g.,

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: A Film Poem Dedicated to the October
Celebrations [1922] or Black Sea-Arctic Ocean-Moscow: A Movie Camera
Race from Moscow to the Arctic Ocean [1924]). As Josh Malitsky points out
‘none of the distinctions now familiar to producers and viewers of news-
reels and documentaries were in place at the time Vertov began to make
films’ (Malitsky, 2013: 122).30
And this was to remain true for some time and not just in the USSR. The
newsreels’ artistry was well able to furnish the documentary with usable
material—for instance, Pare Lorenz’s effective montage of newsreel foot-
age of the Mississippi in flood in The River (USA, 1938). (Woefull Newes
from The Mid-West perhaps?) What we see of News on the March, Orson
Welles’ satiric take on Time Inc.’s March of Time at the start of Citizen
Kane (1941), is not so satirical in its suggestion that the newsreels had
progressed aesthetically well beyond the Topical Budget’s approach.
(Welles’ joke is in the hyperventilating commentary style, not the camera-
work or editing.) In reality, the Canadian National Film Board’s Second
World War series emulating March of Time, Canada Carries On, secured
an Oscar—the first ever for a documentary—for its ‘Extra’, Churchill’s
Island, made in the same year as Citizen Kane. It was entirely assembled
by Stuart Legg from newsreel footage.31
Undeniably, it was thinking like Grierson’s that secured a supposed
distinction between news and newsreels, but his reasons for proposing it
are long past. Now it ill serves our understanding of either.
Newsreels and Radio

Pathé News, Paramount News, Movietone News and Hearst’s News of the
Day all recorded on film the docking of the zeppelin Hindenburg at
Lakehurst, New Jersey on 6 May 1937. Charlie Nehlsen also recorded the
airship’s arrival onto a portable audio disk. He did not get the visual of the
fireball that enveloped it. The newsreels filmed that, silently. Instead he
got the voice of his colleague, reporter Herb Morrison:
… It’s burst into flames! Get this, Charlie; get this, Charlie! It’s fire … and
it’s crashing! It’s crashing terrible! Oh, my! Get out of the way, please! It’s
burning and bursting into flames and the … and it’s falling on the mooring
mast … it’s a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. It’s smoke, and it’s in flames
now … Oh, the humanity! Ah! It’s … it … it’s a … ah! I … I can’t talk, ladies
and gentlemen. Honest. I … I … I’m sorry. Honest. I … I can hardly
breathe. I … I’m going to step inside, where I cannot see it.
In five hundred years of journalism, this recording indicates that a new

form of reporting was at hand. Reporters, from the time the role began to
emerge—distinct from publisher or printer—as ‘intelligencer’ in the late
sixteenth century, had always been witnesses; but never before radio had
they been able to share that witness live (and even incoherently). The pos-
sibility of using commentators outside the dubbing suite reading scripts
had never occurred to the newsreels, even after they acquired synch sound
cameras (which they had by this time). To do this was a radio first and, to
maximize the technique’s usefulness to the broadcasters, liveness could be
recorded—as was in fact the case with the Morrison report: as live from a
disk. But the editorial environment in which it operated was, formally,
even more constrained than the newsreels’.
The right to free expression needed to be secured by mounting a fresh
case for it each time, medium by medium. So, with radio, essentially devel-
oped in the first instance as a technique of military communications, any
presumption of freedom from direct interference by the state was, unsur-
prisingly, to be even more tenuous than had been the case with the theatre
and film. News was, as we have seen with film depictions of sex, drugs etc.,
another especially sensitive area and radio was particularly vulnerable since
it required state allocation of bandwidth to ensure clear signals. This nec-
essary allocative regulatory function easily meshed with assumptions about
the need to control the supposed social power that the medium’s perva-
siveness gave it. The state licensing and, by extension, regulation of con-
tent seemed inevitable and were little questioned. The printed press,
although in America allowed to own radio stations, made no case on
radio’s behalf for an extension of its privileges to cover a new medium
because, in contrast to the newsreels, it saw it as a dangerous rival.
After all, newspapers had long traded on the speed with which they
delivered information. Aided by an impulse to report before competitors
and the technological advances of railway and telegraph, by the nineteenth
century the news had become something of a perishable commodity. The
radio could be quicker than the press: it could instantly translate written
reports into news bulletins merely by ripping them from the news wires
and reading them aloud into a microphone. This added nothing to estab-
lished notions of what the news was. In the United States, many papers
had been happy in the 1920s to acquire radio station licenses as an adver-
tising tool and to control ‘rip’n’read’ news bulletins by limiting radio’s
access to the wires—which they owned. In the event, however, the impact
of this shared agenda and greater instantaneity on newspaper sales was less
26 B. WINSTON
than had been feared by the publishers. In fact, on the contrary, the pub-
lic, its appetite whetted by such broadcasts, turned to the papers for fur-
ther information. The emerging understanding of this symbiosis opened
the press-owned wires to the radio networks and ‘rip-and-read’ became
the dominant radio news mode.
The radio news bulletin thereby acquired much of the authority of the
press and, with it, an assumption of First Amendment privileges which had
escaped the newsreels. Radio news did not share the timidity of the news-
reel and, indeed, innovated in ways that pushed the boundaries of its right
to speak. As the 1930s progressed, the live spot-news report innovation
reflected a measure of editorial robustness; but it also really highlighted
radio a as powerful rival content provider to the papers in ways the news-
reels had never been. It was not only journalistically rigorous, but was also,
to all intents and purposes, virtually instantaneous.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation pioneered live reports into its
bulletins from a mining disaster in 1936. That year, in London, Richard
Dimbleby, who was to become the doyen of British news broadcasters,
made his career, literally, by phoning into Broadcasting House an eyewit-
ness account of the great Crystal Palace fire, delivered from a public tele-
phone box.32 By February 1938, live spot reports on Hitler’s demand of
the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia were regularly interrupting sched-
uled bulletins. The Anschluss, Munich, etc., etc., followed.
It was the live reporter as witness that threatened print, more than any-
thing else. Perhaps nothing better illustrates the depth of papers’ worry
than the War of the Worlds panic of 1938 in the United States. Orson
Welles’ radio play was, as far as the records go, listened to by only some 2%
of the audience; but the tales of the panic it supposedly caused splashed in
the papers the following morning were un-triangulated. The press, the
record suggests, concocted a fake news story of mayhem precisely to
convince the authorities that the power of radio required disabling con-
tent controls.33 They were resisted.
As for the newsreels, the consanguinity of the radio spot report and the
newsreel story—despite the former’s lack of images and the latter’s failure
to exploit the possibilities of on-camera reporters—had become clear. On
the BBC, in 1940, a 30-minute nightly Radio Newsreel emerged to join
BBC News. Newsreels and radio news (and radio newsreels) in combina-
tion were poised to produce the newsreel’s nemesis: television news.
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would have served to strengthen and rest him. But how to come by
so much now? How?
The character of the places frequented by the coolies, bhisties
(water-carriers), hadjis and even beggars like Ibn, while without any
of the so-called luxuries of these others, and to the frequenters of
which the frequenters of these were less than the dust under their
feet, were still, to these latter, excellent enough. Yea, despised as
they were, they contained charpoys on which each could sit with his
little water-chatty beside him, and in the centre of the circle one such
as even the lowly Ibn, a beggar, singing his loudest or reciting some
tale—for such as they. It was in such places as these, before his
voice had wholly deserted him, that Ibn had told his tales. Here,
then, for the price of a few anna, they could munch the leavings of
the khat market, drink kishr and discuss the state of the world and
their respective fortunes. Compared to Ibn in his present state, they
were indeed as lords, even princes.
But, by Allah, although having been a carrier and a vendor himself
in his day, and although born above them, yet having now no voice
nor any tales worth the telling, he was not even now looked upon as
one who could stand up and tell of the wonders of the Jinn and
demons and the great kings and queens who had reigned of old.
Indeed, so low had he fallen that he could not even interest this
despised caste. His only gift now was listening, or to make a pathetic
picture, or recite the ills that were his.
Nevertheless necessity, a stern master, compelled him to think
better of his quondam tale-telling art. Only, being, as he knew, wholly
unsuited to recite any tale now, he also knew that the best he could
do would be to make the effort, a pretense, in the hope that those
present, realizing his age and unfitness, would spare him the
spectacle he would make of himself and give him a few anna
wherewith to ease himself then and there. Accordingly, the hour
having come when the proffered services of a singer or story-teller
would be welcomed in any mabraz, he made his way to this region of
many of them and where beggars were so common. Only, glancing
through the door of the first one, he discovered that there were far
too few patrons for his mood. They would be in nowise gay, hence
neither kind nor generous as yet, and the keeper would be cold. In a
second, a little farther on, a tom-tom was beginning, but the guests
were only seven in number and but newly settled in their pleasure. In
a third, when the diaphanous sky without was beginning to pale to a
deep steel and the evening star was hanging like a solitaire from the
pure breast of the western firmament, he pushed aside the veiling
cords of beads of one and entered, for here was a large company
resting upon their pillows and charpoys, their chatties and hubbuks
beside them, but no singer or beater of a tom-tom or teller of tales as
yet before them.
“O friends,” he began with some diffidence and imaginings, for well
he knew how harsh were the moods and cynical the judgments of
some of these lowest of life’s offerings, “be generous and hearken to
the tale of one whose life has been long and full of many unfortunate
adventures, one who although he is known to you—”
“What!” called Hussein, the peddler of firewood, reclining at his
ease in his corner, a spray of all but wilted khat in his hand. “Is it not
even Ibn Abdullah? And has he turned tale-teller once more? By
Allah, a great teller of tales—one of rare voice! The camels and
jackals will be singing in Hodeidah next!”
“An my eyes deceive me not,” cried Waidi, the water-carrier, at his
ease also, a cup of kishr in his hands, “this is not Ibn Abdullah, but
Sindbad, fresh from a voyage!”
“Or Ali Baba himself,” cried Yussuf, the carrier, hoarsely. “Thou
hast a bag of jewels somewhere about thee? Now indeed we shall
hear things!”
“And in what a voice!” added Haifa the tobacco-tramp, noting the
husky, wheezy tones with which Ibn opened his plea. “This is to be a
treat, truly. And now we may rest and have wonders upon wonders.
Ibn of Mecca and Jiddah, and even of marvelous Hodeidah itself, will
now tell us much. A cup of kishr, ho! This must be listened to!”
But now Bab-al Oman, the keeper, a stout and cumbrous soul,
coming forth from his storeroom, gazed upon Ibn with mingled
astonishment and no little disfavor, for it was not customary to permit
any of his customers of the past to beg in here, and as for a singer or
story-teller he had never thought of Ibn in that light these many
years. He was too old, without the slightest power to do aught but
begin in a wheezy voice.
“Hearken,” he called, coming over and laying a hand on him, the
while the audience gazed and grinned, “hast thou either anna or
rupee wherewith to fulfill thy account in case thou hast either khat or
kishr?” The rags and the mummy-like pallor of the old man offended
him.
“Do but let him speak,” insisted Hussein the peddler gaily, “or
sing,” for he was already feeling the effects of his ease and the
restorative power of the plant. “This will be wonderful. By the voices
of eleven hundred elephants!”
“Yea, a story,” called Waidi, “or perhaps that of the good Cadi of
Taiz and the sacred waters of Jezer!”
“Or of the Cadi of Mecca and the tobacco that was too pure!”
Ibn heard full well and knew the spectacle he was making of
himself. The references were all too plain. Only age and want and a
depressing feebleness, which had been growing for days, caused
him to forget, or prevented, rather, his generating a natural rage and
replying in kind. These wretched enemies of his, dogs lower than
himself, had never forgiven him that he had been born out of their
caste, or, having been so, that he had permitted himself to sink to
labor and beg with them. But now his age and weakness were too
great. He was too weary to contend.
“O most generous Oman, best of keepers of a mabraz—and thou,
O comfortable and honorable guests,” he insisted wheezily, “I have
here but one pice, the reward of all my seekings this day. It is true
that I am a beggar and that my coverings are rags, yet do but
consider that I am old and feeble. This day and the day before and
the day before that—”
“Come, come!” said Oman restlessly and feeling that the custom
and trade of his mabraz were being injured, “out! Thou canst not sing
and thou canst not tell a tale, as thou well knowest. Why come here
when thou hast but a single pice wherewith to pay thy way? Beg
more, but not here! Bring but so much as half a rupee, and thou shalt
have service in plenty!”
“But the pice I have here—may not I—O good sons of the Prophet,
a spray of khat, a cup of kishr—suffer me not thus be cast forth! ‘—
and the poor and the son of the road!’ Alms—alms—in the name of
Allah!”
“Out, out!” insisted Oman gently but firmly. “So much as ten anna,
and thou mayst rest here; not otherwise.”
He turned him forth into the night.
And now, weak and fumbling, Ibn stood there for a time,
wondering where else to turn. He was so weak that at last even the
zest for search or to satisfy himself was departing. For a moment, a
part of his old rage and courage returning, he threw away the pice
that had been given him, then turned back, but not along the street
of the bazaars. He was too distrait and disconsolate. Rather, by a
path which he well knew, he circled now to the south of the town,
passing via the Bet-el-Fakin gate to the desert beyond the walls,
where, ever since his days as a pack servant with the Bedouins, he
had thought to come in such an hour. Overhead were the stars in
that glorious æther, lit with a light which never shines on other soils
or seas. The evening star had disappeared, but the moon was now
in the west, a thin feather, yet transfiguring and transforming as by
magic the homely and bare features of the sands. Out here was
something of that beauty which as a herdsman among the Bedouins
he had known, the scent of camels and of goats’ milk, the memory of
low black woolen tents, dotting the lion-tawny sands and gazelle-
brown gravels with a warm and human note, and the camp-fire that,
like a glowworm, had denoted the village centre. Now, as in a dream,
the wild weird songs of the boys and girls of the desert came back,
the bleating of their sheep and goats in the gloaming. And the
measured chant of the spearsmen, gravely stalking behind their
charges, the camels, their song mingling with the bellowing of their
humpy herds.
“It is finished,” he said, once he was free of the city and far into the
desert itself. “I have no more either the skill nor the strength
wherewith to endure or make my way. And without khat one cannot
endure. What will be will be, and I am too old. Let them find me so. I
shall not move. It is better than the other.”
Then upon the dry, warm sands he laid himself, his head toward
Mecca, while overhead the reremouse circled and cried, its tiny
shriek acknowledging its zest for life; and the rave of a jackal,
resounding through the illuminated shade beyond, bespoke its desire
to live also. Most musical of all music, the palm trees now answered
the whispers of the night breeze with the softest tones of falling
water.
“It is done,” sighed Ibn Abdullah, as he lay and wearily rested.
“Worthless I came, O Allah, and worthless I return. It is well.”
VII
TYPHOON
I NTO a singularly restricted and indifferent environment Ida Zobel

was born. Her mother, a severe, prim German woman, died when
she was only three, leaving her to the care of her father and his
sister, both extremely reserved and orderly persons. Later, after Ida
had reached the age of ten, William Zobel took unto himself a
second wife, who resembled Zobel and his first wife in their respect
for labor and order.
Both were at odds with the brash gayety and looseness of the
American world in which they found themselves. Being narrow,
sober, workaday Germans, they were annoyed by the groups of
restless, seeking, eager, and as Zobel saw it, rather scandalous
young men and women who paraded the neighborhood streets of an
evening without a single thought apparently other than pleasure. And
these young scamps and their girl friends who sped about in
automobiles. The loose, indifferent parents. The loose, free ways of
all these children. What was to become of such a nation? Were not
the daily newspapers, which he would scarcely tolerate in his home
longer, full of these wretched doings? The pictures of almost naked
women that filled them all! Jazz! Petting parties! High school boys
with flasks on their hips! Girls with skirts to their knees, rolled-down
stockings, rolled-down neck-bands, bare arms, bobbed hair, no
decent concealing underwear!
“What—a daughter of his grow up like that! Be permitted to join in
this prancing route to perdition! Never!” And in consequence, the
strictest of rules with regard to Ida’s upbringing. Her hair was to grow
its natural length, of course. Her lips and cheeks were never to know
the blush of false, suggestive paint. Plain dresses. Plain underwear
and stockings and shoes and hats. No crazy, idiotic finery, but
substantial, respectable clothing. Work at home and, when not
otherwise employed with her studies at school, in the small paint and
color store which her father owned in the immediate vicinity of their
home. And last, but not least, a schooling of such proper and definite
character as would serve to keep her mind from the innumerable
current follies which were apparently pulling at the foundations of
decent society.
For this purpose Zobel chose a private and somewhat religious
school conducted by an aged German spinster of the name of
Elizabeth Hohstauffer, who had succeeded after years and years of
teaching in impressing her merits as a mentor on perhaps as many
as a hundred German families of the area. No contact with the
careless and shameless public school here. And once the child had
been inducted into that, there followed a series of daily inquiries and
directions intended to guide her in the path she was to follow.
“Hurry! You have only ten minutes now in which to get to school.
There is no time to lose!”... “How comes it that you are five minutes
late to-night? What were you doing?”... “Your teacher made you
stay? You had to stop and look for a blank book?”... “Why didn’t you
come home first and let me look for it with you afterwards?” (It was
her stepmother talking.) “You know your father doesn’t want you to
stay after school.”... “And just what were you doing on Warren
Avenue between twelve and one to-day? Your father said you were
with some girl.”... “Vilma Balet? And who is Vilma Balet? Where does
she live? And how long has it been that you have been going with
her? Why is it that you have not mentioned her before? You know
what your father’s rule is. And now I shall have to tell him. He will be
angry. You must obey his rules. You are by no means old enough to
decide for yourself. You have heard him say that.”
Notwithstanding all this, Ida, though none too daring or aggressive
mentally, was being imaginatively drawn to the very gayeties and
pleasures that require courage and daring. She lived in a mental
world made up of the bright lights of Warren Avenue, of which she
caught an occasional glimpse. The numerous cars speeding by! The
movies and her favorite photographs of actors and actresses, some
of the mannerisms of whom the girls imitated at school. The voices,
the laughter of the boys and girls as they walked to and fro along the
commonplace thoroughfare with its street-cars and endless stores
side by side! And what triumphs or prospective joys they planned
and palavered over as they strolled along in their easy manner—
arms linked and bodies swaying—up the street and around the
corner and back into the main street again, gazing at their graceful
ankles and bodies in the mirrors and windows as they passed, or
casting shy glances at the boys.
But as for Ida—despite her budding sensitivity—at ten, eleven,
twelve, thirteen, fourteen—there was no escape from the severe
regimen she was compelled to follow. Breakfast at seven-thirty sharp
because the store had to be opened by her father at eight; luncheon
at twelve-thirty, on the dot to satisfy her father; dinner invariably at
six-thirty, because there were many things commercial and social
which fell upon the shoulders of William Zobel at night. And between
whiles, from four to six on weekdays and later from seven to ten at
night, as well as all day Saturdays, store duty in her father’s store.
No parties, no welcome home atmosphere for the friends of her
choice. Those she really liked were always picked to pieces by her
stepmother, and of course this somewhat influenced the opinion of
her father. It was common gossip of the neighborhood that her
parents were very strict and that they permitted her scarcely any
liberties. A trip to a movie, the choice of which was properly
supervised by her parents; an occasional ride in an automobile with
her parents, since by the time she had attained her fifteenth year he
had purchased one of the cheaper cars.
But all the time the rout of youthful life before her eyes. And in so
far as her home life and the emotional significance of her parents
were concerned, a sort of depressing grayness. For William Zobel,
with his gray-blue eyes gleaming behind gilt-rimmed glasses, was
scarcely the person to whom a girl of Ida’s temperament would be
drawn. Nor was her stepmother, with her long, narrow face, brown
eyes and black hair. Indeed, Zobel was a father who by the very
solemnity of his demeanor, as well as the soberness and
practicability of his thoughts and rules, was constantly evoking a
sense of dictatorship which was by no means conducive to
sympathetic approach. To be sure, there were greetings,
acknowledgments, respectful and careful explanations as to this, that
and the other. Occasionally they would go to a friend’s house or a
public restaurant, but there existed no understanding on the part of
either Zobel or his wife—he never having wanted a daughter of his
own and she not being particularly drawn to the child of another—of
the growing problems of adolescence that might be confronting her,
and hence none of that possible harmony and enlightenment which
might have endeared each to the other.
Instead, repression, and even fear at times, which in the course of
years took on an aspect of careful courtesy supplemented by
accurate obedience. But within herself a growing sense of her own
increasing charm, which, in her father’s eyes, if not in her
stepmother’s, seemed to be identified always with danger—either
present or prospective. Her very light and silky hair—light, grayish-
blue eyes—a rounded and intriguing figure which even the other girls
at Miss Hohstauffer’s school noticed and commented on. And in
addition a small straight nose and a full and yet small and almost
pouting mouth and rounded chin. Had she not a mirror and were
there not boys from her seventh year on who looked at her and
sought to attract her attention? Her father could see this as well as
his second wife. But she dared not loiter here and there as others
did, for those vigorous, bantering, seeking, intriguing contacts. She
must hurry home—to store or house duty or more study in such
fields as Zobel and his wife thought best for her. If it was to run
errands she was always timed to the minute.
And yet, in spite of all these precautions, the swift telegraphy of
eyes and blood. The haunting, seeking moods of youth, which
speaks a language of its own. In the drugstore at the corner of
Warren and Tracy, but a half-block from her home, there was at one
time in her twelfth year Lawrence Sullivan, a soda clerk. He seemed
to her the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. The dark, smooth
hair lying glossed and parted above a perfect white forehead; slim,
graceful hands—or so she thought—a care and smartness in the
matter of dress which even the clothing of the scores of public school
boys passing this way seemed scarcely to match. And such a way
where girls were concerned—so smiling and at his ease. And always
a word for them as they stopped in on their way home from school.
“Why, hello, Della! How’s Miss McGinnis to-day? I bet I know what
you’re going to have. I think pretty blonde girls must like chocolate
sundaes—they contrast with their complexions.” And then smiling
serenely while Miss McGinnis panted and smiled: “A lot you know
about what blonde girls like.”
And Ida Zobel, present on occasion by permission for a soda or a
sundae, looking on and listening most eagerly. Such a handsome
youth. All of sixteen. He would as yet pay no attention to so young a
girl as she, of course, but when she was older! Would she be as
pretty as this Miss McGinnis? Could she be as assured? How
wonderful to be attractive to such a youth! And what would he say to
her, if he said anything at all? And what would she say in return?
Many times she imitated these girls mentally and held imaginary
conversations with herself. Yes, despite this passive admiration, Mr.
Sullivan went the way of all soda-clerks, changing eventually to
another job in another neighborhood.
But in the course of time there were others who took her eye and
for a time held her mind—around whose differing charms she
erected fancies which had nothing to do with reality. One of these
was Merton Webster, the brisk, showy, vain and none too ambitious
son of a local state senator, who lived in the same block she did and
attended Watkins High School, which she was not permitted to
attend. So handsome was he—so debonair. “Hello, kid! Gee, you
look cute, all right. One of these days I’ll take you to a dance if you
want to go.” Yet, because of her years and the strict family
espionage, blushes, her head down, but a smile none the less.
And she was troubled by thoughts of him until Walter Stour, whose
father conducted a realty and insurance business only a little way
west of her father’s store, took her attention—a year later. Walter
was a tall, fair complexioned youth, with gay eyes and a big,
laughing mouth, who, occasionally with Merton Webster, Lawrence
Cross, a grocer’s son, Sven Volberg, the dry-cleaner’s son, and
some others, hung about the favorite moving-picture theatre or the
drugstore on the main corner and flirted with the girls as they passed
by. As restricted as she was still, because of her trips to and fro
between home and school and her service as a clerk in her father’s
store, she was not unfamiliar with these several figures or their
names. They came into the store occasionally and even commented
on her looks: “Oh, getting to be a pretty girl, isn’t she?” Whereupon
she would flush with excitement and nervously busy herself about
filling a customer’s order.
It was through Etelka Shomel, the daughter of a German neighbor
who was also a friend of William Zobel, that she learned much of
these boys and girls. Her father thought Etelka a safe character for
Ida to chum with, chiefly on account of her unattractiveness. But
through her, as well as their joint pilgrimages here and there, she
came to hear much gossip about the doings of these same. Walter
Stour, whom she now greatly admired, was going with a girl by the
name of Edna Strong, who was the daughter of a milk-dealer.
Stour’s father was not as stingy as some fathers. He had a good car
and occasionally let his son use it. Stour often took Edna and some
of her friends to boathouse resorts on the Little Shark River. A girl
friend of Etelka’s told her what a wonderful mimic and dancer he
was. She had been on a party with him. And, of course, Ida lent a
willing and eager ear to all this. Oh, the gayety of such a life! Its
wonders! Beauties!
And then one night, as Ida was coming around the corner to go to
her father’s store at about seven-thirty and Stour was on his favorite
corner with several other boys, he called: “I know who’s a sweet kid,
but her daddy won’t let her look at a guy. Will he?” This last aimed
directly at her as she passed, while she, knowing full well who was
meant and how true it was, hurried on all the faster. If her father had
heard that! Oh, my! But it thrilled her as she walked. “Sweet kid.”
“Sweet kid”—kept ringing in her ears.
And then at last, in her sixteenth year, Edward Hauptwanger
moved into a large house in Grey Street. His father, Jacob
Hauptwanger, was a well-to-do coal-dealer who had recently
purchased a yard on the Absecon. It was about this time that Ida
became keenly aware that her normal girlhood, with its so necessary
social contacts, was being set at naught and that she was being
completely frustrated by the stern and repressive attitude of her
father and stepmother. The wonder and pain, for instance, of spring
and summer evenings just then, when she would stand gazing at the
moon above her own commonplace home—shining down into the
narrow, commonplace garden at the back, where still were tulips,
hyacinths, honeysuckle and roses. And the stars shining above
Warren Avenue, where were the cars, the crowds, the moving-
picture theatres and restaurants which held such charm for her.
There was a kind of madness, an ache, in it all. Oh, for pleasure—
pleasure! To go, run, dance, play, kiss with some one—almost any
one, really, if he were only young and handsome. Was she going to
know no one—no one? And, worse, the young men of the
neighborhood calling to her as she passed: “Oh, look who’s here!
Shame her daddy won’t let her out.” “Why don’t you bob your hair,
Ida? You’d be cute.” Even though she was out of school now, she
was clerking as before and dressing as before. No short skirts,
bobbed hair, rolled-down stockings, rouge.
But with the arrival of this Edward Hauptwanger, there came a
change. For here was a youth of definite and drastic impulses—a
beau, a fighter, a fellow of infinite guile where girls of all sorts were
concerned—and, too, a youth of taste in the matter of dress and
manner—one who stood out as a kind of hero to the type of youthful
male companions with whom he chose to associate. Did he not live
in a really large, separate house on Grey Street? And were not his
father’s coal-pockets and trucks conspicuously labelled outstanding
features of the district? And, in addition, Hauptwanger, owing to the
foolish and doting favor of his mother (by no means shared by his
father), always supplied with pocket money sufficient to meet all
required expenditures of such a world as this. The shows to which
he could take his “flames”; the restaurants, downtown as well as
here. And the boat club on the Little Shark which at once became a
rendezvous of his. He had a canoe of his own, so it was said. He
was an expert swimmer and diver. He was allowed the use of his
father’s car and would often gather up his friends on a Saturday or
Sunday and go to the boat club.
More interesting still, after nearly a year’s residence here, in which
he had had time to establish himself socially after this fashion, he
had his first sight of Ida Zobel passing one evening from her home to
the store. Her youthful if repressed beauty was at its zenith. And
some remarks concerning her and her restricted life by youths who
had neither the skill nor the daring to invade it at once set him
thinking. She was beautiful, you bet! Hauptwanger, because of a
certain adventurous fighting strain in his blood, was at once intrigued
by the difficulties which thus so definitely set this girl apart. “These
old-fashioned, dictatorial Germans! And not a fellow in the
neighborhood to step up and do anything about it! Well, whaddya
know?”
And forthwith an intensive study of the situation as well as of the
sensitive, alluring Ida Zobel. And with the result that he was soon
finding himself irresistibly attracted to her. That pretty face! That
graceful, rounded figure! Those large, blue-gray, shy and evasive
eyes! Yet with yearning in them, too.
And in consequence various brazen parades past the very paint
store of Zobel, with the fair Ida within. And this despite the fact that
Zobel himself was there—morning, noon and night—bent over his
cash register or his books or doing up something for a customer. And
Ida, by reason of her repressed desires and sudden strong
consciousness of his interest in her as thus expressed, more and
more attracted to him. And he, because of this or his own interest,
coming to note the hours when she was most likely to be alone.
These were, as a rule, Wednesdays and Fridays, when because of a
singing society as well as a German social and commercial club her
father was absent from eight-thirty on. And although occasionally
assisted by her stepmother she was there alone on these nights.
And so a campaign which was to break the spell which held the
sleeping beauty. At first, however, only a smile in the direction of Ida
whenever he passed or she passed him, together with boasts to his
friends to the effect that he would “win that kid yet, wait and see.”
And then, one evening, in the absence of Zobel, a visit to the store.
She was behind the counter and between the business of waiting on
customers was dreaming as usual of the life outside. For during the
past few weeks she had become most sharply conscious of the
smiling interest of Hauptwanger. His straight, lithe body—his quick,
aggressive manner—his assertive, seeking eyes! Oh, my! Like the
others who had gone before him and who had attracted her
emotional interest, he was exactly of that fastidious, self-assured and
self-admiring type toward which one so shy as herself would yearn.
No hesitancy on his part. Even for this occasion he had scarcely
troubled to think of a story. What difference? Any old story would do.
He wanted to see some paints. They might be going to repaint the
house soon—and in the meantime he could engage her in
conversation, and if the “old man” came back, well, he would talk
paints to him.
And so, on this particularly warm and enticing night in May, he
walked briskly in, a new gray suit, light tan fedora hat and tan shoes
and tie completing an ensemble which won the admiration of the
neighborhood. “Oh, hello. Pretty tough to have to work inside on a
night like this, ain’t it?” (A most irresistible smile going with this.) “I
want to see some paints—the colors of ’em, I mean. The old man is
thinking of repainting the house.”
And at once Ida, excited and flushing to the roots of her hair,
turning to look for a color card—as much to conceal her flushing face
as anything else. And yet intrigued as much as she was affrighted.
The daring of him! Suppose her father should return—or her
stepmother enter? Still, wasn’t he as much of a customer as any one
else—although she well knew by his manner that it was not paint
that had brought him. For over the way, as she herself could and did
see, were three of his admiring companions ranged in a row to watch
him, the while he leaned genially and familiarly against the counter
and continued: “Gee, I’ve seen you often enough, going back and
forth between your school and this store and your home. I’ve been
around here nearly a year now, but I’ve never seen you around much
with the rest of the girls. Too bad! Otherwise we mighta met. I’ve met
all the rest of ’em so far,” and at the same time by troubling to touch
his tie he managed to bring into action one hand on which was an
opal ring, his wrist smartly framed in a striped pink cuff. “I heard your
father wouldn’t even let you go to Warren High. Pretty strict, eh?”
And he beamed into the blue-gray eyes of the budding girl before
him, noted the rounded pink cheeks, the full mouth, the silky hair, the
while she trembled and thrilled.
“Yes, he is pretty strict.”
“Still, you can’t just go nowhere all the time, can you?” And by now
the color card, taken into his own hand, was lying flat on the counter.
“You gotta have a little fun once in a while, eh? If I’da thought you’da
stood for it, I’da introduced myself before this. My father has the big
coal-dock down here on the river. He knows your father, I’m sure. I
gotta car, or at least my dad has, and that’s as good as mine. Do you
think your father’d letcha take a run out in the country some
Saturday or Sunday—down to Little Shark River, say, or Peck’s
Beach? Lots of the fellows and girls from around here go down
there.”
By now it was obvious that Hauptwanger was achieving a
conquest of sorts and his companions over the way were
abandoning their advantageous position, no longer hopefully
interested by the possibility of defeat. But the nervous Ida, intrigued
though terrified, was thinking how wonderful it was to at last interest
so handsome a youth as this. Even though her father might not
approve, still might not all that be overcome by such a gallant as
this? But her hair was not bobbed, her skirts not short, her lips not
rouged. Could it really be that he was attracted by her physical
charms? His dark brown and yet hard and eager eyes—his
handsome hands. The smart way in which he dressed. She was
becoming conscious of her severely plain blue dress with white
trimmings, her unmodish slippers and stockings. At the same time
she found herself most definitely replying: “Oh, now, I couldn’t ever
do anything like that, you know. You see, my father doesn’t know
you. He wouldn’t let me go with any one he doesn’t know or to whom
I haven’t been properly introduced. You know how it is.”
“Well, couldn’t I introduce myself then? My father knows your
father, I’m sure. I could just tell him that I want to call on you, couldn’t
I? I’m not afraid of him, and there’s sure no harm in that, is there?”
“Well, that might be all right, only he’s very strict—and he might
not want me to go, anyhow.”
“Oh, pshaw! But you would like to go, wouldn’t you? Or to a picture
show? He couldn’t kick against that, could he?”
He looked her in the eye, smiling, and in doing so drew the lids of
his own eyes together in a sensuous, intriguing way which he had
found effective with others. And in the budding Ida were born
impulses of which she had no consciousness and over which she
had no control. She merely looked at him weakly. The wonder of
him! The beauty of love! Her desire toward him! And so finding heart
to say: “No, maybe not. I don’t know. You see I’ve never had a beau
yet.”
She looked at him in such a way as to convince him of his
conquest. “Easy! A cinch!” was his thought. “Nothing to it at all.” He
would see Zobel and get his permission or meet her clandestinely.
Gee, a father like that had no right to keep his daughter from having
any fun at all. These narrow, hard-boiled German parents—they
ought to be shown—awakened—made to come to life.
And so, within two days brazenly presenting himself to Zobel in his
store in order to test whether he could not induce him to accept him
as presumably at least a candidate for his daughter’s favor.
Supposing the affair did not prove as appealing as he thought, he
could drop the contact, couldn’t he? Hadn’t he dropped others?
Zobel knew of his father, of course. And while listening to
Hauptwanger’s brisk and confident explanation he was quite
consciously evaluating the smart suit, new tan shoes and gathering,
all in all, a favorable impression.
“You say you spoke to her already?”
“I asked her if I might call on her, yes, sir.”
“Uh-uh! When was this?”
“Just two days ago. In the evening here.”
“Uh-uh!”
At the same time a certain nervous, critical attitude toward
everything, which had produced many fine lines about the eyes and
above the nose of Mr. Zobel, again taking hold of him: “Well, well—
this is something I will have to talk over with my daughter. I must see
about this. I am very careful of my daughter and who she goes with,
you know.” Nevertheless, he was thinking of the many coal trucks
delivering coal in the neighborhood, the German name of this youth
and his probable German and hence conservative upbringing. “I will
let you know about it later. You come in some other time.”
And so later a conference with his daughter, resulting finally in the
conclusion that it might be advisable for her to have at least one
male contact. For she was sixteen years old and up to the present
time he had been pretty strict with her. Perhaps she was over the
worst period. At any rate, most other girls of her age were permitted
to go out some. At least one beau of the right kind might be
essential, and somehow he liked this youth who had approached him
in this frank, fearless manner.
And so, for the time being, a call permitted once or twice a week,
with Hauptwanger from the first dreaming most daring and
aggressive dreams. And after a time, having conducted himself most
circumspectly, it followed that an evening at one of the neighborhood
picture houses was suggested and achieved. And once this was
accomplished it became a regularity for him to spend either
Wednesday or Friday evening with Ida, it depending on her work in
the store. Later, his courage and skill never deserting him, a
suggestion to Mr. Zobel that he permit Ida to go out with him on a
Saturday afternoon to visit Peck’s Beach nine miles below the city,
on the Little Shark. It was very nice there, and a popular Saturday
and Sunday resort for most of the residents of this area. After a time,
having by degrees gained the complete confidence of Zobel, he was
granted permission to take Ida to one or another of the theatres
downtown, or to a restaurant, or to the house of a boy friend who
had a sister and who lived in the next block.
Despite his stern, infiltrating supervision, Zobel could not prevent
the progressive familiarities based on youth, desire, romance. For
with Edward Hauptwanger, to contact was to intrigue and eventually
demand and compel. And so by degrees hand pressures, stolen or
enforced kisses. Yet, none the less, Ida, still fully dominated by the
mood and conviction of her father, persisting in a nervous
evasiveness which was all too trying to her lover.
“Ah, you don’t know my father. No, I couldn’t do that. No, I can’t
stay out so late. Oh, no—I wouldn’t dare go there—I wouldn’t dare
to. I don’t know what he would do to me.”
This, or such as this, to all of his overtures which hinted at later
hours, a trip to that mysterious and fascinating boat club on the Little
Shark twenty-five miles out, where, as he so glibly explained, were to
be enjoyed dancing, swimming, boating, music, feasting. But as Ida
who had never done any of these things soon discovered for herself,
this would require an unheard-of period of time—from noon until
midnight—or later Saturday, whereas her father had fixed the hour of
eleven-thirty for her return to the parental roof.
“Ah, don’t you want to have any fun at all? Gee! He don’t want you
to do a thing and you let him get away with it. Look at all the other
girls and fellows around here. There’s not one that’s as scary as you
are. Besides, what harm is there? Supposing we don’t get back on
time? Couldn’t we say the car broke down? He couldn’t say anything
to that. Besides, no one punches a time clock any more.” But Ida
nervous and still resisting, and Hauptwanger, because of this very
resistance, determined to win her to his mood and to outwit her
father at the same time.
And then the lure of summer nights—Corybantic—dithyrambic—
with kisses, kisses, kisses—under the shadow of the trees in King
Lake Park, or in one of the little boats of its lake which nosed the
roots of those same trees on the shore. And with the sensitive and
sensual, and yet restricted and inexperienced Ida, growing more and
more lost in the spell which youth, summer, love, had generated. The
beauty of the face of this, her grand cavalier! His clothes, his brisk,
athletic energy and daring! And with him perpetually twittering of this
and that, here and there, that if she only truly loved him and had the
nerve, what wouldn’t they do? All the pleasures of the world before
them, really. And then at last, on this same lake—with her lying in his
arms—himself attempting familiarities which scarcely seemed
possible in her dreams before this, and which caused her to jump up
and demand to be put ashore, the while he merely laughed.
“Oh, what had he done that was so terrible? Say, did she really
care for him? Didn’t she? Then, why so uppish? Why cry? Oh, gee,
this was a scream, this was. Oh, all right, if that was the way she
was going to feel about it.” And once ashore, walking briskly off in
the gayest and most self-sufficient manner while she, alone and
tortured by her sudden ejection from paradise, slipped home and into
her room, there to bury her face in her pillow and to whisper to it and
herself of the danger—almost the horror—that had befallen her. Yet
in her eyes and mind the while the perfect Hauptwanger. And in her
heart his face, hands, hair. His daring. His kisses. And so brooding
even here and now as to the wisdom of her course—her anger—and
in a dreary and hopeless mood even, dragging herself to her father’s
store the next day, merely to wait and dream that he was not as evil
as he had seemed—that he could not have seriously contemplated
the familiarities that he had attempted; that he had been merely
obsessed, bewitched, as she herself had been.
Oh, love, love! Edward! Edward! Edward! Oh, he would not, could
not remain away. She must see him—give him a chance to explain.
She must make him understand that it was not want of love but fear
of life—her father, everything, everybody—that kept her so sensitive,
aloof, remote.
And Hauptwanger himself, for all of his bravado and craft, now
nervous lest he had been too hasty. For, after all, what a beauty! The
lure! He couldn’t let her go this way. It was a little too delicious and
wonderful to have her so infatuated—and with a little more attention,
who knew? And so conspicuously placing himself where she must
pass on her way home in the evening, at the corner of Warren and
High—yet with no sign on his part of seeing her. And Ida, with
yearning and white-faced misery, seeing him as she passed.
Monday night! Tuesday night! And worse, to see him pass the store
early Wednesday evening without so much as turning his head. And
then the next day a note handed the negro errand boy of her father’s
store to be given to him later, about seven, at the corner where he
would most surely be.
And then later, with the same Edward taking it most casually and
grandly and reading it. So she had been compelled to write him, had
she? Oh, these dames! Yet with a definite thrill from the contents for
all of that, for it read: “Oh, Edward, darling, you can’t be so cruel to
me. How can you? I love you so. You didn’t mean what you said. Tell
me you didn’t. I didn’t. Oh, please come to the house at eight. I want
to see you.”
And Edward Hauptwanger, quite triumphant now, saying to the
messenger before four cronies who knew of his present pursuit of
Ida: “Oh, that’s all right. Just tell her I’ll be over after a while.” And
then as eight o’clock neared, ambling off in the direction of the Zobel
home. And as he left one of his companions remarking: “Say,
whaddya know? He’s got that Zobel girl on the run now. She’s writing
him notes now. Didn’t ya see the coon bring it up? Don’t it beat hell?”
And the others as enviously, amazedly and contemptuously
inquiring: “Whaddya know?”
And so, under June trees in King Lake Park, once more another
conference. “Oh, darling, how could you treat me so, how could you?
Oh, my dear, dear darling.” And he replying—“Oh, sure, sure, it was
all right, only what do you think I’m made of? Say, have a heart, I’m
human, ain’t I? I’ve got some feelings same as anybody else. Ain’t I
crazy about you and ain’t you crazy about me? Well, then—besides
—well, say....” A long pharisaical and deluding argument as one
might guess, with all the miseries and difficulties of restrained and
evaded desire most artfully suggested—yet with no harm meant, of
course. Oh, no.
But again, on her part, the old foolish, terrorized love plea. And the
firm assurance on his part that if anything went wrong—why, of
course. But why worry about that now? Gee, she was the only girl he
knew who worried about anything like that. And finally a rendezvous
at Little Shark River, with his father’s car as the conveyance. And
later others and others. And she—because of her weak, fearsome
yielding in the first instance—and then her terrorized contemplation
of possible consequences in the second—clinging to him in all too
eager and hence cloying fashion. She was his now—all his. Oh, he
would never, never desert her, now, would he?

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Researching Newsreels: Local, National

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More information about this series at

Foreword by John Corner

Roel Vande Winkel

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018946656

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover credit: lapandr/iStock/Getty Images Plus

The job of a Foreword writer is to address a book’s readers by giving a

detailed examples and arguments in the following chapters, and then to

experience’ by an address which easily shifts into hortatory mode, doing

University of Leeds John Corner

John Corner is visiting professor of Media and Communication at the

2 Wofull Newes from Wales: Details at 11. News, Newsreels,

3 The Newsreel Audience 35

4 Around the World: The First Norwegian Newsreel,

5 The Commentary Makes the Difference: An Analysis

6 Martin Luther King’s Assassination in Spain’s

7 Matrices for Non-Fiction: Dziga Vertov and the

8 More Than Goebbels Bargained For: Nazi Newsreel

9 Screening War and Peace: Newsreel Pragmatism in Neutral

10 The Legal Settlement and Reconstruction in the Norwegian

11 Advertising and Self-Reference in the West German

12 Newsreel Production, Distribution and Exhibition in

13 Researching the Issued Content of American Newsreels 247

14 The Irish Question: Newsreels and National Identity 265

15 If You Build It, Will They Come? Researching British

Scott L. Althaus is Charles J. and Ethel S. Merriam Professor of Political

and Ph. Meers, 2017). He is currently working on the Routledge

Kay Hoffmann is a film journalist, historian and head of research at the

Russian in the Soviet Union and teaching at a community college, he

Roel Vande Winkel is Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies

Fig. 9.8 Screenshot from newsreel SF1259A, 1945. Courtesy of

Ciara Chambers, Mats Jönsson and Roel Vande Winkel

© The Author(s) 2018 1

completely, but also to strengthen its international position. This trend

Nicholas Pronay argues that newsreels held a ‘peculiar power’ which

Due to the time-consuming nature of newsreel production and distri-

Secondly, the production and distribution history of newsreels is hard

by theme, event or personality. This offers a convenient portal for research-

newsreel within the broader context of visual journalism and non-fiction

is known of the provenance of the footage used in Vertov’s early compila-

Using the partition of Ireland as a case study, Ciara Chambers considers

Wofull Newes from Wales: Details at 11. News,

There is a basic, and erroneous, belief about the newsreel:

Throughout its history, the principal function of the American newsreel …

Thus, the doyen of American newsreel studies, Raymond Fielding, with a

© The Author(s) 2018 15

cultural phenomenon while at the same time claiming it as ‘The Story of

Newsreels and Newspapers

breed a race of society gossipers, sport-maniacs, lickspittles and jingoes’.12

Why, methinks, Sir, if the honest common People

In fact, there is a perfect line of ‘lyes’—and truths, of course—made for

Newsreels and Cinema

By 1895, when a refined photographic moving-image technology was

University of Leeds John Corner

2 Wofull Newes from Wales: Details at 11. News, Newsreels,

3 The Newsreel Audience 35

4 Around the World: The First Norwegian Newsreel,

5 The Commentary Makes the Difference: An Analysis

6 Martin Luther King’s Assassination in Spain’s

7 Matrices for Non-Fiction: Dziga Vertov and the

8 More Than Goebbels Bargained For: Nazi Newsreel

9 Screening War and Peace: Newsreel Pragmatism in Neutral

10 The Legal Settlement and Reconstruction in the Norwegian

11 Advertising and Self-Reference in the West German

12 Newsreel Production, Distribution and Exhibition in

13 Researching the Issued Content of American Newsreels 247

14 The Irish Question: Newsreels and National Identity 265

15 If You Build It, Will They Come? Researching British