“Canned History”: American Newsreels and The

“Canned History”: American Newsreels and the Commodification of Reality, 1927-1945 By Joseph E.J. Clark B.A., University of British Columbia, 1999 M.A., University of British Columbia, 2001 M.A., Brown University, 2004 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of American Civilization at Brown University Providence, Rhode Island May, 2011 © Copyright 2010, by Joseph E.J. Clark This dissertation by Joseph E.J. Clark is accepted in its present form by the Department of American Civilization as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date:____________ _________________________________ Professor Susan Smulyan, Co-director Date:____________ _________________________________ Professor Philip Rosen, Co-director Recommended to the Graduate Council Date:____________ _________________________________ Professor Lynne Joyrich, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date:____________ _________________________________ Dean Peter Weber, Dean of the Graduate School iii Curriculum Vitae Joseph E.J. Clark Date of Birth: July 30, 1975 Place of Birth: Beverley, United Kingdom Education: Ph.D. American Civilization, Brown University, 2011 Master of Arts, American Civilization, Brown University, 2004 Master of Arts, History, University of British Columbia, 2001 Bachelor of Arts, University of British Columbia, 1999 Teaching Experience: Sessional Instructor, Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, Simon Fraser University, Spring 2010 Sessional Instructor, Department of History, Simon Fraser University, Fall 2008 Sessional Instructor, Department of Theatre, Film, and Creative Writing, University of British Columbia, Spring 2008 Teaching Fellow, Department of American Civilization, Brown University, 2006 Teaching Assistant, Brown University, 2003-2004 Publications: “Double Vision: World War II, Racial Uplift, and the All-American Newsreel’s Pedagogical Address,” in Charles Acland and Haidee Wasson, eds. Useful Cinema: Expanding Film Contexts. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press (forthcoming). ‘Fox News,’ ‘NPR,’ and ‘Reality TV,’ in Mari Yoshihara and Yujin Yaguchi, eds. Gendai Amerika no Kiiwaado [Keywords of Contemporary America]. Tokyo: Chuo- koron-shinsha (2006). Back Issues: 80 Years of The Ubyssey Student Newspaper, Vancouver: Ubyssey Publications Society (1998). Awards: Dissertation Fellowship, Brown University, 2006-2007 Research Travel Grant, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie, 2006 Doctoral Fellowship, Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 2004- 2006 Graduate School Fellowship, Brown University, 2004-2006 University Graduate Fellowship, University of British Columbia, 2000 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Professors Philip Rosen and Susan Smulyan for their guidance, mentorship, and insightful commentary on this dissertation. Lynne Joyrich has provided useful and important commentary as a reader of this work. I would also like to thank Mary Jo Buhle who – along with my dissertation committee – provided invaluable guidance in my preliminary field exams. Thanks to my graduate school colleagues – in both American Civilization and Modern Culture and Media – for the many challenging discussions and sometimes heated debates that helped to shape my scholarship into what it has become. Special thanks go to Wesley Hiers, Jessica Johnson, Angela Mazaris, Ani Mukherji, and Elizabeth Perez. The Brown Graduate School, the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada, and the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming provided financial support that allowed me to perform my research. I would also like to thank the staffs of the many libraries and archives I visited in the course of this project. I would particularly like to thank the staffs of the UCLA Film and Television Archive, the National Archives at College Park and the Moving Image Research Collections at the University of South Carolina. Special thanks to Lisa Oberhofer of BBC Motion Gallery for assisting me to secure research copies of the All-American Newsreels in the CBS News Archive, Michelle Delaney, of the Photographic History Collection at the National v Museum of American History for providing me with photographs of the Trans-Lux Cinemas, and to Gibson R. Yungblut for giving me access to his private collection of materials related to the Cincinnati Union Station. Finally I would like to thank my family for their many years of encouragement and especially Andrea Gin for giving me her unwavering emotional, intellectual, financial, and motivational support in this project. It is not an exaggeration to say that this dissertation would not exist but for her love and understanding. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 “History of the Most Graphic and Thrilling Sort”: The History of the Newsreel, The Newsreel as History Chapter 1…………………………………………………………………………………17 News Parade: the Logic of the Newsreel System Chapter 2…………………………………………………………………………………58 Newsreel Realism: Redefining the Real in Motion Picture News Chapter 3……………………………………………………………………………..…112 “Heroes of the Lens”: Newsreel Cameramen, the Sino-Japanese War, and Looking as Action Chapter 4…………………………………………………………………….………….159 “Come along. We’re going to the Trans-Lux to hiss Roosevelt” Modernity, Virtual Travel and the Newsreel Cinema as Public Forum Chapter 5………………………………………………………………………………..219 Double Vision: World War II, Racial Uplift, and the All-American Newsreel’s Pedagogical Address Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………....265 vii INTRODUCTION “History of the Most Graphic and Thrilling Sort”: The History of the Newsreel, The Newsreel as History The small boy of the future is going to have one great aid in his historical researches that men of the present day did not have. That aid will be moving pictures. He will not have to dig for all his facts through heavy and dreary volumes; he will not have to exercise his imagination in wondering what kind of man the Kaiser was; he will not have to speculate vaguely about air raids and trench warfare and the submarine. He will find reel upon reel of valuable data in moving picture form to enlighten him; he will have “canned” history of the most graphic and thrilling sort to make things easier for him. ~ Robert C. McElravy, Moving Picture World, 1918 As history, as bottled samples of what is happening now, to be handed down to our great grandchildren, the newsreels are more often than not trivial, lazy, and misleading. As witnesses of great contemporary events, as impartial eyes and ears which wander over the world to record red-hot actuality, they have degenerated rather than improved with time… [The newsreels] have ceased to run after history or try to catch her unawares, preferring to consult the calendar and wait until, as in a St. Patrick’s Day Parade, she marches past the corner with a brass band. ~ Robert Littell, The American Mercury, 1933 The newsreel promised to change the way Americans saw the world. In 1911, when the first weekly newsreel launched in the United States, its boosters argued that people would 1 never have to doubt the truth of news reports again. For the first time, there would be a weekly record of events that represented “indisputable evidence” of the news.1 Not only would such a record inform contemporary audiences, but, as Robert McElvary argued, it would also prove a powerful educational tool for the students of the future.2 By the time the newsreel had reached the peak of its power and popularity in the 1930s and 1940s, critics had already become skeptical of this early optimism. Writers like Robert Littell charged that, in an attempt to entertain rather than inform or simply out of laziness, the newsreel had forsaken its responsibilities to its viewers – current and future.3 Three- quarters of a century later, this debate over the value of the newsreel raises some interesting historical and historiographical questions. What can newsreels tell us about the past? Do these film documents provide some special insight into historical events? How does the experience of seeing the events of the past onscreen change our understanding of those events? In order to answer these questions, however, one must first examine the newsreel’s own history. The newsreel archive today is neither the grand collection of enlightening and valuable data that McElvary envisioned in 1918, nor the trivial and misleading sampling of the past over which Littell despaired. Instead, it is an uneven collection of sound and images from the past that provides useful illustrative material for documentary films and television programs, but that has gone largely unexamined by historians attempting to do rigorous research about the politics and culture of the United States. An analysis of the history of the newsreel industry, its images and its audience reveals a media system that had a profound effect on American culture. In particular, the newsreel transformed the very notions of reality, representation, 1 "The Camera Press Man," Moving Picture World, 23 September 1911, 868. 2 Robert C. McElravy, "Humanizing History," The Motion Picture World, 9 February 1918, 791. 3 Robert Littell, "A Glance at the Newsreel," The American Mercury, November 1933, 263-71. 2 and their relation to one another that lay at the heart of both McElvary’s and Littell’s observations about the newsreel’s historical potential. In doing so, the newsreel did indeed change the way Americans

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