The Newsreel Story
Fox Newsreels were originally seen prior to feature films in movie theaters around the world, starting in 1919 with the silent Fox News Service and ending in 1963 shortly before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
‘It Speaks for Itself’
Theodore Case and Earl Sponable, engineers at the Case Research Laboratories in Auburn, NY perfected an optical method of recording sound waves onto film and in 1926 William Fox purchased the rights to the Case-Sponable sound-on-film system. Shortly thereafter, Fox News Service became Fox Movietone News and for a short time the sound component took center stage. It took nearly a year for other newsreels to produce their own talkies, but by then Fox had a commanding lead over it's rivals.
Aviation was a favorite subject of the early newsreels. One of the defining moments of the 20th Century was captured on May 20th of 1927, when a Movietone camera crew filmed Charles Lindbergh taking off from Roosevelt Field on his famous trans-Atlantic flight from New York to Paris. The negative was rushed back from Long Island, where a print was projected for ecstatic audiences at the Roxy Theatre in Manhattan later on the evening of the same day.
It wasn't until December of 1927 that the first edited sound newsreel was issued. All stories in the first Volume and Release were filmed by Field Outfit Number One, led by Fox veteran cameraman Ben Miggins. Volume #1, Release #1 featured just three subjects: A review at West Point featuring the Academy's marching band, the Vatican Choir singing at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the demolition of the Conowingo Bridge in Maryland. A recent survey was completed of the years 1927 -1929. Fewer than half of these stories are still in existence.
Running on average about 10 minutes in length, the newsreels established a format which news broadcasts follow to this day. World events generally lead off the program, followed by stories of national interest. A fashion or entertainment piece would round out the reel before ending with the sports segment. Between 1919 and 1963 Fox Movietone produced 4,578 Bi-weekly newsreels. Only about 33% of the newsreels from 1919 and 1928 survived and 60% of the newsreels from 1928 - 1934 exist. Over the course of 52 weeks, 104 newsreels were shown to audiences per year and until 1952, production was exclusively in 35mm film. To view a short film on the history of the Fox Movietone newsreel click here
Foreign Bureaus
The newsreels were produced and distributed from the Movietone News studios on W. 54th street in New York. Movietone operated a number of foreign bureaus including operations in London, Berlin, and Paris. Much of the French and German Movietone collections were destroyed during the war. The New York Office, located across from the CBS news offices on 57th street produced newsreels in Spanish and Portuguese for the Latin American market.
Personalities
SPORTS: Ed Thorgerson
Mr. Thorgerson began his career in 1927 as a broadcaster for NBC, making his mark while reporting on the news of the Lindbergh kidnapping live from Hopewell, N. J., on March 1, 1932. That same year he received his first major sports assignment, the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N. Y. He scooped the competition by bringing the new champion, Sonja Henie, to the microphone. He joined Fox Movietone News as a news and sports announcer, and his staccato delivery made his voice familiar to moviegoers around the country. He then became a producer and editor of sports for the popular ‘’March of Time’’ series in 1950 and was also an independent producer of radio and television commercials. He served as a news commentator with Dumont Television in New York City until retiring in 1959. Thorgerson won 2 Academy Awards for short programming in 1943 and 1944 with producer Edmund Reek.
FASHION: Vyvyan Donner
ENTERTAINMENT: Lew Lehr
Television: The End of the Newsreel
After 1952, 16mm distribution was introduced to service the fledgling network television news services, but 35mm footage continued to be the mainstay. At President Dwight D. Eisenhower's suggestion, the newsreel crews were permitted to regularly record the White House press briefings.
Assassination of President Kennedy
This national tragedy was the closing chapter for the newsreels. Though they would linger on for a few more years, the event would mark a sea change in the delivery of news, ushering in an era of immediacy though live television broadcasts and nightly newscasts by the three major television networks. It would remain this way until the distribution of images and information would once again be upended by a new model casting a wider net: The instant delivery of video-on-demand via the World Wide Web.
Newsreel of the Week . . .