Time Flickers Out: Notes on the
Passing of the March of Time
Raymond Fielding
Raymond Fielding is an educational motion-picture writer and director. He recently produced, in Japan, the award-winning documentary The Honorable Mountain. His latest publication is The Wills of the Presidents (Oceana, 1957). The following is one of a series of articles based upon Mr. Fielding's recently completed historical study of the March of Time.
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In The Spring Of 1935, a brilliantly conceived informational film series burst upon the American motion-picture scene, startling journalists and political observers and shattering the complacent calm of Hollywood's film colony. Entitled the March of Time, the series was designed to explore the contemporary American and international scene. Many people believed that it was also deliberately designed to provoke controversy. Certainly few film critics, friendly or not, expected it to survive more than a few months.
Sixteen years and over 160 issues later, in the fall of 1951, this ubiquitous, impudent, omniscient film series ceased theatrical production and disappeared from motion-picture screens. For many people, the silence was deafening. Missed were the crisis-packed sepulchral tones of Westbrook Van Voorhis, the fast-paced ingenious editing, the dramatic pronouncements ex cathedra, and the other unique trademarks familiar to an audience of several millions throughout the world.
Bosley Crowther best expressed the shock and regret that film devotees, critics, and the average citizen felt when Time announced withdrawal of this significant series:
… more than a sentimental sadness over the passing of a cinematic friend will be felt by those toilers in the vineyards who have sweat blood over documentary films. For to them, no matter how they may have snickered at the series' recognized conventional form, the March of Time has stood up as a symbol
[1] "Time Marches Off," New York Times, July 15, 1951, II, 1.
Today, six years after the series' demise, it seems high time to perform a critical autopsy, through which the agents of death may be revealed for the edification of other surviving "idea-film" producers who aspire to theatrical release.
Considering the film's high prestige value to Time, Incorporated, and the obvious efforts of the parent firm to salvage and perpetuate the series, it seems reasonable to assume that financial failure lay behind its withdrawal rather than Time's displeasure with its own handiwork.
If we are to understand this failure, then, we must first examine the motion-picture industry through which the film was released. It is an industry in which short subjects have never enjoyed a financially secure position; a business in which even the traditional newsreel and the ever popular cartoon have generally failed to return their investments.
[2] For a detailed discussion of the financial problems of newsreel production and distribution, see Peter Baechlin and Maurice Muller-Strauss, Newsreels Across the World (Paris: UNESCO, 1952), 16 ff.
Indeed, if the full-length feature film had sprung full-blown from the early, pre-1910 studios, the short subject might never have appeared at all. As it happened, of course, the shorts came first—comedies, melodramas, travelogues, westerns—a potpourri of ten-minute turns that flooded the theaters and established an audience taste for program variety.The status of the short subject began to change shortly after 1912, following the successful introduction of the full-length feature film. As the popularity of the feature increased, that of the short declined. By 1920, the short had become the poor relation of a prosperous film industry, block-booked as a "filler" and designed to divert motion-picture audiences in much the same manner as the late nineteenth-century film had served as an intermission between stage variety acts. Such then was the position of the common short when the March of Time made its bow in 1935: a necessary distribution evil, subsidized by the major producers and
That the independently produced March of Time should have ultimately failed under such circumstances seems less remarkable than that it managed to survive beyond the first year of release. It had what was, until then, possibly the largest short-subject budget in the history of the industry—in excess of $900,000 per year.
[3] Four Hours a Year (New York: Time, Inc., 1936), 17.
Only an independent producer with the tenacity and financial resources of Time, Incorporated, could have sustained such a series until its audience had been built and its distribution and promotion organized along precedent-setting lines. Such a budget, spawned during the lean years of the depression, could only increase with the passing of time. During and subsequent to World War II, the cost of labor and material rose greatly and so presumably did the film's budget. Finally, in the late 1940's, in common with the rest of the film industry, its profits disappeared as the ranks of its audience were attenuated by the electronic marvels of television—in all respects, an economic foe so formidable that continued theatrical production became impractical. Time's motion-picture compeers weathered the storm with 3-D adventures and wide-screen extravaganzas. But the March of Time was selling ideas—they were wide in scope, but hardly competition for the talking puppet, the tousled wrestler, and the dancing beer cans.Despite such formidable economic problems, however, it would seem premature to equate the March of Time's failure merely in terms of high cost and industry recession. The passing of the series may be considered roughly analogous to the recent disappearance from newsstands of two of this country's oldest and most popular magazines. In both cases, financial failure may quite possibly be traced back to atypical audience response or unintentionally aggravated audience apathy.
In its halcyon days, the March of Time enjoyed the devotion and regular attendance of over twenty million people a month in 9,000 theaters in the United States alone.
[4] Nation, May 1, 1937, 501; and Baechlin and Muller-Strauss, op. cit., 67 and 90.
As its producers immodestly but accurately proclaimed, the film played in more theaters than did any other regular motion-picture series. Yet, this audience had been built during the periodWith the closing of the war in 1945, movie audiences turned gratefully from crisis-packed, politico-military films to lighter, peacetime fare. The March of Time found itself for the first time unable to interest audiences in "clouds no bigger than a man's hand." Concomitantly, the quality of MOT editions declined as writers and directors relied more and more on conventionalized staging and editing.
Earlier, with the outbreak of hostilities in 1941, disorganization began to threaten the production group. Some of the technicians on Time's staff were absorbed into the Armed Forces and the government agencies. Distribution of the series was removed from the hands of RKO in 1942 and given to Twentieth Century-Fox. And, in the same year, Louis de Rochemont, father and guiding spirit of the March of Time, left the organization to join Twentieth Century-Fox as a feature-film producer. Though control of production remained in the able hands of director Richard de Rochemont and Time president Roy Larsen, Louis de Rochemont's talents must have been sorely missed.
Finally, and most fatally, the style and format of the March of Time had scarcely varied from the day it opened shop until the day it closed its doors. In 1935, its innovations had had an electrifying effect upon other film makers, infusing the documentary movement with new vitality and popularizing the "idea-film" for theatrical audiences. Indeed, it has been said that the March of Time founded a new school of documentary film production. John Grierson, leader of the British documentarians, acknowledged as much when he stated that he had been obliged to "dramatize public information."
[5] Jean Benoit-Levy, The Art of the Motion Picture (New York: Coward-McCann, 1946), 107.
If the March of Time's originality had been a growing, changing thing, if it had inspired more emulation than it did imitation, it might have survived the familiarity that breeds net losses at the box office. Back in 1935 Alistair Cooke had cautioned film makers against "witless imitation" of the March of Time.[6] The Listener, November 20, 1935, 931.
Grierson unintentionally[7] Grierson on Documentary (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1947), 161.
Subsequent years brought a rash of the expected copies, most of them very poor. Their producers appropriated March of Time style and format but obviously lacked the brilliance, experience, and resources of the originator.That the March of Time had considerable influence on other documentary films cannot be denied. The extent of its influence on newsreels, however, remains moot. In 1936, critic Andrew Buchanan enthusiastically found
signs that news films will ultimately be made which shall be so intelligent, absorbingly interesting and completely different … that, in time … we shall go to see a news-reel with the same thrill we experience when about to view a production by Grierson, Pudovkin or Rotha. The most significant of such signs is "The March of Time."
[8] The Art of Film Production (London: Sir I. Pitman and Sons, Ltd., 1936), 72.
Today, however, as we view the current output of the newsreel factories, we are forced to conclude that Buchanan's enthusiasm was premature. Of course, the March of Time, which considered itself an interpretive "magazine of the screen," usually did its best to disassociate itself from the more common name of "newsreel." Only when dealing with various censor boards, to whom newsreels were sacrosanct, and in fighting the demands of the Screen Actors Guild for union actors in the film's staged sequences, did the March of Time appear to embrace the term.
[9] New York Times, October 12, 1946, 8; and January 8, 1947, 28.
Whatever the March of Time's faults may have been—and there were many—it was always direct, positive, and self-confident. Such qualities, when found in a news film, should be counted as virtues. The therapeutic value of the firm and knowing statements was not lost on fearful audiences. The movie patron, even when finding Time's solutions inadequate, was at least impressed with the earth-shaking self-confidence with which they had been presented. Time generously shared its executive omniscience with its public, momentarily lifting viewers out of the crises that surrounded them and allowing them to view the confusion with revealing perspective. Even when Time declined to attempt a solution, its audience
Will the March of Time or a successor again appear on the American scene? Probably not, unless some happy circumstance brings such dynamic talents as de Rochemont and Larsen and the munificent patronage of a Luce together again, along with the less happy circumstance of accompanying economic and military crises. Even given such a rare combination of talent, capital and catalyst again, there is some doubt whether there is still a place for the March of Time in the American scene. Certainly, political and military crises still remain, but the dogged faith of the 1930's appears to have given way to fatalism in the 1950's. In the past, the appeal of the March of Time lay largely in the implied assumption that problems could be solved and that answers would be forthcoming. There is some question whether the March of Time's dynamic pronouncements would have any meaning today for a citizenry that questions its own power to control the atom and command its own destiny.
To some extent, the March of Time may also be considered a victim of prosperity—an anachronism in an age of plenty. The pressing economic problems, the hunger, and the anger of the 1930's have disappeared, and with them the need for the film's reassuring predictions. The "Voice of Time," with its message of hope, can no longer be heard above the rush and rumble of the automatic dishwasher, the garbage disposal unit, and the power lawn mower. The public does not need the March of Time, or if it does, is not aware of it. Nor should we look to the television screen for its reappearance. The powers of video, inordinately sensitive to the political protests of vocal
The unusually powerful and compelling off-stage voice which narrated the March of Time was that of Westbrook Van Voorhis. Curiously, this "Voice of Time" had no distinct personality characteristics with which members of the audience could identify either themselves or their neighbors. As such, it was a difficult voice to question or attack. Like many of Time's pronouncements, it appeared to speak with the weight of some omniscient power behind it. Today, in television, the sentential voice of Edward R. Murrow, with its "voice of doom" inflection, comes closest to approximating the unseen presence of Van Voorhis. The omniscient voice remains, but is now revealed to have mortal form and substance. Lacking the visual anonymity of Van Voorhis, Murrow and other such commentators become highly vulnerable targets for politically irritated segments of the television audience.
And so, with a backward glance and a ruffie of drums, Time marches off to the film vaults, perhaps to be reincarnated under a different name for another troubled generation, or perhaps, instead, simply to mingle its nitrate dust with that of other forgotten films. The "Voice of the Tomb," home at last, echoes through the crowded corridors of the film vault, its insistent dictum providing a grim reminder for those who court the public's taste: Time … Marches On!