By the spring of 1936,
there had been many frustrations, irritations, and disap-pointments
in the brief motion picurte of Pare Lorentz. Film making for
thegovernment had not been what he had expected. As King
Vidor remarked of Lorentz's Hollywood experience, "I do
remember that he thought the govern-ment effort should
give him some further entry [to motion picture studios and stock
film libraries] than he apparently was receiving." His
Hollywood experiencewas, however, not the only grustration and
disappointment Lorentz encounter-ed. He had his troubles with
government agencies as well.
The
problem was not one of red tape and procedures alone. According to
JohnCarter, there was opposition to Lorentz's efforts within the
executive branch of the government:
At
almost every point his [Lorentz's] superiors tried to sabotage the
enterprise. The Department of Agriculture film chief was allowed to
make a public speech ridiculing the documentary film program, high
agricultural sources privately assured Henry Wallace that Lorentz
would not be allowed to make another government film, his
budgets were cut down and funds already assigned hin were tied up
by petty bureaucratic tactics. Political dynamite was required
to blast officials into a realization that these films were
the sort of thing the White House wanted.
Perhaps
Lorentz's dirve and flamboyance were too much for a conservative
Department of Agriculture. There may have been concern that
his films would draw attention and finances away from problems other
than the one dramatiz-ed in The Plow that Broke the Plains or
those to be treated in future films. There may have been
professional jealousy of his ability to produce a quality film for
the government and get it distributed nationally on commercial
screens.
Lorentz had
produced The Plow for less than twenty thousand dollars--no meanfeat--although
only six thousand dollars had originally been allocated for the
film.Many of these expenses had not been paid, owing in part to the
lack of proper government receipts. Other financial aspects of
making films for the government were irritating to Lorentz. he
complained about "the necessity of counting penies and
accounting for pencils." Nor had Lorentz been paid excessively
for his labors and ideas. He drew $18.oc a day for his
efforts, less than the cameramen and others he had classified under
the new Civil Service position.
Fortunately,
Lorentz had continued writing for magazines, and he paid many of the
expenses for completing and promoting The Plow out of this income
and his wife's stage earnings.
Added
to these irritations and frustrations was the fact that Lorentz
really had nostaff beside Arch Mercey. Much of the fight for
distribution had to be handled by the field information officers of
the RA, who had not been successful in securing bookings until
Lorentz himself broke the barrier in New York. Also, they could not
have been expected to give their full attention to promoting the
film. There was no other distribution machinery within the
government to which Lorentz could turn. His work seemed to
have little permanence in the form of a staff and faci-lities,
and lacked financial support. Consequently, Lorentz's work had
no future,in the form of either more films or scheduled screenings.
In
June, Lorentz walked into Tugwell's office to resign. He told
Tugwell that he had made a valuable film according to expert opinion
and had succeeded in getting commercial distribution. The film was
running in New York, and book-ings were beginning to materialize
elsewhere. He had done what he had set out to do, and there seemed
to be little future.
As
he turned to leave Tugwell's office, he found himself facing a
profile map of the Mississippi River. "There," he
said,"you people are missing the biggest story in the
world--the Mississippi River." Tugwell called him back, asked
what he meant, and began to discuss a project for a new film.
In
the course of his research for The Plow, Lorentz had read the
Misissippi Valley Committee Report, which had given him the basic
idea for the dsign of the new film. "Having read the
report, and knowing that 51% of the population of the country
lived in the Mississippi Valley, my proposal was simple--to
take an engi-neer's boat, put a couple of pick-up trucks on
it, and start at Minneapolis and go clear to the Gulf." Lorentz
changed these plans considerably once production began, but he
convinced Tugwell that day that this idea would make an
excellent film.
Tugwell
communicated with the White House in an effort to secure funds. On
July 4, Lorentz received a phone call at his home in Sneeden's
Landing, New York, recalling him to Washington, John Carter
told him htat fifty thousand dollars had been provided by the
President to be used specifically for the production of the proposed
film. Lorentz's salary was raised to thirty dollars a day. Both the
succes of the The Plow That Broke the Plains and the need for such
films had been re-cognized in a concrete manner.
Considering
the problems and disappointments that must have driven Lorentz to
offer his resignation, one must come to the conclusion that he
though that the obstacles, frustrations, and irritations of the
first attempt could be overcome.
In
spite of his eagerness to produce the Mississipi film, Lorentz could
not afford an-other personal financial fiasco like The Plow. John
Bridgeman, a Treasury clerk, wasassigned to Lorentz to accompany him
as agent cashier. Lorentz and Bridgemangot along well, making the
financial situation much more congenial.
Lorentz
knew the Mississippi River Valley from personal experience. He had
spent some time on the river as a youth before he enrolled at West
Virginia University in 1923. He has written that he remembered the
feeling of the big river.
During
the early summer of 1936, Lorentz was busy on two fronts: doing
research for the new film, and trying to get the first one
distributed nationally. In this period of research he was especially
drawn to the Mississippi Valley Committee Report, Mark Twain's Life
on the Mississippi, Lyle Saxon's Father Mississippi, and blueprints
of the river made by Army engineers.
Lorentz
included Virgil Thomson in the plans for the music for the second
film. Both men were familiar with the folk music and literature of
the river and hill country. Lorentz had been impressed by Honegger's
Kind David, and was particularly in-terested in the possibility of
building up a score for the film in the form of work songs with a
boss singer and a workers' chorus engaging in calls and responses,
somewhat similar to the form of Honegger's oratorio.
Lorentz
prepared a script in outline form based on his research and headed
for the Mississippi Valley in the summer of 1936 to check the script
and his original idea of floating down the Mississippi from
its source to its mouth at the gulf of Mexico. He quickly saw the
impracticality of his plan.
From
Cairo, Illinois, south, the big river is rather dull from a
photographic point of view. "You can't take a thousand feet of
nothing," he said. Such a presen-tation would not hold an
audience. At Vicksborug, Mississippi, he visited the massive
hydraulics laboratory maintained by the Corps of Engineers and
learn-ed that the key to controlling floods in the lower valey
was contgrolling the smaller streams and tributaries of the
river. Consequently, he decided to tell his story by working down
from samll mountain streams and rivers--especially the
Tennessee--along the tributaries, and finally to the big
river itself. As a matter of fact, there are few shots
of the Mississippi River in the film. He re-turned east,
revised his script, and set about hiring a camera crew, which
waseventually composed of Stacy and Horace Woodard, Floyd
Crosby, and Willard Van Dyke.
Stacy
and horace were cmearamen, in the firm of Woodard Brothers, who had
been producing a series of nature films called "The
Struggle to Live." They had won two Motion Picture
Academy awards for their work: a second prize for short pictures in
1933 for The Sea, and first prize in 1934 for City of Wax. Floyd
Crosby had worked as a cameraman on two outstanding exterior films,
Matto Grosso and Tabu (1931), the latter produced and directed
by F. W. Murnau. He won an Academy Award for his work on Tabu. He
had had experience in a variety of foreign locations with
scientific expeditions. Willard Van Dyke had studied
photography with Edward Weston and had made a picture for the
WPA in California.
First
public notice that a second film was under way appeared in the press
on October 6, 1936. The New York Times commented on the report two
days later on its editorial page and quoted Lorentz:"We
are not going to argue that only man in vile. There never was
such a tjhing as an idela river... But we do want to show that if
man will only adopt practices slowing down the flow of the
river he will get the full benefit of it in fields free from
erosion, in power, in clean water." According to Lorentz the
worst flood in the Mississippi valley had been in De Soto's time.
Although
Lorentz was hired in July to produce the new film, various problems
kept the project ensnarled until October. This was a longer delay
than Lorentz had experienced on the first film, and it was to affect
the film through changes in the shooting schedule.
Original
plans were to start shooting at Lake Itasca, Minnesota, from the
Univer-sity of Minnesota under the direction of Robert Kissack
to film footage. Because of bad weather and a peat-bog fire,
the footage was not shot until spring. Lorentz's own
cameramen were divided into two crews. The Woodards accompanied
Lorentz to West Virginia, where the frist footage was sot
overlooking what had been his grandfather's land at Tygart's
Valley. Horace Woodard left the crew after a short stay
and returned home.
In
Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi the two crews filmed footage of
erosion, the barren hillsides, the poverty of the
sharecroppers, reclamation in the TVA area, and, of course, dams,
both completed and under construction. As shoot-ing continued into
December, the crews were plagued by rains. Stacy Woodard left near
the end of December. King Vidor had recommended Floyd Crosby.
Lorentz wired Crosby to join the crew in New Orleans.
As
prducer-director, Lorentz developed considerable new skill during
the produc-tion of The River. Two anecdotes illustrate this
growth. In the sequence of the negro roustabouts unloading bales of
cotton from a Mississippi River steamboat, the workers could
not accept the fact that they were to do real work. There was
to be a seires of shots of bales tumbling down the ganplank toward
the camera, with the heads of two Negros roustabouts looming above
each bale as it nearedthe lens. The Negroes though it was
playacting and began mugging ferociously asas they neared the
camera. At other times they moved listlessly, without the
char- acteristic rhythm of such work. Lorentz had to order
retakes time and time again. Everyone was getting tired,
stiff, and sore. Finally, Lorentz had the mate on the steamboat
shout orders to the men. They put their backs into the work,
forgot thecamera, and Lorentz had his footage. Crosby was
the cameraman.
A
further proff of Lorentz's growth is the fact that he no longer left
matters to chance. He did not photograph what he happened to find
along the way, as he had done much of the time in producing
The Plow. Now the he made plans in advance for necessary
footage. For example, through William Alexander, the Farm
Security administrator, he obtained information about the time
of cotton loadings in New orleans and in the valley inorder to
get the needed fottage.
The
last shots for the script were made on January 16, 1937, near New
Orleans. Shortly after the crew broke up, it became apparent
that the flood coming down the Ohio and some of the other
tributaries was going to be a serious one. Lorentz recalled
Van Dyke and Crosby to Memphis on January 21 and told them to
start filing, but, as Van Dyke has told Richard MacCann, there
were a thousand miles of disaster to cover and they did not know
hwere to start. Lorentz flew to Memphis, prepared a script for the
flood scenes, and supervised the shotting. Since the shotting budget
was almost expended, he wired Henry Wallace for more money;
the secretary granted permission to film the flood.
The
unexpected flood disaster provided the crew with some of the most
thrilling unstaged photography ever included in a motion picture.
This was truly an un-expected stroke of luck for Lorentz and
the film. Lorentz had planned to include a flood in the film,
but he anticipated that it would have to be done through stock
footage. Not only did Lorentz now have exciting flood footage of his
own, but the disaster itself served to focus attention on the
film when it was released, just as the dust sotrms of 1936 had
aided the promotion of The Plow. Whole communities were evacuated,
and tent cities were built to house the refugees. Distribution
centers for food, fuel, water, and medical supplies were set
up. An extensive first-aid program was put into action. When
the flood-waters reced-ed, the WPA went to work removing silt
and reparing the damage.
Lorentz and his crew worked their
way back up the river, filming the rising, rushing, rampaging waters
and the human suffering. Tjhey went up from Memphis along the
Mississippi River levees to Illini\ois, often working as long as
thirty-eight hours at a stretch. When they arrived at Cairo, they
ran into opposition from relie directors. They were told they
could go no further. Only one boat was to be allow-ed on the
river, and that was a government boat. Because Lorentz was
workingfor the government, he assumed that he and the crew could go
on the boat. They were told they could not, although press and
newsreel photographers were on the boat with government permission.
Lorentz asked whose permission he needed in order to go along.
He was told by a relief official that the man from Paramount
was in charge. Lorentz is then reported to have said: Let me see if
I've got this straight. This is a government boat and I'm making
pictures for the government--the one that owns this boat and that
you're working for and I"m working for. Thesame
government that has to have thousands of feet of motion pictures of
thisflood for the Army Engineering Corps and the Department of
Agriculture. If theydon't get these pictures from me, they're going
to have to buy them from com-mercial newsreel men, and
meanwhile I am being paid to take them and I can't get on a
government boat to do it without permission from Paramount.
The
official agreed with Lorentz's interpretation of the situation.
Lorentz went over the heads of the officials to the Corps of
Engineers, who were supervising matters along the river, and soon
had his crew on the boat.
After
the episode at Cairo, the crew continued up the rececding Ohio
River, shooting pictures of the ruined cities, until they reached
Ironton, Ohio, not far
downstream
from West Virginia, the starting place of the film. They finished
their work on March 1, 1937.Lorentz returned to New York and began
his assembly of the film. He started screening what he had
photographed, began his editing plan for the film, and called in
Virgil Thomson to work on the score.Llpud Nosler joined Lorentz as
editor on The River at the recommendation of King Vidor. He remained
with Lorentz as chief of the technical department and worked on
Lorentz's later films for the government. He did not edit any of the
films alone, in the sense that Lorentz gave him raw footage and
told him to put it together. The two men assembled the scenes
together, working closely and amicably for long hours. Nosler
enjoyed the opportunity to experiment, and much of the pictorial
continuity of the film is the result of his talent.Lorentz, inspired
by the Mississippi Valley Committee Report, had decided that the
opening of the film should stress the problem of runoff in the
highlands and along the tgributaries.; Too, the initial
section of the film should show the Mississippi growing from a drop
of water to the wide expanse of its mouth. Lorentz planned
much of the editing as moving from left to right and top to
bottom.The other theme in the film--the close relationship between
land, water, and people--is also to be found in the Mississippi
Valley Report. Consider this quo-tation from the sound track of the
film"But you can't paln for water unless you plan for
land....But you cannot plan for water and land unless you plan for
people.
The foreword
(page ii) to the report begins: "We cannot plan for water
unless we also consider the relevant problems of the land. We cannot
plan for water and land unless we plan for the whole
people."
The rough
cutting took several months, with Lorentz and Nosler working as much
as eighteen hours a day in the cutting room. Some of the assembling
was determined by Lorentz's own reactions to the river: "The
bigger the scene, or rahter the landsacpe, the faster you should
cut. A big panoramam of a river might be impressive to the movie
maker, but it gets real dull to an audience and very
quickly."While the film was being assembled, there were two
problems of content to be faced. The flood presented on problem:
"If you build it to a climax, what else can you say about the
other problems? The problem was solved by music in part." The
other problem was how t include Civil War material to add
historical flavor. This had to be done in such a way as not to
offend either the South or the North. It was decided merely to show
the letter General Robert E. Lee wrote to his troops on the day
before the surrender at Appomattox.Lorentz originally wanted Thomson
to experiment with the form of the muscial score, but, because of
lack of time and money, this experimentation was out of the
question. Thomson set to work on a score similar in form to the one
for The Plow That Broke the Plains. As in his preparation for The
Plow, Thomson did considerable musicological research,
systematically studyingfolklore and old hymns. He corresponded with
George Pullen Jackson, a specialist in these fields and a faculty
member at Vanderbilt University. Jackson provided tThomason with a
large number of whbite spirituals.In the third program of the NET
series "Lorentz on Film," Lorentz explained how he and
Thomson worked together on The River:
Virgil made piano sketches
of each section of the movie, each large sequence, and then
the crew and I tried to edit it down to a preconceived time, at
which point Virgil would get some ideas, genius ideas, and we would
work back and forth so that you didn't have a completed score put on
top of a completed movie or vice versa. The words were then written
to the music and to a cocept of music.
The fact that the score was composed and the film assembled
simultaneously seems to have helped maintain a close relationship
between the two, resulting in an integrated film and score, as in
The Plow, not "a completed score put on top of a completed
movie or vice versa." The pictorial and musical unity of The
River drew praise from many reviewers. Because of the nature of the
pictorial content of The River, it was necessary for film and music
to play roles of vary-ing dominance throughout the assembled motion
picture. For example, in order to keep the flood scenes, with their
tremendous dramtic punch, from overshadowing the more important but
less exciting dramatic but rather ob-vious and shallow. The score
for the later scenes relied on folk music, and was "full of the
emotional content inherent in anything essentially human."
Kath-leen Hoover also comments on the technique of fitting music to
specific pic-torial content: "For the human episodes the
[Thomson] drew on folk tunes, buthis idiom was modern and
individual. For the landscape sequences he inventedmaterial that
captures the Mississippi's changing moods with electric immed-iacy.
The narration was not
written until the score had been composed and the film edited in its
final form. The text was published later as a book with stills from
the film. In the preface, Lorentz wrote, "It was intended as a
functional text to accompany Mr. Virgil Thomson's score, and fit the
tempo of the sequences in the picture."
The narration for The
River developed into its particular form rather unexpectedly. A
poetic form had not been planned. Otis L. Wiese, editor of McCall's,
asked
Lorentz to write a report on the flood for his magazine.
Lorentz, the movie critic
for McCall's at the time, agreed because he felt that the
report might porvide
a basis for the narration for the movie. He wrote a
five-thousand word narrative
report, which he hlater decided would be unsatisfactory for
the readers of Mc-
Call's because it was "too specific, collected, including
Forest Service reports
and news accounts of the flood, and began work on a lyrical
report, written in
one weekend in a nonstop effort. He submitted both versions to Wiese,
who
published the lyrical verson. After 150.000 requests for copies had
been re-
ceived from readers of McCall's, Lorentz was convinced that this
poetic approach
would be suitable for the film. With only a few changes, it became
the narration
for the film.
Chalmers recorded the
narration, and then it was put together with Virgil Thom-
son's score and Lorentz's edited film. The story line and
construction--weak points
in The Plow--were stron in The River. Added to the previous
combination--excellent
photography--music by Thomson, and narration by Lorentz, spoken by
Thomas
Chalmers---is the imaginative use of sound: "Effective use is
made of natural
sounds merely by repetition. For example, the sounds of
the steel mill early in the
film are imitated in the frantic whistle of a coast-guard boat
later."The com-
pleted sequences of The River are arranged chronologically. The
intial sequence
shows the growth of the Mississippi River from its many
tributaires, the waters flowing
calmly and naturally between their baks. This was the state of
the basin before
the coming of the white man with agriculture and industry.
Thefollowing sequences
show cotton farming, the impoverishment of the South by the
Civil War, and the
growth of lumber and steel industries. The results of the
exploitaion of the valley
are chronicled in the next sequences: floods, naked and eroding
hillsides, displaced
and impoverished people, the relationship between poor land
and poor people.
The epilogue depicts the Tennessee Valley Authroity at work
putting the valley
together again.
Lorentz spend nearly six
months completing The River after the dispersal of the
crew in March. The film cost approximately fifty thousand dollars,
in comparison
with about twenty thousand dollars for The Plow. The difference in
cost is ac-
counted for in part by the increased number of personnel, the
greater distance
traveled on location--fourteen states for the second, five for
the first--and the
cost of shooting the unexpected flood.
Word of the cost of The
river must have leaked out early. Several months before
the film was released, the New York Times reported that the
Senate Special
Committee on Government Reorganization was going to investigate
motion
picture production in the RA. the committee, with Senator Harry Byrd
as chairman,
was concerned with the cost of the two films. The RA officials
were reported as
welcoming such an inquiry since "they regard the films as
one of their most suc-
cessful and least expensive experiments." Apparently, the
investigation was
dropped.
The second film of merit
was now complete. Because of the confidence Lorentz
had gained from the success of the first film and the encouragement
he had
received from his sponsors, including President Roosevelt, he was
able to proceed
in a different manner in securing the release of this film. It was
not necessary to
take it around to friends in the profession to seek their approval.
Lorentz knew he
had a good film, nd he began to make plans to get it
distributed.
Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace was the first ranking
official to see the film.
Arrangements were made for him to see it at 10:00 a.m. in a caucus
room. Lorentz
objected: "No one looks at films at 10:00
a.m." But Wallace did look at it
at 10:00 a.m. When it was over, he rose, walked to the door,
turned, and said, "There is no corn in it." The
secretary's Iowa heritage was showing. Actually, it had been too
late to get good footage of a corn harvest.
After this experience
Lorentz was eager to get the President's reaction. He did not
know how to get an invitation or arrange an appropriate
screening. George
Gercke, who had been Albany correspondent for the New York
World when
Roosevelt was governor of New York and was familiar with the
President's habits,
likes, and dislikes, found the answer. He decided tghat the
President might not
mind a postscript to his evening's film program at Hyde Park, and
arranged an
invitation for Lorentz and himself.
Lorentz, Gercke, and The
River arrived at Hyde Park on a rainy night in Septem-
ber just after dinner, about 9:00 p.m. By coincidence, the President
had been
asking at dinner what had happened to the new Lorentz film. It
was a typical,
quiet evening at Hyde Park. As Lorentz recalls, "I think
the Japs had bombed
Shanghai, the stock market had crashed, and there had been an
intercolleg-
iate regatta on the hudson."
The President looked at
several newsreels and then a feature film, Sonja Henie
in Thin Ice. About 12:30 a.m. The river was shown. When the
lights came on at
the end, Roosevelt turned to Lorentz and said: "That's a grand
movie. What can
I do to help?" According to Lorentz, the President
wanted to show the film to a
joint session of Congress, but Lorentz demurred.
Did Lorentz anticipate the
President's question or not? It is likely that, as they
made the trip up the Hudson by train, he and Gercke had
discussed what the
President's various reactions might be. Lorentz was ready with an
answer. He
was facing two problems: the problem of distribution and his own
future, and
the role of movies in the government. He posed both problems to the
President.
Thomas Corcoran, a presidential adviser and coauthor with Ben Cohen
of sever
al New Deal measures, was visiting Hyde Park that weekend. He was
called from
upstairs and joined the discussion. The result, according to Richard
D. MacCann,
was that Corcoran began imnmediately to work on plans for the United
States
Film service.
The next step Lorentz had
in mind for distributing the filmn was motivated by
its content and his experience while filming it. He decided to give
the people
most concerned--the residents of the Mississippi Valley--the
opportunity to see
the film first. He did not want Southerners to be offended by the
film, and was
worried that they might be if they learned of it first through a
review. If he
could win them over first, the felt that there would be much less
misunder
standing later.
The world premiere of The
River took place in New Orleans on October 29,
1937. If Lorentz had been worried about southern reaction
before the New
Orleans premiere, he had no need to worry when the screening was
over. The
audience stood up and cheered when General Lee's name appeared on
the
screen. The manager of the Strand Theatre, where the premiere was
held,
sent the following telegram to Lorentz:
Held world premiere of
River October 29th three hundred and fifty leading people
at New Orleans. Reaction was wonderful. I personally contacted
several hundred
of those people after premiere. They congratulated me for
being able to bring
film of that nature to my screen. Nineteen schools of the city
had a representative
from their history class to see River. Also showed Rivers
[sic] to some 20,000 patrons.
Audience reaction great. The public needs more history shorts
like The River. Hop-
ing Minneapolis enjoys it as New Orleans did. 50
The film was next shown in Memphis on November I and in St. Louis on
November
10. Other cities on the schedule were Des Moines and St. Paul.
The success of the river-city openings is revealed in
excerpts from a brochure
distributed by the Farm Security Administration:
New Orleans State: This is
a cinema which will live in your memory. It should make America sit
up and take notice.New Orleans Times-Picayune: It is a story which
concerns America and Mr. Lorentz has told it in a manner which will
make America listen.New Orleans Item: The River is an
extraordinarily well-done documentary film and is a worthy successor
to The Plow That Broke the Plains.Memphis Commercial Appeal: . . .
should thrill audiences everywhere, not merely because of the
importance of its content, but also by virtue of the masterful
manner in which its makers have dramatized the subject.
Memphis Press-Scimitar:
The River is more compelling and exciting drama than its
predecessor. The Plow That Broke the Plains. St. Louis
Post-Dispatch: An accom-plishment exceeding that of the previous
picture, and a work of exceptional pic-torial quality. St. Louis
Globe-Democrat: It is a film for the nation to see and ponder over
and never forget.
Des Moines Register: It is
a splendid job. We recommend that people see it.
St. Paul Dispatch: It is an extraordinary piece of work.
---------------------------------------------------------
50: From the personal files of Pare Lorentz.
51 U.S. Farm Security Administration, "The River"
[brochure], n.d. From
the personal files of Pare Lorentz.
----------------------------------------------------------
The reviewer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch rated The River better than The
Plow. He also foresaw that opponents of the New Deal would see it as New Deal
propaganda, but pointed out that the picture had very little argument for any
specific projeCt.52 Almost twenty-five minutes of the total twenty-nine in the
film were devoted to photography of the Mississippi and its tributaries,
industrial deve- lopment, the flood, and erosion. The River was inextricably
tied up with politics from the time of its release. Two days before the
Washington premiere, the political sig- nificance of the film was pointed out in
the Washington Star: Just as The Plow ap- peared at a time when the Government
was emphasizing the need of wide- spread soil conservation and relief for
sharecroppers, so The River is released at a time when the Government is on a
new quest. Pending before Congress is the Norris Bill proposing to create seven
national authorities to build dams, abate floods, recreate farming, improve
navigation—and generate powe r. The President advo- cated enactment of the
legislation.53 The Washington premiere was held at the Rialto Theatre on
December 7, 1937. Invitations were sent out by the secretary of agriculture.
Lorentz attended, and must have been thrilled by the spontaneous and sustained
round of applause that burst forth from the audience at the con- clusion of the
film. The next day the Washington papers were full of praise: Washing- ton Post,
Nelson B. Bell: In The River Pare Lorentz has produced a brilliantly illuminat-
ing screen treatise upon the irresistible power for both good and evil of the
Missis- sippi, father of waters. Washington Herald, Mabelle Jennings: The River
proves mo- mentous film in Rialto preview. Washington Star, Jay Carmody: If you
do not believe there is drama and poetry and excitement in the documentary
motion picture, it can only be because you have not seen The River. The
Washington Daily News praised the film but was concerned about the pro- paganda
for the TVA at the end. In the edition of 82 November II, 1937. From the
personal files of Pare Lorentz . 83 December 5, 1937 . From the personal files
of Pare Lorentz. December 10, this paper reprinted Nelson B. Bell's review from
the Post. A reviewer from the Christian Science Monitor also attended the
Washington premiere: Official Washington had a thrill last night when it saw
Pare Lorentz's second docu- mentary film with music. The River, prepared for the
Farm Security Administration. In effect, the senses of the audience were
assailed on three sides simultaneously as they looked at the picture. Some of
the sequences are masterpieces of oblique suggestion, and all drive home the
central philosophy or "propaganda," that it is man's denudation of the forests
that has wrought the erosion and floods, and that what man has wrecked man can
put together again . . . by TVA dams, let us say."* The first major city to book
The River for an extended run was Chicago. Oliver Gris- wold, who had arranged
the screenings at St. Louis and Memphis, worked out a special rotogravure Sunday
section with Louis Rupple, managing editor of the Chicago Times. The material in
this section was based on news coverage of the flood and the river -city
premieres. Griswold arranged a confer- ence with executives of Ba- laban and
Katz Theatres, showed the film, and told them of the publicity material prepared
with Rupple. The officials agreed to book the film into the Apollo Theatre. As
Griswold wrote, "The film sold itself. My job was just to get it before the
right people."s5 Following the run at the Apollo, Joe Strut, of the Balaban and
Katz Corporation, wrote to Griswold on December 15, 1937, quoting a memo from
the Apollo Theatre: We are very pleased with the comments we are receiving on
the government short. The River. Our audiences applaud it after every showing.
During the last day or two we have received numerous calls on the telephone
inquir- ing how long we are going to run it. Many of the inquiries are on the
nature of people asking if we intend to show it in our outlying houses. ~
December 9, 1937. From the personal files of Pare Lorentz. 68 Letter from Oliver
Griswold, December 10, 1963. In short, it is our belief that this subject has
received more favorable comments than any short of this nature we have ever
shown.ss During December, The River had a run at the Little Theatre in
Washington, where applause was noted at every show- ing. An in- crease in
business, instead of the usual slump during the Christmas shop- ping season, was
noticed by the management. Before the film was released generally, many critics
firmly endorsed The River and urged their readers to see the film. Gilbert
Seldes wrote, "Nothing more useful to the entire industry can be accomplished
than to force distributors to go outside their commercial contracts to show this
icture."" After attending a preview of the film in New York, William Boehnel
recommended that his readers see the film.58 The government had made the film
available with- out charge to any theater owner who wanted to show it, but the
film was still not enjoying wide distribution. The river-city campaign, the
Washington premiere, and the Chicago run were beginning to arouse interest, but
a national distribution con- tract was needed. Many exhibitors were still wary
of showing a government film."" The River was spared the fate of being a film of
merit that would rarely be seen. Para- mount Pictures agreed to distribute it.
Lorentz completed negotiations with Para- mount Pictures and signed the
contracts himself. Business Week reported that the film was available without
charge, except for transportation charges from the Para- mount distribution
centers in thirty-eight cities throughout the country."" Barney Balaban,
chairman of the board of Paramount Pictures, must have been impressed with the
film'? run in his chain in Chicago. The three-week run in Chicago, as well as
bookings else- where, had proved that the film could draw cus- 56 Letter from
Joe Strut, Balaban and Katz Corporation, to Oliver Griswold, Farm Security
Administration, Documentary Film Section, December 15, 1937. From the personal
files of Pare Lorentz. ? "The River," Scribner's, January, 1938, 42. 5S "New
Film Tells Story of Floods," New York World-Telegram, January 29, 1938. From the
personal files of Pare Lorentz. 89 "Movies: The Mississippi's 'Power for Good
and Evil," Literary Digest, November 20,1937,34. ? "Federal Film Hit," Business
Week, February 19, 1938, 36.
tomers,
the only measure of merit that concerned exhibitors and
distributors.
The first public showing of The River in New York was at
Loew's Criterion on Febru-
ary 4, 1938. The companion on the bill, Scandal Street, lasted about
a week, but
The River was held over.81 It ran five weeks in Boston at a
first-run theater in Febru-
ary and March.
Lorentz had won a
major distribution battle on the merits of his second film, but
Hollywood was going to withhold the welldeserved glory of an
Academy Award.
When the list of nominees for the 1938 awards was released.
The River was conspi-
cuous by its absence from the short-subject categories. The
explanation was that
documentary films such as The River did not fit any of the
existing categories, includ-
ing cartoons, black-and-white shorts up to a thousand feet,
black-and-white shorts
up to three thousand feet, and color films of three thousand
feet. The committee
did recommend that a new category for documentary and
educational
pictures be established.B2
Lorentz received
support from the Screen Directors Guild, the only professional film
organization he ever joined. The FSA announced a protest by the
guild to the Aca-
demy of Motion Picture Arts and Science over the exclusion of The
River from cons-
ideration for an award.e3 As Lorentz recalls, no one member was
responsible, but
several of his friends, including Milestone and King Vidor,
joined the protest.
Dean Jennings, a newspaperman who was working for the FSA and
had officially
submitted the film, told Lorentz that all the producers of
shorts, including Lorentz's
friend Walt Disney, objected to its inclusion on the grounds
that the government
was competing with private industry. For this reason they did
not allow the film even
to be screened in competition."* Although The River was
denied an Oscar,
awards did come.
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