The March of Time

The March of Time is an American radio news series broadcast from 1931 to 1945, and a companion newsreel series shown in movie theaters from 1935 to 1951. Created by broadcasting pioneer Fred Smith and Time magazine executive Roy E. Larsen, the program combined actual news events with reenactments. The "voice" of The March of Time was Westbrook Van Voorhis. The radio program was later developed into a newsreel series produced and written by Louis de Rochemont and his brother Richard de Rochemont. The March of Time was recognized with an Academy Honorary Award in 1937.

The March of Time organization also produced four feature films for theatrical release, and created documentary series for early television. Its first TV series, Crusade in Europe (1949), received a Peabody Award and one of the first Emmy Awards.

Radio series

The March of Time had its origins in a 1928 radio series developed at WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio, by radio pioneer Fred Smith, who obtained permission to use material from Time magazine in his broadcasts. Later, Smith and Roy E. Larsen, the first circulation manager for Time, developed Time magazine's own radio program, which they called Newscasting. That program evolved into The March of Time, the first network presentation of a dramatized "news" format. At Smith's suggestion, the program included the "10 best radio actors", an "announcer extraordinary", a "splendid orchestra" and a "clever director."^[3]

"The March of Time was the first radio newsreel", wrote radio historian John Dunning, "dramatized news events, elaborately staged with sound effects and music, put together like a newspaper — often on deadline, with impact and accuracy its twin goals."^[1]:435

The March of Time began airing as a weekly series March 6, 1931, on CBS Radio on over 32 stations on Friday evenings.^[4][5] The half-hour program aired Fridays at 8:30 p.m. ET. In 1935 the program was trimmed to 15 minutes and aired five times a week,^[6] but after a year returned to its 30-minute weekly format. Suspended in 1939, the series was revived in 1941 with a new format, and lasted until 1945.^[7]:19

Time Inc. was the only sponsor of all of the shows; other sponsors included Remington Rand, the Wrigley Company, and Electrolux. The March of Time aired on CBS through October 7, 1937, and was subsequently broadcast on the Blue Network (October 14, 1937–June 5, 1942), NBC (July 9, 1942–October 26, 1944), and ABC (November 2, 1944–July 26, 1945).^[8]

One of radio's most popular programs, The March of Time was described by Variety as "the apex of radio showmanship." It reached millions of Americans during its 14-year history. The series's promotional value to Time Inc. proved to be incalculable, although Time had announced that it would discontinue the program after the first year.^[7]:18–19 It was an expensive production requiring as many as 75 staff and 1,000 hours of labor to get each issue on the air.^[7]:12–13

The full studio orchestra was conducted by Howard Barlow (CBS) and Donald Voorhees (NBC). The sound effects team was led by Ora Daigle Nichols, the only woman who made a living as a sound engineer at that time. She and her husband Arthur introduced sound effects to radio, drawing on many successful years of stage and silent film experience. They began to freelance their talents to radio in 1928, and were put under contract by CBS as the demand for sound effects increased. After her husband's death in 1931, Nichols continued to lead the profession and was called the "first lady of sound effects." The media voted Nichols one of the most influential women in radio; other women honored included Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt and Kate Smith.^{[9]:16–17, 244}

The March of Time broadcasts began with the tramp-tramp-tramp of shuffling feet, to indicate "the relentless impersonal progress of events." The principal narrator was the Voice of Time; another was the Voice of Fate, narrating stories of catastrophe or the death of a notable person. The first Voice of Time was Ted Husing; Westbrook Van Voorhis was the Voice of Fate. In fall 1931 Harry von Zell began a brief tenure as Time, but in October 1933 Van Voorhis moved into the lead role. His voice — concluding most broadcasts with a booming, "Time … marches on!" — became synonymous with the program, both on radio and in the newsreel series.^{[1]:436–437}

Written to match the style of Time magazine, radio scripts incorporated transcripts of statements and comments by the figures impersonated on The March of Time whenever possible. When these could not be obtained, writers were allowed to "re-create" appropriate dialogue. Actors researched and rehearsed with great care to mimic the precise voice patterns and characteristics of the people they were impersonating. March of Time creator Roy E. Larsen recalled that only one person, Franklin D. Roosevelt, ever complained about their treatment on the program. The President was annoyed because he was getting calls from political advisors regarding statements spoken on The March of Time that he had not uttered, even though they matched his policies. White House complaints continued until 1937, when The March of Time stopped imitating FDR altogether.^[7]:14–15

"From the beginning it was known that The March of Time would face the stiffest production challenges that radio had yet known", wrote John Dunning:

When a big story broke at the last minute, a polished ready-to-air show was reorganized: the entire menu was shifted as events demanded. Newspapers are accustomed to this … but in radio, a new breed of actor had come to the fore, players who could deliver superb performances from scripts they had never seen before going live on the air. Sight reading, they called it: reading always two lines ahead and acting the lines they had already read. Actors, sound artists, and musicians worked feverishly to accommodate the bulletins from Time's reporters in the field.^[1]:436

Seven or eight sketches were featured in each show, varying in length from 90 seconds to four minutes. Newspapers were sometimes scooped by the radio docudrama. On May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg disaster took place two hours before air time, and The March of Time created a segment that focused on the history of airship travel and ended with the news of the disaster in Lakehurst, New Jersey.^[1]:436 Herbert Morrison's recorded radio eyewitness report from the landing field was not broadcast until the next day.

• 

  Sound effects specialists Ora D. Nichols, Henry Gauthiere, George O'Donnell, and Arthur Nichols on The March of Time^[1]:16

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  Rehearsal for The March of Time with cast including Ted de Corsia, William Pringle, William Adams, Marion Hopkinson and Ray Collins

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  Actors presenting The March of Time

1. ^ Mott, Robert L., Radio Sound Effects: Who Did It, and How, in the Era of Live Broadcasting. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1993 ISBN 0-89950-747-6

Cast

Although its cast was uncredited, The March of Time capitalized on the Broadway celebrity of Orson Welles in a 1938 advertisement. Months later Welles employed the series's techniques in his radio version of The War of the Worlds (1938), and he famously parodied the newsreel series in his first feature film, Citizen Kane (1941).

Broadcast history

Unless noted, broadcast information for The March of Time is drawn from John Dunning's On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (1998).^[1]:434

• 1931–1935: CBS, March 6, 1931–April 26, 1935, 30 minutes. Fridays at 10:30 p.m. ET March 6, 1931–June 1931; Fridays at 8 p.m. July 1931 – 1933; Fridays at 8:30 p.m. 1933–1934; Fridays at 9 p.m. 1934–1935.
• 1935–1936: CBS, August 26, 1935–September 25, 1936, 15 minutes. Weeknights at 10:30 p.m. ET.
• 1936–1937: CBS, October 15, 1936–October 7, 1937, 30 minutes. Thursdays at 10:30 p.m ET.
• 1937–1939: Blue Network, October 14, 1937–April 28, 1939, 30 minutes. Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. ET October 14, 1938–January 1938; Thursdays at 8 p.m. January–July 1938; Fridays at 9:30 p.m. July 8, 1938^[12]–April 28, 1939.
• 1941–1942: Blue Network, October 9, 1941–June 5, 1942, 30 minutes. Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET October 9, 1941–February 1942; subsequently Fridays at 9:30 p.m. or 9 p.m.
• 1942–1944: NBC, July 9, 1942–October 26, 1944, 30 minutes. Thursdays at 10:30 p.m. ET.
• 1944–1945: ABC, November 2, 1944–July 26, 1945, 30 minutes. Thursdays at 10:30 p.m. ET.

Reviews and commentary

• Orson Welles, This is Orson Welles — It was a marvelous show to do. Great fun, because, half an hour after something happened, we'd be acting it out with music and sound effects and actors. It was a super show — terribly entertaining. … I began as an occasional performer, because they had a regular stock company, and then I was finally let in — one of the inner circle. And then I had the greatest thrill of my life — I don't know why it thrilled me (it does still, to think of it now), I guess because I thought March of Time was such a great thing to be on. One day, they did as a news item on March of Time the opening of my production of the black Macbeth, and I played myself on it. And that to me was the apotheosis of my career — that I was on March of Time acting and as a news item. I've never felt since that I've had it made as much as I did that one afternoon.^[11]:74
• John Dunning, On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio — And like any good newspaper, it was damned left and right. Real newsmen condemned it for hamming up the news. Communists called it fascistic. William Randolph Hearst labeled it Communistic propaganda and forbade mention of it in the pages of his newspapers. It was banned in Germany, It even ran afoul of Roosevelt, who asked and later demanded that it stop impersonating him, because the actors were so good they were diminishing the impact of his Fireside Chats. It was accused of being pompous, pretentious, melodramatic, and bombastic. But it was never dull. In the mid-1930s, Time had Hooper numbers in the 25 point range.^[1]:436

Awards and recognition

The March of Time was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1990.^[13]

Newsreel series

Crowd in front of the Embassy Newsreel Theatre, a New York news cinema running Inside Nazi Germany (1938)

The companion newsreel series to the March of Time radio broadcast was launched February 1, 1935, in over 500 theaters. Each entry in the series was either a two- or three-reel film (20 or 30 minutes). Westbrook Van Voorhis, who hosted the radio program, served as narrator of the film series. The series, which finally totalled close to 200 segments, was an immediate success with audiences. Because of its high production costs—estimated at $50,000 per episode, released at the rate of about one episode per month—the series was a money loser. However, it remained in production for six years beyond the cancellation of the radio show on which it was based.

At its peak The March of Time was seen by 25 million U.S. moviegoers a month.^[14]

Like its radio namesake, The March of Time included reporting, on-location shots, and dramatic reenactments. The editors of Time described it as "pictorial journalism". The March of Time's relationship to the newsreel was compared to the weekly interpretive news magazine's relationship to the daily newspaper.^[15]

"Implicit in all March of Time issues was a kind of uncomplicated American liberalism — general good intentions, a healthy journalistic skepticism, faith in enlightened self-interest, and substantial pride in American progress and potential", wrote March of Time chronicler Raymond Fielding:

The men who made the March of Time were not political theorists, they were journalists. For them, fascism, communism, and native demagogues seemed foreign to the American ethic, and they exposed and attacked them accordingly. … A cinematic agent provocateur, the March of Time turned over a lot of rocks, both at home and abroad, and illuminated the creatures it found beneath them. The demagogues and quacks whom they attacked in the 1930s may seem like obvious targets now, but they didn't seem so then. They were popular, powerful, frightening people, and the March of Time stood entirely alone in theatrical motion picture circles as a muckraker.^[7]:87

In late 1936, producer Roy E. Larsen reluctantly left The March of Time to serve as publisher of Life, a weekly news magazine that began publication in November 1936. Time executives had long vacillated over launching such a magazine, but the success of The March of Time's experiments in pictorial journalism overcame the hesitation of the corporation's board of directors. Larsen proposed that the new magazine be named The March of Time, but the name Life was purchased from the owners of a declining periodical. Life magazine was a great success and notable influence on photojournalism throughout its 36-year history.^{[7]:161–162}

Louis de Rochemont succeeded Larsen as producer of The March of Time, while Larsen continued to supervise the operations of the series on behalf of the Time corporation.^[7]:162

Examining the subjects of The March of Time, series historian Raymond Fielding found that episodes dealing with a single country and its affairs comprised 32.6 to 36 percent of the entire series. Economic issues were the subject of 10 percent of the episodes, and domestic politics 5 percent. Between 1935 and 1942, approximately 24 percent of the episodes were about war or the threat of war; from December 1941 until the end of World War II nearly every episode dealt with war.^[7]:172

"Although the March of Time was professedly nonpartisan, a clear and persistent antifascist tone was becoming apparent in its analysis of world politics and rising militarism", Fielding wrote. "'Rehearsal for War' [August 6, 1937] was unquestionably anti-Franco, which was exactly what liberal staff members had intended."^{[7]:175–176}

During Louis de Rochemont's tenure (1935–1943), 14 percent of the March of Time episodes were about the impact of specific individuals on political, economic and military events — a number that dropped significantly after his departure. De Rochemont's particular interest in the geopolitical role of the world's waterways resulted in 7.5 percent of all episodes devoted to the subject.^[7]:172

The March of Time newsreel series ended in 1951, when the widespread adoption of television and daily TV news shows made the newsreel format obsolete. Other newsreel series such as Pathé News (1910–1956), Paramount News (1927–1957), Fox Movietone News (1928–1963), Hearst Metrotone News/News of the Day (1914–1967), and Universal Newsreel (1929–1967) continued for a while longer.

Episodes

Unless noted, sources for episode information are The March of Time, 1935–1951 by Raymond Fielding,^{[7]:335–342} and the HBO Archive's summary of The March of Time Newsreels.^[16]

Reviews and commentary

• Alistair Cooke, The Listener (November 20, 1935) — The March of Time is not the result of bright inspiration. Behind it is ten years' experience with a magazine of the same style; an army of correspondents and cameramen scattered throughout the world; an historical film library it took two years to prepare; a newspaper cutting library as exhaustive as anything extant; and in New York and Chicago a vast research staff alert to trace the origins of any family, war, author, statesman, treaty, or breath or rumour. With no less than this should any other film company irresponsibly compete.^[7]:67
• Bosley Crowther, The New York Times (October 31, 1937) — And now, less than three years old but already an institution, the March of Time is today one of the most successful and forward-looking features on the screen — a dynamic force for the purveyance of information through the medium of the film.^[18]
• D. A. Spencer and H. D. Waley, The Cinema Today (1939) — Although the ideal behind these films is to present, as objectively as possible, accounts of world happenings, there is no doubt whatever that they are helping to mould our views on such happenings. In America legislation regulating child labour … has at last passed both Houses of Congress by a narrow margin which is believed to be due to the March of Time. Their film on cancer has done a good deal to arouse the national conscience of America to the evils of the quackery that battens on fear of this scourge, while in England, before the present campaign for National Fitness was under way, their film Food and Physical Training aroused enormous interest and debate in that it brought home to many people's minds the fact that the animals at the zoo are better fed and housed than many of the nation's children.^[7]:176
• Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times (September 2, 2010) — It's hard to know today even what to call these films. (Raymond Fielding, a retired college educator who wrote a book about the series, told me that roughly 290 were made.) '"Newsreels'" seems inadequate; they are longer, more detailed and much more opinionated than the standard-issue newsreels that preceded them. "Documentaries" is closer, but the blaring orchestrations and outlandish voice-overs sound nothing like a modern documentary. It's tempting to give up and label these whats-its a mass-media Neanderthal — an evolutionary dead end; an attempt to merge the tools of newsgathering and filmmaking that had its moment but died out. Except that, once you watch a few and learn about how they were made, you start to see a little March of Time in almost everything: Fox News, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the History channel, schlocky reality shows of the I Shouldn't Be Alive variety, PBS's P.O.V.^[19]
• Tom Shales, The Washington Post (September 4, 2010) — Fascinating, enthralling, enlightening—many a superlative applies to these documentary shorts, which have gathered value with the march of time itself and have been rescued from the ravages of time by New York's Museum of Modern Art and the HBO Archive, corporate relative of the series's original creators. … It's something of an irony that The March of Time may be less famous today than a bull's-eye parody of it — a parody that millions have seen, many of them perhaps not even knowing that it is a parody or what it's lampooning. Does News on the March ring a bell? It's the title of the fake-out newsreel that begins the Orson Welles classic Citizen Kane, and it includes wily duplications of all the March of Time trademarks, including the white-on-black transitional title cards, the wall-to-wall musical score and the bombastic narration.^[20]

Awards and recognition

• The March of Time received an honorary Academy Award in 1937 "for its significance to motion pictures and for having revolutionized one of the most important branches of the industry — the newsreel."^[21]

• On October 27, 1937, The March of Time episode "Conquering Cancer" received the first Clement Cleveland Medal, established by the New York City Cancer Committee of the American Society for the Control of Cancer.^[22] "Louis de Rochemont was especially proud of a letter he received from U.S. Surgeon General Parran crediting the film with providing a crucial influence in securing a federal appropriation for the National Cancer Institute", reported March of Time chronicler Raymond Fielding.^[7]:170

• The March of Time episode Norway in Revolt was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) in 1941.^[23]

• Prelude to Victory was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) in 1942.^[24]

• Youth in Crisis was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) in 1943.^[24]

• Atomic Power was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) in 1946.^[24]

• A Chance to Live received the Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) in 1949.^[24]

• Inside Nazi Germany, a 1938 March of Time episode directed by Jack Glenn, was deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1993.^[25]

Films

Four feature-length films were produced by The March of Time.^{[7]:343–347}

• The Ramparts We Watch (August 1940, 99 minutes)
• The Story of the Vatican (August 1941, 53 minutes)
• We Are the Marines (December 1942, 70 minutes)
• The Golden Twenties (April 1950, 67 minutes)

Television

In 1949 The March of Time created the first extensive documentary series for television, Crusade in Europe, based on the book by Dwight D. Eisenhower. The ABC series received a Peabody Award and one of the first Emmy Awards (Best Public Service, Cultural or Educational Program).^[26] It was followed by Crusade in the Pacific (1951).^[7]:302

In 1965–1966, producer David L. Wolper revived the March of Time title for a series of documentary films produced in association with Time-Life, Inc.^[27] The series was not successful.^[7]:302

Cultural references

Dorothy Fields' lyrics for the song "A Fine Romance", introduced by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the 1936 RKO film Swing Time, include a reference to the newsreel series:

A fine romance, with no kisses.
A fine romance, my friend, this is.
True love should have the thrills that a healthy crime has.
We don't have half the thrills that The March of Time has.^[28][29]

The March of Dimes, a fundraising organization that still exists, was named by Eddie Cantor in 1938 as a play on The March of Time. Because Franklin D. Roosevelt founded the March of Dimes, originally called the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, a dime was chosen to honor him after his death.^[30]

The March of Time series was satirized in Orson Welles's film Citizen Kane (1941) with the News on the March segment showing the life and funeral of the fictional Charles Foster Kane.^{[7]:258–260}

The Canadian documentary series The World in Action (1942–1945) was patterned after The March of Time newsreel series.^[31]

References

External links

• The March of Time at the National Radio Hall of Fame
• 75th Anniversary of The March of Time at Turner Classic Movies
• The March of Time as Documentary and Propaganda, American Studies Program at the University of Virginia
• Finding Aid (PDF), The March of Time (Radio Program), New York Public Library
• History
• The March of Time collection from Thought Equity Motion
• The March of Time Newsreels and Documentaries
• The March of Time at Alexander Street Press — cross-searchable online streaming video collection for available to academic, public and school libraries
• The March of Time at the Encyclopedia of American Journalism
• Jack Glenn papers (March of Time director) at the University of Wyoming - American Heritage Center

Radio broadcasts at the Internet Archive

• 1938 Radio News — includes The March of Time from February 3 and February 10, 1938
• 1940 Radio News — includes The March of Time from August 24, 1940
• 1941 Radio News — includes The March of Time from November 20 and December 11, 1941
• 1945 Radio News — includes The March of Time from February 22, March 15, March 22, March 29 and April 5, 1945