Newsreels

Raymond Fielding

For the first half of the twentieth century, long before television broadcasting existed, motion pictures of newsworthy events were shown in theaters around the world. These were called newsreels and were released serially, with two different issues a week, into more than 15,000 theaters in the United States alone and tens of thousands more abroad. They appeared in American theaters from 1911 to 1967 and for a few years thereafter in some other countries. Each motion picture newsreel issue ran eight to ten minutes in length and contained seven or eight unrelated stories, each separated from the others by a newspaper-type headline. The subject matter was as diverse as could be found in a daily newspaper, and included politics, war, technology, celebrities, crime, disasters, the arts, parades, celebrations, sports, fashion, feature stories, and novelties. Before there were newsreels, there were news films —individual motion picture records of newsworthy events, presented ...

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