Motion Picture Herald (Mar-Apr 1945)

By TERRY RAMSAYE IN THE BASEMENT of the east wing of the White House in Washington is the world's most exclusive and most important motion picture theatre. It was established by and for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. If this theatre had a name it would be "The Old Hat Box," because that was the name for the room when the pictures moved in. The projection room seats a hundred when all the chairs are in place, but it rarely has played to capacity. The audiences have been made up of the great of the world in politics, at home and from the diplomatic rosters of all nations. In that room too there have been intimate family screenings for the Roosevelt family and their friends. The Old Hat Box has had less publicity and promotion than any other theatre and no word has ever come out of the historic showings there of pictures which have been making, helping to make and recording the living history of the world. #1 There the President could at his easy con ^ venience see what the propagandists of Germany and Japan were putting on their screens, how Germany recorded her invasion of Poland, pulling the world into the debacle of war that was to be our war, too. There he could examine the British documentaries of preparation and battle. That screen was soon to report on Pearl Harbor and its stirring sequels, the epic of the American war machine and the bloody heroic conflicts from the Pacific to thefronts in France, Italy and Germany. The motion picture became a large fact in the life and experience of Mr. Roosevelt. Through the twelve years of the Roosevelt administration the motion picture has come into a new high status, around the world. It has found both experience and opportunities of service beyond the anticipations of its prior years. The most important of Mr. Roosevelt's expressions concerning the screen, to be remembered especially today, is his emphatic declaration that: "The motion picture must remain free ... I want no censorship. . . ." In the Roosevelt days the American motion picture has had its most important contacts with and impacts from government. The industry has made more trips to Washington in the period than in all its prior forty years. ^1 The film has given more theatre time and manhours to the national causes than any other medium before it or contemporary with it. Also it has spent more time before Washington hearings and in court on issues of processes of business, than at any time except perhaps in the days of the patent wars. It has also given more of its substance in film and personalities than has ever been given before in all the annals of the generous show business. And it has paid more taxes into the national treasury than its statisticians could have dreamed a decade ago. The Administration and the Industry have in these strenuous years become most conscious of each other. Mr. Roosevelt got his first indoctrination on the motion picture as a medium a long, long time ago. In 1919 when the famous old N-C planes of the Navy were new and making their INP Paramount New INP Movietone News ATLANTIC CHARTER CASABLANCA FREEDOM OF THE SCREEN On December 18, 1941, eleven days after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt appointed Lowell Mellett Coordinator of Government Films, under the power given him by the Emergency Act. The President's instructions to Mr. Mellett read in part: "The American motion picture is one of the most effective means of informing and entertaining our citizens. The motion picture must remain free insofar as national security will permit. I want no censorship of the motion picture; I want no restrictions placed thereon which will impair the usefulness cf the film other than those very necessary restrictions which the dictates of safety make imperative. "The motion picture, especially as used by the Federal Government, has a very useful contribution to make during the war emergency. In order that the Federal Government's efforts in the field of motion picture production and distribution may serve most effectively and efficiently, it is desirable that all activities of the Federal Government be coordinated under the direction of one central office." = historic flight across the Atlantic, the aggressive young editor of Kinograms, a young newsreel, sitting in New York, called up Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy. "Mr. Secretary, we'd like to borrow a battleship," he said. "Our cameraman in the Azores has a grand picture of the N-C 4's arrival and the wreck of the N-C 3. We need the picture in New York right away." Mr. Secretary Daniels deliberated a moment. Then he saw the light of publicity opportunity for the Navy. "We might spare a destroyer," he decided. "I'll turn you over to my assistant." The assistant was Mr. Roosevelt. Within the hour the cameraman, Al Wetzel, found himself swept off the end of a dock and taken aboard a destroyer, which put about and headed for New York under forced draft through a wild sea. A call from the Assistant Secretary advised that the newsreel would be kept informed of progress. It may have been his little joke, for then repeatedly through a day and a night Naval Intelligence got the editor — now your editor — away from dinner, out of bed in wee hours, away from breakfast, out of the theatre, to receive relayed radio reports on the racing destroyer. In incredibly little time a gob walked into the newsreel office in New York's Twenty-thirc, street and set down the film can. The greai N-C flight picture was delivered by arrange ment with Franklin D. Roosevelt. The young man was minded to get things done. He learnet that week that the movies could borrow a battleship— for a Navy story. The editor sent the Secretary a print, and thanks for the ride. In time Mr. Roosevelt was to become a collector of motion picture prints for himself Many the picture in which he was fancied to have an interest had been those years sent tc, him for screening at the White House and, i(| is said, the prints have thereafter been sent tc, Hyde Park and the Franklin Delano Roosevel\ Library, on the ancestral estate there, to become in time a property of the nation. It was an inevitable consequence, back their that the young Mr. Roosevelt, assistant secre tary of the Navy, should, in view of the pub licity policy meet with Marvin Mclntyre, con, tributor to the Army and Navy Journal ano destined to be a special Assistant Secretary o| the Navy in behalf of getting the Navy ii print and keeping the appropriation bills up am moving. Mr. Mclntyre favored a big navy. When Mr. Roosevelt became Governor o the State of New York, Mr. Mclntyre, astut 10 MOTION PICTURE HERALD, APRIL 21, 194