Warm up your DVRs! Turner Classic Movies is showing four hours of “The March of Time” on Sunday, starting at 8 p.m. ET.

At its peak, The March of Time provided news on current events for over 20 million people per month in 9,000 theaters throughout the United States. Lasting from 1935 through 1951, the series experienced the most sustained success of any documentary-like programming before the age of television, and it was recognized with a special Academy Award in 1936 for “having revolutionized one of the most important branches of the industry—the newsreel.” Its format and approach to depicting news events became a major influence on news documentaries and public affairs programming.

Time-Life-Fortune, Inc., which was headed by Henry Luce, sponsored The March of Time under the watchful eye of Roy Larsen, but it was Louis de Rochemont who innovated the techniques and structure that defined the series. De Rochemont, who had a lifelong passion for true-life dramas, was the director of short films for Fox Movietone News when he brought the idea for what he termed “pictorial journalism” to Larsen. He based his proposal on a radio version of The March of Time, which he felt could be re-created on film. Larsen and de Rochemont began work in June 1934, and the first episode debuted at the Capitol Theatre in New York City on February 1, 1935.

The March of Time modernized and updated the newsreel, which had declined in craftsmanship and popularity after the coming of sound. Companies that made newsreels usually did so as a sideline, meaning they invested little money, effort, or personnel into their productions. They did not staff actual journalists to write scripts or to organize the footage, because they were looking to turn the most profit with the least amount of money. Newsreels were sold as part of a package deal to studios or distributors, and they consisted of film snippets of disasters, sporting events, beauty contests, or crazy fads. Producers stayed away from world events, especially those that generated controversy. In contrast, Larsen and de Rochemont wanted to produce a new film each month that dealt with the type of contemporary events and issues found in the pages of Time or Life magazine. Their approach was to turn a topical event or issue into a story with a beginning, middle, and end so that it could be easily understood to all audiences. Each episode cost between $25,000 and $75,000 in an era when the average newsreel was produced for $8,000 to $12,000.

The goal for The March of Time was to present an event or situation so effectively that viewers felt like they were experiencing the real thing. To accomplish that goal, de Rochemont combined archival footage, re-enactments, interviews, and dramatic voice-over by the deep-throated Westbrook Van Voorhis. He became so associated with the series that he was billed as the Voice of Time–and occasionally mocked as the Voice of God or Voice of Doom. His voice of authority was particularly memorable at the conclusion of each episode when he emphatically pronounced, “Time marches on!” … Read more

Here is the schedule of March of Time episodes to be aired on TCM on Sunday, September 5th, on TCM:

8:00 p.m.
Dogs for Sale – June 11, 1937
Dust Bowl – June 11, 1937
Poland and War – June 11, 1937
8:30 p.m.
Inside Nazi Germany – Jan. 18, 1938
9:00 p.m.
Show Business at War – May 1943
9:30 p.m.
Youth in Crisis – Nov. 1943
10:00 p.m.
Palestine Problem – Sept. 17, 1945
10:30 p.m.
American Beauty – Oct. 5, 1945
11:00 p.m.
Problem Drinkers – June 14, 1946
11:30 p.m.
Mid-Century-Half Way to Where? – Feb. 3, 1950

• “The March of Time” at HBO Archives


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No slang we’ve encountered in an old movie caught us more offguard than the use of “groupie” in The Man with Two Faces (1934) , starring Edward G. Robinson, Mary Astor, Ricardo Cortez, Mae Clarke, and Louis Calhern, and based on a play cowritten by George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woollcott called The Dark Tower.

We’d long assumed that “groupie” was a product of the rock era, that it was coined to describe those women (and men, too, we suppose) who are willing to go that extra mile in demonstrating their devotion to a particular musician or band.

But a scene in THE MAN WITH TWO FACES suggests that the term might be much older.

In the film, Astor plays Jessica Wells, a troubled actress who was formerly married to a controlling creep named Stanley Vance (Calhern). Prior to the action depicted in the film, Vance had abandoned Wells, leaving her a total mess, her life and career in ruins. Finally, when word was received that Vance had died, Wells had slowly begun to pull herself together.

As the film opens, Wells is healthy and about to open on Broadway. Suddenly—wouldn’t you know it?—Vance appears on the scene, very much alive, and everyone close to Wells is concerned that she will crack up again.

In the pertinent scene, another actress (Clark) is sitting on Calhern’s lap as he flirts shamelessly with her. In walks a sardonic actor from the troupe (Robinson) who says, dismissively, “Well—a new groupie!”

Now, it’s possible he could be referring to Vance, since Clarke’s character is an actress and more likely to have an admiring fan, or he could—and I think this possibility the more likely one—be referring to Clarke’s character as Calhern’s groupie, without the fan/performer connotation we usually associate with the word.

Either way, we were surprised to hear the word uttered in a seventy-five-year-old movie. And our friend who works for the Oxford English Dictionary was, too.

“I’m very surprised to hear that the word is that early,” he told us when we mentioned the scene to him. “Every source I’ve ever seen puts it in the late ’60s.” The verdict’s not in yet—he’s still looking into the matter—but it appears that I might just have helped uncover what Jesse said could be “a major discovery.”

Now, it’s not as though we get a free copy of the OED for our contribution or anything (we live in Manhattan—who has room, anyway?), but we do get a kick out of the possibility that we may have contributed a cite that reveals a particular usage to be more than three decades older than was previously thought. We can’t really take any credit, of course—we were just indulging our interest in old movies.

But it’d be nice if our hobby actually provided a service. We leave our small marks in such ways as we can.

We sometimes scratch our heads over how long it takes new technology to come into wide use.

For instance, did you know that a working fax machine was introduced to the general public at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City, and that the earliest efforts in transmitting images date back to the 19th century? We can see why it took so long to perfect, but one can’t but wonder what took so long for it to be widely adopted, once it had been.

Similarly, the vast majority of pre-1950 movies were in black and white, so who would have guessed that experiments in using color dated all the way back to the early twentieth century?

Here’s a reel of tests of Kodachrome color motion picture film from 1922. from 1922, featuring actresses Mae Murray, Hope Hampton, and Mary Eaton, among others. Color film tehnology was two-color, then—reds and greens—so it’s not the full, vivid color that would come later, but it’s got charms of its own.

Oh, and that inexplicable delay I mentioned above? It occurred in this case, too: It would be 13 years after this footage was shot before the first full-length color feature, Becky Sharp, was released.

It’s kind of fun, isn’t it, to imagine a time when Jimmy Stewart was known primarily as a Broadway actor and his successful transition to the silver screen was not at all a certainty.

Here’s what Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times wrote on January 31, 1936, of Stewart’s performance in one of his very first movie roles, in Next Time We Love:

James Stewart, known to playgoers for his work in “Yellow Jack,” “Divided by Three” and “Page Miss Glory,” promises in this his first picture to reach New York to be a welcome addition to the roster of Hollywood’s leading men.

But what if you aren’t satisfied with driving by the homes in which Bogie and Bacall, Jimmy Stewart, and Bette Davis resided? What if you’re more interested in viewing the former residences of the likes of Ted Healy, Una Merkel, or Gummo Marx—not Groucho, Chico, Harpo, or Zeppo, but Gummo Marx?

Then you need only dial up The Movieland Directory, a very impressive online resource, indeed.

The Movieland Directory is downright hard to stump, and don’t think we didn’t try. It gave us addresses for Ned Sparks, for Jack Pickford (Mary’s prodigal brother, don’t you know), for Zasu Pitts, for Billy Gilbert—it even had addresses for El Brendel, for Pete’s sake.

The site also does reverse look-ups. You can enter an address, and if someone related to the movie industry ever lived there, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll turn up.

For instance, our friend Pat used to live on Alta Vista Boulevard, between Sunset and Fountain Avenues. By looking up her block (we’ve forgotten her exact address), we learned that Billy Wayne, who appeared in more than 250 pictures between 1931 and 1958 (but apparently starred in none of them—he’s listed as “uncredited” at IMDB.com in the overwhelming majority of them), used to live just a few doors south of Pat. That’s not terribly exciting, perhaps, but what if it had been Joan Crawford or Buster Keaton or Raymond Chandler? (Considering how often the peripatetic Chandler moved, it well could have been.)

John Ince, brother to motion picture pioneer Thomas Ince and a silent-movie actor and director in his own right, who would became a full-time character actor with the advent of talkies, also lived on what would later be Pat’s block.

And Peter Ostberg, a cabinet maker who was a Universal Studios employee in 1917 (and perhaps before and after that year, who knows?), lived right next to where Pat would live, though his residence has since been replaced by a contemporary apartment building that sits beside the similar one in which Pat resided.

Now, we don’t know Peter Ostberg from Adam, but it’s intriguing to have his name and these tidbits of info turn up in a search like this. It is to us, anyway—perhaps we’re too easily fascinated.

You’ll find former addresses of contemporary stars listed in the database, too, and it’s fun to see what those stars have in common with the stars of years gone by.

For instance, in the 1990s, Julia Roberts lived in the Colonial House Apartments at 1416 Havenhurst Drive. And so, at some point in their lives, did Fred Allen, Joan Blondell, Eddie Cantor, Marion Davies, Bette Davis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, William Powell, and Norma Talmadge, not to mention a slew of more contemporary stars.

We managed to stump the Movieland Directory database only twice. It returned no addresses when we submitted the name of author Ursula Parrott, a once bestselling author of scandalous fiction that might be considered a arguably more sensational precursor to today’s chick lit, but then, though many of her novels were made into movies, we’re not sure Parrott ever resided in L.A., which would take the site off the hook. And the site has no info on Ed Wood, Jr., everyone’s favorite famously inept movie director, which came as something of a surprise to us.

But that’s nitpicking. Give the site a try, and you’ll no doubt find 95% or more of the names you’re looking for. And you might learn just a little bit of Hollywood history