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Post by Sue on Mar 17, 2022 11:44:55 GMT -5
"This Day We Live" by Robert Eichberg Bangkok Review June 15, 1935 Volume 2, Issue 1 Pages 11, 12, and 14
Filming at the 1935 Flemington trial --
Samuel S. Leibowitz, Harry T. Saylor, Floyd Gibbons, H. V. Kalterborn, Charlie Ford, Jim Cunningham, and William Copeland Dodge were interviewed for this article.
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This isn't in the article, but what of the rumor that the ENTIRE trial WAS filmed?
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Joe
Lt. Colonel
Posts: 2,653
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Post by Joe on Mar 19, 2022 8:30:14 GMT -5
"This Day We Live" by Robert Eichberg Bangkok Review June 15, 1935 Volume 2, Issue 1 Pages 11, 12, and 14 Filming at the 1935 Flemington trial -- Samuel S. Leibowitz, Harry T. Saylor, Floyd Gibbons, H. V. Kalterborn, Charlie Ford, Jim Cunningham, and William Copeland Dodge were interviewed for this article. ************************************************************************************ This isn't in the article, but what of the rumor that the ENTIRE trial WAS filmed? It's a great article Sue, and hoping you'll post it.
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Post by Sue on Mar 19, 2022 10:36:19 GMT -5
"This Day We Live" The Bangkok Review June 15, 1935 Volume 2, Issue 1 Pages 11, 12. and 14
The greatest drama of the age was played in a little, old court-room at Flemington, New Jersey, where an alien ex-convict waged a desperate but futile fight to save himself from a death sentence for kidnapping the little baby of America's best-loved hero. And out of that quiet, country courtroom came the newsreel film that has overturned the motion picture industry and aroused nearly as much controversy as did the question of Bruno Richard Hauptmann's innocence or guilt. Attorney General David T. Wilentz has threatened the producers with contempt of court proceedings.
Newsreel men, on the other hand, publicly deny accusations that "subterfuge, trickery, and broken promises" enabled them to the film. Charlie Ford, the man who edited the film and arranged the coverage of the trial for Universal, said, "All five newsreel companies got together before the first witnesses took the stand. We had a schedule of operation worked out, so that we could all take turns on the three cameras we had rigged up, one in the courtroom, one in the court library and the one on the balcony."
The Hauptmann film made its first appearance on January 31. But in the Motion Picture Herald, the "Bible" of the movie trade, January 19. Jim Cunningham said, "Actual photographing and recording in the courtroom is confined, by order of Judge Trenchard, to incident taking place only when he is not sitting on the bench. The judge ruled that he will hold in contempt any person or company responsible for the making of pictures while he is sitting. And by order of the court, all the special photographic electric lights in the courtroom were extinguished and the shades pulled part way down when Bruno Hauptmann took the witness stand. If this was an effort to ensure against the taking of pictures, it failed." According to Cunningham, the camera was equipped with an ultra-fast lens and special "super-super speed" movie film was made to order, that the pictures might be taken.
To get the opinion of an unbiased prosecutor -- one not connected in any way with the Hauptmann trial, District Attorney William Copeland Dodge was interviewed. "On the whole," he said, "I condemn any pictures, be they newsreels or straight dramas, which feature the activities of criminals or even of people suspected of crimes. In my opinion, such films tend to teach children, and even adults with immature minds, the false theory that there is glamour connected with crime."
"The Hauptmann Trial film, showing the prisoner faltering and miserable under the lashing tongue of the able New Jersey Attorney General, David Wilentz, is not so bad. It shows that the way of the man arrested for a crime is, by no means, a pleasant path to tread. Perhaps it may lead some imaginative persons to picture themselves gasping and trembling in the witness chair - but others may see only that this, hitherto unknown, German carpenter is now receiving nation-wide publicity."
Samuel S. Leibowitz, the most brilliant defense attorney of the present day, said, "I am opposed strongly to all this fanfare of publicity which surrounds sensational criminal trials in these United States. However, I think, if we are going to have an army of newspaper sob sisters and fiction writers in the courtroom to give us their personal impressions and reactions to the witnesses, we may as well let the newsreels in, too, and get a really true reproduction of what goes on--with sight and sound. This is much clearer report than when one newspaper reporter tells you that the defendant looked worried and near the breaking point, while another reporter writes that he seemed calm, and more confident than ever. We would be a thousand times better off if we followed the English system more closely. There, trials are dignified legal proceedings, not three-ring circuses."
"It was," Harry T. Saylor, of the New York Post, said "a great piece of reporting. What if it isn't in good taste? The whole tenor of this trial was that of a circus and not a judicial proceeding. So, as long as the newspapers and radio went to such lengths, I don't see why any should object to the newsreels getting as much as possible. Their influence on increasing or discouraging crime? I think it's nil. Pictures of that sort do not teach any lesson; they're just exceptionally interesting pictures for an audience to watch. Rather on the macabre side, though, and in bad taste with a human life at stake."
"We newspaper men, as well as the newsreel men and the radio commentators, have overstepped the bounds of propriety in this. The cameramen are no worse than we are, so why blame them for trying to get their share of the news? After all, they are simply reporters who use a microphone and camera instead of a pencil and paper; their stories are printed on celluloid instead of in ink."
"Fundamentally, we're all in the same profession, and they are to be complimented on doing a good, workman-like job of getting the news -- the reporters' first commandment."
Floyd Gibbons, ace correspondent of the World War, feature writer for the Hearst Syndicate, and premier newscaster, said: "I think the whole case should have been filmed and made public as an unimpeachable record of the trial. The film is a good idea; the only trouble with it is, it didn't go far enough."
"If judges object to the cameramen making the courtroom pictures, it is because they have ideas that date back to the Civil War. They might as well object to electric lights and insist that the courtroom be lighted with candles, or that the testimony be taken in long-hand instead of being type-written."
"When a man, accused of a crime, is taken into court, he is supposed to be given a public trial. The newsreel made this the first truly public trial in our history. It did not limit the audience to the few dozen or hundred people able to squeeze into the courtroom through their influence or other means. It made the trial public to thousands of men and women all over the country. I am sure that everybody is interested in it, not only because of the prominence of some of the principals, but also because the crime of kidnapping is one which strikes into the hearts of every mother and father in the land."
"The picture was illuminating. It gave sidelights that the public could gain in no other way. When I saw the film I was particularly shocked by what I believed to be the contempt which Hauptmann seemed to have for the prosecutor, Attorney General Wilentz, as manifested by his thrusting out his arm, like a traffic cop, and ordering, "Stop dat! Stop dat!"
"I would like to see a film of the entire trial--all testimony of all the witnesses; close-ups of all the exhibits. Not only would it be interesting and educational as to courtroom procedure, it would be a valuable historical document of the most sensational trial in this generation."
An exactly opposite view was taken by H.V. Kalterborn, also a radio news commentator and, for more than forty years, an outstanding newspaperman.
Mr. Kalterborn said:
"There is no reason why any specific type of corporation should be permitted to make a profit out of sensationaling this already sensational trial; the dictum of the presiding justice very definitely should have been respected."
"Catering, for the sake of profit, to that class of the public which craves sensationalism is cheap commercialism, and that goes for newspapers or broadcasters who may find it applicable, as well as newsreel producers." -- Robert Eichberg
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