We always ask what was life like before the cellphone. We don’t really remember and most of us were in our late teens when we got our first cellphone. Well now try to imagine a world without CNN or even the web and that TV was rare, very rare. Newspapers were the source of information, but also those wonderful pre-reels at the beginning of every movie.
In the pre-TV era, people saw the news every week in their neighborhood movie theaters. Newsreels were shown before every feature film and in dedicated newsreel theaters located in large cities. Universal Newsreel, produced from 1929 to 1967, was released twice a week. Each issue contained six or seven short stories, usually one to two minutes in length, covering world events, politics, sports, fashion, and whatever else might entertain the movie audience. These newsreels offer a fascinating and unique view of an era when motion pictures defined our culture and were a primary source of visual news reporting.
Anyway, go to Universal Newsreels to watch them all!
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