Quotes About Newsreels

The boycotts against Hearst's newspapers were soon expanded to include his newsreels. At Williams College, then at Amherst, then elsewhere, students booed the Hearst newsreels—at Amherst, they drowned them out with cries of "We Want Popeye! We Want Popeye!"—and picketed the theaters that carried them, forcing theater owners to protect themselves by removing the name Hearst from the titles.

It's ludicrous that my friends in California aren't able to legally get married. It's a civil rights issue. In 20 years we're going to look back at tapes of these antigay people saying ridiculous things on the news and it's going to sound as antiquated as the newsreels of horrible racists from the '50s.

Usually Jim devoured the newsreels, part of the propaganda effort mounted by the British Embassy to counter the German and Italian war films being screened in the public theaters and Axis clubs of Shanghai. Sometimes the Pathé newsreels from England gave Jim the impression that, despite their unbroken series of defeats, the British people were thoroughly enjoying the war.

The government were going to do everything possible to avoid offending a touchy Reichskanzler, even to the extent of censoring British opinion on the subject of "Munich." American newsreels which ventured criticism were barred, and a strict rule against censure of Chamberlain was being enforced by the British radio.

The dream of empire died when Shanghai surrendered without a fight. Even at the age of 11 or 12, I knew that no amount of patriotic newsreels would put the Union Jack jigsaw together again. From then on, I was slightly suspicious of all British adults.