Biography Peden, Charles: Newsreel Man.v1, 09 April 2008

[mrmikel]

Newsreel Man is the story of a photographer for Movietone News and his many adventures in the early part of the 20th century. Written in 1931 it closes with the Lindbergh Kidnapping, at that point unsolved.

His daughter wrote of his life:
Since I grew up with the author Charles Peden who was my father, I am undoubtedly biases. As a writer for a local newspaper I think I can keep my distance.

This book was written relatively early in his career in 1931 and published in 1932. It reflects his excitement about being in the newsreel business, a business that brought the news of the country and the world to the people. Yet, very little is known about the men who were assigned to document the major events of the day beginning in the early 1900s. The first newsreel company was French, and started by Charles Pathe which became known as Pathe News. Sound on film came later.

My father worked for Fox Movietone when he wrote this book and was fired because he didn't want to be transferred the Chicago. He was then hired in New York by Hearst Metrotone News, News of the Day and remained with them until his death in 1973.

While with Fox he was sent to London to help British Movietone News work with the new sound cameras in 1929. At the time my mother was pregnant with me and as a result I was born in London, which made the trip quite eventful for her, but didn't give her much time to enjoy her first trip to Europe.

His first major story with Fox in the when he returned was the Lindbergh kidnapping in 1932 and then the trial in 1935 as is mentioned in the book, his last story with Hearst was a riot in Harlem, NY in the 1970s.

He covered thousands of great stories throughout his career. We spent many winters in Coral Gables, at the Miami Biltmore Hotel where he was assigned to cover winter sports, the Prince of Windsor who was the governor of the Bahamas, car racing, deep sea fishing, winter quarters of Barnum and Bailey's Circus and other events located in that general area during the winter.

The most spectacular things that he witnessed first hand, other than much earlier the trial of the Bruno Hauptmann, Lindbergh kidnapper, were the explosion of the Hindenberg in Lakehurst, New Jersey, burning of the SS Normandie at its dock on Feb. 9, 1942 only blocks from the offices of Hearst Metrotone News which was on 11th avenue and 56th street.

That summer of 1942, my father joined the Army Air Corps, went to officer's training school in Las Vegas and was sent to Attu Island in the Aleutians Islands with the 11th Air Corps. Later he was transferred to the 21st Air force and served on Saipan flying photographic bombing missions over Tokyo in B.29s. He was home on leave when the Atomic bomb was dropped and took me to Times Square for the VJ Day celebration.

After the war, in 1948 the family moved to Fairfield, Connecticut from where he commuted to New York and as before covered stories from beauty pagants to covering Truman's firing of MacArthur. He brought me to the White House where he covered that announcement. I was vacationing in DC with friends. He wanted me to witness that famous bit of history as Truman made the announcement from his office.

Then there were more Easter Day parades, fashion shows, fires, shootings and floods along the Mississippi, political conventions until the newsreels folded in the 1960s and ABC TV utilized the services of Hearst Newsreel. He covered a number of stories for Edward R. Morrow's "I See It Now" One story noted story was following a pint of blood from the doner in the U.S. to the battle field in Korea.

I never met anyone who loved his job more. Every night when he was home he would tell of his day with the excitement of a kid. It is the only way to be. It was a lesson for me.

Marcia Peden Miner

Because he died in 1973 his work is in copyright worldwide except for the US where he failed to renew copyright.