A Note on Pare Lorentz's The River

A NOTE ON PARE LORENTZ'S THE RIVER by Charles A. Miller In the fall of 1937 the Farm Security Administration released Pare Lorentz' s documentary about the Mississippi, The River. The following year Lorentz published a book based on the film. In the preface to the book he wrote that the text had been taken verbatim from the sound track. In order to provide a "permanent record of the motion picture" he had "not changed the words."1 But what is the "permanent record"? Anyone who follows the film with the book in hand notices a number of differences between the two versions. Most of the differences appear to be prompted by artistic considerations. But one seems not to be. It was instead, apparently, prompted by the President of the United States. Franklin D. Roosevelt saw The River at Hyde Park not long before the first public showing. He was pleased with what he saw—with one exception. The President asked Lorentz, who was present, if he would change a word in one of the opening lines from "Pennsylvania" to "New York." According to Robert L. Snyder, the director resisted "because he knew from his research that the tributaries of the Allegheny River in Pennsylvania were further east than those in New York." Further, states Snyder, Lorentz "submitted his films to his sponsors only when they were finished, and never changed a line or a scene."2 It may be true that Lorentz never changed a line on the sound track, for the word "Pennsylvania" is what one hears in the film. In the allegedly verbatim text, however, "New York" appears in its place. How did this happen? Since Lorentz claims he presented a verbatim text and his Profaes&or MlZZer teaches In the Department ofa Politics at Lake Forest College. 90 biographer implies that no change would have been made, one may suspect either faulty memory or a political gremlin from the Farm Security Administration at work. Forty years after the fact Lorentz recalls turning the preparation of the book for The River over to a "fine Irish lad."3 Presumably that is where Pennsylvania was transformed into New York for print posterity. It would certainly not be the only time in film, or among the admirers of F.D.R. that such changes occurred. Fortunately, the documentary, like the Mississippi, retains its greatness. Pare Lorentz, The River (New York: Stackpole Sons, 1938), n.p. Robert L. Snyder, Pare Lorentz and the Documentary Film (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), p. 198. President Roosevelt's viewing of the film is described on pp. 63-64. Lorentz, letter to Charles A. Miller, April 10, 1979. The frontispiece to McCaIl 's Magazine of May 1937, prior to the release of the film, uses "Pennsylvania" in what amounts to a draft of the narration. An issue of Survey Graphic published two months after the release uses "New York" (December 1937), Vol. 26, p. 629. "New York" may therefore have sneaked in in the weeks following the Hyde Park showing but before the publication of the issue of Survey Graphic. "New York" is also in the poetic narration as printed in The Pocket Companion in 1942, Philip Van Doren Stern, ed. (New York: Pocket Books), p. 407. This version is identical to and presumably reproduced from the misleadingly labeled "verbatim" text published by Stackpole Sons in 1938. 91 ...