The newsreel commentator, the actor, the intellectual, and the broadcaster: celebrity and personality voices in classic British documentary

Abstract

This paper explores some hitherto overlooked intersections between British documentary of the 1930s and 1940s and celebrity culture. It does so through the analysis of voice-over commentary in a range of different films from this period. There is currently an opening for new types of scholarship in this area of film history because many previously unavailable British documentaries, including the majority of those discussed in this paper, have recently become available through DVD releases or websites such as the BFI's Screenonline. The paper rejects the common assumption that voice-over commentary within these films was a reductive, standardised ‘Voice of God’ technique that can be quickly dismissed. Instead, this paper argues that focusing on the newsreel commentators, actors, public intellectuals and broadcasters who provided commentaries for British documentary films during this period extends and nuances our understanding of the histories of both factual film and celebrity, especially since these films became nodal points for multimedia personalities already established in other media.

Keywords:

• celebrity
• documentary
• voice-over
• BBC
• Second World War

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Scott Anthony, Jon Hoare, Jennifer Barnes, Wendy Webster, Jo Fox and Tim Boon for providing helpful comments and references.

Notes

1. The term ‘Voice of God’ was initially used to distinguish between British documentary commentary and the more strident commentary in The March of Time (1935–1951) (Stollery 2011, p. 169).

2. D. Cooper to MOI Films Division, 7 May 1941, Ministry of Information, INF 5/79, National Archive, London.

3. Mitchell was a former actor who worked not only as a newsreel and documentary commentator, but also as a radio broadcaster and in television.