Tim Gray Senior Vice PresidentThe sixth-anniversary issue of Daily Variety, on Oct. 20, 1939, contained something that was unprecedented for the newspaper and for the author: A guest column by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt about movies.She started by saying she was uniquely unqualified to write about the motion picture industry. “However, I have one great interest in the movies, namely, how can the movies become a force in education.
The great majority of our people see motion pictures as part of their recreation. … They want to be thrilled, to live in another world for a time.”But to her, movies had powers beyond escapism. “Stories can be told in such a way as to develop an interest in literature, and in the arts and history.
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