Africa, Prelude to Victory

The history of the Corps, from Colonial times to the present day (1942, that is). The film's midsection details the arduous training procedure of the Few and the Proud at Parris Island and elsewhere. Finally, wartime newsreel footage is adroitly blended with dramatized re-enactments to illustrate the contributions - and the utter necessity-of the marines in WW II.

The first of 4 full-length features produced by The March of Time, which was much more well known for the series of newsreels. The film used no professional actors, instead relying on residents of the town where most of the filming took place: New London, Connecticut.

When a kindly priest is murdered while waiting at a street corner in a quiet Connecticut town, the citizens are horrified and demand action from the police. All of the witnesses identify John Waldron, a nervous out-of-towner, as the killer. District Attorney Henry Harvey is then put on the case and faces political opposition in his attempt to prove Waldron's innocence.

A multi-studio effort to show the newsreel audience the progress of the Hollywood war effort.

An aging actress travels to Rome with her husband; after he suddenly dies during the flight, she begins a passionate affair with a young gigolo.

A newly promoted plant supervisor finds himself in the position of having to announce a layoff of his fellow workers.

Windjammer, the first presentation in CINEMIRACLE, is the record of a training cruise of the full-rigged S/S Christian Radich from Oslo across the Atlantic, through the Caribbean, to New York and back home again.

A light-skinned African-American family are "passing" in an all-white New England town. When the truth comes out, the more prejudiced neighbors demand their expulsion from the community.

The US Government tries to track down embedded Nazi agents in the States.

U.S. spies catch a Moscow-born U.S. citizen helping spies, and they force him to counterspy.

Short documentary film in the newsreel series 'The March of Time'.

Bob Sharkey, an instructor of would-be spies for the Allied Office of Strategic Services, becomes suspicious of one of the latest batch of students, Bill O'Connell, who is too good at espionage. His boss, Charles Gibson confirms that O'Connell is really a top German agent, but tells Sharkey to pass him, as they intend to feed the mole false information about the impending D-Day invasion.

There is a vast increase of youth crime, doubling in the two years since the US entered World War II. With fathers off to war, women are working in the factories leaving children at home for the day or after school, unsupervised and free to get into trouble. Young men and women, some working and making an adult wage, now feel that they have the right to act and do as adults. Others are trying their hands at new thrills, such as smoking marijuana. Young women are getting into trouble by getting involved with the many servicemen that they are attracted to. This film shows how these kinds of subversive thoughts that lead to juvenile delinquency can be broken by having youths selling war bonds and organizing 4-H clubs, among other activities.

An FBI agent works with a refugee scientist and the Coast Guard to crack a Soviet spy ring in Boston.

A "March of Time" presentation of the evolution of movies compiled primarily from film clips of silent movies through the early sound pictures to the present (1939) date. Industry executives such as Jack and Harry Warner, Walt Disney, Cecil B. DeMille, et al are seen taking bows in the live (non-archive) footage.

In New York City, a relationship is threatened when a young man discovers he's caught syphilis from a tryst with a waitress named Ellie. This threatens his relationship with a new girl. Film critic Amy Taubin co-stars as the new girl who gets the bad news. The director is apparently the same man who edited Fritz Lang's The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.