News on Screen

Merl La Voy was an American citizen who in 1910 and 1912 was involved in expeditions to climb Mount McKinley in Alaska. Early in 1915 La Voy travelled from Chicago to London, with the backing of Chicago businessmen and the intention of taking film for the ‘Western British-American Committee of the Prince of Wales’ Fund.' According to one contemporary account La Voy hoped to get film that would counteract German propaganda in Canada and the United States, but the Prince of Wales’ Fund was unimpressed by his offer of 10% of the profits, and the scheme fell through. La Voy then approached the Red Cross and the American Relief Clearing House with a similar proposal, this time based on 25% of the profits. La Voy was accepted, and, using the Red Cross connection, managed to get permission from the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, and the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Basil Thomson, to film Cabinet Ministers in Downing Street. La Voy also took film of the King and Lord Kitchener reviewing troops, and then, apparently with the backing of the American Relief Clearing House, got permission to film in France, being attached to the First Aid Corps for the purpose.

La Voy spent almost two years in France, filming both French and British troops, and producing the film ‘Heroic France.' In 1917 La Voy accompanied the Red Cross mission to Serbia, producing the film ‘Serbia Victorious.' In 1918 he made a tour of the European battlefields, and worked for the Red Cross before becoming a newsreel cameraman for the American Pathe News. In 1939 La Voy supplied Movietone with a number of stories from southern Africa, beginning with ‘M.C.C. CRICKETERS AND THE ZULUS’ in British Movietone News No.501A of January 1939, and continuing with ‘PORTUGUESE PRESIDENT VISITS COLONIES’ in No.530 of July 1939 and ‘EUROPEAN AND NATIVE DISPLAYS FOR PRESIDENT’ in No.532 of August 1939.

Sources

Cinema, 9/9/1915, p.14, ‘Filming Cabinet Ministers’: House of Lords Record Office, Beaverbrook Papers, BBK/E/2/5, S. Insull to N. Thwaites, 17/5/1917: T. Ramsaye ‘A Million and One Nights’ (1926/ London, 1964), pp.686-90: K. Brownlow ‘The War, the West, and the Wilderness’ (1979), p.58.