Happy Trivia Day!
To quench your thirst for Red Cross knowledge, we’ve got a great item to keep in the trivia area of your mind:
Heroes All (1920), a movie created by the Red Cross Bureau of Pictures, was just added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, right along with Michael Jackson’s Thriller and The Muppet Movie!
Now, we don’t have a Bureau of Pictures anymore, so I asked our archivist Susan Watson for some additional info. Here’s what she found:
I found a 23 page article on the Red Cross Bureau of Pictures that was published in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 1990. We have a catalog card for the film that states Heroes All documents wounded World War I GIs returning to Union Station, Washington, DC with the assistance of ARC staff. The film includes rehabilitation footage at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
According the journal article, the Red Cross Bureau of Pictures was formed in 1917 to promote the Red Cross image for fundraising. The bureau produced over 100 films before dissolving in 1921. Several Red Cross photographers, Meryl LaVoy, Ernest Schoedsack, and A. Farciot Edouart, gained early experience with the Bureau of Pictures and went on to have distinguished careers in film making.