"On the Firing Line with the Germans" Film Annotations (2017)

noted the fact he introduced the film and then described some film content, usually mentioning the
several Kaiser family appearances, scenes from local Berlin city life, the impressive German military
drive, the totally destroyed fort of Novo Georgievsk and possibly the suffering refugees. While the movie
content is certainly pro-German and Durborough made the best use of his opportunity to document the
story of the German side of the war and the successful eastern front offensive campaign, his motivation
appears to have been that of a film reporter, not a propagandist, much like his film project investors
who considered the project as a good financial investment opportunity.
However that isn’t necessarily the case for another film tour he did in the fall of 1916. In 1916 Robert
W. Woolley was the Publicity Chairman of the Democratic Campaign Committee responsible for
directing President Wilson’s reelection publicity campaign and the one credited for the campaign slogan,
“He Kept Us out of War.” As Publicity Chairman, he was interested in exploiting film and the film
industry for political purposes to a greater extent than any previous national campaign. Many political
and film historians know President Wilson spoke before nearly 1,000 people including most of the
reigning film moguls at a Motion Picture Board of Trade banquet in New York City on 27 January 1916.
Woolley noticed Durborough’s war film and conceived and secretly paid for a fall 1916 film tour in a few
selected states to hopefully tip the balance for Wilson’s re-election. He approached Durborough
through NEA editor Sam Hughes and commissioned Durborough to assemble a film emphasizing the
horrors of war in Europe and the troubles in Mexico and to introduce each show by describing the film,
giving his personal witness to the horrors of war he experienced while filming and concluding with
strong support for President Wilson’s position of keeping the country out of these conflicts. But to be
effective, Woolley wanted the presentation to appear as though from an unbiased, independent film
journalist and to keep the DCC’s relationship with the project hidden.
Durborough created a film titled With Durborough on the Firing Line composed from parts of his film
taken on the eastern front, a little taken on the western front augmented with other sourced film, and
some Mexican film he took when covering Pershing’s Spring 1916 Punitive Expedition augmented with
some Vera Cruz film almost certainly from Weigle’s Battle of Vera Cruz and possibly other sourced
material. It was presented at brief stops for a day or so in theaters bought out on short notice with
payments to compensate for any losses due to prior film bookings. The shows were staged only in cities
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