March Stopped

In the breezeless and unpolitical atmosphere of last July, MARCH OF TIME turned its cameras on the career of Fusion Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia of New York City. Finding the bustling little Mayor a cheerfully photogenic subject, M. 0. T. dramatized the high spots of his energetic three-and-a-half years in office, made particular point of his political independence. The cameras caught him running great power shovels to start excavations for public works, watched him hold court in a police station, excoriating racketeers, slot-machine purveyors. Only unguarded moment: a rump-wise view of His Honor clambering over the gunwhale of a boat on one of his inspection tours; only peaceful moment: Husband LaGuardia flopping into an armchair at home after a hard day's work, patting his wife's cheek when she announced his favorite dish, pasta e fagiuoli, for supper.

Released to first-run houses all over the U. S. fortnight ago, Vol. 4 No. 2 had been doing a big business for two weeks, but last week it made news ot a different sort in New York City. New York is currently in the throes of a mayoral election campaign in which photogenic Mr. LaGuardia is being opposed by Mr. Jeremiah T. Mahoney, who is the Democratic candidate. Tammany Hall still controls the Borough of Manhattan pretty thoroughly and Radio City's Music Hall, M. O. T. first-run house in New York.

Candidate LaGuardia thought the M. O. T.'s treatment of his life & times was "all right." Impartial observers thought it was a masterly if unconscious campaign document. Tammany did not go on record with any sentiments, but after the film had played a week to 150,000 people at the Music Hall, the management deemed it advisable to substitute a Mickey Mouse cartoon for the M. O. T. during the second week of the current feature's (Stage Door) run. Thus the potential number of voters who might be drawn into the Mayor's camp by the M. O. T.'s film had been, by the Mickey Mouse substitution, greatly decreased.

Because of general clamor aroused by the picture, it appeared for a time that only the M. 0. T.'s principal second-run New York house, the Embassy News-Reel Theatre, would exhibit the LaGuardia biography before November 2, date of the election. But by week's end, as a result of calls for the picture from their patrons, it appeared that some 50-odd circuit and third-run theatres will be showing the picture in New York during the week preceding the election. It seemed that in marching on, TIME had inadvertently stepped on the Tammany tiger's tail.

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