Project 20
Project 20 is the overall title of an irregularly scheduled series of American television documentaries broadcast on NBC beginning on December 27, 1955, The series "was one of the first nonfiction presentations of American history seen on American television". A review in 1961 referred to the project's "mastery of the TV form that makes history come alive informatively and entertainingly". The show's production unit "was disbanded for economy reasons" in 1967, but episodes that had been completed were broadcast through May 11, 1969.
The title was sometimes written as Project XX, and the episodes were sometimes called "telementaries". Episodes of the series were also broadcast in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, and England. Some were shown on the Christian Broadcasting Network cable service in the 1980s as part of a package of 55 documentaries licensed to CBN by NBC Enterprises.
Overview
The title was intended to "reflect the status of the world in the 20th century". Episodes mixed filmed and "live-on-film" content in whatever way worked best for each topic. Producer Henry Salomon said that the goal of Project 20 was to create "a kind of composite picture of the 20th century and 20th century man — who he is, what he is, and why he is." Each episode was "a self-contained dramatic unit", but together they were intended to be assembled to "form a composite history". Writer Richard Hanser said that they did not want the productions to be "just chronological"; instead, they sought "to take the factual material and give it some sort of dramatic form".A secondary effect of the series was preservation of old film. Daniel W. Jones, who was in charge of film research, said that much of the film was "shrunk, warped, and brittle". He explained that nitrate film deteriorates over time and can explode, a situation that caused many owners of such film "to junk it out of sheer prudence". Project 20
1955
The premiere episode was "Nightmare in Red". Pre-empting Armstrong Circle Theatre, the episode used film from 76 sources to report on life in Russia from the beginning of the 20th century. Some of that film had never been shown publicly; some of it had not been seen in decades. It was gathered from both private collectors and film distributors in England, France, Germany, and the United States. Completion of the episode required more than six months' work. The episode depicted a civil war, famines, revolutions, and killing of masses of people. Viewers saw Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, and the last czar, among others. Salomon produced and directed the episode and was its co-writer with Hanser. Isaac Kleinerman edited the film, and Alexander Scourby narrated.The episode was repeated on January 24, 1956. The president of Armstrong Cork Company said that many requests to repeat the program had arrived in each day's mail, some from people who wanted to see the program again and others from people who missed its original broadcast and wanted to see it. Its September 3, 1960, showing was its fourth broadcast.
"Nightmare in Red" received a special Encyclopædia Britannica Films award in 1956 as the best educational television program of the year. In 1959, it was a recipient of one of the 10th annual Scholastic Teacher Film Awards, the 24th award it had received. The McGraw-Hill company distributed films of the episode to schools.
Broadcasts of this episode were limited to North America and South America. Rights to use the Russian film clips in it were restricted because Artkino Pictures, which distributed Soviet films, said that "Nightmare in Red" was not "an objective picture". A spokesman for Artkino said, "certain costume scenes which were obviously from Russian motion pictures and not from newsreels were presented on the program as being the real thing." Salomon replied that the film scenes were symbols and that the episode did not distort the truth.
Sponsorship withdrawal
originally planned to sponsor Project 20 episodes, but it cancelled that sponsorship in October 1955 with no explanation to NBC. The trade publication Variety said, "... informed persons on Ad Row have no doubts in their own minds that General Motors is adopting discretion as the better part of democratic valor and future trade." Pontiac's advertising agency said that a "basic misunderstanding" led to the cancellation. The cancellation led to a delay in the program's premiere, which had been scheduled for November 1955. The report in Variety added that Electric Companies Advertising and Monsanto Chemical each were possible replacement sponsors.Critical response
writer Charles Mercer call the program "one of the best televised documentary films of the year". He praised the research, writing, and film editing that he said put Communism's methods and dangers in an understandable context.A review in The Sun said that the episode was "an eminently objective and accurate summary of the convulsions which afflicted Russia for half a century", and a review in the The Evening Star called the episode "documentary dynamite" and added, "It should be required viewing for students and grown-ups."
1956
The Project 20 episodes in 1956 were sponsored by Norelco."The Twisted Cross" (March 14, 1956)
The episode focused on Adolf Hitler and Nazis as representative of the general concept of how dictators rise and fall. Most of it depicted events and characters as the German people saw them. Salomon said, "In the Hitler story, we had a chance to do a thorough, rather than merely episodic, treatment of great events as seen through alien eyes." The production showed growth of the Nazi movement from the "wretchedness of Germany after World War I". In addition to Hitler, Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler were shown as they emerged into Nazi leadership positions. The program contained a German-made filmed reconstruction of an attempt to assassinate Hitler with a bomb in 1944. Scourby narrated with the script written by Salomon and Hanser. Robert Russell Bennett composed the score and conducted it. The Project 20 staff viewed approximately 5 million feet of film preparing for the broadcast. The crew brought 150,000 feet of film to New York to be edited down to 4,800 feet in the one-hour broadcast.The audience for the initial broadcast was estimated to be 34 million people — at that time the most ever for any network's "one-shot documentary". A repeat was aired on June 12, 1956. That rerun included a preview of the upcoming production, "The Jazz Age". West German television showed it in March 1956. Another American repeat, on January 31, 1960, included a new prologue and epilogue in which Frank McGee connected then-current incidents of Nazi vandalism with the history of Nazism.
Critical Response
Larry Wolters wrote in the Chicago Daily Tribune, that the production's "narration and music almost were superfluous" because the images "wonderfully depicted" the effects of Nazi rule. Those pictures, Wolters said, showed some Germans dedicated to obeying and following Hitler's commands, while others "hated and despised Hitler and risked their lives to eliminate him".A review in the trade publication Motion Picture Daily called the program "a stunning show... particularly in its delineation of the emotions of a time and of a people". The review added that the show would have benefited from more facts rather than generalizations, and it noted that while some scenes were "patently staged shots from post-war German films", that fact was neither mentioned in narration nor stated in credits. That flaw, it said, tended "to undermine, if not alienate, audience belief" in the truth that the episode sought to depict.
A review in the trade publication Broadcasting said of the condensing of 25 years of German history into 53 minutes of air time, "That they managed to accomplish this feat and still remain historically true is remarkable in itself." It commended Scourby's narration and Bennett's musical score.
"The Great War" (October 16, 1956)
Film segments in The Great War covered people and events between 1914 and 1918 that changed the world. Military and political leaders depicted in the films included Kaiser Wilhelm, Marshal Foch, General Pershing, and Woodrow Wilson, and viewers saw entertainers such as Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and Marie Dressler. Filmed activities included the German army taking Belgium and France, the sinking of the Lusitania, the Battle of the Somme, military use of gas in war, and Richthofen's Flying Circus engaged in aerial battles with the Lafayette Escadrille.Critical response
In a review distributed by the Associated Press, Charles Mercer called the program "absorbing television entertainment" but added that he felt that it presented a "curiously romantic" view of war. He pointed out that the broadcast showed "only a few dead bodies" and that it had "no view of the starving millions in Belgium", speculating that Salomon put more emphasis on entertainment than on instruction with regard to World War I. On the other hand, Mercer said, "An accurate picture of the slaughter, starvation and pestilence of war... is perhaps too strong for the television audience."John Lester wrote in the The Gazette and Daily that he found no reason for showing The Great War or any of the preceding Project 20 installments, nor did he see "substantial evidence of a documentary technique worth mentioning in any of them". Lester explained that many elements of the program had been seen previously in films and on television and that even the music was little more than a sampling of songs from World War I. He concluded that NBC "could have found far more powerful, effective and novel ways" to achieve the project's stated goals.
Sheila Gallagher, writing in The Evening Star, called the program "a tightly edited, rawly powerful narrative" but added that it would have benefitted from more interpretation of significant battles and other events. She praised the show's production and writing, and she concluded by saying that it "possessed all the qualities of suspense and action, happily punctuated by some lightness, which all in all made for outstanding viewing".