From what I know there were newsreels before movies. Was that for most movies? How often did they get new newsreels to show? Was it similar in other allied places like UK, Canada, Australia, etc.
I ask this because now we are seeing war almost 24 hours a day from Ukraine on cable channels.
Newsreels showed between movies. The movie theaters were different back then as there was pretty much continuous showings all day long. You bought a ticket to sit down and chill, literally. Movies were among the first places with Air Conditioning.
Typically there would be a newsreel, a live short, a cartoon short, a serial, the main attraction (The Movie). repeat. Sometimes there was a B movie too.
Saturday mornings often had more than one serial, though that might be more of a 30s thing.
The Newsreels themselves were carefully put together and censored.
Well, because communication was so primitive back then, they saw almost none. It would have to be filmed or still shot by wing cameras in the air or cameramen actually on the battlefield itself. It would have to be physically transported back to the United States. I think there was something called “Movietone News”, and people could see the film in theaters.
WW2 news reels were produced weekly. They were typically about 10 minutes long. Some would focus on a single story but most had multiple news stories. If there were a lot of shorter stories you could have as many as 10 stories per reel.
Newspapers and radio broadcasts were a bit closer to “real time”, but were still nothing like the unfiltered news that we see today.
Vietnam has often been called the “first televised war”. As @What_Exit noted, WW2 news reels were carefully constructed and censored. Vietnam television broadcasts were not. While Vietnam TV broadcasts did bring the war directly into everyone’s living room during the nightly news, even that was nothing like the 24/7 internet coverage that we have today.
live shorts were 3 stooges and little rascals and similar ?
Yes, but also lots of creative little pieces that TCM actually shows sometimes between movies. There was an everyman dealing with the problems of normal life or 6-12 minute Travelogues as some examples.
WW2 newsreels were brief and often obvious propaganda. You got some news mixed with golf and Florida bathing beauties.
The closest thing to actual coverage was the “Telenews” theaters. TELENEWS was the name of the theater. They only ran a repeating 1 hour film of war news with combat footage. As I recall, admission was fifteen cents.
There were longer war documentaries, too like The Battle of Midway, The Memphis Belle, and The Battle of Russia (see Five Came Back on Netflix). These films tested just how much real war violence the American public could stomach. It turns out; their appetite was insatiable. By the time John Huston’s The Battle of San Pietro and George Stevens’ footage of liberated concentration camps came out near the end of the war, images of real dead and mutilated bodies were accepted public viewing. No broadcast or cable news network would expose their audiences to those kinds of images today.
Newsreels shown in theaters didn’t provide up-to-the-minute war news, but on the other hand, modern TV news doesn’t feature slick productions with theme music by the likes of Richard Rodgers (“Victory At Sea”).
Apparently the atmosphere at all-night movie theaters during WWII was…memorable. One of Ian Toll’s books mentions stepped-up security patrols to keep murder and mayhem among patrons to a minimum.
Here are a couple of examples:
American: WWII HOME FRONT NEWSREEL "AMERICA'S CALL TO ARMS" 70972 - YouTube
British: British Pathe Newsreel - March 17th, 1939 - YouTube
Plus government censorship. It was not until September, 1943 and Life magazine’s photo and editorial “Three Americans” that civilians in the US saw dead GI bodies.
Nearly two years after Pearl Harbor, this was the first time the American public saw up close the true cost of defending freedom. No slogans, flags or marching bands. No parades. Just three lifeless bodies half-buried in the tidal sands. This, the picture said, is what was happening overseas. Sons and brothers and fathers were fighting and dying in far-off places nobody had ever heard of before.
…
To this point in the war, government censors had strictly forbidden public release of any photographs showing dead American soldiers for fear that it would be too demoralizing for the folks back home.
Memory serves, one of the earliest releases were gruesome scenes of the beaches of Tarawa. The public was shocked at the bodies of fallen Marines on the beaches and floating in the surf.
War Correspondents covered the wars for various newspapers. I’ve linked 1942-43.
Ernie Pyle is one of the most famous WWII Correspondents. He died covering the war in 1945. WWII War Correspondent Ernie Pyle - Warfare History Network
Ernie Pyle was a very popular newspaper reporter.