New World Metropolis

Series

Series Name

The March of Time 5th Year

Issue

Issue No.

5

Date Released

1939

Length of issue (in feet)

1500

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1New World Metropolis

Story

Story No. within this Issue

1 / 1

Summary

The March of Time synopsis: By air today New York is only twenty-four hours from England and the Continent, and in this great metropolis, spreading over 323 square miles, seven and a half million people form every race and nationality in the world, live, work and play together. Three out of every four are foreign born or children of the foreign born, who are gradually becoming American citizens, thankful to live in the freedom of a democratic nation. New York’s largest racial group is its Jewish population of two millions - most appreciative of the privileges of democracy. Citizens of nearly every nation in Europe have settled in New York, recreating small old-world districts in the modern city. The largest group from any single foreign country is its one million Italians, most of whom live in a neighbourhood known as "Little Italy". Six hundred thousand Germans and German-Americans have made their homes in a district known as Yorkville. But more sharply set off from the rest of New York than any community of foreign-born are the four hundred thousand American-born negroes. Harlem, spreading over three square miles of uptown Manhattan, is New York’s greatest problem of poverty and economic distress.

In order that these seven and a half million people, representing every race and nation, may live side by side in one city, New York’s government must operate on a scale greater than that of many countries, yet it must deal, like any small community, with the needs and problems which directly affect the daily lives of every one of its people. Pointing out the great importance of an efficient police force in safeguarding the world’s largest metropolis the March of Time shows the innerworkings of the New York Police Department and its up-to-date law enforcement methods. Permitting cameramen to film their methods for the first time in their history, the Police Department co-operated with the March of Time in the production of "New World Metropolis". Elected six years ago, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia chose as his Police Commissioner a Precinct Captain, Lewis J. Valentine, who was hated by old-line politicians because he was incorruptible. Valentine and his group of honest cops has smashed political influence and a once notorious alliance between police and organized crime. And today the city’s nineteen thousand cops are working to restore public confidence in a police department that had long been dishonoured.

The film shows how the Department’s 600-odd radio cars and emergency trucks patrol the city’s 580 miles of waterfront, and how its planes patrol even the air above New York City. Of twelve thousand cases reported last year to the Missing Persons Bureau, only two per cent remain unsolved. In the same twelve months New York cops recovered lost or stolen property worth more than 650 thousand pounds. And both citizens and cops take pride in the fact that their city today has a crime rate lower by 22 per cent than the national average. The New York of today is a monument to seven and a half million people who, working together, have created the greatest metropolis of the world.

Researcher Comments

This story was included in Vol.5 No.13 of the US edition.

Written sources

Fielding, Raymond. The March of Time 1935-1951 (New York, 1978)   p241.
The March of Time Promotional Material   Lobby Card, Used for synopsis
Today’s Cinema   11 October 1939, p20.

Credits:

Production Co.

Time Inc.