A Newsreel Cameraman’s View of D-Day

by Audrey Amidon, posted in Motion Pictures

Jack Lieb went to Europe in 1943 with two movie cameras: He brought his 35mm black and white camera to film war coverage for Hearst’s News of the Day newsreels and his 16mm home movie camera to shoot color film to show to his family back home. After the war, Lieb edited the color footage into a film that he would narrate in lectures around the country, in venues as varied as the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C. and his daughter’s fourth grade class in Chicago.

In the film below (Local Identifier: LIEB-JL-1), donated by the Lieb family to the National Archives in 1984, you’ll see D-Day from a perspective different than the official military film or commercial newsreel. With his personal footage, Lieb takes the viewer through the preparations in England, where he spent time with war correspondents Ernie Pyle, Jack Thompson, and Larry LaSueur, to the liberation of Paris and finally into Germany. Along the way, Lieb captured his experience on 16mm Kodachrome, filming everyday people in France and the occasional celebrity, such as Edward G. Robinson or Ernest Hemingway.

Jack Lieb’s lecture film is synched with a 1976 recording of one of his final lectures, recorded by Lieb’s son, Warren.

Jack Lieb’s film story does not begin and end with his D-Day footage, though. By the time he arrived on Utah Beach with a seaborne element of the 82nd Airborne Division, he had already spent nearly two decades shooting newsreel footage.

In 1926, Jack Lieb was a pre-med student at City College of New York. He took a summer job at Hearst and ended up with a 35mm movie camera in his hand, shooting film for newsreels. Lieb never made it back to school–he had fallen in love. Before long, he was on a boat bound for Africa, where he would spend several years filming for a Fox travelogue series called “The Magic Carpet.” While there, Lieb filmed a wide range of subjects, from ethnographic footage of a Maasai wedding, to King Albert I of Belgium’s visit to the Belgian Congo.

Jack Lieb with camera.
(Courtesy of Bette Marshall.)

Eventually, Lieb ended up stationed in Chicago, where he was a regional manager for News of the Day. When the United States entered World War II, Lieb was too old to be drafted, but able and willing to use his camera to serve as witness to the action. With camera in hand, Lieb landed on Utah Beach to film the invasion of Normandy. The lecture footage shows some of the lighter moments when the war correspondents and soldiers had down time, but the job was not safe or easy. Both Ernie Pyle and Bill Stringer, who are featured in the lecture film, were killed while serving as war correspondents. Fortunately, Jack Lieb returned safely to his family in the Fall of 1944, half a year before the fighting in Europe came to an end.

Jack Lieb holding a 16mm camera he used to shoot color home movie footage.
(Still from D-Day to Germany)

Lieb spent more than twenty years with a newsreel camera in hand, finally leaving Hearst to start his own company. In an early venture described in a 1947 Billboard magazine article, Lieb pitched the concept of a syndicated television newsreel called “Teletopics” where local television stations would receive completed silent stories and newscasters would read scripted narration. The idea is strikingly similar to how local news stations receive national stories from larger organizations such as the Associated Press, but Lieb was probably ahead of his time. Teletopics didn’t take off, and Lieb started a film production company. Jack Lieb Productions made early television commercials, industrial films, and even films for the government, including one about hospital ships during the Vietnam War.

D-Day to Germany is remarkable in many ways and certainly unique in the Archives’ holdings. In addition to the obvious fact that the footage is color when most other film records of the same events are black and white, Lieb turns the camera on himself, revealing the cameraman’s perspective, which is not often evident in our motion picture holdings.

Many, many thanks go to Jack Lieb’s daughter Bette Marshall, who graciously provided most of the biographical information for this post.

24 thoughts on “A Newsreel Cameraman’s View of D-Day”

  1. My Grandfather is holding his personal 16mm Bell and Howell Filmo with a winding key and a three lens turret. This is not a 35mm newsreel camera.

    1. Thanks for the additional information! I admit I didn’t look at it closely since I figured that any camera seen in this footage would have to be his newsreel camera. It didn’t even occur to me that he would have brought two personal cameras. I have changed the caption.

  2. Just saw the D Day film on cspan july 4, 2014. Truly fascinating, with wonderful narration by Leib…. especially the footage of street scenes in London and Paris, the people, how they were dressed, the scenes in Paris of the liberation day and the crowds and the shooting, even on that day, terrifying the people trying to celebrate….and so much more…all very real, putting you into the reality of the situations. Thank you so much.

    1. There are two blank spaces labeled Jack Lieb – did you removed photos from your media library? because that will take them off the your post!

      1. Hi! Thanks for the heads up. We recently migrated the blog and have a new template. Many of the image links are broken.

  6. It is a great moment when a individual followes the calling on their life. This was no doubt the best man for this job. As always it is so interesting. Thanks for sharing, both of you.

    Peace to you

  12. When I first really studying history, as a profession, I thought the folks who recorded these events on film must have been crazy. Then I began to understand the critical importance these folks played during times of conflict. One picture or film may be enough to change a heart in a way that the viewer will do everything possible to avoid war in the future. My heart ached when I first viewed copies of the original Nazi films of the concentration camps. Huge bulldozers pushing hundreds of naked, emaciated corpses into mass graves. While the motivation to take this documentation was not to horrify the viewer to but to glorify the might of their power, it still serves as a critically important document.
    Another photo was taken during the Vietnam war (conflict) showing a young girl running down a dirt road as napalm burned her skin off. I never got this image out of my head. In fact, when I see a picture of a historical event, I will never forget it. I feel the anguish, fear, pride or joy that the subjects in the picture display. Conversely, when I see pictures of Hitler, Mussolini, or other monsters in history, I feel anger and disgust. Documenting the horrors of war is one of the most important jobs because we all need to know the cost. We all need to feel the cost of war.

  13. PS. Audrey, you might want to come over to my site and read some of the wonderful comments you are getting for this post. [and they are still coming in!!]

  15. Excellent video on the works of Jack Lieb, a remarkable man who made a great contribution to the history of D day and other notable wartime events.

  16. Just finished Mark Harris’ NYT bestseller ‘Five Came Back’; the story of Hollywood and the Second World War. Jack Lieb’s private wartime footage is great and segway’s beautifully with Hollywood director George Stevens experience and historic color footage of the European Theatre during the Second World War. For those interested in the untold story of how the U.S. government farmed out its war time propaganda effort to Hollywood, the utilization of its great directors and film crews, and the early application of moving pictures to cover war, training films, and propaganda, then ‘Five Came Back’ is a must read.

  18. Absolutely wonderful footage, i would like to pay my full respects to Jack Lieb – Thank you so much!

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