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GEORGE
RONY independently amassed a
substantial collection of documentary
footatge of 20th century war-torn
Europe from the period of approximately
1900 to 1940, with emphasis on the
Russian Revolution, the formation of
Czechslovakia, the decline of the
Austro-Hungarian empire, the rise of
Italian dictatorship, German
militarism, political cowardice that
led to World War II and important
political figures from England, France,
Austria, Italy and other European
countries. Some of the footage was
public-domain news film. Some was
purchased outright.
RONY
edited the film into a series, Fifty
Years of History, and narrated the
shows with noted philosopher and
long-time friend, Manly Palmer Hall. He
licensed footage to Hallmark
Productions, Inc., which created
Halfway to Hell (exhibited in
theaters in 1953), to NBC for a
television show the same year, and to
KCOP in 1955 for a weekly television
series called Background to
Battle.
Listed
among his film credits are these: (this
list is work in progress as archival
documents continue to be
examined)
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- Writer,
Melody Lane
(1941)
- Distributor,
The Blue Light
(1939)
- Director,
La Tour de Babel
(1949)
- Producer,
Blood Brothers
(1953)
- Contributor,
Halfway to Hell
(1954)
- Translator,
Taras Bulba
(1957)
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Motion
picture producer Leni Riefenstahl,
comments in A Memoir, the
following:
In 1949, another
emigré visited me at my
apartment on Hohenzollernstrasse;
it was none other than Harry
Sokal, my co-producer on The
Blue Light. . . . I was very
angry with him because he had
taken off with the original
negative of The Blue
Light, and claimed that it
had been accidentally burned in
Prague. At the time, I had no
proof that he was lying. It
wasn't until twenty years later
that Kevin Brownlow, the British
film director, told me that the
original negative was in the
United States, in the possession
of a friend of Brownlow's, George
Rony, who, just before the
outbreak of the war, had bought
it from Sokal along with the U.S.
distribution rights. Rony was
able to prove this and, after
some negotiating, he told me he'd
be willing to return my negatives
to me for six thousand dollars;
unfortunately, I didn't have the
money.1
1. Leni Riefenstahl, A
Memoir (Macmillan: New York)
1995, p. 367.
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