Pare Lorentz

Journalist and film critic who made two landmark documentaries while serving as film advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt's US Resettlement Administration: "The Plow That Broke the Plains" (1936), about soil erosion in the West, and "The River" (1937), about flooding on the Mississippi. Despite Hollywood's resistance to Lorentz's subsidized films (the studios claimed unfair competition), his socially progressive work received widespread critical and popular support. In 1938, Lorentz was appointed head of the newly-formed US Film Service, a unit responsible for producing some noteworthy documentaries--including his dramatized study of infant and maternal mortality in America, "The Fight for Life" (1940)--before Congress withdrew its support in 1940.