The Mad Latvian
From 1906 to 1950, first with Pathe News and later Paramount News, John Dored filmed many of the major news events across the European continent. His colleagues nicknamed Dored “The Mad Latvian,” for he was able to obtain access to events and public figures that one would have to be “mad” to even attempt.
Among Dored’s scoops was the only foreigner to illegally film the funeral of Lenin – which earned Dored an arrest by the KGB and a stay in a Soviet prison. He was only released after intervention from both the British and US governments.
During World War Two, Dored was assigned as the cameraman for the USA newsreel pool in addition to his usual duties with Paramount News. Dored took his job very seriously as a letter he wrote to US Army Major Pelegrin in 1944 requesting transportation after another group of journalists took his car to flee a battle that was to take place shows.
Dear Major,
Usually I always try to get along with my work without troubling anybody, but this time I have to. Hope and expect you can help me out of my present difficulty. It is transportation difficulty. When I left your PRO coming up here, Capt. Hotchkiss said the car has not to return and I can use it as long as I want. Along with me came five journalists who also were supposed not to return to your PRO but would stick around until we all reached Paris. I hoped therefore we all had the same idea and working program and I would not run into transportation difficulties. What really happened, is this: on the very first evening reaching 36 Div. C.P., we all got a briefing and were told – a serious battle is going to take place. Seemingly some of the journalists got cold feed and wanted to leave the place. All five had a conference between themselves and the outcome was, they all left the C.P. half an hour later to an unknown destination and asked me what I intended to do. I had just one answer – I will remain here. Had to unload my equipment and they left in a hurry with the car and trailer and thus, absolutely unexpectedly I was left where I stood without any transportation. I had not seen those men since. As you know, dear Major, I am representing the USA Newsreel Pool and as such have a very great responsibility placed upon me. How can I work and do my duty in a proper way without transportation? Simply, it is not possible. I hope you realise that. The C.P. here is really very kind to me and does all they can for me, but they are very short of transportation themselves and cannot produce a jeep every time I badly need it to go to locations of interest to my film work. Thus, I am loosing very important material. It simply can’t go on like that. I must have transportation, and, with no journalists on board to share it. I trust, you will find a way to satisfy my legitimate request.
Expecting your urgent and kind reply and decision, I am,
Respectfully yours,John Dored
Paramount News and Newsreel USA Pool
Dored retired from Paramount News in 1950 and spent his remaining years living in his wife’s native Norway.
Years later in his memoirs, Dored summed up his career in two sentences – “I’ve always felt limited by scripts and staging, I always yearned for freedom. I became a film reporter to shoot footage of those things for which our Father in Heaven writes the screenplay.”
