Marvin breckinridge patterson biography

She also was the first woman to head a CBS office when she was put in charge of the network's operations in Amsterdam.
Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson, was an American photojournalist, cinematographer, and philanthropist.
Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson '27 was born on October 2, 1905, to John Cabell Breckinridge, the grandson and namesake of Kentucky Senator John C.

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Marvin Breckinridge

by Charles Tepperman

Marvin Breckinridge was an amateur filmmaker, best known for her 1930 silent film The ForgottenFrontier. This film presents the activities of the Frontier Nursing Service, a group (primarily women) that provided medical services in remote and rural areas of Kentucky. While the film was named to the National Film Registry in 1996, its position as an amateur production, a late silent film, and documentary made outside of commercial production and distribution networks compound its marginality. Despite having a place on the Film Registry, Breckinridge and her films have received little scholarly attention. This neglect cannot be ascribed to a shortage of documentation about her work; archival and historical sources of information about Breckinridge’s life and filmmaking are plentiful. She took meticulous notes during the production of her completed films, and along with her published memoir, these offer us unique access to Brickinridge’s filmmaking activities.

Grandchild of Vice President John Cabell Breckinridge on one side of her f

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When One of “The Murrow Boys” Became a Foreign Service Wife

Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson was the only female member of the original generation of CBS Radio war correspondents known as “The Murrow Boys.” A photojournalist and cinematographer, she studied French, German, Italian, and modern history at Vassar College. While there, she also helped found the National Student Federation of America, and in that way met Edward R. Murrow.

Travelling to Europe in 1939 on photojournalism assignments, Breckinridge was in Switzerland when the Nazis invaded Poland, starting World War II. She traveled to London to photograph the evacuation of English children, one of only four American photographers in England for the first months of the war. In November, Edward R. Murrow invited Breckinridge to join him in a CBS radio broadcast about the changes the war had brought to English villages, and then others. Urging her to speak in a deep voice while broadcasting, he hired her as the first female news broadcaster for the CBS World News Roundup to report from Europe.

She ended up broad

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Today in media history: In 1939 Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson became one of the first female CBS broadcast journalists

Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson, one of the first female CBS broadcast journalists, was born on October 2, 1905. At the beginning of World War II she served as part of Edward R. Murrow’s team for the CBS radio program, “World News Roundup.”

In the following 1940 audio recording she reports on Adolf Hitler.

The following excerpt comes from a Library of Congress exhibit.

“When World War II broke out in 1939, freelance photojournalist Marvin
Breckinridge Patterson took the first pictures of a London air-raid
shelter. She was, however, new to radio when friend Edward R. Murrow
hired her as the first female staff broadcaster in Europe for CBS.
….One of only a handful of American women in Europe working in radio,
Patterson was among the first correspondents to use a new short-wave
transmitter to broadcast on location. Of her early broadcasts, Murrow
told Patterson: ‘Your stuff so far has been first-rate. I