Sunday,September 21 at 9:30 pm. Power for the Parkinsons, narrated by broadcast icon Walter Cronkite, tells the compelling story of the making of the classic New Deal documentary film Power and the Land. In 1939, 75% of American farms were without electricity. While American towns and cities were bright with light, farm families were reading and working by the light of kerosene lanterns. Farm women on wash day pumped water by hand, heated it over a coal stove, then pounded their clothes on a scrub board and hung them out to dry. Without indoor plumbing and bathrooms, family members faced the long walk out back to the "privy." In 1939, FDR's Rural Electrification Administration asked noted filmmaker Pare Lorentz to make a film that would show the advantages of bringing electricity to the farm. After writing a rough script, Lorentz hired Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens who then brought together an "all star" team featuring Arthur Ornitz and Floyd Crosby as cinematographers, Stephen Vincent Benet as the author of the narration, and Douglas Moore as the composer. Ivens and Helen van Dongen supervised the final editing. Power and the Land, which premiered in St. Clairsville, Ohio, on August 31, 1940, was subsequently shown to millions of American farmers, building public acceptance for the program and paving the way for the modernization of American agriculture.