A closer look
Long before David Attenborough became the voice of God, Mary Field was out here in the 1920s pioneering time-lapse micro-cinematography. She was doing groundbreaking, peer-reviewed biological observation on film for the Secrets of Nature series. But because she was a woman trying to sell nature documentaries to theaters full of rowdy men, she was forced to slap on deeply unserious, vaudeville-style voiceovers. Field literally had to trick the masses into learning about fungus reproduction by making it sound like a pub joke.
