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Messrs. Ullman & Seldes spent some $30,000 searching out and buying news photographs from newsreel services and from private sources. The original idea was Mr. Ullman's. Under his direction the old films were restored, re-photographed, in some cases re-timed, and fitted for a sound track. Only in the last two of the seven reels is there any actual sound reproduction. Through the rest runs an impartial discourse where it is necessary to introduce a scene. This was written by Author Seldes, is spoken by NBC Announcer Alois Havrilla, who sounds like and is often mistaken for Graham McNamee. But for the most part the pictures ably tell the story. This Is America may be distributed nationally through United Artists by Messrs. Ullman & Seldes. Pilgrimage (Fox). Except for a Parisian street quarrel which might have been directed by Rene Clair, Pilgrimage maintains a respectable tragic pace. It tells the tale of Hannah Jessop (white-haired Henrietta Crosman) and her son Jim (Norman Foster). Mrs. Jessop wanted Jim for herself, all of him. Together they till the soil of their Arkansas farm, a shadowy and sinister place, until Jim falls in love with Mary (Marian Nixon), a besotted neighbor's daughter. A hayloft and a harvest moon do the rest. Rather than give up her son to Mary, hard Hannah Jessop turns him over to a draft board. Jim goes off to War, leaving Mary with a baby. That removes capable Norman Foster from the film, for when snow flies word comes from Washington that Jim has been killed in France.