1936. After several private showings, the film was officially released to the public at the Mayflower Hotel on May 10, 1936. Following President Roosevelt's private showing, FDR praised Lorentz for his work and wanted to show it to a joint session of Congress. This would have made The Plow That Broke the Plains the first film to be screened in Congress, but this did not occur due to the House chambers not being equipped to show a film with sound. Although some film reviewers did not agree that The Plow That Broke the Plains was a pinnacle of artistic achievement, praise was almost unanimous and Lorentz became one of America's foremost directors. Following the film's release, members of the Hollywood community claimed that due to the film being created by the government it was, therefore, a propaganda film and not a documentary. For this reason, they refused to show it in theaters. Lorentz traveled the country with the film to convince theater owners to show his film. The Rialto Theater in New York agreed and the public reacted positively. This led to other theater owners showing the film as well. Out of 14,000 commercial cinemas nationally, 3,000 screened the film to an audience of about 10 million in 1937. In addition to independent theaters the film was also shown in school auditoriums and public meeting places as well. According to Robert L. Snyder's book about Lorentz, the filmmaker's favorite comment about the movie was something he heard an audience member say in the row ahead of him: "They never should have plowed them plains." Controversies Distribution Because government regulation forbade commercial theaters from charging admission to see the film, theater owners felt that the government was attempting to use them to distribute propaganda. Additionally, motion picture producers and theater owners felt that government-produced films might compete with their own products and threaten their profits, resulting in Hollywood barring the film from its distribution system. As an excuse to not show the film, commercial theaters argued that at 28-minutes long, the film was too short for a feature but too long for a newsreel. Criticism Further sources of controversy came from the film's interpretation of who was responsible for the ecological disaster of the Great Plains. While newsreels, journalists, and Great Plains politicians blamed the disasters on weather, Lorentz rejected this and instead pointed toward mechanized agriculture and human action as