Tough 'Ombres and Battleground: The Reel War and The Real War

Broderick | Tough Ombres and Battleground: The Reel War and the Real War Suzanne Broderick Heartland Community College Tough Ombres and Battleground: The Reel War and The Real War Battle ofthe Bulge on film: how real? 62 I Film & History World War II in Film | Special In-Depth Section Hundreds of movies about World War II have been produced. A filmography entitled Hollywood at War lists over three-hundred war movies released between 1939 and 1945 alone. Long after their orginal showings, viewers—including those too young to have known the war— watch these films on late-night TV. On Memorial Day weekend, the Second World War is fought around the clock on cable channels. What is the true relationship between Hollywood warfare and the real war? Was the war the way it is depicted in the movies? Did the war movies that were being shown during the firstyears ofWorld War II have any effect on those young men watching them on the home front? Have any ofthe post-war movies accurately portrayed the war? One way to get the answers to these questions was to query a real-life World War II combat veteran, Harry Miller of Bloomington, Illinois.' Miller was fifteen years old on December 7, 1941, and was drafted when he turned eighteen in 1944. Asked if the war movies he saw during his high school years had any effect on him, he was very blunt: "Yeah, movies like Wa^e Island (1942) and Guadalcanal Diary (1943) made me hate the Japanese ." Such films did not, however, make him "gung ho" about fighting the enemy. He considered Chaplin's TAe Great Dictator (1940) hilarious, but beyond that, he claims that Hollywood war movies of the early '40s had no distinct impact on him. Miller was much more impressed by the newsreels which accompanied the war movies. The "real" war looked exceedingly uninviting, and he, like his buddies, was not anxious to get involved. However, his draft board had different plans. Later, after his combat experience , Miller preferred not to watch war movies; he had seen the real thing. However, one film, Battleground (1949), makes a bold claim of being authentic, realistic and lifelike; and, for the sake ofhistory and film scholarship, Miller generously agreed to watch it and comment on the authenticity of this war film in the light ofhis own war experiences. Battleground, a film about the Battle of the Bulge, was released by MGM in 1949. The movie was directed by World War I veteran William Wellman who had earlier won recognition for directing the war films Wings (1927) and The Story ofGIJoe (194S).2 The screen writer, Bob Pirosh, had been a soldier in the Battle of the Bulge and "had come out of the war with notes on his experience and a desire to do a movie about the Battle of the Bulge."3 In April 1947, Pirosh returned to the battlefields where he had fought. He decided to portray the activities of one rifle squad: without heroics, without fancy speeches, without a phony romance. He wanted to write a picture which would ring true to the men [who had fought there] and which would not be an insult to the memory of those we left there. Pirosh felt that the story of one squad was, in a sense, the story ofall squads .... The important thing is what did it do to us? How did we feel?4 The filmmakers who shaped Battleground, particularly producer Dore Schary, were determined to make their war movie as realistic as possible . To this end, Wellman decided, "I'll make a film about a very tired group ofguys."5 General McAuliffe (the "Nuts!" general from Bastogne) recommended Lieutenant Colonel Harry W. O. Kinnard, who had served under him at Bastogne, to be the technical advisor for the movie during the shooting.6 In The War Film, Norman Kagan observed : The accent was on plausibility: the snow-covered battleground, the clumsy, heavy-coated dogfaces slogging along or digging foxholes or in a swift, confused fire fight with Englishspeaking Nazi infiltrators .... Battleground is really most about the look of combat, what Ernie PyIe called "a look that is the display...