One World, Big Screen: Hollywood, the Allies, and World War II

Contents

 Acknowledgments, ix Abbreviations, xiii Introduction, 1  The “Magic Bullet”: Hollywood, Washington, and the Moviegoing Public, 24  “Pro-British-American War Preachers”: Internationalism at the Movies, 1939–1941, 53  One World, Big Screen: The United Nations and American Horizons, 89  Kissing Cousins: How Anglo-American Relations Became “Special,” 136  Courting Uncle Joe: The Theatrics of Soviet-American Matrimony, 169  Negotiating the Color Divide: Race and U.S. Paternalism toward China, 217 Conclusion, 256 Notes, 275 Selected Bibliography, 321 Index, 343  A moment made for the media: the Big Three first meet at 1943’s Tehran Conference to solidify the United Nations, 2 Franklin Roosevelt illustrates Allied strategy during a 1942 Fireside Chat as Americans follow along at home, 97 Humphrey Bogart stars in Sahara (1943), Columbia’s dramatization of Allied inclusivity, 110 Office of Facts and Figures poster portraying China as America’s friend in the fight for freedom, 1942, 114 Office of War Information poster championing the United Nations, 1943, 115 Britons cheer American soldiers parading through London’s Trafalgar Square on United Nations Day, 1943, 120 United Nations Information Organization poster upholding collective security, 131 The Allied family is besieged in Mrs. Miniver (1942), winner of the Best Picture Oscar, 138 The reunion of an American GI and his British war bride in New York City, 1945, 151 U.S. Army staff sergeant Samuel Rochester and his “adopted” mother, Mrs. Norman Rawlence, of Bremerton, England, join hands at the American Red Cross Club’s Mother’s Day Tea Dance, London, 1943, 152 Peter (David Niven) and June (Kim Hunter) Carter are an AngloAmerican couple happily reunited in A Matter of Life and Death (1946), 156 “Uncle Joe” Stalin (Manart Kippen) explains Soviet foreign policy to U.S. ambassador Joseph Davies (Walter Huston) in Mission to Moscow (1943), 179 Aspiring Soviet musician Nadya Stepanova (Susan Peters) meets American conductor John Meredith (Robert Taylor), beginning an international romance in Song of Russia (1943), 201 Detective Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) does his bit for the Allies in Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944), 218 Acting as a surrogate father, an American soldier stationed in China wipes a local child’s face, 225 Gene Tierney in yellowface as Haoli Young, the Eurasian object of the affection of Johnny Williams (George Montgomery) in China Girl (1942), 242 Father Francis Chisholm (Gregory Peck) heals a Chinese boy with modern Western medicine in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), 254 Allied cameramen and photographers cover the Soviet-American linkup at the Elbe River, 1945, 258 Victorious American and Soviet soldiers locked in fraternal embrace, 1945, 259 A jubilant GI and a matronly Briton celebrating V-E day in London, 1945, 260 Newsreel cameras roll as China’s delegation signs the United Nations Charter at the San Francisco Conference, 1945, 262 This page intentionally left blank ...