Thorny Issues

Fyne | Thorny Issues Robert Fyne Kean University Rjfyne@aol.com Thorny Issues Paul M. Edwards. A Guide to Films on the Korean War. Greenwood Press, 1997. (149 pages, $59.95) As a motion picture entity, Hollywood's portrayal of the Korean Conflict—the undeclared war that lasted from 1950 to 1953 between United Nation's forces and North Korean nationals—appears modest when compared with the hundreds ofWorld War II photoplays produced before U.S. GIs, stationed inJapan, were ordered to halt the 38th parallel invasion . While the disgruntled foot soldier, now in the thick of battle, fought to contain "communist" expansion, the stateside filmmakers, heeding their country's call to arms, geared up a second time to show the American people the celluloid invincibility ofJeffersonian democracy. Moviegoers, now watching new war screenplays in their local theaters, initially applauded, but slowly lost their enthusiasm for combat pictures . As the Korean hostilities entered their second year, one thing was apparent: the glory days of the propaganda film, as personified by Marion Morrison, were over. Why was this? What happened? Why did Hollywood turn out approximately 30 titles by the time the July 1953 Panmunjom armistice ended all fighting? What halted this flag-waving era? These are some of the thorny issues that Professor Paul Edwards looks at in his exhaustive study, A Guide to the Films on the Korean War. As Dr. Edwards explains, the Korean War emerged at a point when television sets began to show up in American homes and their nightly news reports—still in rudimentary format—provided a continuous source of information for an audience weaned on radio reports from the last war. Almost immediately, this new technology, the "tube," began to "push the movie business aside." Entertainment, not war, became a dominant Hollywood catchword as cinema moguls, with their dollar-sign eyes glued to the bottom line, ordered less killing and more dancing. Soon Korean War scripts became a scare item. The first Hollywood tides came outin 1951 (a motion picture, like gestation, requires about nine months' preparation) and now American audiences cheered when Sgt. Gene Evans zapped a communist sniper (The SteelHelmet), Lt. Richard Emory destroyed a strategic bridge (Korea Patrol), Commander William Holden steered his underwater vessel into enemy territory (Submarine Command ), while Sgt. William Phillips helped his inexperienced soldiers blowup an ammunition dump (A Yankin Korea). In all, nine films were released in 1951, another nine in 1952, plus ten more in 1953. Just twenty-nine pictures (approximately halfwere B-titles) during a conflict thatlasted thirtyseven months. By contrast, during this same diree-year period, more than fifty World War II Hollywood storylines appeared. Clearly, the adulation ofa recent global victory offered more excitement and greater vicarious thrills than the current fighting on a faraway, Oriental peninsula, a country many Americans knew nothing about. After the armistice, other photodramas trickled out of Tinseltown. In Men ofthe Fighting Lady (1954) Lt. Van Johnson blasted off the carrier deck to assault the inland enemy , while Lt. Richard Conte's squad routed the communist foe in Target Zero (1955). In Battle Hymn (1957) Colonel Rock Hudson, a flying ace, helped some South Korean orphans find sanctuary, Lt. Gregory Peck fought for a strategic position in Pork Chop Hill (1959), and Marine Sergeant Robert Webber led a group ofmisfits to blow up an enemy tunnel in The Nun and the Sergeant (1962). But one picture said it all. In 1970, M*A*S*H lampooned the futility ofwar as incompetent officers, sex-starved nurses, and illogical military regulations (the SOP's) careened offeach other and the results were hilarious. This watershed title, as Dr. Edwards notes, did not wave the Red, White, and Blue. Instead, "the purpose ofthis dark comedy was to portray the farce ofall such military campaigns, especially the one in Vietnam." After M*A*S*H, where could Hollywood go with the Korean War film? Basically no where. In 1977, Universal's MacArthurheaped praise on America's popular hero, portraying the five-star commander as a modern-day deliverer and in 1981, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon produced Inchon, an overpriced potboiler highlighting this famous September 1950 port invasion. According to the Unification Church...