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TO REASSURE A NATION: HOLLYWOOD PRESENTS WORLD WAR Il By DAVID E. MEERSE Too young and technologically immature to have played a significant role in the United States' first experience "over there," by the outbreak of the Second World War Hollywood was prepared to participate actively and significantly in the American military experience. To a nation that had been "enlightened" about the role of propaganda in whipping up wartime emotions by the congressional investigations led by Senator Gerald P. Nye and others, the movies were expected to have a tremendous impact on public morale and motivation in wartime. The recognized importance of the motion picture industry in mobilizing public opinion, together with the success of agencies of the British and Canadian governments in making overtly propaganda films, seemed to point to firm government direction and control of the industry once hostilities commenced. And there viere elements in the movie industry who openly advocated such government direction and control. The respected New York Times movie critic, Bosley Crowther, in January 1942, expressed his "disappointment" about the absence of a "plan, officially drawn up" and subsequently declared that "there still is no moral reason which historians will later respect why a medium as vast and potential as motion pictures should not have been coupled by now to a program of national persuasion in this time of our country's direst need. "^ But the national administration eschewed such a policy. In a letter to Lowell Mel lett, Coordinator of Government Films, just eleven days after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt declared, "The Vavld E. Méense is a member ofa the Department ofa Hlstony at S.U.N.y. Fnedonla. This papen was originally pnesented at the Gneat Lakes Hlstony Confaenence In May 1975. 79 motion picture must remain free insofar as national security will permit . I want no censorship of the motion picture." Thus the movie industry was to be relatively free to define its own responsibilities to the nation in time of war as well as the manner in which they would be carried out. Nor was the industry cautious in setting forth its definition of means and ends. As Francis S. Harmon, Executive Vice Chairman of the War Activities Committee of the Motion Picture Industry declared, seven different kinds of films were to be "enlisted in the fight for freedom." These included war information films (documentaries), newsreels, and training films. These three types of films were all designed to convey accurate information about the military aspects of the war. A second category of films would fulfill the goal of director Ernst Lubitsch when he declared that "we must make clear to our audiences whatweare fighting for." Included in this category were films for combat areas, United Nations films, and Good Neighbor films, that would improve understanding among and about all those engaged in the effort to crush the Axis powers, While the films in this category were partially information conveyers, and therefore to be factually accurate, they also contained another element. As Will H. Hayes, President of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, declared, "the motion picture . . . can . . . be a vehicle of emotional surcharge and inspiration ... by making the heroism of their characters reflect the highest values which Americans respect, [and] by focusing the climaxes of their plots upon actions or events which command our admiration." But it was clearly with the seventh type of film that Hollywood expected to render its greatest service. As Francis Harmon maintained, "the primary function of the motion picture theater is to entertain." But this "entertainment " would be enhanced, in Hayes' view, by directors who took "their fictional materials from past or current history," an assertion echoed by Lubitsch' s declaration that "without question, a part—and not only a small one-- of the motion picture program must be devoted to dealing with current situations." "Of incalculable value to national morale," in Harmon's view, were to be the star-studded, staged "war" films "which break wartime tension, relieve factory fatigue, and supply temporary surcease to hearts heavy over lost or absent loved ones. "^ When the fighting stopped, and Hollywood took a retrospective look at its wartime contributions, it found that it...

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