Film It in France, Build It in Burbank: How To the Victor Paved the Way for Postwar Runaway Productions

In 1947, director Delmer Daves and producer Jerry Wald tried to convince Warner Bros. executives to film To the Victor (1948) on location in France with interiors done on Warner's Burbank lot. Despite the executives' reluctance to approve the faraway trek, Daves and Wald prevailed and proved the viability of international location work. Drawing from various archives and special collections, this article constructs a history of one of the first post–World War II Hollywood productions to conduct principal photography in France. It contends that the film helped lay the foundations for the practices that would characterize Hollywood's postwar runaway productions.