This is the Army (1943): The Show Musical Goes to War

Cabaniss | This is the Army: The Show Musical Goes to War Dan Cabaniss Georgia Institute of Technology This is theArmy (1943): The Show Musical Goes to War / man may give his life to his country in many different ways. "Over There" is as powerful as a cannon. - Franklin Roosevelt, in Yankee Doodle Dandy Getting ready forthe big show. 54 I Film & History World War II in Film | Special In-Depth Section It should come as no surprise that when Hollywood decided to give itself a pat on the back for its collective work in producing propagandiste films during World War II, it chose a musical to do so. As Leo Braudy, Jane Feuer, Rick Altman, and others have pointed out, the Hollywood musical has consistently been a self-referential genre, one in which the apparatus of show-making is foregrounded and what Feuer calls the "myth ofentertainment" is idealized .1 Thus, when composer George M. Cohan is summoned to the White House at the beginning of the 1942 Warner Bros, musical Yankee Doodle Dandy (Michael Curtiz) to receive a Congressional Medal of Honor in recognition ofhis patriotic songs, it seems entirely fitting that President Roosevelt would use the occasion to tell Cohan what crucial work toward winning the war he had accomplished through his popular music. It seems clear, moreover, that the figure of Cohan (played by James Cagney in an Oscar-winning performance) serves as a stand-in for the wartime American entertainment industry as a whole. Just as the President has shown his appreciation for Cohan's cultural contribution to the war effort, the audience in the movie theater is being asked to appreciate the patriotic work of Hollywood filmmakers. This valorization of the "work" of entertainment acquired a particularly heavy charge, ofcourse, in the crisis atmosphere ofWorld War II, when rationing was the order of the day and virtually all Americans were being asked to work long hours, sacrifice leisure time, and put on hold their personal ambitions in order to win the war. For Hollywood filmmakers, then, there was a pressing sense that the movies had to accomplish two tasks at once: first, to give their overworked audience a pleasant diversion from the rigors of wartime production, and at the same time to make an ideological contribution to the war effort itself. Among all the genres at Hollywood's disposal, the musical was best suited to this double-duty. Indeed, according to Rick Altman, the film musical in America had always grappled with the potential clash between work and pleasure: Justifying the entire entertainment enterprise, the musical demonstrates that people who are insensitive to entertainment somehow miss the best part oflife. In an important sense, the American film musical constitutes an apology for its existence: by setting up the work/entertainment polarity in such a way as to demonstrate the incomplete and potentially destructive nature of work ... as well as the desirable qualities of entertainment, the musical justifies its own existence. Instead of simply supplanting the work ethic, however, entertainment values complement it, providing an able and energetic partner for the work ethic's more sober and conservative approach.2 At no other time in American history was this ability to negotiate between the "potentially destructive " nature ofwork and the pleasures ofentertainment more crucial than during World War II: for men, work had become the potentially life-threatening business ofsoldiering, while for women, work had moved outside the home and into industry, posing at least an ideological threat to the life of the American family. Resolving these new tensions was required the Hollywood musical to perform some heavy lifting. To accomplish this task, Hollywood turned to what Altman calls the "show musical" (as distinct from either the "fantasy musical" or the "folk musical ") which, since Lloyd Bacon's 42nd Street in 1933, had been the predominant subgenre of the film musical , building its plot around the "creation ofa show ... with the making ofa romantic couple both symbolically and causally related to the success ofthe show."3 To this basic paradigm were added two new forms: films featuring the servicemen's club (e.g., Stage Door Canteen [Frank Borzage, 1943]; Two Giris and a Sailor [Richard Thorpe...