Liberty Theatres of the United States Army, 1917-1919 (review)

{ 152 } BOOK REV IEWS Chambers answers Bruce McConachie’s recent call (Theatre Survey, May 2007) for historian/theorists’ reevaluation of the field in the light of interdisciplinary studies. Messiah of the New Technique is a welcome addition to the history/theory conversation and is valuable to anyone who researches United States theatre, American theatre, and American studies—or anyone who delights in questioning accepted narratives or joining Chambers in his desire “to not only write but to right the historical record” (205). —ANNE FLETCHER Southern Illinois University, Carbondale Liberty Theatres of the United States Army, 1917–1919. By Weldon B. Durham. Jefferson , N.C.: McFarland, 2006. viii + 219 pp. $35.00 paper. As the United States prepared in 1917 to enter World War I—a time of turmoil and often chaos—the War Department’s Commission on Training Camp Activities decided that along with troop mobilization should come entertainment . To facilitate this, a collection of theatre venues would be needed with the stated intent of offering “morally uplifting” plays, movies, and variety entertainments . Consequently, during 1918 and 1919, forty-two Liberty Theatres were designed, constructed, or found, and, for a brief time, managed in virtually the same number of training and debarkation camps throughout the United States. As even Weldon Durham, author of this fascinating investigation, admits, the Liberty Theatres have been little more than a footnote in histories of the home front in the Great War. Indeed, the story of Liberty Theatres as related by Durham might still be a footnote to both military and theatre history (and certainly its brief history might justify such a position) if it were not for the full context of the phenomenon and the intriguing behind-the-scenes portrait vividly presented in minute detail by Durham.What began as a very good 1973 dissertation has evolved over the past decades into a much better book—mature, well crafted, clearly written—a study that illustrates why this aspect of military theatre deserves its place in our history. The dissertation was more tightly (and narrowly) focused; the book provides much more context and places these two years in the bigger picture. It is also a far more up-to-date and multi-layered piece of scholarship than its predecessor, one that makes an important addition to the literature on the military and the theatre. \ { 153 } BOOK REV IEWS In reality, little of a serious nature has been written about military theatricals in the United States (and even less about theatricals by U.S. troops abroad during wartime). Only the USO shows of World War II have received much attention , and most of the books on that subject are largely anecdotal, such as the 1993 Over Here, Over There: The Andrews Sisters and the USO Stars in World War II, coauthored by Maxine Andrews and Bill Gilbert. The earliest military theatricals have been chronicled by Jared Brown’s The Theatre in America during the Revolution (1995), and Charlotte Canning’s The Most American Thing in America: Circuit Chautauqua as Performance (2005) introduces the role of Chautauquas in World War I theatricals, which Durham’s covers in considerably more depth. Durham has expanded his earlier study to include an excellent opening chapter that effectively places in context the theatre in both the United States and the U.S. Army, emphasizing the rapidly changing times and the varied forces that converge to help create camp theatres. A second chapter provides a historical overview of pre–World War I military theatre, followed by two chapters that analyze factors affecting the reformation of military camp life at the onset of the U.S. involvement in the war. Chapters 4 and 5 introduce what for me is the most engrossing and dramatic aspect of the Liberty Theatre phenomenon and the explanation for the ultimate modest success and a large degree of failure of this experiment. This theme then permeates the rest of the study. In a nutshell, the crux of most problems, especially during 1918, was the tension (and often ego-driven dissension) between the Commission on Training Camp Activities (those from the field of recreation) and the commercial entertainment world (most visibly Marc Klaw, a prominent member of the Theatrical...