“Escapist fare was the general order of the day, but Hollywood was aware too of the need for films extolling the virtues of democracy and exposing the horrors and savagery or totalitarian regimes. America’s motion picture industry rose to the task of tending the spirit of a nation during a perilous time in its history. Here is how Hollywood went to war…”
The story of Hollywood’s relationship with World War II is an extensive one. There are hundreds of films depicting the war at home and abroad, yet because there are so many war films that cover not only World War II but every other war since then, people today take for granted that it was not always easy to produce and release a film about war. The subject matter Hollywood wanted to tackle in the 1930s was more often than not out of sync with what the government and the censorship boards had in mind. This was particularly true of content relating to the war because the United States had a very tumultuous relationship with the rest of the world, and the American people were extremely wary of how the war was going to affect them. In other words, as tempting as it was for Hollywood studios to project onto the movie screen what was happening overseas, in the late 1930s the obstacles seemed insurmountable. Yet because such a great canon of World War II films exists, we know that Hollywood did overcome these obstacles. Placing side by side the following statements shows the significant shift that occurred from 1938 to 1941 regarding the motion picture’s role in portraying the war. The first is from Will Hays, President of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. The second is from Wyoming Senator Joseph C. O’Mahoney.
“[March 28, 1938] The function of the entertainment screen is to entertain by whatever wholesome theme or treatment writers, artists, and dramatists can create. There is no other criterion.”
[June 1943] “We are living in a new age in which the radio and the motion picture have become the most effective means of disseminating news and factual information.”
More important than the shift itself, however, is what factors contributed to the shift. Examining a brief history of censorship, Hollywood foreign markets, pre-war Hollywood filmmaking, the isolationist cause, the relationship between the studios and the government, and finally the relationship between Hollywood and its audience, it is possible to determine how the film industry was able to convince the censors, the isolationists, and the American public that the war picture, like any other motion picture of the day, deserved a place on the movie screen.
The 1930s are often considered the “Golden Age” of Hollywood. Motion pictures still reflected the glamour, decadence, and sexuality of the 1920s, and with the emergence of sound, cinema took on a whole new life. Due to the depression, the industry felt it important to give American audiences escapist fare to help them through the grim reality of the time. “The dominant theme of American movies in the golden age, said critic Parker Tyler, was the ‘success story.’ The movie makers projected their success on the screen to a public that wanted to believe.” Not everyone seemed as eager as Tyler suggests to embrace everything Hollywood was spoon-feeding its audiences. “Worry about the effect movies might have on public morals, particularly those of children…was a recurrent concern.” In 1930, Hollywood agreed to abide by a production code written by Daniel Lord, but the studios tended to ignore the code as is evidenced by the films they released, particularly in 1934. These included Cleopatra, Ecstasy, Murder at the Vanities, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, and Scarface. The films depicted—albeit with great subtlety—sexuality, drug-use, the breakdown of law and order, violence, slavery, and social disobedience.
Not surprisingly, Hollywood was attacked from the outside. In 1934, American bishops of the Roman Catholic Church threatened to boycott the industry. Will Hays, head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (Hays Office), and some alarmed movie executives feared that “unless the trend in pictures was curbed, the federal government would step into censor the movies or break up the industry.” Consequently, Hays upgraded the enforcement mechanism, the Production Code Administration and made Joseph Ignatius Breen, a conservative Catholic journalist, the head of the administration. Films had to conform to Breen’s interpretation of the code to get a PCA seal. Without the seal, none of the Big Eight studios would handle a film, which would effectively kill its market. Because of the code, the subject matter Hollywood would undertake from 1934 to the 1950s was sharply limited.
Industry policy was particularly sensitive about films dealing with foreign counties. This proved to be a major hurdle, as Hollywood grew more and more tempted to fictionalize the European crisis. “Although the Hays Office tried to steer the studios away from political subjects, the movie producers, whether for reasons of conscience, profit, or sheer human interest, could not avoid politics and war.” Besides pressure from censorship boards, Hollywood also felt pressure from abroad. The American movie industry was economically dependent on a world market for the success of its products. In Latin America, for example, some 5000 theaters played American films; in Asia, more than 6000. Europe had by far the greatest number of all—more than 35,000 theaters where American movies were shown. Because of this dependence on foreign markets, Hollywood had to be extremely careful in the way they handled world affairs and especially in the way they depicted foreign leaders. “Any movies that dealt realistically with Mussolini and his new Roman Empire, Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, or the Spanish Civil War, were likely to be banned from thousands of screens in Europe while at the same time being opposed at home by American isolationists. It was a cruel economic choice the movie makers faced, since forty percent of industry revenues were generated overseas, representing the profit margin for many films.” Eventually, the complete intolerance of American films and film practices sealed Hollywood’s fate in dealing with foreign markets. “The Nuremberg Laws banned films with Jewish actors and actresses, cut the number of American pictures that could be shown in Germany to just twenty per year, and imposed severe restrictions on the repatriation of profits…As the stain of Nazi influence seeped across Europe after 1937, Hollywood’s markets progressively dried up. By 1940 they were insignificant.” Because the film industry no longer had to concern itself with whether or not a film would play in Europe successfully, subject matter became a much less sensitive issue to the studios. In fact, several studios began to make explicitly interventionists films. Joseph Breen was deeply suspicious. Breen knew that many of the studio executives were Jewish and was concerned that they were trying to use the Nazis’ treatment of Jews to make propaganda pictures. The issue of Nazism in Hollywood would become a particularly hot topic when America’s favorite comic star decided to take on Adolf Hitler himself.
“The credit for perhaps the most significant antifascist film, both politically and artistically, must go to Charles Chaplin, independent producer, director, writer, and actor extraordinaire, for his 1940 classic, The Great Dictator.”
Although The Great Dictator was released in the fall of 1940, controversy surrounding the film began much earlier. In October 1938, the German council in Los Angeles wrote to Joseph Breen objecting to the proposed picture. In March 1939, Brooke Wilkinson, secretary of the British Board of Film Censors, cautioned Breen that there would be a serious problem if Chaplin made The Great Dictator, because the board enforced a stringent rule that no living personage could be represented on the screen without his or her written consent. Chaplin was thus pressured to cancel the project. He said studio execs at United Artists had told him “they had been advised by the Hays office that ‘I would run into censorship trouble.’” Chaplin was not discouraged and continued with the production. He fully believed that Hitler should be ridiculed. It is fairly certain Chaplin would have done anything to get the film released; however, the outbreak of war in September 1939 relieved the British censor of the need to enforce its censorship rule, which took pressure off Breen to shelve the project. Chaplin completed The Great Dictator over the summer of 1940. Breen, delighted with the film, screened it on September 6. “‘It is superb entertainment,’ Breen wrote, ‘and marks Mr. Chaplin, I think, as our greatest artist.’”
While The Great Dictator was well received, it is important to note why exactly people could handle this kind of “war film” in 1940 and not others. Through 1941, it was required that Hollywood films distinguish between Nazis and the German people. For example, The Great Dictator drove home the point that not all Germans were Jew-hating Nazis. “This approach was both a Hollywood formula and a requirement of the production code. Evil Germans had to be balanced by a few good Germans. The PCA simply took its formula for avoiding controversy—politicians could be corrupt, but not all politicians were—and applied it to Nazi Germany.” The PCA demanded that Hollywood enforce a fairness doctrine, despite how evil Hitler and the Nazi regime were considered to be. Besides The Great Dictator’s “fair” representation of Germans, the film was satirical and Chaplin, the comic genius, was in top form. Chaplin had made a name for himself as a silent screen star and Dictator, being his first sound film, allowed Chaplin to expand even further as a performer. By filtering the idea of Hitler and Nazism through the lens of comedy, Chaplin was able make his own unique political statement.
Even though the critical response of The Great Dictator was generally good, it was that unique political statement that people found to be the weakest element of the film. The general consensus seemed to be that Chaplin succeeded as a comedian, but not as a politician. Critics did not care for the closing speech in which Chaplin makes a passionate plea for tolerance. Breen did not object, perhaps because “the speech expressed a universal longing for peace rather than a specific political course of action.” Critics, however, thought it was inappropriate and superfluous. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times said, “It is as the dictator that Chaplin displays his true genius,” but later added, “The speech with which it ended—the appeal for reason and kindness—is completely out of joint with that which has gone before.” John O’Hara of Newsweek bluntly declared, “No time for comedy? Yes, I say time for comedy. Time for Chaplin comedy. No time ever for Chaplin to preach as he does those last six minutes, no matter how deeply he may feel what he wrote and says.” Regardless of the how some felt about the ending of The Great Dictator, Chaplin turned his political statement into box office gold—“the film grossed $5 million worldwide and earned him a profit of $1.5 million.” Chaplin did not take the criticism lightly, however. When the New York Film Critics awarded him the Best Actor award for The Great Dictator, Chaplin refused it due to the harsh criticism parts of his film received. It is clear that Charlie Chaplin wanted to be taken seriously as an artist, and his intent with The Great Dictator was not solely to humor his audience. Perhaps the American public was not yet ready to have their favorite movie stars remind them about the perils of an impending war. Whether they were ready or not, one maverick director was about to let Americans know that the situation abroad could no longer be ignored.
“Foreign Correspondent engages its world audience on two coexistent levels. The obvious one is the entertaining chase—the cloak-and-dagger work of the New York crime reporter. The second is the flag-waving propaganda calling for an end of American isolationism in World War II.”
Alfred Hitchcock was already an established filmmaker in his native Great Britain by the time he relocated to the United States in 1939. His decision to move could be attributed to the simple fact that Hitchcock wanted more freedom and he believed American audiences would allow him that freedom. Despite what Americans were and were not willing to see, the issue of creative freedom was much more complicated as the United States was growing more involved in the war. “Strong debate about the reversal of the original Neutrality Act was the political atmosphere in the United States when Foreign Correspondent was released. This propaganda-entertainment film was part of the new vanguard of politically oriented films exposing the Nazi menace while calling for military alertness through rearmament.” So with the war moving closer and closer to the forefront of American life and the growing concern people felt toward propaganda and politics in film, how exactly was Foreign Correspondent able penetrate the market?
While it is true that Hitchcock did not blanket his film with comic relief, Foreign Correspondent appealed as a political thriller that incorporated a lot of exciting action sequences and a romantic storyline. Joel McCrea plays Johnny Jones, a newspaper reporter who is sent to Europe to report on the escalating foreign conflicts of the nations at war. There is an espionage subplot involving a Dutch diplomat who is captured by the Nazis after attempting to deliver a secret treaty back to his country. Laraine Day plays an English girl who gets involved romantically with Johnny as they struggle to rescue the Dutchman. Just as Chaplin was the king of comedy at that time, Hitchcock was the master of suspense. And like Chaplin, Hitchcock had an uncanny ability to create the kind of movie audiences wanted to see despite the subject matter. Although Hitchcock and his writing team took great pains to make the film as socially relevant to the time as possible, they were able to package it in such as way as to not make any blatant or offensive political statements. “The film had no problem getting a seal of approval. All references to Spain were removed, and German policy toward the Jews was not dealt with. The picture did not directly attack the Germans or imply that all Germans were evil…While Breen and Hays might have preferred the film not be made, Foreign Correspondent was mild enough to cause little concern.” Critical response of Foreign Correspondent was also remarkably positive. “Time magazine claimed Foreign Correspondent to be ‘one of the year’s finest pictures; noting that Hitchcock’s camera was the best reporter—being in the right place at the right time.” The New York Herald Tribune concurred. “The ending of the film is as challenging a call to arms as the screen has issued to democracy.” With approval from the PCA and a warm reception by the critics, it would seem that Foreign Correspondent was able to escape controversy altogether. That would prove not to be the case, however, when the isolationists got wind of it.
As with The Great Dictator, it was difficult to ignore the message being communicated by the conclusion of Foreign Correspondent. Hitchcock was British, after all, and it was obvious that he felt some misgivings about how successful his country was going to be against Germany without some kind of American militaristic intervention. “The film ended with McCrea, caught in the London blitz with bombs falling in the background, making a passionate plea via radio for American intervention before the lights went out all over Europe.” While many people considered the film patriotic because of its emphasis on coming together for the common goal of democracy, “the isolationists viewed Foreign Correspondent as propaganda because it attacked non-involvement.” At the 1941 hearings investigating propaganda in Hollywood, the film was referred to several times. The interventionists used it in their defense and argued that motion pictures were simply illustrating the reality of the times. Darryl F. Zanuck, Vice President of Twentieth Century Fox said, “Hollywood didn’t create the underworld, nor did it create Hitler and the Nazis. We have portrayed them no differently than they are pictured daily in newspapers, magazines, books, and all other mediums of expression.”
Foreign Correspondent is an important film in Hitchcock’s career because it marked the beginning of a series of extraordinary films about war, espionage, and foreign affairs for which Hitchcock would ultimately be remembered. The real accomplishment, however, is how Hitchcock was able to make and release a film with such controversial subject matter, and convince the American public that it was exactly what they needed to see.
On September 9, 1941 a subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate Commerce began an investigation of “war propaganda” and motion pictures. The Hollywood studio heads faced serious charges as isolationists accused them of embarking on a “devious campaign to inject its entertainment pictures with propaganda and drag America into the war.” The purpose of the hearings was to determine whether Congress should enact legislation to deal with content in motion pictures. Wendell Willkie, the 1940 Republican presidential nominee who had become a supporter of FDR’s international policies, served as counsel for the industry interventionists. He charged that the real purpose of the hearings was to gain publicity for the isolationist cause. Senator Gerald P. Nye, an extreme isolationist from North Dakota, was the committee’s first witness. He attacked Jewish control of the industry and “claimed to think it was ‘quite natural’ that American Jews would support a foreign policy directed against their oppressors.” Willkie fired back by pointing out that within the industry there were “Nordics and non-Nordics, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, [and] native and foreign-born.”
The industry defended itself in several ways. First and foremost, it reverted to its time-worn excuse that it was purely in the business of entertaining. Yet, as it became clear that the hearings were not designed to analyze movies but curtail interventionism, the defense shifted its gears. Isolationists were bent on making connections between FDR’s foreign policy and the motion picture industry, so in effect, they went after Hollywood as a way to protest the government. The industry execs thus took it upon themselves to dispel any kind of connection. Willkie stated, “‘the motion picture industry and its executives are opposed to the Hitler regime…we make no pretense of friendliness to Nazi Germany.” In other words, Hollywood’s anti-Nazi films were not propaganda but accurate portrayals of what was happening overseas. Willkie’s decision to abandon the weak “nothing but entertainment” argument was a brilliant one as he converted the issue from propaganda to a question of fact. He understood that most Americans, although fearful of America’s involvement in the war, detested Hitler and agreed with the way Nazism was represented in the movies. Because Hollywood was handling mildly what the print media had already handled explicitly, Willkie made a convincing argument that movies should be entitled to the same freedom from federal censorship. “By claiming that the industry was producing portrayals of the ‘world as it is,’ he wrapped the studios in the flag of patriotic service. Hollywood emerged as the unlikely hero.” The hearings were adjourned on September 26. On December 8, 1941, D. Worth Clark, the isolationist Democrat who had headed the subcommittee, announced their abandonment. Now that the United States was directly involved in the war, the issue of interventionism was moot. The next big question became how motion pictures would handle the war, and whether or not Hollywood and the government could work together to create the kind of war picture people would be willing to see.
Because of what had happened during World War I, many Americans had serious misgivings about the role of propaganda. In 1917-18 the Committee on Public Information, better known as the “Creel Committee,” launched a propaganda campaign unlike any other in U.S. history. The campaign flooded the country with posters, pamphlets, and “four-minute men,” who gave rousing patriotic speeches in theaters and other public places. What stood out more than anything else, however, was the “hate the Hun” campaign that distorted the perceptions and contributed to the persecution of German-Americans. It also heightened the disillusionment already felt by Americans after the war. People also felt wary because of suspicions regarding British propaganda’s role in maneuvering the United States into war in 1917. For these reasons, Hollywood was apprehensive about producing war films because of the propaganda stigma that would inevitably be attached to them.
FDR and his administration were also unsure of how they should handle the propaganda situation. “When the war broke out in Europe on September 1, 1939, the United States was the only major power without a propaganda agency.” FDR did finally create a propaganda agency in late 1939 called the Office of Government Reports (OGR) but this agency was limited to gathering information about the defense program and informing the executive branch about public opinion. In other words, the agency dealt only with accurate and neutral information. The head of OGR was Lowell Mellett, a presidential assistant and former editor of the Washington Daily News. Despite its informational focus, the agency aroused considerable controversy and Congressional conservatives refused to fund it. Roosevelt used his own office funds to operate the agency until Mellett successfully defended his budget request to Congress in 1940, and OGR became a fully funded part of the defense effort.
FDR took another tentative step in March 1941 when he signed an executive order to create a Division of Information within the Office of Emergency Management (OEM). This agency again dealt only with informational propaganda. While trying to avoid backlash from isolationist groups, the government managed to stir up criticism from interventionists who argued for a more “inspirational propaganda agency.” “They argued that conscription, the recently passed Lend-Lease bill, and a military buildup were not enough.” By the fall of 1941, the propaganda issue had a new critic. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall complained of low morale among draftees, which he contributed to apathy of the general public. FDR responded by placing the responsibility of morale-boosting functions in a newly formed Office of Facts and Figures (OFF) headed on a part-time basis by Archibald MacLeish, the prominent poet and librarian of Congress. MacLeish claimed that the OFF’s sole purpose was to convey accurate information that would neither be “perverted or colored.” Although OFF did rely on informational methods, its practice of subtly manipulating the facts paved the way for future vehicles of “inspirational propaganda.”
If, up until this point, FDR felt an obligation to handle the propaganda situation with kid gloves, it was Pearl Harbor that allowed him to finally deal with it straightforwardly. His first step was to appoint Lowell Mellett coordinator of government films on December 17, 1941. Mellett was expected to establish cooperation with Hollywood and insure that the studios did their part to help the war effort by inserting morale-boosting themes in its films. Thus began a somewhat unsteady give and take between movie producers and government propagandists. Mellett believed that the studios would cooperate with the propaganda program but only if the government did not interfere with the box office. Yet, the situation was sticky because while the government needed Hollywood, “too much propaganda could wreck the movies’ entertainment appeal—the very thing that made the studios attractive to the propagandists.”
In April 1942, Mellett established a Hollywood office, and heading the branch was Nelson Poynter, publisher of the St. Petersburg Times and close friend of Mellett. Poynter did not follow movies but Mellett thought his political understanding was more important than movie expertise. The office came under the Domestic Branch of the Office of War Information (OWI) when it was created in June 1942. The presidential order instructed OWI to “undertake campaigns to enhance public understanding of the war at home and abroad; to coordinate government information activities, and to handle liaison with the press, radio, and motion pictures.” At first, OWI simply assisted Hollywood in the production of government and war-related shorts to be shown with feature films in theaters. Yet, Poynter downplayed the informational short and felt that the government’s message would be most effective if incorporated into feature films. OWI could thus become most helpful if it got to review scripts before production began.
While Hollywood was perfectly willing to produce “four-to ten-minute information films on victory gardens, rubber conservation, or tank production,” it was not so enthusiastic about releasing entertainment features with explicit propaganda themes. Sensitive to the government censorship that had burned the industry so badly in the 1930s, studio executives continued to fear that by releasing any film that could be interpreted as propaganda, the government would again step in and censor it. OWI attempted to convince the industry why their approach would be successful. “Entertainment pictures presumably could reach a mass audience impervious to carefully reasoned writing. OWI believed this could be accomplished if propaganda messages were ‘casually and naturally introduced into the ordinary dialogue, business, and scenes which constitute the bulk of film footage.’” In the summer of 1942, Poynter and his staff created the “Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture Industry.” The manual asked filmmakers to consider the following questions:
1. Will this picture help win the war?
2. What war information problem does it seek to clarify, dramatize or interpret?
3. If it is an “escape” picture, will it harm the war effort by creating a false picture of America, her allies, or the world we live in?
4. Does it merely use the war as the basis for a profitable picture, contributing nothing of real significance to the war effort and possibly lessening the effect of other pictures of more importance?
5. Does it contribute something new to our understanding of the world conflict and the various forces involved, or has the subject already been adequately covered?
6. When the picture reaches its maximum circulation on the screen, will it reflect conditions as they are and fill a need current at that time, or will it be out-dated?
7. Does the picture tell the truth or will the young people of today have reason to say they were misled by propaganda?
With this manual, the OWI effectively created its own production code. Though not as scrupulous and comprehensive as the Production Code Administration’s standards, the OWI code similarly instructed filmmakers on how to present certain subject matter. Instead of being in the business of cutting out and omitting material from movies, however, OWI felt inclined to insert material that would enhance the quality and effectiveness of movies as vehicles to assist the war effort.
With the help of OWI, Hollywood began producing a steady supply of war films that succeeded in educating the public about the war, while also keeping them entertained. While the government and the movie industry would continue dealing with one another throughout the war years, one thing was clear. The subject of war had infused itself onto the American movie screen. Not only had Hollywood convinced the government that the war film was a necessity. By 1943, it had the American public begging for it.
By 1943 it had become clear that American audiences were beginning to relinquish their paranoia and skepticism regarding war films. Whether it was because OWI’s strategy had worked on them, or Americans simply let their guard down, public opinion over the role of the war in Hollywood film had certainly changed. On January 1, 1943, a memo from “America’s Movie Audience” was sent to a variety of Hollywood and other news sources including Fox Movietone News, News of the Day, Paramount News, Pathe News, The March of Time, and Universal News. The memo listed a number of requests.
1. Give us pictures of our men and women in service…behind the lines and at the fighting fronts!
2. Show us the courage and fortitude of our Allies…Bring home to us their contribution of blood, sweat and tears!
3. Portray to moviegoers in the other United Nations and in neutral lands…how Uncle Sam “keeps ‘em rolling” in the arsenal of democracy!
4. Fight phony Axis propaganda with pictorial facts…on the motion picture screens of America and the world.
5. Give us the truth…in pictures…about the war…We can take it!
How can this reversal in public opinion be accounted for? Perhaps people realized that propaganda did not necessarily have to be a negative instrument. There were plenty of films, Foreign Correspondent for example, that could instill in people a desire to fight for something without having to resort to blatant hatred or condemnation of the enemy. When OWI was formed in June 1942, it anticipated these very ideas and took them to heart when working with Hollywood to produce war films. “OWI officials had…learned that hate propaganda was counterproductive and that something more than flag-waving emotional pitches was necessary.”
Yet, even if there still existed certain skepticism about war movies and propaganda, one thing was certain. People were going to the movies again. “After peaking in the mid-thirties, weekly movie attendance had declined in 1941 to 55 million per week, but in 1944 almost 100 million Americans—two-thirds of the population—attended movies each week, and the studios prospered as never before.” Once the United States officially got involved in World War II, Americans could no longer deny that war was the reality of the time. Hollywood and OWI understood that, although the American public had accepted its country’s involvement in the war, they were wary of it, and consequently the two groups worked together to produce the kind of film that would instill patriotism and morale rather than fear or apprehension. The result was a warm reception by American filmgoers who could once again find comfort and reassurance on the silver screen.
Just as it took some time for the United States to accept its role in the war, it took time for American movie audiences to accept the role of war movies in their lives. Because film was such an influential medium in the 1930s and 40s, everyone from the filmgoers to studio execs to government officials to members of clergy had a stake in what found its way into motion pictures. Combined with the hypersensitive censorship boards of the early 1930s, people’s fears over the United States involving itself in yet another world war severely hindered any chance Hollywood had of releasing films that reflected what was going in the world. With all the backlash and criticism toward propaganda, there was a time when it seemed as though the war picture was destined to remain absent from the Hollywood film canon. Were it not for the bravery and creative genius of several maverick filmmakers, the cooperation of the Hollywood movie industry and United States government, and a sudden desire in the American public for honest and rousing war films, it is quite possible that a great many of the most beloved movies in American cinematic history may never have been produced, distributed, or exhibited to a viewing public. As memories of the war fade and first-hand accounts can no longer be obtained, the stories of hardship, sacrifice, courage, and victory that came to define World War II will not be forgotten as cinema has given those stories eternal life.
Complete essay with endnotes available upon request
