THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE: Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder By Kim Luperi

Released near the end of WWII, THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE (’45) thoughtfully presented a timeless tale of love and the true nature of beauty to a war-weary nation. But it also dives below the surface, imparting sensitive commentary on society’s standards of attractiveness and belonging, matters of which always seem to remain relevant even as the world changes. 

In THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE, "homely" Laura (Dorothy McGuire) works as a housemaid at the cottage where handsome Oliver (Robert Young) and Beatrice (Hillary Brooke) plan to spend their honeymoon. However, WWII interrupts those nuptials, and a year later, Oliver gets discharged from service with visible battle scars. Bitter and almost driven to suicide, he shuts himself out from the world in that same cottage, where he befriends Laura and blind WWI veteran John (Herbert Marshall). Out of loneliness and convenience, Oliver and Laura marry, but something magical happens once they do: their physical imperfections melt away, but only to them, as love grants them the gift to see each other as they want to be seen.  

Sir Arthur Wing Pinero penned the source material in 1922 in part to provide a confidence boost for injured WWI veterans. His play first hit the screen in 1924, and two decades later, WWII offered a timely background to update the story with similar effect; in fact, Variety predicted the picture would inspire tolerance and “make rehabilitation of the boys easier.” Almost a century after the story’s debut, The Enchanted Cottage’s themes continue to endure. 

WWII expanded women’s roles, making it more acceptable for them to trade, to an extent, elegance for practicability and comfort, especially those who worked in factory jobs vacated by men. Even so, media and pinup photography highlighted beauty and desirability, confirming both genders “assigned great importance to female attractiveness,” as Susan M. Hartmann wrote in The Home Front and Beyond. Indeed, women’s magazines continually emphasized traditional femininity and glamour, while publications that men flipped through accentuated the same – and more overt sexual appeal, too. 

As evidenced by her perceptive reaction to the shattering rebuffs she receives from servicemen at a dance, Laura does not fit the traditional modes of rouged-up style. Growing up in the internet age with similar pressures of glamour and perfect bodies everywhere I clicked, I identified with the humble and thoughtful Laura. Sure, society at large may not label her as physically attractive, but her appeal lies in the way she defends her worth and lives life on her own terms. The film presents her as more of a plain Jane, and viewers are privy to her compassionate character, which makes us root for her. That said, there has always existed a stark difference between the fantasy served up in media and women’s experience in the real world. Just like WWII opened up opportunities, modern women have access to a breadth of possibilities that have also altered how we live and look. Even though more diverse images of beauty are disseminated today, we still constantly consume meticulously crafted physical representations few can actually attain. The weight of 1940s societal pressures obviously left Laura with emotional scars, as such unreasonable demands still have the ability to do today. 

Many soldiers returning from WWII also faced unrealistic expectations. As Mark D. Van Ells reported in To Hear Only Thunder Again, self-help books counseled veterans’ families to show patience, support and encouragement in difficult situations, which Oliver’s support system obviously didn’t do as he seeks to come to terms with his injuries. “Sensitivity seemed in short supply,” Thomas Childers remarked in Soldier from the War Returning when commenting on the stares and whispers disabled veterans regrettably encountered in public, which made many reluctant to venture out. That same social stigma and lack of empathy and kindness for one another, especially those who look different, sadly continue for too many today through bullying. In fact, internet anonymity seemingly gives people carte blanche to act much more cruelly online. 

As Oliver despondently admits to John, he just wants his old life back. John W. Jeffries observed in Wartime America that post-war magazines and newspapers focused on getting back to normal, like going on trips and picnics. For disabled veterans, though, their new normal necessitated a completely different existence. Today, people feel similarly as we’ve lived with the COVID-19 pandemic for over a year. Many grapple with re-entering a society that looks unlike the one we left, and many more deal with tremendous loss and life-changing repercussions from the virus.

The outsider status imposed on Laura and Oliver draws them together in their own secluded world where they fit in. In the modern day, those who feel ostracized from society can find a sense of belonging with like-minded friends and companions around the world through online groups, social media and, of course, dating apps. Then as now, we just want to connect with others – and sometimes, as THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE reminds me, we have to look past the surface and embrace the true self that lies just beneath.

Mickey Rooney’s Best Performance By Jessica Pickens

Mickey Rooney’s home studio wanted him to serve his country during World War II … but not in the way that you think. During World War II, Hollywood film studios helped express patriotic ideas through film. This could be through a film on soldiers experiencing military life, depicting Americana or Americans on the World War II homefront making sacrifices for those overseas.

As Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s top box-office draw, Rooney was cast in homespun comedies and musicals with wholesome values. Since 1937, Rooney starred in the Andy Hardy film series, where he played a teenager that figured out life, love and turned to his judge father for a “man-to-man talk” when he needed help. In total, there were 15 Andy Hardy films from 1937 to 1946 (and one later in 1958 with Andy Hardy as an adult) and they were hugely successful for the studio.

MGM felt that Rooney’s films, like Andy Hardy, personified American ideals and what servicemen and women were fighting for overseas. At least … that’s what MGM told the draft board.

With the war raging overseas, it was a real possibility that Rooney would be drafted, especially when other MGM contract players enlisted or were drafted. But studio heads wanted to keep Rooney out of the war and in front of film cameras, according to his biographers Richard A. Lertzman and William J. Birnes.

In 1942, Eddie Mannix, MGM executive and “fix it” man, sent formal documents to the local draft board to get Rooney an occupational deferment. Mannix cited the Andy Hardy films and their patriotism and that Rooney would soon begin production on another film important to the American homefront, THE HUMAN COMEDY (’43). Lertzman and Birnes noted that Mannix also stated the main reason MGM didn’t want Rooney in the military: the studio would lose millions.

The appeal was denied, but Rooney received an extension; allowing him to make THE HUMAN COMEDY. Based on a story by William Saroyan and directed by Clarence Brown, THE HUMAN COMEDY is a quiet story that follows an American family, the Macauley’s, during a year of adjustments in the small town of Ithaca. The film is narrated by Mr. Macauley, played by Ray Collins, who died two years prior. The eldest son Marcus (Van Johnson) is drafted. To help support the family, teenaged Homer (Rooney) gets an evening job in the local telegraph office. Homer’s family is rounded out by Ma (Fay Bainter), his sister Bess (Donna Reed) and his five-year-old brother Ulysses (Jackie “Butch” Jenkins).

As Homer gets more comfortable in his job, he matures and feels like everyone around him is changing — when it’s really just that he is growing up. As a telegraph delivery boy, he takes difficult messages to mothers who have lost their sons, and he has the responsibility of looking after alcoholic telegraph operator Willie Grogan, played by Frank Morgan. Everyone around Homer also changes and adapts. Bess and her friend Mary allow three soldiers on furlough to join them at the movies; knowing that soon they will see action on the battlefield. Homer’s boss Tom Spangler and socialite Diana Steed marry — bridging a social class gap and realizing that they are more similar than they think. Even Ulysses starts to learn more about life around him, like what it means to be afraid.

While the entire cast of notables play their roles superbly, Mickey Rooney is the standout performance in THE HUMAN COMEDY, and earned an Academy Award nomination for the role. In many of his other films, Rooney’s characters were variations of his Andy Hardy character. It didn’t matter if Rooney was portraying Huckleberry Finn or putting on a musical show with Judy Garland, shades of Hardy shine through.

But in THE HUMAN COMEDY, he plays the role in a restrained and mature manner. He’s emotional but doesn’t overact. It’s one of Rooney’s best performances. Perhaps because of a warning director Clarence Brown gave him: “The first time you shed an unnecessary tear or start any of the mugging you’re famous for, I’m going to halt everything, walk right out in the middle of the set, and give you a swift kick in the pants.”

Despite the early admonishing, Brown later said that Rooney was one of the greatest film talents and “could do no wrong in his book,” according to Brown’s biographer Gwenda Young. In one scene, Rooney had to emotionally read a telegram and react to the bad news. Brown was amazed that with each take, Rooney would “read it as though he’d seen it for the first time.” Brown and Rooney both later said that THE HUMAN COMEDY was one of the best films they made.

The film also features new talent such as Van Johnson, Donna Reed, Don DeFore, Barry Nelson and Robert Mitchum in his first film role.

Released in March 1943, the film garnered mixed reviews from critics, but ultimately was a success. Critics like Bosley Crowther of the New York Times said it was charming and had “moments of extraordinary beauty” but was also filled with “maudlin gobs of cinematic goo” when it came to some of the sermon-like dialogue. Critics overseas, who were closer to the battlefield, struggled with the message of “all men are angels,” according to Young.

As Rooney was filming THE HUMAN COMEDY, Mannix continued to submit appeals to the draft board from August 1942 to February 1943. Studio physician Dr. Edward Jones even stated that Rooney had a heart flutter, classifying him as 4F — unfit for duty, according to Lertzman and Birnes. Eventually, Rooney was able to serve his country more than in his film roles. Rooney was reclassified as 1A and he was enlisted in the Army in June 1944. Rooney later said he was proud of his service and continued to support veterans and attend World War II veteran ceremonies, including leading the Memorial Day Parade in Washington, D.C. in 2008.

From War to Pandemic, We Salute Our Medical Heroes By Kim Luperi

“War is not only a man’s business,” the French documentary WOMEN AT WAR 1939-1945 (2015) cautions. “Nevertheless, men always forget, once wars are over, women’s key role in conflicts.” Women participated in WWII in ways that changed history and inspired future cultural and social movements: Keeping the home fires burning, working in factories, piloting planes, going undercover as spies, coordinating the resistance, caring for injured soldiers. TCM’s September spotlight “Honoring Our Medical Heroes” celebrates the incredible contributions medical personnel made during wartime. Re-visiting CRY ‘HAVOC’ (’43) recently reminded me of the astonishing valor women displayed on the front lines during WWII, and I couldn’t help but notice subtle parallels to those on the front lines fighting against the coronavirus pandemic today.

CRY ‘HAVOC’ follows a troop of female refugees – including Pat (Ann Sothern), Grace (Joan Blondell), Connie (Ella Raines) and Luisita (Philippine-born Fely Franquelli) – who volunteer as aides at an Army field hospital in Bataan in the days before the Allies surrendered to the Japanese. Led by two officers, Captain Alice Marsh (Fay Bainter) and Lieutenant Mary Smith (Margaret Sullavan), the diverse group are thrust into peril as they tend to wounded soldiers in a treacherous environment with dwindling supplies. With Japanese troops advancing, their character and courage are tested as their fate lies in the balance.

CRY ‘HAVOC’ was based on Allan R. Kenward’s play showing “life of a nurse at its very worst,” Variety commented during the film’s September 1942 opening in Hollywood. Two weeks later, MGM snatched up the screen rights for $20,000. The film adaptation bears strong evidence of its stage origins, particularly in its setting, as it takes place mostly underground in the women’s barracks; however, the actresses’ resilient performances effectively convey the anxiety, agony and horror nurses in the Philippines endured and the bravery they demonstrated in the face of extreme adversity.

In addition to the character deletion of an undercover Nazi spy from the movie version, the play also differed in its darker ending: The Japanese take the nurses captive and a barrage of gunfire erupts offstage, confirming their fate. I imagine that resolution was much too bleak for the screen, especially as the military still needed nurses to enlist in 1943, so CRY ‘HAVOC’ fades to black after the women’s detainment, leaving their ending up in the air. Considering the action takes place on Bataan, these final frames reminded me of the Angels of Bataan, the group of almost 80 US nurses who became Japanese prisoners of war in 1942. Not only did each of those nurses survive the three years they were interred in prison camps, but they banded together to valiantly continue supplying medical care to those held captive with them as they faced starvation and illness themselves.

More than 59,000 women served as nurses during WWII, working closer to the front lines than any other women in uniform. According to Judith A. Bellafaire’s brochure “The Army Nurse Corps in World War II,” their expertise and perseverance resulted in an extremely low number of post-injury soldier deaths despite some hospitals treating five times as many patients as they had capacity for. In the Philippines specifically, where CRY ‘HAVOC’ was set, nurses faced hazardous conditions (open air hospitals, kamikaze attacks, malnutrition), environmental factors (an intense tropical climate, water shortages) and disease (malaria, dysentery, dengue fever). Yet, like the volunteers in the movie who were given the option of leaving, many fought through the hardship, treating the sick and wounded as well as they could despite the circumstances.

The characters in the movie who put their lives in harm’s way to care for others reminded me of the sacrifices many are making today. The impetus for fellow aide Flo (Marsha Hunt) recruiting the volunteers in CRY ‘HAVOC’ was straightforward: The few nurses there are overworked and desperately need help. (Nor do they possess adequate medical provisions to treat a never-ending flow of wounded soldiers, but the volunteers couldn’t solve that issue.) This situation echoes the tragic reality of overtaxed doctors and nurses today who are tirelessly fighting a novel coronavirus with insufficient supplies as patients fill ICUs.

I was also struck by the similarity in seeing civilians step up and contribute on the front lines, a place most of them never thought they’d be; in CRY ‘HAVOC’, women with scant medical knowledge provide life-saving care on the battlefield, and this year, essential workers – from grocery clerks to postal workers and everyone in between – continue to show up and put their health at risk to ensure that life can continue as a pandemic rages. While the background situations may differ, these parallels provide an important reminder to recognize and applaud the sacrifices of those who serve for the greater good of humanity – in any capacity.

The Atomic Bomb on Film: Remembering Hiroshima By Kim Luperi

Filmmakers take a position in the way they showcase their subject, especially when confronting the horrors of war and national tragedy. One such event that Japanese cinema has grappled with for decades is the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945, which, along with the bombing of Nagasaki three days later, took the lives of over 200,000 people and hastened the end of WWII.

Two of the first Japanese films to show the attack on Hiroshima and its aftermath were CHILDREN OF HIROSHIMA (’52) and HIROSHIMA (’53), and I was intrigued that both pictures were commissioned by the Japanese Teachers’ Union (JTU), based upon the same book and produced in quick succession. But how come it took seven years for filmmakers to address the bombing? Well, following Japan’s surrender in 1945 came the American occupation, which shifted the Japanese film industry from wartime propaganda to occupied propaganda. Among the suppressed subjects were the atomic bomb and nuclear warfare, partly for fear that showing the Japanese people the real destruction and suffering the bombs caused “would sway public opinion against the U.S.,” Matthew Edwards explained in The Atomic Bomb in Japanese Cinema: Critical Essays. Only when the occupied forces left Japan in April 1952 were filmmakers free to explore defining wartime events through a cinematic lens.

The story of these two adaptations begins with the JTU’s insistence that the bombing of Hiroshima be documented and shared widely. As explored in Kazu Watanabe’s illuminating Criterion.com article “A Tale of Two Hiroshimas,” one reason the JTU ardently pushed the subject was because many teachers felt complicit in disseminating a wartime philosophy that led students to their deaths. That awakening gave way to the slogan, “Never send our students to the battlefield again.”

With that, the JTU contacted director Kaneto Shindô, a Hiroshima native, to adapt Children of the Atom Bomb, Arata Osada’s 1951 collection of essays by young bombing survivors. Cameras began rolling on the adaptation, CHILDREN OF HIROSHIMA, a mere month after the occupation ended. The movie centers around a schoolteacher, Takako Ishikawa (Nobuko Otowa), who returns to Hiroshima years after her mother, father and sister died in the bombing. There she visits with former students and witnesses many of the enduring hardships citizens live with daily.

CHILDREN OF HIROSHIMA combines documentary-style realism and melodramatic flourishes that frame the survivors’ palpable sense of grief, determination and precarious hopefulness. In choosing a protagonist who is a victim herself but also detached from the reality of day-to-day life in Hiroshima, Shindô provides survivors and outsiders a window into which they can identify with the painful effects of this horrific event.

Despite a positive reception internationally that included a screening at the Cannes Film Festival and peace-related awards from the likes of the British Film Academy, the film was “promptly dismissed” by the JTU “as largely ineffectual,” according to Mick Broderick and Junko Hatori’s essay in The Atomic Bomb in Japanese Cinema. In the preface for Children of the Atom Bomb, Arata described the kids’ stories as "outrage against the war that took their beloved family members from them; and a heart-rending prayer and call for peace,” and though CHILDREN OF HIROSHIMA embraced that sentiment, it was much quieter with its convictions.

Thus, the JTU commissioned a second adaptation of Arata’s anthology for a broader denouncement of war and a more unflinching depiction of the bombing and its fallout. As with CHILDREN OF HIROSHIMA, Hideo Sekigawa’s HIROSHIMA mixes a realistic quality with dramatic touches, though the tone is more fervently anti-war. In contrast with Shindô’s film, HIROSHIMA bluntly calls a number of issues out: It insinuates American racism against the Japanese, details discrimination faced by survivors, shows the terrible effects of radiation poisoning and critiques American AND Japanese forces and government. The picture also features less of a narrative structure, as scenes of pre-atomic city life, the bomb dropping and the agonizing aftermath are intermixed with storylines following an orphaned survivor who turns to gambling and a family reunification. I found sequences displaying injured survivors particularly haunting, with a symphony of distressed children yelling “mother” in Japanese echoing in my head long after the final frame.

While HIROSHIMA’s tone satisfied the JTU, the film’s distributor found the content too anti-American and requested cuts the JTU didn’t want to comply with. Without edits, no major Japanese studio would release HIROSHIMA, prompting the JTU to self-distribute it. The film arrived stateside in 1955, and despite being a modified version, its message resounded, with The New York Times writing “the material is extraordinary – nightmarish, agonizing and insane” and Variety calling it a powerful “propaganda weapon.” (CHILDREN OF HIROSHIMA didn’t make it to the US until 1962, so HIROSHIMA provided most American viewers their first glimpse of the bomb’s devastation.)

An estimated 90,000 residents appeared as extras in HIROSHIMA, including some victims who brought personal possessions from the bombing as props. Survivor Yuriko Hayashi participated in the filming because, as she noted years later, "I thought I should say what I had to as someone who was in Hiroshima at the time.” The stories and courageous participation from those who experienced this trauma make both pictures compelling historical commentaries and harrowing reminders of the shattering human cost of warfare.

There Is No End to the Story: Samuel Fuller’s THE STEEL HELMET By Jessica Pickens

As his boat moved inland to Omaha beach, he saw bloody bodies floating in the water. Some were alive and begging for help. At age 32, director Samuel Fuller was part of the Normandy invasion during World War II. As he and his unit made their way through the water to the beach, some around Fuller were hit and never made it to the beach. “It was horrible. Worse than Dante’s Inferno,” Fuller wrote in his autobiography A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking. “I swallowed a ton of salt water mixed with American blood.”

Memories of June 6, 1944, would change Fuller’s life forever. And when he turned to filmmaking, scenes from this day and his World War II days seeped into his storylines and imagery. Fuller was not only part of the D-Day invasion on Omaha Beach, but he also took part of Operation Husky, the allied invasion of Sicily, and the invasion of North Africa. And he liberated the Falkenau concentration camp. Through it all, he kept notes. Scenes in his films were based on moments he witnessed during war from a severed arm with a wristwatch in THE BIG RED ONE (’80) to wanting a bullet hole in a helmet for luck, like in THE STEEL HELMET (’51).

Before the war, Fuller wrote screenplays in Hollywood. When he returned, he not only wrote screenplays but began directing films; making his feature-length directorial debut in 1949. It was his third feature film, THE STEEL HELMET (’51), that established Fuller in Hollywood and caused the public to take notice—though not all of that attention was positive. The film was written, directed and produced by Fuller. He focused the film on his war experiences, but instead of setting the story during World War II, he made the film contemporary with the current, less-popular conflict, the Korean War. While hundreds of World War II films were made each year in America from 1941 to 1945, fewer Korean War films were made, since Americans were not enthusiastic about another war.

Fuller felt that the bravado in most war films was fake. “You never saw the genuine hardship of soldiers, not ours or the enemy’s, in movies. The confusion and brutality of war, not phony heroism, needed to be depicted,” he wrote.

THE STEEL HELMET follows a rag-tag, mismatched group of soldiers of different backgrounds, races and creeds as they fight in the Korean war. Sergeant Zack (Gene Evans) is the only person in his unit that survives an ambush from the North Koreans. He is helped by a South Korean child, who he nicknames “Short Round,” played by William Chun. Though the rough and independent Zack doesn’t want Short Round in toe, the child follows just the same. As they travel, they pick up other stragglers, including Corporal Thompson (James Edwards), a Black medic, and inexperienced Lt. Driscoll (Steve Brodie) leading a patrol. There are racial tensions in the group, but they have to unite when they are under the attack of snipers and outfit a Buddhist temple as an observation post. In the post, a North Korean major is also hiding out. Knowing of racism in America, the North Korean major tries to divide the group by discussing inequality in their country.

Sergeant Zack is the anti-hero, and not the typical soldier you would see in a 1940s World War II film. "I was determined to make it look real; my soldiers are real and deeply flawed,” Fuller wrote in his autobiography. “War brings out the best and the worst in you.” A major studio heard about Fuller’s film and offered to produce it with John Wayne in the lead as Sgt. Zack. Fuller declined. “That would have taken all the reality out of the film. This wasn’t a gung-ho war movie … With Wayne, I’d end up with a simplistic morality tale,” Fuller wrote.

Casting Evans as the lead role was a gamble. At that point in his career, Evans had acted in 12 films, all largely uncredited. THE STEEL HELMET would be Evans’s first leading role and casting him was a decision that wasn’t fully supported by executive producer Robert L. Lippert. In fact, associate producer William Berke tried to fire Evans and pay him off so that a more famous actor could play the lead role. When Fuller learned this, he was furious and fought to keep Evans in the film.

Throughout the story, Fuller used his real life experiences. For the closing scene, Fuller said, “We shot the scene to look like a horrible nightmare, harkening back to the horrible images I’d never forget from Omaha Beach.” Rather than ending the film with THE END, Fuller’s end card reads “There is no end to this story.” He felt "until we end the violence, this is just one episode in the continuum of horrible war tales. Violence begets violence."

The exterior shots were filmed at Griffith Park, with UCLA students dressed as Korean soldiers. THE STEEL HELMET was shot in less than two weeks at under $200,000 and was released after only six months of the United States being in Korea. The film was successful when it was released, but also “all hell broke loose.” Reporter Victor Reisel called Fuller “pro-communist and anti-American,” because of the film, and reporter Westford Padravy said that the film was “financed by Reds.”

Accusations didn’t end in the newspaper. Fuller was investigated by the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover and was summoned to the Pentagon to be questioned by 20 officers who had just watched the film. The group questioned the fact that a character was named Thompson, which apparently was a communist code word. They also said there was no such Buddhist temple in Korea, which Fuller showed them on a map, and were concerned with the depiction of killing a POW. Despite the pitfalls, studio heads were contacting Fuller to hire him. He went with 20th Century-Fox because Darryl F. Zanuck asked Fuller the question that eluded to creative freedom: “What story do you want to make next?”

After THE STEEL HELMET, Samuel Fuller continued to make unconventional and controversial films. And with several of the films, he looked back to his war days, even with his later films in the 1980s.

A Guy Named Van Johnson and  His Guardian Angels By Jessica Pickens

From actors to athletes, an injury can end or postpone career. On a March night in 1943, a wreck not only could have halted a promising new film career, but actor Van Johnson was nearly killed. Johnson came to Hollywood from Broadway in 1940. For the next four years, he had brief or secondary roles in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films, such as playing a reporter who interviews Marie Curie in MADAME CURIE (’43). The same year, he received his first credited film role in THE WAR AGAINST MRS. HADLEY (’43), which Johnson later credited as the beginning and “then things began to roll.”

In 1944, Johnson was cast in a leading role in the World War II drama, A GUY NAMED JOE (’44). Cast alongside Hollywood veterans Irene Dunne and Spencer Tracy, Johnson plays a young Army Air Corps pilot who is guided by his guardian angel, played by Tracy. The title of the film references the universal nickname United States servicemen were called abroad. “Anybody who’s a right chap is a guy named Joe,” a child says in the film while watching pilots land.

Maj. Pete Sandidge (Tracy) is a good but daring pilot, who narrowly escapes both danger and formal reprimands for his reckless actions. His girlfriend Dorinda Durston (Dunne) is also a pilot who ferries aircraft. Dorinda worries that Pete will be killed during a mission, and while bombing a Nazi aircraft carrier, Pete is killed. Finding himself in heaven, Pete is tasked with being a guardian angel flight instructor to Ted Randall (Johnson) during flight school and in combat. However, this becomes complicated when Ted and Dorinda meet and start a romance. Johnson’s character of Ted doesn’t appear until 45 minutes into the two-hour film, but this was his first leading role.

Johnson was announced for the role in February 1943. Robert Young was originally slated to play Ted, but MGM officials felt that Johnson would attract the teen audience. Nervous during his screen test with a major star like Irene Dunne, Dunne gave Johnson a pep talk and also pretended to be nervous to put Johnson at ease, as recounted in Van Johnson: MGM’s Golden Boy by Ronald L. Davis.

Spencer Tracy also helped the young actors on set. Actor Barry Nelson, who co-stars in A GUY NAMED JOE, said, “He liked young actors and he tried to help them … he was certainly a role model,” according to Spencer Tracy: A Biography by James Curtis. But on March 30, 1943, an event happened that almost caused Johnson to be replaced in the film and almost killed him.

Johnson was in his DeSoto convertible driving to a screening of the film KEEPER OF THE FLAME (’43). The passengers were his friend and actor Keenan Wynn, Wynn’s wife Evie and two servicemen friends. Another vehicle ran the red light at Venice Boulevard and Clarington Street, hitting Johnson’s DeSoto, turning the car on its side. Johnson hit his head on the windshield and then was thrown from the car into a gutter, where he hit his head again. He later said his face was wet with blood. Evie sustained a back injury and the other passengers were shaken but okay. Johnson’s condition was much more grave; a bystander even thought he was dead.

Johnson had a skull fracture, facial injuries, glass cuts on his face and neck, and the back of his head was peeled off, with his brain pierced by skull fragments. A doctor later told him he was almost decapitated, but Johnson was never unconscious. While waiting 45 minutes for an ambulance, Davis states that Johnson lost three quarts of blood.

A GUY NAMED JOE director Victor Fleming, Tracy and Dunne visited Johnson at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital. The Chicago Daily News reported that Tracy volunteered to donate blood for Johnson, and Dunne again gave him a pep talk: “You are going to get well and you are going to finish that picture. It’s a great role and you’re not going to lose it.”

Doctors and MGM leaders weren’t so sure. Doctors initially said Johnson would never work again in movies, and he would be lucky if he lived. MGM was planning to replace Johnson in A GUY NAMED JOE with John Hodiak or Peter Lawford. But similar to his role in A GUY NAMED JOE, Tracy looked after Johnson and went to bat for him. Tracy went to MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer and said he and Dunne would walk off the set if Mayer didn’t shut down production of the film until Johnson recovered, according to the book, Irene Dunne: First Lady of Hollywood by Wes Gehring.

Due to the support from his co-stars, Johnson was kept in the film. His treatment and recovery included several surgeries, including a five-inch long metal plate on the left side of his head and a muscle graft from his right arm to help rebuild his forehead. After three months, Johnson returned to filming A GUY NAMED JOE in June 1943. He was still weak and had headaches each day, but he was thankful to be working and alive. “Things like that you never forget. I’m a man with a debt to pay,” Johnson said.

Not only did the film role bring stardom, but so did the publicity of the accident. By the time the film was released, the wreck was heavily covered and film fans rallied behind Johnson’s recovery. Johnson’s scars are visible in A GUY NAMED JOE, and you can spot a long scar on his forehead in later film roles. The injuries from his wreck and the metal plate kept Johnson from serving in World War II, but he frequently performed in military roles, and within a year was a top box office draw. Doctors said Johnson would be lucky if he performed again. Performing until 1992, luck seems to have been on Van Johnson’s side.

Team Leslie Howard By Susan King

Leslie Howard has gotten a bad rap over the decades. Ironically, it’s because of his most famous role as Ashley Wilkes, who is obsessed with and weakly indecisive over Scarlett O’Hara, and married to his sweet distant cousin Melanie in the Oscar-winning Civil War epic GONE WITH THE WIND (’39). In fact, when I first saw the film at 13 during one of the epic’s reissues, I said “ewww” when I first saw Howard on screen. The British actor was far too old for the part and seemed to be caked in make-up to look younger. And in fact, he was old enough to be the father of Olivia de Havilland, who played Melanie. I kept shaking my head when my mother told me Howard was quite the matinee idol in the 1930s.

He also seemed disinterested in the role. The performance isn’t awful, but he just seemed to be going through the motions. Truth be told, he didn’t want to be in the movie. He even wrote to his daughter: “I hate the damn part. I’m not nearly beautiful or young enough for Ashley, and it makes me sick being fixed up to look attractive.” Howard further said of the movie: “Terrible lot of nonsense. Heaven help me if I ever read the book.”

Then what was the reason he did the movie? Because GONE WITH THE WIND producer, David O. Selznick, gave him an associate producer credit on INTERMEZZO (’39), the romantic melodrama based on the 1936 Swedish hit. INTERMEZZO also marked the Hollywood debut of Ingrid Bergman, who had starred in the original.

Considering I was so unimpressed with Howard as a young teen, I have been a member of Team Leslie since the 1970s. (I can almost forgive him for playing Romeo at the age of 43 in MGM’s ROMEO AND JULIET, ’36.) Though his acting style is of its time, I love his romanticism and his glorious voice. I feel the same way about Ronald Colman, who, like Howard, excelled at suffering from the slings and arrows of love.

Though he made some silent shorts, Howard’s major movie career only lasted 13 years from 1930 to his tragic death in 1943 at the age of 50, when the commercial plane in which he was traveling was shot down by the Nazis. Growing up, Howard’s films were rarely shown on television. Thankfully, TCM and Warner Archive has changed all of that. He was so much more than Ashley Wilkes. Besides being a star on stage and screen, he changed the career of Humphrey Bogart, earned two best actor Oscar nominations and also directed and produced films.

Howard’s career was bookended by the World Wars. Howard, who was of Hungarian/German Jewish heritage, suffered from shyness growing up in a Forest Hill London neighborhood. And, this sensitive young man experienced shell shock during his World War I service. Acting was prescribed as a cure. The debonair, gentlemanly Howard quickly became a star on the London stage and made his Broadway debut in 1920 in Just Suppose. For the next 17 years, he would appear on the Broadway stage often not only starring in plays, but producing, writing and directing.

And he made his Hollywood film debut in one of his Broadway hits, OUTWARD BOUND (’30). With arrival of the talkies, Hollywood look to Broadway and the London stage for talent who, unlike numerous film stars, had had trained voices and could handle dialogue. He earned his first Oscar nomination for the film version of another Broadway vehicle BERKLEY SQUARE (’33). For years, the uber-romantic time-traveling fantasy was unavailable to be seen. I actually bought a bootleg DVD off of eBay, but the print was so bad it was unwatchable.

A few years ago, TCM aired a beautiful print. All I can say, it was worth the wait. It is stagey and creaky, but I just loved it and so will you if you have a romantic bone in your body. The lavish Alexander Korda production of THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL (’35) was the movie that changed my opinion of Howard. I watched it late at night in a horrible TV print that was riddled with commercials. But I was gob smacked. Howard seemed to be having a field day as a foppish British aristocrat, Sir Percy Blakeney, who is actually the brave and dashing Scarlett Pimpernel, a mysterious man who rescues French nobility from losing their heads during the Reign of Terror.

The actor returned to Broadway in 1935 in Robert Sherwood’s drama The Petrified Forest. He also produced the hit play in which he played the epitome of his disillusioned romantic. This time around he’s Alan Squier, a poetic but disenchanted Englishman hitchhiking across the U.S to seek the meaning of life. He ends up finding love and death at a café in the Petrified Forest. The play also starred Humphrey Bogart who electrified audience as “the world-famous killer” Duke Mantee. 

When Warner Bros. planned to have Howard reprise his role in the 1936 film version, Howard insisted that Bogart, who certainly wasn’t a box office name, play Duke or he would quit the film. Bogart’s career was changed because of Howard, who does take a back seat to the actor’s riveting performance. Though they have diverse acting styles, Howard and Bogart’s scenes together still pack a wallop 84 years after its release. The following year, they reunited for STAND-IN (’37), a kicky but rarely seen comedy about Hollywood. And nine years after Howard’s death, Bogart and Lauren Bacall named their daughter Leslie after the late actor.

Howard earned his second best actor Oscar nomination for the delightful British production of George Bernard Shaw’s PYGMALION (’38) as Professor Henry Higgins opposite Oscar-nominated Wendy Hiller as Eliza Doolittle. Howard also directed the film, produced by Gabriel Pascal, with Anthony Asquith.

With England at war with Nazi Germany, Howard left Hollywood and went home to London where he began working for the British war effort. He starred in, produced and directed my favorite film of his PIMPERNEL SMITH (’41), a rip-roaring exciting update of THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL. And it’s hard not to think of Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones watching the movie. Howard, the self-assured director, gets a wonderful self-assured performance from Howard the actor. And the final line is a real corker. He also starred with David Niven and directed the well-received aerial propaganda drama THE FIRST OF THE FEW (’42), which was renamed SPITFIRE when it opened in the U.S. shortly after his death.

Howard was on a commercial flight from Lisbon, Portugal bound from London on June 1, 1943 when the Luftwaffe shot the plane, which had 16 other passengers and crew, down over the Bay of Biscay. It would have been so interesting to see where Howard’s career would have gone after the war. Would he return to Hollywood? Broadway? Would he had abandoned acting for directing?

Over the years I have talked to some actresses who worked with him. Despite the fact that de Havilland appeared with Howard in the romantic comedy IT’S LOVE I’M AFTER (’37) and GONE WITH THE WIND and did the Lux Radio Theatre version of The Scarlet Pimpernel, she told me she didn’t get to know him well.

Celeste Holm got to know him maybe a little too well. Though Howard was married, it is no secret he had a wandering eye. She was appearing with Howard in the late 1930s in the touring production of Hamlet as a lady in waiting and Ophelia’s understudy. “I was wearing a gorgeous scarlet dress with a gold wimple and train,” she told me during a 1997 Los Angeles Times interview. “After my scene, I immediately exited to the first wing. I could see the show from there.” Howard soon entered the wing. “He took one look at me and before I could say anything, he took me in his arms and kissed me as beautifully as I had ever been kissed before or since. I was totally unprepared. I had only met him the night before.”

The actor was myopic and as soon as he kissed her, Howard realized it was the wrong woman. Holm went to the dressing room. “One of the actresses I was working said, ‘What happened to you? You look like you have seen a ghost.’” The actress started to laugh at the memory. “She said, ‘He was having an affair with the girl in New York who wore your dress. He probably forgot where he was.’”

Reliving the War On-Screen: They Were Expendable (’45) By Jessica Pickens

Reliving the War On-Screen: They Were Expendable By Jessica Pickens In the late 1920s and 1930s, actor Robert Montgomery was often cast as the playboy in comedies —always debonair, charming and clowning. His characters on screen might be dressed in a top hat and tuxedo, holding a martini. Other times, he may be ready to play tennis or go on a fox hunt. But by 1937, Montgomery got tired of playing the juvenile fool and was cast as a murderer in NIGHT MUST FALL. When war broke out in Europe, however, Montgomery traded in the title of Hollywood leading man to help during the conflict.

Before the United States joined World War II, Montgomery traveled to France in 1940 to drive ambulances — much to the chagrin of his home studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Montgomery briefly returned home to make three films, then joined the U.S. Navy in 1942, enlisting under his birth name LT. Henry Montgomery Jr., USNR. Montgomery served in the South Pacific, commanding a PT boat, or partial torpedo boat. He saw action in Noumea, Espiritu Santo and Guadalcanal. Montgomery also served in the European Theater as an operations officer aboard destroyer USS Barton (DD-722) during the D-Day Invasion.

After serving five years of active duty, Montgomery was awarded the Bronze Star and French Legion of Honor. He retired from the Navy in 1944 with the rank of a commander. But when he retired, Montgomery hadn’t left the war completely.

His first film role when he returned home was the lead in THEY WERE EXPENDABLE (’45), directed by John Ford. The story was based on William L. White’s non-fiction book of the same title, based on the experiences of John D. Bulkeley. Bulkeley commanded PT boats in the Philippines and broke through Japanese lines so Gen. Douglas MacArthur could escape from Corregidor to Bataan. White’s book was adapted for the screen by Navy veteran Frank W. Wead. Montgomery would be playing Bulkeley, but his name was changed to Lt. John Brickley for the film.

The story begins in 1941 on an American Naval base in the Philippines days before the Pearl Harbor attack. The story follows from the declaration of war to the United States’ surrender at Bataan and Corregidor. The central focus is Lt. Brickley, Lt. Rusty Ryan (John Wayne) and their squadron of PT boats. In peace time, the Navy didn’t consider the PT boats seriously for wartime use, but the squadron’s tasks are quickly changed from messenger to combat duty.

This art-imitating-life role is a far cry from Montgomery’s last role from three years earlier, the comedy UNFINISHED BUSINESS (’41), where he played his usual playboy who drank too much. With his first acting role in three years, Montgomery panicked; worried that he wouldn’t remember how to perform in front of a camera. According to Behind the Scenes of They Were Expendable: A Pictorial History by Lou Sabini, while filming in Key Biscayne and Miami, FL, Ford told Montgomery to take the PT boat out and relax until he felt comfortable.

Whatever self-doubt Montgomery may have experienced doesn’t come across on screen. He was even able to take over directing when Ford fell and fractured his leg; leaving the director hospitalized. In one of Montgomery’s best screen performances, he plays Lt. Brickley restrained and reserved. All of Montgomery’s actions and reactions feel authentic. As he drives the PT boats, gives orders or is concerned for his men, this isn’t Montgomery just playing another role. It’s obvious he’s drawing on his war experiences and reliving them.

Montgomery wasn’t the only member of the cast or crew to have recently left the service. This was director John Ford’s first feature film since HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY (’41). Since then, he had been making documentary shorts on the war for American audiences. Cinematographer Joseph H. August had also just returned from overseas serving with John Ford’s film unit, which included filming the documentary short,The Battle of Midway (’42). Hollywood newcomer actor Cameron Mitchell had just gotten his start in films after serving as a bombardier with the United States Army Air Forces during World War II.

The film had other authenticities, such as the PT boats on loan from the Navy and the use of Navy phrases like “Fire in the paint closet!” World War II ended in September 1945 and THEY WERE EXPENDABLE was released in December 1945. Releasing the film was a risk. Audiences were celebrating that the war was over and were weary of war films, particularly ones that chronicled some of the darkest days of the conflict.

But the film was still met with critical acclaim. The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther named it one of the top 10 best films of 1945. In his December 21, 1945 review, he called it a “labor of understanding and love on the part of the men who produced it, from John Ford, the director, on down. Most of those who worked on it were active or recent Navy personnel.”

THEY WERE EXPENDABLE is different from most war movies of the era. Robert Montgomery, John Wayne and Donna Reed may be the stars of the film, but each actor plays their role equally well and no one star outshines another. It’s truly an ensemble cast. The brief romance between Wayne’s Rusty and Reed’s Nurse Sandy isn’t neatly wrapped up and doesn’t have a cliché happy ending. Rusty has to leave Sandy, and the two don’t get to see each other again. As the top personnel are evacuated from the Philippines for Australia, Rusty wonders what will happen to Sandy with the surrender.

This is also not a heroic war film where our stars save the day. Montgomery’s Lt. Brickley makes a point of reminding his squadron that they are following orders — particularly when their squadron is on standby and the men are eager to get into the fight. There isn’t a singular hero who saves the day. In fact, with the surrender of the Philippines, they fail. “It’s a film about adults coping with failure and loss,” said John Wayne biographer, Scott Eyman.

The overall tone is mournful and feels almost like a coping mechanism for those who returned from the war. And on top of the mournful sadness of the film is the gorgeous cinematography wrapping it into a masterpiece. Montgomery later attributed the film’s perfection to John Ford in a 1980 interview: “Anything that’s good about THEY WERE EXPENDABLE—in the script, the performances, the editing, the camerawork—was Ford’s achievement.”

None Shall Escape – As Long As We Don’t Let Them By Kim Luperi

“Think how important those formulae are: How to make a villain? We need to pay very great attention to those ‘how to’s,’” actress Marsha Hunt warned before a screening of the WWII drama NONE SHALL ESCAPE (1944) at the 2018 TCM Classic Film Festival. Sage advice then and some 75 years later.

I first heard of NONE SHALL ESCAPE about five years ago. The film is rarely screened and was not on DVD, yet as the first picture to depict the post-WWII world – before the Allied victory – it was groundbreaking on many levels. It detailed “Nazi barbarism with far more courage and intelligence” than other WWII films (Baltimore Morning Sun), was “the most prophetic screen play of our time” (Waterbury Democrat) and was said to contain “the most passionate, the most militant indictment of anti-Semitism in the history of Hollywood” (The Daily Worker). Despite such strong accolades, NONE SHALL ESCAPE remains all but forgotten today. What a shame that is, because the episodes of unjust hatred and pleas for peace this film depicts feel very relevant today.

NONE SHALL ESCAPE unfolds in flashback, as Nazi officer Wilhelm Grimm (Alexander Knox) faces trial for his war crimes following the end of WWII. Acquaintances including his former fiancée Marja (Hunt), his brother Karl (Erik Rolf) and Father Warecki (Henry Travers) testify against him, painting vivid pictures as to how this former schoolteacher and disabled WWI veteran transformed from an outcast in a Polish village to a high-ranking Nazi official.

NONE SHALL ESCAPE approaches its war theme from a different vantage point in analyzing the hows and whys of evil and intolerance in the making. Part of the reason I admire this uncannily prescient film, aside from its resilient production and performances, is its brazenness. Shot while the war raged on without a clear end in sight and released over a year and a half before hostilities officially ceased, the movie not only predicted the Allied forces’ triumph, but it also forecast the prosecution of Nazi party members with the Nuremberg trials almost two years away.

If those audacious facts aren’t astounding enough, here’s one more: While over 140 movies came out during WWII, NONE SHALL ESCAPE was the first picture to depict the massacre of the Jewish population and identify victims as Jews. Furthermore, the film did not shy away from showcasing the atrocity of war, and its violence, mostly aimed at innocent civilians, comes across as incredibly blunt and agonizing for its time.

Universally praised, NONE SHALL ESCAPE won high marks from critics who commended its blatant, timely condemnation of the Nazis’ brutality. Though President Roosevelt’s October 1942 proclamation that the UN would investigate war criminals inspired producer Sam Bischoff, director André De Toth’s experiences as a newsreel cameraman documenting the fall of Poland in 1939 informed many of the picture’s most vicious events. “I must never forget what I saw and learned,” De Toth said in a January 1944 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. And clearly, he hadn’t. Case in point: The German officer assigned to his unit who was “inordinately proud of the destruction which we saw all about us and kept talking about the music of battle” sounds suspiciously like NONE SHALL ESCAPE’s Wilhelm Grimm. 

Both sides of what De Toth witnessed made it into the picture: the truth – brutality, destruction, indiscriminate murder and assumed prostitution, none of which he was permitted to photograph – and the lies he was ordered to capture, like German troops handing food out to Poles smiling “practically at bayonet point.” “Had I turned my camera in another direction to photograph the truth, I would have been sent back to Budapest without another word,” De Toth stated. Thankfully, Hollywood gave him a second chance to put more of the truth to film.

Though firmly of its time, certain episodes in NONE SHALL ESCAPE resonate in today’s political and social climate. Between Father Warecki and Rabbi David Levin’s (Richard Hale) impassioned speeches imploring peace and acceptance and Marja calling Wilhelm and his Nazi-bred nephew blind followers, well, it’s still pretty timely stuff. Some critics found the film’s ending negative, with Wilhelm reasserting the Nazis’ prowess (“We will rise again and again!”) and the judge handing judgement off to the UN (and with a square look into the camera, the audience as well). This move, which could have been mandated by the US government as some viewers would regard the movie as foreshadowing future events, can also been seen as placing an obligation on the viewer to do what’s right and hold the guilty parties accountable. NONE SHALL ESCAPE informs us that denouncing intolerance and protecting marginalized populations is a responsibility placed upon every citizen in every country. And that’s a message we need to hear – and heed – more than ever today.

Holocaust Remembrance: Those Who Survived and Came to Hollywood By Raquel Stecher

Officially established by the United Nations in 2005, January 27th is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This day honors the 6 million Jewish victims as well as the millions of other victims of the Holocaust. It also marks the anniversary of the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Red Army.

From the time Hitler came to power and throughout WWII, actors, directors, producers, composers, production designers and other members of the European film industry emigrated to Hollywood to escape the Nazi regime and to begin a new phase in their careers. Some artists fled at the first sign of trouble, others were able to escape even in the face of real danger while others were interred in concentration camps and German POW camps. Many lost family members, some nearly lost their own lives but, in the end, they persevered in the face of adversity and lived to tell the tale. Here are some of their extraordinary stories.

Michael Curtiz

According to Michael Curtiz biographer Alan K. Rode, the director did everything he could to get his family out of Hungary. Curtiz arranged transport for his mother and got her housing in Los Angeles. He relocated his brothers David and Gabriel to Tijuana, Mexico where they waited for two years before being allowed entry into the United States. And Curtiz may have employed the help of Jack and Harry Warner to get the U.S. Army Air Corps to transport his sister out of Hungary. Curtiz’ brother Lajos and sisters Regina, Margit and Kornelia decided to stay behind. Margit and her family were eventually interned in Auschwitz and while Margit and her daughter survived, her husband and second child did not.

Audrey Hepburn

Born in Belgium but raised in England, Audrey Hepburn’s parents were pro-Fascists. After their separation, Audrey’s mom Ella moved the family to the Netherlands and joined the Dutch resistance. Before becoming an actress, Hepburn studied as a dancer and her skills were put to good use when she was commissioned by local resistance leader Dr. Hendrik Visser‘t Hooft to perform dance numbers at underground meetings known as “zwarte avonden”, aka black evenings. This was a way to earn money to help fund the Dutch resistance’s efforts to hide or transport Jews across the country.

Martin Kosleck

German actors who fled Europe for America often found themselves playing Nazis in Hollywood productions. Actor Martin Kosleck played Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels 5 times including a role in CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY (‘39), considered the first anti-Nazi film. Kosleck himself was an outspoken opponent to Hitler and the Third Reich and fled Germany in 1931 when a warrant was issued for his arrest. A few years after he left, he was placed on the list of Gestapo’s “undesirables” and was tried and sentenced in absentia but remained safe in Hollywood.

Fritz Lang

Lang’s celebrated film METROPOLIS (‘27) was one of Adolph Hitler’s favorite films. The director caught the eye of both Hitler and Goebbels, the latter had even offered Lang the job of head of the German Cinema Institute which Lang eventually declined. Shortly after the premiere of THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (‘33), Goebbels banned the film for inappropriate use of Nazi party slogans. Lang claimed that Goebbels then offered him another job as production supervisor at UFA which he declined. Lang’s Jewish heritage was no problem because according to Goebbels “we’ll decide who’s Jewish!” Lang wisely left Germany for Paris and eventually made it to Hollywood. His soon-to-be ex-wife and longtime collaborator Thea von Harbou joined the Nazi party and eventually wrote and directed propaganda films.

Curt Lowens

Actor Curt Lowens’ story of surviving the Holocaust was one of bravery and sheer luck. Born in Poland, Lowens’ father was a highly respected attorney and his mother was an active member of the local Jewish community. His father moved the family to Berlin in hopes that he would find more work among the large Jewish community in that city. As the political climate changed, the Lowens planned to emigrate to the US by way of the Netherlands but the Germans invaded the day they were supposed to leave. Lowens’ father’s connections helped saved them from deportation to Auschwitz and eventually got them out of Westerbork. The family went into hiding and Curt Lowens changed his name to Ben Joosten and became an active member of the Dutch resistance. On V-E Day, Lowens rescued two members of the US Army Air Corps for which he received a commendation from General Dwight Eisenhower.

Branko Lustig

Croatian producer Branko Lustig is best known for his work on SCHINDLER’S LIST (‘93). Lustig himself was a survivor of both the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. In his acceptance speech for the Best Picture Oscar for SCHINDLER’S LIST, Lustig said, “My number was 83317. I’m a Holocaust survivor. It’s a long way from Auschwitz to this stage. I want to thank everyone who helped me to come so far. People died in front of me at the camps. Their last words were ‘be a witness of my murder. Tell to the world how I died. Remember.’” Lustig hoped that his work on the film helped fulfill his obligation to the innocent victims of the Shoah and that we will never forget what happened to them.

S.Z. Sakall

The actor affectionately known as “Cuddles” was born Gero Jeno in Hungary in 1883. Early in his acting career he changed his name to Szöke Szakall (aka Blonde Beard) which was later shortened to S.Z. Sakall. The Jewish Sakall performed on stage and in film in Hungary and Austria. In his autobiography he remembers a chance meeting with Hitler, who openly criticized Sakall’s recent picture A CITY UPSIDE DOWN (‘33). Years later Sakall and his second wife Anna Kardos fled for Hollywood. Many members of Sakall’s family, including sisters, nieces and in-laws died in concentration camps. Sakall almost turned down the role of Carl the head waiter in CASABLANCA (‘42) because he thought it might be too much to bear.

Roman Polanski

Born in France but raised in Poland, by the age of nine Roman Polanski and his parents were deported and separated from each other. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Polanski recalls that his pregnant mother was most likely killed upon arrival to Auschwitz. His father was interned at the Mauthausen camp in Austria and managed to survive the ordeal. Polanski himself avoided the concentration camps by changing his name to Romek Wilk and fleeing to the countryside where he hid until the liberation. His experiences influenced his film THE PIANIST (2002) although he claims that the film was in no way autobiographical. 

Douglas Sirk

In 1934, the German director divorced his first wife Lydia with whom he had a son Klaus. Both Lydia and Klaus joined the Nazi party and because Sirk’s second wife Hilde was a Jewish woman he was not permitted to have contact with his son. Klaus was a child actor in numerous Nazi propaganda films and eventually served as a soldier in the German army and died on the battlefield in 1944. While filming in the Netherlands in the late 1930s, Sirk was contracted by Warner Bros. and he and his wife fled the Nazi regime for a new life in Hollywood.

Otto Preminger

A few years before Otto Preminger moved to Hollywood, he was offered the position of director of Austria’s state-run theater, the Burgtheater, which required that he convert from Judaism to Catholicism. Preminger turned down the offer. This was a good decision on Preminger’s part because it allowed him to later take Joseph Schenck’s invitation to work in Hollywood. Also, religious conversion would not have protected Preminger from the Nazi regime. Preminger left in 1937 and his parents and brother stayed behind. When Austria was invaded in 1938, they found refuge in Switzerland.

Conrad Veidt

The German born star of films like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (‘20) was not Jewish himself but stood in solidarity with wife Lily who was. When Goebbels required actors in the German film industry to declare their race Veidt made the bold decision to declare himself on the form as Jude (Jew). This infuriated Goebbels who proclaimed that Veidt would never work in Germany again. He and his wife fled for England in 1933 and later emigrated to Hollywood. Veidt would go on to play Nazis on screen including his part as Major Strasser in CASABLANCA.

Fred Zinnemann

Austrian director Fred Zinnemann started off as a concert violinist and a law student before transitioning to a career in film. He left for Hollywood in 1929 seeking better opportunities. His film THE SEVENTH CROSS (‘44) was one of the first to acknowledge the existence of concentration camps. Unfortunately, Zinnemann lost both of his parents in the Holocaust. According to a page of testimony Zinnemann filed on behalf of his parents for the Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in 1984, his mother Anna most likely died in Auschwitz in August 1942 and his father Oskar died in Belzec around December 1941.

RANDOM HARVEST Keeps on Giving by Kim Luperi

Classic film fans who are also wise enough to follow Carl Reiner on Twitter may have noticed that he extols the virtues of RANDOM HARVEST (‘42), his favorite film, on a regular basis. Actor Gene Wilder considered it one of the most romantic movies of all time.

Upon filming the last scene of the film, star Ronald Colman commented to director Mervyn LeRoy: “This is one picture I hate to finish!” Even fellow star Greer Garson called it her favorite of all her movies – the “happiest” one she ever made. “I know I am prejudiced, but I think it is one of the half dozen greatest love stories,” she said in an interview quoted in Michael Troyan’s biography A Rose for Mrs. Miniver: The Life of Greer Garson.

RANDOM HARVEST begins with amnesiac WWI vet Smithy (Colman) fleeing the asylum he’s been recuperating in when peace is declared. During the revelries, he meets dance hall girl Paula (Garson), and they fall in love, marry and have a child. Soon thereafter, a freak accident Smithy suffers restores the memory he previously lost and wipes all recollection of Paula and their life together. As the wealthy Charles Rainier, he returns to his family and their business. But fate works in mysterious ways, especially as engineered by faithful Paula, who takes a job as Charles’ secretary in hopes that he’ll remember her.

Based upon James Hilton’s 1941 best-selling novel, RANDOM HARVEST had ‘hit’ written all over it. The Hollywood Reporter predicted it would break box-office records, and that it did, in particular a big one: RANDOM HARVEST ran for 11 weeks at Radio City Music Hall, screening as many as seven times a day, starting as early as 7:45am. (The picture broke the 10-week record set earlier in 1942 by MRS. MINIVER, another Garson vehicle.) RANDOM HARVEST went on to earn over $8 million, making it the third highest grossing movie of the year. One New York exhibitor even expressed regret that they weren’t able to extend the film’s run, calling it “a great audience picture, which made its own way into the hearts of the people.”

Garson and Colman’s delicate, compassionate performances along with the warmth and refinement imbued in the script and Mervyn LeRoy’s sensitive direction won the movie mostly rave reviews. “One of the truly fine motion pictures of this or any year is ‘Random Harvest,’ an emotional experience of rare quality,” The Hollywood Reporter commented, further praising the “great, enduring love story it stirringly brings to life.”

But what accounted for the film’s massive success? A superior production, of course, and romantic idol Colman and Garson at the zenith of her popularity didn’t hurt either. But I think timing played a large part. In Ten Movies at a Time, John DiLeo called RANDOM HARVEST an “essential piece of escapism for the home-front audience.” Just as Smithy and Paula experienced personal tragedies as a result of war, so many in America did as well. But like the characters onscreen, viewers had to keep pushing forward during tough times. 

In RANDOM HARVEST, Garson portrayed a woman that WWII-era viewers had come to know her as: a composed, valiant presence, privately suffering yet steadfast in her faith—in this case, faith that Smithy’s memory comes back. That brand of stoic devotion, loyalty and optimism was not only highly relatable to wartime audiences, millions of whom were filled with the same emotions awaiting the return of their loved ones fighting overseas, but it also hit a chord with those protecting the country, too. In A Rose for Mrs. Miniver, Troyan shared excerpts from a letter a Navy Officer wrote Garson lauding the picture and her performance for epitomizing “the sailor’s dream: a happy home, a family, and a good wife.”

While the reality of WWII is far removed from ours in 2019, I think the romance of RANDOM HARVEST plays a role in why the film remains so beloved today. Yes, the fact that Smithy loses his memory and regains it twice is rather far-fetched, but that makes Paula’s devotion, even though she’s told he may never remember her, all the more dramatic, engaging and endearing, especially since the audience is rooting for them both. I believe people want to think that there will be someone as devoted to them, with a love just as strong, who would fight like Paula did for Smithy after their tragic separation—despite the odds being stacked against her.

With such a far-flung plot, RANDOM HARVEST could easily have teetered overboard into full-blown soap opera, but the restraint shown in the production and the gentle performances relieve the story from such a fate. The tender way in which this tale was told and the sincere emotional reaction RANDOM HARVEST still elicits today serve to showcase love—and classical Hollywood filmmaking—at their finest.

A Little Girl Who Carried a Bomb: A JOURNEY FOR MARGARET by Jessica Pickens

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) is known for its glittering spectacular films, featuring immaculate stars draped in the most divine costumes. Each of the studio’s films offer a glamorous escape from real life, whether it’s a story with singing and dancing, or a whirlwind romance that starts on a subway train. During World War II, MGM produced patriotic stories, with that same captivating charm.

One 1942 film is different from the rest and often overlooked: JOURNEY FOR MARGARET (’42). The film was released a year after the United States had entered World War II. The setting here is England, a country that had been in the war since 1939 and suffered from German bombings of civilian areas. Set after France fell to the Nazis in 1940, this story focuses on the trauma caused by the war and the German Blitz. Despite the bombings, life continued and England pressed forward.

John Davis (Robert Young) is an American journalist living in England with his wife Nora (Laraine Day). The two have traveled the world together for John’s work and Nora is pregnant with their first child. “It takes more than a war to upset Nora’s homing instinct,” John tells a friend. The friend, played by Nigel Bruce, tells her she’s a brave girl to have a baby “at a time like this.”

But Nora never has her baby. She’s injured in The Blitz which causes a miscarriage, and she’s never able to have children again. Despondent, she returns home to family in America.

While John continues to work in England, he realizes a result of the bombings he hadn’t considered: when adults die, their children are left behind with no one to care for them. For an article he’s writing on war orphans, he visits the Riswick Children’s House run by Trudy Strauss, played by Fay Bainter. After his interview, Trudy invites John to meet the children and see firsthand the affects the bombing has on them.

Not only are they alone, they are traumatized. They scream and run when they hear planes, or shriek with fear at the sight of a man.

One little girl, Margaret (Margaret O’Brien), constantly wipes her tearless eyes and she carries around a detonated bomb. A little boy, Peter (William Severn), can’t adjust to any of his foster parents. The children are drawn to John, and he considers adopting them and taking them to Nora in the United States. However, he has difficulties finding a way to get the children home when overseas travel is limited.

While MGM still doled out the glamour and entertainment, many of their film releases in 1942 had a more serious war focus. These films include MRS. MINIVER, THE WAR AGAINST MRS. HADLEY, SOMEWHERE I’LL FIND YOU, REUNION IN FRANCE and JOE SMITH, AMERICAN. Even some of the 1942 MGM musicals like SHIP AHOY and PANAMA HATTIE involve enemy spy plotlines. However, JOURNEY FOR MARGARET is somehow different from other films released during the World War II-era because it focuses on two different ideas many films don’t cover: war orphans and grief after a miscarriage.

Many war films focus on homefront life or the battle front. Few focus on the children left with psychological trauma after loss of home and family. The child actors in JOURNEY FOR MARGARET give a heartbreaking view of children who saw horrors beyond their comprehension. The other issue in the film is the loss of Nora’s unborn child. Once optimistic and sweet, she becomes bitter about the war and the future. “They killed our babies. All of our babies; forever dead,” she tells John. “I’ll be a ghost. You’ll be a ghost. The whole world crawling with ghosts.”

She feels like less of a woman and self-medicates with alcohol. John hopes adopting will revive Nora back to herself. There are few pre-1960 films that cover grief and coping after a miscarriage. Others include PENNY SERENADE (’41) and MY BLUE HEAVEN (’50).

While some elements of the film are fiction, the experiences are based on true events. JOURNEY FOR MARGARET is based on a book of the same title by William Lindsay White, a newspaper writer who was a correspondent in 1940. White’s 1941 book is about his wife Katherine and the daughter they adopted, Barbara, according to the Kansas City Historical Society. White also wrote another book which became a major motion picture, They Were Expendable.

JOURNEY FOR MARGARET is also notable for the careers that started and ended with this film. This was the second film and first credited role of five-year-old Angela Maxine O’Brien. She changed her name to Margaret O’Brien after the character in this film, according to Margaret O'Brien: A Career Chronicle and Biography by Allan R. Ellenberger. Prior to this film, O’Brien had a brief, uncredited role in BABES ON BROADWAY (’41). After JOURNEY FOR MARGARET, she became one of MGM’s top stars of the 1940s.

For longtime MGM director W.S. Van Dyke, JOURNEY FOR MARGARET would be his last film. Released in Dec. 1942, Van Dyke died in February 5, 1943. With nearly 100 credits to his name, Van Dyke had been directing since 1917.

Though the main characters of JOURNEY FOR MARGARET are children, there is nothing saccharine or sweet about this film. And while it is war focused, I wouldn’t call it “propaganda” either. It illustrates an often overlooked issue from World War II. It’s unapologetic, but also unpretentious in its gut-wrenching description of the psychological effects of war on all ages.

I See A Dark Stranger: I See A Quirky Spy Comedy by Kim Luperi

When prompted (and sometimes not), I love telling folks about one of my favorite movies, I SEE A DARK STRANGER (‘46), released as The Adventuress in America. The little-remembered British flick stars Scottish actress Deborah Kerr as a headstrong Irish lass who grew up hating the British so much that she accidentally ends up a German spy during WWII.

Yes, it’s a comedy. And a thriller. And a romance.

You’d think a British film about a girl filled with such hatred towards the Brits that she works with the Germans against them would be a tad hard to swallow after the war, right? The comic liberty taken with the subject is one reason I’ve always admired I SEE A DARK STRANGER. Upon watching it again recently, I was also rather startled to find how contemporary it is—particularly the fact that the main character, Bridie (Kerr), blindly hates an entire group of people for no legitimate reason.

Filmmaking team Frank Launder (writer/director/producer) and Sidney Gilliat (writer/producer), authors of Alfred Hitchcock’s THE LADY VANISHES (‘38), wrote I SEE A DARK STRANGER near the end of WWII. Filming in Ireland and England took place for several months throughout the latter half of 1945, with the picture debuting in the UK in 1946 and the US in 1947. As Bruce Babington observes in his book Launder and Gilliat, that post-war release allowed the writers to make light of tense subjects despite being less than two years removed from the action. In fact, most reviews domestically and abroad lauded I SEE A DARK STRANGER, and curiously, few English critics voiced an issue with Bridie; most focused instead on the film’s comedic angles.

One reason for the picture’s positive notices is the precarious balance Launder and Gilliat pulled off, particularly in the film’s tone and Bridie’s character. Jerry Vermilye commented in The Great British Films that the movie “could hardly have emerged the winningly offbeat lark it remains—so cleverly skating the thin ice of Anglo-Irish satire and the seriousness of wartime espionage—without the teamwork of Launder and Gilliat.” The writers maintained an equilibrium between those tense spy segments and the story’s sardonic humor, smartly restraining the seriousness of Bridie’s actions… until she realizes their potential consequences, which keeps her sympathetic.

Indeed, Bridie’s intentions remain squarely anti-British as opposed to pro-Nazi, and the comical bits generally arise from her surroundings and misplaced patriotism. For instance, a particularly entertaining early scene finds Bridie sharing a train compartment with a nice-looking gentleman. Her inner musings of him flow from intrigue to attraction to doubt to hatred when she detects his English surname. Game over, for now, because he just so happens to be her Nazi recruiter. Kerr, top billed for the first time, displays impressive range and command of her role, balancing Bridie’s headstrong naïveté and her youthful impulsiveness with the severity of the events occurring around her. (Kerr won the New York Film Critics Circle Award jointly for this picture and 1947’s BLACK NARCISSUS.) Babington emphasized that Bridie’s “composite of wilful (sic) child and resourceful heroine, winsome sweetness and transgressive boundary crosser” is “essential to the film’s strategies.” It’s hard to believe Launder and Gilliat aimed to generate sympathy for a German spy, easily an objectionable notion for Brits, but Kerr’s candor, unsophisticated charisma and dry humor cause you to root for a happy ending—for her and the British!

One scene that finds Kerr amusingly oscillating, in this case between brusque anger and inexperienced flirtation, involves British officer David Baynes (Trevor Howard), whom she’s tasked to detain while other spies break a prisoner out of jail. When given her orders, she balks; as a Brit, Baynes is automatically the enemy. It’s a riotous scene watching Bridie try to suppress her aversion as she feebly attempts to keep Baynes occupied with her feminine wiles. How he sticks by her is beyond me!

That raging, blind hatred Bridie shows feels very relevant today. Her gullibility and baseless revulsion for another ethnicity fuels her actions and ensnarls her in something that she eventually (thankfully) realizes can hurt her own people; in fact, that animosity is the basis for this entire film. And to think: All of it started with misinformation passed down by her father. Without proper education or access to the facts, Bridie almost got herself, and many others, killed. If it weren’t for the clearly satirical slant of her character, Bridie could truly be a terrifying soul.

But as it goes, Launder and Gilliat took a potentially provocative subject and characters and turned them on their head during a time when many were in desperate need of laughter. If you’re in the mood for a quirky gem filled with witty dialogue and colorful characters, I highly suggest seeking out I SEE A DARK STRANGER.

The Story They Deserved: William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives by Jill Blake

Throughout World War II, Hollywood cranked out countless feature-length films, animated shorts, radio programs and various government-sanctioned propaganda in support of the war effort. These films ranged from serious dramas set on the frontlines of battle, to lighter romantic comedies featuring servicemen on leave, to glimpses of how families were coping on the homefront. After the war ended in September 1945, it was back to business as usual for Hollywood cranking out splashy musicals, costume dramas and comedies. Of course, there were movies that focused on the post-war experience for Americans—settling down, having children and moving from the big city to the idyllic picket-fenced suburbia—but most of these films either glossed over or completely ignored the struggles of servicemen returning to civilian life, as well as the strain placed on their families, desperate to reclaim years of lost time while remaining hopeful for the future. One Hollywood director understood the importance of telling the stories of these servicemen and their families, drawing upon his own harrowing experiences during the war and his acclimation back to civilian life: William Wyler.

In 1942, months after the United States entered World War II, William Wyler voluntarily joined the United States Army Air Forces, serving as a major in the Army Pictorial Service, which produced educational and propaganda films to promote the war effort. During his service from 1942 to 1945, Wyler and his assembled crew filmed hours of footage from the air, resulting in two documentary films. The first was THE MEMPHIS BELLE: A STORY OF A FLYING FORTRESS (1944), the story of the crew of a Boeing B-17 bomber, which Wyler accompanied on numerous dangerous missions in enemy territory; the second was THUNDERBOLT (1947), a profile of a P-47 fighter squadron. During the filming of both documentaries, Wyler and his film crew faced extremely dangerous conditions, with the director’s cinematographer Harold J. Tannenbaum killed during one perilous mission. While Wyler returned home safely at the end of his service, he did not do so unscathed. During his time with the P-47 squadron in the Mediterranean, Wyler lost consciousness and suffered severe nerve damage in one of his ears, resulting in a total loss of hearing. Eventually, Wyler was able to regain partial hearing with the help of a hearing aid, but the problem affected him for the rest of his life.

Like his fellow Hollywood filmmakers who also served during World War II—John Ford, John Huston, George Stevens and Frank Capra—Wyler wasn’t quite sure how to proceed with his directorial career upon his return. However, it wasn’t long before the perfect project landed in Wyler’s lap: an adaptation of MacKinlay Kantor’s novella Glory for Me, a story of three servicemen returning home after the war and the various struggles they face as they acclimate to civilian life. Produced by Samuel Goldwyn, with an adapted screenplay by Robert E. Sherwood, Kantor’s story became THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946)—Wyler’s most personal film and a loving tribute to the men he served alongside during his three years at war, as well as the families those servicemen left behind.

What makes THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES so unique is its unflinching look at the harsh realities faced by returning veterans. These were men whose lives and careers were upended with absolutely no warning; their plans for the future put indefinitely on hold; their jobs and very livelihoods stripped away from them with no promise of return. They were expected to fight, regardless of their civilian professions. In the case of the three servicemen portrayed in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, a successful banker is relegated to the frontlines of the Pacific as a sergeant (Fredric March as Al Stephenson); a high school football star finds himself in the belly of a Navy destroyer (real-life veteran Harold Russell as Homer Parrish); and a soda jerk finally finds purpose as a captain for the Army Air Force (Dana Andrews as Fred Derry).

Each man does what he must to not only serve his country, but survive, so as to return home to the lives they had before the war. However, war is cruel, and although they survived, their battles are far from over. The good will and patriotism that was worn on the sleeve of every American has faded as life returns to normal. But what is normal anymore for these men and their families? Are they really expected to pick up exactly where they left off when nothing is truly the same as it was before? Why can’t people understand what they’ve been through?

Wyler carefully explores the journey of these three servicemen as they try to find their place in this new post-war world, amidst dealing with their own personal demons, from self-medicating with alcohol; dealing with horrid PTSD flashbacks with little to no support and certainly no treatment (in an era when this was hardly taken seriously and afflicted veterans were expected to simply “snap out of it”—and is unfortunately still a problem today); and reclaiming some form of independence after serious physical injury.

But it’s not just the veterans’ stories that Wyler tells here. He also empathetically shows the struggles of their families, overjoyed yet guilt-ridden that they are the lucky ones in welcoming their heroes back home, while also silently cursing years of lost time and mourning for the simplicity of life before the war. No other film so delicately balances the patriotic call of duty, its sacrifices and the utter destruction of personal lives like THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES. It’s devastating and emotionally raw, and yet there is hope. These men and their families are strong. William Wyler knew firsthand what these servicemen were made of and he gives them the happy ending they deserve.

The War Against Mrs. Hadley by Jessica Pickens

Hollywood films during World War II generally featured patriotic characters who took pride in their country. Most characters were either fighting in the war or doing their part back home to help those overseas. But in real life, not everyone wanted the United States to be involved in the war, especially in the early days of World War II. Others felt they were above to having to ration and make daily life sacrifices. One movie that shows an honest depiction of these feelings is the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film, THE WAR AGAINST MRS. HADLEY (’42), released in September 1942, less than a year after the United States entered World War II.

In the film, wealthy Washington, D.C., society matron Stella Hadley (Fay Bainter) celebrates her December 7 birthday (Bainter’s real life birthday) the same way every year: lunching with her family and friends and listening to the Boston Symphony. But in 1941, the day was different. When Stella’s daughter Patricia (Jean Rogers) turns on the Boston concert, news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor floods the airways. Stella is irritated and upset when her son Ted (Richard Ney) and friend Elliot (Edward Arnold) rush to the War Department where they work.

After Dec. 7, 1941, Stella is inconvenienced by the changes going on around her and she refuses to bend, facing changes with anger and a lack of understanding of what’s going on in the world. Stella is especially unhappy when the war upsets her household:

While working at the canteen Pat meets and falls in love with soldier Michael Fitzpatrick (Van Johnson). The two eventually marry, but Stella, who doesn’t approve of the marriage, doesn’t attend. Other society women even scoff at her saying she doesn’t “have an ounce of patriotism in her.” Stella’s determination to keep everything as it was before for the war leads to Stella ending up alone.

While THE WAR AGAINST MRS. HADLEY has an important war message, it was also important to the career of MGM star, Van Johnson. The film was Johnson’s first credited role after four uncredited films. Johnson said Bainter was kind and helpful to him during the filming. “Thank God for Mrs. Hadley. That was the beginning. Then I began to roll.” Johnson is quoted in the book Van Johnson: MGM’s Golden Boy.

The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther scoffed at the film, saying it came too late coming after the start of the war and that the character of Stella Hadley is “barely reflective of an average American type.” However, I think this is an interesting time capsule for today’s viewers as it shows that not everyone was in favor of the war or willing to change their lifestyles. In the end, Stella changes her ways and begins holding committee meetings and hosting soldiers in her home. The film’s message to 1942 audiences is that it’s not too late to get involved in the American war effort.

THE WAR AGAINST MRS. HADLEY was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay written by George Oppenheimer. However, the film lost to Ring Lardner Jr. and Michael Kanin’s script for George Stevens’ WOMAN OF THE YEAR (’42).