Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War
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“Capra’s familiar and favorite American type”: New Republic, March 24, 1941.
“overwritten”: Bosley Crowther, “‘Meet John Doe,’ an Inspiring Lesson in Americanism, Opens at the Rivoli and Hollywood Theatres,” New York Times, March 13, 1941.
“topple artistically”: “Cinema: Coop,” Time, March 3, 1941.
“Do you know why today is so refreshing?”: Capra, The Name Above the Title, 304.
“give a defense of Hollywood”: Joseph McBride, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992; revised 2000), 437.
“like any youngish, likable Italian”: Margaret Case Harriman, “Mr. and Mrs. Frank Capra,” Ladies’ Home Journal, April 1941.
“Personally, I refuse to believe”: McBride, Frank Capra, 438.
“Can you make a million people sit still”: Ibid., 444.
“because my way had produced five home runs”: Capra, The Name Above the Title, 202.
“I guess I was in a mood”: Marilyn Ann Moss, Giant: George Stevens, a Life on Film (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 71.
“taciturn, always grave-looking”: Irwin Shaw interviewed by Susan Winslow, October 14, 1981, FJC.
“he looked very much like an Indian chief”: Joseph L. Mankiewicz interviewed in the documentary “George Stevens: Filmmakers Who Knew Him,” available as a supplement on the Warner Home Video DVD of Giant.
“I just [realized] what that pacing”: “The New Pictures,” Time, February 16, 1942.
“I have often humbled actors”: Unedited transcript of George Stevens interviewed by Robert Hughes, 1967, file 3677, GSC.
When he learned of the deaths: Marc Eliot, Cary Grant: A Biography (New York: Harmony, 2004), 222.
“employs not one but six or seven”: Bosley Crowther, “Cary Grant and Irene Dunne Play a ‘Penny Serenade’ at the Music Hall,” New York Times, May 23, 1941.
“proved to be a costly mistake”: Douglas W. Churchill, “The Hollywood Round-Up,” New York Times, May 18, 1941.
Chapter 5: “The Most Dangerous Fifth Column in Our Country”
“the one-man army.”: “Cinema: Sergeant York Surrenders,” Time, April 1, 1940.
“fat little Jew”: Michael E. Birdwell, Celluloid Soldiers: Warner Bros.’s Campaign Against Nazism (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 105.
“I don’t like war pictures”: “Sergeant York Surrenders.”
“I don’t think I can do justice”: Todd McCarthy, Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood (New York: Grove, 1997), 303.
“Hitler can, will, and must be beaten”: “Sergeant York: Of God and Country,” documentary supplement to Warner Home Video DVD of Sergeant York.
won a bitter arbitration battle: Lawrence Grobel, The Hustons: The Life and Times of a Hollywood Dynasty, updated ed. (New York: Cooper Square, 2000), 206.
“the strange sense of inevitability”: Memo from John Huston to Hal Wallis, March 21, 1940, Warner Bros. Archives, University of Southern California.
“I want you to give the utmost attention”: Memo from S. Charles Einfeld to Martin Weiser, July 17, 1940, Warner Bros. Archives, University of Southern California.
“I took that picture over”: Grobel, The Hustons, 213.
“not a success story”: Thomas Brady, “Mr. Goldwyn Bows Out,” New York Times, February 16, 1941.
“blundering stupidities”: McCarthy, Howard Hawks, 305.
“I don’t believe that the film delivers”: Ibid., 307.
“a result of World War II’s menacing threat to democracy”: Michael S. Shull and David Edward Wilt, Hollywood War Films, 1937–1945 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1996), 134.
The list of opening-night attendees: Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (New York: Free Press, 1987), 39.
greeted personally by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia: Hal Wallis and Charles Higham, Starmaker: The Autobiography of Hal Wallis (New York: MacMillan, 1980).
“Distinguished Citizenship Medal”: Mason Wiley and Damien Bona, Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards, 10th anniversary ed. (New York: Ballantine, 1996), 114.
“The suggestion of deliberate propaganda”: Bosley Crowther, “‘Sergeant York,’ a Sincere Biography of the World War Hero, Makes Its Appearance at the Astor,” New York Times, July 3, 1941.
“stunt picture . . . about the army”: New Republic, September 29, 1941.
“Hollywood’s first solid contribution”: “New Picture,” Time, August 4, 1941.
“a clarion film”: Variety, July 2, 1941.
Burton K. Wheeler: Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War, 17–20.
“conducted and financed almost entirely by Jews”: Thomas Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 198, 206–7.
William Wyler was among those who attended: Telegram to William Wyler, April 1, 1941, file 743, WWA.
Gerald P. Nye, a Republican senator to “and Joseph Schenck?”: Vital Speeches of the Day 7, no. 23 (September 15, 1941).
“in the best storm trooper fashion”: Wayne S. Cole, Senator Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962), 190–91.
“propaganda [that] reaches weekly”: Propaganda in Motion Pictures: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate Commerce, United States Senate, Seventy-Seventh Congress, First Session on S. Res. 152, a Resolution Authorizing an Investigation of War Propaganda Disseminated by the Motion-Picture Industry and of Any Monopoly in the Production, Distribution, or Exhibition of Motion Pictures, September 9 to 26, 1941 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1942). All subsequent quotes from the hearings in this chapter are from this transcript.
Willkie, who received $100,000: Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War, 42.
after publicly debating Charles Lindbergh: Steve Neal, Dark Horse: A Biography of Wendell Willkie (New York: Doubleday, 1984), 210–12.
“the best men in the industry”: Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Crown, 1988), 346.
“the essential service of motion pictures is entertainment”: Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War, 20–22.
he encouraged them to speak forthrightly: Joseph Barnes, Willkie: The Events He Was Part Of—The Ideas He Fought For (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1952), 269–70.
the Screen Writers Guild fired off a telegram: Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–1960 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 160–61.
the reality was closer to 140: Michael S. Shull and David Edward Wilt, Hollywood War Films, 1937–1945 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1996), 17.
Roosevelt publicly compared him to a Civil War “copperhead”: A. Scott Berg, Lindbergh (New York: Putnam, 1998), 420–22.
“black gloom”: Anne Morrow Lindbergh, War Within and Without: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1939–1944. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), entries dated September 11, 1941, and September 14, 1941.
“un-American” and “unpatriotic”: Berg, Lindbergh, 401–2.
“the symbol of anti-Semitism in this country”: Lindbergh, War Within and Without, entry dated September 15, 1941.
“I’m anti-Nazi and proud of it”: Birdwell, Celluloid Soldiers, 145–46.
Chapter 6: “Do I Have to Wait for Orders?”
December 7, 1941, Catholic churches: W. R. Wilkerson, “Trade Views,” Hollywood Reporter, December 8, 1941.
Sunday’s gloomy revenue reports: “War Wallops Boxoffice,” Hollywood Reporter, December 8, 1941.
ready to go to the movies again: “Nation’s Boxoffice Booming,” Hollywood Reporter, December 30, 1941.
“Stir yourself out of your depression”: “War’s Effect on Hollywood,” Hollywood Reporter, December 9, 1941.
kids reveal
ed that their favorite picture: “Annual Poll of Nation’s Kids Puts ‘York’ on Top as Best Pix,” Hollywood Reporter, December 15, 1941.
“It’s just as much the duty”: Michael E. Birdwell, Celluloid Soldiers: Warner Bros.’s Campaign Against Nazism (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 145–46.
“about the only places that were lit up”: “Hollywood Works 8 to 5 Daily,” Hollywood Reporter, December 12, 1941, and “The Rambling Reporter,” Hollywood Reporter, December 11, 1941.
“Hollywood wants to know” . . . President Roosevelt would ask Lowell Mellett: “Mellett Likely H’Wood Boss,” Hollywood Reporter, December 11, 1941, and “Mellett Boss for Hollywood,” Hollywood Reporter, December 23, 1941.
“I want no censorship of the motion picture”: “President Says No Censorship,” Hollywood Reporter, December 24, 1941.
Variety suggested that someone who already commanded respect: Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (New York: Free Press, 1987), 57.
made a formal request to Navy Secretary Frank Knox: Scott Eyman, Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 245.
“Congratulations”: Cable from Darryl Zanuck to John Ford, October 11, 1941, JFC.
Ford’s initial fitness report: Joseph McBride, Searching for John Ford: A Life (New York: St. Martin’s, 2001), 336–39.
“Inopportune to make this film now”: Eyman, Print the Legend, 235.
“looked like my mother”: John Ford to Dan Ford, JFC.
“Picture went over marvelously”: Dan Ford, Pappy: The Life of John Ford (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1979), 162.
“If this is not one of the best pictures”: Memo from Darryl Zanuck to John Ford, June 13, 1941, JFC.
On his official entrance report: Entrance application completed by John Ford, ca. August 1941, JFC.
a guest of the first family: Letter from Mrs. J. M. Helm, secretary to the First Lady, to John Ford, October 27, 1941, JFC.
new Field Photo Unit: Special Photographic Unit V-6 roster, July 24, 1941, JFC.
“It is beyond my comprehension”: Letter from A. Jack Bolton to Commander Calvin T. Durgin, August 13, 1941, JFC.
interviewed in November 1941: Frank Farrell, “John Ford Dons Naval Uniform Because ‘It’s the Thing to Do,” New York World-Telegram, November 1, 1941.
“respect, awe, and a little bit”: Kathleen Parrish interviewed in John Ford Goes to War (originally aired 2002 on Starz), produced and directed by Tom Thurman, written by Tom Marksbury.
“I don’t know that [I’d] like very much”: McBride, Searching for John Ford, 339–43.
“I’m very courteous to my equals”: Ford interviewed by Philip Jenkinson, 1968, BBC.
Donovan sent him to Reykjavik: Memo from the chief of the Bureau of Navigation to John Ford, December 12, 1941, JFC.
then to Panama: Memo from the chief of the Bureau of Navigation to John Ford, December 20, 1941, JFC.
The Story of Pearl Harbor: An Epic in American History: McBride, Searching for John Ford, 353.
Donovan told him to go to Hawaii: Memo from Frank Knox to the secretary of the navy, ca. January 1942, JFC, and (for reference to Engel), Robert Parrish, Hollywood Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), 18–21; letter from Henry Stimson to William J. Donovan, February 3, 1942, JFC.
“all in good shape, everything taken care of”: John Ford oral history, Naval Historical Center.
Ford said little, but he was unsettled: Parrish, Hollywood Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 16.
He didn’t tell Toland and Engel: McBride, Searching for John Ford, 356.
“doing a great job of our assignment”: Letter from Gregg Toland to Samuel Goldwyn, March 22, 1942, file 3902, SGC.
in Honolulu, all cars had to be off the streets: Ibid.
“Naturally one can’t write a great deal”: Letter from John Ford to Mary Ford, February 24, 1942, JFC.
“I love that request for Frank Borzage”: Letter from John Ford to Mary Ford, ca. March 1942, JFC.
“Ah well—such heroism”: McBride, Searching for John Ford, 343.
Ford finally lost his temper: Parrish, Hollywood Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 18–21.
Parrish assumed it was as punishment: Ibid.
“Americans badly needed a morale boost”: General James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle with Carroll V. Glines, I Could Never Be So Lucky Again (New York: Bantam, 1991), 2.
“enemy alien”: Joseph McBride, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992; revised 2000), 450.
In an unusual arrangement: Arsenic and Old Lace files, FCA and Warner Bros. Archives, University of Southern California.
Capra seemed to be planning: McBride, Frank Capra, 448, 451.
“I know only too well the standards”: Letter from Captain S. S. Bartlett, War Dept., to Frank Capra, December 20, 1941, FCA.
the army’s Morale Branch: David Culbert, “Why We Fight: Social Engineering for a Democratic Society at War,” in Film and Radio Propaganda in World War II, ed. K. R. M. Short (Kent, UK: Croom Helm Ltd., 1983).
“Since General Osborn is reputed to be”: Letter from Bartlett to Frank Capra, December 20, 1941, FCA.
“you will at all times have free access”: Cable from General Frederick Osborn to Frank Capra, January 8, 1942, FCA.
“I suppose it was in my blood”: Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography (New York: Da Capo, 1997; originally published 1971), 315–16.
“Do I have to wait for orders”: Telegram from Frank Capra to Richard Schlossberg, February 4, 1942, FCA.
“You Hollywood big shots are all alike”: Capra’s account of Schlossberg’s statement appears with slight variations in The Name Above the Title, 318, and Jan Herman, A Talent for Trouble: The Life of Hollywood’s Most Acclaimed Director, William Wyler (New York: Da Capo, 1997), 239–41.
Marshall had projected movies: Culbert, “Why We Fight.”
frequently greeted with hooting and Bronx cheers: Michael Birdwell, “Technical Fairy First Class,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 25, no. 2 (June 2005).
“a gross abuse of the principle of a training film”: Ibid.
“didn’t like them. He didn’t think”: Leland Poague, ed., Frank Capra Interviews (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004), 127.
“wanted a series of films made”: Ibid., 57–61.
“I come to you with no salute”: Frank Capra, “A Proposed Address by the President,” December 24, 1942, Mellett files, Records of the Office of War Information, box 1432, NA.
“one of our greatest movie directors”: Memorandum from Mellett to President Roosevelt, February 25, 1942, Mellett files, Records of the Office of War Information, box 1432, NA.
calling it “a good idea”: Letter from Roosevelt to Mellett, February 26, 1942, Mellett files, Records of the Office of War Information, box 1432, NA.
“This is beginning to look like” to “nothing but us”: Several letters from Frank Capra to Lucille Capra, undated but all February 1942, FCA.
Chapter 7: “I’ve Only Got One German”
there would be no dancing: Mason Wiley and Damien Bona, Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards, 10th anniversary ed. (New York: Ballantine, 1996), 115–16.
“the vicious character of Nazi plotting and violence”: Ibid., 119.
“was playing Regina with no shading”: Ed Sikov, Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis (New York: Henry Holt, 2007), 180.
“Miss Davis seemed intent”: Thomas Brady, “Peace Comes to ‘The Little Foxes,’” New York Times, June 22, 1941.
one of her worst performances: Bette Davis, The Lonely Life (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1962), 207.
“Are you thinking what the character”: Wyler in New York World-Telegram, September 9, 1941, cited in Barbara Leaming, Bette Davis (New York: Cooper Square, 1992), 181.
“You will give the great performance”: Michael Troyan, A Rose for Mrs. Miniver: The Life of Greer Garson (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 129.
“I jumped at it because”: William Wyler interviewed by Catherine Wyler, 1981, reprinted in Gabriel Miller, ed., William Wyler Interviews (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009), 112.
“I’ve been thinking about that scene”: Versions of this story, with slight variations, appear in Jan Herman, A Talent for Trouble: The Life of Hollywood’s Most Acclaimed Director, William Wyler (New York: Da Capo, 1997); Michael Anderegg, William Wyler (Boston: Twayne, 1979); and Wyler’s 1979 interview with Ron Davis in Miller, ed., William Wyler Interviews, 96–97.
In the shooting script that Wyler had approved: Script of Mrs. Miniver, October 18, 1941, box 7, folder 13, WWUCLA.
Wilcoxon was already on active duty: Troyan, A Rose for Mrs. Miniver, 134.
“wild to get involved”: Talli Wyler interviewed in Directed by William Wyler (episode of American Masters, originally aired 1986 on PBS), produced by Catherine Wyler, narration and interviews by A. Scott Berg, directed by Aviva Slesin.
“about my status and what action has been taken”: Telegram from William Wyler to Richard Schlossberg, February 12, 1942, NA.
“if he had qualms”: John Huston interviewed in Directed by William Wyler.
“uncomfortably obvious”: Lawrence Grobel, The Hustons: The Life and Times of a Hollywood Dynasty, updated ed. (New York: Cooper Square, 2000), 229.
his salary for The Maltese Falcon: Ibid., 217.
“We had an odd, childlike territorial imperative”: Ibid., 212, 221.
“The Monster is stimulating” and “a First Class Character”: Stuart Kaminsky, John Huston: Maker of Magic (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 26, 48.
“shrinking all the pauses” . . . “with the whole picture in mind”: Rudy Behlmer, Inside Warner Bros. (1935–1951) (New York: Viking, 1985), 151–52.
“The Warners have been strangely bashful”: Bosley Crowther, “‘The Maltese Falcon,’ a Fast Mystery-Thriller with Quality and Charm, at the Strand,” New York Times, October 4, 1941.
“frighteningly good evidence”: “The New Pictures,” Time, October 20, 1941.
“a classic in its field”: New York Herald Tribune, October 4, 1941.