by Mark Harris
Penny Serenade, 80–81, 387
A Place in the Sun, 440, 443
pneumonia contracted by, 196
Russian soldiers and, 368–69
Screen Directors Guild and, 79, 81, 166
Shane, 443
SPECOU team of, 261, 263, 290–91, 309, 311–12, 315, 316, 320–23, 339, 343, 366, 376, 415, 443–44
The Talk of the Town, 166–67, 169, 172, 263
The True Glory and, 347
Tunisian Victory and, 237–41, 254, 261, 288
Vigil in the Night, 39, 40, 46–49, 80
Woman of the Year, 5–6, 81, 165, 166
Wyler and, 349
Stevens, George, Jr., 166, 195, 196, 261, 290–92, 339, 342, 344–47
Stevens, Yvonne, 195, 196, 263–64, 290–92, 341–42, 345, 346, 404, 414, 416, 418
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 360
Stewart, Jimmy, 41, 389, 422
Stimson, Henry L., 183, 208, 296
Story of G.I. Joe, The, 279, 334, 407
Stout, Junius, 325
Stranger, The, 331, 401
Streicher, Julius, 403
Sturges, John, 348–49, 361–62, 388
Sturges, Preston, 420
Stürmer, 403
Strauss, Theodore, 225
Sullavan, Margaret, 31
Sullivan, Arthur, 335
Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), 262
Surles, Alexander, 217, 218, 224, 243, 250, 278, 308, 331, 332
Swerling, Jo, 423
Swing Time, 21
Szekely, Hans, 76
Talk of the Town, The, 166–67, 169, 172, 263
Tanaka plan, 330
Tannenbaum, Harold, 169, 199, 200, 220, 246, 259
Target for Tonight, 181
Tashlin, Frank, 235
Taylor, Robert, 356
Taylor, Telford, 403
Tebourba, 180, 215
Technicolor, 76, 152, 173, 257, 415
Tehran, 309
Temple, Shirley, 62
Test Pilot, 300
They Were Expendable (film), 299–302, 318–19, 325–27, 352–61, 395, 405–7
They Were Expendable (White), 272, 299–300, 353
Thief of Bagdad, The, 76
Thin Man movies, 308
This Above All (Knight), 142
This Is the Army, 304
“This One is Captain Waskow” (Pyle), 279
This Thing Called Love, 79
Thunderbolt, 298, 348–49, 351, 361–65, 388–89, 415
Time, 24, 31, 38, 43, 54, 55, 78, 88, 138, 139, 165, 172, 173, 197, 213, 232–33, 289, 307, 383, 391–92, 407
Times (London), 177
Tobacco Road, 70
To Be or Not to Be, 118
Tobey, Charles, 93–94
Tobruk, 233
Tojo, Hideki, 160–61, 278, 380
Toland, Gregg, 57, 63, 108–9, 147, 155, 191, 206–10, 288, 355–56, 409, 431, 432, 434
Toldy, John, 76
Torgau, 368–69
Torpedo Squadron 8, 150, 158
Torpedo Squadron 8, 158–59
Toscanini, Arturo, 329
To the Shores of Tripoli, 129
Town & Country, 284
Tracy, Spencer, 5–6, 165, 272, 318, 356
Traven, B., 127
Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The, 127, 170, 293, 410, 440, 443
Treaty of Versailles, 141
Tree, Marietta (Marietta Fitzgerald), 192, 241, 284
Triumph of the Will, 6, 141, 142, 376
True Glory, The, 347
Truman, Harry, 213, 216, 217, 372, 375, 376
Truman Committee (Senate Committee Investigating National Defense), 213–17
Zanuck and, 215–16, 224, 326
Trumbo, Dalton, 423
Tunis, 179, 180
Tunis Expedition (Zanuck), 214, 232
Tunisia, 173, 198, 214, 231–33
Tunisian Victory, 236–43, 254–56, 261, 278, 281, 283, 288–90, 298, 305, 347, 381
British and, 243, 247–52, 254, 255
Turkmenistan, 309
20th Century Fox, 18–19, 23, 29, 53, 70, 73, 74, 93, 105, 111, 129, 142, 155, 258, 161, 162, 197, 293, 327, 335, 380
Zanuck and, 214–16, 326
25 Missions, 246–47
Two Down and One to Go!, 380
Two-Faced Woman, 101
unions, 20, 26, 40, 41, 91, 105
United Artists (UA), 46, 52, 68
Universal Pictures, 24, 29, 31, 103, 176, 331
USAAF, 293
U.S. Film Service, 276
USO, 273
U.S. Relocation Authority, 162
USSR Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, 265
Valley Forge, 24–25, 28
Variety, 16–17, 38, 54–55, 68, 77, 88, 104, 138, 225, 233, 407, 436
Vatican, 348
V-E Day, 375, 381, 385
Veiller, Anthony, 247, 250–52, 262, 264, 308, 380
Venafro, 267–70, 279
veterans, returning, 396–97
The Best Years of Our Lives, 390, 391–96, 417, 425–38, 441, 442
Let There Be Light (originally The Returning Psychoneurotic), 386–87, 396–400, 409–13
Veterans Administration, 410
Vigil in the Night, 39, 40, 46–49, 80
Vivacious Lady, 22
V-J Day, 388
Voice of America, 138
von der Lippe, Victor, 403
Wake Island, 102, 147, 149
Wake Island, 129
Wallace, Irving, 277–78
Wallis, Hal, 33, 38, 84, 85, 86, 124, 127
Walsh, Raoul, 85, 336
Walt Disney Studios, 164, 182, 235, 276
Wanger, Walter, 46, 48, 52–53, 59, 63, 174, 204, 288, 415, 420
“Wanted: A Faith to Fight For” (Alsop), 7
War Activities Committee (WAC), 158, 217, 218, 224, 225, 265, 295–96, 389
War Comes to America, 164, 308, 379–82
War Department, 112, 133, 137, 152, 153, 160, 175, 207, 208, 210, 211, 224–26, 233, 243, 249, 254, 302, 308, 317, 321, 328, 330–31, 332, 336, 361, 376, 387, 413
Bureau of Public Relations, 217, 243, 333, 383, 388, 410–13
Ford and, 105, 107, 325–26
liaison between movie industry and, 9–10, 91, 104, 216, 217
newsreel producers and, 10
War Department Report, 288
war movies, pre-World War II, 20–21
Warner, Albert, 15
Warner, Harry, 15, 16, 17, 50–51, 61–62, 73, 96–97, 103, 279, 328
speech of, 60, 62
Warner, Jack, 29, 60, 61, 73, 94, 102, 103, 124, 125, 127, 129, 130, 344
Mann dinner hosted by, 15, 16–17
Warner, Sam, 15
Warner Bros., 5, 8, 15, 17, 23, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37–38, 46, 59, 60, 65, 73, 82, 85–88, 97, 111, 123–25, 127, 129, 140–41, 170, 191, 235, 253, 278, 293, 294, 329, 331, 336, 379n, 410
Washington, Booker T., 306
Washington, George, 24–25
Wasserman, Lew, 422
Wayne, John, 10, 52, 55, 63, 109, 272–73, 275
in They Were Expendable, 356–60, 406
Wead, Frank “Spig,” 56, 208, 300–301, 353–56, 406
Wedemeyer, Albert, 274, 326
Wehrmacht, 346
Weizmann, Chaim, 89
Welles, Orson, 77, 123, 253, 331, 401
Wellman, William, 154, 407
Westerner, The, 49, 51
What Price Glory?, 259
Wheeler, Burton K., 88, 261
White, William, They Were Expendable, 272, 299–300, 353
Whitty, May, 121
Why We Fight, 113, 114, 131–33, 141–44, 163–64, 169, 181–82, 185, 217, 218, 234, 236, 264, 276, 303, 329, 330, 381–82, 421
The Battle of Britain, 164
The Battle of China, 164, 308, 330
The Battle of Russia, 164, 264–65, 278, 288
Divide and Conquer, 164
The Nazis Strike, 164
Prelude to War, 144, 164, 182–85, 205, 210, 211, 217–19, 224, 234, 264, 421
War Comes to America, 164, 308, 379–80
Wilcoxon, Henry, 121–22
Wilder, Billy, 68, 436, 440
Wilhelmshaven, 202–3, 205, 219, 220, 297
Willkie, Wendell, 87–88, 91–94, 118, 245, 288
Wilson, Woodrow, 5
Winchell, Clarence, 202
Winchell, Walter, 17
Wing and a Prayer, 150n
Winged Victory, 298
Wings, 169, 407
Winsten, Archer, 412
With the Marines at Tarawa, 289–90, 297
Woman of the Year, 5–6, 81, 165, 166
Wood, Sam, 69–70, 275
World at War, The, 181–83
World’s Fair, 84
World War I, 2, 4, 5, 7–8, 19, 21, 22, 63, 64, 83, 84, 87, 113, 183, 221, 340
as movie subject, 21, 87
World War II:
beginning of, 49, 53, 103
in Europe, end of, 365, 375, 383
in Japan, end of, 387–88
loss of American optimism in outcome of, 141–42
Pearl Harbor in, see Pearl Harbor
U.S. entry into, 1–2, 121
Wright, Richard, 306–7
Wright, Teresa, 427
Wurtzel, Harry, 275
Wuthering Heights, 30, 34–35, 52, 178
Wyler, Cathy, 30, 170, 205, 221–22, 247
Wyler, Judy, 170, 222, 247
Wyler, Leopold, 350
Wyler, Margaret Tallichet “Talli,” 4, 30, 31, 49, 51–52, 60, 69, 70, 123, 126, 129, 169–70, 177, 201, 202, 204–5, 220–22, 245, 247, 257, 290, 347–48, 351, 364, 365, 432
Wyler, Robert, 350
Wyler, William, 4–5, 11–12, 18, 29–35, 49–52, 60, 69, 72–73, 79, 89, 124–26, 136, 144, 168–70, 176–79, 193, 211, 219, 221–22, 244–46, 262, 263, 339, 347–52, 382, 408, 420, 421, 425–35, 440–43
Academy Awards and, 33, 52, 69–70, 72, 118, 123, 125–26, 203–5, 435–36, 442
Air Medal awarded to, 221
The Best Years of Our Lives, 390, 391–96, 417, 425–38, 441, 442
on bombing missions, 201–3, 219–21, 245–46, 430, 434
Davis and, 31, 33, 51, 60–61, 118–19, 426, 429, 442
death of, 442
in doorman incident, 296–97, 428
and family and friends in Europe, 4, 11, 29, 51, 61, 348–51
Ford and, 177
in France, 347–51
Goldwyn and, 72–73, 169, 245, 258, 298, 365, 389, 390
hearing loss of, 363–65, 366, 388, 389, 431, 432–33
How Green Was My Valley and, 73–76, 105
Huston’s friendship with, 30–34, 442
in Italy, 298, 348, 351, 362–64
The Letter, 60–61, 69, 118
Liberty Films and, 389–90, 402, 416, 417, 421, 424, 437
The Little Foxes, 60, 73, 75, 118–19, 125, 126, 134, 429, 431
in London, 176–78, 199–204, 257, 258
marriage of, 30, 31, 60
The Memphis Belle: The Story of a Flying Fortress (originally 25 Missions), 246–47, 257–61, 293–98, 317, 348, 349, 361, 362, 388
Mrs. Miniver, 4, 5, 119–23, 126–27, 129, 134, 138–39, 169, 172, 177–78, 203–5, 211, 220, 298, 389, 426
in Mulhouse, 348–51, 361
The Negro Soldier and, 134–36, 303
Olivier and, 178
P-47 fighter plane documentary of, 298
Signal Corps joined by, 4–5, 123, 126, 127
Stevens and, 349
Thunderbolt, 298, 348–49, 351, 361–65, 388–89, 415
25 Missions, 246–47
Wuthering Heights, 30, 34–35, 52, 178
Wyler, William, Jr., 430
York, Alvin C., 83–86, 88, 95–96, 103
You Can’t Take It With You, 24, 26–27, 40–41
Young Mr. Lincoln, 53
Your Job in Germany, 378–79
Zanuck, Darryl F., 18, 19, 53, 59, 70–72, 74–76, 93, 97–98, 104–5, 112, 126, 134, 161, 176, 196, 214–15, 224, 279, 298, 344, 380, 385, 395, 401
At the Front in North Africa, 215, 232–34
Ford and, 327
in North Africa, 179–81, 184, 211, 214, 215, 231–32
Truman Committee and, 215–16, 224, 326
Zeroes, 146–49, 188, 190, 207
Zukor, Adolph, 90
* Sex Hygiene remained in use until well into the Vietnam War.
* In 1939, All Quiet on the Western Front itself was the victim of revisionism. Universal decided not only to rerelease the film, but to recut it; footage that was sympathetic to German soldiers was removed and a voice-over was added, interrupting the film a dozen times to describe war atrocities and emphasize Germany’s plan for world domination, specifically mentioning Hitler. The New York Times described the new version as “stupid vandalism” that deliberately undercut the original film’s antiwar message, but with the disingenuous billing “The Uncensored Version,” it did business well into 1940.
* Balaban and Zukor were the president and cofounder of Paramount; Schenck, the chairman of 20th Century Fox, had recently been convicted of income tax evasion.
* In 1944, director Mervyn LeRoy incorporated Ford’s footage into an MGM drama about the raid, Thirty Seconds over Tokyo.
* The movie Hellman wrote, The North Star, a drama about a Ukrainian village shattered by the Nazi invasion in the summer of 1941, was directed by All Quiet on the Western Front’s Lewis Milestone and released in 1943; it was one of the few examples of pro-Soviet propaganda to emerge from Hollywood during the war.
* The story of Torpedo Squadron 8 was made into a feature film, Wing and a Prayer, that 20th Century Fox released in 1944.
* It has never been determined whether James Roosevelt was actually present at Midway.
* Warner Bros. agreed to hold off on Sierra Madre, but the studio reassigned the Ambler project to Huston’s High Sierra collaborator W. R. Burnett. William Faulkner also worked on the screenplay for Background to Danger, which was released in 1943.
* After several more rejections, Olivier decided to direct Henry V himself, and won an honorary Academy Award for his work on the picture when it was released in the United States after the war.
* The derogation, a reference to his short stature, was also the title of a 1935 Shirley Temple movie.
* The other two winners were also war documentaries—the Australian News Information Bureau’s Kokoda Front Line and Russia’s Moscow Strikes Back.
* Keep ’Em Flying was the title of a huge recent movie hit, a 1941 service comedy that starred Abbott and Costello.
* Chennault was the son of USAAF major general Claire Chennault, who had become something of an American hero as the leader of the Flying Tigers and was widely recognized for shooting down four Japanese planes soon after Pearl Harbor in the first direct U.S. hit against the Japanese army.
* After the war, Foreman went on to write High Noon and many other films; he became one of Hollywood’s most famous blacklisted screenwriters after refusing to name names to HUAC.
* Hayward, born in South Africa, was a popular actor in Hollywood swashbuckler movies who became an American citizen shortly after Pearl Harbor, then joined the marines as a combat photographer. He won the Bronze Star for his work at Tarawa.
* Wyler received the honor, but not until early 1946.
* The timing of Capra’s assignment to Stevens has been a subject of confusion and uncertainty for decades. In his 1971 autobiography, Capra wrote that he conceived the Lend-Lease short and sent Stevens to the Iran/USSR border in May 1942, a clear failure of memory since Stevens hadn’t even joined the army yet. Twenty years later, biographer Joseph McBride caught the error, checked it against Capra’s army file, and concluded that the assignment was actually made two years later. His basis for this was a letter dated May 27, 1944, in which Capra and Osborn asked the USSR
for access “to photograph the activities of the Lend-Lease supply into the Soviet Union.” But circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that the date in the army file is a typo and that the request was actually made a year earlier, on May 27, 1943. In his letter, General Osborn refers to the proposed film as covering “the full operation of the Persian Gulf Service Command”—the U.S. Army outpost in charge of coordinating the supply line. But the designation “Persian Gulf Service Command” was only in use from August 1942 to December 1943; after that, its name was changed. Moreover, a May 1943 assignment to Stevens would logically have led into the trip that he and one of the men in his unit, Gunga Din screenwriter Joel Sayre, took from Egypt to Iran one month later. On July 4, 1943, Stevens was in Tehran and wrote in his journal, “Photographed celebration here, commemorating American Independence Day and the delivery of TONS of material to U.S.S.R.” In any case, the short was abandoned when the Soviet army refused to let Stevens and Sayre cross the border so that they could film American supplies arriving at their destination.
* Ford’s more embellished claim in a 1966 interview with the French magazine Positif that he shed the last vestiges of racism when he saw “scores of black bodies lying in the sand” when he landed on Omaha Beach should probably be discounted as an overstatement at a moment when the somewhat enfeebled director was trying to defend the treatment of African Americans in his films.
* In the years to come, Ford put at least $200,000 into the Farm’s maintenance; it closed permanently in 1969 after being destroyed by a fire.
* The Tanaka plan, widely accepted as factual during the war, is today considered to be a skillful anti-Japanese hoax that was created in China.
* Sturges directed almost fifty movies after the war, including Bad Day at Black Rock, The Magnificent Seven, and The Great Escape.
* Ryan’s real-life counterpart was a sailor named Bob Kelly, who ended up disliking the way he was portrayed so much that he sued for defamation; he was awarded $3,000.
* Although Your Job in Germany was not originally made to be seen by American moviegoers, the War Activities Committee eventually gave the short to Warner Bros., which recut it and rewrote the narration, adding some cautions about the possible rise of Fascism in the United States. It was released theatrically in December 1945 under the title Hitler Lives. The following spring, that version, which was overseen by Don Siegel (later the director of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Dirty Harry) won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject.
