HOLLYWOOD CINEMA (5AAQS260)

WORLD WAR II AND HOLLYWOOD’S WAR EFFORT

31ST JANUARY 2023

DR KULRAJ PHULLAR
HE/HIM/HIS
kulraj.phullar@kcl.ac.uk
 UCU STRIKES – FEBRUARY-MARCH 2023
Week 1 – Wednesday 1 February
Week 2 – Thursday 9 and Friday 10 February
Week 3 – Tuesday 14, Wednesday 15 and Thursday 16 Week 6: 1950s Hollywood – Johnny
February Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)
Week 4 – Tuesday 21, Wednesday 22 and Thursday 23
February
Week 5 – Monday 27 and Tuesday 28 February and Week 8: 1960s Hollywood – Midnight
Wednesday 1 and Thursday 2 March Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969)
(No action week commencing Monday 6 March)
Week 6 – Thursday 16 and Friday 17 March
Week 7 – Monday 20, Tuesday 21 and Wednesday 22 Week 11: Global Perspectives/South
March Asians – The Namesake (Mira Nair, 2006)
Assignment 2: Online test – 2.00-3.30pm, Monday 20 February 2023

• 30 multiple-choice questions
• Material from first four weeks of term (weeks 2-5)
• NOTE: Week 6 (1950s Hollywood and Johnny Guitar) will NOT be in the test

• Questions will draw on material covered in the lectures and assigned readings
• You should have seen the four main course films at least once (e.g. Tuesday
screenings)
• Revision should prioritise weekly lecture slides and assigned readings – all
available on KEATS
 WEEKS 2-5: OVERVIEW
Weeks 2-3 Week 4

• Hollywood films about • Hollywood during WWII

Hollywood
• Transition to sound • Entertainment and the war effort
film/“talkies”
• Production Code • Stardom
• Richard Dyer
• Archival/primary sources
Weeks 4-5: 1940s • Veronica Lake
• All-star revue/backstage musical
• Week 4: WWII
• Week 5: Film noir (and • CLIPS: The Heat’s On (Gregory Ratoff, 1943); U.S. News Review -
Cold War) “Safety Styles” (1942)
• SCREENING: Follow the Boys (A. Edward Sutherland, 1944) [DVDs
have been catalogued and should now be available in the library]
 POST-CODE: JAMES CAGNEY

G-Men (William Keighley, 1935) Angels with Dirty Faces (Michael Curtiz, 1938) The Roaring Twenties (Raoul Walsh, 1939)

As the psychotic film noir

gangster in White Heat
(Raoul Walsh, 1949) [left]
and Kiss Tomorrow
Goodbye (Gordon
Douglas, 1950) [right]
Steven J. Ross, “Confessions of a Nazi Spy: Warner Bros., Anti-Fascism and the
Politicization of Hollywood,” in Warners' War: Politics, Pop Culture &
Propaganda in Wartime Hollywood, eds. Kaplan and Blakley (2020)

Also see Marshall Curry’s A Night at the Garden (2017), comprising archival
footage of 1939 Nazi rally in New York: https://anightatthegarden.com/
 WWII
• US reluctance to enter WWII – isolationism
• December 7 1941: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour

• June 1942: formation of Office of War Information (OWI) to oversee

news, media and propaganda; Bureau of Motion Pictures (BMP)

“Hollywood displayed more zeal about the war than it did political
judgement.” Clayton R. Koppes, “Regulating the Screen: The Office of
War Information and the Production Code Administration,” in Schatz,
ed., Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s (1999), 269.

• Wartime rationing and restrictions – raw film stock, construction

materials, transportation
• Loss of (mostly male) personnel and performers
• Loss of overseas markets – Britain (and empire) remained important
market; see H. Mark Glancy, When Hollywood Loved Britain: The
Hollywood ‘British’ Film 1939-45 (1999) [especially chapter 1
“Hollywood’s Foreign Markets”]
“Before the war, American movies were mainly considered an amusement or an
investment. A few academics dissented, arguing for a profound if intangible
“sociological” influence. A more numerous legion of public guardians concurred
after a fashion, railing against the movies as moral blight or religious blasphemy. Not
until Hollywood enlisted as an active agent in the Second World War did the
ephemeral popular art dedicated to “mere entertainment” suddenly and seriously
matter – to the War Department, to the Office of War Information, to spectators
made sensitive to the educational import and ideological impact of the movies. …
The unique, unprecedented alliance between Washington and Hollywood generated
not only new kinds of movies but a new attitude toward them. Hereafter, popular
art and cultural meaning, mass communications and national politics, would be
intimately aligned and commonly acknowledged in American culture.”

Thomas Doherty, Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 5.
“Emphasizing the necessity for increased public
information and understanding about the war, he
[President Roosevelt] outlined six aspects which
needed to be more fully understood: the Issues of the
War; the Nature of the Enemy; the United Nations and
Peoples; Work and Production; the Home Front; and
the Fighting Forces. This classification was subsequently
adopted by the Office of War Information, and, because
of its comprehensive nature, has proved useful
generally in the dissemination and analysis of war
data.” – Dorothy B. Jones, “The Hollywood War Film:
1942-44,” Hollywood Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 1 (October
1945), 1-2.
“there were 45 or 50 [films] which aided
significantly, both at home and abroad, in
increasing understanding of the conflict” (12)

“faced with the task of making films which would

educate the public about the war, most Hollywood
movie makers did not know where to begin. They
lacked experience in making films dealing with
actual social problems.” (13) “Well, they have
experts making those
Dorothy B. Jones, “The Hollywood War Film: 1942- pictures. I guess that’s
44,” Hollywood Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 1 (October how they see the
1945) war.”

Jones was head of the OWI’s reviewing unit.

I’ll Be Seeing You (William Dieterle, 1944)
Authored The Portrayal of China and India on the
American Screen, 1896-1955 (1955) https://youtu.be/bCLBcHf71Rc [25:34-27:36]
“The assimilationist credo of the war years found vibrant
expression and visible confirmation on the Hollywood
screen. … When the struggle against the master racists of the
Third Reich forced a recognition of the unseemly domestic
parallels, a rich assortment of exotic new elements were
added to the motion picture mix. The cast of Hollywood
characters expanded to embrace Americans traditionally
sidestepped and overlooked, ridiculed and demeaned.”
– Doherty, 5
 AFRICAN AMERICANS AND WWII
• WWII: demographic and • Documentaries: The Negro
occupational changes Soldier (Stuart Heisler, 1944),
The Negro Sailor (Henry Levin,
• Anti-racist/fascist activism: 1945) – both available on
“Double V” campaign YouTube
launched by Pittsburgh
Courier
• NAACP/Walter White
interventions in Hollywood

• Wartime movies: Black

servicemen; Black-cast
musicals; anti-racist themes
– anticipate postwar social
problem films Humphrey Bogart and Rex Ingram
in Sahara (Zoltan Korda, 1943)
“There may come a day when the Negro will have seen so many other sides
of Negro life on the screen that he can afford to condone quaint Negro
characters and folky acting. At present he cannot do so for the simple reason
that many white people are coming to regard those simple characters as
typical of an entire race, and that will not aid good race relations in America,
nor will it please people in foreign countries whose skins are not white.

“For the present, we would like to see ridiculous, criminal, superstitious and
immoral characterizations eliminated; Negroes cast in other than servant
roles; Negroes’ contribution to the war and to American life pictured;
Negroes included as extras in background groups; Negroes employed in
studios in other positions than those of actor and menial; Negroes employed
as authorities on the Negro. We would like to see all-Negro films abolished
for, no matter how expensive and glamorous they are, they still glorify Hazel Scott
segregation. In short, we would like to see the Negro presented to the world
Numbers from The Heat’s On (Gregory
and to America as a normal American. If this were done, the films could Ratoff, 1943):
make a real contribution to inter-racial understanding and to a better world.”
“The White Keys and The Black Keys” -
William Grant Still, “How Do We Stand in Hollywood?” (1945) – included on https://youtu.be/4s7nqIYy4iE
PDF with “She Makes the Wounded Wiggle,” from Bitter Fruit: African
American Women in World War II, ed. Maureen Honey [on KEATS] “The Caisson Song” -
https://youtu.be/aWyBFkAqhNE
KCL alumnus Greer Garson in 1942’s top-grossing film Mrs. Top female star of 1940s –
Miniver (William Wyler); wins Best Actress Oscar – pictured Betty Grable’s iconic pin-
alongside Best Actor winner James Cagney, for Yankee Doodle up photo
Dandy (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
“The star challenges analysis in the way it crosses
disciplinary boundaries: a product of mass culture,
but retaining theatrical concerns with acting,
performance and art; an industrial marketing device,
but a signifying element in films; a social sign,
carrying cultural meanings and ideological values,
which expresses the intimacies of individual
personality, inviting desire and identification; an
emblem of national celebrity, founded on the body,
fashion and personal style; a product of capitalism
and the ideology of individualism, yet a site of
contest by marginalised groups; a figure consumed
for his or her personal life, who competes for
allegiance with statesmen and politicians.”
Christine Gledhill, “Introduction,” in Stardom: Industry of
Desire, ed. Christine Gledhill (London and New York:
Routledge, 1991), xii.
“The American cinema is a classical art,
but why not then admire in it what is
most admirable, i.e. not only the talent
of this or that film-maker, but the
genius of the system, the richness of its
ever-vigorous tradition, and its fertility
when it comes into contact with new
elements – as has been proved, if proof
there need be, in such films as An
American in Paris, The Seven Year Itch
and Bus Stop.”
André Bazin, “De la Politique des Auteurs,”
in Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader,
ed. Barry Keith Grant (Malden, MA and
Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 27.
Translated by Peter Graham. Original French
article published in Cahiers du Cinéma in
1957.
 RICHARD DYER, STARS (1979/1998)
• Established theoretical In “Stars as Specific Images” (60-63) Dyer
framework for academic notes that the star image is typically
study of stardom composed of:

• Stars as “phenomenon of • Promotion

production” vs. • Publicity
“phenomenon of • Films
consumption” (chapter • Commentaries and criticism (including
2) scholarship

• Three key perspectives: “The image that results from all these
• Stars as a Social media texts is a complex totality with a
Phenomenon chronological dimension. What we need to
• Stars as Images understand that totality in its temporality is
• Stars as Signs the concept of a structured polysemy.” (63)
 ARCHIVAL SOURCES
Lantern – online archive of fan magazines and
trade papers
https://lantern.mediahist.org/
BFI Reuben Library – official studio pressbooks
and other archival sources
https://www.bfi.org.uk/bfi-reuben-library
Also see Mary Beth Haralovich, “Selling Mildred Pierce:
A Case Study in Movie Promotion,” in Boom and Bust,
ed. Thomas Schatz, for useful case study of
promotional materials and strategies during the 1940s.
WWII-era documentaries and newsreels, released
through War Activities Committee of the Motion
Picture Industry – available on YouTube
• The Negro Soldier (Stuart Heisler, 1944)
• The Negro Sailor (Henry Levin, 1945)
• Winning Your Wings (John Huston and Owen
Crump, 1942) [James Stewart]
• Wings Up (1943) [Clark Gable]
• Show-Business at War (Louis De Rochemont, 1943)
• Hollywood Victory Caravan (William D. Russell,
1945) [Paramount stars and Humphrey Bogart]
Scholarly accounts of documentaries and newsreels in
Doherty and other books on WWII (see Further
Reading slide)
 VERONICA LAKE
“Lake’s media visibility
throughout 1941 and 1942
invites us to take seriously
her influence during these
formative years of film noir.”
– 87

Kulraj Phullar, “‘Detour

coiffure’: Veronica Lake and
“A Sweater, A Sarong and a her peekaboo
Peekaboo Bang” number hairstyle,” Celebrity Studies,
from Star Spangled Rhythm 7:1 (2016), 83-97.
(George Marshall, 1942)
U.S. News Review - “Safety Styles”
(1942) -
https://youtu.be/mgpvKXLTwr8
“stars are supremely figures of
identification” (Dyer, 99)

“The fact that [stars] are also real

people is an important aspect of
how they signify, but we never
know them directly as real
people, only as they are to be
found in media texts.” (Dyer, 2)

How does Weller’s interview

construct Lake as a figure of
identification, and negotiate the
relationship between
extraordinariness (star as individual,
“unique”) and ordinariness (star as Further reading: Anthony Slide, Inside the Hollywood Fan
figure of identification, “one of us”)? Magazine: A History of Star Makers, Fabricators, and Gossip
Mongers (2010)
“The militarist musical was an ideal place to recognize the
contributions of an essential homefront industry
Hollywood needed no urging from the OWI to recognize:
itself. Cavalcade productions depicted the common touch
of celebrities eagerly rolling up their sleeves …” –
Doherty, 189

“For in heightening the asymmetry of story and spectacle

that is always central to the genre, in their star spangled
patriotism these musicals project a historically concrete,
if also highly contradictory, representation of
entertainment as a metaphor of social unity.” – Steven
Cohan, “Star Spangled Shows: Utopia and History in the
Wartime Canteen Musical,” 82
Richard Dyer, “Entertainment and Utopia” [1977], in
Only Entertainment (London: Routledge, 2002), 19-35

“Two of the taken-for-granted descriptions of

entertainment, as ‘escape’ and as ‘wish-fulfilment’,
point to its central thrust, namely, utopianism. …
Entertainment does not, however, present models
of utopian worlds … Rather the utopianism is
contained in the feelings it embodies. It presents,
head-on as it were, what utopia would feel like
rather than how it would be organized.” (20)

Utopian solutions to social problems: abundance;

energy; intensity; transparency; community (26)
UNIVERSAL
 DISCUSSION POINTS
• How does Follow the Boys reflect Dorothy Jones and Thomas Doherty’s assessments of WWII-
era films?

• Does Follow the Boys display the same tension between demystification/mystification as films
discussed in week 2 (Show People, etc.)? How does WWII transform the purpose of the
“Hollywood film about Hollywood”?

• How do musical numbers and formal strategies represent Hollywood’s war effort and construct
“community” – e.g. framing, editing, montage, dissolves, newsreel footage, props, spectacle >
plot.

• What purposes – narrative, ideology, genre – do Tony West’s death serve?

• Using Doherty’s chapter, Follow the Boys and the Veronica Lake and Hazel Scott articles, reflect
on how WWII impacted on film stardom. How do gender and race impact on stardom?
 FURTHER READING
• Steven Cohan, “Star Spangled Shows: History and Utopia in
• Thomas Doherty, Projections of War:
Wartime Canteen Musicals,” in The Sound of Musicals, ed.
Hollywood, American Culture, and World
Cohan (2010) [most detailed account of films similar to Follow
War II (1993)
the Boys]
• Bernard F. Dick, The Star-Spangled Screen:
• Rick Altman, The American Film Musical (1989)
The American World War II Film (1985/1996)
• Jane Feuer, The Hollywood Musical (1993)
• Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War:
Patriotism, Movies and the Second
• Sean Griffin, ed., What Dreams Were Made of: Movie Stars of
World War from Ninotchka to Mrs Miniver
the 1940s (2011) [especially introduction and chapters on
(2000)
Greer Garson, Betty Grable and homefront female stars]
• Michael Renov, Hollywood’s Wartime
Woman: Representation and Ideology (1988)
• Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks,
5th edition (2016), and Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The
• Thomas Schatz, Boom and Bust: American
Story of Black Hollywood (2005)
Cinema in the 1940s (1997)
• Anna Everett, Returning the Gaze: A Genealogy of Black Film
Criticism, 1909-1949 (2001)
Further useful sources – especially on women
• Charlene Regester, African American Actresses: The Struggle
and WWII – will be included in next week’s
for Visibility, 1900-1960 (2010) [includes chapter on Hazel
class.
Scott]