Men Must Fight - 1933

Men Must Fight (1933) straddles the convictions of pacifism versus a willingness to go to war on provocation; it straddles a cinematic proclivity to predicting the future and yet carries forward anachronistic images to illustrate that future.  Mostly, it straddles the past and present: the former grim and the latter an airy illusion of modernity we weren’t living up to in 1933.

This is another in the films I’d like to examine this year made during the 1930s that represent our mindset and our pop culture of that pivotal decade.

The film begins during World War I, with a gentle and yet provocative shot of lovely English actress Diana Wynyard and Robert Young chatting in a charming, homey room in England, preparing to take leave from one another.  The director Edgar Selwyn handles this opening in a sensitive and tantalizing manner.  As the seconds and the chatty dialogue click by, we gradually realize they are lovers, and they are dressing, both preparing to return to wartime duties.  In another moment, as they dress, we see she is a nurse, and he is an American flyer.  We must pause a moment to reflect how handsome and charming Robert Young was in his early career, and what a remarkably confident and appealing nature he projects.  He is quite natural in an era where screen acting could still be quite mannered and even stilted.

Robert says he wants to marry her and we have it on good authority now that they have enjoyed a romantic tryst and are unmarried.  There is no discussion of mores of the time, only that she has anxiety that he may be killed in the war, and he brushes that off with boyish gallantry.

But he does die.  (Longtime readers of this blog will be aware that I give no warning of spoilers, I just spit them out, so you newcomers to the blog had better adjust or go out and come in again.)

In an abrupt scene, we see a plane crash, and the body is transported to Miss Wynyard’s hospital, and it is Robert Young, and he doesn’t make it.

We are shunted to another scene where Miss Wynyard is talking with an old friend, played by Lewis Stone.  He is an American officer as well, but has never met Robert Young.  However, he knows Diana well enough to help her get a transfer, and make a gentlemanly offer to marry her.  “You don’t want your baby born in an atmosphere like this.”

The movie has barely begun and we get Pre-Code shock after shock.  Diana Wynyard at first rejects Lewis Stone because she does not love him and it would not be fair to him, and he gallantly accepts that, but offers security for her and the child.

The war ends, and Diana remarks, “Thank God it’s over and it will never happen again.”  That was the general idea during The World War, however unfortunate and inaccurate a prediction that turned out to be.  We know now the sequel to The World War began in 1939, but this movie, filmed in 1933, projects ahead at this point to 1940 and war clouds gather ominously again.  It is, however, a fictional war and is not really a remarkable prediction of World War II, but is rather a reflection of the dichotomy between the extremely strong anti-war fervor that began after World War I and continued into the early 1930s and the beginnings of militarism around the globe—first with Mussolini in Italy in the 1920s, Hitler’s rise in Germany and becoming chancellor in January 1933, and the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. These world events had us on tenterhooks—at least those who paid attention to world news—and pacifism, isolationism, nationalism all converged and began to make even the most unwilling take stances.  Eventually, they would take sides.

Lewis Stone, we may note, in the early scenes during the World War is given a very dark dye job to suggest he is a much younger man than we see him in the 1940 scenes, which is appropriate, but even with the dark hair, and even looking trim in his officer’s uniform, we might note he still looks too old for Diana Wynyard, but this is not mentioned and perhaps we are meant to take him for her contemporary.

By the 1940 scenes, he looks like our old friend Judge Hardy, and Diana is now made up to look middle-aged and matronly.  They are married, and her baby is now a grown man, who has never been told that Lewis Stone is not his father.

Played by Phillips Holmes, young Bob is a recent college graduate with a chemical engineering degree, who is returning to the U.S. from abroad with a new girlfriend on board, played by Ruth Selwyn (who in real life was the second wife of the director, Edgar Selwyn).  When she eventually goes to meet his folks, she brings her mother along—played by Hedda Hopper in her pre-gossip column days.

Lewis Stone is a bigwig in the American diplomatic service, Secretary of State, and Diana Wynyard is a peace advocate.  With them living in their Art Deco apartment in New York City is May Robson, the grandmother.  Miss Robson gets to make snappy remarks and get away with it.

Their butler, Albert, is played by Robert Greig, who played so many butlers in his career that he must have belonged to the union.  Perhaps my favorite is his turn as Joel McCrea’s butler in Sullivan’s Travels (1941), which we discussed here.

Diana Wynyard and Lewis Stone have a cozy, comfortable marriage, but trouble comes between them when a U.S. ambassador to a fictional nation called “Eurasia” is murdered and the United States finds itself on the brink of war.  The naval fleet is sent to confront Eurasia.  Diana wants Lewis Stone to resign his position, but he will not.  “I’m not obsessed with the fear that has haunted you all your life.   You’ve seen one war, you’ve seen the man you loved killed, and ever since you’ve been afraid of what might happen to his…”  He’s about to say “son,” but just then their boy Phillips Holmes enters and Diana shushes Lewis Stone.

She speaks at a pacifist rally, and he wants their boy, with his new degree, to enter the chemical engineering side of the war department because “Gas will win this war,” that it will kill not only soldiers but civilians as well.  While we know poison gas was one of the greatest horrors of World War I, it’s not being the weapon of choice in World War II makes the remark sound anachronistic, but not funny.

Lewis Stone is adamant, “Any talk of peace is not only cowardly, it’s treachery.”

Their cook, an immigrant, wants to go back to his homeland—Eurasia—to fight in its defense.  He sounds vaguely Italian, so we really don’t know where Eurasia is supposed to be.  Butler Greig gives him a boot.

One of the interesting attempts at imagining the future world of 1940 is the scenes where we see Diana Wynyard’s speech at the peace rally on television, and another scene where the characters talk on video phones.

Diana is heckled at the rally and fights break out.  Guards hustle her away to safety.  There is mob violence in the city, but Lewis Stone addresses it from their balcony, with their son’s girlfriend’s visiting brother, who is in uniform.  Mr. Stone uses the young soldier as a prop to show the crowd he is all for war.  The uniform calms the crowd and they cheer Lewis Stone for not being a pacifist.

Their boy, Phillips Holmes, however, is.  He has learned about the evils of warfare from his parents from an early age and he has no desire to join up or use his education to become a military chemical officer.  He is torn about what to do, and his girlfriend breaks up with him.  He wants to speak up about peace and his mother’s pacifist cause, but Lewis Stone intervenes in a surprisingly cruel way.

He will not let the son use his good name in the cause of promoting peace.  He tells him that he is not his real father and that he is not free to use in this way the surname that has been generously given to him.

“You have no moral right to use the name of Seward in the manner you propose or any other manner.”  Diana Wynyard cringes, she knows what’s coming.

Lewis Stone continues telling Phillips that he is illegitimate, “Your father was a brave man who died for his country.” He zealously pulls away the honor of his name and the security it represented to a much younger Diana Wynyard.

She tells the whole story to her son, who is now more torn than ever.

Men in uniform march in the streets, and the enemy from Eurasia bombs and burns New York City.  Diana Wynyard and her son’s girlfriend are caught in a cab that is blown up and overturned, but she’s not seriously injured.

Lewis Stone makes a prescient remark, “All those years we’ve sat around and waited. Talked about peace and disarmament.  It’s cost us lives of thousands of men. We weren’t prepared for a war like this.”

Phillips Holmes eventually decides to join up, not in the chemical corps with its ghastly poisons, but as a flyer, like his real father.

His mother is crushed, of course, and the hand of fate weighs heavy on her, to think of her son being a flyer like his father, Robert Young.

“Do you believe in this war?” she asks him.

“Of course not.  It’s a dirty rotten business,” he replies, but adds no less truthfully, “I’ve got to play the game.” 

His girlfriend takes him back, they are married, and in the final scene, the women are sitting on their New York City balcony watching warplanes, biplanes, flying overhead.  We have also gotten a glimpse of zeppelins. Nothing says future war like zeppelins.

May Robson remarks that the world should be run by women.  “Let the men crow and strut and fight and be ornamental.  Like roosters.  That’s the function of the male.”

The new young bride muses that if she ever has a child, he’ll never go through this, but May responds, “Fat lot you’ll have to say about it.  You’ll be just another mother.”

It is a wistful and sad ending, not terribly inspirational though one suspects a certain amount of inspiration was intended.

The movie is daring in so far as it can be; truthful in so far as it could presage the facts of another war, but it fails to give any guiding wisdom about what to do about extermination camps, atom bombs, and the total annihilation of total war.  It couldn’t, of course.  In 1933 we were still too innocent, despite the famed world-weary attitude of the Lost Generation, to imagine anything could be worse than what we had already experienced.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation.

 

 

 

 

Heroes for Sale - 1933

We mark Veterans Day today with the film “Heroes for Sale” (1933), which was produced in that era when Veterans Day was Armistice Day and the prevailing view of Armistice Day and World War I was pacifist. By the end of the decade, war returned and pacifist sentiments would be something akin to treason.

Gone finally, or overwritten at least, was that era, not innocent, but world weary, when the loss and the futility of war was still felt so keenly. Richard Barthelmess shows the many sides of being a veteran. This is not so much a welcome home story as it is a what do you do now story. We begin in the trenches, and we end on a long lonely road to nowhere.

Richard Barthelmess and Gordon Westcott are part of the platoon that is engaged in a raid on the enemy. We are with them in the mud soaked trenches. We crawl along the barbed wire of No Man's Land in the night, in the pouring rain with cannon fire all around us. Mr. Westcott perhaps reflects our sentiments more purely when he has a panic attack and refuses to continue. He hides in the trench, while Mr. Barthelmess moves forward and captures the enemy. He brings the German officer back to the trench, a valuable prisoner to be interrogated. But just after he gets the German officer to safety, Barthelmess is shot and collapses.

Westcott brings the German officer back to headquarters and is proclaimed a hero. This is a film that could have been divided into two or three different movies, because there's a lot happening that is very interesting in terms of the illustrating great demons we carry around. Mr. Westcott is a perfect case study. He is a poster boy for that old line from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, “cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.” Westcott’s fear at being found out dogs him this entire movie.

The first time we think he might be exposed is when the German officer is being interrogated in German by an American officer, and the German glances at Westcott with a wry, mocking smile, as if he knows that this coward, who did not capture him, is getting the credit for being a hero. We wonder if the German will tell. Westcott suffers agonies wondering.

There are several times when someone could spill the beans and Westcott’s dirty secret will be out, which lends a great deal of dramatic tension as we wait for his inevitable humiliation. It also reminds us throughout the film that the War, and its various consequences, is never over for these vets.

Meanwhile the valiant that taste of death but once, Barthelmess, we discover is not dead. Westcott thought he was and we thought he was, but he was captured by Germans and he was brought to a hospital behind enemy lines.

Here we see another aspect in a war movie that we would not see again for many, many years, and that is a humanistic, if not exactly empathetic view of the enemy. We see the Germans have their hospital and they treat the enemy as they would their own soldiers. They are not the monsters we seen the World War I posters. They are overburdened and overworked and desperately trying to save lives.

After the Armistice there is a prisoner exchange, and the German officer in charge of the hospital tells Barthelmess that he may go home. He gives him morphine to take because Barthelmess still has slivers of schrapnel in his spine which causes him great pain. Barthelmess is thankful, respectful, and they part like gentlemen.

We see what is probably a newsreel shot of a troopship coming home. Here, Westcott meets up with Richard Barthelmess again unexpectedly. The sick expression comes over Westcott’s face and he knows that he will have to come clean with this secret he carries, if not with the world, at least with Mr. Barthelmess. He confesses what he did, but Barthelmess has a nonchalant attitude towards it and lets him off the hook. He doesn't care. He says, “I've been in the shadow of death so long. Nothing seems very important anymore.”

It is an admirable sentiment and probably common to most soldiers after seeing absolute hell. They've seen the worst in they are not looking for the best anymore, just a little peace.

In a cameo role on this troopship we see James Murray, who we last saw in this post on “The Crowd” (1928). We mentioned the unfortunate circumstances of both his career and his life that took place a few years after this film was made. Since “The Crowd” was a silent movie, this film is the first time I've heard him speak. I was surprised to hear he sounds something like George Brent.

Westcott the hero goes home to a hero's welcome and Barthelmess goes home with a dependence on morphine. Westcott is a rich boy; his father owns the bank. Barthelmess works as a teller, and we see him behind the bars of his teller's cage looking for all like he is in jail.

He is struggling at work, he needs a fix, and he sneaks out of the alley to see the drug pusher. But the pusher has raised his prices, and Barthelmess can't afford it. We think for a moment that he might steal from the bank, but he doesn't. He goes to a doctor and the doctor reports him to the public authorities. His boss is unsympathetic. When Westcott tries lamely to defend Barthelmess the boss says, “You fellows forget the war is over. It's time to quit beating the drum and waving the flag.” The boss wants to fire him for his “loathesome cowardly habit”.

We see how these words sting his son, who is the real coward. Barthelmess finally does hysterically spill the beans when he is cornered, about the son’s cowardice, defending his drug habit by saying he got wounded while his son did nothing.

For a moment we think Westcott is finally exposed, but his father won’t believe the accusation. Westcott won’t admit to it, either. He dismisses Barthelmess’s words as the “ravings of a dope fiend.”

Barthelmess is sent to the state narcotics farm for several months. When he is released, we see by his file card that his morphine habit is cured, and we see from Barthelmess’ stroll around the cemetery that his mother has died in the meantime.

Now he heads to Chicago for a new start, and now we have what could be a completely different movie. Some aspects of this film are very similar to Paul Muni's experiences in “I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang” (1932). One could make a lot of comparisons.

In Chicago, Aline MacMahon, who we last saw as a chorus girl in this post on “Gold Diggers of 1933”, and her father, Charley Grapewin, run a small hole-in-the-wall diner and a rent rooms upstairs. Aline is her usual sharp but nice girl with snappy dialogue and a heart of gold. A plain Jane in whom no one is interested romantically, but probably should be. When Barthelmess comes in asking for a room, she brings him upstairs and tests the mattress out for him by vigorously bouncing on it, while Barthlemess watches incrediously in one of those naughty/innocent moments.

Loretta Young, with her large pale eyes and enormous smile also rooms here, Barthelmess, no surprise, is smitten by her. Another roomer is a German Communist, played by Robert Barrat who was probably one of the funnier people in this movie.

He is one of the gang here, and he always rants about the doctrines of servitude in a capitalistic society. But nobody dislikes him for his political leanings; they take him with a grain of salt. He is an equal here, even if he is a “Red”. They see him only as an obnoxious loudmouth. He could be just a minor character in this movie, but he actually ends up having a pivotal role. Cleverly though, his presence is meant more for comic relief rather than to nail the audience on the head with a social message.

Loretta works in a laundry, and Barthelmess gets a job there. He starts at the bottom and works his way to the top. Grant Mitchell is his boss.

Life is good for a while for our Mr. Barthlemess, coming home to the rooming house where the gang, who have become like a family, await him. Especially Aline MacMahon, whom pa Charley Grapewin teases for looking like she’s primping for Barthlemess.

She says no, “just trying not to look like the family”. A great line, and a great delivery.

In a bittersweet scene, Loretta and Barthelmess are preparing to go out on the town and they ask Aline to come with them. She is excited about going out, leaving the drudgery of running the place and looking after pa for a few hours to be with people her own age.

She goes off to get her hat and coat, but she sees Barthelmess and Loretta hugging, and she closes her bedroom door in a private moment of agony, being tactful and noble and crushed all the same time. Three is a crowd. She tells them to go on without her, and we see that not only has she lost what she thinks might have been a romantic relationship with Barthelmess, she has lost their companionship as well. Miss MacMahon is very good, very subtle in this scene. She is clearly one of those actresses who can do a whole lot with very little.  The director lets the camera linger on her while she works through her emotions.

Loretta and Barthelmess marry and they have a little boy. Barthelmess is a success in business. Communist Mr. Barrat, who is an engineer, invents a machine to use in the laundry business. It will increase production. He comes to Barthelmess for help to promote and to get investors. Both see this wonderful machine as a benefit for employees. They will have more leisure time, and their work will be easier. They sell this machine to Grant Mitchell, and he agrees that no one will be fired, no salaries will be cut. A little Depression-era message.

But the illusion of utopia is shattered when a new owner takes over and does what new owners do: fires employees because who needs them with this great new machine?

We get a shot of the factory. There are few people at work, and those that are working at menial jobs, which do not require their intelligence or their creativity. They push buttons.

A riot of unemployed workers breaks out. I've read where director William Wellman hired real hobos for the fight scene, which one can believe because it is very realistic. There is one shot of Loretta Young, trying to struggle her way through the crowd looks as if she's in real danger. Barthelmess tries to stop the riot. Loretta gets beaten and trampled to death in a shocking scene of implied violence hidden by some quick cuts.  Several others are killed, and Barthelmess is sent to jail for five years for being an agitator.

Good old dependable Aline MacMahon takes his son and raises him and tells him his father is in Alaska. There is a sweet goodbye scene when the little boy, sitting on his lap playfully pokes Barthelmess's tear-streaked face. When Barthelmess is taken away by the police and the child comes fretful, Aline tells the little boy soldiers don't cry.

They don't get much of a break, either. After five years, Barthlemess is released, but in the meantime, the Communist has sold many of his machines to many laundries and has gotten filthy stinking rich. He doesn't care if people are being thrown out of work because of his invention. He's made an amazing and humorous change. He turns from Communist to capitalist.

Conversely, Barthelmess's conscience is weighed down by the idea of people being thrown out of work. But the Communist has proven a valuable and trusty steward, because he saved Barthelmess’ royalties for him in a bank account, and now Barthelmess has a nice nest egg for the rest of his life.

They do a nice job aging Barthelmess. He looks haggard, not so baby faced when he was a young soldier out of the trenches. It's not too much or overdone, but you can see the lines in his face, the dark circles under his eyes.

The Communist is now wearing a millionaire’s tuxedo and derby, and attending University Club suppers. All this time Aline has been taking care of the boy. And now it is the Depression, and she and Charley Grapewin run a soup kitchen. When they run out of soup, and they must close the door to the next people in line, men and women, old folks stare desperately through the window.

Barrat calls them lazy moochers. Barthelmess gives Aline his bankbook and tells her to run her soup kitchen with his money. But the Communists has no use for charity. He says it is like a snowball that keeps growing and growing. If you feed them once they will always return. He says, “If I was running the world I would kill anybody that needed anything.”

This character has made the most amazing transformation in the history of the movies since Scrooge became a good guy. Communist, to capitalist, to fascist. A little more movie message here, but couched in clownishness.

Barthelmess, an ex-convict now smeared as a Red for having been involved in the labor riot, becomes the target of vigilante squads, self-important bullies with too much time on their hands, who run him out of town and grab a few Italians, too, because most likely they are Reds. Proof is not essential when you hate.

Barthelmess leaves Chicago, and like many other hobos in the Great Depression, rides the rails from one hobo jungle to another. In one he meets up again with Gordon Westcott. The “hero” is just out of jail for bank fraud, and his father who had been stealing from the bank for years, has shot himself to avoid prosecution. Westcott explains his father's thievery “is just one of those things. When you start, you can't stop.” It is ironic, and we think of Barthelmess’ drug habit long ago.

Ward Bond has a small cameo as one of the hobos in the jungle. It is rainy and muddy, just like when they were in the trenches years ago. The end of the movie is like where they began. Westcott still carries on his shoulders the guilt of his cowardice. But Barthelmess no longer cares, and if Westcott ever gains any absolution it is in the way his long ago human act of fear no longer matters in a world where even the World War no longer matters.

Westcott glances around, the rain dripping off his battered fedora, and mumbles, “This country can't go on this way. It's the end of America.” How many times have we heard that?

But Barthelmess, though not exactly an optimist, has a more fatalistic and practical approach. He brings up FDR's inaugural address (President Roosevelt was just beginning his first term when this film was released), and thinks things will iron themselves out in the end.  He thinks America will come back stronger than ever.

And when the police raid their hobo jungle and move them on farther down the road, Barthelmess looks up and notes happily that it has stopped raining. He has a soldier’s fatalism, the kind you get when you've seen the worst. And you don't expect the best anymore, just a little comfort will do.

As the movie ends, we look into the eyes of his son. A boy who idolizes his father, a distant figure who supports the soup kitchen where Aline is raising him. We look into the eyes of the future. He says he wants to be just like his dad.

We know he probably won't be, because the circumstances of his life will be different. The circumstances in which we live have a way of making all of us who we are, for better or for worse, some of us rise above it and some of us do not.

He will be old enough to fight in World War II, but they don’t know that yet, because this movie was made in 1933, and we all knew that there wouldn’t be any more wars after the War to End All Wars.

For Me and My Gal - 1942

For the monumental occurrence that happened 90 years ago in 1918 on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, we have an unlikely but not I hope inappropriate tribute in “For Me and My Gal” (1942). Like “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, made in the same year, (see blog post here) the movie combines the world of vaudeville with a world at war. The loss of innocence comes wrapped in spats over high button shoes, song and dance, and the sudden interruption of violent reality.

Judy Garland stars, with Gene Kelly in his first film, and George Murphy. Directed by Busby Berkeley, this film, also like “Yankee Doodle Dandy” presents its musical numbers as performances on stage, and not the unreal bursting into song in everyday settings as is common in most musicals. It helps that there appears to be a piano in just about every room.

Judy Garland, despite the turmoil of her private life, presents here her unique and irresistible confidence as a person with more talent than she can possibly contain. Mr. Murphy is her stage partner, a nice fellow who gives her up to the rakish Gene Kelly so that she gets to be a vaudeville star. Mr. Kelly is fresh as paint and full of applesauce. An arrogant opportunist, he sucks up to an operatic headliner with her own railroad car. No private Lear jets these days, just private railroad cars. Conveniently, there is a piano here, too. Judy knows Kelly is no good, but falls in love with the cad anyway.

We have the traditional vaudevillian mélange of acts, the whistle stops in small towns across the country, uncomfortable train upper berths, and the ever-constant desire to headline at New York City’s Palace Theater. It’s a rough and ready world, the chosen way of life of special people.

We see World War I has broken out from the angry headlines on the newspapers the uninterested Gene Kelly tosses aside. When Miss Garland’s kid brother is killed in battle, she leaves Kelly and the act, and their troubled romance, to go to France and perform for the troops. Kelly, who has kept himself out of the Army with a rather rash “accident”, sinks as low as he finally can in her eyes. To redeem himself, he hops over to France as well to perform, and ends up being a hero, which is fortunate for Mr. Kelly’s future acting career.

World War I is significant for the backdrop of a movie about vaudeville, as it was probably the first war that professional entertainers joined together in a voluntary troupe, sort of quasi-official units, to visit the troops. They also sold Liberty Bonds and raised money for Red Cross and other various charity drives. This would all be repeated, of course, on a grander scale for World War II.

At first, Gene Kelly balks at joining them, “You don’t think I’m going over there and sing a bunch of silly songs while all those guys are getting their heads shot off?” But he changes his mind, becomes a hero and finds redemption. Even if he had not become a hero, he still would have been doing his part. The silly songs somehow helped. And somehow got to define a war that has, perhaps more than any other, come to represent lost innocence.

World War I carried something that World War II did not in terms of a kind of folklore of lost innocence. Though the seeds of that war had been present for more than a generation in the form of social unrest, nationalism among disparate European ethnic groups and class turmoil, the war really erupted in an accidental and unintended snowball effect after the tragic 1914 assassination which set everything in motion. It was not many months into the war before generals and politicians alike realized with horror that what they had created to be a limited war was utterly beyond their control to stop. The best hope was that it would somehow burn itself out.

It did, but not before millions of deaths due to battle, disease, and famine.

Ernest Hemingway wrote in “A Farewell to Arms” that “Perhaps wars weren’t won anymore. Maybe they went on forever. Maybe it was another Hundred Years War.”

The other tragedy of World War I was, obviously, its legacy of an imperfect peace that led to World War II.


But another curious aspect to that war so tragic, was the ironic ebullience with which a generation approached it. Even these recruiting posters pictured here do not have that grim, us or them, kill or be killed message. One shows a man quietly examining his conscience as an army of his brothers marches outside the window, and the other shows a group of soldiers on a train gesturing towards the viewer to join them, as if they are happily taking a chartered excursion to a football game.

This ebullience is so marked that when one thinks of that war, one of the first things that comes to mind are the popular songs of the day. So much a part of that war, that the landmark CBS documentary series “World War I” (1964) set aside an entire episode called “Tipperary and All the Jazz” just for the songs the soldiers sang. There was no narration, just song after song played over poignant newsreel footage.

Some of these same songs are performed in “For Me and My Gal” by Judy Garland, et. al., and we are lucky enough to have a front row seat. Because of these funny, raucous, keep-your-chin-up songs, one might think the American Army marched late to the war like party crashers. That is only partly Hollywood; part of it is true. There was an especially hopeful, and for today, an almost unbelievably joyous element in going to war for that generation. “Let’s put on a show” became “Lafayette, we are here!”

It was noted by our allies. British nurse Vera Brittain’s memoir of World War I, “A Testament of Youth” (rpt. Virago Ltd., 1978) notes after three weary years of a war that would not end, “They looked larger than ordinary men; their tall, straight figures were in vivid contrast to the under-sized armies of pale recruits to which we had grown accustomed…I wondered, watching them move with such rhythm, such dignity, such serene consciousness of self-respect…Then I heard an excited exclamation from a group of Sisters behind me.
‘Look! Look! Here are the Americans!’
I pressed forward with the others to watch the United States physically entering the War, so god-like, so magnificent, so splendidly unimpaired in comparison with the tired, nerve-racked men of the British Army…The coming of relief made me realise all at once how long and how intolerable had been the tension, and with the knowledge that we were not, after all, defeated, I found myself beginning to cry.”

One moment in the movie is particularly sober, and its sentiment particularly true, despite the theatrical setting. Judy’s brother, in uniform, finds her at a party with only enough time to say goodbye. His unit is going overseas. The song “Till We Meet Again” is struck up and everybody sings. It is a sad, sweet waltz,

“Smile a while, and kiss me sad adieu.”

We may think of songs like “George M. Cohan’s “Over There” when we think of World War I, but “Till We Meet Again” was the big song of that era. It is not very vaudevillian, at least not as much as the song one of their vaudeville troopers sings with lyrics like, “We’ll crack the Kaiser with a bottle of Budweiser!” It’s more of a front parlor song, the kind of song people sang together when they didn’t feel so brave.

Just that song was the beginning perhaps, of the loss of innocence. After all the song and dance, though the war was won, the generation that won it, particularly its chroniclers in prose and poetry, art and music, would forever be known as The Lost Generation.

The movie gives us some newsreel footage of General Pershing and the victory parades. Judy and Gene are reunited at the end, at the Palace Theater at a servicemen’s show, both of them in uniform. “For Me and My Gal” just ends with boy getting girl, and an audience made entirely of soldiers cheering them on, like those fellows in the poster marching past the window to some unforeseeable future.

Just like “Yankee Doodle Dandy” there are subtle reminders that there is another war going on outside the movie theater in real time, and some not so subtle ones. After “the end” we have “America Needs Your Money. Buy War Bonds and Stamps at this Theatre.”

The Dark Angel (1935)

“The Dark Angel” (1935) is perhaps one of the first films set during World War I that does not carry themes of the wastefulness of war or the tragedy of the political failings of that war, despite the tragic experiences of the leading men, two soldiers. It does not present the soldiers of that war as dupes or victims of heartless or corrupt governments. It seems to be one of the first films that depicts the soldiers of that period as romantic heroes, and that war as a romantic and noble gesture, albeit a doomed one.

The Lillian Hellmann screenplay tells the story of three friends from childhood, a winsome girl growing up in a genteel English country home, and the two boys who are her playmates. The two boys are cousins, and she has a crush on one of them, leaving the other to quietly nurse his own crush on her.

Years later they grow up to be Merle Oberon; Fredric March as the boy she loves; and Herbert Marshall as the boy who wishes he were Fredric March.

The cinematography is all stock Hollywood images of what the English countryside should be: picnics in a sheep meadow, a breeze playing at the curtains, a roaring fire, mannerly servants, and a sense of noblesse oblige.

Then the Great War breaks out and the two young chaps (played by much older actors) manfully take up their duty as officers. Mr. March is still in his matinee idol period of his career, still exuberantly boyish and occasionally mugging. It is a wonder to consider that in ten years’ time he will be the tired, war-weary middle-aged American sergeant returning to his family in “The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946).

Home on leave, Fredric March and Merle Oberon decide to wed. Herbert Marshall, with his stiff-upper-lip is particularly moving as he congratulates them while stifling his own sense of rejection. A quick wedding is made impossible when the boys are recalled to the frontlines. Merle Oberon accompanies Fredric March on a secret tryst to spend one last night with him at a seaside inn. It is interesting in scenes like these, in films like these, to observe the delicate balance Hollywood struggles to keep when deliberately trying to create an atmosphere of romantic desire and yet maintain an aura of innocence. As the night grows on, and sense of dread increases as they sit in a darkened room hours later, cuddling by a window with distant sounds of cannon fire, we are left to imagine for ourselves whether or not they have consummated their love. The Code of the day decrees that while such an occurrence could be suggested for minor characters even if not graphically shown, nevertheless it could not even be suggested if the happy couple are to remain the film’s hero and heroine. It is an amusing and cowardly bit of fence sitting.

A snide gossip later jokes about Mr. March’s romantic last night with some woman, to a shocked Herbert Marshall, who is appalled that March would take up with another woman while being engaged to Merle Oberon. There is a split between them, doubt, suspicion and resentment grows while we are given the iconic image of English World War officers boarding a fog-enshrouded transport ship in their trench coats. (The trench coat was named for the place where English officers wore their all-weather long coats - the trenches.)

So miffed is Herbert Marshall with what he perceives is his junior officer Fredric March’s swinish behavior, he denies him temporary leave, after which March, spitefully volunteering for a dangerous mission, is lost on the battlefield after a big explosion, and presumed dead.

Marshall blames himself, confesses his guilt to Merle Oberon, who in turn confesses that it was not some trollop that Fredric March chose to amuse himself with his last night on English soil, it was her.

The movie could have ended here with this O. Henry type ending and we could have had a different story, but a further melodrama is added when Fredric March turns up in a hospital, blind.

After his rehabilitation, he chooses not to return home and be an object of pity, but hides out in a country inn where his suicide attempt is aborted by three nosy children who have never seen a blind man before. (Fay Chaldecot plays the engaging little girl with a charming natural quality.) From his encounter with the kids, and subsequent afternoons amusing them by telling them stories, he becomes a successful children’s book author. Not as successful as J. K. Rowling, but enough so that he can buy a little cottage of his own in the country and grow roses.

Meanwhile, Mr. Marshall and Miss Oberon, who comfort each other after the loss of their friend, get engaged. By this time it is more or less foregone that they will meet with Fredric March again, and Miss Oberon will dump Mr. Marshall for her old love. Poor old Herbert Marshall. His quiet nobility and silent pain is more affecting than all the romantic promises and occasional overacting both by boyish Mr. March and the lovely Miss Oberon.

More Hollywood England is applied with a trowel for good measure: a fox hunt, teatime, the strains of World War I songs, a benign village vicar. All we are missing is a blustering retired “Major” and a Cockney chimney sweep.

“The war did something to me. I’ve changed,” Fredric March tells us, no less a fact for not being very original. What is poignant about the film is that the sense of resentment for the war, the rueful disgust, is not displayed here as it is famously illustrated by films like “All Quiet on the Western Front” (1930), and most other films made from the end of World War I to the early 1930s.

In three years after this film was made, the Nazis would invade Poland and begin World War II. Already the seeds were being sewn in Spain and Ethiopia, and Manchuria and Korea. You can almost sense in this film the new era to come. Even if one were not able to predict the coming war, there was evidently a atmosphere, as evident in this film, of rehabilitation over the former resentment of War I, and even a sense of wistful nostalgia for the romantic past of 20 years ago. Even men who were really were victims of war, like the character played by Frederic March, blinded in battle, would no longer be seen as dupes and victims, but as romantic heroes.

This is also one of the first films which shows a man with a physical impairment not being an object of pity. He is shown here living independently on his own, earning his own living, and still the preference of the woman he loves. Contrast this with the sweet but utterly helpless blind World War I vet played by David Manners in “The Miracle Woman” (1931), who is more dependent on those around him.

Another irony to the film is that Herbert Marshall, whose character is unscathed by the war, actually served in the British armed forces in World War I and lost a leg. His film career, like his previous stage career, was performed, unknown by most audiences of the day, on a prosthetic leg.

The Ducktators (1942) & Peace on Earth (1939)

Since part of the movie going experience, back in the day before these enlightened times of the $7 bag of popcorn, included cartoons and newsreels, today and tomorrow (and from time to time) we’ll take a look a few famous examples of these other movie house attractions.

Two cartoons when examined together tell us a lot about the World War II era, and from two different viewpoints. These two cartoons are “Peace on Earth” (1939) and “The Ducktators” (1942).

Just by the titles and the dates of release, we can tell these films are drastically different. “Peace on Earth” is rather like “All Quiet on the Western Front” for kids. A Grandpa Squirrel puts his grandkids to sleep with a story of long ago, how strange creatures called “men” fought a terrible war against each other. The flashback is stark, colored in grays and browns and blacks, looking realistically like an old film of World War I soldiers. There is chaos in the trenches, and a horrific man-like figure in a gas mask with a gleaming bayonet. It is a nightmare vision. Finally, only two men are left, and they kill each other from opposing foxholes. This is why, as Grandpa, voiced by Mel Blanc, explains, there ain’t no men no more.

The little squirrels go to bed, and we see that the whole squirrel village is made from old army helmets. All is peaceful under a blanket of snow. All trouble is gone because man is gone. “Peace on Earth” was nominated for an Academy Award.

This cartoon was released in December 1939, when World War II was a few months old. The strong pacifist message it carries was rooted in the horror of World War I, which created for most nations and people who participated in the war an aversion to future war that directed public policy, at least in Britain, France and the US, for the next generation. The cartoon also reflects American nervousness at the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe and how deeply reticent most Americans were at having to commit to the struggle. As it is, it took the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor to drag us in, over two years later.

Which brings us to “The Ducktators.” This is a sillier cartoon, a more humorous cartoon, with lines like, “My mama done told me - Sieg Heil!”, but despite the silliness it is a more savage cartoon. Here is a link to “The Ducktators”: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1390519574176708696 .

There are no polite manners here, where barnyard animals are taken over by three bullies intended to represent Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Emperor Hirohito. Ethic and racial characteristics are obviously exaggerated to ridicule these bullies. There is a brief comic signboard from the invisible theater management to announce, “We wish to apologize to all the NICE DUCKS and GEESE in the audience - The Management.” How funny this seemed to Americans of German, Italian, and Japanese ancestry who by the time of this film’s release must have endured a bellyful of caricature, we can only guess. Still, it is interesting that the producers would even tuck in that notice, as if to say they knew they were crossing a line, with sensitivity that was quite uncharacteristic for that time. Even a black duck sounds like the Rochester character on the Jack Benny radio show, played by Eddie “Rochester” Anderson.

But, in this cartoon, even the Dove of Peace is caricatured as an effete fellow speaking in couplets. We know that right is on his side, but we can’t help but be a bit disgusted by him as he sits waving around olive branches (note that he is perched near an actual jar of olives), and letting the bullies run the barnyard. We only begin to like the Dove of Peace when he has had enough of being trampled upon, and beats up the bad ducks in a Popeye-like fistfight.

The end of the cartoon, usually cut off in later releases, concluded with a plea to buy war bonds.

It is fascinating that terrorists of today are as evil as any enemy we encountered in World War II, yet we tread a fine line making fun of them, especially in the use of caricature. If we do not, we would run the risk of insulting millions of people these terrorists claim to represent, but do not represent and are innocent.

We are not even encouraged to buy bonds. It is as if even today we are caught between the messages of these two cartoons: one, that all war is bad. Two, that only the enemy is bad. Public policy may have taken a quick and drastic change after Pearl Harbor, but in the psychological span evidenced between these two cartoons, it is negligible how prompt most Americans were to respond to it.

Previews and Playing to the Audience

The film industry in its early years was extremely sensitive to audience reaction. This sometimes went as far as changing the movie they had just finished if an audience viewing a preview didn’t like the ending.

At the end of “The Champ,” Wallace Beery lost the fight and died. At least, he was dead until the preview audiences saw, were horrified, and wrote as much on their questionnaires. The studio, horrified, released a new version. Wallace Beery won the fight, lived and everybody was happy.

Keeping the audience happy was more important than what might be defended today as artistic integrity. Actually, artistic integrity is not always terribly common today, either. A bit more business is sometimes added to films today to bring an otherwise G-rated film to a more sophisticated audience and to what the producers may feel is a more acceptable film to today’s paying customer.

Making the film more acceptable to the paying customer back then required sometimes the opposite effect: making things nicer, not nastier. Gene Kelly played such a rat in “For Me and My Gal,” that audiences couldn’t stand to see him paired with Judy Garland. They felt such a nice girl was much better off with a swell guy like George Murphy. But, since Kelly was the actor the studio wanted to showcase, they re-vamped his character and made him a hero at the end of the film. This took some doing, because his character maimed his hand trying to dodge the World War draft, but Hollywood always has a way of making things better.

Gary Cooper, at the end of “Meet John Doe” was supposed to jump off a building in protest to Edward Arnold’s group of big-business fascists trying to take over the country. The preview audience again intervened, not liking one bit the idea of Gary Cooper splattered all over the pavement. The film was released with the version of Barbara Stanwyck stopping him in time, and Cooper carrying her off the rooftop in his arms, with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony swelling in the background.

Hollywood of the time is sometimes mocked for its happy endings, but it evidently gave the customer what the customer wanted. It was the audience that wanted happy endings.