hollywood
In 1939, Joseph P. Kennedy, the scion of the modern-day Kennedy family which included three United States senators, an attorney general, and the 35th president of the United States, was appointed the American ambassador to Great Britain by President Franklin D. Read more
hollywood
Early in 1944, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the defeated hero of North Africa and now head of Army Group B in France, was tasked with strengthening the Atlantic Wall defenses against Allied invasion. Read more
hollywood
When I was a young boy in Seattle, my father told me about a fake town that had been built on top of Boeing’s Plant 2 during the war. Read more
hollywood
Almost every American veteran has fond memories of a Track-Side Free Canteen, or a USO center at some train station or airport situated at locations around the world, or a “USO Camp Show” that provided entertainment close to the front lines, during every conflict since World War II. Read more
hollywood
With such award-winning films as Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln, Drums Along the Mohawk, The Grapes of Wrath, The Long Voyage Home, and How Green Was My Valley behind him, John Ford was one of Hollywood’s most respected directors by the time World War II broke out in 1939. Read more
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The most successful and popular patriotic show of World War II and one of the most unique productions in the history of entertainment was Irving Berlin’s This Is the Army, which originally began as a Broadway musical. Read more
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World War II, America’s last “good war,” has always been a fruitful source for homegrown moviemakers. Beginning with the wartime movies that shamelessly if sincerely promoted American efforts to rally against the fascist evils of Germany, Italy, and Japan, the silver screen gave audiences stirring depictions of brave GIs risking and sacrificing their lives for the greater good. Read more
hollywood
The first truly realistic American films of World War II began with a flourish familiar to any moviegoing audience at the time: a hand-drawn company logo introduced by musical fanfare. Read more
hollywood
Jimmy Stewart is arguably the only prewar American actor of superstar magnitude to have served in a sustained combat role during World War II, and the only one to have served in a position of command. Read more
hollywood
The heated reaction by the Marines to the slaughter at the Goettge Patrol, answered in kind by the Japanese, led to some of the fiercest combat seen in the war. Read more
hollywood
World War II came to the Hollywood motion picture studios, the “Dream Factories” as they were sometimes called, the day after Pearl Harbor. Read more
