All across America and around the world, this
is Veterans Radio. This is Veterans Radio. And
now, your host for today's program, Dale Throneberry.
And good afternoon and welcome to another Veterans
Radio program here at WAAM 1600 Talk Radio. We
welcome you to our program today. I want to wish
everybody a happy Easter and hope that you're
able to get together with family and friends
sometime during the day and just be thankful
for what we've got in this gorgeous country that
we are in. What was Easter like in Vietnam? Sorry
for the pause of dead silence. Did you have a
mission? I don't think there was any difference.
Those that were probably a little bit more religious
than I was Might have gone to Catholics. I always
had mass. It seemed like I mean did they have
a mission that day? Yeah, we thought that we
flew another day. It's just another day the only
days we would get off were usually well, you
didn't get them off, but they would have a Ceasefire
sometimes during around Christmas or Thanksgiving
and things. I don't remember one because I was
I was a new pilot in April of 1969, and I think...
I'm trying to remember what was going on. I was
looking that up the other day. They didn't send
you there for an Easter egg hunt. No, we were
looking for other stuff. But April 8, 1969, I
became an aircraft commander. So, what's that,
45 years ago? Something like that. Got my own
helicopter. That was kind of cool. That was fun.
What was the name of your helicopter? Sky Chief
108. Well, did you give it, you know, like little
milk mop in there? No, we didn't give them names
like they did World War II aircraft. They just,
you know, we just had the little tail number
on them and that was it. It was all painted up
nice and clean. It was a nice helicopter. It
didn't survive, unfortunately. When they left
Vietnam in 75, which again is another one of
those anniversaries, is that it was one of the
ones that got thrown overboard. So it's in the
South China Sea somewhere. Archaeologists will
find it. That's right. Do you leave any chewing
gum there? No, probably underneath the seat.
There probably might be some in there. I want
to remind our audience today that we are going
to be talking with Mark Harris, and he's written
a great book called Five Came Back, a story of
Hollywood in the Second World War. You guys got
to stick around for this one. This is a great
story. Not only are we going to learn about these
five great directors that all of us grew up with
watching, the westerns and, you know, romantic
comedies and all kinds of things like that, but
just the history of what was going on just before
World War II. I think it's going to be fascinating.
They played a huge role. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
I think it's going to be... I'm anxious to talk
about this. I was... Well, I saw them after,
more in the late 40s when they were being re
-run. Remember Victory FC? Oh yeah. Who directed
that? I was on NBC, I remember that. Because
I remember watching the waves and airplanes.
Oh man. Oh, I didn't miss it. Sunday morning.
It was like 10 o 'clock Sunday morning. It would
be that. It would be that. But we have a couple
of things that we want to get out to you, like
we always do at the beginning of Veterans Radio.
And Bob, you've got somebody that you wanted
to talk to. Well, no, actually, I have two things.
First of all, remember, folks, there's going
to be an Agent Orange Legacy Town Hall May 9th.
That's this year, May 9th at Northville High
School. and that's going to be put on by the
Vietnam Veterans of America. There's going to
be a number of speakers, and it's not going to
be like an all -day thing. I think it's only
like four hours. Right, from eight in the morning
until one. Right, but here's the key word, legacy.
What's being left to the future generations?
I know, Dale, that's something that has very
close to your heart. Yes, it was something that
I'm getting more and more concerned about it
as I talk to more and more friends who's... Children
and grandchildren are having issues that they
feel might be related to being exposed Well,
that's all going to be what do you do about it?
Right? There's going to be something now. Okay.
Well, what if I live in Texas? What do I do man?
Well, I'll tell you what you're going to do We
veterans radio on our internet our internet station
will be broadcasting that that's right. So you'll
be able to hear it We'll give you more information.
That's May 9th. That's a Saturday. I believe
yes And way cool. And those of you local that
want to attend, you're going to want to give
a call to 734 -421 -1805. 734 -421 -1805. You
should always have a pencil and paper when you're
listening to Veterans Radio, right? You never
know. That's being sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans
of America. 510? No, not 510. 528. So you can
go to their website, vba528 .org, and there's
an application there. They do want to just get
an idea of how many people are going to be there
because they're going to be supplying materials.
And we'll give you more information on how you
can go to our internet network and then pick
that up live. Great stuff. I want to see more
of that. Now, well, it's coming up once again,
Memorial Day, not too long from now, about four
weeks, right? How's my guy? Is he standing by?
Got it. Okay. So I was able to make contact with
the folks at Reese Across America and I have
with me on the phone and he's taken time out
from his very well -deserved vacation to be on
the program with us, the chairman of the board
of Reese Across America, Mr. Wayne Hanson. But
before I introduce him, Dale. What? I think he
was 19... 1969 Vietnam veteran. It was a captain.
Wayne, is that true? Was that it? 1969? That's
correct. September 69, September 70. Okay. Well,
welcome home, sir. Well, thank you, same to you.
Welcome home. Where were you? I was over in Phu
Bai, out by the DMZ. Phu Bai, okay. I was with
the military police corps, and we ran patrols
from the DMZ down at Da Nang, and then February
of... In 1970, I took over the MP company down
in Da Nang in our combined military police patrols
we had down in Da Nang when the Marines started
pulling out. I told Bob earlier that at the end
of 1969, they started pulling troops out. I was
down in the Longbin area in III Corps. Actually,
my company was sent home in 1970 and disbanded.
That was the end of it. Well, this is kind of
informally, folks, the way that we like to introduce
each other. Wayne Hansen, welcome to Veterans
Radio, first of all. Thank you, Bob, for having
me on. And my partner right here, Dale Throneberry,
who happens to be the host today, but my partner
for the last 12 years, Vietnam Veterans Slick.
pilot. Those of you that don't know what a slick
pilot is. Well, that's the guy that flies helicopters
with those little skids on them, right? Yeah,
they're skids, yeah. We carried everything, let's
put it that way. That's right. We did the ashen
trash. We were the truckers of the air. Well,
Wayne, we're going to certainly have you coming
on back so we can talk some more about this Vietnam
veteran and this Vietnam experience. You are
the chairman of the board of Reese Across America.
Folks, Reese Across America has been in existence
a few years, and what they do, they place Reese
at cemeteries, veterans' headstones, and you
can get involved. In fact, you can even sponsor
your own cemetery. Well, anyway, why should I
say any more of this? Wayne, welcome to Veterans
Radio. Tell us all about it. Well, thank you.
Wreaths Across America, it's a 501c3 organization,
a non -profit organization that really sprung
out of one man's dream and action that started
back in 1992 when Morrill Worcester, a wreath
maker from Maine, he had won a trip to Washington
D .C. as a 12 -year -old child and as part of
that trip he had a tour of Arlington National
Cemetery. and he was just so impressed with that
that when he went back to Maine and went to school
and started in the wreath business in 92 he had
purchased he was buying wreaths at that time
and he had found that he had an overage of stock
as the holiday season started to come to an end
and they were saying kind of saying well what
are we going to do with all these wreaths and
he had about 5 ,000 wreaths and he got a hold
of the main senator at that time Olympia Snow
and said, I'd like to bring these to Arlington.
Can we do that? And Olympia Snow's office got
a hold of Arlington Cemetery and asked that question.
And they said, well, nobody's ever done anything
like that. But if you want to bring them down,
go ahead. So he got one man, one company up there
to donate a truck. And they drove down overnight
and brought 5 ,000 reeds to Arlington. And that
just started something. It was Morrill's tribute
to the veterans, to thank the veterans. He is
not a veteran himself, but he wanted to take
that opportunity to thank the veterans for their
service and sacrifice and allowing him to stay
free and do what he was doing in his business.
He continued that process from 1992 until 2005
with very little He didn't seek any publicity
for himself. He had a few volunteers that helped
him put the wreath down. That's how I became
involved back in 93. I belong to the Maine State
Society, which is a group of people who have
ties to Maine that live in the Washington area.
And we volunteered to help him put these wreaths
down. But in 2005, there was a group from the
Air Force, and there was an Air Force photographer
that was helping us. And he happened to take
a picture of the wreaths that had snowed, and
he put that picture on the internet with everything
that goes on. And it went viral, that picture.
And people did not believe that that has been
happening since 1992, bringing those wreaths
down. People just couldn't believe it. And they
found out that, yeah, it had been. So he and
his family got together and said, if we can do
this to remember our veterans, at Arlington,
then why can't we do this at other locations?
So they applied for and were granted 501c3 nonprofit
organization status in 2007. What year was that?
In 2007. They got that designation. And it started
with about a hundred more locations and it has
grown every year. Last year we had over a thousand
locations across the country in all 50 states.
and we placed about 716 ,000 wreaths that were
sponsored across the country at these locations.
One of the main points of having you on this
program, of course to give the background, but
folks can get involved. I know last year, Dale,
that was Jamie and Andrew and their Right, and
they had a number of wreaths, right, didn't they?
And so they were involved and, you know, so many
of us, we tie ribbons around the trees, we have
a bumper sticker, we do etc., etc. Well, this
is something now that you can really put yourself
into. Folks you can get yourself involved. Yeah,
and you can you can do that. Tell us all about
Wayne How does somebody okay? I want to get something
sir, and you know if you don't even have to be
military to know this No, no, we have so go ahead
real quick groups children's group We rely on
the the public to help us. We receive no government
funds It's all individuals reaching into their
pocket and pulling out fifteen dollars will sponsor
a wreath You can become involved by going on
our website, wreathsacrossedamerica .org, and
checking on the locations. As I said, we have
over 1 ,000 locations we grow every year. You
can help at one of those locations. You can pick
your state, click on that particular state, and
it'll give you a drop -down of what cemeteries.
where we have what we call a location coordinator
who has agreed to do a ceremony. We do it the
second Saturday in December. This year will be
Saturday December 12th. You can contact that
local location leader if you want to get involved
locally or you can go online and make a donation
to help us. Phil Arlington, last year it was
the 150th anniversary of Arlington Cemetery.
And I consider Arlington a cemetery as the nation's
cemetery because there are veterans from every
state buried there at Arlington. And our goal
last year was to be able to cover every headstone
at Arlington last year. And with the great support
of the public and some corporations, we were
able to do that. We placed 226 ,525 Wreaths at
Arlington and that's that's on we covered every
marker that was eligible to receive a Remembrance
wreath of veterans wreath last year in support
of Arlington's 150th anniversary Well with we'd
like you to come back on between now and Memorial
Day and and and we'll go over this again. So
Thank you very much. We've got that's wreathsacrossamerica
.org folks Reese Across, Reese, W -R -E -A -T
-H -S, AcrossAmerica .org, all the information's
on there. You're going to want to go and do that.
Wayne, thank you very much for being on the program
and thank your family for giving you up. Dale,
do you have something here? Nope, we've got to
move along. Move along, okay. Wayne? Thanks for
having us and happy Easter. Happy Easter to you
too. Thank you very much for being on the program.
All right, we'll be right back in just a moment
after this break with Mark Harris, author of
Five Came Back, a story of Hollywood in the Second
World War. Are they Andrew's sisters? Yeah. Yeah,
we're back on Veterans Radio and I was all excited
about having this guest on the program and I
was looking through the music that we have for
World War II. all these songs that my my mom
would play and my dad and she my mom and dad
would dance dance we dance in the dining room
another living room and uh and he my brother
folks and then we did the my family did the same
thing we danced so they were everywhere but anyway
so folks i want to welcome mark harris to veterans
radio is the author of five came back a story
of hollywood and the second world war the story
of five Hollywood directors who decided that
America had a good story to sell and they wanted
to sell it. So Mark, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited
to talk to you about this book and I guess the
thing that I found so fascinating was at the
beginning was all of the intrigue and everything
that was going on in the country prior to Pearl
Harbor. Could you talk a little bit about how
these famous directors, and as we mentioned their
names, I think most of our audience will recognize
them, how they decided to make this jump to work
for the military. Sure. Well, the book is about
these five directors, William Wyler, John Ford,
George Stevens, John Huston, and Frank Capra,
who by the time of Pearl Harbor were five of
the biggest directors in Hollywood, and they
all Accepted officers commissions in the army
or in fourth case joined the Navy to leave Hollywood
for the next three or four years and become documentary
makers or Propagandists which was not really
a dirty word back then For the war effort at
the invitation of the War Department Well, I
know that Capra and some of the other ones were
motivated by the propaganda that the Nazis were
putting out They were. Capra was called to Washington
DC by George Marshall. Capra was really meant
to be the kind of hub of the whole operation.
The other directors would go around the world,
basically, filming the war, but Capra would be
put in charge of making what were then called
morale films, the Why We Fight series of seven
one -hour films that was intended not for public
consumption, but to be shown to new recruits.
He was asked to make these movies, but he had
almost no budget to do it because the War Department
wasn't going to spend, you know, precious resources
on movies. So he saw some Nazi propaganda films,
including Triumph of the Will, at the Museum
of Modern Art in New York and got the really
brilliant idea, sort of a moment where necessity
is the mother of invention, to... Take all of
these Axis propaganda films that had been seized
by the Treasury Department and use that footage
in these Why We Fight films to show young Americans,
18, 19, 20 years old, what the enemy was up to.
Yeah, that was, there was a lot of resistance
to getting involved in World War II at this time.
And in fact, that film that you were talking
about, The triumph of the will that was being
shown around the United States to all of these
pro -german groups Yes in New York City where
I live there was a movie theater right in Manhattan
on 86th Street that was known as a pro -nazi
movie theater and would routinely up until the
beginning of the war show Nazi propaganda to
the German Emigre audience in that neighborhood
and there was By no means unanimity about the
war. In fact, just before Pearl Harbor, Washington
held hearings where the heads of all the movie
studios were ordered to come and account for
themselves because they were being accused of
creating interventionist propaganda. In other
words, they were being accused of trying to drag
America into the war for their own interests.
The isolationist strain in America, both in Washington
and in the the population was really considerable
right up until Pearl Harbor. Well, I was interested
in, at the beginning of the book, when you're
talking about these directors and some of the
movies that they were making, especially Capra
with his, you know, Mr. D's and Mr. You know,
meet John Doe and so on and so forth that he's
making, kind of all these idealistic. In fact,
you know, Capra didn't really want anything to
do with going to war. It sounded like at the
time. That's right. Capra's politics were really
funny. And if you only knew his work from, for
instance, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, you wouldn't
necessarily guess that he was a conservative
Republican. He boasted that he never voted for
FDR in one of his four elections. He was really
anti -labor union. It's funny because he had
this populist reputation, but even though politically
he was not always in agreement with Roosevelt,
he was very impressed by him as a president and
by a man and was totally convinced by Roosevelt's
belief that we were going to have to fight this
war. So really, from the time that Capra became
an officer, He was 100 % on board with serving
his country and serving the mission. There was
never any wavering of his part. Well, we'll come
back to Frank Capra. I want to go to John Ford.
And all of us know John Ford from his Westerns
more than anything else. He was credited with
finding John Wayne, and he did Stagecoach, and
he also did a lot of other very powerful films.
But he enlisted in the Navy. Before anybody he
did Ford was one of the first people in Hollywood
to believe that Not only to believe that war
was inevitable, but to believe that Filmmakers
cameramen sound men editors were going to have
a really vital role to play in the war Which
is now we think you know well of course the war
would be filmed But but you know if you think
back to the beginning of World War two sound
movie making uh... was only about ten or twelve
years old so still you know a much newer medium
to all of america then for instance the internet
is to us now but forward had this idea camera
crews were going to be necessary so all through
nineteen forty one he sort of created this weekend
naval reserve gentlemen's club where he got guys
from the studios to come and basically drilled
them and trained them in for instance what it
would be like to have to develop film on a listing
ship or or how to shoot a camera you know how
to how to shoot film under wartime conditions
and the idea was that if war started this would
be a kind of useful reserve for the navy to have
in fact They never became a reserve. They pretty
much all went in as soon as war started, and
they became really essential to the effort to
record the war. But Ford actually left Hollywood
three months before Pearl Harbor. He essentially
stopped working as a movie director and joined
the Navy. I find it fascinating that the people
at the time had the foresight to start putting
these whole organizations together, not just
the Navy, but also the Army, the Department of
Defense. There were a lot of conflicts of who
controlled what, and it took them a long time
to get it all straightened out, didn't it? Yeah,
a lot of them. Capra, I know, said that working
for movie studios and fighting with the studio
heads was very good preparation for him in battling
war department bureaucracy, because it took six
months or so to decide whether this was a propaganda
effort or a war effort or who would be in control
of it. And while that was being fought out, The
directors just sort of rolled ahead and did what
they wanted and kind of made their own plans.
I was interested in a first couple of films that
some of these people, I guess I'm jumping around
here a little bit with you. We're talking with
Mark Harris, he's the author of Five Came Back,
a story of Hollywood and the Second World War.
And I think it was John Huston, you can correct
me on this, we've got a couple of minutes. He
went in and he had to make these training films.
And for those of us that have been in the military,
some of these training films, especially about
the spreading of social diseases. What to watch
out for when you go into town. Yeah, exactly.
That was actually John Ford. That was his very,
very first assignment. No relation to the auto,
folks. Let's not cut off our sponsorship here,
right? But anyway, he had to make a graphic film
about the spread of social diseases, right? He
did, and it's funny because as opposed to someone
like John Huston who had a girl in every port
and sort of saw the war as a big adventure, Ford
was extremely prudish and didn't talk about sexual
relations or anything like that at all, didn't
make those jokes. And for him to have to oversee
the most graphic thing, And if anybody is curious,
by the way, about any of these movies, I should
say that they're all available on the internet,
on YouTube, for free. You can stream them. And
most of them are quite short, but Ford later
said that after he finished making this film,
which was called Sex Hygiene, he left the room
and threw up. He was so horrified by it. And
the way he describes it in the book, it's very
graphic. of what these various diseases do to
a young man. So don't go into town on that. Again,
we're talking with Mark Harris, author of Five
Came Back, a Story of Hollywood in the Second
World War. If you'd like to ask a question, and
we're coming up on a break in about 30 seconds,
you can give us a call here at Veterans Radio
at 734 -822 -1600 or you can call us toll free
at 844 -838 -1600. Some of you out there, I know,
were alive during World War II. Maybe you were
children. Maybe you saw some of these films,
especially the Why We Fight things. I think those
films are fascinating. And YouTube is a great
invention. And I encourage people to go to YouTube
and watch these films after our program. So we'll
be right back after taking this break. You are
listening to Veterans Radio. Thank you. I remember
hearing that one in the house, too. No, not that
one. Was that Doris Day? I don't remember exactly
who that one was. I'll have to get my associate,
Derek, to figure out who that one was. But we're
back here on Veterans Radio, and you just heard
a little spot for Conway truckload. And I just
wanted to remind our listeners out there, if
you know of companies that are hiring veterans
or have special hiring programs for veterans,
let us know. Contact us at Veterans Radio. You
can go to our website, veteransradio .net. Click
on sponsorship. and let us know who these people
are and we'll get them on the program to talk
about their programs for hiring vets. In fact,
next weekend we have a representative of the
United States Chamber of Commerce coming on to
talk about their Hire the Heroes program. So
we really appreciate all these corporations that
are putting together these special, special programs
to hire these veterans because that's what Veterans
Radio is all about. As my partner told me the
other day, it's about the veterans. And that's
what we want to do. We want to keep those words
going so we can keep these people, these men
and women, get them good jobs at good pay so
they can find their way back into... They're
out there. No, great jobs. Yeah, there's both.
We just got to bring that together. Get that
synapsis on. Synapsis. That's something that
we're going to be talking about later on because
toward the end of the book, our guest Mark Harris
talks about some of the transition problems that
these directors had. after being in World War
II and coming back and trying to get back into
that Hollywood thing. So Mark, I'm sorry to get
off on my little tangent there, but you mentioned,
or I want to go to John Ford again, after, just
a second Robert. Okay. After Pearl Harbor, John
Ford was sent out to Midway, and this is something
we have covered on our program quite a lot, the
Battle of Midway. Could you tell us a little
bit about what he found there and and what he
was able to accomplish yeah it was a really remarkable
episode uh... in that for didn't even know what
he was being taken to until he got to midway
even when he got there he assumed that he was
being asked to make uh... and nature documentary
about life on a remote you know pacific outpost
and uh... only then would be told that uh...
an attack was imminent that the american forces
were prepared for it and that he was going to
be asked starting very very early in the morning
to stand on the roof power station and film the
japanese enemy planes flying overhead and uh...
the american response and um... ford and uh...
to very junior cameraman that he brought with
them uh... filmed uh... film the battle of more
film you know what the pieces of the battle that
they could see from their various vantage point
and the movie that resulted this film called
the battle of midway First of all, made Ford
a national hero because he literally filmed until
a piece of shrapnel knocked the film loose from
the camera and the camera out of his hand, but
he was able to save it. He turned it into an
18 -minute movie, which was the first time that
American home front audiences had seen any sign
that the war in the Pacific was starting to turn.
and starting to go the way of the allies. And
that movie was shown eventually in three quarters
of all of the movie theaters in the United States.
It was the first documentary film to show Americans
in actual combat. It was the first time people
got to see images of the war on color film, which
was really unusual back then. Color was more
reserved for fantasies and musicals and spectacles.
So it really was kind of for many Americans the
first movie glimpse of what the war actually
looked like and Ford was behind it. I found it
fascinating because that was one of the ones
I went and looked at on YouTube and it was so
graphic in some standpoints that they kind of
had to clean it up a little bit because they
didn't think that the American audience was prepared
to see what was really going on. Well, I think
that, you know, one thing about color for news,
it was so unusual that they wondered if, you
know, a big yellow and orange fireball with black
smoke trailing out of it against this brilliant
blue sky, you know, you see some of the most
graphic bombing of that battle and the narration,
which is pretty dominant in the movie, goes silent
for several minutes. And then the first thing
you hear when the narrator returns is his voice
saying, Yes, this really happened. And it's almost
as if he had to tell American audiences, you
know, it's okay. You can believe your eyes. What
we're showing you is real. I would encourage
people to go and watch it. Was Walter Houston
one of the narrators? Because I know that Henry
Fonda was involved. Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell,
who were the son and the mother in The Grapes
of Wrath, which Ford had just made the year before,
were voices in it. And then there were two other
voices. I'm not sure that Walter Houston was
one of the voices. There's a very sort of serious,
it's not Walter Houston actually, it's Donald
Crist who was the father in How Green Was My
Valley, another Ford film, and then a young director
actually used as a voiceover named Irving Pichel.
So it's an interesting movie because there's
four voices kind of competing for your attention.
Two of them are straight up narrators and two
of them are almost like meant to be two people
sitting next to you in the audience as if you
were listening to them comment excitedly on what
they were seeing on screen. Yeah, it's a great
little film to watch because you can see the
camera shaking and that was the other thing is
that he was so close to the bombing that you
could feel the vibrations of that. You had a
question? Yeah, well it's not a question. I have
a comment, Mark, and you can comment on this
because What I see, and I still like today, is
that the way it was shot. I like the black and
white more. I love the contrasting. And you got
to see the action straight. I mean, that was
it. That was what was really going on almost
in real time. But yet, when it came to the movies,
it was contrived. The Japanese, no, there's no
side. Right. There was a sands of Iwo Jima while
there were guys talking in a foxhole the Japanese
just don't jump in or what they slither Like
snakes and slither over the logs and slither
down Kill these guys and slither they didn't
jump up and run out which most 99 % of the world
would do they slithered back out and Then there
was the other movie about the CBs the fighting
CBs with William Frawley He's an Irishman, and
a lovable Irishman from Boston, and he's singing
an Irish lullaby when a Japanese sniper buck
teethed the glasses, the whole thing, puts a
bullet in him. Now, that's a bit contrived, rather
than the realism that you saw with the newsreel
-type footages. Comment on that contrast that
Hollywood was I Mean when we were kids and we
saw that we hated the Japs bad This is one of
the really interesting things I Learned in the
course of doing the research for the book that
when you hear about Propaganda and you hear that
the War Department Told Hollywood what kind of
things to put in their movies you kind of automatically
think well that must have been that must have
been bad, like the War Department must have been
sort of pursuing their own ends, and filmmakers
may have said like, well, we want to show this,
and the War Department would have said, well,
no, no, no, you can only show it this way. But
in fact, what you're talking about in terms of
the depiction of Japanese enemy fighters, that
was a moment where the War Department was actually...
sort of ahead of hollywood in what they wanted
on screen it was hollywood's instinct to show
these guys and often refer to them not even as
human i mean that the worst of those uh... depictions
and what were then called hate pictures uh...
made during the war movies like blood on the
fun uh... or behind the the rising sun uh...
they would refer to the japanese not just soldiers
but people as rats as dogs as monkeys the war
department started putting considerable pressure
on hollywood not to do that they they said you
know we are going to win this war eventually
and uh... did we're going to have peace and probably
uh... we're going to have peace and have to have
some kind of relationship with hero he though
we certainly don't expect them to be killed in
this war and you have to start you know depicting
the Japanese, not the enemies, but the Japanese
as human beings. I mean, one other big problem
in Hollywood movies at the time was a widespread
tendency to depict Japanese Americans all as
double agents. And that was something that the
War Department really objected to, but for their
own purposes. They objected to it because they
had, you know, tens of thousands of Japanese
Americans in internment camps, and for a while,
What they had been planning to do was resettle
those internees in different towns and cities
and villages throughout the South and the West.
You know, not too many to a town, but just sort
of scatter them all over the place. And they
felt that if Japanese Americans were depicted
by Hollywood as being dangerous and untrustworthy,
that no towns in America would accept them. It's
really interesting to see what Hollywood did,
what Hollywood was pressured not to do, and what
the motives behind that pressure were. Well,
there's a lot of this, again, in the book. I
encourage people to read this, because you address
this subject, I think, really well. I'm talking
with Mark Harris here on Five Came Back, a story
of Hollywood and the Second World War. We've
got about 15 minutes to go. So I need to get
into, let's talk about John Huston. and what
he did. He was a well known, just actually a
beginning director, but he's well known because
he had just filmed, where did it go? The Multifalcon.
The Multifalcon, that's right. So tell me a little
bit about him. Right, well you're right. He was
well known but he was just starting out. He was
younger than the other directors and had just
had his first breakthrough film. He had been
working as a screenwriter mostly before then.
Houston thought the war was going to be a big
adventure. He probably gave less thought to the
sort of patriotic side of it than maybe the other
four guys I wrote about did. He thought it was
going to be a lot of fun and went in and discovered
that it really wasn't. Houston had a couple of
really interesting experiences during the war.
One was that he was assigned by CAPRA to make
a documentary about the liberation uh... by the
allies of an occupied italian village uh... and
he got to the village after it had already been
liberated the village was still abandoned and
filled with uh... german you know tripwires and
booby traps and so he re -staged the entire battle
with the enthusiastic endorsement of the army
And the resulting film, which was called The
Battle of San Pietro, was passed off as documentary
battle footage by the War Department. They even
made up a story about how Houston and his men
were so brave that they advanced in front of
the first line so that they could then turn their
cameras around and show the first set of troops
advancing. Everything in the movie is completely
staged. So that was a... a sort of rough moment
in in war propaganda history. And then Houston
had an extraordinary experience after the war
when he was asked to make a movie about psychologically
scarred veterans who were receiving psychiatric
treatment in a veterans hospital. The purpose
of this movie was to show that veterans could
be cured really quickly and that American businesses
could rehire them. But the movie that resulted,
which is called Let There Be Light, was so upsetting
that the War Department banned it for 35 years.
And Houston thought he had done a good job, and
in many ways he really had, but the first part
of the movie, which is where you see just how
damaged and hurt and shaken up the veterans are
was something the War Department really did not
want the public to see. I've heard about this
film and it's something that we're going to be
talking about later on as we come up to one of
our programs on post -traumatic stress later
on this year. Okay, so we've got a couple of
other well -known directors that we want to get
to. So let's talk a little bit about William
Wyler. William Wyler was He had just finally
gotten up to the point where his 1942 picture
Mrs. Murnover had been up for an Academy Award
and he was a Jew who had left Germany, right?
Well, it was actually it was a part of France
that he grew up in that at various times either
was or was not under German control So like when
he was a teenager during the first war so he
had the war was very personal to him and he he
tried to get as many as twenty five or thirty
uh... family members and friends from his town
uh... out of europe and as war was approaching
uh... but you know why were made this is never
um... which was uh... huge huge uh... success
in in in both america and england if it's the
story of a uh... alone small english village
that that kind of a rape is all of it snobberies
and class distinctions and petty disputes to
band together during World War II. The shooting
of that movie took place about half before and
half after Pearl Harbor. It was rewritten after
Pearl Harbor, especially the ending, to make
it much clearer that this village wasn't just
something to be sympathetic to, it was meant
to be an example for American audiences to follow.
And then Weiler himself went in and filmed the
great documentary of the air war, The Memphis
Bell, and had a sort of extraordinary experience
where he was filming in an unpressurized plane
footage of the Italian coast for another documentary
and in one stroke lost his hearing. He went completely
deaf and 24 hours later was out of the army and
essentially returned home a disabled veteran
who thought his directing career as well as his
army career was probably over. And he took all
of that pain and frustration and uncertainty
and poured it into his next movie, the first
movie he made as a civilian after the war, which
is The Best Years of Our Lives, which is one
of the great American masterpieces, I think,
about but especially about returning veterans.
It's an extremely powerful movie for people that
were looking at it probably in 1946. I think
it might be a little bit different today, but
even so, it's still a powerful film. You know,
I've shown it to people in the last year in movie
theaters since the book came out, and you'd be
surprised at how emotional people still find
it. On a big screen, it's still a really strong
experience. Well, I think movies shown on a big
screen always have much more emotional appeal
than on a 32 -inch latch screen TV or whatever
that happens to be. I want to get to George Stevens
here also and talk about his experiences when
he was asked to end up filming in Europe as the
American troops were moving across. Stevens had
an extraordinary wartime experience. He was one
of the guys who signed up because he felt it
was absolutely the patriotic thing to do. Very
happy -go -lucky guy. He had started in Hollywood
in the 1920s making Laurel and Hardy shorts.
And Stevens was all over the place in the war.
I mean, he was in North Africa. He filmed the
liberation of Paris and the liberation of France.
He was there with his camera crews in the Battle
of the Bulge. He and Ford co -supervised the
filming of D -Day. Probably the wartime footage
that Stevens is most remembered for is that in
May 1945, he and his men were the first American
camera crew into Dachau just after it had been
liberated. And, you know, we have to cast our
minds back to a moment when we didn't really
yet know what the Holocaust was and the extent
of German atrocities was not yet fully known.
And imagine what it was like for Stevens and
his men to walk through the gates of that camp.
and see what they saw. And almost immediately,
Stevens realized that his job was no longer to
create propaganda or to make a documentary, that
he and his cameras were there to gather evidence.
And in fact, that's exactly what he did. He filmed
and filmed and filmed, and the footage that he
compiled was used as evidence in the Nuremberg
trials. The way that you describe it in your
book, we're talking with Mark Harris, author
of Five Came Back, a story of Hollywood and the
Second World War. You can see how he was so affected
by what he was seeing for the first time. In
fact, I think one of the things you describe
is he saw somebody but he didn't think it was
a living person and he just couldn't believe
it. And the people, of course, were so happy
to see the American troops there. And he's the
one that, you know, the pictures that you see
of the Holocaust, of the bodies in the boxcars
and in the crematoriums and so forth, many of
those were taken by him. So you know that had
to affect him for the rest of his life. Yes.
I mean, from a movie perspective, when you look
at Stevens' career, it's really interesting because
he seems to be one kind of great director before
the war and a different kind of great director
after the war. I mean, before the war, he was
famous for things like swing time and alice adams
and woman of the year with heffernan tracy a
lot of really light fun comedies after the war
in the fifties he becomes the director of shane
and a place in the sun and the diary of an frank
and giant i mean really serious movies all drama
he said that after what he saw it dot gov he
felt that he would not ever be capable of making
a comedy can and he never did You mentioned earlier
that these directors covered the invasion of
Normandy and so forth, but there were a lot of
problems with that invasion of Normandy. Can
you tell us about the physical demands that were
there and what happened to them? Yeah, I mean
it was an extraordinary idea to try to film this
on a scale that the Army had certainly never
done before. There were hundreds of cameras mounted
to the the prowess of, you know, the the American
and allied vessels. There were dozens of trained
cameramen. About 90 % of the equipment and 90
% of the footage was destroyed in the initial
attack. That still left a lot, but of that remaining
footage, the majority of it was considered much
too bloody and frightening and unusable to be
shown to american newsreel audiences who you
know newsreels changed every weekend and american
audiences were just frantic to get the first
you know the first scenes from the the invasion
uh... so what they saw with the stuff that was
reasonable to see you have to wait almost i think
fifty years uh... until steven spielberg made
saving private ryan that the first 25 minutes
of that movie, which is D -Day, that footage
is largely based on the footage that Stevens
helped oversee that was not shown originally
because it was just too rough. And the beginning
of that movie I thought was very rough. I thought
it was hard to watch. So you can imagine, and
that was 1998, so you can imagine how impossible
it would have been, you know, in 1944 for people,
you know, used to seeing fairly sanitized Hollywood
movies to look at that. Well, as we come up toward
the top of the hour when we start thinking about,
you know, unfortunately wrapping this up, what
would you say do you think was the overall effect
that these directors had on the war movement
for America? There's a short question for you.
You know, I think they did two things. One is
Capra very directly, you know, you didn't get
into the army after a certain point without seeing
those Why We Fight movies. So on a direct level,
he helped to instill a sense of purpose and mission
and patriotism in the American fighting man.
But overall, I think what they did was something
really, I mean, it was flawed and it was uneven,
but At its best, it was very noble, which was
to try to grapple with their instincts as patriots
to help the war effort, with their instincts
as directors to tell a good story, and with their
instincts as men to tell the truth, and to kind
of combine that into work that would bring home
to the American public what this war looked like,
felt like, sounded like, what its effect was
on the soldiers. what we were trying to do. I
mean, these weren't guys who were 18 or 19 or
20 years old. They were between 35 and 45. So
none of them had to do this. And they realized
that what they could contribute to the war was
clarity and storytelling. And that's what they
tried to do. And so I do think it was a major
part of the war effort to try to get the American
people to understand what this war looked and
felt like. Well, I've learned a lot from reading
your book. And again, I encourage people to go
out and get this. It's Mark Harris. It's Five
Came Back, a story of Hollywood in the Second
World War. I believe it's out in paperback now,
is that correct? That's right, yes. Thank you.
Well, I've got to promote my authors, especially
when I have great stories like this. And I encourage
people also to go to YouTube and look at the
Why We Fight movies that are on there. I think
you'll learn a lot about what was going on during
the 1930s and 40s because they, you know, we
didn't get into the details about this but Capra's
really tried to explain why we were fighting
the Japanese the way we were and the history
of how Japan had taken over China and so forth
and what Hitler had done and what Mussolini had
done. It's a great history lesson for all of
you out there and I encourage you to go out and
purchase the book and check out all these movies.
Thanks so much. Yeah, and you can also find Let
There Be Light and The Battle of Midway in San
Pietro on YouTube as well. I did. I also saw
some cartoons from Disney and from Warner Brothers
on there too. Right, those are great, the private
snafu cartoons. They are and they're really,
you'd be amazed that, you know, we think about
stereotyping in it and like we talked about earlier
and it's just, it's outrageous. Today people,
both sides of the political aisle would be just
so upset by those things. So Mark Harris, I want
to thank you so much for being on Veterans Radio
and I would love to have you back on again at
some point and talk about some other things about
movies and war. My pleasure. Thank you very much
for being on the program. Thanks so much. All
right, folks. That's another one in the can,
as they say. There we go. That's a wrap. That's
a wrap. I don't know what number this is. It's
probably somewhere around 570 or something like
that. Give or take. Give or take 20 or 30 of
them. But I want to thank everybody for listening
today. I want to thank our sponsors, Legal Helper
Veterans and Conway Truckload for sponsoring
the program. By the way, folks out there, we
need some support from you also. We need you
to go to our website, look on Support Veterans
Radio. We've got some things that we want to
try and do, and we need to start raising some
funds to do that. So you'll be hearing more about
our fundraising in the next couple of weeks.
No checks too small, no checks too big. That's
right. We'll send you a copy of our book, Vietnam
Stories, the Best of Veterans Radio. And so we're
going to get into our little music here, and
then we'll be gone. And we'll be back next week,
though, so we want to make sure that you tune
in and listen to Veterans Radio. Until next week,
you are dismissed.