Hollywood Goes to War : How Politics, Profits and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies

by Clayton R. Koppes

Conflicting interests and conflicting attitudes toward the war characterized the uneasy relationship between Washington and Hollywood during World War II. There was deep disagreement within the film-making community as to the stance towards the war that should be taken by one of America's most lucrative industries. Hollywood Goes to War reveals the powerful role played by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Office of War Information--staffed by some of America's most famous intellectuals including Elmer Davis, Robert Sherwood, and Archibald MacLeish--in shaping the films that were released during the war years. Ironically, it was the film industry's own self-censorship system, the Hays Office and the Production Code Administration, that paved the way for government censors to cut and shape movies to portray an idealized image of a harmonious American society united in the fight against a common enemy. Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black reconstruct the power struggles between the legendary producers, writers, directors, stars and politicians all seeking to project their own visions onto the silver screen and thus to affect public perceptions and opinion.

Genres: Nonfiction, World War II, History, Media Tie In, American History, Film

Paperback

First published July 1, 1987

About the author

A historian of American culture, technology, foreign policy and the environment, Clayton R. Koppes is professor emeritus of Oberlin College. A graduate of Bethel College, Koppes earned an MA in history from Emory University and a PhD in history with honors from the University of Kansas.

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hollywood Goes to War is a history of American perception throughout World War II. Proceeding from the origins of the Hollywood war complex in 1939 to its dialectical dissolution in 1945, Koppes and Black summarize, analyse, and criticize popular American attitudes towards themselves, their allies, and their enemies. In academic style, the book helpfully treats this assemblage of topics with the same structure over and over again: A chapter will open by establishing the origins of the so-called movie colony's need to begin teaching Americans about Russia, for example, and then roughly summarize the popular depiction and its flaws. The chapter will then pick apart several films, describing the original concept behind them, the ways the propaganda organ the Office of War Information (OWI) suggested rewrites, the final form of the released film, and its impact on the American people's understanding of the world and its flaws.

Movies about China and Russia, rushed into the cinemas to help Americans get to know these unknown and worthy allies, were flattened-out into democracy-loving imitations of America with shared values and goals. Respectively, this led to Americans remaining more or less ignorant of China and in the dark about Mao's brewing revolutionary effort, and the similar distortion of the Soviet Union in the opposite direction come the Cold War. Indeed, the Hollywood strategy for manufacturing American perception of the world was to divide the planet into two camps: A democracy-loving, liberal, popular coalition of free peoples and united nations, and a despotic slave world led by villains who enslaved their own peoples and wish to enslave the rest of the world as well. Purportedly, Americans in 1942 generally believed Hitler was not popularly-supported.

The OWI more or less failed in its apparent effort to remove racism from the movies. Japanese were unanimously depicted as bloodthirsty fanatics, and African-Americans are rarely given an accurate spotlight, for fears that an open confrontation with America's segregated society would damage the united, democratic war effort against the racist slave-masters. In WWII Hollywood, one had to to be white to be given a human depiction.

As WWII escalated over time, so too did Hollywood's war movies mature over the course of the war. Comedies and satires, present before America entered the war, disappear as true apprehension of the war's stakes become more apparent. The need to stress internationalism and democracy, the need to make sure every movie would help win the war, and the actual depiction of war itself dominate movies near the end of WWII. Films about war with Japan, depicting a simple battle in the jungle against animalistic monsters, become supplanted by films about war with Germany, showing repentant and even antifascist Germans, while Americans become wounded and harmed by war themselves.

In the end, the system couldn't survive the end of the war. Its flattened depiction of a dualistic fight between friend and enemy had to both reckon with the decolonization efforts fought against 'friend' camps throughout the world, and Americans had to choose a new enemy after Germany was defeated. Soon, the House Committe of Un-American Activities would train its guns on the Hollywood professionals who'd previously cooperated with the OWI. The move industry itself became less monopolized, the censorship code was soon abandoned, and television supplanted the cinema as the organ of popular culture. In a way, the superstructure built around the Hollywood propaganda industry continued to influence movies long after the base it was built upon fell.

[Blaine Welgraven · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Office of War Information in Hollywood represented "the most comprehensive and sustained government attempt to change the content of a medium in American history. Wartime censorship told the mass media what not to make known. OWI not only told Hollywood what should be excluded but what should, in fact, be included."

A well-written, organized account of World War II propaganda films, complete with thorough explanations of the classic Hollywood studio system, the World War II political climate, and the uneasy partnership between the west coast's movie-making cartel and FDR's byzantine assortment of propaganda agencies. Highly recommend.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did not officially finish. It was too dense and wasn’t as much about production during the wartime as I would have liked

[John Albers · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a previous review I gave this book three stars but after reading Hollywood Goes to War a second time, I upgraded my review to 4 stars. I remember watching many of these old war movies when I was a kid in the 1950's, especially Guadalcanal Diary, which all the boys in 5th grade repeated the dialogue many times on the playground at recess. Of course, at the time I didn't realize the efforts by the government and the studios to shape and mold these films to represent American ideas. The book clearly states the efforts by government agencies and organizations along with studio heads that led to these films being made.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

You might say 2.5 stars, because it had redeeming qualities — and a big bunch of faults, too. Full of factual errors about films, many typos. But also lots of informative material on how the government influenced the content of films and also how the studios in some cases buckled and in other cases evaded government meddling. Will be a keeper to look up WW-II era movies as I see them.

[Orla · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clever, well-written and engaging history of a period of intense change in American society and the role Hollywood had to play in that.