Hollywood – Old Magazine Articles

The Sullivans
(Liberty Magazine, 1943)

In 1943, Twentieth Century Fox released a movie that told the story of one of the earlies heroes of the war, The Sullivans. These five Iowa brothers enlisted in the U.S. Navy just three weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack. Assigned to the cruiser Juneau, three were killed that summer during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (1942), and the two others died the next day. The nation as a whole was very moved by this saga and cherished their memory.

“Five unknown actors play the Sullivan lads. And because their faces are fresh and new, they seem amazingly convincing and real.”

Linda Darnell Downsizes
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

Everyone on the home front was used to making sacrifices, and Hollywood star Linda Darnell (1923 – 1965) was no exception:

“Allowances must be made for Linda Darnell who has been sorely tried. Instead of six servants, she now has two – and she hears strange sounds from the kitchen that convince her she will soon be alone. Her chauffer has been drafted; her butler is working at Lockheed. Her flower gardens are a wreck because the Japs who once tended them are in internment camps… ‘Why, this gas rationing… it’s worse than being bombed!'”

Joan Fontaine Does Her Bit
(Liberty Magazine, 1942)

Whether Joan Fontaine (1917 – 1913) was pressured into writing this bitter-sweet article by her studio or some other Hollywood entity – we’ll never know, but this piece recalls her earliest days in Japan, where she was born, and all the sweet smiles and kind words that all of us are peppered with during our formative years. So much for the sweet part of the article – then she recalls her return trip in 1934-35 and what a bunch of Fascist skanks they all turned into (Japanese-Americans also feel her back hand).

When Hollywood Wished Not to Offend Hitler
(Liberty Magazine, 1939)

When Hitler and Mussolini declared that they would no longer import Hollywood films for viewing, they inadvertently gave birth to a new kind of Hollywood – a Hollywood that would now produce movies criticizing European Fascism.

Read about Mission to Moscow (Warner Brothers, 1943) – made when Hollywood wished not to offend Stalin…

Hollywood Feels the Actor Shortages
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

“What Hollywood is saying secretly and can’t say publicly is: The Armed Forces are taking away all our actors, all our technical men. Things are serious now; in six months they will be desperate. But if anybody in Hollywood got up and said that unless a great change in public policy is made, the movies might be out of business in six months…”

“[Movie stars have] a duty and Hollywood has a duty and they should be made to stick to it.”

The Government Film Business During WW II
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1944)

“Government movies are now having their greatest boom in history. The boom is tied to the war, but many capital observers believe that it will continue into the post war era, and that the large-scale production of films by the Government telling the people what’s what and how to do it is here to stay.”

Oscars at War
(PM Tabloid, 1943)

War-torn Hollywood was at its best for the Academy Award Ceremony at the Coconut Grove Hotel in March, 1943. To no one’s surprise, Mrs. Miniver walked home with most of the most coveted trophies.

The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League
(Click Magazine, 1938)

The Los Angeles of the late Thirties was plagued by a small coterie of Nazis; they were not terribly visible, but they were around, nonetheless. From time-to-time real Fascists from Europe would blow into town and they would be met by such groups as the Jewish Labor Committee, the United Anti-Nazi Conference and the Los Angeles Jewish Community Relations Committee. This article concerns another organization that worked shoulder to shoulder with these groups, but with a little more style: the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. The League was 5,000 strong (likely an exaggeration) and within its ranks were Hollywood notables such as Herbert Biberman, Robert Rossen, Francis Edward Faragoh, Ring Lardner, Jr. and Dalton Trumbo.

‘Hitler” of Hollywood
(The American Magazine, 1944)

Song and Dance man Robert Watson (1888 – 1965) was Hollywood’s-go-to-guy when they needed a fella to tread the boards as the Bohemian Corporal (Adolf Hitler). Throughout the course of his career he played him nine times.

When W.W. II Came to Hollywood
(Photoplay Magazine, 1948)

The attached article is but a small segment addressing the history of Hollywood during the war W.W. II years; clipped from a longer Photoplay Magazine piece that recounted the illustrious past of Hollywood some thirty-five years earlier.

After Pearl Harbor, the men really began leaving town. David Niven was gone now. So too, was Flight Officer Laurence Olivier. And more and more from the Hollywood ranks kept leaving. Gable, Fonda, Reagan, the well-knowns and the lesser-knowns. Power, Taylor, Payne, Skelton and many others…More Hollywood regulars went away, so other, newer newcomers had to be found to replace them because the box office was booming.

The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse
(PM Tabloid, 1943)

The reason the Nazis banned The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse was that it was a political preachment against Hitler ‘socialism,’ by a man [Fritz Lang] whose films were appreciated by the Germans as true interpretations of the social trends of post-war Germany… Lang’s intention in the film was, in his own words, ‘to expose the masked Nazi theory of the necessity to deliberately destroy everything which is precious to a people so that they would lose all faith in the institutions and ideals of the State. Then, when everything collapsed, they would try to find help in the new order.’

Who in Hollywood Received Draft Deferments
(Photoplay Magazine, 1942)

This article first appeared at the end of America’s first full year of war and it is composed of the names and pictures of Hollywood’s leading men who were absolved from fulfilling their military obligations during the war.

The personalities of the fabulous films are on the spot in the matter of serving their country. It is useless to deny that the motion picture stars have been getting the best of it. Some have been given special draft deferments and choice assignments and often have been allowed extra months to finish their pictures before having to report for duty.

Click here to read about the American draft-dodgers of the Second World War.

Should Movie Stars Be Expected to Fight, As Well?
(Photoplay Magazine, 1942)

We were very surprised to read in the attached editorial that the whole idea of draft deferments for actors and other assorted Hollywood flunkies was not a scheme cooked-up by their respective agents and yes-men, but a plan that sprung forth from the fertile mind of the executive officer in charge of the Selective Service System: Brigadier General Lewis Blaine Hershey (1893 – 1977) in Washington.

Always one to ask the difficult questions, Ernest V. Heyn (1905 – 1995) executive editor of Photoplay posed the query Should Stars Fight? and in this column he began to weigh the pros-and-cons of the need for propaganda and an uninterrupted flow of movies for the home front, and the appearance of creating a new entitled class of pretty boys.

Twenty years earlier a Hollywood actor would get in some hot water for also suggesting that talented men be excused from the W.W. I draft…

What The GIs Thought of The Films of the Forties
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

After four hard years of watching sappy Hollywood drivel about the war and the home front, the censorship machine was finally dismantled – which allowed the servicemen to speak their minds about what they REALLY thought about those movies…

Production Delays
(PM Tabloid, 1940)

The week the French Army collapsed was the week Hollywood experienced the greatest number of production delays. Studio wags believed it was an indicator as to just how many European refugees were employed on their stages. Studio bosses banned all radio and newspapers from their properties in hopes that each production would maintain their respective schedules.

‘The Story of GI Joe”
(Pic Magazine, 1945)

The Story of G.I. Joe was released shortly before the war ended and was praised by General Eisenhower for being the best war movie he had ever seen. Directed by William Wellman, the film was applauded by American combat veterans of the time for it’s accuracy – in their letters home, many would write that Wellman’s film had brought them to tears. The movie was based on the war reporting of Ernie Pyle as it appeared in his 1943 memoir, Here Is Your War: Story of G.I. Joe. Although it is not mentioned here, Pyle himself had spent some time on the set as a technical adviser, and the film was released two months after his death.

At The Front North Africa
(PM Magazine, 1943)

Here is the PM movie review of At The Front North Africa directed by John Ford and produced by Darryl Zanuck for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The reviewer seemed irked that the film only showed the Germans having a difficult time.

Click here to read about the American Army in North Africa…

Actor Lew Ayres: Conscientious Objector
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

This short notice from a 1944 issue of the U.S. Army’s Yank Magazine can be printed or read on screen if you prefer; the article is accompanied by a photo of Lew Ayres (1908 – 1996: Ayres is best remembered for his performance in All Quiet on the Western Front) wearing his Army togs while performing his tasks as a chaplain’s assistant on Wake Island (New Guinea).

‘I am still a conscientious objector to war,’ Ayres says. He went to a camp for conchies at Wyeth, Oregon early in 1942 but volunteered a short time later for medical service. After training as a hospital ward attendant and then becoming an instructor at Camp Barkley, Texas, the ex-movie actor shipped overseas as a staff sergeant.

Click here to read more about American conscientious objectors in W.W. II.