Home : World War II : The U.S. Film Industry's Values :The Idealistic Calling Of National Service
A number of stars saw more combat on the back lots and sound stages of Hollywood than they did on any real battlefield. Several legendary actors were exempt from World War II military service, including Marlon Brando (knee injury), Gary Cooper (bad hip), Peter Falk (glass eye), Errol Flynn (heart condition), Jackie Gleason (overweight), Van Johnson (injuries sustained in a car crash), Danny Kaye (bad back), Peter Lawford (shoulder injury), Dean Martin (hernia), Frank Sinatra (perforated eardrum), Richard Widmark (same condition), Gregory Peck (old rowing injury), and Bob Hope, Fred Astaire, and George Raft (too old). Some actors avoided service, such as Cary Grant, Dick Haymes, and John Wayne (bad knee from a football injury, although some less-than-charitable accounts claim that The Duke deliberately avoided military service). Humphrey Bogart, an established star who had served in the Navy in World War I, tried to enlist but was rejected for service in World War II because the draft board said he was too old (43 in 1942). His roles in Action in the North Atlantic, Sahara, and Casablanca (all 1943), however, inspired a generation to the idealistic calling of national service. Several Canadian actors served during World War II as well. James Doohan (RCAF, While landing in Normandy on D-Day was wounded in the leg and hand; losing a finger. Then he retrained as a Pilot, earned a Commission with the RCAF, and completed the war serving as a Pilot Artillery Observer.), best known as Scotty in the Star Trek TV series, was shot seven times and lost a finger while serving as an officer with a Canadian artillery unit on Juno Beach in Normandy on D-Day. After recovering, he switched branches to join the RCAF and served as a pilot/artillery spotter. Other notable Canadians who answered their country's call include Raymond Massey; Glenn Ford (USMC, (Gwyllyn Ford) When the United States entered World War II Glenn enlisted in the Marines. Among his numerous Medals and Commendations are, the Good Conduct Medal, the American Defense Service Ribbon, the European Theater Ribbon with three Battle Stars, one Overseas Service Bar, and the French Legion of Honor for his service in France during World War II. Following his WWII service, he transferred his commission to the U. S. Naval Reserves. He retired as a Captain in the US Naval Reserve.), who served with the U.S. Navy; Leslie Nielsen, and TV game-show host Monty Hall. German Oskar Werner, who won international acclaim in Francois Truffaut's Jules et Jim (1961), tried to avoid military service but in December 1941 was drafted into the Wehrmacht. A dedicated pacifist and anti-Nazi, he acted like an incompetent soldier, deliberately falling from his horse and pretending not to understand how to operate an artillery piece. As a result, instead of being sent to the Russian Front, he was put to work in a garrison in Austria peeling potatoes and cleaning latrines. While still a soldier, he married a half-Jewish woman with whom he had a daughter. During an Allied bombing of Vienna, he was buried under rubble for three days. On December 8, 1944, with his wife and baby, he deserted from the Wehrmacht, hiding in a shack in the Vienna Woods until the Russians closed in. Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, the star of Rashomon (1950) and Seven Samurai (1954), was drafted into the Japanese Army and transferred to an air force squadron stationed in Manchuria. An experienced photographer, he was soon put in charge of the squadron's aerial photography unit. At war's end, he was stationed at a kamikaze base. In 1969, Mifune and Lee Marvin starred together in Hell in the Pacific. Sessue Hayakawa had planned on a naval career, but a hearing loss prevented it. He is best remembered by American audiences as Colonel Saito, the Japanese officer in The Bridge on the River Kwai, a performance for which he received an Oscar nomination.
Several fine books chronicle the military lives of the celebrities, including
Stars in Khaki: Movie Actors in the Army and the Air Services
All the books convey a certain nostalgia for a time when the country was in grave peril from a world full of foreign enemies and hundreds of Hollywood stars, and those destined to become stars, gave up their careers and put their lives on the line.
The USAAF's Famed Fort RoachAbout a year and a half before the World War II, Warner Bros were contacted by the Army with a request that a series of short subjects be made for release in theaters throughout the nation to familiarize the public with the various branches of the military. At the time the public was unaware of the importance of branches like the Armored Forces, the Engineers, Air Corps Cadet Training, etc. Jack L Warner accepted the challenge with enthusiasm and conferred with Gordon Hollingshead of his Short Subjects Department, who in turn called in Owen Crump, a writer at the studio. After Crump researched and visited various Army bases around the country, a series of eight two-reel subjects was produced in Technicolor, at the time an innovation in the short subject field. Once the Army films were released in the theaters, similar requests came from the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard for films about pre-Pearl Harbor orientation. It was natural that General Henry H Arnold, chief of the AAF, realizing the necessity for films on training, orientation, and inspirational subjects to keep pace with the growth of the Air Forces, would request Warner and Crump to come to Washington.
The Army Signal Corps Photographic Section had made all training films for the air arm, but Arnold saw the immediate necessity of organizing and activating his own film unit to serve the particular needs of the new Army Air Force as a separate service branch. The outcome of the meeting resulted in Jack Warner being commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the AAF and Crump a captain. Their primary assignment was to organize the First Motion Picture Unit of the USAAF (FMPU). Most urgent was a film aimed at speeding up enlistments in the Cadet Training Program since the AAF then could not draft men for Cadet Training and was in a position where more than 100,000 young men needed to voluntarily enlist within a three-month period. LtCol Warner turned over the facilities of his studio to the project. Work was carried out on a 24-hour basis. Crump wrote and directed the film, in which then-Lt James Stewart played the lead, and in 14 days it was finished. Released in most theaters throughout the USA, its effect was immediate, intense. More than 150,000 enlistments were directly traced to the effect of the picture, "Winning Your Wings." First home for the FMPU was the old Vitagraph Studio in East Hollywood. It was vacant, but it had sound stages and storage and office space. Arnold sent out a lieutenant and two sergeants to handle the military paper work to properly activate the Unit. Once word got out about the need for craftsmen, from grips to producers, they came from every studio in a wave of patriotism. Along with the studio personnel, popular actors came from nearly every studio (including President Ronald Reagan as a captain), as did directors, producers, and some of the finest writers in the industry, all as soldiers in the service of their country. Although the idea of direct enlistment into a particular military unit was quite unheard of, General Arnold agreed to it as the only way such a complicated organization could be assembled quickly. After four weeks of Army basic training in other parts of the country, studio workers returned to sleep on cots on the sound stages and to eat in the commissary. It was, however, soon evident that because of wartime priorities on equipment, a studio completely equipped for the making of motion pictures was needed. When it was learned that the Hal Roach Studios in Culver City were out of production, in a matter of days it was leased by the AAF, and some 300 men marched in to take over what would become known as "Fort Roach." One week later, shooting began on the first picture, "Live and Learn," a six-reeler that illustrated the mistakes young cadets should avoid in flight training. Within two months, 300 pictures were underway, and the range of subject matters was incredibly varied—flight operations, survival training, even sex hygiene. The first Japanese Zero captured intact was immediately sent to FMPU to film it in the air doing a series of maneuvers with a technical narrative for viewing by combat units in the Pacific. A notable top-secret project was a huge, scale miniature of the main island of Japan that covered an entire sound stage. With a camera moving overhead, briefing films were made for use on Okinawa to train pilots to bomb Japan. Thus could B-29 crews see the trip they were to make, pick out check points and the target. During FMPU's life more than 400 films were made. In the end there were 1,110 men, not counting Combat Camera Training and units in the field, technical advisors on special assignment, or personnel on temporary duty from AAF units. Combat camera crews trained by FMPU at nearby Page Military Academy were sent out to AAF fronts. They went along on bombing raids as a matter of routine and suffered many casualties. FMPU represented an historical moment since it marked the first time in history a military unit was formed entirely of motion picture personnel.
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by James Wise and Ann Rehill; 
by Michael Munn; and 
by James E. Wise and Scott Baron.
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