Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War.

Jones, David B.

Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War.

Harris, Mark. New York: The Penguin Press. 2014. ISBN 978-1-59420-430-2

This well-written, unpretentious book recounts the participation of five great American film directors in World War II. The directors are Frank Capra, John Huston, George Stevens, William Wyler, and John Ford. Author Mark Harris describes their reasons for deciding to serve, the films they made in support of the war effort, their frustrations and triumphs in dealing with the military bureaucracy, and the effect of their war experience on their post-war filmmaking. The book lacks a thesis, offers minimal interpretation--and is thoroughly engrossing.

Among the book's many surprising revelations is that all five directors entered the service voluntarily and eagerly, and in some cases joined up before the United States declared war. They shared an aversion to Nazism but otherwise had varying motivations. Ford and Capra had long been attracted to military service. Ford secured a reserve Navy commission in 1934, motivated largely by the romantic allure of naval adventure. In 1939, while on a fishing trip off the coast of Mexico, he conducted some unofficial reconnaissance looking for Japanese trawlers. Capra, too, was attracted to military service, but in his case it was largely in response to his insecure identity as an American, having been foreign-born and grown up feeling something of an outsider. Wyler, who had lost relatives to Hitler's campaign to exterminate Jews, had already volunteered to serve and was awaiting orders.

Each of the five directors entered active (as opposed to reserve) service at great risk to their careers. Huston, the youngest, was a successful screenwriter who had just made the big time as a director with The Maltese Falcon (1941). Stevens had established himself as a superb comedy director, having made Woman of the Year (1942) and The Talk of the Town (1942). Ford had recently won Oscars for The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and How Green Was My Valley (1941). Wyler was coming off The Letter (1940) and The Little Foxes (1941) and had nearly finished Mrs. Miniver (1942). Capra was the most prominent of them all, with Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and Meet John Doe (1941). The professional and financial sacrifice they each made was substantial. Capra, for example, was in line for a contract that would pay him $250,000 per movie; his salary in the Army peaked at $4,000 a year. And like everyone else, none of them could know how long the war would last.

As might be expected, a recurrent theme in the book is the clash between these creative, strong-willed directors and the government officials overseeing them. At times, they were given a free hand but they were often hamstrung by rules, regulations, obtuseness, or timidity. They produced some of their best work surreptitiously or in open defiance. The filmmakers' main bete noir was Lowell Mellet, head of the Office of War Information. To avoid Mellet's prying eyes, Ford sent the footage from which he would make The Battle of Midway (1942) to California with an assistant; Ford instructed the latter to hide it in his home and find a lab where he could edit it on the quiet. Wyler insisted on participating in air raids in order to get authentic footage; he impressed the crews with his willingness to take great risks to get a good shot. Fearing Wyler might be a juicy target for the Germans if they had intelligence that he was aboard, the Army (in those days, the Air Force was part of the Army) grounded him. Wyler ignored the order and went on more missions, gathering footage for The Memphis Belle (1944). Capra managed to produce Prelude to War (1942) without scrutiny, which greatly annoyed Mellet and others, but General George Marshall loved the film.

What might not be expected is that the bureaucracy often was right. Mellet, for instance, was against reenactments and wanted the films to use authentic material as much as possible. He disliked Huston's The Battle of San Pietro (1945) because it relied almost entirely on staged scenes; indeed the film is for most people far less engaging than, say, Memphis Belle, which used no reenactments at all. Mellet also fought against depictions of the Japanese as entirely evil or subhuman. He made Ford recut December 7th, 1942 (1943), which Ford had allowed cinematographer Greg Toland to shoot and assemble with a free hand, because, besides being too long, it reeked of anti-Japanese virulence. Mellet, along with a number of high-ranking military men, was against "the moral evil of incendiary race-baiting" [335]. Huston made his strident Know Your Enemy: Japan (1945) after Mellet had left the OWI. The film arrived overseas only three days after Hiroshima was bombed. MacArthur refused to let it be shown to his troops because it was too anti-Japanese.

Some films were produced with little discord but, when finished, were deemed too controversial for public showing. Huston's Let There Be Light (1946) is a very simple film about the psychological treatment of men suffering from shell shock. At the time, it was criticized for depicting some cures as too quick, but, according to author Harris, no evidence was ever produced to prove Huston wrong about the cases in question. It remains a moving film, but because the Army feared it might hinder its recruiting efforts, it was not shown publicly for thirty-five years. One of the best films from the war was produced completely on the side. Haunted by the loss of most of the men in Torpedo Squadron 8 during the Midway clash, Ford assembled all the footage he had of the pilots and their crew, and made an 8-millimetre film, Torpedo Squadron 8 (1942), out of it. The film identifies each man by name and rank. Ford made just fifty copies and arranged for a print to be hand-delivered to each of the families. Ford never spoke of this. The film was not shown publicly for nearly fifty years. It is lovely in its simplicity, directness, and affection.

The book offers fascinating insights into how their war experiences affected and influenced these directors and their post-war work. Stevens, sorely missing his family, followed the allied army into Germany and was assigned the job of filming the liberation of the concentration camps and documenting the atrocities committed there. He did much of the filming himself, not wanting to inflict the gruesome task onto his crew. The experience, especially of Dachau, depressed him, because it made him suspect that anyone, including himself, had within him the potential to commit such crimes. Later, he called Shane (1953) "my war picture" [443]. Shane's haunted demeanor, his wistful devotion to the Starretts, Wilson's cold deadly efficiency, and the quick, matter-of-fact death of Torrey all seem to have roots in Stevens's wartime experience. Wyler was older and more financially established than most of the airmen he flew with. He lost his hearing in one ear from the roar of airplane engines, a member of his film crew was killed on a bombing raid, and he once punched someone for an anti-Semitic slur. These experiences find echoes in the three returning veterans of his magnificent The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Ford made no more "prestige" pictures after the war, focusing on Westerns. Harris doesn't mention it, but Ford seems to have channeled his wartime experience into his cavalry trio, Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950), each of which extols military virtues while acknowledging military foibles and failures. Huston's Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) depicts a man crumbling under pressure. Harris suggests that It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Capra's last important film (but a flop at the time), reflects the insecurity that contributed to Capra's desire to enlist and afflicted him even during his service, as he was the only one of the five to spend the war safely in Washington (and occasionally Los Angeles) and not serve overseas.

Five Came Back is rich with information and anecdotes. Readers will likely want to track down and view or re-view a number of the wartime films featured in the book. They will likely make their own connections between the experiences Harris recounts and the films these directors made after the war. And they are almost sure to gain a profound respect for these five talented men who put their careers and in some cases lives at risk in the service of their country.

David B. Jones, Drexel University