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However, in what can only be described as a shocking oversight, no effort was made to collect the first-hand stories of the American soldiers who took part in this battle on film – even though the Marine Corps helped Paramount film the 1952 movie Retreat, Hell! in 1952. Former Marine Brian Iglesias, a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom whose service included the fighting in Ramadi, has stepped in to fill the void, with a superb documentary, Chosin. 

Iglesias and fellow Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran Anton Sattler’s eight-month road trip in 2009 was done on a shoestring. Iglesias and Sattler, both decorated for heroism in combat while serving in Iraq, interviewed over 180 of the “Chosin Few.” While Chosin is a great start in getting the story out- in a very real sense, it has just begun to tell the tales from this incredible campaign. 

Only twenty of those veterans appear in the film – and while Iglesias and Sattler have given them the gift of recognizing their service and preserving their stories, it pales when compared to the gifts these men have given to both America and the world. Korea is long considered the “Forgotten War” – and in many cases, it is considered a draw. However, the veterans feel that they won – and there is a good case to be made for a victory in Korea: Communist aggression was contained on the Korean Peninsula. 

Chosin is a powerful documentary film – one that is well worth the price of the DVD. One cannot help but feel gratitude for the heroism of the courageous men interviewed by Iglesias and Sattler, and pride in what they accomplished. This is a must-have for any video library. If there is one negative to this film, it is that more of these veterans’ stories could not fit into this documentary. However, there is always the possibility of sequels. 

Chosin is currently available via the website www.frozenchosin.com, costs $24.99. Runtime is 86 minutes. Directed by Brian Iglesias. Written and produced by Brian Iglesias and Anton Sattler.

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You would think with such serious statistics and the pain, suffering, sacrifice and drama they imply, that Hollywood would have been drawn to the Korean War as a setting for a bevy of war movies. But sadly there are only a few films that tackle the subject. Still, some notables do stand out.  So if you are looking for a way to honor the veterans of what has been called “the forgotten war” (apparently by Hollywood, as well), I hope you’ll look back at the previous chapters of this series in which I humbly presented my five favorite Korean War films, starting with the most recent one produced.

My thoughts on the war and its meaning (especially since my dad fought there) can be found at Big Government. Here at BH my interest was in Hollywood’s treatment of the subject matter as expressed through the motion picture medium. 

And so I conclude my series with my personal favorite below. God bless all who served in that war. And if the Marines who read this will pardon this respectful civilian’s use of their motto just this one time, I offer my father, 2nd Lieutenant Jack Schaeffer, 1st US Marine Division, Purple Heart - Korea, now storming the great beachead in the sky, Semper Fi.

The Bridges At Toko-Ri (1954): Based on the novel of the same title by James Michener, the film stars William Holden as naval aviator Harry Brubaker, a veteran of WW2 who practiced law after the war but then was recalled as a reservist to fly missions over North Korea. Stationed on a carrier, his command is tasked with taking out the heavily defended title bridges.

The film features a stellar supporting cast that includes Grace Kelly as his concerned wife Nancy (who meets him in Tokyo), Frederick March as the paternal Rear Adm. Tarrant, and Mickey Rooney as CPO Mike Forney, a selfless if eccentric helicopter rescue pilot. Brubaker is suffering combat fatigue and yearns desperately to return to his civilian life and family, but his sense of duty keeps him flying—even as he suspects his death in combat is imminent. 

Sadly his premonition comes true.  The movie’s tragic ending, where Brubaker and Forney are overrun by Chinese and killed after the former crashes and the latter is also downed trying to rescue him, is emblematic of the war in which Brubaker lamented fighting in such a far away place that seemed to matter little, save to those who were there.  Waiting in a ditch for the Chinese onslaught, Brubaker poignantly reflects on Adm. Tarrant’s take on the whole war  (which coincidentally echoed Harry Truman’s words):

“The wrong war in the wrong place and that’s the one your stuck with…I can see now he was right. You fight simply because you’re here.”

The film ends with Tarrant famously commenting on his pilots’ deaths which hits him hard.  He poses a question to himself that rings as true today as it did sixty years ago when thinking on that war:  “Where do we get such men?”

Cooper delivers his one-liners in a Preston Sturges staccato that helps give the 1970s film a pleasant 1930s gloss, bridging the gap between comic book and movie. But if, like me, you were just a kid when you saw Superman, you may not have known that here was an actor who, fifty years earlier, was one of the most popular and recognizable in the world, courtesy of a little picture called The Champ.

Cooper’s rise to childhood stardom was all-too typical — born in 1922, the unhappy progeny of a broken home, he was first dragged to the studios by his grandmother. “For most of the ladies in that poor neighborhood,” Cooper wrote in his autobiography, “it became common practice to walk to the studio gate in the morning and see if any of the directors needed extras. . .if you were picked, you got $2 and a box lunch. . . [my grandmother] was picked often because she had a little towheaded kid with her — me.”

A host of small roles eventually led to a job as one of Hal Roach’s Little Rascals, which after a few years resulted in a breakout, Oscar-nominated role playing the titular moppet in the Hollywood adaptation of the famous comic strip Skippy. Directed by his uncle (who won a Best Directing Oscar for the film), it made a name for Cooper as the movie kid who could cry better than any other (Cooper claims that his uncle once got him to cry on cue by threatening to shoot his dog), and its popularity quickly led to a lucrative M-G-M contract and the chance to star in The Champ.

Then as now, child stars were held in something akin to contempt by many filmgoers. The New York Herald-Tribune said in its review of The Champ that “This department, it is only right to tell you, has little sympathy for the child performers. Ordinarily they play with the clumsiness you might expect of their youth, while invariably providing in their personal qualities all of the more deplorable instincts of maturity. In a word, they act like children while seeming immature adults.” That description sounds like Dakota Fanning and any number of modern child actors. But Jackie Cooper, according to the same review,

proves by one of the finest and knowingly sensitive portrayals of the recent cinema that he is an actor of genuine distinction: a child who performs with all of the intelligence and mature emotional power supposed to belong to an adult, without losing anything of the youthful appeal to be expected of his years.

Time magazine was much less charitable to Cooper’s Champ performance, chortling that, “every time Beery gets drunk, gambles away the racehorse which he has presented to his son, or is taken to jail for disturbing the peace, there is a shot of little Cooper sticking out his underlip and wrinkling his eyes.” That pat criticism, simplistic and snide, fails to account for any number of great scenes where Cooper isn’t sniffling in close-up.

Cooper played the role not just with amazing naturalness, but also with an eye toward the dramatic arc of his character. Like in his real life, in The Champ he’s a kid forced to leave behind his innocence and become an adult before his time.

The studio put out press releases saying how wonderfully Beery and eight-year-old Cooper got along, and anecdotal evidence contemporary to the period supports that assertion, despite the barrage of negative things Cooper said about Beery fifty years after the fact in his autobiography. News reporters visiting M-G-M claimed that, far from being afraid or angry at Beery, Cooper called him “Uncle Wally,” and happily followed him around the set. Beery himself recounted in an interview how he would help the director talk the eight-year-old through the emotional spectrum of each scene until he figured out how to play it. (One breakthrough came when little Dink undresses his drunk Dad and puts him to bed — after having it explained to him several times, Cooper suddenly brightened and exclaimed to the crew, “I get it! I’m the father and Wally’s the kid!”)

Later in life, Beery would say that “. . .[one of the few times] in my life I felt that maybe I was a pretty decent guy. . .was when little Jackie Cooper said he liked Wally Beery better than any other man he knew.” Cooper would star in several more movies with Beery, most notably Treasure Island (1934) and together they became one of Hollywood’s most popular screen pairs of the 1930s.

The tone of his autobiography hints that the real thing Cooper was missing was a father figure, and when someone like Beery failed to assume that role for him off-screen it hurt. The truth was that he was a lonely, friendless kid caught in the vast machinery of Hollywood, seeming to have everything in the world but empty and directionless inside. Judging from all of the extant pictures from that era, as well as newspaper accounts of press junkets, public appearances, and other films, Cooper’s childhood was one long series of meetings, movies, and promotions. For instance, in the month following the November 1931 release of The Champ, period newspapers tell of Cooper coming to Grauman’s Chinese Theater for a joint promotion with Santa Claus, first pressing his hands and feet into the cement forecourt and then introducing The Champ to 2000 kids in the theater. He was (in the words of Sid Grauman) “America’s Boy,” and a countrywide superstar. And he fulfilled that role at the expense of his childhood.

Like most prepubescent stars, his fame largely disappeared when he grew up. Cooper would later dismiss his entire childhood as a bad nightmare, aghast at the pressures he was put under when so young and lamenting the normal life he lost in the process. By the end of his teens he had slept with stars as varied as Judy Garland and Joan Crawford (the latter when he was seventeen and Crawford thirty-four), smoked dope and taken pills while hanging out with big-band musicians like Gene Krupa (Cooper learned the drums and often sat in with them), and spent virtually all the money he had made in Hollywood on fancy clothes, cars and women.

He credits the service with finally shaping him up and making a man out of him. When World War II hit, his handlers were ready and willing to pull the strings necessary to keep him out, but he bucked their advice and insisted on joining the Navy. He was twenty years old, and his childhood career was already just a memory. Although he says he was mercilessly hazed by fellow servicemen who held his movie-star status against him, Cooper maintained that, “I wouldn’t have wanted to be anyplace else. It would have been worse outside, getting the sneers from women wondering why you weren’t in uniform. Besides, there was that patriotic consideration — my country was in a desperate war, and I wanted to do my part, corny as that might sound, so we would win.”

Jackie Cooper spent the war playing the drums in a USO band, and after he was discharged had some tough years. He went through three marriages — with the last wife, twenty-five years into the marriage he had an affair with a younger woman and briefly left the house, only to come to his senses and patch things up before it was too late (the incident forms a moving chapter of his autobiography). He found work wherever he could, first in New York on the stage, then on ’50s TV shows, then as a studio executive in the ’60s, and finally as a Emmy Award-winning director of television throughout the ’70s, most notably on the now-classic show M*A*S*H.

Over the decades he remained active in the Navy Reserve, which eventually caused a problem on the M*A*S*H set. As Captain William S. Graves relates in Cooper’s book:

I came over to the set because I wanted to make some Christmas tapes [to send to the troops in Vietnam]. . . Some were thirty seconds, some were twenty seconds. . .and they’d say, “It’s Christmas, and we miss all you guys, and you’re doing a good job for your country, and we appreciate what you’re doing, and come home safe and Merry Christmas.”

. . . when I got there, Alan Alda had said he would make no Christmas greetings for the armed forces. So, of course, people sort of followed his lead, and Loretta Swit wouldn’t do it, Gary whatever-his-name wouldn’t do it. . .

Jack had done his best to try to get these guys all to do it because he believed in it, and he was doing it. . . the only people that did it were Wayne Rogers, who was a Navy lieutenant at one point in his life, and McLean Stevenson, who was a Navy pharmacist’s mate during the Korean War. And they did a nice job. But nobody else on that show would do it.

Imagine that: a group of Hollywood people, who had made their fortunes playing in arguably the most beloved military-themed TV show of all time, refusing to offer a kind word for the troops fighting in Vietnam. Jackie Cooper had a lot of problems throughout his life, and he regretted his movie-star childhood. But at least he got into the Navy, and came out with a lifelong dedication to our armed forces that does him credit.

Cooper regularly derides his childhood acting as shallow, but at the time of The Champ hordes of moviegoers disagreed with him. The review for Variety on November 11, 1931 was typical of the euphoric reaction Cooper got from most critics and audiences:

A good picture, almost entirely by virtue of an inspired performance by a boy, Jackie Cooper. There is none of the usual hammy quality of the average child actor in this kid. He goes beyond, simply acting natural in natural situations. He has the power to square the broadest plot exaggerations that a Hollywood scenarist can devise, merely with wistful boyishness and a manner that never gets scrambled with thespian mechanics. . . The director and his meg are not mirrored in Jackie Cooper’s phiz. There is no suggestion of orders from and training under an anxious parent or tutor in a single gesture, expression, or intonation. Here is the perfect child player, chiefly because he isn’t typical.

The boy, as is customary with boys in pictures, says some strange things for a boy his age; his thinking has far more scope and depth than is good for a boy his age. There are many chances for character to become unbelievable and lose its grip, but this boy doesn’t let it get away from him.

Instead of waiting to grow up and tell his grandchildren about it, the Cooper boy can tell his grandfather right now that this is his picture. Youth isn’t wasted on children when there are kids like this. It will be talkers’ heavy loss when Jackie Cooper grows up.

And it was — to this day, Cooper is the youngest actor ever to be nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. The early superstar career ended all too soon, but then there was the Navy, and some classic M*A*S*H episodes, and of course even that wonderful late-career turn in Superman. Most other child actors turned out far worse, that’s for sure. In an age category normally dominated by Lindsay Lohans, Jackie Cooper stands out as something special.

Cooper is eighty-seven years old now, and retired from the business. His wife just died last year after over fifty years of marriage. He has several grown children (two daughters have predeceased him) and a whole bunch of memories. I hope that he’s mellowed since writing his autobiography, and that these days he’s a lot more proud of his accomplishments. He certainly deserves to be.

Next Saturday in For Conservative Movie Lovers, the gifted director of The Champ, and how he brought script, camera, and actors together to make an instant classic.

Previous posts in the series “King Vidor, Wallace Beery and The Champ“

Part 1 | Part 2

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

Please Don’t Shoot My Dog: The Autobiography of Jackie Cooper. An honest attempt by Cooper to evaluate his life as a Hollywood star, faults and all. He often comes across as whiny and ungrateful, but he also doesn’t pull any punches, going so far as to let his detractors tell their side of the story whenever possible in their own words.

Hordes of internet websites, including Wikipedia, make the claim that in this book Cooper calls Wallace Beery, “the most sadistic person I have ever known,” and says he was a “violent, foul-mouthed drunkard,” among other things. Actually Cooper says nothing of the sort. Beery is described, fairly mildly as these things go, as a sort of Little Napoleon petty tyrant on the set: making people wait inordinately for him, demanding little favors of special treatment from directors and producers, whining over small things, and trying to upstage his fellow actors whenever possible. Among Cooper’s charges against Beery are that he didn’t tip at the commissary, never gave Cooper a ride on his speedboat, and (my personal favorite) never bought poor lil’ Coop an ice cream cone. Hardly the stuff of sadism, despite what the Internet gossips would have you believe. In the final analysis Cooper says: “I never did actually hate him, although I never liked him. . . I really don’t think he was a swell guy at all. When I first started with him, I wanted him to be. He was a big disappointment.” Not a glowing endorsement by any means, but a far cry from “the most sadistic person I have ever known.”

“Jackie Cooper Has All Aversions of the Average Youngster For Studies” by Wood Soanes. This is a reprint of a magazine exposé from 1932, soon after The Champ was released. Like many other articles, it shows Cooper at the time getting along fine with Beery. Although one might chalk that up to studio propaganda, the variety and number of sources all telling the same tale makes me think that Cooper’s opinion of Beery might have been higher as a child, only to deteriorate over the course of fifty years as an adult. (Fifty years, it should be remembered, of people constantly asking, “So what was it like working with Wallace Beery?” long after his own stardom had dimmed.)

Jackie Cooper on The Milton Berle Show (1953): A clip from this classic show showing an adult Cooper showing off his drumming skills in a musical number with sexy 1950s singer Dagmar.

Jackie Cooper’s Birthday Party and Jackie Cooper’s Christmas Party (both 1931): These M-G-M shorts are a lot of fun, showing Jackie Cooper in his Champ heyday, having massive parties with legions of kids while being feted by all the studio’s great stars of the era, including Norma Shearer, Clark Gable, Lionel Barrymore, Jimmy Durante, and of course Wallace Beery. Keep your eyes peeled for these on TCM, where they sometimes appear.

Events lead Kowalski to resist a local takeover by a Hmong youth gang. The Hmong are an ethnic Southeast Asian people, primarily from Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. In real life Michigan, they are among the fastest growing immigrants. Many Hmong people emigrated from South Vietnam after Democrats shamelessly withdrew monetary support from South Vietnam in 1974. The Paris Peace Agreements thus became toothless and North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam. “Boat people” fled Vietnam and the insane, murderous Pol Pot created the Cambodian Killing Fields.

Gran Torino can be viewed as metaphorical microcosm of the Vietnamese conflict with an alternate ending. Eastwood, the quintessential symbol of American independence and strength, helps defend a group of Asian Americans against a gangster group of other Asian Americans. Kowalski’s courage and independence led to his death and the defeat of the gang members. The image of protagonist Thao Vang Lor (Bee Vang) driving in Kowalski’s Gran Torino, left to Thao in his will, cements the “good Hmongs” victory, and ultimate commitment to America. The juxtaposition of this scene, versus Kowalski’s children trying to unload him in an old age home is striking.

Another morality play is occurring today in the real Michigan. Michigan has a 15% unemployment rate. Detroit’s auto industry, which made the 1972 Ford Gran Torino, has been decimated in large part by federal regulations. In classic “anti-comparative advantage” style, a sclerotic EPA required individual auto companies to meet mandated “CAFE” standards. Even if one wanted the nation’s entire car fleet to meet CAFE requirements on average, the EPA implemented it in the most inefficient way possible.

US automakers’ comparative advantage was in SUVs and small trucks. To keep their fleet within mandated averages, they were forced to build unprofitable, uncompetitive small cars. If the Feds just let comparative advantage work, the US auto fleet would have likely met federal CAFE standards without each company being compelled to build every type of car. But Government does not know economics. They simply know better.

Obama’s “new environmental energy plan,” the Waxman-Markey “Cap and Trade” bill, is a ruse. It is not an energy bill, but a regressive consumption tax in disguise. It is favored by Wall Street, George Soros, Al Gore, GE and other corporatists looking for subsidies paid for by the tax payer. Cap and Trade is the ultimate economic destruction machine. The bill passed the House of Representatives this summer by six votes, 219-213. Forty-four Democrats voted against it. The Senate has not yet voted.

Michigan Congressman Thaddeus McCotter, a real life political “Kowalski” and GOP Policy Committee Chair, opposed this monstrosity. He is among a group of opponents being targeted for attack in the next few weeks. Others include House Minority Whip Eric Cantor and Missouri’s Roy Blount. The campaigns are funded by Soros’ groups MoveOn.Org and Americans United for Change. The attack is preposterous, as this video shows (Groups target GOP on cap-and-trade). What is the goal of the bill?

The goal of the bill is to replace cheap energy with expensive energy. This is called “saving the environment.” This is accomplished by requiring consumers to purchase more expensive electricity, biomass power for example, while also paying taxes to subsidize these enterprises. As we consume more expensive energy, the same amount of labor and capital creates less output. Even if one believed the ridiculous 1.7 million “green job” increase advertised, it doesn’t factor the lost jobs from lower productivity and higher energy costs. The manufacturing heavy states and big users of energy, like Michigan, are clearly poised to be the big losers in such legislation. They are already seeking “exemptions” from regulations because of the bill’s potential economic devastation (Michigan Economic Impact on the State from the Waxman-Markey Bill).

Meanwhile, Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs, and self important financial traders like George Soros, strongly support this legislation because they get to buy and sell “CO2 credits.” The rationale is this legislation will combat “global warming.” Climatologist Chip Knappenberger estimates the best case impact of the bill would be to lower global temperature by “0.1″ degree centigrade in the year 2100. This bill does not address global warming. The bill’s costs exceed its “benefits” by a factor of at least ten, using the UN’s officially approved climate models. This means lost jobs and/or lost real income. This is also why Greenpeace joined with pro-growth conservatives and opposed it. The whole thing is a sham.

So why do Democrats want this bill? They want to raise your taxes under the cover of “climate change” reform. It also gives Government the power to decide which industries get benefited more heavily than others. It is part of the transformation from a free society to a government controlled society. This is yet another highway toward the ultimate c goal of centralized government planning.

McCotter understands, like Walter Kowalski, what it means to be an American. A great American can be a first generation “Hmong” from Vietnam, like Gran Torino’s Thao Vang Lor. Conversely, a treasonous American can be born in Chicago to great advantage, like Weatherman terrorist and Obama supporter Bill Ayers. This speech by Congressman McCotter provides a very clear vision of what America is and should be about. Let’s not permit anti-American fakes, like George Soros, sacrifice McCotter’s (or Cantor’s or Blount’s) “political life” by trying to pull the wool over our eyes. “Green jobs” are a wolf’s tax in sheep’s clothing.

Letter of Appreciation [click to enlarge]

And they live across from us.   One such Hero is Adolph Arujo who served in the Korean war as a medic in the 2nd Infantry Division in the Punchbowl.  This area had some of the fiercest fighting of the war such as Heartbreak Ridge.

We have never spoken in detail about the War nor will we.  Courtesy of Hollywood movies, I can imagine the devastation of a friend’s horrible death at your side. I can imagine the onslaught of an attack and gut-bending fear that does not deter one from duty. I can imagine the alienation between a soldier and civilian life. But, of course, I’m still just imagining and not living this role. My words are wholly insufficient. Their valor, courage and service is far too incomprehensible in my experience.

I got to talking one day in general about the Korean War with Adolph, including marksmarnship, and then he said, “Nobody remembers and nobody cares.”  He shrugged and we parted.  That bothered me for a number of years and I had to take action. I wanted to get a letter, a declaration, anything from a Korean government official thanking him for his service.  I called the Korean embassy but they didn’t understand.  I tried to limp through conversation.  I even wrote a letter.  Nothing.

Flash forward five, six years.  I am working on a film, “Body and Seoul” that is set in Korea.  My producing partner, Robert Lennon, speaks Korean fluently, married a Korean woman and served in Korea.  He is in Korea for two months to arrange talent, finance and locations. Over this time, he speaks to numerous officials, politicians and others in pursuit of our film project – and this letter.   He is meticulous, unfailingly polite and determined.   At last, he gets a former Minister of Defense, a Major General, Chairman of their Joint Chiefs of Staff, Deputy Commander of South Korean-US Combined Forces Command, etc., to write a letter thanking my Korean War-vet friend.

In part, the letter says, “On behalf of the Korean people and government, I would like to express my belated appreciation for your extraordinary courage, noble sacrifice and contribution to the war effort that you have show during times of war.  We owe a debt of gratitude to you for your service in the Korean War and you will be remembered forever by the Korean people as our true friend, who protected our nation.”

Today, fifty-five years after the cessation of hostilities on the Peninsula, the Socialist Left-wing dictatorship of North Korea still threatens the Freedom and Liberty of the South Korean people.  The recent missile and rocket launches, blustering rhetoric and refusal to discuss its nuclear proliferation make the border between North and South Korea one of the most dangerous areas in the world. The thirty-eight miles between the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and the South Korean capital of Seoul is sewn with defense mines, huge tank traps and other methods to block any massive North Korean attack.

I got the letter, and with a family, career and other obligations, I found months had gone by trying to find the right day and time to present it. And then suddenly the Fourth of July was coming.  I hustled and put the letter in a frame, his other wartime photos and documents supplied covertly by his son.

I presented it to him on the Fourth of July, telling Adolph that as long as I am alive, that as long as my children are alive, that his sacrifice will never be forgotten for our Freedom and that of the South Korean people. Amazingly, my friend, Robert, and Adolph were both in the 2nd Infantry Division in Korea and share the same birthday. I do not believe that this is coincidence.

Freedom does not know time. The fight for Freedom comes full circle from generation to generation. My guess is that the experiences of Adolph in the Punchbowl are as real to him today as they were 55 years ago. But, hopefully, today and tonight, he and all our vets sleep a little better at night from the horrors of war. I believe that War is the second worst condition that humanity can experience.

The first is slavery. The South Korean people do not know of the first and the North Korean people know nothing other than slavery, starvation and brutality.

“We owe a debt of gratitude to you for your service in the Korean War and you will be remembered forever by the Korean people as our true friend, who protected our nation.”

What did I get out of all this?  The idea that we have to remember their sacrifices like they happened yesterday.  For them, it still does. And the  best Fourth of July.  Ever.