Unfortunately, the complete opposite proved true. The film went over-budget, costing a then-astronomical $25 million, earned critical raspberries and flopped. The fallout would contribute to one of the most incredible events in the history of Hollywood, when the elder Zanuck fired his own son. In the end, when compared to the film, the actual attack on Pearl Harbor was much cheaper to produce, took less time to plan, and was, at least in the short-term, a success.

“Tora! Tora! Tora!,” however, would outlive its detractors and find a new audience on television and eventual profitability from home video, as well as some overdue critical respect. The Blu-ray transfer (released yesterday to commemorate today’s 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor) delivers this near-classic full justice with a gorgeous widescreen transfer and a ton of extras that delve deeper into the backstories I touched on above.

Using a similar approach to the “Longest Day,” where American, British, and German directors filmed the scenes involving their respective countries, the American scenes for “Tora!” were directed by journeyman Richard Fleischer (“20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”) and, after the notoriously difficult Akira Kurosawa had a narcissistic meltdown, Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masuda were last-minute hires brought in to direct the Japanese action and actors. The result is a splendid docu-drama — a tense, engrossing tick-tock approach that tells the story of the meticulous planning, diplomacy, and stupidity that resulted in a crippling blow to our Pacific fleet and the deaths of 2,042 Americans.

Unlike “The Longest Day,” though, the budget just wasn’t there to hire movie stars, and while this forced choice probably hurt the box office, it does make for a better film. Martin Balsam, Joseph Cotten, E.G. Marshall, James Whitmore, and Jason Robards (who was in the Navy and survived the real attack) are all superb, as are the Japanese actors, and a murderer’s row of exceptional character actors perfectly suits the tone and seriousness of the narrative.

And it’s the narrative that’s the real star here. The hundred-plus minutes that lead up to a brilliantly staged and filmed attack sequence fascinates with detail, thanks mostly to a perfectly structured script and a fidelity to historical accuracy (truth is always more interesting than fiction). The attack itself is an unforgettable mind-blower and a reminder that CGI will never replace this kind of epic filmmaking.

Reportedly, some felt the film’s lack of box office success was due to the fact that the American people weren’t yet ready to see the Japanese portrayed in a sympathetic way. Further proof of this theory was that the film did do very well in Japan. Maybe. But if that is the case, it was a failure of promotion, not the film itself. This faithful retelling does little to acquit the Japanese. While we are made to understand the political and geographical hands they were dealt, “Tora! Tora! Tora!” shows us a very militaristic Imperial Japan and evens foreshadows the kamikaze attacks to come. The Japanese are certainly given their humanity, but there’s also a robotic quality to the military at large.  In other words, this is no “Letters From Iwo Jima,” director Clint Eastwood’s overrated and misguided attempt to portray from the Japanese point of view the brutal battle for that small but crucial island.

Today, the 70th anniversary of a terrible crime committed against our country by a people we would eventually defeat, rebuild, and become allies with, is an appropriate day for 20th Century-Fox to rerelease this outstanding spectacle. 40 years and a lot of lazy CGI later, the filmmaking is even more impressive than it was then, but the film also honors our country simply by telling the truth.

“Tora! Tora! Tora!” is available for purchase today at Amazon.

Today I have two members of the gut wrenchingly stupid Hollywood set to report upon. It might have been three but the terminal lunacy of Charlie Sheen just goes without saying.

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This week Americans stood ready to wish each other a Happy Thanksgiving, to be sure. Well, everyone was but the  Angelina Jolie, that is. If reports are true, to her this holiday isn’t a day to thank God for our fortunate bounty and to reflect upon the fortuitous founding of this nation, it’s little else but “happy murder the natives day” and she refuses to take part.

Angelina Jolie hates this holiday and wants no part in rewriting history like so many other Americans,” a friend of the actress tells me. “To celebrate what the white settlers did to the native Indians, the domination of one culture over another, just isn’t her style. She definitely doesn’t want to teach her multi-cultural family how to celebrate a story of murder.

I suppose we can be charitable and ignore these kitschy musings based on a woefully incoherent view of American history. Unfortunately, it is just the sort of vapidity that is de rigueur for the empty headed Hollyweird set. As they puff themselves up imagining they care more than you about “the little people,” they indulge a corresponding hatred of our country all too often.

But Jolie’s absurd notion pales in comparison to the outright lunacy of “comedienne” Whoopi Goldberg (real name: Caryn Elaine Johnson). Whoopi thinks that the world does not have a Muslim problem, thinks “white men” are terrorists, and thinks that Muslims in the USA are persecuted more than Jews. Oh, there’s more. Goldberg also thinks that the Japanese didn’t attack Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Those are truly gut wrenchingly stupid notions.

In a segment on the Bill O’Reilly show, Goldberg unleashed this risible steam of inanity on his poor viewers and proved that Jolie has nothing on the venerable, award-winning comedienne in the department of the absurd.

As she debated O’Reilly… well, the word “debated” is also bestowing a charitable air to the appearance… Goldberg burdened the viewers with the following deeply thought out truths:

O’Reilly: Do you have a problem in history when you were taught about World War II that Japanese attacked us? Do you have a problem with that?

Goldberg: I have a problem with that. The Japanese Army attacked us.

The foolishness of the assumption behind Goldberg’s “point” is laughable. In her view the Japanese didn’t attack us. Just their army did (and O’Reilly corrected her that it was the air force, not the army). So, I guess when any nation’s armed forces are engaged in battle, no one sent them into battle? No people stands behind its own military?

Idiotic.

Unfortunately for the viewers, she went on.

Goldberg: Right now, everybody can say the Muslims are the terrorists. Two years ago, it was the white people that were the terrorists.

O’Reilly: What white people?

Goldberg: Oh, wasn’t it white people that blew up Oklahoma City?

O’Reilly: Yes, two of them. Two of them.

Wow. So to Goldberg, two white guys that bombed the federal building in Oklahoma means that all white people are terrorists, yet that 19 Saudi Muslims perpetrated 9/11, that does not mean that all Muslims are terrorists? Her logic escapes me.

The truth is that neither all white people are terrorists because of the actions in Oklahoma of two of them nor are all Muslims terrorists because 19 of them perpetrated 9/11. But the fact is, in today’s reality most terrorists are Muslims so Goldberg’s whole underlying premise is idiotic all the way around.

One more.

O’Reilly: New study today, Jews in America are far more likely to be persecuted than Muslims, just came out today.

Goldberg: You know what? I’m sure that someone believes that, but I believe that in neighborhoods where they don’t want Muslims, they beat up kids.

You’re “sure that someone believes that,” Whoopi? Yeah, that someone would be the FBI whose latest hate crime statistics prove that in all of 2009 only 107 “hate crimes” against Muslims were reported all across the country. On the other hand, that same FBI release noted that 931 hate crimes against Jews were reported.

If hatred against Muslims was so wide spread in the U.S. as Goldberg imagines, why is there no corresponding rise in hate crimes against Muslims? And the 2009 report isn’t an outlier year, either. In 2008 (see table 1) we find an equally whopping 105 anti-Muslim hate crimes reported.

There is no way to escape the conclusion that there really isn’t much anti-Islamic hate crime in the U.S. even after 9/11. Despite the fevered imagination of one Whoopi Goldberg, there is many times more anti-Jewish hate crime happening in the U.S. than anti-Muslim hate crime.

Once again she proves herself uninformed, full of wild-eyed notions, and wholly devoted to devaluing America in favor of every other nation/ideology. (See a full transcript of Goldberg’s appearance at Newsbusters)

Sadly, these two geniuses are representative of the skewed, half informed, nonsense that passes for deep thought in Hollywood these days. It’s hard to excuse such foolishness even on a holiday.

I kid. Those speeches never took place – because our enemies never tell us when they’re going to attack. But we’re different. Not only do we tell them when and where, but also, how long before we’ll go home. Terrorists? Alas, they have patience in spades. A few years is nothing when you`re looking at an eternity with 72 virgins.

But look: this is war, and we need to call it war, and when we fight a war, we must back the President. So I`m with him 100 percent. But I wish he`d, you know, embrace the damn thing – and say we`re going to destroy these bastards, minus the egg timer. And to me, the coach shouldn’t talk strategy out in the open until after the game, when we`ve beaten the pants off the other team.

Which is why I didn`t find the speech inspirational – and I wonder if those cadets did too. My guess is, they want to be led by a winner, not a cost manager. The speech was less a rallying cry, and more a statement by a CEO that “we`ve had a rough year, there will be changes, and you know, watch your expenses.” Even more, this is coming from a guy who will spare no cost when it comes to health care reform or global warming crud – and yet he’s worried about a few billion bucks to ensure the safety of our country and our brave troops? Those priorities should come before public options and carbon offsets.

But enough with the petty griping. When it comes to battle, we all stand together, and I congratulate the President in finally moving this ball forward. If General McCrystal is happy, then so am I.

Plus, I`m also grateful that I`ve finally learned how to pronounce Paki-STON, as well as Tali-BON!

And if you disagree with me, you`re probably a racist!

Tonight we’ve got Mike Baker, S.E. Cupp and Rob Tannebaum!

“That bold buckaroo with the cold green eyes.”

– General Douglas MacArthur, describing his savior John Bulkeley –

In March 1942, facing imminent capture by the Japanese, America’s commander in the Far East was ordered to slip away to safety in Australia. The Empire of the Sun controlled both air and sea, and only a precious few Allied planes and ships remained in-theater, skulking through the night fog like pirates to avoid capture and running on little more than spit and baling wire. “Overhauling those motors without any replacement parts was a terrible job,” one of the few to escape that nightmare later remembered. “For instance. Any tank-town garage which overhauls a flivver back in the States always replaces the gaskets with new ones. Only we didn’t have any. Or any sealing compound. So those old gaskets had to be carefully removed, handled as gently as though they were precious lace, and laid back in place when the motors were reassembled.”

When MacArthur arrived at the dock with his family and key commanders, he found waiting for him a trio of tiny, dilapidated motor torpedo boats crewed by dirty, emaciated men with long, unkempt beards and wild eyes. Their skipper was a thirty-year-old U.S. Navy Lieutenant named John Bulkeley, who for months had held his disintegrating squadron together by scrounging like a rat among the islands for gasoline, torpedoes, and other basic supplies. His boats were little more than plywood matchboxes, but Bulkeley had kept them active long after the rest of America’s Navy and Air Force had been destroyed or driven off. He made sneak assaults against transports, cruisers, destroyers, airplanes, landing parties — anything to frustrate the pace of the overwhelming Japanese invasion. Every time he attacked it was a fearsome David-versus-Goliath mismatch, but Bulkeley had done so time and again, sinking many enemy vessels.

Now he faced his most important task yet: use his last sputtering, wheezing boats to ferret precious human cargo across enemy-infested waters to the southern island of Mindanao, where MacArthur and his contingent could then be safely flown to Melbourne. To do this, he rocketed his boats across hundreds of miles under cover of night, navigating in the impenetrable darkness by instinct alone while deftly avoiding Japanese patrols. It was a spectacular feat of derring-do. As MacArthur told him when he disembarked several days later, waterlogged and exhausted but safe to fight another day: “You have taken me out of the jaws of death. I shall never forget it.”

For all of this, Bulkeley was promoted to Lieutenant Commander and received the Medal of Honor. His citation reads:

For extraordinary heroism, distinguished service, and conspicuous gallantry above and beyond the call of duty as commander of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 3, in Philippine waters during the period 7 December 1941 to 10 April 1942. The remarkable achievement of LCDR Bulkeley’s command in damaging or destroying a notable number of Japanese enemy planes, surface combatant and merchant ships, and in dispersing landing parties and land-based enemy forces during the 4 months and 8 days of operation without benefit of repairs, overhaul, or maintenance facilities for his squadron, is believed to be without precedent in this type of warfare. His dynamic forcefulness and daring in offensive action, his brilliantly planned and skillfully executed attacks, supplemented by a unique resourcefulness and ingenuity, characterize him as an outstanding leader of men and a gallant and intrepid seaman. These qualities coupled with a complete disregard for his own personal safety reflect great credit upon him and the Naval Service.

These exploits provided the basis for W. L. White’s 1942 bestseller They Were Expendable. It is a story of heroism, but a particularly grim one. Bulkeley remembered later that he “was very bitter about the thing. We went over there with 111 men and only 9 men came back alive. . . the war plan was totally, utterly hopeless. . . But we had to put up a fight.” An Admiral in John Ford’s 1945 film version of the story explains the brutal rationale for allowing so many Americans to be defeated and captured: “Pearl Harbor was a disaster, like the Spanish Armada. Listen, son — you and I are professionals. If the manager says, ‘Sacrifice,’ we lay down a bunt, and let somebody else hit the home runs.”

The book itself is still a fine read, filled with hard-nosed, first-person reportage and telling anecdotes. Some choice quotes:

“They were burying the dead — which consisted of collecting heads and arms and legs and putting them into the nearest bomb crater and shoveling debris over it. The smell was terrible. The Filipino yard workers didn’t have much stomach for the job, but it had to be done and done quick because of disease. To make them work, they filled the Filipinos up with grain alcohol. . . those staggering Filipinos, maybe dragging a trunk toward a crater, pulling it by its one remaining leg, or else maybe rolling a head along like on a putting green. The Japs must have killed at least a thousand. . . .”

“It seemed to be a Jap reconnaissance patrol. . . one group stopped and ate chow on the road bank opposite us; we were scared stiff they would come over and find us. It was hard for the wounded to lie quiet. Our tank driver had a rivet stuck in his throat — every time he took a drink, the water would come leaking out. . . .”

“Here in Newport maybe you wouldn’t think it was much of a party. But it was a swell night, with a big moon hanging over Manila Bay — peaceful — and best of all, all the girls had broken out with their civilian dresses. That doesn’t sound like much, but one look at them after seeing nothing but uniforms for months was like a trip back home. Make-up too — they looked so goddamned nice you could eat them with a spoon. . . .”

“How slow everybody learns in a war. Nobody knows anything about a war until it begins. Just two years before, the Polish air force had been blown to hell on the ground. The French caught it the following spring. In spite of that, the same things happened to our planes at Pearl Harbor. And yet two days later, in spite of all of it, the Japs catch our air corps on Luzon with its pants down. Only that wasn’t the end. Months later, on my way out through Australia, I pass a big American field, and there they are, bombers and fighters parked in orderly rows, wing tip to wing tip. ‘Hell,’ they told me, ‘The Japs are hundreds of miles away.’ Except that’s where they’re always supposed to be when they catch you with your pants down, and I thought to myself, Jesus Christ, won’t these guys ever learn?”

“The whole crowd started pulling money out of their pockets and piling it on the table. They’d had no pay since the start of the war, but since they’d been down here in Mindanao, they’d had shore leave and a chance to play poker with the army. The government could cut the cost of the war by just paying the army and then giving the sailors a chance to play poker with them.”

“But here were all these brave people on Bataan and the Rock, Peggy among them, realizing more clearly every day that they would never get out. Doomed, but bracing themselves to look fate in the face as it drew nearer, knowing that they were expendable like ammunition, and that it was part of the war plan that they should sell themselves as dearly as possible before they were killed or captured by the Japs. . .”

You would think that John Ford would have jumped at the chance to make a movie about Bulkeley, but it took several years of cajoling to get him to agree to direct Expendable. Unlike many, he was actually enjoying the war in a perverse way: globetrotting around the world, feeling the exhilaration of being shot at and having bombs dropped on you, and getting rigorous exercise at fifty years of age. He relished being a part of the armed services he had admired for so long, and heading back home to make a movie would take him away from it all, perhaps forever. It could also be the case that Ford needed time to think about the movie, to dwell on how important it was to get right, and to plan exactly what he wanted to focus on.

Bulkeley had already lived through the harrowing events depicted in Expendable — and been one of the lucky few to escape — when between missions he went to Ford’s Washington DC hotel room to say hello. As Bulkeley later admitted to Ford biographer Joseph McBride, his first encounter with his country’s greatest film director was memorable, to say the least:

I went to see him and he was bare-tail, absolutely naked in that damn bed. He loved to do that for shock effect, he had men in there and he had women in there, hangers-on trying to get a job or something, he had a big plate of food, eating with his fingers like a Roman emperor.

The opening statement [from Ford] was, “See that closet?” “Yup.” “Open it up.” I opened it up and there was a captain’s uniform with four stripes. He said, “You see that? I’m a captain.” I said [sarcastically], “Yes. What are you captain of?” He picked up that big plate of food and threw it at me, and I just ran out the door! He didn’t even bother getting out of bed, he just reared up and whammo!

It was a match made in heaven. They eventually bonded during some shared days aboard ship during the D-Day invasion, and in October 1944, with the war heavily in our favor and civilian life staring him in the face once again, John Ford changed his status to inactive and went to film the movie while his war experiences (and his impressions of Bulkeley) were all still fresh in his mind.

As for Bulkeley himself, he continued serving in the Navy in various capacities for the rest of his life, eventually rising to the rank of Vice Admiral. Among his chestful of awards were the Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, two Distinguished Service Crosses, two Distinguished Service Medals, and two Legion of Merit Awards.

On April 6, 1996, John Duncan Bulkeley died at the age of 84, and was buried with full military honors at Arlington. All told, the “bold buckaroo with the cold green eyes” had served his country faithfully for some fifty-five years. In June of 2000, a new Navy destroyer was christened USS Bulkeley. May that ship bring as much honor to the name Bulkeley as Bulkeley brought to his country.

Next Saturday in For Conservative Movie Lovers: a look at They Were Expendable’s luminous cinematography and graceful direction.

Previous posts in the series “John Ford, John Wayne, and They Were Expendable“:

Part 1 | Part 2

FURTHER READING AND VIEWING

An interesting article reprinted from a postwar issue of Mechanix Illustrated, which focuses on how Bulkeley’s beloved PT Boats were made to roar off the assembly line in unprecedented numbers.

A nice piece describing the real-life tale behind the events of They Were Expendable.

Buy the book They Were Expendable at Amazon. Over sixty-five years later, it is still in print and still a valuable, exciting read. Better yet, hunt down an old used copy from the 1940s, where you can see the advertisements for war bonds on the back cover.

Read a little post-Expendable nugget about how Beulah Greenwalt, the real-life nurse brought to fictional life by Donna Reed in the movie, used her noggin and her nerve to protect and preserve the regimental flag of her unit.

“[John Ford] was the only one of the Hollywood directors who fought who did not forget his men.”

– Captain Mark Armistead, USN –

Thus quotes Joseph McBride in his masterful biography Searching for John Ford, at the head of the chapter dealing with the director’s wartime activities. It is usually seen as lamentable when a genius is pulled from the practice of his art for any extended period, but here we must make a special allowance. As filmmaker Lindsay Anderson (1923-1994) explains in his essential critical volume About John Ford (which, like the McBride book, should be sitting proudly and dog-eared on the bookshelf of every conservative film fan): “War service took Ford away from the making of films for some three years when his powers were at their height. One would regret this interruption more had it not led directly to the making of a masterpiece.”

The masterpiece of which he speaks is a 1945 war film called They Were Expendable, and if you are a conservative who has never seen it, then you have denied yourself one of the most moving and achingly poetic expressions of your worldview ever put to celluloid.

They Were Expendable was made in the Fall of 1944, while most of the people portrayed in the story were still rotting in Japanese POW camps, if indeed they weren’t already dead. Just like our modern foes, the Japanese mocked the Geneva Conventions throughout World War II, and by the end some 40% of the POWs in their care had been executed, starved, or died of disease in their camps. This is compared to Europe, where only 1% of American POWs in German camps died. The events the film depicts took place in early 1942 when, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, tens of thousands of Americans found themselves trapped in the Philippines and facing a fearsome Japanese invasion. The enemy bombed them with impunity, destroying their bases and leaving them with only four planes and an assortment of tiny boats. Supplies and morale dwindled into oblivion as, rather than be evacuated, they were ordered to hold their positions as long as possible against — and eventually be killed or captured by — an overwhelming enemy who was infamous for torturing and murdering prisoners.

How these Americans (and Filipinos) comported themselves as they were gobbled up by the Japanese war machine, buying time with their lives so that General MacArthur could escape the clutches of the enemy and prepare a counter-assault, is the focus of the film. And yet it is like no other war film ever made. Its long running time (two hours, sixteen minutes) allows us to linger on scene after scene of doomed men and women slowly losing their grip on their homes, their jobs, their culture, and each other. Under Ford’s direction, the movie rises above mere plot — battles, strategies — to become something much greater: the cinematic ennobling of an entire people, their way of life, their code of honor, and their selfless sacrifice. Lindsay Anderson would later declare it his single favorite film from his single favorite director, noting the presence of “image after image of conscious dignity” depicting a “love of brotherhood, loyalty,” and “the spirit of endurance that can wring victory from defeat.”

What prompts someone to make a movie like this? To throw away all of the Hollywood clichés, to indeed ignore the enemy entirely (the Japanese are only seen from afar via their planes and ships) and instead reach for something more vital: the very bedrock of our connection with country and culture? It’s so personal a picture that any essay has to be as much about the life and times of its maker as about the film itself — the two are intertwined too deeply to ignore. We thus turn away from They Were Expendable for a spell, and drift backward in time to the life of the director many call the greatest in motion picture history.

For John Ford (1894–1973), serving with the Navy during World War II was much more than boilerplate Hollywood patriotism. He was no green recruit, hastily enlisting in the wake of Pearl Harbor to toss on a uniform for the very first time. Growing up on the coast of Maine where he met many sailors, from an early age he was entranced by the discipline, hard ways, and exaltation of duty inherent in military life. During High School he applied to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, and was devastated when he failed the entrance exam. In 1918, as a twenty-three-year-old fledgling director in Hollywood, he again tried to serve, this time volunteering as an aerial combat photographer. Bad eyesight ensured he flunked the physical, and numerous attempts to circumvent that ruling came to naught.

Despite these failures, he never gave up, making many military films throughout the ’20s and ’30s and taking every opportunity to schmooze with the Navy brass brought on as technical advisers. Finally, as a forty-year-old in 1934, and despite bad eyes once again causing him to fail the physical, enough strings were pulled by his Navy buddies to get him into the U.S. Naval Reserve. Given the rank of Lieutenant Commander, he was charged with creating “a course in naval photography; its uses, tactical, historical, and propaganda,” studying “infra-red and other super-sensitive films and complimentary filters as to their efficacy on sea and in the air, particularly in tropical waters” and “working intensely in an effort to collect photographic and camouflage information likely to be of value to the Navy.”

He also began spying for the Navy on a semi-formal basis during frequent trips of drunken carousing down the western coast of Mexico on his yacht, the Araner. With friends like John Wayne, Henry Fonda, and Ward Bond in tow, Ford made observations of the coastline and filed detailed reports on Japanese ships and suspicious “sailors” in the area. These made their way to Navy intelligence, netting him several citations.

In 1940, with friends in the military telling him that America’s eventual entry into the war was all but assured, Ford attempted to establish an official Naval photographic unit that could not only use their skills to directly aid the front-line troops in the fight ahead (in the form of reconnaissance, mapping terrain, et cetera) but also help fight the nasty propaganda war that was already brewing between patriotic Americans and growing cells of anti-American Leftists who were becoming increasingly vocal in the media and Hollywood. The proposal he sent to his superiors reads today as if it was clipped from Big Hollywood’s own mission statement:

Radio, newspapers, motion pictures blast contrary ideas back and forth. . . A series of films which show factually the power of the American Navy is bound to give a psychological lift to the whole nation. Let them see the rigors of training; the skill of execution in maneuvers. . . our morale purpose is to show that a Democracy can and must create a greater fighting machine, in spirit and being, than a dictator power.

Unfortunately, Ford was pressing up against a lumbering, asleep-at-the-wheel Navy, the same one that would allow the Japanese to surprise its fleet at Pearl the very next year. With numerous agencies like the Signal Corps protecting their film-making/photographic turf against the interloper, Ford watched his proposals vanish into the gaping maws of military bureaucracy. The sense that namby-pamby Hollywood civilians would have little to contribute to an honest war effort might have played a part as well. As much as Ford liked being a Navy man, the endless red tape and politics were sources of constant aggravation, and he often lashed out at his superiors to a degree that would have landed anyone else in the brig. An oft-told story has it that, when asked by an officer what Hollywood landlubbers liked to do for amusement after making a movie, Ford cheerfully replied, “We all get on a bus and go down to San Diego and f*** Navy wives.”

Undeterred by being ignored, Ford decided to proceed unofficially, confident that someday soon the talent of Hollywood would be called upon, and that he would be ready. He began enlisting men from the rank-and-file of Hollywood film crews — cinematographers, grips, editors. He borrowed prop guns and uniforms from the Fox costume department, and set up impromptu military film classes on unused soundstages. There his Hollywood recruits learned from experts like the Oscar-winning cinematographer Gregg Toland (The Grapes of Wrath, Citizen Kane, et al.) about cameras they would use during a war, how to shoot in all lighting conditions, and how to develop film in the field if need be. They also were drilled in the basics of military life by Jack Pennick, a member of Ford’s regular acting troupe who happened to be an expert on military history and rules.

The rest of Tinseltown, and the skeptical Navy brass, began jokingly referring to this motley crew as “John Ford’s Navy.” And yet, by the time he was through, over a hundred of his Hollywood trainees had joined the active service or reserves, ready for a war they knew was coming.

After Pearl Harbor, with the Navy in shock and disarray, Ford finally found his long-sought benefactor. William “Wild Bill” Donovan was in the process of setting up the OSS — the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to today’s CIA — and Ford’s moxie, skills, and penchant for skirting the bureaucracy was just what he was looking for. Soon the director had brought his Hollywood gang under the official auspices of the OSS as “The Field Photographic Branch,” and it wasn’t long before they were filming reconnaissance, troop movements, and full-on battles all over the world.

At forty-seven years of age, after three decades of trying, John Ford was finally a soldier.

Ford served without pay, traveling across the globe and dodging enemy bombers and U-Boats to fulfill his duties as head of Field Photo. Iceland… Panama… North Africa… West Africa… Cuba… Australia… Ceylon… China… India…. Burma…. Saudi Arabia… Brazil… France. Ford filmed potential base locations, assessed the security of existing sites, captured now-historic battles on film, often in color, and coordinated the movements and missions of his men, thirteen of whom were killed in action. For these efforts, he was promoted to Captain on April 3, 1944. In later years he would state that — although he was the recipient of many of the highest awards in the film industry, including several Oscars — he was most proud of having earned his Small Arms Expert’s medal in the Navy.

John Ford had a knack for showing up in interesting places. He was on the deck of the USS Hornet, deep in enemy waters, when the famous Doolittle raid lifted off for Japan, his camera recording the historic moment for posterity. He was at Normandy on June 6, 1944, capturing rare footage of D-Day as it unfolded. He first (and last!) parachute jump occurred behind enemy lines in Burma on a secret OSS mission, with Ford terrified and murmuring Hail Marys all the way down because, a mere few days before, he had filmed a cargo drop and watched as chute after chute failed to open and the boxes smashed into the unforgiving earth.

Someone else who was scared was Ford’s wife, Mary, who only saw her husband on several brief occasions during the years he was off to war. She was from a Navy family herself and understood the sacrifices involved, but that didn’t make it any easier. One extant letter has Ford gently chiding her, “Ma, you can’t call up long distance just when you’re blue and lonesome. It’s just too damned expensive. We’ve really got to adjust — not financially necessarily, but mentally.” Lonely and bored, she wrote back to her husband that she felt guilty for not doing anything herself for the war effort while he was away fighting. One stateside friend wrote to Ford that his wife was, “pretty miserable just sitting on a hilltop worrying about you and waiting for you to come home.”

Eventually, Mary found some solace in volunteering her time at the now-legendary Hollywood Canteen, the star-studded entertainment hangout for servicemen passing through Los Angeles, where GIs could be served dinner by movie stars and dance the night away with popular starlets to the tunes of world-famous big bands. Mary threw herself into kitchen work there, and quickly became Vice President of the Canteen’s board. Her letters during this time reveal that she helped stars like Bob Hope and Bette Davis fight off a coven of Hollywood Commies, who were trying to get the military MPs (charged with keeping order in the Canteen) booted out, so they could then begin using the venue for staging and promoting leftist propaganda unimpeded.

Ford’s relationship with his wife wasn’t perfect — he was a notorious alcoholic, and one who had flirted with his share of Hollywood actresses during the early years, most notably Katharine Hepburn. But his wife had closed her ears to the gossip and never wavered from his side, vowing to remain “Mrs. John Ford until I die.” They had been married almost twenty-five years, raised two kids, and had overcome problems that would have doomed a lesser marriage. “I pray to God it will soon be over,” he wrote to her in another letter, “so we can live our life together with our children and grandchildren. . . God bless and love you Mary darling — I’m tough to live with — heaven knows & Hollywood didn’t help — Irish & genius don’t mix well but you know you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved.”

By the end of John Ford’s life, he had been married for fifty-three years.

Next Saturday in For Conservative Movie Lovers, we continue our look at John Ford’s war years, and address his Oscar-winning WWII documentary The Battle of Midway (1942).

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

Searching for John Ford: A Life by Joseph McBride: Without question the bible for John Ford fans. Ford is lucky in that most of the biographies written about him have been pretty good. But McBride’s masterwork — the culmination of three decades of intense research — towers above them all. Heavily drawn upon whenever I write or think about Ford, it is a must-read for all conservative film fans.

John Ford’s Sex Hygiene (1940): A footnote to Ford’s war career, mentioned here solely for the benefit of the morbidly curious. Only for the strong of stomach (and not safe for work). Actor Charles Trowbridge (later to play Admiral Blackwell in They Were Expendable) narrates and stars in this still-ghastly training film, which fully accomplished its goal of scaring the hell out of millions of randy enlisted men. In graphic, venereal diseased detail, young recruits are shown the perils of fooling around with ’dem dirty wemmins in their off-hours. At one point during the production of this little documentary Daryl Zanuck, the head of Twentieth-Century Fox, burst in on Ford interviewing a guy glistening with disgusting sores and declared, “He don’t scare me — send him to makeup!” When asked to comment on the film years later, Ford quipped, “I looked at it and threw up.”

Sex Hygiene Part I at YouTube | Sex Hygiene Part II at YouTube (again, it’s thoroughly gross, and there’s lots of medical full-frontal male nudity — you have been warned.)

The Hollywood Canteen is an idea that could and should be resurrected today, but do you dare take a peek at the modern incarnation of The Hollywood Canteen? One featuring not patriotic movie stars serving our troops, but pampered, puerile celebrities like Paris Hilton and Marilyn Manson being feted by armies of vapid Hollywood wannabes? Steel yourself against massive disappointment and check it out.

The first of three such dates for Americans is 12/7/41.  That was, as FDR put it, a day of infamy.  It was a Sunday between Thanksgiving and Christmas when, without warning, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, killing 2,335 servicemen and 68 civilians.

The second of the nightmarish dates was 9/11/01 when 19 Islamics hijacked four airliners and murdered 2,998 human beings, most of whom were Americans.

The third such date was 11/4/08, when 64,385,746 American voters decided it would be a fine idea to vote for a man who said that if push came to shove, he would side with Islamics.

If you lost loved ones in Hawaii 68 years ago or in Manhattan 8 years ago, I can fully understand why you would disagree with me when I insist that the third of those dates is the most tragic.  The reason I voice that opinion is because, aside from the 5,401 innocent lives lost, ships, planes and skyscrapers can always be re-built.  But once lost, freedom and liberty can not always be regained.

On Dec 7th 1941 many Heroes were made. John Finn received the Medal of Honor for his bravery on that day. He says he doesn’t deserve it and simply holds it for all the others who fought and died that December day. I disagree. On that December morning John held his position firing on the enemy for over two hours even though he himself had been hit 21 times. Several of his wounds were serious. Once the skies were quiet he sought medical help only after being ordered to. He then returned to help rearm the remaining airplanes at Kanoehe Bay. Because Kanoehe was hit five minutes before Pearl Harbor, many believe that John Finn is the first man to earn the Medal of Honor during WW2. But when you sit and listen to his stories he will tell you of his men, not of himself. Even at 100-years-old his mind is sharp and he loves to share his stories with those who will listen. And if you get the chance to meet Mr. Finn, listen to his stories for they are truly amazing.

John, my son Anthony, and I

I had the very humbling honor of sitting with him for several hours this past April at the Gainesville, TX Medal of Honor Week. In those hours I not only heard the stories of history from a man who lived it, I made a friend. While talking to his caretaker, Francis, I was stating how I can no longer take care of my son who was killed in Iraq and now feel it is my duty to take care of my son’s brothers in arms. Mr. Finn stopped in the middle of his conversation, pointed at me and said, “I like you missy. You get it.” He told me, “We can only mourn those who have fallen in war. We must honor them by taking care of those who come home, especially our wounded.” This put into words what my mission for the past year and a half.

Happy Birthday, John. I hope you have many more to come. You are truly a gift to this nation and me.

Robert Avrech’s lovely paean to the patriotism of Old Hollywood reminds me, by way of contrast, of a blink-and-you-missed-it scandal from seventeen months ago. Even in a cultural arena rife with liberal outrages against military families, it marked a new low. And although it was but one small battle in the culture war, it is worth recalling in the wake of Memorial Day as a reminder of just how far our popular media has fallen from the sterling ideals of our forefathers.

What does NBC stand for again? National Broadcasters against Conservatives? No Blessings for the Corps? On December 7, 2007, as the country solemnly remembered Pearl Harbor and the timeless sacrifices of soldiers long dead, one of our major television networks decided that running ads praising today’s modern armed forces constituted a bridge too far. The two thirty-second spots had been produced by Freedom’s Watch, a now-defunct conservative action group which aspired to be the MoveOn.org of the right, using “grassroots lobbying, education and information campaigns, and issue advocacy” to fight the good fight against the legion of hippy-dippy protesters, nihilists, and ideological bullies that perpetually rage (and increasingly reign) throughout blue-state America.

For years, organizations like Code Pink, A.N.S.W.E.R., and MEChA have inflicted lunatic be-ins on a horrified public, the collective psychedelic derangement of which makes The Rocky Horror Picture Show look like A Room With a View. But then Freedom’s Watch arrived on the scene — let’s call them Code Red, White and Blue — and they came determined to honor our troops, damn the cost. In August of ‘07, they first attempted to buy ad-time on major networks to run commercials supporting the war in Iraq. While Fox and CNN broadcast them without issue, NBC and its sister networks deemed them too controversial, which is liberal Pig Latin for too partisan, too outside the mainstream — in a word, too conservative. At the time, Freedom’s Watch president Bradley A. Blakeman wrote a polite letter to NBC, pointing out that the network has a long record of accepting ads from nakedly progressive groups without the slightest qualm.

(The Bob Hope display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force near Dayton, Ohio.)

He might also have added, “That plaintive whining sound you hear is Bob Hope spinning in his grave.” As Hollywood’s most beloved wartime icon, the British-born comedian spent a half-century enriching NBC’s coffers while praising our military at every turn. His 1970 and ‘71 Christmas Specials, filmed on the ground in Vietnam, still rank among the most-watched television shows of all-time. But save for an impressive schiltron of American flags displayed on holidays, Hope’s legacy long ago faded from 30 Rockefeller Plaza. In the end, the network’s wingtipped, Armani-clad Brahmins never deigned to answer Blakeman’s letter, quietly consigning his request for ad-time to the good ol’ circular filing cabinet, one with a metaphorical temperature edging dangerously close to Ray Bradbury’s dystopian 451 degrees.

Then in December of ‘07, Freedom’s Watch tried again with a pair of innocuous commercials that, to this viewer, soothed and fortified like exquisite mouthfuls of Mom’s home cooking. These new spots depicted people from all walks of life offering simple, heartfelt benedictions to our troops, and while their aura of optimism recalled Reagan’s “It’s Morning in America” ads, the underlying message was, by any reasonable standard, universal. Judge for yourself:

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Astoundingly, these too were rejected by a sober-faced NBC. The problem this time? Including FW’s web address on the tail-end of each ad, an act which apparently violated the network’s Standards and Practices.

Standards and Practices…boy, that’s rich. In recent years, NBC’s practices have famously included living the high life at the expense of the companies they cover, as well as manufacturing stories on everything from anti-Muslim hate crimes to exploding cars. In the process, they’ve degenerated from a once-proud news bastion into the peacock battalion of America’s fifth column, force-feeding viewers doom-and-gloom propaganda slickly masqueraded as unbiased news. Running a sincere message of hope in a time of war would indeed appear to go against everything they stand for these days, although — who knows? — it might help them reverse their agonizing slide into their lowest news ratings in over twenty years.

Freedom’s Watch president Blakeman promptly fired off a new letter of protest, but few believed he’d have better luck than last time — that is, until storm clouds started to form on the public-relations horizon. Cruising the conservative blogosphere in the days following the rejection, I could sense astonishment quickly hardening into genuine outrage. In forum after forum, the network began getting an earful from Americans with friends and family in the armed services. Soon the cacophony had grown to the point where NBC announced that it was reversing course and amending its (allow me to gird myself to say the words with a straight face) Standards and Practices.

And so, just like that, Freedom’s Watch won. Not an election or a court case, but merely the simple right to buy, at great expense, the time with which to say “thank you” to our heroic fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, friends and spouses fighting and dying in faraway lands. This confrontation proved instructive. As Robert Avrech’s Memorial Day post here at Big Hollywood showed, conservatives often pine for the olden days when America was largely united on patriotic matters. It seems possible to at least partially resurrect that (semi-mythical) time, but only if we insist on more from our shared broadcast media than the desiccated “standards and practices” of a corrupt liberal thugocracy.

During that holiday season of 2007, the NBC show with the most cultural buzz was Heroes, a sleeper hit about ordinary people mysteriously imbued with comic-book superpowers. It’s nice to know that — courtesy of Freedom’s Watch — America’s real-life heroes were honored on NBC during that Christmas as well. Granted, we only got it in precious little windows of thirty seconds each, but it was a start on the long road toward cultural recovery and renewal.

Freedom’s Watch was a victim of the collapsing economy of 2008, and there will be no new Christmas commercials from them thanking our troops. But one imagines that in December of 2007, somewhere in the heavens, Bob Hope cracked a smile at all of the people who twisted NBC’s corporate arm and said, “Thanks for the Memory.”

Those conservatives pining for a bit of that ol’ time patriotism can buy Bob Hope: The Vietnam Years (1964-1972).

It’s also something our movies used to portray well. We don’t get to see too many of these kinds of movies anymore. Nope, they don’t make them like they used to. That can be said of both the men and women of Bush 41’s generation, as well as the films of that era. But sometimes, in more recent times, we’re graced with shining examples of tarnished excellence, of battered beauty in our citizens and in our favorite art, the movies.   

“In Harms Way” is such a movie. It’s a great film. Imperfect, but great. When I ask learned friends of mine about Preminger’s films, they usually omit this one in their list of Otto’s greats. I’ve seen it a few times now, and I’m not sure why they leave it out. I’ve speculated it’s because they haven’t gotten around to seeing it yet. Nope, they’ve seen it, they assure me. So, when I delved deeper as to why it gets left out, I was a bit surprised to see a full spectrum of opinions expressed in describing the film and its flaws, real and imagined. It’s a good sign, though. If a work of art – and this film is art – can evoke such divergent opinions and emotions in an audience, then it’s working. Boy is it ever! 

A couple of things seemed to surface far more than others in the criticisms of this flick. Even Kirk Douglas, one of the stars of “In Harms Way” was somewhat vocal at the time in his opinion on some of these same perceived shortcomings.

Basically, he didn’t like the boats. 

With all due respect to Kirk, I think he’s wrong on this one. Recent comments I’ve heard about this film miss the mark, too. So, don’t listen to the technologically-dependent reviewers who say that the “special effects are lame.” I’ve seen plenty of worse special effects in newer, bigger budget films. But that’s not important. Because if you look for flaws, you’ll find them. To those who so easily do, I ask the following question: Have you ever had the pleasure of watching Shakespeare performed by a talented acting company on stage? Would you walk out because the stage lighting was lame or a backdrop wasn’t a perfect rendering of a landscape or village street?  It has long been my opinion that the folks who complain about special effects being “lame,” “bad” or “cheap” are missing the point.

The entire phenomenon of drama, of film is an “effect,” a cheat, an illusion, pulling the wool over our eyes twenty four times a second. The sum total of cheats and tricks are intended to transport the mind to another place, the setting of the film. The acting, scenery, effects are there to help us imagine, to aid our mind on its journey. So, when I hear one complain that the acting in a film is great, but that the effects stink, it simply tells me that the viewer’s mind is too weak to make the jump, to connect the dots, because, perhaps, some of the dots are not as boldly written as others. Either that or they just came out of a Roger Corman flick. 

As an alternative, would those critics of cheaper effects prefer to have Otto Preminger go out sink actual cruisers, torpedo boats and the real battleship Yamato for his film?  I almost expect the answer to be ‘yes’, judging from some of the commentary I’ve read on this subject and others like it. Let’s get serious, folks. Without a doubt, there seems to be a trend, more prevalent as the tooth gets long and the days go by, to confuse narrative drama with documentary. Even the Italian Neo Realists knew where to draw the line. Maybe it’s because documentaries of late have been produced like narratives, manipulative and with a clear and present intent on affecting the heart and mind of the viewer, politically and ideologically. Or maybe it’s because audiences are more sophisticated now and demand more technical prowess for their buck. Forget it. Give me a break. If the folks coming out of American Pie II are to be described as more sophisticated as compared with those exiting a screening of Bicycle Thief, then I’m in the wrong business and I need a new dictionary.  

When an old war film like this is shown on television or released on DVD, the usual suspects come out and take their hackneyed pot shots over the bow, criticizing the film for being too tame in the graphic violence department, or for using “cheap models” and other “not realistic” effects. These misguided critiques are often accompanied by the ubiquitous phraseology that goes hand in hand with such complaints, such as, “if you can get past the bad effects….”. This kind of unimaginative discourse is about as useful as Facebook in a knife fight. Often these criticisms rally together an alliance to hit the easy and much targeted Hays Code and Hollywood’s era of so called ‘censorship’, which just so happened to result in the best darn moviemaking ever seen in human history. Nope, that’s coincidence, they say. Mere chance that the obstacles, such as not having a fleet to sink, nor being allowed to show the fact that sailors when hit by the explosive force of artillery are turned into nothing more than steaming stains, actually produced better cinema.

Obstacles help.

They force the filmmaker to go around them, to be resourceful and creative with what they are able to show. Obstacles force the the creators of film art to use the power of their imaginations, and thus spark the viewer’s imagination of what they thought they just saw on the screen, but actually didn’t. By using the effects of association, montage and the art of lighting in creating a desired sensation, whether for suspense, doom or elation, great filmmaker can make us believe what we were seeing, and not seeing. And during that golden age of Hollywood, by not showing, they showed us far more than we can see now in the unbridled Hollywood of CG and anything goes. Take a modern pre CG visual masterpiece such as Blade Runner, for example. If made for the first time, in the near tomorrow of Los Angeles, 2010, Roy Batty’s “I’ve seen things” speech would be omitted in favor of simply showing computer generated attack ships burning off the shoulder of Orion. Cool, though it may be. Roy’s description sparked a fuse that still burns so very, very brightly to this day. Unwavering. The same cannot and would not be said if, the production began tomorrow, and we did see what he saw with Chew’s eyes. It would not be timeless, masterpiece of moviemaking history, but a dated and forgotten one faster than you can say, “you’re talking about memories.”  Because, over time, all effects become lame, outdated and clunky. Bar none. No exceptions. The only thing that never becomes outdated is our imagination. What we think we see. 

Others, not in favor of the CG answer, and though still not keen on how the battle action was portrayed in “In Harm’s Way” might prefer that grainy newsreel footage be used, as seen in the Pearl Harbor sequence at the outset of the film. No one can argue that such material is not real enough. The process of using stock footage can be convincing if done sparingly, for only seconds on screen, such as in the cold war classic, “Fail Safe”. Personally, I love to see war footage. But not in a feature film.  I’d rather see imperfect models than mismatched newsreel footage, which, for obvious reasons, all too often substitutes different vessels and aircraft type for those depicted in the story, usually in mid-scene! Some experts out there familiar with the cold war classic might fire back at me here and state that a movie like “Fail Safe” fails in this regard, as well, and by this very same sin. True, but the insert of stock footage happens so quickly that its somewhat inaccurate characteristics (I won’t say more) goes unnoticed by most viewers not versed in war machinery, leaving us safely undistracted and in the story. 

Also, it must be noted that though there is battle action, “In Harms Way” is not a war film, as such. It is a film that uses the war as its setting. Other critics who are able to “get past” the so-called lame effects, charge that there isn’t enough action in the film. This is a valid point. It’s based on a novel. Characterization is of prime importance. But, like From Here to Eternity and Farewell to Arms (both film versions from novels), the setting of the war is only a setting, a backdrop, a time and place to situate the activity of our characters and what kinds of messes they get themselves into. Sure, cinema by definition is about visuality and what happens next, what we see happening next, not about the written word. But there can be a very nice blend of literary greatness, storytelling and visuality that all movie classics from Hollywood’s golden era share. You show me a timeless classic film from the 30s, 40s, 50s and I’ll show you a dense script.  

Preminger deserves more credit for doing a fine job in transforming the story from the written word to the big screen. He doesn’t do it alone, of course. To help him are John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, and Patricia Neal with many fine smaller roles filled by Burgess Meredith, Dana Andrews, Franchot Tone and Henry Fonda as well as some other familiar faces I’ll let you enjoy noticing on your own. 

I won’t comment on each of the actor’s performances here either; you can see for yourself how fine or poor their acting is by your own standards after watching this admirable film. It’s my opinion, though, that you won’t be disappointed. You’ll find in at least one of them, something you can relate to, in another something you can empathize with, one you can love and maybe one you can honestly hate. 

I will add one point about the actors, though, and that is that John Wayne did a tremendous job in this film. Some say his understated performance was due to his having been diagnosed with cancer at the time. I’m in no position to say if that’s true or not. There are probably only a handful of people who still alive who are. But I can say this: if that’s the case, if his suffering from cancer was a reason why his performance was the way it was, then, rather than discredit, it says even more about the man’s strength and character and his ability to perform under such conditions than anything I can even begin to think of.

Another thing about Duke. It’s been my experience that the critics of John Wayne, of his acting, are similarly cynical concerning the topic of U.S. foreign policy and America’s role in the world. Such people, it’s been my experience to note, who resent his “John Wayneness” are often unreceptive to him as a figure of tough, no nonsense America, much more than his skills in acting. They despise what he represents, and therefore, anything he does or stars-in regardless of quality. This is a behavior we’ve all seen in the last several years with regards to George W. Bush. Those eager to mock the decisions he’s made ignore the fact that those same or similar decisions were made by other politicians which the critics themselves celebrated with nothing less than high regard and glee. 

Here’s an experiment: next time you hear someone making jokes about John Wayne’s acting, particularly if they aren’t good-natured jokes, or impressions – who doesn’t do a John Wayne impression? – discreetly inquire about their stance on U.S. foreign policy. Don’t be obvious, just see if you can wrangle it out of them delicately. I don’t think you’ll be surprised to find an overly negative and similarly cynical attitude in this area as well.

Watch the film. Ignore the shortcomings. A strong mind can do this easily. A weak mind will dwell on them. It’s your choice. Like Bush ‘41 and his generation depicted in the film,  ”In Harm’s Way” is an example of imperfect greatness that perhaps only history can appreciate completely.