The Film Front
The Führer had Leni Riefenstahl. FDR had the Warners.
Armed with one of Hollywood’s most powerful studios, brothers Jack and Harry Warner fought a propaganda war against Hitler long before the United States officially entered the fray.
An exhibition in the Quinn Wing of USC Fisher Gallery through Dec. 13, "Warners’ War: Politics, Pop Culture & Propaganda in Wartime Hollywood," examines their efforts
Featuring materials drawn largely from the USC Warner Bros. Archives, “Warners’ War” includes film stills, historical documents, animation art and selected shorts, along with such ephemera as press books and inter–office memos.
“The show follows the Warners’ crusade through the ’30s and ’40s,” said Randi Hokett, curator of the exhibition and director of the archives. “And it documents the sometimes uneasy marriage between filmmakers and the American political machine.”
Immigrants from Poland, the Warner brothers had a personal stake in Europe, and “they used whatever tools they had to make the U.S. comfortable with involvement [in WWII],” said Hokett.
Their persuasion tactics ranged from public to clandestine. They made movies. They gave speeches. And they wrote letters to President Roosevelt and other influential friends.
Some of this private correspondence is featured in the show, Hokett said, and is none too subtle on the brothers’ political stance.
Other material is less overt.
The studio made shorts about different branches of the military in 1939 and 1940, which, Hokett believes, served to acclimatize the movie–going public with the idea of going to war.
The Warners also made bald–faced propaganda art – this agitprop was far ahead of the curve.
Harry first announced that he would make a feature decrying fascism in 1933, said Hokett, “when a Depression–era U.S. was not interested in getting involved in European conflicts.”
Partly because the spirit of the time was isolationist and partly because the powerful Production Code Administration encouraged self–censorship, Hokett said, “Confessions of a Nazi Spy” was not released until 1939.
Even so, it was the first openly anti–Nazi film to get made by a major American studio, and it drew fire from those eager to maintain friendly ties with Germany.
“Confessions” and related materials are among the show’s highlights, said Hokett.
Another highlight is “Sons of Liberty” (1939), a short docudrama about Haym Salomon, a Jewish man who helped to fund the American Revolution.
The film is noteworthy for its rarity, Hokett said: “Jewish characters had been almost wiped out from films of the time. The country’s sentiments ran not only to isolationism but to anti–Semitism too.”
“Sons” is one of several patriotic shorts that Warner Bros. made before the U.S. entry into the war. It and its cousins will be screened continuously in Fisher Gallery’s Reading Room.
At first, the Warners were almost alone in their campaign. But by 1941, a few months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, others had joined up. And a reactionary Senate convened a subcommittee to investigate the Industry on charges of war–mongering, Hokett said.
Harry testified, and his testimony is part of the show.
“Basically, he claimed it was all entertainment – about telling a good story and making money,” Hokett said.
But that claim belies the facts, she said. Much of what the Warners made for their cause was made at cost.
The hearings were dropped after Dec. 7, 1941.
By 1942, FDR’s administration and Warner Bros. were collaborating in the open.
Jack Warner was even commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Air Forces to set up the First Motion Picture Unit. The unit made training films for the military as well as PR pictures for the public, starring such servicemen as Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Stewart.
While “Casablanca” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy” filled the screens of theaters across the country, war bonds sold in lobbies filled treasury coffers.
“Warners’ War” – is a joint project of USC’s Fisher Gallery, Warner Bros. Archives and Norman Lear Center. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 5 p.m.
Admission to the exhibition is free. For directions to the gallery, go to: http://www.usc.edu/fishergallery.
Contact Inga Kiderra at (213) 740–6156.
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