Another Year, Another Movie – 1942

American entry into World War II  created a new breed of Hollywood movies with war themes.  The first of these was Wake Island, which dramatized the unsuccessful defense of the U.S. garrison on that Pacific Island following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Many other war films and morale-boosters were to follow.  The Office of War Information (OWI) stated that film makers should consider seven questions before producing a movie, including: “Will this picture help to win the war?” The War Production Board imposed a $5,000 limit on set construction. Wartime cloth restrictions were imposed, prohibiting cuffed trousers and pleats. Klieg-lit Hollywood premieres were prohibited.  Disney’s wonderful send-up of Nazi Germany “Der Fuehrer’s Face” won the Academy Award for Best Short Feature, Cartoon.

I love this so much!

While numerous actors and directors enlisted those left State-side did their bit too.  An early casualty was Carole Lombard, who was killed at age 33 with her mother and twenty others when the plane bringing them back from a defense bond campaign crashed outside of Las Vegas.  The Hollywood Canteen was founded in 1942 (by Bette Davis, John Garfield, and others) to provide free entertainment (food, dancing, etc.) to servicemen by those in the film industry. It operated for just over three years as a morale booster. 

In the U.S., mobilization for war converted most industry from consumer products to weapons manufacture.  On February 2, President Roosevelt signed an executive order directing the internment of persons of Japanese descent, aliens and citizens alike. About 120,000 people were sent to “relocation camps”.  It was not until 1988 that the U.S. Goverment apologized for this injustice and authorized (partial) reparations to camp survivors.

Japanese-Americans celebrating Memorial Day at Manzanar Camp

On May 6, the last American and Filipino forces surrendered to the Japanese on Corregidor.  General Douglas MacArthur had escaped to Australia in March to become Supreme Commander of the war in the Southwest Pacific.  On arrival, he said “I came through and I shall return.”  In late 1942, Allies started to turn around the war in the Pacific with major offensives at Midway and the Coral Sea.

MacArthur arriving in Australia

In Germany, the Reichstag met for the last time, dissolving itself and proclaiming Adolf Hitler the “Supreme Judge of the German People”, granting him the power of life and death over every German citizen. Nazis at the Wannsee conference in Berlin decided that the “Final Solution (Endlösung) to the Jewish problem” was relocation, and later extermination. Anne Frank made the first entry in her diary on June 12, her 13th birthday.  Her family went into hiding above her father’s office in Amsterdam on July 6.

The Battle of Stalingrad began in August.  Marked by house-to-house combat, it was among the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare with over 1 million civilian and military casualties.

Stalingrad, 1942

The 1942 Oscar winners set to “White Christmas”