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Authors: Miranda J. Banks
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crucial to winning the support of Americans and their allies. The enemy at home might be someone who “seeks to shortchange the American people so that they fail to receive their full rights as guaranteed by the Constitution.” 31 Consequently, any form of racial discrimination or religious intolerance should be treated as—and should be exposed to the public as—a manifestation of fascism.
Because films were a primary form of entertainment for the troops, the
Manual
reminds writers of their responsibility to serve and to represent the soldier as “a plain guy with a terrific problem”: “You can’t talk at him; you must talk with him.” 32 Didactic language would fail. Writers should strive both to educate and to entertain. The
Manual
encourages writers to know and to explore as characters the soldier, the enemy, and the family at home. It also speaks to the way that women are portrayed in films: “Show women on the job . . . their lives readjusted to the war. American women are finding new expression in jobs they have assumed. Ways and means must be found of interpreting this new role and what it means to the American people. Women are not going to return ‘en masse’ to the kitchen, as soon as the war is over; many of them are going to remain on their jobs. These new attitudes must be articulated in order that they be understood.” 33
The goal for the OWI was to provide viewers with enough information to decide for themselves who the villains and the heroes were—or rather, to decide that the heroes were Americans and their allies and that the enemies were the Axis and anyone who supported fascism. The Chinese and the Russians were to be treated as new neighbors. 34 Alvah Bessie observed that the quality of Hollywood films improved during this period precisely because multiple voices had to be included in the narrative. “For the first time, Negroes were presented in a responsible and decent light, trade unions were shown for the first time in John Howard Lawson’s
Action in the North Atlantic
, films began portraying women with some decency, not just as sexual objects, because women were working in war factories.” 35
The idea behind the mobilization was to pool writers to support the war effort, and the values upheld in the
Manual
are a combination of thoseenumerated by government offices and President Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms. 36 The focus should always be on Americans taking actions that will help win the war overseas. Harold Medford, writer of
Berlin Express
, listed some of the opportunities for writers: for example, they could work on films such as Frank Capra’s
Why We Fight
series, or they could collaborate with editors to create documentaries from a mass of unedited raw material. The writer, according to Medford, “works with celluloid as much as with pencil and paper. The frames of stock film are his dialogue, his descriptive words, his phrases. . . . That is the break war film writers get. Their basic material being life itself, it is at once unimpeachable and matchless.” 37
IMAGE 12 Draft of the
Manual for Writers
, sent to Robert Riskin, chief of the Bureau of Motion Pictures, Office of War Information, Overseas Division, 1944.
Screen Writers Guild Records, 1921–1954, Writers Guild Foundation Archive, Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles
For some observers like Medford, writing was a process of interpretation and translation of reality to reflect the human experience onscreen. Looking back at this era from 2002, blacklisted writer Bernard Gordon, who scripted
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
, defended the screenplays created by more liberal writers during this period. Rather than being influenced by communism, they promoted humanist values and followed some of the ideals set out by the HWM:
Whatever our mistakes and shortcomings, we were people who had a keen sense of what was wrong in the world in terms of racism, poverty, and war. We quite naturally brought this kind of
Because films were a primary form of entertainment for the troops, the
Manual
reminds writers of their responsibility to serve and to represent the soldier as “a plain guy with a terrific problem”: “You can’t talk at him; you must talk with him.” 32 Didactic language would fail. Writers should strive both to educate and to entertain. The
Manual
encourages writers to know and to explore as characters the soldier, the enemy, and the family at home. It also speaks to the way that women are portrayed in films: “Show women on the job . . . their lives readjusted to the war. American women are finding new expression in jobs they have assumed. Ways and means must be found of interpreting this new role and what it means to the American people. Women are not going to return ‘en masse’ to the kitchen, as soon as the war is over; many of them are going to remain on their jobs. These new attitudes must be articulated in order that they be understood.” 33
The goal for the OWI was to provide viewers with enough information to decide for themselves who the villains and the heroes were—or rather, to decide that the heroes were Americans and their allies and that the enemies were the Axis and anyone who supported fascism. The Chinese and the Russians were to be treated as new neighbors. 34 Alvah Bessie observed that the quality of Hollywood films improved during this period precisely because multiple voices had to be included in the narrative. “For the first time, Negroes were presented in a responsible and decent light, trade unions were shown for the first time in John Howard Lawson’s
Action in the North Atlantic
, films began portraying women with some decency, not just as sexual objects, because women were working in war factories.” 35
The idea behind the mobilization was to pool writers to support the war effort, and the values upheld in the
Manual
are a combination of thoseenumerated by government offices and President Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms. 36 The focus should always be on Americans taking actions that will help win the war overseas. Harold Medford, writer of
Berlin Express
, listed some of the opportunities for writers: for example, they could work on films such as Frank Capra’s
Why We Fight
series, or they could collaborate with editors to create documentaries from a mass of unedited raw material. The writer, according to Medford, “works with celluloid as much as with pencil and paper. The frames of stock film are his dialogue, his descriptive words, his phrases. . . . That is the break war film writers get. Their basic material being life itself, it is at once unimpeachable and matchless.” 37
IMAGE 12 Draft of the
Manual for Writers
, sent to Robert Riskin, chief of the Bureau of Motion Pictures, Office of War Information, Overseas Division, 1944.
Screen Writers Guild Records, 1921–1954, Writers Guild Foundation Archive, Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles
For some observers like Medford, writing was a process of interpretation and translation of reality to reflect the human experience onscreen. Looking back at this era from 2002, blacklisted writer Bernard Gordon, who scripted
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
, defended the screenplays created by more liberal writers during this period. Rather than being influenced by communism, they promoted humanist values and followed some of the ideals set out by the HWM:
Whatever our mistakes and shortcomings, we were people who had a keen sense of what was wrong in the world in terms of racism, poverty, and war. We quite naturally brought this kind of
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