by Mark Harris
Stevens walked into a room . . . “They’re dirty torturers!”: George Stevens in Kirschner, Jewish War Veterans Review.
“He’d always been an observer”: Unpublished transcript of interview with Ivan Moffat, file 51, FJC.
Only a small portion of what he photographed: Thomas Doherty, Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 59.
Stevens, who had been raised Protestant . . . “and they had it”: Unedited transcript of George Stevens interviewed by Robert Hughes, file 3677, GSC.
“Closeups of the prisoners”: Official SPECOU report by George Stevens, June 20, 1945, exhibited at Mémorial de la Shoah, Musée, Centre de documentation juive contemporaine, Paris.
When he finally left the camp . . . traded it for cognac: George Stevens: D-Day to Berlin.
They went into Goering’s house: Lambert, ed., The Ivan Moffat File, 219.
he filmed the Olympiad stadium: George Stevens: D-Day to Berlin.
“troublesome” . . . “He was lonely”: Unpublished transcript of interview with Ivan Moffat, file 52, FJC.
Chapter 26: “What’s This Picture For?”
Frank Capra and Theodor Geisel had prepared a short movie . . . “of the vital issues”: Judith Morgan and Neil Morgan, Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1995).
“get off your bloody ass”: Ibid., and James C. Humes, Eisenhower and Churchill: The Partnership That Saved the World (New York: Prima, 2001).
“the greatest documentary film I have ever seen”: Letter from Darryl F. Zanuck to Frank Capra, April 21, 1945, FCA.
“I will consider myself through”: Letter from Frank Capra to Colonel Lyman T. Munson, April 27, 1945, FCA.
“I want to remain active”: Letter from Frank Capra to Colonel Lyman T. Munson, January 30, 1945, FCA.
both men declined: Joseph McBride, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992; revised 2000), 506–7.
“to be as frank as I can”: Letter from Colonel Lyman T. Munson to Frank Capra, February 8, 1945, FCA.
enough to win him a discharge: Application for Separation from AUS by Frank Capra, May 18, 1945, FCA.
Capra left Fort Fox in Los Angeles: “Itinerary” by Frank Caora, entries dated June 8–11, 1945, and June 12, 1945, FCA.
Distinguished Service Medal: Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography (New York: Da Capo, 1997; originally published 1971), 367.
“Surprise! Glorious surprise!”: “Itinerary” by Frank Capra, entry dated Jne 14, 1945, FCA.
“substantial cuts” . . . “mass production of babies”: Letter from General Frederick Osborn to Frank Capra, October 21, 1944, FCA.
from 1943 to 1945, production of war pictures: According to Michael S. Shull and David Edward Wilt, Hollywood War Films, 1937–1945 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1996), 334–410, the eight major studios released 198 movies with at least some content related to the war in 1943; in 1945 they released just seventy-eight.
“Frank’s series . . . will live longer”: Thomas M. Pryor, “Back to Work,” New York Times, September 15, 1945.
the hit comedy Harvey on Broadway: “Itinerary” by Frank Capra, March 25, 1945, FCA.
Capra got back to Los Angeles: Ibid.
Journalists and reviewers were sent a press release: United States Army press materials for San Pietro, undated, file 503, JHC.
“pure tragic grandeur”: “The New Pictures” (unbylined but written by James Agee), Time, May 21, 1945.
“daring” in shooting during combat: Bosley Crowther, “Army Film at 55th Street ‘San Pietro,’” New York Times, July 12, 1945.
“absolutely unromantic”: Manny Farber, “War Without Glamour,” New Republic, July 30, 1945.
“a dirty, deadly business”: John McCarten, “The Current Cinema: Brief Masterwork,” New Yorker, July 21, 1945.
“a dolorous goddamn picture”: Letter from John Huston to Darryl F. Zanuck, March 14, 1945, file 499, JHC.
His wife, Lesley, had finally gone to Reno: A. M. Sperber and Eric Lax, Bogart (New York: William Morrow, 1997), 302–3. Lesley Black Huston’s petition for divorce was filed on April 6, 1945.
at a party at David O. Selznick’s house: Otto Friedrich, City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), 177–78.
“I remember that the language: John Huston, An Open Book (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 97–98. In his autobiography, Huston erroneously places the fistfight with Flynn in 1942.
“Scott has made as many and as great”: Letter from John Huston to Colonal Roland Barrett, February 5, 1945, file 1443, JHC.
Two army psychiatrists wrote Huston: Letters from Colonal Roland Barrett and Colonel Emanuel Cohen to John Huston, February 1945, file 1443, JHC.
The Returning Psychoneurotic should do: Gary Edgerton, “Revisiting the Recording of Wars Past: Remembering the Documentary Trilogy of John Huston,” Journal of Popular Film and Television, Spring 1987, reprinted in John Huston, Gaylyn Studlar, and David Desser, Reflections in a Male Eye: John Huston and the American Experience, Smithsonian Studies in the History of Film and Television (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1993).
“photographic prints off the same negative”: William Blakefield, “A War Within: The Making of Know Your Enemy—Japan,” Sight and Sound, Spring 1983.
It arrived three days after the atom bomb to “showing to public in United States”: McBride, Frank Capra, 499.
“nothing more than a glorified newsreel”: Letter from William Wyler to Major Monroe W. Greenthal, July 11, 1945, box 23, file 3, WWUCLA.
General H. H. Arnold . . . “that was the end of that”: Jan Herman, A Talent for Trouble: The Life of Hollywood’s Most Acclaimed Director, William Wyler (New York: Da Capo, 1997), 276–77.
“Mr. Wyler doesn’t feel that his own readjustment”: Thomas M. Pryor, “Back to Work,” New York Times, September 16, 1945.
showed the film to colleagues and friends: Screening invitation list for Thunderbolt, October 12, 1945, box 23, file 8, WWUCLA.
After his official separation from the army: Army Separation Qualification Record, October 31, 1945, file 777, WWA.
he kept writing letters to anyone . . . “a member of the picture business”: Letters from Samuel Goldwyn and Francis Harmon and telegram from Ned E. Depinet of RKO to William Wyler, with handwritten annotations by Wyler; letters from William Wyler to Harmon and General Ira Eaker, all November and December 1945, box 23, file 3, WWUCLA.
become a partner in Liberty: Collier’s, February 4, 1950, cited in Herman, A Talent for Trouble, 295.
a dramatized biography of Eisenhower: A. Scott Berg, Goldwyn (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), 393.
Goldwyn offered him The Bishop’s Wife: Axel Madsen, William Wyler: The Authorized Biography (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1973), 260–61.
“[His] point was”: William Wyler interviewed by Catherine Wyler, 1981, reprinted in Gabriel Miller, ed., William Wyler Interviews (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009), 119.
“I wish that I could go back”: William Wyler to Thomas M. Pryor, September 1945, first printed by Pryor in “William Wyler and His Screen Philosophy,” New York Times, November 17, 1946.
“I’ve learned so much dealing”: Pryor, “Back to Work.”
“I was still full of the war”: Miller, ed., William Wyler Interviews, 131.
“I spent four years being”: Bernard Kantor, Irwin Blacker, and Anne Kramer, eds., Directors at Work (New York: Funk & Wagnall’s, 1970).
Chapter 27: “An Angry Past Commingled with the Future in a Storm”
a Time magazine correspondent . . . “About how much I’ve changed”: “The Way Home” (unsigned), Time, August 7, 1944.
telling him, “Returning soldiers!”: Harriet Hyman Alonso, Robert E. Sherwood: The Playwright in Peace and War (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), 281.
“The story
is going along tolerably well”: Letter from Mackinlay Kantor to Samuel Goldwyn, October 6, 1944, file 177, SGC.
But from its first sentence . . . “Commingled with the future in a storm”: Mackinlay Kantor, Glory for Me (New York: Coward-McCann, 1945).
Howell sent a telegram to her boss . . . “his unwillingness [to] make commitment”: Telegram from Miriam Howell to Samuel Goldwyn, April 4, 1945, file 177, SGC.
“He thinks [it] is excellent”: Interoffice memo from Pat Duggan to Samuel Goldwyn, May 31, 1945, file 177, SGC.
Goldwyn told him he could simply get rid: Telegram from Samuel Goldwyn to Pat Duggan, June 13, 1945, file 177, SGC.
“criticisms of civilians” . . . “and a future together.”: Interoffice memo from Pat Duggan to Samuel Goldwyn, June 15, 1945, file 177, SGC.
“I’m very excited about it”: Letter from Samuel Goldwyn to John Ford, July 14, 1945, file 177, SGC.
“This is entirely due to the conviction” . . . was getting so much attention: Letter from Robert E. Sherwood to Samuel Goldwyn, August 27, 1945, file 177, SGC.
“there will be several million men” . . . “hitting it right on the nose”: Telegram from Samuel Goldwyn to Robert E. Sherwood, September 4, 1945, file 177, SGC.
“prevent a lot of heartaches”: Robert E. Sherwood to Samuel Goldwyn, August 27, 1945, file 177, SGC.
“the whole country and the whole world”: Alonso, Robert E. Sherwood, 283.
“no man can walk right into the house” . . . “the way I wanted them”: Thomas M. Pryor, “William Wyler and His Screen Philosophy,” New York Times, November 17, 1946.
“I just can’t get this story”: A. Scott Berg, Goldwyn (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), 409–10.
Huston began to explore the same issues: Gary Edgerton, “Revisiting the Recording of Wars Past: Remembering the Documentary Trilogy of John Huston,” Journal of Popular Film and Television, Spring 1987, reprinted in John Huston, Gaylyn Studlar, and David Desser, Reflections in a Male Eye: John Huston and the American Experience, Smithsonian Studies in the History of Film and Television (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1993).
“the War-Crazed Veteran theory”: Joseph C. Goulden, The Best Years: 1945–1950 (New York: Atheneum, 1976), cited in Edgerton, “Revisited the Recording of Wars Past.”
“human salvage” . . . “living in a dead man’s world”: John Huston, An Open Book (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 120.
“monstrous subnormal thing”: Frances McFadden, “Let There Be Light,” Harper’s Bazaar, May 1946.
“to act like cry-babies” . . . “weak-willed namby-pambies”: Dr. Herbert Spiegel, quoted in Ben Shephard, “Here Is Human Salvage,” London Times Literary Supplement, November 6, 1998.
a sign reading “Hollywood and Vine”: McFadden, “Let There Be Light.”
the recovery rate of the seventy-five men: John Huston interviewed by Peter S. Greenberg, Rolling Stone, February 19, 1981, reprinted in Robert Emmet Long, ed., John Huston Interviews (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), 117.
“Certainly you can’t expect”: Stuart Kaminsky, John Huston: Maker of Magic (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 43–44.
“For some reason, to see a psyche” . . . “almost a religious experience”: Gene D. Phillips, “Talking with John Huston,” Film Comment, May/June 1973.
On September 29, 1945: U.S. Naval Personnel Separation Center, Washington D.C., form, September 29, 1945, JFC.
“superb accomplishments” . . . “love for his subordinates”: Endorsement attached to above, October 18, 1945, JFC.
Nazi Concentration and Prison Camps and The Nazi Plan: Robert Parrish, Hollywood Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), 66–68.
when Zanuck offered him the chance: Joseph McBride, Searching for John Ford: A Life (New York: St. Martin’s, 2001), 421.
a move he had been considering: Letter from Harry Wurtzel to John Ford, November 10, 1941, JFC.
Ford ultimately decided not to attend: Andrew Sinclair, John Ford (New York: Dial, 1979), 124.
no longer considered himself “retired”: Marilyn Ann Moss, Giant: George Stevens, a Life on Film (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 142.
“You’re coming back to the studio” . . . “I said yes”: Unedited transcript of George Stevens interview with Bruce Petri, file 3692, GSC.
“the only guy ever to tell me” . . . “come back [to] Columbia”: George Stevens interviewed by Patrick McGilligan and Joseph McBride, in Paul Cronin, ed., George Stevens Interviews (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004), 115.
“The impression we get is an endless river”: Victor H. Bernstein and Max Lerner, Final Judgment: The Story of Nuremberg (originally published in 1947; reprinted by Kessinger Publishing Inc., 2010), cited in Ann Tusa and John Tusa, The Nuremberg Trial (London: Macmillan, 1983), 160.
During the screening, the spotlight illuminating the defendants’ box: Tusa and Tusa, The Nuremberg Trial, 160, based on contemporary eyewitness accounts as reported in the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph, and the New York Times.
“Even for those who, like me”: Telford Taylor, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 186–87.
As they watched Hitler speak: Joseph E. Persico, Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial (New York: Viking, 1994), 158.
he cabled Yvonne that he planned to sail: Cable from George Stevens to Yvonne Stevens, October 6, 1945, GSC. Stevens was scheduled to sail on the Queen Mary from Southampton, England, on November 4 and arrive in New York City five days later, but he was still working on the film when he sent the cable and may have left Europe on the Queen Mary’s next crossing (November 22–27).
“when hopes ran higher for the world”: John Huston interviewed in “George Stevens: A Filmmaker’s Journey,” unpublished transcript, file 13, FJC.
Chapter 28: “A Straight Face and a Painfully Maturing Mind”
“I just can’t believe that film’s any good” . . . “goddamned thing into that picture”: Lindsay Anderson, About John Ford (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), 20–21.
Ford had closely supervised: Joseph McBride, Searching for John Ford: A Life (New York: St. Martin’s, 2001), 444.
the cacophony of voices: Andrew Sinclair, John Ford (New York: Dial, 1979), 121.
Brickley was to read out an angry roll call: Ibid., 121–22.
the film’s length: Anderson, About John Ford, 21.
“Big Smile!” . . . “a PT boat”: Advertisement, December 1945, publication unknown, They Were Expendable file, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
“Montgomery Role Parallel to Own Navy Experience” . . . “himself a veteran of Navy action”: Pressbook for They Were Expendable, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
“If this film had been released” . . . “a moving remembrance of things past”: Bosley Crowther, “The Screen: ‘They Were Expendable,’ Seen [at] Capitol, Called Stirring Picture of Small but Vital Aspect of War Just Ended,” New York Times, December 21, 1945.
“long and late” . . . “in any other picture”: “The New Pictures,” Time, December 24, 1945.
“regardless of any actual”: Variety, November 21, 1945.
“so beautiful and so real . . . “watching them do so” and “visually beautiful” to The Story of G.I. Joe: James Agee, Nation, January 5, 1946, and in “Best of 1945,” Nation, January 19, 1946, both reprinted in Film Writing and Selected Journalism, ed. Michael Sragow (New York: Library of America, 2005).
Jack Mackenzie, the cameraman: McBride, Searching for John Ford, 386.
“to extend his OSS–U.S. Navy unit into civilian life”: Robert Parrish, Growing Up in Hollywood (New York: Little, Brown, 1976), 158.
“As this is the picture”: Letter from John Ford to the chief of the Office of the Bureau of Archives, December 6, 1946, JFC.
“I was instrumental in establishing” . . . “my knowledge of Motion Pictures”: Annual Qualifications Questio
nnaire filled out by John Ford, 1945, JFC.
official notice of separation: Separation Center memorandum and Military Record and Report of Separation, February 13, 1946, file 1719, JHC.
“like dressing for a costume party”: John Huston, An Open Book (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 126.
Museum of Modern Art had selected his film: “Documentary Films on View at Museum,” New York Times, January 3, 1946.
stills from the movie had appeared in Life magazine: Gary Edgerton, “Revisiting the Recording of Wars Past: Remembering the Documentary Trilogy of John Huston,” Journal of Popular Film and Television, Spring 1987, reprinted in John Huston, Gaylyn Studlar, and David Desser, Reflections in a Male Eye: John Huston and the American Experience, Smithsonian Studies in the History of Film and Television (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1993), 52.
he brought a print of Let There Be Light: Ibid., 51.
the film could be shown only to men: Memo to the chief of the Army Pictorial Service from the post legal officer (name redacted), March 11, 1946, file 251, JHC.
“in furtherance of the war effort” . . . “an invasion of the right of privacy”: Memo to the chief of the Army Pictorial Service from the post legal officer (name redacted), March 22, 1946, file 251, JHC.
“the Army Bureau of Public Relations” . . . “and Winnie’s next speech”: Letter from John Huston to Walter Karri-Davies, March 21, 1946, file 252, JHC.
“I still feel that it is the best picture” . . . the ban would have to stand: Letter from Brigadier General William C. Menninger to John Huston, March 28, 1946, file 252, JHC.
it had examined its own records: Letter from chief of the Army Pictorial Service to John Huston, April 2, 1946, JHC.
Huston went back to the army’s editing facility: Edgerton, “Revisiting the Recording of Wars Past.”
“dispel prejudice on the part of the public” . . . obtain all necessary clearances: Letter from John Huston to Menninger, April 15, 1946, file 252, JHC.
Menninger forwarded his appeal: Letter from Menninger to assistant secretary of war, April 24, 1946, file 252, JHC.
a British short called Psychiatry in Action!: “Co-Featured Role for Ruth Warrick,” New York Times, April 28, 1946, and Museum of Modern Art press release, JHC.