Hooray for Holly-War!

The War-Torn Sign of Hollywood

"Public opinion in the United States is the point we must attack!" declared David Scott, the Undersecretary in Charge of American Affairs, told the June 1940 meeting of the new Winston Churchill government in London. Scott was well aware that wars are fought on public relations. Wars are the biggest business in the world and the finest salesmen are employed to make sure that the public will buy it. Hollywood, despite it's unfounded reputation as a bastion for peace loving hippies and liberals, has marched goosestep with the war mongers in selling every war from World War II to the endless War on Terror.

A scene from the 1940 MOI propaganda piece "London Can Take It!" I say London can take it up the rear.

In September 1940, Warner Brothers Studios released a 10-minute pro-war documentary entitled London Can Take It! Narrated by Collier's Weekly war corespondent Quentin Reynolds, the propaganda piece painted a skewed picture of a London bombed by Nazi bombers as a land that keep on going as if nothing was happening. "These are not Hollywood sound effects," Reynolds smoothly narrated as the bombs fell over Trafalgar Square, "This is the music that plays every night in London. The symphony of war." By December 1940 more than 60 million Americans had seen this piece of interventionist propaganda in over 12,000 theaters from Maine to California. It was believed that this film had been made by Warner Brother's studios, but no, it had actually been directed and produced by Humphrey Jennings, a director for the Crown Film Unit of the British Ministry of Information (MOI). Warner Brothers allowed this very important fact to be left out of the film. In fact, the only credits simply attributed the company that sold the film and the voice of Mr. Reynolds.

Warner Brothers allowed the Ministry of Information (MOI) to release this propaganda piece under the guise of a Warner Brothers film because it was seen as a flashy way to sell the war in Europe to a nation that did not want to go to war. A Gallup Poll from 1937 revealed that 95% of the population polled in the United States opposed entering another war in Europe NO MATTER WHAT THE CIRCUMSTANCES. In November 1940, a series of university polls revealed that Americans did not care for the British. "Polls showed that Americans saw the British as guided by selfish interests and imperialism," writes Nicholas J. Cull in Selling War: The British Campaign Against American "Neutrality" in World War II. These polls were a disaster for the warlike Churchill regime that needed an Anglo-American Alliance to continue the dying British Empire. The British would find a friend in Hollywood.

The British Lion of MGM Roars America into War

MGM's Louis B. Mayer welcomed a representative from the British Ministry of Information (MOI) in late 1940. Mayer told the MOI representative that MGM was ready to to do, "everything possible to help the great cause." This "great cause" was Britain's war for Poland (otherwise known as World War II). By January 1941 the heads of MGM, Columbia and Fox studios had all agreed to distribute MOI propaganda documentaries to theaters. The MOI began to mass produce them, releasing them in American theaters at the pace of one new documentary every month! Now that is fast paced lying even a 300-word per minute politician would be jealous of.

Churchill, still desiring an Anglo-American alliance to hold up his illegitimate empire by the point of a bayonet, decided to meddle in Hollywood to influence American entry into his war for Poland. Hungarian-born British filmmaker Alexander Korda was Churchill's main Hollywood propagandist. IN his film That Hamilton Woman, a film about Lord Horatio Nelson's mistress, Churchill installed the jingoistic phrase, "You can not make peace with dictators. You have to destroy them." This type of over-the-top saber radling ran rampant in Hollowood in the early 1940s. Cary Grant, the fondly rememebred actor, was on the payroll of the MOI and was openly starring in pro-war films while President Franklin Double-crossing Rooseveltwas lying to America and telling the people of his nation that he would never, "Send your boys to die in a foreign war."

A long series of "America and Britain at War" films began to be released in Spring 1941, seven months before the bombing plot at Pearl Harbor. A Yank in the R.A.F. starred British actor Jerome Power as an American who joins the British to fight the Nazis in the Battle of Britain. A series of Nazi spy films, starring future James Bond star Carry Grant, were released in which over-the-top Nazi spies plotted against the safety and democracy of the United States. None of what was being covered in these films was true (especially the Nazi spy rings in the United States) but the constant onslaught of Hollywood driven pro-British, pro-war films were having an effect on the public opinion of the United States. By July 1941, 60% of Americans polled by Literary Digest supported H.R. 1776 (The notorious Lend-Lease Act) and even 50% of those polled supported American entry into the European war. The constant Hollywood propaganda machine was having a great effect in reworking the American mind.

Cary Grant: British-American Actor and War Enthusiast

Back in Britain many people were upset that actors like Cary Grant and directors like Alexander Korda were hanging out in Hollywood rather than facing the Blitzkrieg and dying at the escape from Dunkirk. Korda, Grant and other British Hollywood figures were maligned as, "Gallantly facing the footlights." However, Churchill realized he could not spare his propaganda agents in Hollywood so he had his American ambassador, Lord Lothian, explain that, "There is plenty of manpower in Britain" to keep his propaganda agents in Hollywood. Lothian wrote that these films were a "powerful nucleus" in the ultimate goal of forcing America into World War II.

Senator Gerald P. Nye: Hero of Truth and Anti-Propagandist

1941 was the most pro-war year in the history of film making. The once honorable profession of acting had been bought ought by the British war machine, and many in the American Midwest knew this. Senator Gerald P. Nye (Republican of North Dakota) announced in October 1941 that he was going to lead a congressional investigation into war propaganda in Hollywood. He declared he was going to end the influx of "non-American producers into American cinema." Nye, a prominent leader in the America First Movement, was correct in his fears. As has been shown, Hollywood was more than happy to propagandize for the British Empire. Director Alexander Korda was summonsed to testify before the committee on December 12th, 1941. FDR would ignore the warnings before Pearl Harbor to make sure that this interview never occurred. Instead of being grilled before the United States Senate for his work in lying to the American public and serving as a propaganda minister for war, Korda was instead knighted in 1942. He was awarded for lies well told.

Another Hollywood pro-war piece given accolades by a foolish populace.

In 2010 Kathryn Bigelow was given the Academy Award for Best Director for her pro-war film The Hurt Locker. This was nothing new in Hollywood. Casablanca, Saving Private Ryan, Forrest Gump, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, and We Were Soldiers all have won Academy Awards and all show war as a fun game where men can show how "Manly" they are. None of these films show the waste, horror and sadness of war.

If Hollywood truly was a land of liberal, peace loving hippies the bravado of John Wayne and R. Lee Ermey would never have caught on. However, one is hard pressed to find a pro-peace or anti-war film in Hollywood that is ever honored. Hollywood has been firmly in the hands of the pro-war propagandists since Churchill and Britian destroyed the world's finest profession, acting, in the darkest era of the 1940s.