A Fourth Of July Salute To Patriotic Movies

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), July, 2000 by Wes D. Gehring

In addition to this song-and-dance biography, there were other notable patriotic musicals produced during World War II, from a celebration of the traditions America was fighting for in "Meet Me in St. Louis" (1944) to a more direct cheerleading effort for the cause in "Star Spangled Rhythm" (1942). "Holiday Inn" (1942) alternates between tradition and cheerleading, including a range of songs from "White Christmas" to the "Song of Freedom." Personally, I am partial to Fred Astaire's Fourth of July dance, "Let's Say It with Firecrackers."

"The Pride of the Yankees" (with Cooper in the lead) uses a real-life hero from the national game as a model to follow in the difficult days of the war. Author Damon Runyon's film-opening prologue underlines this connection when he writes that Gehrig "faced death with the same valor and fortitude that has been displayed by thousands of young Americans on far-flung fields of battle." Like many patriotic biographies, "The Pride of the Yankees" achieved its goal by celebrating basic American values, with very little flag waving.

America goes to war

This "less is better" approach is probably best showcased in "The Sullivans" (1944, also later known as "The Fighting Sullivans"), a true story of five brothers who died when their ship was destroyed during a naval battle in the Pacific during World War II. Their deaths changed U.S. military policy about family enlistments (limiting siblings serving together), and later acted as a partial story catalyst for "Saving Private Ryan," which was about the rescue of one family's last surviving military son.

Despite the battle deaths of the Sullivans, the film spends little time with them in uniform. Instead, it is a movie about growing up in heartland USA--Waterloo, Iowa. The constantly scrapping brothers (thus the title, "The Fighting Sullivans") are likable, funny, and loyal to their siblings. They could be anyone's children, and that is just the point--populism is about the common man and woman always being available when democracy is in danger.

Countless other pictures dealt more specifically with battle. A good literary starting point is the 1943 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's 1940 novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Although the book was about the Spanish Civil War, this conflict was the dress rehearsal for World War II. By having as the central character an American (Cooper) who sacrifices his life for freedom, the movie puts a positive patriotic spin on a conflict that should have generated more attention from the democracies of the world.

The novel also had a more direct impact on World War II motion pictures. When the lone America sacrifices his life for others by manning a machine gun against impossible odds, the world of war movies had an inspired icon of resistance. By the time Cooper replicated the stirring finale in the film version, variations of the conclusion had already occurred in "Wake Island" (1942) and "Bataan" (1943). A more upbeat take on this scene occurs in "Sahara" (1943), when Humphrey Bogart and company keep a detachment of German infantry from a source of water.