BONNIE: Welcome, you’re listening to an episode of the Crisis and Catharsis podcast, where we explore stories of how people have found relief in times of crisis, focusing on artistic expression, like literature, music and art, but also expression in daily life, like cuisine and oral histories. This episode focuses on Hollywood and the use of movies to get the United States to enter World War II, but how they also functioned as mass entertainment in a precarious period for many Americans. My name is Bonnie Soper, I’m a PhD student at Stony Brook University who studies religious and political dissidence in early modern Scotland. Today I will be asking questions and interviewing Devin Kelly. Devin has a masters degree in public history from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and currently works in Collections at the Cape Fear Museum of History and Science.

Keep listening if  you want to learn more about war propaganda and the changing nature of women and citizenship during the 1940s …

DEVIN: In 1945 journalist Robert St John wrote quote: “There was a day when it was considered smart to be cynical about Hollywood. That was before the War.”  This reflected a major shift that occurred over the course of the war, where movie makers encouraged American involvement. After World War One and the domestic issues brought about by the Great Depression, there was a tidal wave of isolationist feelings and actions by the American congress and citizenship that prevented Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s involvement in the conflict in any direct or official capacity. But the United States in practice was never truly isolated from the European Conflict.  In such, United States culture was heavily impacted by the outset of World War II.

BONNIE: Looking back on how Hollywood portrays American involvement in World War II now, it’s weird that there was a time where they had to encourage Americans to be involved in the war.

DEVIN: Well American film often reflects popular opinion.  In the years leading up to  American involvement in the War, Hollywood had the most active campaign for US intervention in Europe. Particularly between 1938 and 1940, the years preceding the United States official involvement in the war makes these films not only culturally significant, but they served as a political “call to action” to the American public. 

The context of pre-war America offers a unique perspective on representations of femininity, feminine strength, and women’s citizenship.  The films that chose to feature a female character as the crux of a film did so in a way that did not challenge the traditional cultural norms, but instead enforced them in roles such as wives and mothers. You know Rosie the Riveter? Before she symbolized a call for women to take up work in factories, women instead saw reflections of themselves on the screen that enforced and heightened their traditional roles as caretakers, mothers, and wives.

In the initial years of European involvement in World War II, Hollywood responded to the fascist threat for purely humanitarian reasons, but did so in the organization of the “Popular Front,” and three major antifascist organizations: The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, The Motion Picture Artist’s Committee, and The Motion Picture Democratic Committee. However, these organizations were very loosely organized, idealistic, and lacked pointed political goals leading to the collapse of the Popular Front by 1938. It wasn’t until the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 that Hollywood truly created a unified response. From that point on, Hollywood contributed into the War effort primarily through official propaganda films and unofficial popular entertainment.  Major Hollywood studios such as 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers made anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian films in large numbers.  The films that followed were often government sanctioned, or received War Board funds to produce them.

BONNIE: What film do you think is the most emblematic of this movement where Hollywood wanted to encourage people to get involved in the war effort?

DEVIN: Arguably the most popular of the pre-Pearl Harbor films is the 1940 Warner Brother’s film, Mrs. Miniver.  Mrs. Miniver was widely successful both with critics and the American public.  Mrs. Miniver received 6 Academy Awards in 1942, including: best cinematography, best screenplay, best supporting actress, best actress, best director, and best picture.  This film is set in 1938 wartime England, and follows the story of Mrs. Miniver and her family.  Mrs. Miniver represents the epitome of British stoicism and fortitude, as she plays heroic wife and mother throughout some of the most difficult times of the war on the British home front.  The film begins in an idyllic setting, and highlights the peaceful and optimistic nature of pre-war England.

BONNIE: Devin, can you tell us a little synopsis of Mrs. Miniver for listeners who have not seen the movie?

DEVIN: Yes, I can do that. Spoilers for Mrs. Miniver ahead. Class serves as a central theme, and a defining characteristic of the main cast. Mrs. Miniver is portrayed as decidedly middle class, and that stands as a central aspect of her character.  In the first few moments of the film, Mrs. Miniver’s family is introduced in comparison to her upper-class family of noble birth, Lady Beldon.  The dichotomy between Lady Beldon, of upper-class standing, and of middle class Mrs. Miniver serves to aid in the heroization of Mrs. Miniver as she stands as more relatable to an American public.  The townspeople describe her as the nicest woman in the neighborhood, so much beloved that a local shopkeeper, Mr. Ballard, names his prize rose after Mrs. Miniver.

Mrs. Miniver’s family is the other central aspect of the film.  Her son, Vin, a recent student from Oxford, is highly critical of British class systems, and compares the class system of his home village to the feudalistic fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  On a diatribe against this traditional societal organization, he is introduced to Lady Beldon’s niece, Carol.  Carol has come to the Miniver household to discuss the upcoming Flower contest, and the Miniver rose that Mr. Ballard has placed in the competition.  On behalf of her Grandmother, Carol Beldon requests that Mrs. Miniver encourage Mr. Ballard to not enter his rose in the competition, as Lady Beldon is an octogenarian and has entered her roses unopposed, “her roses mean so much to her.” Vin Miniver continues his diatribe, now with a subject and person on which to regale against.  This conflict becomes resolved rather quickly, and the two begin an unlikely courtship relationship.

This idyllic setting is interrupted by the movements of the German army closer to the British coast.  Vin joins the Royal Air Force, Mr. Miniver serves in the reserves that protect the neighborhood when called upon.  During the battle of Dunkirk, both Vin and Mr. Miniver are called away in order to lend support to the British troops.  Left alone with her two small children, Mrs. Miniver encounters a wounded German soldier.  The soldier is threatening, but seriously wounded, and once collapsed, Mrs. Miniver alerts the authorities and tries to care for and comfort the young boy, assuring him that “the war will not last forever.”  Instead of assuaging him, the young soldier threatens her in a fanatical way he says quote: “We will come.  We will bomb your cities like Barcelona, Warsaw, Marwick, Rotterdam…Rotterdam we destroyed in two hours.”  Appalled, she responds quote: “those were thousands killed, thousands innocent;” to which he replies “they were not innocent. They were against us.”  This zealous speech from a wounded, soon to be captured and imprisoned soldier, is meant both to shock audiences and to highlight the dangers of unfought fanaticism.

Mrs. Miniver heroically faces the German soldier until he is taken by authorities, but she does so still in a traditional caretaker manner. In the interaction with the German soldier, she wraps him in a blanket, tries to care for his wounds, and at one point holds a gun but does not use it.  This caretaker heroic actions continue once the battle is over and her husband arrives home safele. Rather than share her experiences, she cares for her husbands well being: puts him to bed, makes him food, and ensures his comfort.  In response, Mr. Miniver says to his wife, quote: “I almost envied you having such a nice quiet time at home.”  If not for a house worker who lets slip the harrowing experience of the Nazi soldier in their household, Mrs. Miniver likely would have never told her husband, instead ensuring his physical safety but more importantly, his emotional well-being.  In this case, her heroism is admirable, but still well within the already established social and gendered spaces of domesticity and caretaking.

The setting of the finale of the film takes place in the remains of the firebombed church, the congregation gathered to mourn the death of young Carol, who represented the traditional gender norms associated with young women in this period such as innocence.  The final scene of the film serves as a call to action, and characterizes the global conflict as a war between good and evil.  During this ending call to arms the leader of the church says:

“Because this is not only a war of soldiers in uniform. It is a war of the people, of all the people, and it must be fought not only on the battlefield, but in the cities and in the villages, in the factories and on the farms, in the home, and in the heart of every man, woman, and child who loves freedom!”

This speech not only equates the war as one between good and evil, but of one that is fought in the home.  By having both the heroine and the victim of the film represent domestic space, it makes the German threat all the more sobering, and victory all the more necessary.  Additionally, the backdrop of the church invokes an image of attack not just on the home front, but on the church and church values. The final speech delivered by a leader of the church not only underpins the religious themes, but gives sanction of Christianity to the warfront.

I want to reiterate that Mrs. Miniver was so popular before America’s formal involvement in World War II and invoked a call to action while hugely successful as popular entertainment.  Rather than “manipulation by word or image” studios such as 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers sought to invoke popular feelings and dramatize them. By centering the film around Mrs. Miniver and the death of young Carol, and their traditional gendered spaces of domesticity and the home, this film served as a “wake up call” for America to the dangers of inaction and the threat to the secure and American way of life.

BONNIE: So Mrs. Miniver was really popular, did it have any real lasting impacts on American culture?

DEVIN: Hollywood’s representations of women in the years preceding the attacks on Pearl Harbor, and America’s military mobilization into the Second World War heroized women while still keeping them in their traditional gender roles.  By highlighting traditional women at the center of these films, movie makers showed America that the domestic sphere was under attack.  Conversely, when women are heroized, the home is as well.  Cementing women’s place in the home made clear that women were the first line of defense and it fell upon women to protect the domestic realm in preparation for their men who would be on the battlefield.

 The sources that informed this podcast include:

Bernard F Dick’s book The Star-Spangled Screen: The American World War II Film, published by The University of Kentucky Press in 1985.

Thomas Patrick Doherty’s book  Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II published by Columbia University Press in 1999.

And Jean-Michel Palmer’s,  Weimar in Exile: The Antifascist Emigration in Europe and America published by Verso in 2006.

 

BONNIE: Thank you again to Devin Kelly for coming and speaking with us about Hollywood film in the lead up to World War II and Thank you to the audience for  listening to Crisis and Catharsis, check our website for instructions on podcast submissions as well as blog posts and other background on how people have dealt with crisis in history.