| Hollywood Stars Cope with Food Rations (Collier's Magazine, 1943) If you ever wondered how Lucille Ball, Red Skelton, Barbara Stanwyck, Carmen Miranda, Veronica Lake, Charlie McCarthy or Edgar Bergen prepared their respective meals during the bad ol' days of food rationing during W.W. II - then you'll get your answer here:
"With shortages of meat, eggs, gasoline, rubber and what-not worrying the nation, Hollywood came up with a number of bright ideas. Fortunately, indeed, each idea when properly executed is quite edible and, for a change (from the Hollywood point of view), quite economical." "Hollywood has done a complete about-face and banned the lavish, costly dish.... These days when the inhabitants of Glamor Town take off their faces and sit down to dine, the taste may be varied, but every meal is eaten with the full knowledge that a quarter of a pound of butter or a pound of ground steak is just as rare in Hollywood as Wheeling, West Virginia." When W.W. II Came to Hollywood (Photoplay Magazine, 1948)The attached article is but a small segment addressing the history of Hollywood during the war W.W. II years; clipped from a longer PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE piece that recounted the illustrious past of Hollywood some thirty-five years earlier. "After Pearl Harbor, the men really began leaving town. David Niven was gone now. So too, was Flight Officer Laurence Olivier. And more and more from the Hollywood ranks kept leaving. Gable, Fonda, Reagan, the well-knowns and the lesser-knowns. Power, Taylor, Payne, Skelton and many others...More Hollywood regulars went away, so other, newer newcomers had to be found to replace them because the box office was booming." The new stars in town were Alan Ladd, Van Johnson, Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, Joseph Cotton and Betty Hutton. Hollywood classics from the Forties often air on TCM, which can
be found regularly in some Comcast packages and deals. Click here to read a 1940 article about Lucile Ball. Who in Hollywood Received Draft Deferments (Photoplay Magazine, 1942)This article first appeared at the end of America's first full year of war and it is composed of the names and pictures of Hollywood's leading men who were absolved from fulfilling their military obligations during the war.
"The personalities of the fabulous films are on the spot in the matter of serving their country. It is useless to deny that the motion picture stars have been getting the best of it. Some have been given special draft deferments and choice assignments and often have been allowed extra months to finish their pictures before having to report for duty."
"Months passed with the stars still among those present and the public began to ask why. Wives, sisters, parents and sweethearts of drafted men who had little worldly goods to fight for wondered why their loved ones should face danger and death while the men to whom America had given so very much remained behind." Some of the names listed, such as Mickey Rooney, John Garfield and Robert Taylor, were granted early war draft deferments, but made it into uniform before the war ended. Should Movie Stars be Required to Fight? (Photoplay Magazine, 1942)We were very surprised to read in the attached editorial that the whole idea of draft deferments for actors and other assorted Hollywood flunkies was not a scheme cooked-up by their respective agents and yes-men, but a plan that sprung forth from the fertile mind of the executive officer in charge of the Selective Service System: Brigadier General Lewis Blaine Hershey (1893 - 1977) in Washington.
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| Since You Went Away, Jenn... |
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Always one to ask the difficult questions, Ernest V. Heyn (1905 - 1995) executive editor of PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE posed the query "Should Stars Fight?" and in this column he began to weigh the pros-and-cons of the need for propaganda and an uninterrupted flow of movies for the home front, and the appearance of creating a new entitled class of pretty boys. Twenty years earlier a Hollywood actor would get in some hot water for also suggesting that talented men be excused from the W.W. I draft... Tears in the Dark of the Theater (Click Magazine, 1944)Even the broad-shouldered, steely-hard men who toil daily over this website cry like little girls when exposed to the 1944 home front movie, Since You Went Away (pictured at right); for our money it was the best movie Hollywood ever produced about the war years.
That said, we invite you to take a gander at the attached photo-essay from CLICK MAGAZINE in which a spy camera using infrared film was used to capture the weeping masses sobbing in the dark of the theater as they watched that remarkable movie.
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