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 were Alan Ladd, Van Johnson, Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, Joseph Cotton and Betty Hutton.
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.
Hollywood Stars in the USO (Click Magazine, 1944)Attached is a 1944 article from CLICK MAGAZINE about the touring performers of the U.S.O. during the Second World War. Illustrated with eight photographs picturing many of the most devoted and well-loved of the Hollywood entertainers (Bob Hope, Martha Raye, Al Jolson, Jack Benny, Wini Shaw) the article, by celebrated newspaper critic Leonard Lyons
, goes into some detail as to the deep sense of gratitude these show people felt and how happy they were to give some measure of payback. It was estimated that the U.S.O. performed 293,738 shows by the time the war reached an end.
The article ends on a solemn note listing the names and talents of seven men and women who were killed on their tours (by the war's end the total number of performers killed would number 28).
Click here to read about a popular all-girl band that performed with the USO.
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.
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"; 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 teater as they watched that remarkable movie.
Which Hollywood actors received draft deferments?
Flight Officer Lawrence Olivier (Photoplay Magazine, 1942)When the actor Lawrence Olivier (1907 – 1989) first heard that a state of war existed between Britain and Germany, he was enjoying the breezes off the shore of Southern California in a sailboat skippered by Hollywood's heir expectant, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and it was to Fairbanks that the attached letter was addressed. When this letter was written, Olivier was posted to the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm where he gained the understanding that aeronautics was an acquired taste, and one that he simply could not cultivate. In his book International Stars at War
, author James Wise noted that Flight Officer Olivier would soon be judged incompetent by the Royal Navy and released for other duties more in line with his abilities (like writing this highly self-conscious letter to his Hollywood friend).
Fairbanks, on the other hand, played an important roll in the U.S. Navy and by the war's end was sporting a chest-full of ribbons.
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