CineSavant Column
Hello!
First up is an eye-opening link provided by Joe Dante … this one lifted from the ‘Click Americana’ Vintage & Retro Memories Page.
Back in the early 1950s, one could buy an educational toy (You know — for kids!) that taught lessons about atomic energy, an activity ‘Atomic Energy Lab.’ The unattributed article describes the toy in detail and has close-up photos of its contents.
The activities promised:
• See paths of alpha particles speeding at 12,500 miles per second!
• Watch actual atomic disintegration – right before your eyes!
• Prospect for Uranium with Geiger-Mueller Counter!
• Sneak U-235 into the local water supply!
It’s all real. The lab kit also contained some actual radioactive material, as explained in the article. Was it the original ‘glow in the dark’ toy?
And from our dependable contact Michael McQuarrie comes another unusual item, from the Internet Archive Page, one so good, we’ve written a longer report.
At film school long ago we saw the 34-minute documentary feature December 7th, by John Ford and Gregg Toland, and only noted that much of its footage of the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 was staged recreations and special visual effects. In news programs and documentaries, these scenes had often been passed off as actual newsreel footage. Most of the ‘enemy’ planes we see are American, optically darkened to obscure insignia, as in the snap above.
Only years later on a PBS TV screening did we realize that this release version, which won a 1944 Oscar, had been cut down from a complete original documentary feature that was more than twice as long, 82 minutes in duration. The full-length version wasn’t widely distributed. It is full-blown morale-building propaganda reportedly written by Budd Schulberg. If this long version had been available, it would have been a good focus for Stephen Mamber’s documentary class. The idea of ‘authenticity’ hadn’t yet been codified for documentaries … and neither had the definition of a documentary, either.
John Ford’s first Navy documentary The Battle of Midway faked some its content as well, with sentimental speeches of ‘ordinary Americans’ voiced by stars like Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell. The original full-length December 7th went even further, concocting a fantastic drama taking place ‘outside of time,’ as in the play Our Town. At the very ‘Our Town-ish’ finale of December 7th, a ghostly sailor who died at Pearl Harbor walks through a cemetery. He is none other than actor Dana Andrews. He lectures us on what the valiant war dead expect us to do … you know, safeguard democracy. It’s emotional, patriotic and very well done.
The full-length December 7th begins as a ‘fantasy documentary’ taking place just before the Pearl Harbor attack. Walter Huston plays Uncle Sam, in full costume. He has a debate about war preparedness in Honolulu with his conscience, identified as ‘Mr. C.’ He’s played by character actor Harry Davenport.
It’s likely that John Ford had a free hand with his morale-building film, and that the War Department later saw fit to cut it down by 60%. As if defending his film, Ford puts his War Department mandate right on the screen:
The public saw a version missing the entire 40 minutes of fanciful debate between Uncle Sam and his Conscience … but we can see it now in this uncut Internet Archive encoding. Walter Huston’s enthusiastic Uncle Sam and the pragmatic Mr. C explain Hawaii’s history, its economic importance and its multi-racial population — and ask whether the Japanese on the island are loyal American citizens. Life in Honolulu is illustrated with marvelous documentary footage, but also many staged scenes. We see Japanese spies gathering info and the Japanese consul meeting with a Nazi official. At least one Japanese character is played by a Chinese-American actor familiar from other 1940s films.
The film eventually contradicts the propaganda of Hollywood movies like Air Force, concluding that the Japanese Americans of Oahu are mostly loyal citizens. The narrator states that known Japanese agents were arrested, but adds that “Not one single solitary act of sabotage was committed on the 7th.” Just the same, the earlier arguments cast doubt on the loyalty of the Japanese population. We understand why the War Department would chop the feature December 7th from a feature film down to a short subject. They spelled out what they wanted John Ford to film, but likely changed their minds when they saw the completed movie. We would think that the War Department of 1943 would not want to encourage discussion of the loyalty or disloyalty of Japanese Americans — many thousands of them were imprisoned in increasingly controversial internment camps.
Patriotic propaganda aside, Ford and Toland’s images of wartime Honolulu — with its Japanese American population mostly going about its business — are pretty special. Even with its weird fantasy concept, it’s a powerful attempt at a fair-minded documentary.
Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson