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Thursday, January 29, 2009

Hollywood in a Different Era

Jean Sexton writes:

Part of my "Real Life" job involves cataloging DVDs. We catalogers are a persnickety lot and when I got in a DVD that claimed it was 100 minutes long in the cataloging description and the back cover claimed the two features were each 100 minutes long, and down in the fine print the case claimed the whole DVD was two hours long, well, none of those figures agreed! That meant I had to actually find out which time was the correct one. (For the curious, the DVD was actually 110 minutes long--90 minutes for the main feature and twenty minutes for the second.)

Now I skimmed through the first feature, but the second caught my eye. It was a film I had not heard of called Hollywood Victory Caravan. Filmed just after World War II, it told the story of a girl who wanted to get to Washington, D.C.to join her wounded G.I. brother. The only way she could do so is to ride with Bing Crosby's Victory War Bonds show. Major actors and actresses appeared in this movie and didn't ask anything for their appearance. Humphrey Bogart, Betty Hutton, Bob Hope, Barbara Stanwyck, Franklin Pangborn, William Demerest, and Robert Benchley were among them.

The message in this movie had changed from the War Bond messages. Now it was "Buy a bond and we can bring a G.I. home." Much of the funding for the war and the aftermath came from ordinary people buying. first War Bonds, and then Victory Bonds.

It was a different time back then. Hollywood today seems to delight in cynically painting the U.S. and its military as villains. And yet, many of those movies do not do well in the heartland of the U.S. Could it be that Hollywood has lost touch with what ordinary Americans think and feel?

I don't know. All I know is that I feel proud to work with a company who appreciates those who serve and have served our country. Most products that ADB, Inc. publishes carry a dedication that recognizes those people. It seems to me to be the least we can do for those who stand and are willing to stand between us and the dark.