Senate subcommittee, chaired by Senator D. He drew from a 1973 book entitled The Films of World War II and said, "One evidence of the importance attached to Hollywood's role was a pre-Pearl Harbor investigation of the industry by a U.S. Nye and others, the movies were expected to have a tremendous impact on public morale and motivation in wartime."(2)Īlong the same vein, Meerse also briefly mentioned the Hollywood's pre-Pearl Harbor history as propaganda. In an article in the journal Film & History, researcher David Meerse said, "To a nation that had been "enlightened" about the role of propaganda in whipping up wartime emotion by the congressional investigations led by Senator Gerald P.
With their combination of audio and visual elements, as well as their ability to tell stories, films were (and still are) able to really affect people on both intellectual and emotional levels, making the medium a very effective instrument of propaganda. I sought to gather and condense the most important and commonly agreed upon aspects, as well as to investigate how these aspects played out in the life of Howard Sarty, whose WWII letters are preserved in this digital archive.įilms acted as propaganda and, due to the audio-visual nature of the medium, had the ability to be even more effective at motivating people than other forms of propaganda such as posters. A fair amount of research has been done on this topic, but most sources focused on one or two aspects of Hollywood’s role. Hollywood as a whole was recruited during World War II by the Office of War Information (OWI) and expected to put its production forces into the war effort.(1) I delved into a combination of scholarly journal articles and primary sources such as letters, films, and journal articles to understand why Hollywood was such an important asset.
This importance is demonstrated by the extensive use of films in propaganda, recruitment, training, and morale-boosting. During World War II, Hollywood's efforts gave an unprecedented boost to the morale and recruitment levels of the American armed forces, making cinema the most important form of popular media produced during the war.
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