The American War Film: History and Hollywood

Abstract

Frank McAdams. The American War Film: History and Hollywood. Praeger Publishers, 2002. 352 pages; $74.95. Thousands of Movies Frank McAdams, an adjunct professor in the USC Cinema/ TV Department and screenwriting instructor at UCLA, as well as an award-winning Hollywood screenwriter, also fancies himself an expert with regards to Hollywood's portrayal of war on film. The reader is immediately made aware of the magnitude of Mc Adams' lengthy labor of hubris via the frequent author/insider name dropping, idiosyncratic background factoids-the well known gory details of actress Carole Lombard's fatal air crash during a WWII bond selling tour, to name only one-and, most amazingly, the complete absence of any coherent definition of the genre that the author has chosen to engage. One cannot fault Mr. McAdams for attempting to write a work that encompasses the thousands of movies that represent the American film industry's century long effort at portraying war on celluloid. So far, this reviewer is aware of only one individual who has come close to scaling this Pike's Peak in film history scholarship-Dr. Larry Suid-whose seminal Guts & Glory was first published in 1978 and whose revised and extensively expanded edition of his classic appeared in 2002 (University Press of Kentucky). Needless to say, assuming he was even aware of the original publication, Mr. McAdams did not deem Suids' book worthy of inclusion in his bibliography. But why would he need to cite such a comparatively humble source, since McAdams has already informed the reader in his acknowledgments that he was able to consult, among others, such distinguished authorities on the subject as his tennis buddy, the "acclaimed author" of The Dirty Dozen (1967), and Stephen Peck, the retired combat officer son of actor Gregory Peck. After a 28-page whirlwind treatment of the first forty plus years of war films, Mr. McAdams plunges into World War II. Following a somewhat incongruous quote from none other than Winston Churchill, "War is mainly a catalogue of blunders," the reader is regaled with several pages of historical contextualizing, including the cost of renting an apartment in December 1941 in New York City! But the absolute nadir is reached on pages 35-36 when the author provides his reader with an extended list of "established actors... [who] decided to place their careers on hold to enlist" - in addition to naming the many stars who did serve with distinction (Jimmy Stewart, Tyrone Power, Clark Gable, et al.), the list also gratuitously includes, Neville Brand, James Arness, Walter Matthau, Jack Valenti, Rock Hudson, Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon- to the best of this reviewer's knowledge none of these honored veterans in this catalogue of wonders had established acting careers before the war and some never would-most notably the longtime (since 1966) MPAA spokesman, Jack Valenti. One is also less than reassured re McAdams' basic historical knowledge when he notes that the twin-engined specially adapted land-based B-25 bombers of the famous April 1942 Doolittle Raid upon Japan, launched on a planned one way mission from the carrier USS Hornet, did not have enough return fuel. …