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Posted on 04/15/2003 5:35:08 AM PDT by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. We hope to provide an ongoing source of information about issues and problems that are specific to Veterans and resources that are available to Veterans and their families. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support.
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Once Upon a Time, Tinseltown Marched Lockstep into Battle When Michael Moore delivered his now infamous anti-war, anti-Bush proclamation from the Oscars podium, it was difficult to discern the cheers from the jeers. Hollywood, like much of the nation, is divided over the war in Iraq.  Clark Gable on far right The Second World War, perhaps more than at any other time in the country's history, found Americans in perfect agreement about a war: This was a black-and-white battle between good and evil. For those who weren't sure that Hitler and his Axis minions were a problem for this country, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor convinced them. The fight was on. And like the rest of the country, Hollywood pitched in. Stars and the rest of the Hollywood community raised money or joined the service or entertained the troops. Though known as a place of big egos and massive self-involvement, the whole of the Industry seemed to be focused on one goal: Help beat the Nazis and their Fascist buddies by doing whatever you could. And as you'll see, Hollywood could do plenty.  French officer presents Col. Jimmy Stewart with the Corps de Guerre with palm for valor in battle. Still, real life isn't like a movie. Like millions across the theaters of war, some lost their lives. Others fought against the countries of their birth. Some even found themselves ostracized for holding unpopular beliefs. It was a different time, indeed.  Gov. Dwight Griswold presents Abbott and Costello with an ear of corn as a memento of their trip to Nebraska to help sell war bonds. In one of the first acts of support, the likes of Mickey Rooney, James Cagney, Harpo Marx, Fred Astaire and Judy Garland crisscrossed the nation selling war bonds, raising millions of dollars for the war effort. It was during one such drive that the beautiful screwball comedian Carole Lombard, wife of Clark Gable, died in a plane crash. Lombard, who had just raised $2.5 million for the cause, had also starred in an anti-Nazi film, the hilarious To Be or Not to Be, with Jack Benny. When she died, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt eulogized her, saying, "She gave unselfishly of time and talent to serve her government in peace and war."  During the First World War, Charlie Chaplin, at the height of his fame as the Little Tramp, helped raise millions selling war bonds to support U.S. and British troops. But perhaps his more lasting wartime achievement--or at least best remembered one--is a film that spoofed the rise of Adolf Hitler (who was rumored to have patterned his own Tramp-like mustache after Chaplin). In The Great Dictator, released in 1940, Chaplin returns the favor, ranting and raving as psychotic leader Adenoid Hynkel, as well as playing another role as a gentle Jewish barber who gets mistaken for the crazed tyrant. The film was not a huge success, and Chaplin later said had he known the magnitude of Hitler's crimes he wouldn't have joked about them. In another time, perhaps Pamela Anderson might have gotten this honor. But during World War II, the inflatable yellow life vests used by American and British pilots were nicknamed Mae Wests, in honor of the chesty comedienne. The vest, which used inflation hoses, straps and cylinders of CO2 to puff up into flotation devices, saved many pilots who had to bail out over water.  What better way to console homesick GIs than with pictures of pretty women? (Okay, there are other ways, but we aren't going to talk about those...) Betty Grable probably wasn't the biggest star in Hollywood, but she was easily the most popular pinup girl of WWII. Her rearview swimsuit shot, in which she smiled invitingly over her shoulder for the benefit of the fighting men, was tacked up on barracks walls in war zones all over the world. Beauties like Rita Hayworth and Alice Faye could only come in a distant second in the battle to make GI hearts thump the loudest.  Glenn Miller The entertainment community has sometimes found novel ways to support the current military effort. Two of the most popular musicians of the World War II era--big band leaders Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw--joined the service and led bands, while many other artists recorded V-Discs, recordings made especially for the troops. So in demand were they that Miller's band played 800 performances in a single year. He died in 1944, when his plane went down over the English Channel. No trace of the plane or Miller was ever found.  Audie Murphy An underage, undersize, baby-faced farm boy with only five years of schooling, Audie Murphy became the most decorated American combat soldier of World War II, winning every citation for bravery the U.S. had to offer, including the Congressional Medal of Honor. Spending more than a year on the front lines in Europe, Murphy was credited with killing more than 240 German soldiers and capturing many others. His appearance in Life magazine attracted the attention of James Cagney, who brought the soldier out to Hollywood. Murphy starred in a series of B westerns and The Red Badge of Courage (where it was claimed he had trouble playing his character's moments of cowardice) and played himself in the autobiographical film To Hell and Back. A humble man who suffered from a gambling problem and post-traumatic stress disorder in the years after the war, Murphy died in a plane crash in 1971.
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Good dog!
Moe, Larry and Curly:
Premature Anti-Fascists
The Stooges took on Hitler before most Americans had a clue
By Richard von Busack
AS A SPECIALIST IN the study of propaganda, the University of Dayton's Don Morlan is especially fond of the film that Moe, Larry and director Jules White all considered their best, the 1940 short "You Nazty Spy." "That was a classic," says Morlan. "The comedy came out satirizing Nazis two years before Pearl Harbor, when America was still trying to stay neutral." In 1941, isolationist senators, including Montana's Burton Wheeler, were investigating suspected anti-Nazi propaganda by Hollywood. The committee had gone as far as making a list of films with an anti-Nazi bent. (These hearings are little known, because they were canceled on the morning of Monday, Dec. 8, 1941, and the findings were never reported.)
In "You Nazty Spy," Moe plays a wallpaper-hanger recruited by the leading businessmen of Moronika to be their puppet dictator. The kingpin Stooge in Hitler drag is uncannily like Adolf; the two wrathful little guys merge into one. Curly's Goering is also startlingly like the real model, and Larry, besashed and beribboned, has a diplomat's own spinelessness.
Morlan is quick to ascribethe quality of "You Nazty Spy" to Chaplin's The Great Dictator--released nine months later. Still, "You Nazty Spy" was released in January 1940, months before the German invasion of France and the anti-Nazi turn in American public opinion. White and Howard's short film missed the radar of the isolationists in the U.S. Senate but not, apparently, through any lack of attention by the U.S. public. According to Morlan, "You Nazty Spy" was a popular short for the Stooges; the film even played in some first-run theaters that usually excluded the trio.
The Three Stooges not only got there before anyone else in American comedy, they pegged their man just as well as Chaplin did, perhaps better. Moe understood Hitler's rage and seediness. "You Nazty Spy" stresses how the Führer had got his job through the support of Germany's business class. In The Great Dictator, Chaplin thought that, with sweet reason, Hitler could be convinced to do good. Moe Howard may have been a more limited man, but he was perhaps better in touch with human nature. In one scene, Moe reveals through Hitler his own un-Christian desires by having his dictator order up some lions, planning to throw his country's dissidents to them. But like Hitler and unlike Chaplin's Adnoid Hynkel, Moe's Hailstone ends up undone by farce. The last shot before the fade-out is a sharp political cartoon image: a burping lion wearing the Reichsführer's hat. [ Metro | Metroactive Central | Archives ]
At Christmas I was able to purchase a 5 box set of DVD's of Red Skelton shows at Wal-Mart. I noticed the other day that in the $5.88 bin they had Roy Rodger DVD's out. Might be a good time to get a few for our grandson.
I LOVE Gleason, even his later stuff...his hick sheriff was a hoot with Burt Reynolds. Buford T. Justice.
Dennis Miller referred to Tim Robbins saying discount any liberal males lacking secondary sexual characteristics.
George Clooney's disgusting attacks on Charlton Heston are perfectly in type with Abu Abbas' cold-blooded shooting of the elderly invalid Jewish man in the wheelchair on the Achille Lauro.
In each case it was required of the debased perp's overcompensation that he go over the top: for Abbas, the pushing of the wounded man into the sea; for Clooney, the heartless insult of his professional and moral bettor.
As for Michael Moore, this obese vat of liposuction uptake is not worth a syllable; perhaps a few ears of corn and some straw.
Mike Farrell, having appeared in the worst fictional representation of the Korean War ever, now continues to drive his dumbassedness into the ground like a carny roustabout with every utterance.
The tens of millions of Americans who fought in WWII dispatched the horror-show villains menacing mankind.
Now our people have freed a nation of such a tyrant and made a region ripe for peace.
The shrieking girly-men and bearded women of the carny set are aghast.
Diminishing not the least the magnificence of our force's accomplishment.
Yep! There were good actors and actress in the old days. I wonder if there is any correlation between being a good actor and being able to think. Michael Moore can't act.
The following words were spoken by the late Red Skelton on his television program in 1969 as he related the story of his teacher, Mr. Laswell, who felt his students had come to think of the Pledge of Allegiance as merely something to recite in class each day.
I used to watch the Red Skelton Show every night on our floor model Philco black and white.
When the tv repairman took the chassis to his shop to fix it we could get inside and put on puppet shows.
Our C.A.R. gang went to Vincinnes, close at hand to us Hoosiers.
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