The Good War's Greatest Hits

The glow of 1945 persists as a kind of beacon for American society, symbolic of an era when good and evil were easily defined. This image is at the centre of Philip D. Beidler's entertaining look at the way World War II reshaped American popular culture. The legend of the ""Good War"" was fostered by wartime propaganda and reinforced in the aftermath of victory through books, the news media, movies, songs and television. Beidler captures the aura of the times as he chronicles the production histories of more than a dozen projects with wartime themes, examining how books and plays evolved into films, how stars were considered and selected, the technical problems and personality conflicts, and the public's reactions. From the upbeat tempo of the musical ""South Pacific"" to the weary disillusionment of ""The Best Years of Our Lives"", from the patriotic nostalgia of ""Life's Picture History of World War II"" to the moral ambiguity of ""From Here to Eternity"", a powerful mythology of the war developed. As a consequence, the line between fact and fiction has blurred for the war generation and its inheritors, and Hollywood's version of the Good War has become enshrined as historical fact in the nation's collective memory.