href="#ulink_9e0049a8-cc82-5e71-ba0a-c238b4ba8efa">1 As Nicholas J. Cull observes in his history of the USIA, many government agencies identified their work as being part of the United States Information Service, the name first used to describe a White House office tasked with promoting the New Deal and later adapted by Robert Sherwood, of the Foreign Information Service, for use in overseas propaganda campaigns during World War II. In 1946, several foreign propaganda offices were consolidated within the State Department, creating the Office of International Informational and Cultural Affairs, but, to avoid confusion, the State department continued using the name USIS. The United States Information Agency was established in 1953, but the government continued to use USIS in its overseas campaigns. See Cull (2008: 14). While overseas propaganda campaigns were largely controlled by offices in the State Department after the end of World War II, the US Army retained control over film propaganda efforts in occupied countries. See “U.S. Film Makers Planning Pictures To Teach World,” Motion Picture Herald, 8 July 1946, 15.
2 2 See Immerwah (2015).
3 3 For more on Riskin’s operation, see Scott (2006). In Richard Dyer MacCann’s history of government filmmaking, he notes that Robert Sherwood, Director of the Overseas Branch of the Office of War Information, hired Riskin, best known as the screenwriter for several Frank Capra films, in part to counter the “glamorizing” of American life as seen in Hollywood films. See MacCann (1973: 140).
4 4 “A Picture of America,” The Logan (Ohio) Daily News, 5 April 1946, 4.
5 5 See MacCann (1973: 137–151).
6 6 “A Picture of America,” The Logan (Ohio) Daily News, 5 April 1946, 4.
7 7 “OWI To Make Movie in Cummington,” The (Pittsfield, Mass.) Berkshire Evening Eagle, 7 September 1944, 7.
8 8 “Cummington Packs Town Hall to See Itself in the Films,” The (Pittsfield, Mass.) Berkshire Evening Eagle, 30 January 1946, 4.
9 9 Local participation in government documentary was not a new phenomenon, as it was also used before the war. In Jonathan Kahana’s analysis of Joris Ivens’s Power and the Land (1940), he suggests that the film constructs a “public sphere that is depicted in, and eventually embodied by, the film itself.” See Kahana (2008: 131).
10 10 “Madison Sees Itself in Preview of OWI Film,” Indianapolis Star, January 14, 1944, 9. A copy of the film was given to the Madison Chamber of Commerce, so it could be screened noncommercially in public and private settings. See The (Columbus, Indiana) Republic, 9 June 1944, 4.
11 11 Although the pastor is unidentified in the film, later accounts name him as Rev. Carl Sangree, a conscientious objector during World War I, and a Congregationalist minister. See Richie Davis, “The Cummington Story,” The (Greenfield, MA) Recorder, 30 April 2005. http://www.recorder.com/richie‐s‐top‐40‐cummington‐4080218 (Accessed 20 September 2016).
12 12 For more on Copland’s role in the film, see Lerner (2005).
13 13 For example, the wave of “city symphony” films produced in the 1920s and 1930s encouraged filmmakers and audiences to make connections between modernism and international aspirations. See MacDonald (1997‐1998).
14 14 See Goldstein (2009), Kitamura (2010), Wagnleitner (1994), and Fay (2008).
15 15 See Kitamura (2010: xii).
16 16 As Alice Lovejoy (2018) notes, the selection of American films for exhibition in occupied countries was a logistically and politically complex process, with lobbying groups in the film industry negotiating with government officials which films were appropriate to be screened.
17 17 Among the government films adapted by the CAD were the Pare Lorentz pictures The River and The Plow That Broke the Plains.
18 18 Smulyan (2007: 100).
19 19 Memo from Pare Lorentz to Lt. Col. R. B. McRae, “Documentary Films for Germany,” 29 October 1946. Box 252.
20 20 “Reorientation Branch Work Program, Fiscal Year 1947.”
21 21 “Army to Release 52 Documentary Shorts in Reich,” Motion Picture Herald, 8 November 1947, 20. The Herald reported that the Army planned to spend $600,000 on documentary films.
22 22 Lorentz’s departure may have also been linked to political disagreements over the direction of the CAD. Lorentz, like many other government filmmakers active in the 1930s, was closely associated with nongovernmental leftist filmmaking. Several of the projects proposed by Lorentz – a documentary on African American history titled “The Thirteenth Amendment,” a study of rural cooperatives, and a profile of community organizer Saul Alinsky – reflected this political agenda. Of these proposals, only The Rural Co‐Op was produced. After Lorentz left, the CAD tightened its control over film scripts, and began outsourcing film production to companies accustomed to working on contract. See Memo from Pare Lorentz to Lt. Col. R.B. McRae, “Proposed Productions for Occupied Areas,” 4 October 1946. Box 252.
23 23 Memo, Chief, New York Field Office to Chief, Civil Affairs Division, 24 November 1947, Box 254.
24 24 The CAD’s film Tulsa, Oklahoma (1949) is apparently the only of the planned six‐film series to come to fruition. In 1950, another CAD film, titled Community Chest, was made in Yonkers. In fact, several CAD films were produced within a few hours’ drive of New York, where the film production unit was based.
25 25 Letter from Patrick Belcher to Mary, Undated. Pittsford, Vermont Historical Society.
26 26 McCarthy (2010: 99).
27 27 “Sun Dial Films to Make Educational, Tele Pix,” Film Daily, 28 June 1944, 2.
28 28 “Democracy Film To Show Biloxi Fishing Scenery,” The (Biloxi, Mississippi) Daily Herald, 26 June 1951. Thanks to Ray Bellande for providing these articles.
29 29 “Biloxi Students Needed to Take Part in Democracy Films,” The (Biloxi, Mississippi) Daily Herald, 30 June 1951.
30 30