Broadcasting legends Eric Sevareid and Edwin Newman are the hosts for this exhaustive compilation of newsreel footage covering America's involvement in WWII. We sampled two of the ten programs in the series: the opener Pearl Harbor to Midway and volume seven Women at War: From the Home Front to the Front Lines. The opener begins with a recount of the "day of infamy": December 7, 1941. The attack on Pearl Harbor brought America into the war, as well as the business of war production-the making of weaponry and vehicles. Clips of the exploits of Chennault's Flying Tigers, Jimmy Doolittle's daring Tokyo raid, and the decisive victory at Midway are counterbalanced with the early string of defeats on Corregidor and in the Philippines. The rhetoric of the newsreel footage-most obvious in the sanitized news version of the Japanese internment in U.S. "holding" camps-is alternately disgusting and laughable. But this is a living record, not a revisionist gloss. We may deplore the way we were, as Sevareid and Newman point out the inaccuracies, but the raw reality of the newsreel footage is both instructive and illuminating. In Women at War, viewers see clips of the various roles women played in the war, both at home in the factories, and overseas on the battlefields. The WASPS, WAVES, WACS are shown in training (some of them crawling while live rounds are being fired inches over their heads) and on the job. Women celebrities who contributed to the war effort by launching war bond drives are shown, along with the inexhaustible efforts of Eleanor Roosevelt. And, in the factories where the 6 million women comprised one-third of the workforce, the newsreels show the "Rosie the Riveter" image, while the hosts point out the sad inequities in wages between women and their male coworkers. The other volumes in the series are: Guadalcanal and the Pacific Counterattack; North Africa and the Global War, Anzio and the Italian Campaign; D Day and the Battle for France; Tarawa and the Island War, The Battle of the Bulge and the Drive to the Rhine; Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Push on Japan; and The Eagle Triumphant. The series is highly recommended. (Available from most distributors.)
V For Victory
(1989) 10 programs, 45 m. each. $19 95 each. Atlas Video, Inc. Public performance rights included Vol. 4, Issue 8
V For Victory
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