Reel Wars: Cold War, Civil Rights and Hollywood's
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REEL WARS: COLD WAR, CIVIL RIGHTS AND HOLLYWOOD'S CHANGING INTERPRETATION OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 1945-75 J. Roy Collins M. Phil. 2006 . HESISfc tc o:> COL g REEL WARS: COLD WAR, CIVIL RIGHTS AND HOLLYWOOD'S CHANGING INTERPRETATION OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 1945-75 J. Roy Collins A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Greenwich for the degree of Master of Philosophy March 2006 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisors, Andrew Dawson, for his patient encouragement and for gently keeping me focused, and Michael Zell, for his very pertinent comments, also the library staff at Greenwich who have always been most helpful. My thanks, too, to my son Dan and my friends May Clarke and Jim Murray for struggling through a rather large first draft and Alan Rose for his help in obtaining many of the films on video. Also, my sister Tessa, for her proof reading, and Jacob Veale for his computer expertise. Finally, my partner Sarah for her continual encouragement and support and my daughters Hannah and Esther, who accepted that 'Dad was doing his thing.' in ABSTRACT This study is an examination of America's evolving sense of racial and national identity in the period from 1945 to the mid 1970s as refracted through Hollywood's representation of the American Civil War - a powerful event in American memory which still resonates today. Civil War films have been the subject of study by film studies specialists and historians but they have concentrated on the early years highlighting the iconic films The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Gone with the Wind (1939). The period 1945-75 has not received similar systematic attention, yet it is highly significant in American history covering as it does the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement. The aim of the study is to show that history films can be used to assist in a better understanding of the past - not the 'past' that the history film purports to represent but the past of the moment of its production. This approach sees Hollywood films as untapped sources of evidence of changes in public perception about the issues of the day. This differs from the approach of most film historians who seek to examine the past by using archival and printed sources, such as newspapers, magazines and biography. The study demonstrates the complex interaction of the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement on Hollywood and how they influenced the discourse about race and national identity through popular culture. Ultimately it was the Civil Rights Movement that had the greater influence upon Civil War films. It also shows that Hollywood's presentation of the Civil War underwent a far more radical process of change than has hitherto been understood. By the late 1960s all of the early twentieth century myths had been questioned and overturned and African Americans had become part of mainstream America. IV CONTENTS Acknowledgments iii Abstract iv Abbreviations vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Why Use History Films? 7 Chapter 2 A War Remembered, A War Reused: The Civil War from 1865 24 Chapter3 'Moonlight and Magnolias': Civil War Films 1908-1941 42 Chapter 4 Cold War, Westerns and Hope: Civil War Films 1946-55 57 Chapter 5 Race, Fear and Memory: Hollywood Confronts the Centennial: Civil War Films 1956-63 85 Chapter 6 The Last Cycle: Civil War Films 1964-75 116 Chapter 7 Conclusion: Hollywood's Civil War - Past and Future 145 Appendices 1 Civil War film cycles 1908-1945 158 2 Civil War film cycles 1946-1975 159 3 Establishing a Civil War Filmography 160 4 Production Code Administration Files 164 5 Civil War Film Exhibition 1908-1945 179 6 Civil War Film Exhibition 1946-1975 188 7 Civil War Film Exhibition 1976-1999 190 Bibliography 191 ABBREVIATIONS AMPAS Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences AHR American Historical Review Birth The Birth of a Nation Commission (the) United States Civil War Centennial Commission cwsc Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission GWTW Gone with the Wind NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People OWI Office of War Information PCA Production Code Administration UCV United Confederate Veterans UDC United Daughters of the Confederacy USCV United Sons of Confederate Veterans VI INTRODUCTION Far more than the Revolution of 1776, the Civil War occupies the central place in American memory. 1 It is not just the four years of struggle, the huge loss of life, the emancipation of four million African Americans or the saving of the Union, but its influence on American society ever since. While slavery was abolished and the Union was saved, not all the issues were resolved to the participants' satisfaction. What became known as the 'unfinished business' of the Civil War saw the 'freed' African Americans 're-enslaved' throughout the South by a combination of judicial decision, state legislation and intimidation.2 This racial subjugation was accepted by the North as an issue best left to those who had most experience in dealing with racial matters - the white South. It fitted the developing racial concepts of white supremacy and helped to maintain the fiction that America's national identity was wholly white - a position sustained by immigration policies until the mid-1960s. Against this background, the struggle of African Americans to achieve their constitutional rights has now been recognised as forming a significant part of twentieth century American history. However, the issues of race and equality raised by the Civil War continue to be just as relevant today as they were in the 1860s and in the 1960s.4 The subject of this study is how popular culture, from 1945 to 1975, reflected and represented that struggle and those issues through the medium of Hollywood, using the genre of the Civil War film.5 Popular culture is a product of its time and, as Peter Biskind says about movies, '(w)hatever their genre, they share a preoccupation with the pressing issues of the day.' 6 By analysing the Civil War films in this period, the debate over the issues of race and equality can be observed. At particular times the issues were discussed, at other times ignored; African Americans were sometimes marginalised, sometimes showcased; old stereotypes and myths re-emerged, new ones were created. These changes can be mapped against current events in society and demonstrate how Hollywood reflected and reacted to the fluctuations in attitudes towards race, equality and national identity, and can therefore provide historians, looking at the periods when the films were produced, with additional information. Historians using film as a resource to understand the past is a comparatively recent trend. Before the 1970s historians tended to dismiss film as purely entertainment as, even when based on actual events, films inevitably include interpretations, distortions and invention to meet the expectations of the audience. Whilst there has been some recognition that history films can provide some understanding of the past, in terms of 'felt' history, or giving new perspectives, most historians still look at historical films from a purely evidential standpoint - how does the film relate to the facts - rather than whether they give an added dimension to understanding the past. Ever since the Civil War ended, it has been used as a cultural symbol and vehicle, originating and reinforcing myths, inculcating American values and, by the middle of the twentieth century, as a critique of America and its foreign policy - especially in relation to Vietnam. Hollywood became interested in the Civil War in 1908 at a time when the white North and the white South had become reconciled, the African American marginalised and the Southern version of the Civil War predominated in popular culture and in academia. It helped transform a story of 'bitter sectional conflict into one of human courage and bravery,' assisting in 'reconciling the competing versions of what constitutes the United States...into a blame-free experience' to provide a narrative 'that would appeal to North and South alike.' 7 The Hollywood image portrayed a cultured Southern civilisation, a 'moonlight and magnolia' world, of large plantation houses, loyal servants, honourable, heroic men and beautiful, supportive women who were only defeated by superior forces. 8 Then followed the hardship of Reconstruction - the South ground down by northern carpetbaggers.9 This was the myth that Hollywood took and built upon in film after film until D. W. Griffith, in his 1915 film The Birth of a Nation (Birth), added the final myth that freed African Americans would revert to animalistic, sexual brutes if not controlled by kindly whites. 10 This representation of the Civil War remained unchanged for thirty years. Myths are important in society. They interpret the past to give meaning and value to life and present an ideology to defend the status quo. The truth, says William H. McNeil, is what people believe. Myths can become reality and, in doing so, blind people to other evidence. 11 What 'actually happened', says David Goldfield, and 'what people thought happened belong to a single historical process, and history and memory are indelibly intertwined........history is not learned - it is remembered, handed down.' 12 All the participants in the Civil War developed their separate myths and reinforced them through 2 rituals, monuments, oral reminiscences and history syllabi. David Blight has argued that three overall visions emerged from the Civil War: visions of reconciliation, white supremacy and emancipation. The first two gradually 'locked arms' to form, by the early 1900s, 'a segregated memory of the Civil War on racist terms.' But the emancipationist memory of the African Americans persisted, and its revival, through the Civil Rights Movement, helped to transform America.