Film Industry in the 1940s

The film industry was affected greatly in the early 1940s with the attack at Pearl Harbor which is where the United States joined the war efforts. The war hit every industry hard. "However, Hollywood film production rebounded and reached its profitable peak of efficiency during the years 1943 to 1946 - a full decade and more after the rise of sound film production, now that the technical challenges of the early 30s sound era were far behind. Advances in film technology (sound recording, lighting, special effects, cinematography and use of color) meant that films were more watchable and 'modern" (Dirks 1940s)'. Which then led into what Dirk's calls Hollywood's most profitable year in 1946 beacause of the amount of people who went out and watched films. 


The war which did economically hurt all other industries was actually surprisingly helping the film industry. "The US government's Office of War Information (OWI), formed in 1942, served as an important propaganda agency during World War II, and coordinated its efforts with the film industry to record and photograph the nation's war-time activities" (Dirks, 1940s). The first war to be documented would be a huge move by both the government and the film industry. In the early 1940s because of the war efforts we began to see big Hollywood productions that are patriotic and may not have the greatest plot, but because of their patriotism and the timing they were very popular.

Many new stars were also being generated in the 1940s. "A new breed of stars that arose during the war years included Van Johnson, Alan Ladd, and gorgeous GI pin-up queens Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth. (Betty Grable had signed with 20th Century Fox in 1940 and would soon became a major star of their musicals in the 1940s.)" (Dirks, 1940s).  Not only did the war period produce stars, but it also helped in careers of some directors. "Some of Hollywood's best directors, John Ford, Frank Capra, John Huston and William Wyler, made Signal Corps documentaries or training films to aid the war effort, such as Frank Capra's Why We Fight (1942-1945) documentary series (the first film in the series, Prelude to War was released in 1943), Ford's December 7th: The Movie (1991) (finally released after being banned by the US government for 50 years) and the first popular documentary of the war titled The Battle of Midway (1942), Huston's documentaries Report From the Aleutians (1943) and The Battle of San Pietro (1945), and Wyler's sobering Air Force documentary Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (1944)" (Dirks, 1940s). 


The History of Film: The 1940s by Tim Dirks http://www.filmsite.org/40sintro.html