World War I

"DO YOUR BIT FOR AMERICA"

The United States entered the war on 5 April 1917. President Wilson called on everyone to "Do Your Bit for America," and this included the film industry. At every level—helping with recruitment and fund-raising, making training films as well as inspirational fiction features featuring charismatic movie stars—cinema worked to align the nation to the political and social needs of the day. Producers, distributors, and exhibitors developed an approach of "practical patriotism," finding that business and patriotism could be mutually beneficial. The public was encouraged to attend not only for entertainment, but to participate in sweepstakes to win Liberty Bonds, thus offering the incentive of indirectly lining the pockets of Uncle Sam. Although only a minority of features directly referenced the war itself, the number of war-themed films increased over the course of the war, from eight in May 1917, when public opinion was predominantly antiwar, to fifty-four (many of which were prestige productions) at the time of the Armistice in August 1918.

Cinemas were frequently decked out with bunting or portraits of President Wilson to spark patriotic interest, while the singing of the national anthem and other patriotic songs, slide shows of local enlisted men, public lectures on war topics, and even the raising of colossal flags at every show fostered feelings of collective identity. For the third Liberty Loan campaign, the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry (NAMPI) distributed a film by Douglas Fairbanks (1918, 'Sic 'Em Sam') and over 17,000 advertising trailers and posters. NAMPI, established in July 1916, regulated the various sectors of the film industry and in May 1917 formed a War Cooperation Committee to further the interests of both the industry and the government. The Committee was advised on the latest guidelines on matters such as food conservation, and produced campaigns and short propaganda films. The studios sent out stars such as Mary Pickford (1892–1979) and Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) to address the public while its members were attached to key departments and divisions of government and the armed forces. On 28 April 1917 Motion Picture News proudly reported that the serial queen Pearl White (1889–1938) had ridden a steel beam to the twentieth story of a New York building, unfurled an American flag in the breeze, and called for all young men to enlist.

The Committee on Public Information (CPI) was formed in April 1917, with the journalist George Creel as chairman, and with the Secretaries of State, War, and Navy as members. It functioned to sustain voluntary censorship and oversee the making, distribution, and exhibition of propaganda films, particularly through its control of export licenses. Thus if an overseas territory were found to be exhibiting German material, the threat of withholding the more popular American films could be used to gain cooperation. Additionally, 20 percent of any shipment of entertainment film had to consist of "educational" material. Although the committee's remit included "motion picture films and photographs," a new Division of Films was created in September that year. The eminent American critic W. Stephen Bush wrote to the British trade journal The Bioscope on 19 May 1917, describing his efforts to organize motion picture exhibitors across the southern states into "keeping the flame of patriotism burning brightly." Adding to the motivation behind such efforts were fears that Texas would become a "second Belgium" if Germany executed plans to invade from Mexico, whose civil war until then had been competing with the European war for US headlines.

Although the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation would not permit Cecil B. DeMille to travel to Europe to visit the front lines, D. W. Griffith (1875–1948) was granted statesmanlike authority there to shoot Hearts of the World (1918). The film, partly financed by the British government, told the story of a small French village beset by war; the crew made much-publicized visits to the trenches in France to record real-life action scenes that would be intercut with reconstructions. Billed as "A Love Story of the Great War," it became one of biggest films of the period. In April 1918, a month after the premiere of Hearts of the World , the historian Francis Trevelyan Miller wrote to Griffith, hailing him as "the Greatest of War Historians." On 5 April 1918 the New York Times reported that, when the film was shown to an invited Broadway audience of critics and servicemen, the pastoral scenes before the coming of the war registered the most profoundly: "the theatre broke into applause just at some particularly beautiful landscape of rural vista." Making the film's propaganda angle clear, at the end of the screening Griffith himself stood to give a short speech, broken with emotion. The crowd then cheered footage of British and French leaders, whereas a "representation of the Kaiser was eagerly hissed." The following month Griffith, as president of the new Motion Picture War Service Association, was charged with the task of boosting the US war effort through sales of war bonds. However, the film was not as big a success as the British government had hoped. Audiences had grown tired of war films of any kind and instead sought information from newsreels. Hearts of the World was rereleased with a revised ending as a "peace edition" in 1919.