"We'll Always Have Paris"

Today's the anniversary of the start of the Nazi Blitzkrieg and the Fall of France. Appropriate then, to include the farewell scene from Casablanca where Rick tells Ilsa: "We'll always have Paris." There was a while when we didn't. Glad we got it back.

Casablanca Excerpt from Ted von Bevern on Vimeo.

Taking It Off At The Stage Door Canteen

Gypsy Rose Lee (1911-1970), the famed burlesque stripper, charms her audience in 1943's Stage Door Canteen. Compared to today's tramp-stamped pole dancers, Lee is both more charming and more erudite - dropping allusions to Cezanne and Oscar Wilde while dropping her drawers. What's more, servicemen and women in the 1940s understood the humor and appreciated her act. We've come a long way, baby. And it might not be an improvement.

Nurses Front and Center

With a pandemic flu threatening the nursing profession is in the news these days. So Proudly We Hail celebrates the sacrifices of US nurses in the Philippines during the early days of WWII. The 1943 film stars Claudette Colbert, Veronica Lake and Paulette Goddard with Lake's character becoming a suicide bomber of sorts - holding a live grenade and walking into a group of Japanese soldiers so the rest of her colleagues can escape them.

Benny Goodman Swings

The Gang's All Here is a Busby Berkeley Technicolor musical featuring fruit-bearing Brazilian sensation Carmen Miranda (who sparked a censorship fracas with the position of her bananas), and below, bandleader Benny Goodman surrounding himself with energetic jitterbuggers. America, protected by two vast oceans, would never experience the horror of war on the Home Front, which made some citizens a bit guilty. Most, however, were just grateful, and the country's undamaged, youthful exuberance is present in this clip.

The Three Stooges at War

Larry, Curly and Moe marched to war along with the rest of America. In this 1943 short they've joined the Merchant Marine with the usual attendant slapstick and mayhem, some of which involves torpedoes and dastardly Nazis.

Pluto Goes to War

Like the other studios, Walt Disney was front and center in their war effort making training films for the military while continuing to entertain moviegoers. The cartoon Private Pluto released in 1943 is noteworthy for the first appearance of two beloved Disney characters: the chipmunks Chip and Dale.

Got Oomph?

Responding to a request, we researched the actress Ann Sheridan (1915-1967). The Texas-born Sheridan was celebrated in WWII as the "Oomph Girl" for her sizzling sex appeal. She's pretty, and a competent singer, as this clip from 1943's war fundraiser Thank Your Lucky Stars shows. But her huge allure remains a mystery, unlike Rita Hayworth who looks very modern. If anyone cares to elaborate on the Sheridan mystique, be our guest.

Propaganda or Entertainment?

Destination Tokyo starred a couple of square-jaws, Cary Grant (above) and John Garfield, as submariners piloting their ship right into Tokyo Bay with all the Yankee moxie Warner Bros could muster. Filmed in cooperation with the US Navy, the 1943 picture is more authentic than most. Even when watched through the a six-decade-long filter, the action still enthralls, despite the era's cruder special effects. It's the propaganda that's over-the-top. Jim McDevitt has a comprehensive review.

Working Girls

Do your part. Ginger Rogers (left) starred in the 1943 Home Front drama Tender Comrade. The plot has four diverse yet ordinary women moving into a big house to save money while working in a defense plant. The themes of share and share alike, making do and patriotism connected to wartime audiences who made the movie a hit. Its Soviet-sounding title came from a Robert Louis Stevenson poem. The script was penned by Dalton Trumbo, who would be blacklisted for his left-wing politics in the postwar Red Scare. Rogers said later some of the script's lines took a more "communistic turn" which she claimed upset her. Two other actors in the movie, Kim Hunter and Mady Christians, were also blacklisted.

You Must Remember This

It's the trailer from Casablanca, the 1942 classic that almost cast Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan, not Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in the starring roles. How the movie got made is a fascinating story of Hollywood at war. More to come.