Movie stars at war

Seriously? They all did it? All of them?

Stephen Turner
January 01, 2025

Wandering through Wikipedia… your daily dose of the weird and wonderful from the greatest website in the world!

So in WWII, and honestly now I expect, the quickest way to educate people was visually. Whether it was teaching troops safety, strategy and flight skills, or teaching the public about anything in a difficult time, film and imagery were at the top of the list.

So that’s where the First Motion Picture Unit came in.

Featuring stars such as Clark Gable, William Holden, Clayton Moore, Ronald Reagan, Craig Stevens and DeForest Kelley (Bones McCoy!) they made a huge variety of films from 1942-1945.

The most dangerous part of the operation was the combat camera man training unit, but while they took the risks, who wouldn’t want to have been trained by John Sturges while taking a risk for your country?

Did you know?

The unit shot hundreds of hours of film over the years of war, and most of it has never been seen? It was deemed to expensive to produce and develop so has never been seen. But even counting what was developed, that’s nearly every bit of footage you’ve ever seen in a History Channel WWII documentary.

Bonus!

While not in this unit exactly, Stan Lee and Dr Seuss both served in the film and publications unit during the war. Considering they were both masters of visual storytelling and design, this isn’t so surprising! (Though Dr Seuss was 40 at the time and Lee was just over 20!)