TV Reviews : When the Stars Did Their Duty in WWII

It will take no marks for profundity, but “Stars and Stripes: Hollywood and World War II,” airing today on American Movie Classics at 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., is an affectionate look at the stars and the industry doing their wartime bit.

Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart enlist and make recruiting films before they go on to sterner duties. Marlene Dietrich and other beauties appear at the Hollywood and Stage Door canteens. Others stars perform for the newly created Armed Forces Radio network. There are the war bond tours.

The footage, often rare or at least unfamiliar, includes Frances Langford and others visiting the wounded in forward area hospitals and entertaining within the sound of artillery fire. Inevitably, Bob Hope is everywhere, as indeed he was, with no TV specials as byproducts.

For those on the far side of 50, the hourlong look will unlock a pile of private memories of how it was for them. Younger viewers may well recognize the patriotic fervor from the excitements that attended the Gulf War. They may be startled to see a war that was fought in black and white, without television, and when the issues were also seen in black-and-white.

Despite the brief encounters with the wounded, the tone is relentlessly light. The somber reconsiderations from Hollywood itself, let alone documentaries like John Huston’s “San Pietro” and “Let There Be Light,” would have to wait for peace to find their audiences.

Narrated by Tony Randall, the show was written and produced by Marcia Ely.

Both telecasts are followed by the premiere of the restored version of the 1943 Irving Berlin musical, “This Is the Army,” with Lt. Ronald Reagan as one of its stars. The restoration, supervised by the UCLA Film and Television Archive, is based on a set of Technicolor master positives discovered five years ago in a Warner Bros. vault.