War Story With Epic Staying Power

Executives at NBC thought the idea was daft, a sure-fire loser. Who would want to watch a 26-episode documentary about the U.S. Navy in World War II?

One exec mocked the project as “Victory In Red,” as in red ink.

But the big boss at NBC--urged on by his son--approved the project, with what was then a whopping budget of $500,000, plus use of the esteemed NBC orchestra.

Gentle persuasion was applied to composer Richard Rodgers to take time from Broadway to contribute his services to this new medium called television.

Still the advertisers stayed away.

What they missed was being part of “Victory At Sea,” by most measures one of the most acclaimed, enduring and artistically successful television productions ever, an American classic.

Forty-five years have passed since “Victory At Sea” made its debut one Sunday afternoon in 1952. In all that time, there has never been a season when the series, which chronicles the Navy from 1939 to V-J Day, has not been shown in one television market or another.

As the 20th century winds down, the emotional resonance of the series--in portraying the era’s most cataclysmic event--shows no signs of losing its grip on the American public.

Indeed, interest appears to be increasing, a sign perhaps of a national emptiness and a yearning for times that, while more dangerous and uncertain than our own, were also more purposeful and possessed of a moral clarity.

“There is always an intense interest during unheroic times in heroic events of the past,” said Alan Brinkley, professor of modern American history at Columbia University. “In the eyes of most people, we live in very unheroic times, and ‘Victory At Sea’ is the ultimate heroic story.”

The History Channel uses the series to anchor its Monday prime-time lineup with back-to-back 30-minute episodes, and holds occasional all-day marathons. Before that, the series ran for several years on the Arts & Entertainment channel.

Two-thirds of the nation’s Public Broadcasting Service stations have used “Victory At Sea” in recent years as a fund-raising vehicle--a fail-safe audience grabber in areas as different politically and socially as San Francisco and San Diego.

For the Naval Academy and a host of civilian universities, the series serves as a teaching tool--mostly in classes on documentary filmmaking, the history of television, and popular culture.

“ ‘Victory At Sea’ embodies the American myth, in the best sense of that word, a story that ennobles and gives higher meaning to a people’s existence,” said Peter Rollins, editor of the journal Film & History and professor of English at Oklahoma State University. “In one way, it is less about World War II than about how Americans once thought of themselves and their country.”

At Annapolis, “Victory At Sea” is shown to remind midshipmen--all born in the post-Vietnam era--how passionately Americans felt about World War II and the Navy’s role in winning it.

For years, visitors to the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii were shown Episode 2, “The Pacific Boils Over: Pearl Harbor.” Copies of “Victory At Sea” have found their way to innumerable military bases, squadron ready rooms and ship libraries.

On a recent training deployment, young sailors aboard the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk huddled around on their off hours to watch an episode about the four-day naval battle for Leyte Gulf. “Amazing,” said one wide-eyed 19-year-old.

Robert Thompson, a professor of television and film at Syracuse University, says the series’ continuing appeal springs from the fact that it was created before American intellectual life was seized by cynicism about the nation’s motives and distrust of government in general, the military and other institutions.

“The rhetoric and the cumulative strategy of ‘Victory At Sea’ are, on some levels, so unsophisticated, so sincere and so alien to what we’ve come to expect that it makes a compelling argument,” Thompson said.

From the beginning, the series was a father-and-son affair. Fathers who had served in World War II watched it with their sons;, now those sons want their sons to know what their grandfathers did in the big war.

Among those who watched the series with his father is documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, whose output includes much-praised works on baseball, the West, the Civil War and the Lewis and Clark expedition.

“My goal is to do something as good, as enduring, as remarkable as ‘Victory At Sea,’ ” Burns said. “It’s an epic poem, a grand opera of the American people. It shows what television can be: a campfire where we sit around and tell stories about what kind of people we are.”

Despite early doubts at NBC, “Victory At Sea” remains a moneymaker.

Surveys show that the History Channel audience for the program is predominantly male and largely upscale, making the series attractive to big-ticket advertisers such as stock brokerages and luxury car manufacturers, except for Japanese auto makers.

New Line Home Video offers a six-tape “special collectors edition” through an 800 number shown during the episodes. New tape and compact disc editions of the music, with enhanced sound effects, are for sale at stores.

Strictly speaking, “Victory At Sea” is not primarily a work of scholarship, but rather a work of art. Depending on your view, this is either its glory or its bane.

The series has its critics--including Thompson and Rollins--both for its political message (America can do no wrong; American leaders are wise and compassionate) and some of its shortcut techniques (some studio reenactments and use of the same scenes to portray different battles).

The Naval Academy does not include “Victory At Sea” in its naval history courses, because it does not provide enough conflicting views to stimulate debate about the effectiveness of the tactics used by Adms. Raymond A. Spruance, William “Bull” Halsey and Chester W. Nimitz. Professors prefer the British-made “The World At War.”

“We want to produce critical thinkers, as well as warriors,” said Craig Symonds, a professor of history at the academy. “ ‘Victory At Sea’ is designed to evoke a strong emotional response, but it is essentially a passive exercise, where you are invited to share the pathos of momentous events but not to evaluate or debate them.”

The series is 200-proof, lump-in-the-throat American patriotism, a story of arms and men and a noble cause, akin, in its fashion, to Shakespeare’s “Henry V.”

Other works created in the “golden era” of television documentaries--ABC’s “Crusade in Europe” and CBS’ “Air Power,” for example--had their moments and then largely disappeared. None came close to the staying power of “Victory At Sea.”

The narrator’s voice--the only one heard except that of President Franklin Roosevelt in his “day of infamy” speech--is forceful, dramatic and morally unequivocal. The film--with some exceptions--is the authentic stuff, most shot by the Navy. The music--confident, uplifting, powerful--is an American symphony.

“Victory At Sea” does not flinch at showing the bodies of dead Americans--floating at sea, tossed by surf at Normandy or Iwo Jima, on the burning decks of ships hit by kamikaze planes, or caught in a thicket of jungle. Repeated scenes show the agonized faces of the shell-shocked and wounded.

In Episode 6, “Guadalcanal,” the narrator, in rhetorical fashion, stakes out one of the dominant themes:

“Far from the dying and destruction, far from the sailors and Marines who fight and pray for victory and salvation, the United States of America organizes her land, her resources, her industry, her men, to answer the distant prayers. In the greatest mobilization of strength ever known to the world, America prepares to rescue the world. And to the rescue, America marches.”

Marines and soldiers are shown fighting savagely, even brutally--numerous scenes depict the use of flamethrowers to rout Japanese troops from caves. Still, the emphasis is always on the Americans’ innate peacefulness.

In Episode 17, “Turkey Shoot: Conquest of the Marianas,” the series recalls the fight to liberate Guam:

“Agana, Guam’s battered capital, is liberated by the blood and sacrifice of young Americans. . . . And the people of Guam, the Chamorros? Down from the hills they come. Out of Japanese concentration camps they come. The weary and the frightened. The sick and the feeble. All are welcomed and helped by the American soldier, who cheerfully abandons the savagery of battle for what is truly in his heart, in his nature: sympathy, kindness, compassion.”

‘Subtle, Spiritual Dimension’ of War

“Victory At Sea” began with an idea by Henry Salomon Jr., a 1939 graduate of Harvard who had been a wartime aide to Rear Adm. Samuel Eliot Morison. Morison was the Harvard historian recruited by Roosevelt to witness and write the definitive history of the U.S. Navy during the war.

Leaving the Navy in 1948, Salomon wanted to use combat photography to make something grander and more compelling than just another pastiche of film clips and routine narration being compiled by other filmmakers.

Salomon, who had witnessed six major battles, said he wanted to capture “the subtle, spiritual dimension” of the war. “The naval war was perhaps the most powerful and stirring expression, in both human and physical terms, of the might and potential of contemporary America.”

He approached Robert Sarnoff, who was a Harvard classmate and the son of David Sarnoff, chairman of the board at RCA, the parent company of NBC. Despite dissent among his executives, David Sarnoff believed in the project and was in a mood to support his son’s enthusiasm.

The Navy assisted Salomon and his film editor, Isaac Kleinerman, a veteran of Hollywood and Frank Capra’s “Why We Fight” films for the Army, in sifting through 60 million feet of film, including captured footage from the Japanese and Germans.

Robert Montgomery was hired as narrator, but after weeks of work, Salomon concluded sadly that the actor’s marvelous voice was wrong for the part. As a replacement, Rodgers selected Broadway thespian Leonard Graves, an understudy to Yul Brynner in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The King and I.”

The script was to be written by English novelist C.S. Forester (“Horatio Hornblower”). Salomon found the author’s scripts overly literary and decided instead to go with narration he wrote with newspaperman-turned-screenwriter Richard Hanser.

Their script is journalistic in style. Short sentences. Punchy fragments. Nearly all sentences in the present, the most forceful of verb tenses.

For long stretches, the script lets the pictures and music tell the story. Rodgers’ score--as arranged by Broadway veteran Robert Russell Bennett--is, by turns, optimistic, romantic, foreboding, sentimental and powerful. The composer’s debt to Aaron Copland and John Philip Sousa is clear; so, too, are hints of Rodgers’ “Oklahoma!” and “South Pacific.”

High school bands and local orchestras routinely perform pieces from “Victory At Sea.” President Richard Nixon asked that music from the series be played at his funeral.

(After “Victory At Sea,” Salomon and Kleinerman made a string of documentaries. Salomon died in 1958 at age 40 of a cerebral hemorrhage.)

Even after the initial episodes drew enormous ratings, and sponsors were eager to display their wares, Sarnoff stuck by his decision to show the series without commercial interruption.

Narration Evokes Whitman Poetry

The narration of “Victory At Sea” invites comparison with the works of that most American of poets, Walt Whitman, including his masterpiece “Song of Myself” and his Civil War poems.

In the “Guadalcanal” episode, the images of American farms and factories, highways and hydroelectric dams, assembly lines and steel mills, of men and women building planes and tanks, of men stripping naked at their pre-induction physical and later marching smartly in their crisp uniforms--all are reminiscent of Whitman’s cataloging technique.

In the 25th episode, “Suicide for Glory: Okinawa,” the narrator intones a eulogy for a fallen wartime president that carries with it similarities to “O’ Captain, My Captain,” Whitman’s hymn to the slain Lincoln:

“And while the harsh struggle for Okinawa--on land, air and sea--grinds on to victory, free men everywhere suffer defeat. Nine thousand miles away in the United States, the commander in chief has fallen, a casualty of war as surely as if a kamikaze has felled him at the helm. Franklin Delano Roosevelt--defender of democracy, foe of tyranny, architect of victory--is dead.”

In the 26th and final episode, “Design for Peace,” the narrator quotes from Whitman’s “Song for All Seas, All Ships.”

Carl Sandburg wrote famously that Whitman’s poetry “is America’s most classic advertisement of itself as having purpose, destiny, banners and beacon-fires.”

Television critics and academics said much the same about “Victory At Sea” when it debuted. Name the television award, and the series has won it: Emmy, Peabody, Sylvania and more.

The series has changed hands several times. These days, television distribution rights belong to Worldvision Enterprises of New York, a subsidiary of Aaron Spelling Entertainment Group of Los Angeles.

In 1953, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Bernard DeVoto wrote that all Americans should be able to see “Victory At Sea” once a year.

He had no way of knowing it, but his suggestion has proved entirely possible.

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The Power of Simplicity

Part of the emotional force of “Victory At Sea” comes from its simplicity--both in message and in form. The only words--except for a small part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s “day of infamy” speech--are those of the narrator. The only sound is that of Richard Rodgers’ musical score, tailored by arranger Robert Russell Bennett to fit the needs of the scene. As written by producer Henry Salomon Jr. and ex-newspaperman Richard Hanser, the script leaves no doubt about the series’ moral certainty and point of view. Here are examples:

* “War has begun. Ships are sinking. Men are dying. It is September 1939.... For fascism to survive, it must kill. The time has come. Hitler hurls his U-boats into the Atlantic to ravage and kill.... If freedom is to survive in the Old World, the New World must act.”

--”Design for War.” Episode 1

****

* “Suffering, agony, death. 1,178 men wounded. 68 civilians dead. 109 Marines dead. 218 soldiers dead. 2,008 sailors dead.... But while the hulks are still hot from the attack, experts and technicians are flown in from the mainland. The most extraordinary salvage job in history begins. Hidden in the havoc wrought by the new enemy, there are the seeds of a miracle. In the ruins, there is life. With the dead lies the vision of a shattered fleet. Hidden in a pall of fire and smoke, is the vengeance of the United States.”

--”The Pacific Boils Over: Pearl Harbor.” Episode 2

****

* “If there was horror and ferocity, there was also courage and self-sacrifice. If there was death, filth and disease, the Marines turned the tide of war and stopped their enemy. The Japanese will advance no further. And as the surviving Marines wave goodbye, one of the greatest tales of heroism slips out of focus into history. To these men go the honors accorded the Greeks at Thermopylae, the colonials at Valley Forge, the British at Waterloo and now the Americans at Guadalcanal.”

--”Guadalcanal.” Episode 6

****

* “American soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen--as a team--crack and then pulverize the Japanese and their defenses.”

--”Conquest of Micronesia.” Episode 12

* “After 3 1/2 years of war, the long arm of Allied sea power reaches out to throttle aggression at its source.... An assault as big as the Normandy invasion is bearing down on the island of Okinawa: 300 miles south of the Japanese home islands, 6,000 miles from the continental United States. What Japan once thought was impossible, what the Allies hardly dared hope, is about to become a reality.”

* “One method and only one can stop the kamikaze. Shoot him down before he has a chance to crash himself against the ship. American pilots pit courage and skill against the self-destroying frenzy of the Japanese.... Night brings no respite, darkness no relief. The fantastic contest between those who fight to live and those who fight to die goes on around the clock. Whenever a ship is hit, others come to the rescue. The risks of death are great, but the determination to save a shipmate is greater.”

--”Suicide for Glory: Okinawa.” Episode 25

****

* “One bomb from one plane and life becomes death. One bomb from one plane and Hiroshima is a wasteland. One bomb from one plane and 78,000 human beings perish. Three days later one more bomb on Nagasaki and 24,000 more die. Two bombs and World War II is over.... The Allies are spared 1 million casualties.”

* “To the ports of both coasts, along the West Coast, along the East Coast, the ships that sailed away to war and death bring back their millions to peace and life. To these men, free men owe their victory on land, their victory in the air, their victory at sea.”

--”Design for Peace.” Episode 26