Robert McLaughlin

During the highly charged years of World War II, movies perhaps best communicated to Americans who they were and why they were fighting. These films were more than just an explanation of historical events: they asked audiences to consider the Nazi threat, they put a face on both our enemies and allies, and they explored changing wartime gender roles. We'll Always Have the Movies shows how film after film repeated the narratives, character types,...

"In Broadway Goes to War, Robert L. McLaughlin and Sally E. Parry analyze how American theater actively addressed and debated timely and controversial topics during World War II. Productions such as Watch on the Rhine (1941), The Moon is Down (1942), Tomorrow the World (1943), and A Bell for Adano (1944) encouraged public discussion of the war's impact on daily life and raised critical topics about the conflict well before other forms of popular media....