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Hollywood goes to Korea: Biopic politics and douglas sirk's Battle Hymn (1957)

2005; Routledge; Volume: 25; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439680500065055

1465-3451

Hye Seung Chung,

Japanese History and Culture

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments I would like to thank David Scott Diffrient for proofreading the manuscript and providing many insightful suggestions. Thanks also to Dr Paul M. Edwards for inviting me to present a shorter version of this essay at the 2003 Annual War and Media Conference and offering his assistance with research in the Center for the Study of the Korean War at Graceland University, Independence, Missouri. Hye Seung Chung is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. She received her Ph.D. from UCLA's Department of Film, Television and Digital Media, and has contributed to Asian Cinema, Film Quarterly and Film and Philosophy. Her writings on Asian-American stardom and Korean cinema have appeared in such anthologies as East Main Street: Asian American popular culture; South Korean Golden Age Melodrama: gender, genre, and national cinema; and New Korean Cinema. Notes Jon Halliday, Sirk on Sirk: conversations with Jon Halliday, rev. edn (Boston, 1997), p. 122. Barbara Klinger, Melodrama and Meaning: history, culture, and the films of Douglas Sirk (Bloomington, IN, 1994), p. 98. Halliday, Sirk on Sirk, p. 120. Having grossed nearly US$4 million, Battle Hymn made the list of top 20 moneymakers of 1957. See Robert J. Lentz, Korean War Filmography (Jefferson, NC, 2003), p. 51. In his comprehensive study of biopic films made between 1927 and 1960, George F. Custen fails to mention Battle Hymn in both his analysis of sample films and his lists of 291 biopics by studio and profession. See Bio/Pics: how Hollywood constructed public history (New Brunswick, NJ, 1992). While Battle Hymn and Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing are nostalgic classics of both the Korean War generation and that of their children, canonical Korean War films in the US such as The Steel Helmet, Men in War and Pork Chop Hill are little known in South Korea. For a discussion of the unique South Korean canons of classical Hollywood cinema, see Hye Seung Chung, Towards a Strategic Korean Cinephilia: a transnational détournement of Hollywood melodrama, in Kathleen McHugh and Nancy Abelmann (eds.), South Korean Golden Age Melodrama: gender, genre, and national cinema (Detroit, 2005). For an overview of South Korean war films of the 1960s, see David Scott Diffrient's articles: ‘Military Enlightenment’ for the Masses: generic and cultural intermixing in South Korea's golden age war films, Cinema Journal (forthcoming); and Hanguk Heroism: cinematic spectacle and the postwar cultural politics of Red Muffler, in McHugh and Abelmann, Gender, Genre, and National Cinema. Paul M. Edwards, A Guide to Films on the Korean War (Westport, CT, 1997), p. 31. Dean E. Hess, Battle Hymn, rev. edn (Reynoldsburg, OH, 1987), p. 147. Universal's Battle Hymn pamphlet, Billy Rose Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (hereafter NYPLPA). Hess also served as technical advisor on the 1954 Korean War Air Force film Dragonfly Squadron. Custen, Bio/Pics, p. 37. Edwards, A Guide to Films on the Korean War, p. 35. Halliday, Sirk on Sirk, p. 125. Hess, Battle Hymn, p. 2. Ibid., p. 131. Ibid., p. 234. Hess describes Craigwell as ‘a self-educated Negro, with a fine knowledge of mechanics … an ex-crew chief in his late twenties with whom I was to fly many missions and whom I came to love like a brother’ (ibid., p. 124). Ibid., p. 175. Edwards’ filmography includes The Steel Helmet, Men in War, Pork Chop Hill and The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Halliday, Sirk on Sirk, p. 127. Sirk argued that the propagandistic prologue sequence with General Partridge was shot by the studio without his knowledge, having quickly moved to his next project Interlude (also released in 1957) as soon as he finished cutting Battle Hymn. Darragh O’Donoghue's review of Battle Hymn, http://www.amazon.com. Paul Connors’ review of Battle Hymn, ibid. Universal's Battle Hymn pamphlet, Billy Rose Collection, NYPLPA. Quoted in Joseph C. Goulden, Korea: the untold story of the war (New York, 1982), Introduction, p. xv. Although Omar Bradley originally used the phrase in the spring of 1951 to express his opposition to Douglas MacArthur's proposal to expand the war into China, the catchy line has been widely (mis)quoted to describe the Korean War itself. Quoted in I. F. Stone, The Hidden History of the Korean War (London, 1952), p. 348. Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, Vol. II: The Roaring Cataract 1947–1950 (Princeton, NJ, 1990), pp. 768, 770. See Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, Vol. I: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes (Princeton, NJ, 1981); idem, The Roaring Cataract; Bruce Cumings and Jon Halliday, The Unknown War: Korea (New York, 1988); and Jon Halliday, The Korean War: some notes on evidence and solidarity, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 11, 3 (July–September 1979), pp. 2–18. See Burton I. Kaufman, The Korean War: challenges in crisis, credibility, and command (Philadelphia, 1986); William Stueck, The Korean War: an international history (Princeton, NJ, 1995); James I. Matray, The Reluctant Crusade: American foreign policy in Korea, 1941–1950 (Honolulu, 1985); idem, Civil War of a Sort: the international origins of the Korean conflict, in Daniel J. Meador (ed.), The Korean War in Retrospect (Lanham, MD, 1998); Kathryn Weathersby, New Findings on the Korean War: translation and commentary, Bulletin of Cold War International History Project, 3 (Fall 1993); idem, New Russian Documents on the Korean War, Bulletin of Cold War International History Project, 6–7 (Winter 1995–1996); and idem, The Soviet Role in the Korean War: the state of historical knowledge, in William Stueck (ed.), The Korean War in World History (Lexington, KY, 2004). Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: essays in cultural criticism (Baltimore, MD, 1978), p. 122. Hayden White defines tropes as ‘deviations from literal, conventional, or “proper” language use, swerves in locution sanctioned neither by custom nor logic … [a trope] is always not only a deviation from one possible, proper meaning, but also a deviation toward another meaning, conception, or idea of what is right and proper and true “in reality”’ (ibid., p. 2, original emphasis). He borrows Kenneth Burke's taxonomy of the four ‘master tropes’ to map out the movement from metaphorical, through metonymic and synecdochic, to ironic in the nineteenth-century historical interpretations. Robert C. Allen and Douglas Gomery, Film History: theory and practice (New York, 1985), p. 8 (original emphasis). Sirk complained about Hess's snooping over his shoulders and restraining his artistic freedom during the film's shooting. The director originally wanted to insert a scene of Hess drinking to express the character's psychological conflict but had to give up the idea because ‘[Hess] was on the set the whole time saying “I didn’t drink” and all that, trying to make me stick to “truth”’ (Halliday, Sirk on Sirk, p. 125). Producer Ross Hunter, however, appreciated Hess's contribution to his project, saying ‘no technical adviser in picture history has ever been so closely associated with or had so much direct influence on a motion picture as Colonel Hess, who lived the story to begin with’. Universal's Battle Hymn Production Notes, Billy Rose Collection, NYPLPA. As of early 2001, the survivors had compiled and reported the names of 181 killed, 20 missing and 50 wounded during the three-day American attack (air strafes as well as machine-gun fire). Eighty-three percent of the dead were men over the age of 40, women and children. Survivors estimated that the death toll reached as high as 400 (taking into account unclaimed deaths). The AP's Nogun-ri report fueled further claims of the large-scale civilian killings by US troops at other towns throughout South Korea, including Masan, Tanyang and Iksan. By early 2001, 61 cases of American wartime atrocities had been reported to the Defense Ministry of Korea. See Charles J. Hanley, Sang-Hun Choe and Martha Mendoza, The Bridge at No Gun Ri: a hidden nightmare from the Korean War (New York, 2001), pp. 276, 291–295. In remarkable resemblance to the Nogun-ri incident, One Minute to Zero's climatic scene shows American soldiers slaughtering a South Korean refugee column, infiltrated by North Korean guerrillas. The US Department of Defense as well as the Army and the Air Force withdrew their official cooperation for the film after their request to excise the civilian massacre scene was rejected by the RKO producer Howard Hughes. In Battle Hymn, a Korean nanny who brought the orphans to Hess's camp turns out to be a North Korean agent and is killed by an RKO major when she tries to destroy the ammunition storage with a grenade. Hess's memoir records similar instances in which communist guerrillas and agents infiltrated refugee columns, often using orphaned children as their cover and/or dressing as women (Hess, Battle Hymn, p. 182). The political censorship under successive, authoritarian regimes (1961–1993) in close military alliance with the US discouraged the survivors from speaking out. In 1994, they filed repeated petitions to American leaders (including Bill Clinton and Al Gore) as well as the new South Korean civil government to no avail. In 1997, the claimants filed a request for compensation for damages to the US military (under the State of Forces Agreement between the American and South Korean governments), which was denied on the grounds that there was no evidence and a three-year statute of limitations had long expired. See Hanley, Choe and Mendoza, The Bridge at No Gun Ri, pp. 260–262. Neither Clinton's statement nor the Pentagon report (Statement of Mutual Understanding between the United States and the Republic of Korean on the No Gun Ri Investigations) mentioned the fact that the South Korean officials had compiled a list of 251 names of dead, wounded or missing. Korea Update (ROK Embassy newsletter, January 2001). For example, in a memo dated 25 July 1950, Colonel Turner C. Rogers wrote: ‘The Army has requested that we strafe all civilian refugee parties that are noted approaching our positions. To date, we have complied the Army request in this respect’. The 8th Cavalry log (dated 24 July 1950) notes receipt of the following instructions from the headquarters: ‘No refugees to cross the front line. Fire everyone try to cross lines. Use discretion in case of women and children’. The crucial July 1950 communications log of the 7th Cavalry—responsible for the Nogun-ri killings—is missing from the National Archives. See Hanley, Choe and Mendoza, The Bridge at No Gun Ri, pp. 75, 81, 272. Hess, Battle Hymn, p. 191. See Hanguk Ilbo (Korea Daily), 21 June 2000. Examples include Chang Kil-su, Silver Stallion (Ŭnma nŭn oji annŭnda, 1990) and Yi Kwang-mo, Spring in My Hometown (Arŭmdaun 1998). For a comparison between Battle Hymn and these films, see Hye Seung Chung, From Saviors to Rapists: G.I.s, Women, and Children in Korean War Films, Asian Cinema, 12, 1 (Spring/Summer 2001), pp. 103–116. Hess, Battle Hymn, p. 239. In a later scene, Hess says a goodbye to Miss Yang, adding ‘until a better day’, a line she sadly repeats after his departure. The better day (apparently denoting the postwar period) seems to connote an ideal future time when racial prejudices no longer deter their presently impossible romantic union. In his memoir, Hess twice makes an analogy between Korea and the American West (Hess, Battle Hymn, pp. 88, 133). There has been only one Korean War film—the low-budget No Man's Land (1964)—to feature a romantic union between an American GI and a Korean woman. Universal's Battle Hymn Production Notes, Billy Rose Collection, NYPLPA. There has been a claim that Anna Kashfi was born Joanne O’Callaghan in Cardiff, Wales. In her memoir, Kashfi argued that she was born in Calcutta, India (to Devi Kashfi and Selma Ghose) and that William Patrick O’Callaghan was her stepfather whose surname she later adopted to circumvent the admission quotas on Indians into the United States. See Anna Kashfi Brando and E. P. Stein, Brando for Breakfast (New York, 1979), pp. 15, 110. Kashfi's career prematurely ended after appearing in a handful of movies and television programs in the late 1950s due to her drug and alcohol abuses as well as the prolonged custody battle with Marlon Brando following a disastrous two-year marriage. Hess, Battle Hymn, pp. 188–189. Battle Hymn was awarded a Golden Globe for Best Film Promoting International Understanding in 1957. Ella Shohat, Gender and Culture of Empire: toward a feminist ethnography of the cinema, in Matthew Bernstein and Gaylyn Studlar (eds.), Visions of the East: Orientalism in film (New Brunswick, NJ, 1997), p. 20. Hess, Battle Hymn, pp. 237–238. Ibid., p. 188. Ibid., pp. 103, 105. Ironically, Hess's prediction of Rhee's historical honors proved wrong, since Syngman Rhee is now remembered as an authoritarian dictator in his homeland. After a 12-year rule, Rhee's corrupt regime was toppled by a student-led revolution in April 1960, which forced the President to resign and spend the rest of his life in exile in Hawaii. Philip Ahn correspondence file, Ahn Family Collection, Northridge, CA. Examples include China Girl (1942), China (1943), Dragon Seed (1944) and China Sky (1945). Hess, Battle Hymn, p. 4. Ibid., p. 100. Universal's Battle Hymn pamphlet, Billy Rose Collection, NYPLPA. See Hess, Battle Hymn, pp. 111, 155, 176. After the shocking revelation of his affliction with AIDS in 1985, Hudson's homosexuality generated widespread media coverage, increasing the public's AIDS consciousness and complicating his earlier screen image. Ahn has also been rumored to be gay, although there is no evidence to prove his sexual preference. Ahn never married and lived with his widowed mother until her death in 1969, only nine years before he succumbed to a fatal bout with lung cancer. After playing male leads opposite Anna May Wong in Paramount's ‘B’ movies, Daughter of Shanghai (1937) and King of Chinatown (1939), he was once rumored to be the Chinese American actress's offscreen romantic partner. A Saga of Sam and a Colonel, Life, 25 February 1957, p. 137. Won Moo Hurh, The Korean Americans (Westport, CT, 1988), p. 33. Darrell Y. Hamamoto, Monitored Peril: Asian Americans and the politics of TV representation (Minneapolis, 1994), p. 100. Hess, Battle Hymn, p. 113. Cumings, Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, preface, pp. xxvi, xxix. Robert T. Oliver, Syngman Rhee and American Involvement in Korea, 1942–1960 (Seoul, 1978), p. 297. For example, see the Letters to the Editor section, Chosun Ilbo (Chosun Daily) website, http://www. english.chosun.com. A Saga of Sam and a Colonel, Life, 25 February 1957, p. 143. Ibid., p. 140. Brando and Stein, Brando for Breakfast, p. 57. Ahn Junghyo, Of Confusion and Battle Hymn, Korea Herald, 28 October 1999. Ibid.