So,
Gregg Toland
made a thing
too controversial
to release
John Ford
got on board
made it shorter
won an Oscar
and their friendship was never the same again.
– yiqi 14 July 2021 5:40 pm
This poem was inspired by something I learned today about the World War II films that John Ford made. According to the documentary Ford at Pearl (2021), Gregg Toland was working on a documentary called December 7th (1943) about the attack on Pearl Harbor, but his end-product included a lot of fiction (editing voice-overs and footage to make it seem like Japanese-Americans were all spies in cahoots with the land of the rising sun). Toland’s film was shelved and Ford took over, winning an Academy Award for Best Documentary, Short Subjects in 1944.
Read more about the differences between the Toland and Ford versions at The Unwritten Record and archive.org.
Oh yes, I did talk to the TV…called out Gregg Toland by name too, and how did he think he could just make up stuff about the Japanese-Americans living in Hawaii in the wake of that day which will live in infamy?
Originally posted at my tumblr.
Pic creds: 20th Century Fox, mptvimages, IMDB
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