Letter to a Hero is a 1943 American short documentary film produced by Frederic Ullman Jr. A school teacher in Monroe, NY writes a letter to her former student who is fighting in WWII. It was nominated for an Academy Award at the 16th Academy Awards for Best Short Subject, Two-Reel.
Ann Dere
Narrator
Letter to a Hero is a 1943 American short documentary film produced by Frederic Ullman Jr. A school teacher in Monroe, NY writes a letter to her former student who is fighting in WWII. It was nominated for an Academy Award at the 16th Academy Awards for Best Short Subject, Two-Reel.
A schoolmistress is writing a letter to one of her former pupils who is off at war. “Sgt. Dan” has just been awarded the silver star and so the town of Monroe in the American state of New York is thrilled. Her letter isn’t one that blows that trumpet, though, it’s much more of a “snapshots from home” style of missive. It tells of the weather, the busy Friday night’s in the soda bars, of his gal - soon to be a music teacher - and his mother both busying themselves with day-to-day life. His dad, meantime, and younger brother “Bobby” are putting extra effort to maintain their family farm and it’s forty head of independently minded milkers. The film seems to serve two purposes. The first uses specially shot actors and more generic photography to show the world that for America, it is still business as usual and secondly to let this brave man, and all of his cohorts, know that what he is fighting for is worth saving. It is sentimental, unashamedly, but it’s one of the few examples of wartime American feel-good films that could just as easily be applied to any nation whose sons, husbands and brothers are away perilously doing their bit whilst their families serve in a different fashion at home.
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When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
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