The Big Picture - 1. Give ’Em Hell | Do We Get to Win This Time?

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

In the late-’60s, John Wayne stars in the first hit Vietnam movie: his controversial blockbuster ‘The Green Berets.’ And the piercing documentary ‘Hearts and Minds’ leads to an Oscar-night meltdown in 1975. Other films we talk about in this episode include ‘In the Year of the Pig’ (1969) and ‘Winter Soldier’ (1972).  Host: Brian Raftery  Producers: Devon Manze, Mike Wargon, Amanda Dobbins, and Vikram Patel Sound Design: Bobby Wagner  Mixing and Mastering: Scott Somerville  All interviews for this series were conducted before the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, if you're enjoying our show, you might also like some of the other narrative podcasts here at The Ringer. Want more history in your life? Try 22 Goals, a chronicle of the Men's World Cup told through the lens of 22 of the most iconic goals ever scored in the tournament. Spoiler alert, it's about a lot more than just soccer. Or maybe, like me, you just can't get enough of pop culture history. If that's the case, check out Just Like Us, a deep dive into

the tabloid magazine era. Not quite sick of my voice yet? Well, in Gene and Roger, I dive into the careers and legacies of legendary movie critics Siskel and Ebert. Two thumbs up for shameless self-promotion. Thanks for listening. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. The evening of March 30th, 1987, represented a high point for Vietnam movies.

Welcome to the 59th Annual Academy Awards. And a low point for Vietnam movies Welcome to the 59th Annual Academy Awards and a low point for Oscar ceremonies. The show began with a tacky musical number featuring Telly Savalas, Dom DeLuise, and the Karate Kid's Pat Morita. As they sang and danced on stage, technically speaking, a background chorus celebrated some of the night's big films. It's the kind of moment that would go viral now, for all the wrong reasons.

Children, we must recover. Children, we must recover. Hannah and her sisters. Hannah and her sisters. But despite the Academy's efforts to keep things brainlessly upbeat, the night was dominated by an intense war drama, a film Americans had been lining up to see for months. And the winner is Platoon. Oliver Stone for Platoon. Chris Simpson for Platoon.

By the end of the evening, Oliver Stone's Platoon had won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It was a weird ceremony, with all that Hollywood glitz overshadowed by the sobering memories of Vietnam, a conflict many Americans had tried to forget. Here's Stone, gracefully accepting his Oscar for Best Director. But I think that through this award, you're really acknowledging the Vietnam veteran. And I think what you're saying is that for the first time, you really understand what happened over there. And this is Stone in 2023,

still stunned by the success of his film, one that had taken a decade to get made. Nothing could stop Platoon. It was just a pouring out of truth. That's not to say it's a perfect movie. I'm not saying that, but it was just a catharsis, is the correct word. Platoon didn't just reignite old debates about the war. It also led a new wave of high-profile Vietnam movies. Films like Good Morning Vietnam, Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill, Casualties of War, and Born on the Fourth of July. Suddenly, audiences were eager to return to Vietnam.

It was a watershed moment, one that was long overdue. For years, the Vietnam War had been seen as untouchable, at least in Hollywood. Until the war ended in 1975, few American filmmakers dared to even acknowledge Vietnam. Those who did learned a lesson that would rule the film industry for years to come. If you wanted to bring Vietnam to the big screen, you had to fight for it. From Spotify and the Ringer Podcast Network, I'm Brian Raftery. And this is Do We Get to Win This Time? How Hollywood Made the Vietnam War. Before Vietnam, Hollywood was happy to help out with the war effort.

In the early 40s, as the U.S. was plunged into World War II, the film industry did all it could to support the cause. Big-name directors like John Ford and Frank Capra rushed into service, returning from the front with footage that brought the war to life. And Hollywood actors were recruited to make training films, like this 1943 Army short, in which a young actor named Ronald Reagan plays a pilot experiencing a mid-flight crisis. Suddenly I stopped thinking.

I saw something. Another plane. World War II gave Hollywood a noble mission, as well as a clear-cut set of villains. It was a cinematic clash between good, the Allies, and evil, the Axis powers. And over the next few years, studios produced hundreds of movies set during the war. They included everything from epic adventures... This is it. Richard Tregoskki's Guadalcanal Diary. The thrilling eyewitness story of the first of America's victories.

To goofy monster flicks... Who is this terrifying Phantom Commando? What is his amazing mission? See The Invisible Agent. To a gripping romance about two lovers stranded at a bar. We'll always have Paris. We didn't have. We lost it until you came to Casablanca. World War II ended in 1945, but the World War II movies kept coming.

The Great Escape, The Dirty Dozen, The Bridge on the River Kwai. These films were wildly successful, if sometimes a bit jingoistic. And they helped shape how many young Americans thought about war. Well, I grew up in the 50s and 60s, so World War II movies in particular were a staple, especially on late-night television. And they were all glorious. This is retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Michael Lee Lanning, a Vietnam veteran. You know, we saw the young girl running by the train telling her

boyfriend that she'd wait for him and she'd be there, and the flags waving in the background, and all the great patriotic things that went with World War II movies. It really added me wanting to get off that ranch in West Texas and see some of the world. Every time I could possibly

find a date, I'd go to the movies because that's what you did. That's retired Marine Corps Captain Dale Dye, a Vietnam vet who served as an advisor on Platoon and several other Vietnam films. I was a kid from a small southeast Missouri town, and I felt that there were greater things out there on the other side of the hill. And I heard the bugles and saw the flags. I saw something heroic in there. And I guess like a lot of teenagers, I saw myself in that lead role. In Hollywood's version of World War II, combat was gritty, but gratifying.

And all that on-screen fighting had a higher purpose, the same purpose that had drawn the U.S. into the war to begin with To stop the rise of an international evil But decades later, in the late 60s and 70s The war in Vietnam was a much harder sell For one thing, American audiences were already watching it play out on their TV screens In the late 60s, as the U.S. became more involved in Vietnam And casualties increased

The TV news was sending home images of huts being set on fire Or soldiers dodging gunfire In the late 60s, as the U.S. became more involved in Vietnam and casualties increased, the TV news was sending home images of huts being set on fire or soldiers dodging gunfire. You couldn't get away from the war. This is film and television producer Paula Weinstein, who spent years as an anti-war activist. You can't imagine every day the lead story on Walter Cronkite was either people demonstrating villages, hamlets being bombed and strafed and massive demonstrations all over the country, young men burning their draft cards. It was crazy. People wanted an escape from all that news, and Hollywood provided it.

Some of the biggest hits of the late 60s were musicals and comedies like The Odd Couple, Funny Girl, and The Love Bug, movies that transported audiences as far away as possible from Vietnam. But it wasn't just that moviegoers wanted to avoid the war abroad. They also felt uneasy, and often very angry, about the battles in their own country. The late 60s was a period of constant upheaval. There were the ongoing battles of the civil rights movement, the devastating assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

And of course, there were the protests and counter protests inspired by Vietnam, but taking place here at home. It had been easy to reduce World War II to a fight between good and bad. But the Vietnam War was harder to understand. Why were so many Americans being sent there? Who were they up against? And what would victory even look like?

Not everyone agreed on the answers. As the 60s went on, and the U.S. became more deeply involved in the war between North and South Vietnam, Americans began turning on one another. Paula Weinstein was a first-hand witness to the chaos of the late 60s, having taken part in several major anti-war events. She protested at the Pentagon, and joined a march led by Martin Luther King, Jr. through the streets of New York City, where sharpshooters watched down from the roofs. Whether it was on Fifth Avenue in a demonstration or up at the university where the cops were

pretty brutal and people were enraged, you knew there was a divide. Look, most movie studios do not want to get into conflict. That's producer and executive Mike Medavoy, who helped release Platoon, and whose Hollywood career stretches back nearly 60 years. And why do a movie about what the conflict is? What's to be gained? How many people will come?

Who's going to want to see it? The answer? Pretty much nobody. In the mid-60s, right as the U.S. was sending more and more troops to Southeast Asia, Hollywood tried in vain to lure moviegoers to Vietnam. In 1963, an actor named Marshall Thompson actually traveled to Saigon to direct and star in a combat film called A Yank in Vietnam. He got so close to the fighting, he was grazed by gunfire. That helped get the movie some press, but A Yank in Vietnam. He got so close to the fighting, he was grazed by gunfire. That helped get the movie some press.

But A Yank in Vietnam wound up going from drive-ins to late-night TV before disappearing altogether. Seriously, it's completely gone. If you have a copy, hit me up. Even name-brand actors couldn't attract audiences. Marlon Brando was one of the biggest stars in the world in 1963 when he appeared in The Ugly American. It's a thriller set in a fictitious Southeast Asian country,

one clearly meant as a stand-in for Vietnam. The land where bullets come screaming out of nowhere, where intrigue is everywhere, where armies spring up overnight. Anyone interested in Vietnam wouldn't learn much about it from The Ugly American, much of which was filmed in Thailand. So was Operation CIA, released in 1965 and featuring Burt Reynolds as an undercover agent trying to stop an assassination attempt in Saigon. At one point, Reynolds and his local ally come across a group of Vietnamese protesters. What's that all about? Oh, that's the student demonstration. It happens quite often in my country.

Yeah. Too often. Reynolds' co-star in that Operation CIA scene was Vietnamese actor Quy Chin. She'd fallen into acting in her 20s by accident when she was spotted on a Saigon street by an associate of Joseph Mankiewicz, the writer-director who'd worked on such classics as All About Eve and The Philadelphia Story. Mankiewicz wanted Chin to play a small role in his adaptation of The Quiet

American, the classic Graham Greene novel about 1950s Saigon. Chin couldn't take that part, which wound up going to an Italian actor. Not the first time a Vietnamese character will be played by a non-Vietnamese performer. But Chin did get major roles in both A Yank in Vietnam and Operation CIA. I was lucky because among the actors, there are few at that time that I was lucky that I speak both languages. You know, there's no acting school in Vietnam then.

And even movie industry was some kind of newborn I speak both languages, you know. There's no acting school in Vietnam then. And even movie industry was some kind of newborn in Vietnam. You know, it's not very popular. As a result, many of the earliest movies Chin starred in about Vietnam were made by outsiders. She was proud of her work, but those films didn't always reflect the Vietnam she knew. Every foreigner company coming to Vietnam making movie, of course the story is about the war. But to me, most of the movie, from the point of view of the outsider,

they're making movie related to war, soldiers, to barbed wire, blood and shooting, but not any movie talking about the people, about the culture, about the native. Operation CIA doesn't focus much on Vietnam's people or its culture. Instead, Reynolds spends most of the movie chasing girls, killing bad guys, and at one point, fighting a boa constrictor. It keeps your attention,

but it's barely a Vietnam movie. And either way, it had a hard time finding audiences in 1965. In fact, it wasn't until three years later that Hollywood finally produced a hit film about Vietnam. And it didn't feature a mere movie star. It was built around a legend. He was an American icon and a guy who defined the war film, and maybe war itself, for generations of moviegoers. Nowadays, it's impossible to talk about John Wayne, the Oscar-winning movie star, without also talking about John Wayne, the unapologetic racist. But Duke's been dead for more than 40 years. Yet every once in a while, his infamous 1971 Playboy interview, in which he said, and I quote, I believe in white supremacy, gets passed around the internet in disbelief. His views were

so repugnant, they inspired an impassioned 1989 putdown from Flavor Flav himself. For much of the 20th century, though, Wayne was absolutely adored. He was a super patriot, a guy who'd starred in not only dozens of westerns, but also in blockbuster World War II dramas. Movies like The Longest Day, in which he played a real-life paratrooper leading men into battle on D-Day. One more thing. Your assignment tonight is strategic. You can't give the enemy a break.

Send them to hell. Wayne despised communism, and by the mid-60s, he'd become a vocal supporter of America's involvement in Southeast Asia. He'd written a letter to Congress describing anti-war protesters as, quote, Berkeley beatniks. And he'd gone to Vietnam and hung around with American grunts, some of whom he stayed in touch with long afterward. Around the time of those visits, Wayne bought the rights to Robin

Moore's bestseller, The Green Berets, a fictionalized account of Moore's experience as a journalist in Vietnam. But despite the book's success, it wasn't easy to get the green light for The Green Berets. Columbia turned it down. Universal said yes, then quickly backed out. Wayne blamed the liberals. But in reality, Hollywood still wanted nothing to do with Vietnam.

In 1966, the war would claim the lives of more than 6,000 Americans, three times the number of the year before. Studios were canceling Vietnam films across town. They were simply bad for business. As one executive put it, nobody wants to see guys getting killed in the Vietnam War when guys are getting killed in the Vietnam War. Even without that baggage, The Green Berets was a tough sell. War movies are expensive, and this one featured massive battle scenes.

Then there was the very unsubtle screenplay, which one studio executive described as, quote, the worst I've ever read. The movie follows a skeptical reporter who tags along with the Green Berets, watching them kill numerous Vietnamese. No studio wanted to take a stand on Vietnam. And the pro-war message of the Green Berets was loud and clear. I'm going to tell the people the facts, the facts of what I saw in there.

What you saw in there was nothing. I don't call brutality nothing, Colonel. That man was lining us up for a VC mortar crew. There's still such a thing as due process. Out here, due process is a bullet. Still, for all the studio indifference to the Green Berets, this was John Wayne. Sorry. John Wayne!

And after more than a year, he convinced Warner Brothers to make the film on a budget of $7 million, about $60 million today. He also got help, albeit indirectly, from Lyndon Johnson. The two men needed each other. Johnson knew public support for the war was wavering,

and Wayne needed the military. He was producing, starring in, and co-directing the Green Berets. If the movie was going to look real, he needed some heavy-duty machinery. So in 1965, Wayne sent the president a letter asking for help, and then, according to one account, followed it up with a phone call. Lyndon, I'm going to followed it up with a phone call. That's not really John Wayne, by the way. It's actually The Ringer's very own Chris Ryan.

Anyway, Wayne's request worked. He sent an eight-page list to the Department of Defense, outlining what he wanted. Tanks, machine guns, cargo planes. He also got permission to film on a military base in Georgia, as well as access to hundreds of troops, all funded with taxpayer money. In exchange, the military got approval over the script. The Green Berets would be a pro-America film,

overseen by a famously pro-America movie star. And it would all be made with American guns and gear. Wayne knew exactly what kind of Vietnam movie he was making. Years later, he described the Green Berets for what it was, propaganda. The studio executives who turned down the Green Berets in the mid-60s were right. To the average moviegoer, the war had become radioactive. As casualties increased, so did the number of anti-war protests, which were sometimes met with protests of their own. Americans doubled down on their views,

splitting the country along social, cultural, and political fault lines. I'm sure none of this sounds familiar, by the way. And for filmmakers, even those working outside Hollywood, any movie taking a stand on Vietnam was going to face resistance. Emil D'Antonio learned this when he arrived at a Chicago movie theater in the fall of 1969. His new film, a brutal Vietnam documentary titled In the Year of the Pig, had been causing chaos in the city for days. And it hadn't even played yet.

Here's D'Antonio, recounting that moment in a radio interview. They first of all threatened to kill me. And they threatened to bomb the theater. And they threatened to bomb the owner of the theater. And on the opening night of the film, there were five police cars with flashing lights. Watching the movie now, you can understand why In the Year of the Pig was so controversial.

The movie was financed in part by anti-war celebs like Paul Newman and Richard Avedon. And D'Antonio had used those resources to obtain some disturbing footage of wounded American soldiers being carried across the battlefield, of Vietnamese monks burning themselves alive. There were also plenty of interviews, some with the men who planned the fighting, and some with the men who actually had to do the fighting.

That includes George S. Patton, the son of the legendary World War II hero of the same name. In Year of the Pig, he talks about a memorial service he attended in Vietnam for four of his fellow soldiers. And the place was just packed. I turned around and looked at their faces, and they were, I was just proud. My feeling for America just soared because of their, the way they look, they look determined and reverent at the same time, but still they're a bloody good bunch of killers.

D'Antonio believed the U.S. had no business in Southeast Asia, and he knew a well-made movie could hammer that message home. It was probably the one thing he had in common with John Wayne. As you know, Bob, I made the film, first, I suppose, as a film, but also as propaganda. As it made its way across America, In the Year of the Pig was greeted with outrage. In Los Angeles, someone broke into a theater and painted the word traitors on the screen. In other big cities, screenings were pulled at the last minute. Even an Oscar nomination couldn't help the film get a wider release. Moviegoers hoping to see In the Year of the Pig

usually had to seek it out on a college campus or in Europe. This was the fate of nearly all the Vietnam documentaries produced while the war was still raging. In 1971, a team of more than a dozen filmmakers spent a weekend in Detroit collecting testimonials from anti-war Vietnam vets. They'd gathered to talk about atrocities they'd seen in combat. And their stories were horrifying. And the next slide is a slide of myself.

I'm extremely shameful of it. It's me, holding a dead body, smiling. Everyone in our platoon took two bodies, put them on the back ramp, drove them through a village for show. The footage from that weekend, which included a brief cameo from future politician John Kerry, was released in 1972 as Winter Soldier. Maybe released isn't the right word. The movie played at the Cannes Film Festival.

But still, no major U.S. distributor picked up Winter Soldier, and the major TV networks declined to air it. There were other crucial Vietnam documentaries during that late 60s, early 70s period. Movies like A Face of War or The Anderson Platoon, which won an Oscar. But these films could be hard for some audiences to stomach. One newspaper columnist admitted he walked out of Winter Soldier after only an hour. He agreed with the film's message, but it was simply too much for him to handle.

The story's headline? A film you shouldn't see. When Roger Ebert visited the set of The Green Berets in Fort Benning, Georgia in late 1967, he found John Wayne in high command, and in high spirits. The only thing bugging the Duke that day was a pesky on-set photographer. But Wayne set him straight, right in front of Ebert. Tell him the first time I see him shooting somebody picking his nose or scratching his butt, I'll take him and boot him all the way over to Italy where they make a living doing that. And I mean I'll boot him physically. Is that clear? By the time filming on the Green Berets wrapped,

Wayne had enough footage to stretch the movie to nearly two and a half hours. The end result had plenty of explosions and lots of war movie cliches. There's the bright-eyed, happy-go-lucky soldier who you just know is going to die. Then there's a cute little Vietnamese kid with a truly incomparable name, Hamchunk. You'd think Hamchunk is going to die too, but at the end of the movie, he's walking hand-in-hand with Wayne on the beach. What will happen to me now? By now, Amchunk is wearing an actual Green Beret.

You let me worry about that Green Beret. You're what this is all about. There are other Vietnamese characters in the Green Berets. Many are depicted as nameless monsters who exist mostly to be killed. Others are noble allies who need America's help to keep their country together. Wayne's film may have been pioneering a whole new genre,

the over-the-top Vietnam War epic. But in its treatment of non-white, non-American characters, The Green Berets was also very much rooted in Hollywood's past. When I was growing up, I think the two genres of movies that really made a big impression on me were World War II movies and Westerns.

This is author and scholar Viet Thanh Nguyen. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his 2015 book The Sympathizer about a Vietnamese-American spy who gets caught up in an out-of-control Vietnam War film. More on that later in the series. Wynn spent much of his childhood in California, where he watched a lot of movies, including those formative war flicks and westerns. When we think about Vietnam War movies, they are in fact, in many cases,

updated versions of the western, with white men surrounded by natives. I was, you know, as a young boy struggling with what it meant to be an American, struggling with what it meant to be male or masculine. And these genres were very much about men asserting themselves against all these unknown and wild and savage forces outside and inside of themselves. According to Wynn, the Green Berets is very much part of that Western tradition. And its portrayal of the Vietnamese reflected how many Americans viewed Vietnam in the 60s. And the infamous ending of the movie is John Wayne literally putting the Green Beret on top of the head of a Vietnamese orphan. And so, you know, this is clearly a movie about American paternalism and the Southeast Asian

as the progeny of the United States. John Wayne's own feelings about Vietnam, both the country and the conflict, were obvious to anybody who caught the Green Berets when it opened in the summer of 1968. Earlier that year, the Tet Offensive had started a bloody new chapter in Vietnam. The war was front and center in America's mind, and in The Green Berets, Wayne makes

his case as to why the fight was a worthy one. In one early scene, the film's skeptical journalist, played by 60s TV star David Jansen, grills a group of military men, asking them a question that was on the minds of millions of Americans. Just why were we in Vietnam? The answer comes from a hard-headed sergeant, played by famous Hollywood tough guy Aldo Ray. He shows the reporter a cache of captured weapons, all supplied by communist countries. From Red China, Chiai Com K-50. Chinese communists. SKS Soviet-made carbine.

Russian communists. Ammunition, Czechoslovakian made. Czech communists. His conclusion? The only way to stop communism from dominating the world, including the U.S., is to defeat it in Vietnam. That kind of loaded moment explains why most film critics had a visceral reaction to the Green Berets. In the New York Times, Renata Adler described it as

vile and insane. Ebert called it, quote, cruel and dishonest and unworthy of the thousands who have died in Vietnam. And Ebert was a guy who loved John Wayne. The response among war critics was even stronger. When the movie premiered in New York City, filmmakers invited real-life Green Berets to attend. They were greeted by more than a hundred protesters, some of them chanting, hey, hey, Green Berets, how many kids did you kill today? And when the movie opened across America, some theaters drew picketers who condemned the film as propaganda.

But at the box office, The Green Berets was a major success, one of the biggest movies of 1968, not far below Rosemary's Baby and Planet of the Apes. The weekend it opened, Ronald Reagan, who was by then the governor of California, tried to get tickets for him and his wife Nancy, only to be told there were none available. The movie also found a devoted audience in the military. It's actually not that bad of a movie, especially the first 10 minutes is probably the best explanation

of why the United States was in the war and why it was important to be there. That's Michael Lee Lanning again. He caught the Green Berets before heading off to Vietnam. I saw it while I was in jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia. And the portion of it, when they jump out of the airplane, was about two days before my first jump. Scared the hell out of me. We liked it because it was all we had, like a crust of bread to a starving man. The Green Berets would play for months, and Wayne spent the rest of 1968 on a victory lap,

one that included a stop at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach. While addressing the crowd, Duke took a swipe at his critics. And I thought I'd tell you folks that when I came out here that I was an actor, not a politician. But I read some of the reviews that some of my left-wing friends wrote about my last effort, and there's some doubt about that. The Green Berets would be one of Wayne's final war films, and for many years, the only studio movie about Vietnam. It would take more than five years for another Vietnam movie to cause a fight as big, and as public, as the one over the Green Berets. Peter Davis arrived in Saigon in the fall of 1972 with a small film crew and a big mission. To understand how America had become entrenched in what was then the longest running war in its history.

As Davis would later recount in a DVD commentary track, he wanted to make a movie that would answer three very tough questions. Why did we go to Vietnam? What did we do there? And what did the doing in turn do to us? Working with a budget of $1 million, an extraordinary amount of money for a documentary, Davis and his team began collecting as much on-the-ground footage of the Vietnam War as possible. They filmed bombed-out villages and tearful funerals, sites that had become familiar to many TV viewers.

But they also trained their cameras on American soldiers, filming them as they visited local brothels and set Vietnamese homes on fire. Davis was even granted an interview with William C. Westmoreland, the legendary Army general who'd led the U.S. efforts in Vietnam for four years. As Davis recalled, it was a somewhat uncomfortable encounter. I was driving, Westmoreland was sitting next to me in the car. He was nothing if not intimidating. He was like a John Wayne figure combined with a great athlete.

And he was commanding, which indeed was his title in Vietnam. And he glared at me while I was driving him out to the place that we had... Toward the end of the interview, Westmoreland shared a parting thought on his experiences overseas. He had a point he wanted to make. So much so, he asked to redo it, just to make sure he was being clear. A heads up, as you'll hear, Westmoreland's comments include offensive language and attitudes while discussing Vietnamese people.

Well, the Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does the Westerner. Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient. Such moments wound up in Davis' documentary, which he titled Hearts and Minds. In the film, Davis juxtaposes this moment of Westmoreland chatting casually back home in America with footage of a young Vietnamese child wailing at a funeral. Watching the sequence now, decades later, you can't quite believe what you're seeing or hearing. Hearts and Minds is full of provocative scenes like this. Davis combined multiple interviews with stock news footage, often contrasting the government's official stance toward Vietnam

with what he saw on the ground. The result was a new kind of documentary. Inventive, calculating, blunt. And it made some early viewers uneasy. Columbia Pictures, which had financed Hearts and Minds, got spooked by the threat of lawsuits and decided not to release it. The movie premiered at Cannes, then sat on the shelf for nearly a year. When it finally opened in 1975, audience reactions were strong. Some were angered by what footage Davis had included in the film, others by what he left

out. One of the film's most prominent critics was a former actor who'd starred in such World War II films as Hellcats of the Navy and This is the Army. And if there was one thing Ronald Reagan knew, it was that movies could shape viewers' feelings about war. Here's what he wrote about Hearts and Minds in a newspaper column. Quote, the purpose is propaganda, to show that Americans are simple-minded, jingoistic sadists. The film was criticized at times for showing what the Americans did that was atrocious, and not what the Vietnamese did. Well, it was very interesting, and at times I'm sure terrible, what Vietnamese did to one another and what they

occasionally did to Americans. But that wasn't the film I was making. Like the previous Vietnam documentaries, Hearts and Minds made its anti-war feelings clear. But unlike those films, it had the backing of a major studio, Warner Brothers, which picked up the movie after Columbia bailed and which had also released The Green Berets. What really helped Davis's film, which picked up the movie after Columbia bailed, and which had also released The Green Berets. What really helped Davis' film, though, was the support of Bert Schneider, the producer of counterculture hits Easy Rider and The Last Picture Show. Schneider waged a press blitz for Hearts and Minds, generating countless news articles about the film.

All the attention and all the anger that Hearts and Minds inspired would culminate on the night of April 8th, 1975. In just a few weeks, U.S. helicopters would race out of Saigon, ending America's official involvement in the war. But that wasn't the reason more than 40 million households tuned into NBC that evening. Those viewers were there for an escape. Live, the 47th Annual Academy Awards presentation. Dozens of Hollywood stars were there for the show. Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, and, of course, John Wayne.

They'd all be witnesses as Lauren Hutton announced the winner of the Best Documentary Award, Hearts and Minds. Davis gave a relatively subdued thank you speech, reminding viewers that the war was far from over and that people were still suffering in Vietnam at that very moment. But Schneider's speech was more head-on. It is ironic that we are here at a time just before Vietnam is about to be liberated. That murmuring you hear, that's somebody offstage telling the orchestra not to stop the speech.

I will now read a short wire that I have been asked to read by the Vietnamese people. Just days before the Oscar ceremony, helicopters from North Vietnam, made and supplied by the Soviets, began flying over South Vietnam. The fall of Saigon was imminent. And now, on live TV, Schneider was broadcasting a message from the communist forces that would soon roll into the city. It says, please transmit to all our friends in America our recognition of all that they have done on behalf of peace and for the application of the Paris Accords on Vietnam. These actions serve the legitimate interest of the American people and the Vietnamese people. Greetings of friendship to all the American people.

Thank you very much. Phones quickly began ringing at NBC offices in New York and L.A. Hundreds of callers demanded to know why quote-unquote communist propaganda had been allowed on the air. And backstage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, a fuming Bob Hope, who'd made multiple trips to Vietnam to entertain troops, wrote a statement denouncing Schneider's speech. Later in the show, Hope made

Sinatra read the message on air. It said, we are not responsible for any political statements made on this program, and it does not reflect the attitude of the Academy. That prompted a few boos from the audience. But the incident proved that Hollywood, which has spent years shying away from Vietnam, could no longer ignore it. And neither could movie audiences. By the mid-70s, thousands of soldiers had returned to America. And their stories would soon be told on the big screen. The Vietnam War was coming home. On the next episode of Do We Get to Win This Time...

And here I am later taking care of people who went through that kind of trauma. Ambushes, hit by shells. In the 70s, when they're all returning and many of them experiencing the things we would now call PTSD, there was no label for it. There was a protest against the war, and they hollered at me because of my haircut. They recognized me as a military and called me a baby killer. This is Do We Get to Win This Time? How Hollywood Made the Vietnam War.

Written and reported by me, Brian Raftery. The executive producers are Bill Simmons, Juliet Lippman, and Sean Fennessy. Our story editor is Amanda Dobbins. The show was produced by Devin Manzi, Mike Wargon, and Vikram Patel. Fact-checking by Dan Comer. Copy editing by Craig Gaines. Talent booking by Kat Spilling.

Sound design by Bobby Wagner. Mixing and mastering by Scott Somerville. The music in this series comes from Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Art direction and illustration by David Shoemaker. Thanks for listening. Scott Somerville. The music in this series comes from Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Art direction and illustration by Davis Shoemaker. Thanks for listening.