Mail dominated roles? My grandmother was a surgical nurse. Patton shows up with a stitch (a boil on the forehead from the helmet). It is Sunday the semi agreed up day of rest between the American/Germans in North Africa. The nurses are prepping for Monday when fighting starts again. Patton says, "No wounded here? What? Did you all come here to find husbands?" The nurses were officers but the Sgt Major (a woman) rips into Patton with every thing that was wrong and how busy they were. One of her complaints is that to reach the R&R camps the nurses are not allowed to check out vehicles from the motor pool. 1943 nurses had to hitchhike to the R&R and the Tunisian men circa 1943 were not so pleasant to hitchhikers. Patton changed the rules to allow women to checkout vehicles. At Christmas he had some dressed up French general deliver 2 dozen roses to the Sgt Major.
Oh well good for him and God Bless your grandmother anyway. Being a surgical nurse made her invaluable during wartime I'm sure. My dad was an internal medicine specialist surgeon who once stayed up and did surgeries at a Frontline field hospital patching up soldiers for 72 hours straight. He could not have done that without the assistance of a surgical nurse. He told me he saw 1 particular soldier Twice during that 72 hours. The first time with a gunshot wound and the 2nd time with a mortar shrapnel wound!!! 😳
Wow, looks like a great movie! I can’t wait to see it. One thing I noticed in the PR photo of Kate Winslet for the movie, she has her chin strap of her helmet down under her chin. My dad’s division, the 99th ID, landed at Le Harve, France in August of 1944. Dad told me that when they landed, one of the first things they were told was to NOT wear the helmet strap under your chin. The reason being, the concussion of a shell landing near by could decapitate you or at least break your neck. Interestingly, Kate Winslet is shown being blown back by a shell that lands close to her. When I asked my dad how you kept the helmet on if the chin strap was not used, he said a lot of time you didn’t. If it fell off, you just picked it up and put it back on. Often times, the strap for the helmet liner would be pulled forward and hooked over the front lip of the steel helmet. This was usually a thin leather strap. The larger canvas strap, that was attached to the bail of the steel helmet, was pulled up behind the steel helmet. This kept the two helmets together so if it did fall off, it was easy to pick it up and put it back on. The helmet liner was made out of fiberglass and contained the canvas webbing inside to fit on the soldier’s head. The steel helmet did not have any webbing in it. Of course, the airborne soldiers had a completely different chin strap to keep the helmet on during a parachute drop. Professor, I’d like to hear what you have found out about either wearing the chin strap or not during WWII. Thanks.
I really enjoy the war movies that dig deeper into the little known stories. They've been around for a while but don't typically get the acclaim of the big films like Saving Private Ryan. Films like: Lee, Amen, Flame and Citron, One Life, Monuments Men, Defiance, etc. It's really important to remember that this war wasn't just fought by the guys in uniform in fox holes. Everybody brought their own needs, specialties, and areas of interest to the war.
My only issue is that Kate Winslet and Andy Samberg are significantly older than their real life counterparts in this. Makes me wish they had shot this at least 10 years ago when they were more age appropriate. That being said they still look pretty close in likeness.
Thank you for this video! Great to see the spotlight on female war journalist and photo-journalists. Hopefully this opens the cinematic door to other women in the journalism trade. Thinking in specific of Catherine Leroy, her life story would make for an epic war movie. For those of you unaware of Leroy, I recommend reading You Don’t Belong Here by Elizabeth Becker, highlighting the stories of three female journalists in Vietnam. Becker herself was instrumental in bringing to light the horrors of Cambodia at the tail end of the Vietnam war. A brilliant read.
Yep, lee Miller was there. The Blitz, France, the liberation of two camps.....she was there the whole time. Fashion model, artists model, surrealist photographer, war correspondent, gourmet cook, high functioning addict. She was all of those. Picasso painted her six times - there's a photo of him being given a tour of the family farm by her son who didn't know about half of the things in his mothers life until after her death (I think he definitely inherited her bone structure).
If Doctor Fredrick didn't do a review of the trailer I would never have considered this movie on the strength of the trailer. It seems more like a Lifetime movie. Didn't give any background of Lee Miller and her contributions. Now that I know I will see it.
Thanks Jared I hadn’t seen anything about this until now. Personally I wish they would make a film about the female SOE agents such as Violette Szabo who were as brave as the men working in Nazi occupied Europe. Theirs is a story little known outside of WW2 historians.
Carve Her Name With Pride (1958). Szabo was played by Virginia McKenna and the film was directed by Lewis Gilbert (The Sea Shall Not Have Them, Reach For The Sky, Sink The Bismarck, You Only Live Twice, Operation Daybreak, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, and many many more).
There's a 1950 film name 'Odette' after Odette Hallowes' SOE experience. I can't find it, but I thought you'd want to check it out. I wish they'd make biographies of Virginia Hall or Krystyna Skarbek. They have so much lore behind them.
1:31 She'd had tough times before - I'm wondering what other parts of her life they'll talk about in this movie. Though I think we got a confirmation with the focus on the little girl
In a way, I'm sort of happy a major studio didn't pick it up. I feel it would have been less authentic and watered down in 2024. Looking forward to this film.
Thanks, Jared. I delved briefly into Miller's story on line-- whew. What a life during a fascinating time in history. Born in 1907. By WW2 she had already experienced a great deal. I'm definitely going to catch this when it hits the theaters.
Thanks for the informative video. Looking forward to watching the film when it comes out here in the UK. Just downloaded ur book “Dispatches of D-Day to my kindle so looking forward to reading that as well!! Keep up the good work.
Hi Dr. Fredrick. I've been a subscriber for a while. Thanks for this reaction. Could you please do a deep dive on one of my most favorite female centric WW II movies called "So Proudly We Hail" (1943) directed by Mark Sandwich and starring Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard, Veronica Lake and George Reeves among others. "Lee" reminded me of "So Proudly We Hail". Thanks to that movie I became a fan of Claudette Colbert 🥰
Subscribed because of your thoughtful analysis and because you linked information about the Holocaust front-and-center on your video. We need to remember if we hope to not repeat.
