Publisher's Synopsis
"In Broadway Goes to War, Robert L. McLaughlin and Sally E. Parry analyze how American theater actively addressed and debated timely and controversial topics during World War II. Productions such as Watch on the Rhine (1941), The Moon is Down (1942), Tomorrow the World (1943), and A Bell for Adano (1944) encouraged public discussion of the war's impact on daily life and raised critical topics about the conflict well before other forms of popular media. McLaughlin and Parry reveal that while film studios, radio stations, newspapers, and other media outlets widely chose to echo official government communications and opinions regarding Nazi Germany and the war, Broadway remained stunningly independent. In the absence of pressure from the US Office of War Information or an industry-based agency like Hollywood's Hayes Office, the New York stage became an important venue for debating topics that would have been considered taboo on a film set,
