This book documents films produced in America during the 1940s, including 61 documentaries and 44 so-called "race movies," B Westerns and films from Poverty Row studios. Entries are alphabetically arranged by title and sequentially numbered. Where applicable, entries contain the following information: studio and/or production company, year of production and release, cast (sometimes with name of character played), running time, a brief synopsis, and awards won.

On the history of motion pictures

In Europe the war was already old, but while feeding nickels into roadhouse jukeboxes, the Presidential conventions, where the biggest question would be whether That Man in the White House would shatter yet another precedent and run for a third term. To many Americans, there seemed little else worth worrying about. As with all time periods, the 1940s had a set of specific fads that were popular around the country. Read this book and find out about the films of this decade and more...

From 1937 through 1945, Hollywood produced over 1,000 films relating to the war. This enormous and exhaustive reference work first analyzes the war films as sociopolitical documents. Part one, entitled "The Crisis Abroad, 1937-1941," focuses on movies that reflected America's increasing uneasiness. Part two, "Waging War, 1942-1945," reveals that many movies made from 1942 through 1945 included at least some allusion to World War II.