Bogart Explains Republicans, Short and Sweet

No Half Measures

Relic of a Bygone Era

Today, the sentiment expressed in the promotional text on this poster for Warner Brothers' `1944 film, "Passage to Marseilles" is almost literally unimaginable: a mainstream movie company marketing its film to the general public on the explicit claim that it is every freedom-loving person's duty to fight fascism whatever the cost.

That was 1944, when patriotic Americans were fighting fascists, not 2025, as patriotic Americans watch in horror as tens of millions of our fellow citizens are either proudly showing themselves to be fascists, or cravenly capitulating to them.

Anyway, the text is a little hard to read, so here you go:

"PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE", starring Humphrey Bogart, is the story of an outcast ... forgotten by, but not forgetting, the land that banished him ... and of how jungle and shackles and mutiny could not stop him from going home.

Entertainment? Certainly! For entertainment is our business - a business in which Warner Brothers is a widely-recognized leader.

And that leadership is based on this Company's ability to make one picture satisfy two values!

One value is entertainment.

The other is best expressed in a long-standing Warner Bros. policy ... of producing films that will help to champion the basic freedoms of democracy.

You've seen that policy applied in "This Is The Army", "Air Force", "Princess O'Rourke", "Destination Tokyo", "Watch On The Rhine", "In Our Time", and many other Warner Bros. pictures

Be sure to see it again in "PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE", "THE ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN" "UNCERTAIN GLORY" and other Warner pictures soon to come! Then you'll know why the New York Times referred to this Company's "enviable record for combining good citizenship with good picture-making".

WARNER BROS.

JACK L WARNER, Executive Producer

A media corporation Selling a movie based on the fundamental virtue of killing Nazis... and winning praise from The New York Times for it's good citizenship?

What a concept!

Especially considering that, 81 years later,  media giant Netflix -- which streams some of Warner Brothers most popular movies -- is trying to sell the public on the virtue of not taking sides against fascists because, y'know, Both Sides.  

Both Sides Don't

Professional Left Podcast Episode 877: Resistance Theater! (1940's Movies And This Week's News)

“I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble” -- Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon.

Links:  

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Science Fiction University Episode 23: The Maltese Falcon

All episodes available at our Science Fiction University website here.

Professional Left Podcast #202

"I’d bet they’re asleep in New York. I’d bet they’re asleep all over America…"

-- Rick Blaine, Casablanca

Links: 

• Homeland is the story of Cassandra 
• Books mentioned in Science Fiction University:  Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake  and   The Handmaid's Tale,  Frederick Pohl,  The Space Merchants,  and   Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People.

Da' money goes here:

Aggregation 4 Dummies

First-name-chummy + link.

Will and Conor talk about Winnie.

See?