Five Came Back: WW2 and Mark Harris

If "Five Came Back" seems like a familiar title to you, congrats, and nibble some popcorn.

If you know it was a film with a who's who of obscure character actors and B-list leading men (Chester Morris, Kent Taylor, Patrick Knowles, Wendy Barrie, John Carradine, Joseph Calleia, and C.Aubrey Smith) put a whole tin of Jiffy Pop on the stove.

Mark Harris's new book is about World War 2 in Hollywood, as seen through the eyes of five directors. In these days of ADD and cable channel surfing and streaming videos, who'd expect a book to focus on just one person? Harris takes a look at what John Ford, George Stevens, John Huston, William Wyler and Frank Capra did during the war, daddy.

Harris, who previously wrote "Scenes from a Revolution," about the five 1967 Academy Awards "Best Picture" nominees, dials back to the start of World War 2, and examines what some of the most influential directors decided to put on the silver screen. Capra, for example, chose to make some "We We Fight" propaganda films, and heroically endured shrapnel in his arm while he filmed the Battle of Midway.

Film buffs are free to rifle the pages back and forth, looking at favorite directors or films first, or for juicy gossip (Huston's sex life, Ford's antisemitism). More devout cinema fans will be at the edge of their seats over the authors analysis of "The Battle of San Pietro," for example, and how much of Huston's script was actual, if not factual. The 40's...many who were in World War 2 are now gone, but not all...and Harris has been able to dig up a lot of fresh material to make this valuable and not just another Film 101 rehash from somebody who likes to talk movie trivia.