Mid-Century Mass Media Movie Study

Media (the plural form of medium) is the common usage word for all the various forms of mass communication.  Today, the Internet, television and movies are the media technologies that inform and entertain us.  In 1943 we were informed and entertained almost exclusively by print media, radio and movies.  Guadalcanal Diary is a 1943 monochrome film that the contemplative movie connoisseur should view and study for its unusual confluence of the media of the mid-20th century.

The Guadalcanal Campaign during World War II was significant because it was the beginning conflict in the long and difficult effort to reverse Japanese military conquests and take the war back to the Japanese Islands.  Richard Tregaskis was a 26 year old journalist who volunteered to serve as a war correspondent with the Marines on Guadalcanal.  Five months after the commencement of the six-month campaign, Tregaskis published a book,"Guadalcanal Diary," giving the American public an eyewitness account of the island battle.  Six months after publication of the book, 20th Century Fox began production of a film based on the book.  The film was released in October of 1943, just ten months after the conclusion of the fighting on Guadalcanal Island.  The movie and book exposed the public to the real life experience of men-at-war.  It is significant that this mass communication of the war experience was only mid-way through the war in the Pacific theater of operations.  The horrific death tolls of Iwo Jima and Okinawa (148,185 combat deaths) were more than a year in the future for the 1943 movie patrons.  One year after the movie's release, three of the film actors recreated their roles for the Lux Radio Theater presentation of "Guadalcanal Diary," thereby completing a triparte mass communication by print, film and radio.                                                          John Greanias, Copyright 2013.