Army-Navy Screen Magazine, No. 45, Reel 2

This film shows the following: scenes at various polling places in the United States, Bob Hope voting, crowds in Times Square, U.S. soldiers in Europe awaiting voting returns, and a cartoon in which Pvt. Snafu undergoes extremes in weather conditions in the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. This is the second of two reels for this film (see the first reel).

The Army-Navy Screen Magazine was a biweekly news, information, and entertainment series of short films designed for servicemen. It was shown before the feature film in all military motion picture theaters during the World War II. The series was produced by the Signal Corps’ Army Pictorial Service under the supervision of Frank Capra.

While the purpose of the series was primarily to educate, the producers recognized that they must also succeed in entertaining a paying GI audience who had come to see a first-run Hollywood feature. Typically, each 20-minute episode consisted of four or five segments featuring stories about the home front, news about major events of the war, an animated cartoon, and a variety show with entertainers like Bob Hope, Judy Garland, and Lena Horne.

The series became the eyes and ears of its soldier audience as it covered such news events as D-Day, Germany’s surrender, the death of FDR, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.