Capra formed his own production company after Mr Smith but Meet John Doe flopped and so did the company

Some of Cary Grant’s family in Bristol died in the Battle of Britain

Huston had an open affair with Olivia de Havilland and Ford a thing with Hepburn

Ford answered only to Donovan and was at Midway to shoot a documentary when the battle happened; he hid the footage from the feds and showed the short to studio chiefs and FDR who loved it

Congress had hearing before Pearl Harbor about Hollywood’s Communist sympathies; once the war began and initial flurry of wartime filmmaking dissipated, studios were summoned again to question use of government-sanctioned propaganda

Senator Truman chaired committee that oversaw wartime expenditures

Wyler flew on dangerous Air Force missions into France and Germany for footage that became Memphis Belle

Capra’s “Hey Soldier!” morphed into Private SNAFU, which helped recruit Theodore Geisel

Ford and Stevens were part of D-Day; Ford’s Field Photo crew had cameras on boats but were destroyed, but got beach footage that was too graphic for the public

Stevens joined the Free French troops to film the liberation of Paris; told de Gaulle and the German governor of Paris to reenact official German surrender in better lighting

Ford resented John Wayne’s lack of service and belittled him for it

Wyler lost his hearing while filming in a plane over Italy and had to leave the air force

Stevens’ crew documented Dachau camp; he went on to Berchtesgaden and Hitler’s grave

Huston made documentary of soldiers’ postwar treatment as Wyler did Best Years; Army later rescinded clearance and spiked it

Ford like Capra went independent after the war, not wanting to be subservient to studios

Ford and Stevens documentaries on Germany and the concentration camps were shown at the Nuremberg trials