Word: norwegians
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Opening in Stockholm last month, John Steinbeck's anti-Nazi, inferentially Norwegian The Moon Is Down proved such a smash that it speedily moved to a bigger theater. Swedish critics, speaking of evergrowing Norwegian resistance, praised Steinbeck for prophetic insight, remarked that The Moon Is Down is truer today than when it was written...
...Nunnally Johnson, who also did Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath) the camera witnesses many important events that take place offstage in the play. The picture shows the Nazi invaders' confident march into the mining village of Selvik, their mowing down of a pitiful dozen of Norwegian soldiers, the villagers' terror and confusion. Then, in the sharp language of action rather than introspective comment, it describes the villagers' growing hatred and resistance, the Nazis' growing fear...
Henry Travers does an excellent job as the fumbling, humbly heroic Norwegian mayor; so does Dorris Bowdon (Mrs. Nunnally Johnson) as the slayer of a Nazi officer who tries to seduce her. In the story's most controversial role, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, as the Nazi commander, looks more like a cold-blooded Junker than like the unmilitary officer described by Steinbeck...
Weakest spot is short-wave radio. The transmission is often weak and reception poor. The Nazis have some 100 transmitters to the U.S.'s 21. But OWI cares more about quality of reception than quantity, in this way: from private sources OWI knows that one Norwegian underground operator will be listening in-perhaps in his basement, perhaps on a mountainside. He does not need his news "angled": he just wants the truth. When he gets the news he fans it out to others-by letters, seditious handbills, etc. With the Nazi death penalty enforced for listeners to U.S. news...
Covering Up. On the East Coast the services seem more conservative. In Norfolk, Tattooist Arthur B. ("Cap'n Dan") Coleman, who has had the same shop for 25 years, finds sailors still wanting girls covered with flags; eagles; anchors with fouled lines. Baltimore's Norwegian Tattooist Einar ("Tattoo Bill") Kluge said last week: "Business isn't as good as it was in the last war, but it's good. . . . Women run to initials, roses and butterflies on the arm and leg, stand up to it better than men, who sometimes faint. As for the Marines...