376 Films & TV Shows Set In North America During The 1940s
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The Fighting Sullivans
Iowa The 1930s The 1940sTHEY MET LIFE - AND GLORY - IN ONE BLINDING FLASH!! — The lives of a close-knit group of brothers growing up in Iowa during the days of the Great Depression and of World War II and their eventual deaths in action in the Pacific theater are chronicled in this film based on a true story.
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Maisie Goes to Reno
Nevada The 1940sYOU'LL BE CRAZY ABOUT MAISIE! — A Brooklyn showgirl gets mixed up in a divorce between a soldier and his wife.
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Marine Raiders
California 🇦🇺 Australia 🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea 🇸🇧 Solomon Islands The 1940sCOURAGE - Cold as the Steel of their Bayonets! ROMANCE - Warm as the Love which Inspires It! ACTION - Shaking the Skies! — A Marine major (Pat O'Brien) looks out for his captain (Robert Ryan) on Guadalcanal and in Australia.
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Air Force
Florida Hawaii 🇵🇭 Philippines The 1940sGIANTS OF THE SKY...blazing a trail to victory! — The crew of an Air Force bomber arrives in Pearl Harbor in the aftermath of the Japanese attack and is sent on to Manila to help with the defense of the Philippines.
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Report from the Aleutians
Alaska The 1940sA documentary propaganda film produced by the U.S. Army Signal Corps about the Aleutian Islands Campaign during World War II. The film opens with a map showing the strategic importance of the island, and the thrust of the 1942 Japanese offensive into Midway and Dutch Harbor. Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
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Around the World
California 🇱🇾 Libya 🇪🇬 Egypt The 1940sTHE MUSICAL THAT GOES PLACES... all over the global map on a song-and-laugh tour of our fighting fronts! — Bandleader Kay Kyser takes his troupe of nutty musicians, goofball comics and pretty girl singers on a tour around the world to entertain the troops during World War II.
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This Is the Army
Hawaii The 1940s The 1910sIt's your own army - in the army's own show! — In WW I dancer Jerry Jones stages an all-soldier show on Broadway, called Yip Yip Yaphank. Wounded in the War, he becomes a producer. In WW II his son Johnny Jones, who was before his fathers assistant, gets the order to stage a knew all-soldier show, called THIS IS THE ARMY. But in his pesonal life he has problems, because he refuses to marry his fiancée until the war is over.
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Bombardier
New Mexico Aichi Prefecture The 1940sSee the bombing of Tokyo before your very eyes — A documentary/drama about the training of bombardiers during WWII. Major Chick Davis proves to the U.S. Army the superiority of high altitude precision bombing, and establishes a school for bombardiers. Training is followed in semi-documentary style, with personal dramas in subplots. The climax is a spectacular, if somewhat jingoistic, battle sequence.
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Watch on the Rhine
District of Columbia The 1940sOn her lonesome lips a smile. — On the eve of World War II, the German Kurt Müller, his American-born wife Sara, and their three children, having lived in Europe for years, visit Sara's wealthy mother near Washington, DC. Kurt secretly works for the anti-Nazi resistance. A visiting Romanian count, becoming aware of this, seeks to blackmail him.
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December 7th
Hawaii The 1940s"Docudrama" about the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 and its results, the recovering of the ships, the improving of defense in Hawaii and the US efforts to beat back the Japanese reinforcements.
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Happy Land
Iowa The 1940s The 1930s The 1920s The 1910sAn Iowa drugstore owner becomes embittered when his son is killed in World War II. The druggist believes that the boy's life was cut short before he had an opportunity to truly appreciate his existence.
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Proudly She Marches
🇨🇦 Canada The 1940sThis film from the Second World War is a report on how Canadian women were trained to handle many kinds of work in the Canadian Women's Army Corps, the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service. Basic training, everyday life in the forces and the contribution of women to Canada's fighting strength are illustrated.
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Across the Pacific
🇵🇦 Panama The 1940sA Warner Bros. Hit ! — Rick Leland makes no secret of the fact he has no loyalty to his home country after he is court-marshaled out of the army and boards a Japanese ship for the Orient in late 1941. But has Leland really been booted out, or is there some other motive for his getting close to fellow passenger Doctor Lorenz? Any motive for getting close to attractive traveller Alberta Marlow would however seem pretty obvious.
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The Gay Sisters
New York The 1940sAnother great novel... another Warner Bros. hit! — The eldest (Barbara Stanwyck) of three sisters protects their Fifth Avenue mansion from a developer (George Brent) she once married.
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Wings for the Eagle
California The 1940sIt's Time-and-a-Half for Uncle Sam...and the Rest of the Time is for Love! — Aircraft workers during during World War II become involved in a love triangle.
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Remember Pearl Harbor
🇵🇭 Philippines Hawaii The 1940sAmerica's Stiring War Cry!...Ringing Across The Oceans...Striking Fear Into The Heart Of A Sneaking Foe Who Dared To Stab Uncle Sam In The Back! — A man tries to redeem himself after ducking out on his comrades before the fatal attack.
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Secret Agent of Japan
Shanghai Hawaii The 1940sNow! The First, Inside Story Behind The "Stab In The Back"! — World War II espionage drama, starring Preston Foster and Lynn Bari.
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Citizen Kane
New York Florida The 1940s The 1930s The 1920s The 1910s The 1900s The 1890s The 1870sIt's terrific! — Newspaper magnate, Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.
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Dumbo
Florida The 1940sThe One...The Only...The FABULOUS... — Dumbo is a baby elephant born with over-sized ears and a supreme lack of confidence. But thanks to his even more diminutive buddy Timothy the Mouse, the pint-sized pachyderm learns to surmount all obstacles.
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Mr. & Mrs. Smith
New York The 1940sLombard and Montgomery Get Hitched As They're Getting Unhitched ! — Happily married for three years, Ann and David Smith live in New York. One morning Ann asks David if he had to do it over again, would he marry her? To her shock, he answers, "No". Later that day, they separately discover that, due to a legal complication, they are not legally married.
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Remember the Day
Indiana The 1940s The 1930s The 1920s The 1910sElderly schoolteacher Nora Trinell, waiting to meet presidential nominee Dewey Roberts, recalls him as her student back in 1916 and his relation to Dan Hopkins, the man she married and lost.
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Flight Command
Florida The 1940sT-H-R-I-L-L AMERICA! Here come The Flying "HELL CATS"! — A rookie flyer, Ens. Alan Drake, joins the famous Hellcats Squadron right out of flight school in Pensacola. He doesn't make a great first impression when he is forced to ditch his airplane and parachute to safety when he arrives at the base but is unable to land due to heavy fog. On his first day on the job, his poor shooting skills results in the Hellcats losing an air combat competition. His fellow pilots accept him anyways but they think he's crossed the line when they erroneously conclude that while their CO Billy Gray is away, Drake has an affair with his wife Lorna. Drake is now an outcast and is prepared to resign from the Navy but his extreme heroism in saving Billy Gray's life turns things around.
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The Fight for Life
Illinois The 1940sThe Fight for Life was documentary filmmaker Pare Lorentz' first "dramatic" film, utilizing the talents of several top New York stage actors. A tribute to the Chicago Maternity Center and its efforts to provide the best possible care for destitute mothers, the film is based on the book of the same name by Paul de Kruif. Myron McCormick plays the largest role as a dedicated intern, while others in the cast include such theatrical heavywrights as Will Geer, Dudley Digges and Dorothy Adams. The film's many vignettes range from the tragic (a mother dying in childbirth in the opening scene) to the exultant (another mother rescued from the brink of death in a disease-ridden tenement). Filmed in Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland, Fight for Life is a worthwhile effort, though Lorentz seems more comfortable with the "actuality" scenes than with the dramatized passages.
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The Long Home
Tennessee Kentucky The 1940sRural Tennessee in the 1940's: a young man unwittingly goes to work building a honky-tonk for the charismatically diabolical bootlegger who murdered his father ten years earlier and runs into conflict when he falls for the young woman the bootlegger is grooming to be a prostitute. NOTE: 2020-08-31 According to Wikipedia, The Long Home was tentatively expected to be released in 2017, and in November of that year, the sales rights to the movie were acquired by Great Point Media. However, it has yet to be released in any format as of 2020.
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KOMMANDO 1944
California 🇩🇪 Germany The 1940sJuly 1944, An Asian American soldier Corporal Soo is thrown into a Nazi work camp on a farm in Germany as his family back home in America are forced into an American Japanese concentration camp in Manzanar California. The allied soldiers think Soo is a Japanese soldier and segregate him. Soo must fight to let go of the past in order to be set free.
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