Winds of War

[Walt's Daughter]

Yesterday Lee and I started re-watching the series, Winds of War. This is probably the 5th or so time I've seen it and I still love it. Both of us have also read the book and the series that follows, War and Rememberance.

 

If you haven't seen the series, I strongly suggest that you take the time someday. It gives you a good feel for the entire war and the series of events that led up to it. It follows the lives of several individuals in America, Italy, Germany, Poland, etc.

 

The book is by Herman Wouk and the mini-series is based on his books.

[Walt's Daughter]

Well we've made it through several episodes by this evening. It is now late fall of 1940. The Nazi's are bombing London, Paris has fallen and Hilter is preparing for the invasion of Russia. 1940 was quite a year!

 

At the end of the CD tonight, they had a special "making of the movie" segment. The part that was most fascinating was the director/producer talking about the episode where Pearl Harbor is attacked. He was explaining that the filming took place in 1980 and they didn't have all the special effects available that they have today. He spoke of taking weeks to set up all the explosions that were to take place and how they were to have 8 different cameras going simultaneously to catch the action. They also had a still photographer named Roland. Well they wanted to do just a "dry-run" and he asked that someone call in the still photographer. Well... Someone called out for him and someone else mistook the words. They thought he said, "Roll-'em" and he actually called for Roland. You can imagine what happened next. Yup, all the charges started going off and here they are not quite prepared. So he went with it and they began shooting the sequence of events and they pulled it off. Talk about sweating.

 

He said the scene that really got to him was the filming that took place depicting the meeting of Roosevelt and Churchill. He remembered that they filmed the actor playing FDR, steadfastly making his way up the gang-plank assisted by his son, walking with the stiff leg braces and when he made it onto the deck the band started playing and there wasn't a dry-eye in the house. During that same scene, the camera man was crying so hard he said he couldn't see through his lens. Wow, talk about recapturing the moment in time. Makes on gulp. So many historic scenes once again brought to life with all the grandeur of the past.