The Big Picture: The Cold War on the Small Screen. John W. Lemza. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2021.
The subject of John W. Lemza’s scholarly study The Big Picture: The Cold War on the Small Screen is a U.S. Army-produced documentary television series called The Big Picture that ran from 1951-1971 on network, local, and educational stations, as well as on the Armed Forces Network of overseas stations. The intent of the television series was to allow the Army to “tell its story” to the American public by offering weekly half-hour vignettes of Army battles, operations, culture, and weaponry, as well as portraits of memorable units and soldiers.[1] Lemza’s study is relevant to our own era in which a gaping civil-military divide separates the American public from the military, and in which the military largely fails to communicate a compelling appreciation of its goals, virtues, and activities. Lemza recovers a historical chapter in which the Army much more successfully married its messages with the possibilities of television technology, the entertainment realm, and the tastes of emerging mass-viewing audiences. The account of how it did so, and why the endeavor eventually collapsed, is full of intriguing insights and historical details.
Billed by the Army as “an official television report to the nation from the United States Army,” The Big Picture series is now largely forgotten, or remembered primarily for its portentously strident tone that relentlessly affirms the value and valor of the Army.[2] But the show was popular in its time and was long-lasting: over its 20-year run, the Army produced 823 episodes, first broadcast on network television and later syndicated to 426 local commercial, educational, and cable television stations, as well as 51 stations on the Armed Forces Network.
Series episodes combined war footage primarily shot by the Army Signal Corps or images commissioned by the Army Pictorial Center (APC) to serve a particular episode’s needs. In some cases, created scenes were shot in the studios of the Army Pictorial Center. Most episodes were introduced by on-screen hosts, either Army officers and non-commissioned officers in uniform or civilian journalists, to include luminaries such as Walter Cronkite, Edward B. Murrow, and Ronald Reagan. Stirring martial music and stock footage of parades and waving flags highlighted the grandeur and patriotic valence of each episode’s subject. Many episodes, however, also contained graphic combat footage drawn from World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam War archives.
Lemza excels in establishing the 1950s cultural context that engendered The Big Picture series and allowed it to flourish. Especially important was the rise of the television industry as an entertainment medium, the popularity of which was immediately evident. By 1955, for example, 65% of American homes had television sets. Lemza describes how the Army adroitly partnered with the television industry—primarily the big national networks based in New York—to leverage the power of television to influence (while entertaining) viewers. Importantly, Lemza notes that the series was just one of a number of shows in the early 1950s produced by the military in conjunction with the television industry to meet audience appetites. The Army’s series ran alongside similar efforts by the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, as well as other productions by the Army.
The branches’ respective efforts to publicize their virtues on network television were more competitive than cooperative, however, because the stakes were high. The Army, for example, worried the other branches were better positioned to curry favor with Washington politicians for funding dollars and with the American public to boost recruitment. As a consequence, The Big Picture episodes frequently promoted the Army’s continuing relevance in an age of high-tech Cold War conflict with Russia. Lemza reports that the shows sponsored by other military branches lasted just a few years at most, so while the Army was not successful in winning every battle for dollars in Washington or recruits among the American populace, it can be said to have won the television war. While not uncritical of some aspects of the show’s production, Lemza asks us to appreciate the overall craftsmanship and savvy of the show’s creators that allowed the series to survive for twenty years while other military-informational shows perished.
Lemza appears to have watched all 823 episodes of the series and helpfully categorizes episodes into three groups. The largest number of episodes are those Lemza deems “historical” and “informational, instructional, and educational.”[3] A second group of episodes asserts the Army’s importance in ensuring America’s safety in Cold War competition with the Soviet Union and its proxy states. But Lemza’s chief interest is in his third category of episodes: those that extoll an exceptionalist vision of American superiority that is both defended by and reflected in the Army.[4] An example of a The Big Picture episode that ties military endeavor with the American way-of-life is “The Right to Bear and Keep Arms.” The episode describes weapon ownership and proficiency as an integral part of American history and identity and salutes the close relationship of the Army and the National Rifle Association. Though many episodes were much more anodyne—for example, those that described the Army’s commitment to community engagement and aiding disaster relief—episodes such as “The Right to Bear and Keep Arms,” as well as others that describe the important role played by chaplains in the military, opened up the series to criticism. The charge, mounted with increasing fervor as the Vietnam War and the cultural battles of the 1960s unfolded, was that the series went beyond objective telling of the Army story to partisan political advocacy and a slanted portrayal of what constitutes essential American characteristics. While acceptable in the 1950s, unquestioning connection of Army endeavor with ideological and political stances became increasingly problematic in the late 1960s and contributed to The Big Picture’s demise.
Lemza also usefully tracks the show’s effort to document the Army’s embrace of social change over the years. Unfortunately, the effort was, in his estimation, spotty. Several episodes highlighted the numbers and roles played by women in the Army, but Lemza asserts the portraits were often patronizing and condescending. African-Americans are featured coincidentally in group shots of soldiers marching and fighting throughout the show’s run, but no episodes were dedicated specifically to highlighting Army opportunities for Black Americans. Unflattering race-related events, such as riots by Black soldiers in Germany in 1955 and 1970, were definitely not addressed by The Big Picture episodes. Even more curious to Lemza is the failure of the series to sing the praises of Japanese-American units such as the 442nd Infantry Regiment and the 100th Infantry Battalion that fought valiantly in World War II, even as the series routinely dedicated many other episodes to heroic exploits by other soldiers and units.
So why did the series end in 1971, even, as Lemza reports, it was being aired on more stations than ever before in its run? Though the show was still widely syndicated, it was not being broadcast in big urban markets and even on the small markets where it still appeared it often was scheduled in non-prime time slots. An early sign that the America viewing public was not completely enthralled with the Army’s overly-serious regard for its own greatness was present even in the early years. In the 1950s, for example, more contrarian–even subversive–portraits of military life were rendered by popular TV comedies such as The Phil Silvers Show, a precursor to later military sit-coms such as Hogan’s Heroes; Gomer Pyle, USMC; and eventually (after The Big Picture’s demise) M*A*S*H. Lemza also notes that the popularity of “serious” war literature such as Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five pointed to a public appetite for representations of war and the military that were not so high-minded and obviously partial.
This growing sentiment fed into the biggest reason for the end of the series’ run: its failure to adjust to growing public disillusionment and cynicism about the military precipitated by the Vietnam War and the draft. The events leading to the final downfall came in the late 1960s, when liberal Washington politicians such as Senator William Fulbright charged the series with political advocacy in support of the Vietnam War and wondered at the dedication of resources to its production.
Lemza touches lightly on liberal vs. conservative political debate, but concurs that by 1971 the series had run its course. He quotes an announcement in the military’s own Stars and Stripes newspaper that suggests the Army felt the same: “There are several reasons for canceling the half-hour show. One is the fact that the Army wanted for some time to come up with something that, it feels, is more relevant to the problems of the service today.”[5] Reflecting on the Stars and Stripes pronouncement, it is interesting that the Army has struggled in the decades since 1971 marketing itself to the American public through collaboration with the entertainment industry and by leveraging media and informational possibilities.
While the Army has occasionally mounted successful recruiting campaigns—the “Be All You Can Be” campaign from the 1980s arguably being the most distinguished—the record of its public relations apparatus over the years cannot be judged as anything but feeble. Thinking especially about the post-9/11 wars, much has been made of the civil-military divide that separated the American people from understanding the nature of military endeavor in Iraq and Afghanistan and the human face of the soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors who served in those wars. The effort to bridge the divide has consisted largely of novels and memoirs from fighting men and women themselves, reporting by interested journalists, and Hollywood movies of varying fidelity and sympathy. That the military as an institution has not tried harder to manage the impression it makes on the American people is notable.
Lemza is not shy about calling The Big Picture series propaganda, and episodes watched today can feel very one-sided, dated, and square.[6] However, the comment sections on YouTube videos of episodes are full of praise from other viewers who find the series on-point and even inspirational—documentary evidence of an Army that is perceived as once strong and an America that is viewed as once great. The fissure points to the division in outlooks characteristic of America today on virtually every subject and in every realm. The social congruence that united the military, the populace, and the entertainment media in the 1950s is long gone, and new endeavors that draw on The Big Picture’s virtues and capitalize on the lessons learned from its shortcomings seem not to have even been attempted. Lemza’s study invites wonder what a show that tells the Army's story in a way that pleases all factions of American viewing audiences might look like today.
Peter Molin is an Assistant Teaching Professor and Director of Collège Writing and Research at Rutgers University.
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Header Image: American Forces Network, Incirlik AB, Turkey 2023 (Airman 1st Class Kevin Dunkleberger). The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.
Notes:
[1] John W. Lemza, The Big Picture: The Cold War on the Small Screen (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2012), 12.
[2] “Exercise Arctic Night: The Big Picture.” Nuclear Vault, YouTube.
[3] Lemza, The Big Picture: The Cold War on the Small Screen, 150, 156.
[4] Lemza, The Big Picture: The Cold War on the Small Screen, 124.
[5] “Army Famed Series Signs Off. ‘The Big Picture’ Fades from TV Screen,” Stars and Stripes (Pacific Edition), 15 July 1971, 3. Quoted in Lemza, The Big Picture: The Cold War on the Small Screen, 189.
[6] Lemza, The Big Picture: The Cold War on the Small Screen, 72.