"A nation rabid for war"

Published: July 18, 2007, 5:44 pm

Here are a few pictures of Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks at a rally in New York, 1917, encouraging fans to buy Liberty Bonds and support the future of democracy. It's a great snapshot of the America on the brink of entering World War and stepping into her 20th century position as a major world power; and the likes of Chaplin, Fairbanks and the rest of the movie making industry helped to push that transition ever more quickly forward...If there's one thing I love more than anything else about the movies, it's when they interact with history. And its the influence of the U.S. government's Committee on Public Information (CPI) on the early American silent film industry during the First World War that is perhaps my favourite example of this phenomenon. There's an excellent documentary on the net, taken from Kevin Brownlow's Hollywood: The Pioneers series, called Hollywood Goes to War in which the film historian interviews key personalities of the film industry both during and

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