ABSTRACT
Hollywood's contribution to the Selective Service debate was to step up production of its service comedies and dramas. The dramatic moment when the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, reached into a fishbowl and drew the first number to determine the order in which the eligible men would be called up was captured by newsreel cameras and tacked on to the front of the hugely popular Abbott and Costello comedy, Buck Privates. War in the Balkans caused hardship to Hollywood, as Clay Campbell, the make-up supervisor at Twentieth Century-Fox pointed out. In September 1940 during the Battle of Britain, when the small number of serviceable British fighters appeared to have a direct bearing on the outcome of the war, the studio sent Britain two Spitfires: 'President Roosevelt' and 'Cordell Hull'. Claudette Colbert manages to secure the release of Milland from one of Franco's jails in which he has been awaiting the death sentence for his part in the Spanish Civil War.
