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.
