All This and World War II

• 1. Introduction

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  All This and World War II arrived in American theaters on the 11th of November 1976, the same date the armistice of the first World War had been commemorated for decades. The premise was brazen: take archival footage of Adolf Hitler, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the bloodiest conflict in human history, then set it to Beatles songs covered by rock musicians. No studio executive had greenlit quite this collision before. The questions the film raises are still alive: can pop music illuminate historical catastrophe, or does it trivialize it? And how did a 24-year-old researcher end up directing one of the most polarizing documentaries of the decade?

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• 2. A Dream Behind the Concept

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  Russ Regan conceived the film after a series of dreams. In those dreams, Hitler at Berchtesgaden played out against The Fool on the Hill; the Liberation of Paris unfolded to Michelle; and the attack on Pearl Harbor burned to the strains of Here Comes the Sun. Those three pairings became the seed of the entire project. Lou Reizner, who had served as musical director on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, was brought in to shape the soundtrack. Reizner retained rights to three Bee Gees performances from his Pepper work, and he built the All This and World War II album alongside arranger Wil Malone. The London Symphony Orchestra provided the backing sound, lending the whole enterprise a grandeur that sat uneasily against its subject matter.

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• 3. An Unlikely Director

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  Sanford Lieberson first approached Terry Gilliam to direct the film. Gilliam declined. The job eventually fell to Susan Winslow, who had been working on the production as a researcher. Winslow was 24 years old at the time. Her selection of footage was so decisive and assured that she was promoted to the director's chair, and All This and World War II became the only film she ever directed. The editorial work fell to Colin J. Berwick. Researchers combed through one million feet of film over three years of production. The final budget came in at around $650,000.

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• 4. The Footage and the Famous

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  The film drew on a wide archive. Newsreel footage placed Winston Churchill, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Eleanor Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, and Charles Lindbergh on screen alongside Hitler and Mussolini. Hollywood intersected with history through clips of Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, James Stewart, Bob Hope, and Laurel and Hardy. Feature film excerpts came from 20th Century Fox titles including Guadalcanal Diary, Patton, Tora! Tora! Tora!, The Longest Day, and A Bell for Adano. One scene from Casablanca, a Warner Bros. production, was also used. The combination placed entertainment figures of the era directly inside the war's visual record, blurring the line between the conflict and the culture it interrupted.

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• 5. The Soundtrack's Performers

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  Peter Gabriel, who had recently left Genesis, made his solo recording debut on this album, singing Strawberry Fields Forever. Frankie Laine covered Maxwell's Silver Hammer, and he was candid about his motivation: he did it solely because Lou Reizner was his friend, and he said there was "not much else to say." Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb contributed vocals, their performances carried over from Reizner's earlier Sgt. Pepper project. Rod Stewart's version of Get Back was later released as a single and reached number 11 in the United Kingdom. Elton John's rendition of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, which had already been released as a single in 1974, had reached number one in both the United States and Canada.

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• 6. Release and Reception

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  The film premiered at the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles and was distributed by 20th Century Fox with a PG rating. Critics were largely hostile. Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it tasteless and offensive. Ruth Batchelor, writing for the Los Angeles Free Press, predicted that those over 40 would resent the film while those under 30 would not understand it. The New York Daily News suggested the PG rating stood for "Positively Ghastly." Joe Baltake, reviewing for the Philadelphia Daily News, dismissed it as a "pointless documentary." Film critic Shane Burridge observed that the film almost entirely removes the deaths and atrocities of World War II from view. Fox withdrew the picture from theaters, and it was a financial failure.

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• 7. Dissent and the Album's Life

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  Not every voice condemned the film. George Anderson gave it a B rating in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, calling it an effective fusion of music and footage. Phil Hall, writing for Film Threat, called it "the most brilliantly reckless movie" he had ever seen and acknowledged it was tasteless, absurd, and avant-garde all at once. Michael Fremer's experience at a Boston screening became its own footnote: he watched the film while under the influence of LSD, initially loved it, and invited radio personalities and critics to a subsequent showing. Ten minutes in, he reversed his judgment entirely and attacked the poor quality of the Beatles covers. The soundtrack fared somewhat better than the film. Riva Records released it in the United Kingdom on the 25th of October 1976, ahead of the film's opening. It reached number 23 on the UK Albums Chart across seven weeks, number 14 in Australia, number 17 in the Netherlands, and number 48 on the Billboard Top 200. The album was nominated for a NARM Award for Best Selling Movie Soundtrack. A planned live concert at London's Olympia, featuring artists from the album, was abandoned when no single date could be found that suited all or most of them.

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• 8. Afterlife and Re-Edit

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  Rumors circulated for years that 20th Century Fox had all prints of the film destroyed. It was never given an official home video release. Despite that, the film surfaced occasionally at festivals and on cable television in the United States, including a screening out of competition at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival. In 2016, Tony Palmer produced a re-edit called The Beatles and WWII, inserting different archival footage and substituting different music throughout. That same year, Gonzo Multimedia issued a box set pairing a DVD of Palmer's re-edit with the original soundtrack on two compact discs. The soundtrack itself had finally appeared on CD a decade earlier, in 2006, on the Hip-O Select label, and again in 2015 as a limited pressing on the Culture Factory label with the original gatefold sleeve intact. Two of the album's tracks, Leo Sayer's performance of Let It Be and Lynsey de Paul's recording of Because, appeared on a European Beatles cover compilation in 1991. Peter Gabriel's Strawberry Fields Forever, the track that marked his solo debut, remains the most discussed recording from a project that few people ever saw on a theater screen.

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