Putting Hollywood, WWII in the spotlight

By Michael Barrett
San Antonio Express-News

"Hollywood and World War II: Soldiers in Greasepaint" is both historical and timely.

The exhibit, running through Aug. 31 at the World War II Memorial Museum, links recent films such as "Pearl Harbor" and "Windtalkers" with the Hollywood war effort of half a century ago.

The exhibit includes original movie posters, costumes, autographed pictures of stars, and the centerpiece — a one-dollar bill. Museum owner Steven Stoli explains that a San Antonian, Mrs. Clinton Lininger, came up after a show at his playhouse, adjacent to the museum, and asked if he'd be interested in a dollar bill that her late husband had gotten autographed while stationed in Tunisia. It sat in a drawer for 40 years.

"I said, 'Well who signed it?'" Stoli remembers. "And she said Humphrey Bogart. So we call it the Bogey bill. He was one of the big fund-raisers at that time."

The bill is also signed by Yankee pitcher "Lefty" Gomez and two others, whose names are difficult to identify but who all must have been at the same celebrity event in North Africa.

"Another lady said as a teen-ager she would write off to the Hollywood studios and ask for autographs of different movie stars," Stoli adds, pointing to the wall of pictures of Fred MacMurray, Bing Crosby, Van Johnson, Margaret O'Brien, Dorothy Lamour and others. "Dorothy Lamour was Miss War Bonds. She raised more war bond money than any other actress ever did."

The newest addition is a program signed by Nicolas Cage from the Washington, D.C., premiere of "Windtalkers." It was sent to the museum by Rep. Henry Bonilla. Costume uniforms worn in "Pearl Harbor," the HBO series "Band of Brothers" and the John Wayne film "Sands of Iwo Jima" are on hand. So are original posters from films such as "A Wing and a Prayer" and "Battleground," a 1949 film Stoli identifies as "the same movie as 'Band of Brothers' only 50 years earlier."

Stoli opened the museum last November, and items such as the dollar and the autographs often come from local people. "The idea of this whole museum is to get this stuff out of the closet, get it out of your drawers and let us use it to teach people, because eventually this will be a teaching museum for younger generations."

Summer hours for the museum, at 11840 Wurzbach at Lockhill Selma roads, are 2 to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Admission is free and donations are welcome. Call (210) 408-1945 for more information.

06/26/2002