A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Although Richard Rodgers will always be remembered for his brilliant musical theater collaborations with Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II, particularly with the latter (South Pacific, The Sound of Music), he also had a successful career as a composer of incidental music, and Victory at Sea is perhaps his best-known orchestral score.  Rodgers composed 13 hours' worth of music for  Victory at Sea,  NBC-TV's 26-episode documentary which premiered in 1952 and was a staple of the pre-cable late night hours on independent televisions such as WCIX-TV in Miami. Each episode ran for 30 minutes and focused primarily on the U.S. Navy's participation in the then-still recent Second World War, from the fight against German U-boats in the North Atlantic to the fierce struggle for domination of the Pacific between American and Japanese fleets.  Renowned conductor and arranger Robert Russell Bennett's name has forever been linked with Rodgers' Victory at Sea score, for i...

The Bottom Line  The battle of Okinawa is briskly, briefly discussed in this episode of  Victory at Sea   Since 1952, when NBC first aired its 26-part  Victory at Sea  series of 30-minute documentaries about the U.S. Navy during the Second World War, it has been a staple of both broadcast and cable channels. Millions of viewers in the U.S. and elsewhere have seen at least a few episodes of writer-producer Henry Salomon's ode to the sailors and Marines who fought and often died fighting their German, Italian, and Japanese counterparts for control of the world's oceans. Because battles on the air, land, and sea aren't scripted for the cinematographers as if for a Hollywood production, any major documentary about World War II is, in essence, a montage of shots and snippets of 35-mm film photographed by combat photographers stationed on different ships, aircraft, and military installations. There is actually precious little continuous footage of entire single n...