Victory At Sea 1954
Victory at Sea began life as a 26-episode television documentary, originally presented on NBC in 1952-1953 as part of their Project 20 series. The program used rare film clips — including captured German and Japanese combat and newsreel footage — to chart the history of WWII, from the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 to VJ (Victory in Japan) Day in 1945. Richard Rodgers composed a special score for the series, which quickly matriculated into a hit LP; one of Rodgers’ leitmotifs was later adapted into “No Other Love” in the Rodgers & Hammerstein Broadway musical Me and Juliet. Victory at Sea won several awards and ran forever in rerun syndication — and, in 1954, was spun off into a theatrical feature. It was up to editor Isaac Kleinerman to distill the 13 hours of the orginal series (culled from 60 million feet of film!) into 97 minutes. The feature version of Victory at Sea was narrated by Alexander Scourby, replacing the TV version’s Leonard Graves.
