New doc details Chicago’s role during WWII

A City at War: Chicago

A City at War: Chicago

Earlier this month, WTTW premiered a new documentary from former WTTW producers John Davies and Brian Kallies. Titled A City at War: Chicago, it aired during the PBS station’s special Veteran’s Day programming

Narrated by Bill Kurtis, the new 60-minute film vividly traces significant events that took place in Chicago and the suburbs during World War II, exploring how the Windy City answered that call, and how a mutually beneficial relationship between FDR and Chicago mayor Ed Kelly (the original “big city boss”) helped to set everything in motion.

Unless you lived during the time, most are unaware that the Chicago area was transformed into a well-oiled production machine, with every man, woman, and child mobilizing to support the war effort.

It recalls a time in U.S. history when the nation was focused on its war effort, which according to Davies and Kallies, is a stark contrast to today in which few Americans follow the country’s expansive international military entanglements and only 0.4 percent serve in the active-duty armed forces, according to Department of Defense data.

“It [WW II] was a time that unified the entire country,” Kallies, who has produced, edited and directed documentaries, specials, and series for Showtime, Tru-TV, WGN, BBC, Esquire TV, and PBS, told The Chicago Tribune. “It’s like today most people talk about Game of Thrones or Walking Dead. We’re bonded by entertainment and gossip, whereas back then there was a bond for country and just survival — a little deeper connections.”

A City at War: Chicago is the ‘warts and all’ story of just about everything that happened in Chicago during World War II, told using rare color footage and interviews with people who were there,” added multi-Emmy® Award winning writer/producer/director Davies. Watch the trailer below:

 

 

Kallies, a former Mount Greenwood resident whose father and grandfathers served in the Navy, said he and filmmaking partner John Davies were inspired to make the film while working last year on another World War II documentary, Heroes on Deck.

Moving forward, the two culled together personal memories, declassified and vintage propaganda films, period posters, and images, to bring the documentary together.

“If a family came from a certain amount of wealth, let’s say, they would have had a 16mm camera,” Davies explained to the audience during a Q&A session at an Oct. 18 screening of the film. “We just sort of ask around people that we think might have had a camera and we strike gold a lot more often than not.”

Brian Kallies and John Davies
Brian Kallies and John Davies

Some of the footage used during the film’s discussion of Chicago’s Jewish community, for example, came from home movies, Kallies said.

“Those home movies that no one has seen before, there’s an authenticity to it. It’s not fake,” he said. “Just seeing those moving pictures on a personal level like that, I think it brings it home.”

Among the “factacular” highlights are rare color footage of FDR’s 1937 “Quarantine Speech,” delivered in Chicago to warn of the coming war; and perhaps the conflict’s most significant event: the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, achieved by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi and his team at the University of Chicago, which led to the eventual development of the atom bombs that brought about the end of the war.

Look for this excellent and thought-provoking doc on various PBS stations in Chicago and nationally.

A City at War: Chicago

A City at War: Chicago

Earlier this month, WTTW premiered a new documentary from former WTTW producers John Davies and Brian Kallies. Titled A City at War: Chicago, it aired during the PBS station’s special Veteran’s Day programming

Narrated by Bill Kurtis, the new 60-minute film vividly traces significant events that took place in Chicago and the suburbs during World War II, exploring how the Windy City answered that call, and how a mutually beneficial relationship between FDR and Chicago mayor Ed Kelly (the original “big city boss”) helped to set everything in motion.

Unless you lived during the time, most are unaware that the Chicago area was transformed into a well-oiled production machine, with every man, woman, and child mobilizing to support the war effort.

It recalls a time in U.S. history when the nation was focused on its war effort, which according to Davies and Kallies, is a stark contrast to today in which few Americans follow the country’s expansive international military entanglements and only 0.4 percent serve in the active-duty armed forces, according to Department of Defense data.

“It [WW II] was a time that unified the entire country,” Kallies, who has produced, edited and directed documentaries, specials, and series for Showtime, Tru-TV, WGN, BBC, Esquire TV, and PBS, told The Chicago Tribune. “It’s like today most people talk about Game of Thrones or Walking Dead. We’re bonded by entertainment and gossip, whereas back then there was a bond for country and just survival — a little deeper connections.”

A City at War: Chicago is the ‘warts and all’ story of just about everything that happened in Chicago during World War II, told using rare color footage and interviews with people who were there,” added multi-Emmy® Award winning writer/producer/director Davies. Watch the trailer below:

 

 

Kallies, a former Mount Greenwood resident whose father and grandfathers served in the Navy, said he and filmmaking partner John Davies were inspired to make the film while working last year on another World War II documentary, Heroes on Deck.

Moving forward, the two culled together personal memories, declassified and vintage propaganda films, period posters, and images, to bring the documentary together.

“If a family came from a certain amount of wealth, let’s say, they would have had a 16mm camera,” Davies explained to the audience during a Q&A session at an Oct. 18 screening of the film. “We just sort of ask around people that we think might have had a camera and we strike gold a lot more often than not.”

Brian Kallies and John Davies
Brian Kallies and John Davies

Some of the footage used during the film’s discussion of Chicago’s Jewish community, for example, came from home movies, Kallies said.

“Those home movies that no one has seen before, there’s an authenticity to it. It’s not fake,” he said. “Just seeing those moving pictures on a personal level like that, I think it brings it home.”

Among the “factacular” highlights are rare color footage of FDR’s 1937 “Quarantine Speech,” delivered in Chicago to warn of the coming war; and perhaps the conflict’s most significant event: the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, achieved by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi and his team at the University of Chicago, which led to the eventual development of the atom bombs that brought about the end of the war.

Look for this excellent and thought-provoking doc on various PBS stations in Chicago and nationally.