By Pete Hammond
Awards Columnist/Chief Film Critic
Using stirring musical moments, songs of the era sung by Broadway stars, personal accounts and archival photos and film of those who were there, the PBS special The Eyes of The World: From D Day to VE Day from American History Unbound tells a perspective of the final months of World War II as never seen before.
Taped last May before a live audience with the 60-piece Boston Pops providing the music, historian John Monsky leads the audience through the dramatic final 11 months of the war including the landing on Omaha Beach in Normandy on June 6, 1944, as well as the largely untold personal stories of the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Life Magazine war photographer Robert Capa, Vogue model-turned-photojournalist Lee Miller, and a young soldier named Jerry who was on the front lines (and later revealed to be none other than J.D. Salinger).
Monsky, executive producer and president of American History Unbound Meredith Wagner and Hemingway’s great grandson Patrick Hemingway Adams discussed the unique special during Deadline’s Contenders Television: Documentary, Unscripted & Variety event.
Watch on Deadline
Monsky explained how this show — the last to be performed in the East Room of the White House toward the end of President Joe Biden’s tenure — came about, especially in finding the stories of the likes of Hemingway, Miller, Capa and Salinger in terms of their service in WWII.
“I like to say they found me. But I collect American flags, and I had a flag that was on a landing craft that came into Omaha Beach and another one that came into Utah Beach, and at both Utah and Omaha you had Hemingway and you had Jerry, and then Lee Miller shows up and Robert Capa shows up, and so the story revolves around those moments,” he said. “It starts with those moments on D-Day and then the whole thing has an arc and a lot of drama until you get to the end of the war.”
Monsky explained how he found this hybrid variety format to be a way of telling history without being boring. In fact, it was just the opposite.
“We twist it into a more emotional experience because you have a 60-piece orchestra running throughout the whole show. And then the National Archives is incredible. We found things in there that just are overlooked, and two people that worked down there for us. So you add the photographs, you add the orchestra, you add the core of the story with people like Ernest Hemingway, and it becomes a pretty dramatic moment,” he said.
Check back Monday for the panel video.
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