Discovering Victory at Sea
By Bob Small
Because we neither cable nor stream we rely on DVD and VHS which requires occasional forays to our local Goodwill or library. At Goodwill, we gathered the VHS Version of the 1950’s documentary Victory at Sea, which, amazingly, we had never seen. We recently finished all 26 episodes initially shown from Oct. 26, 1952 to May 1, 1953. It snared an Emmy in 1954 for best Public Affairs program. We learned an incredible amount of “hidden history” in the month we gave ourselves to watch this program.
If you’ve ever wondered why this generation was dubbed “the greatest generation”, this goes a long way to answering that. Personal note; Both our fathers were members of the US Military and our mothers contributed on the “home front”.
The idea of Victory at Sea was conceptualized by Henry Salomon about whom very little is known, at least on the Internet. This US Navy veteran and writer served as a research assistant to Samuel Elliott Morrison, author of the 15-volume History of United States Naval Operations in World War II.
Salamon discovered the huge amount of filmage by all the involved navies. NBC approved the idea in 1951.
The music was written by Richard Rogers, of Rogers and Hammerstein and Rogers and Hart with Robert Russell Bennett,a leading arranger and orchestrator on Broadway — think The King and I and South Pacific.
Trivia note Perry Como‘s“No Other Love” became a 1953 #1 hit using the melody from Episode 9, Beneath the Southern Cross, with words by Oscar Hammerstein.
The narration was by Leonard Graves Leonard Graves, an American Actor and singer who was later manager of the Memphis Opera and finished his career with the Israeli National Opera.
See also An Update on Memphis Singer and Actor Leonard Graves
Note; If you purchase a DVD set, check to see it it’s the full set. You won’t have that problem with the VCR set.
We’re now looking to find a DVD/VHS version of Soviet Storm. WW2 in the East (The Great War). Very little of Victory at Sea included the Soviet Eastern Front, for obvious reasons.
We’re now returning to our usual fare of murder mysteries and westerns.
