In 1941, Frank Capra, John Ford, John Huston, George Stevens, and William Wyler were all well beyond the age in which they could have been drafted, but decided entirely on their own accord to go against the industry curve and actively join the war effort. The footage they shot is of immense cultural, esthetic, and historic value.

John Ford, famous for his Westerns and winner of the Academy Award for Best Director in 1935 and 1940, was the first of the “Five” to enlist: Ford joined the Navy as a Major in 1941 (he was 47). The Navy had no film or photography department at the time of his enlistment, and Ford was the right man to found it. His documentary on the Battle of Midway and his propaganda film December 7th would win him two academy awards when he was in service. Ford is the director whose footage gets closest to the action: he was injured by shrapnel when filming the Battle of Midway, and closely followed the first wave of landings on Omaha Beach, directing a team of cameramen who filmed from behind beach obstacles. Ford would remain an active Navy Reserve Officer and would return to active service in the Korean War, being promoted to the rank of rear admiral on his last day of active service. After World War II he returned to directing with mixed hits and flops, but was most successful when directing what he directed best: Westerns.

Frank Capra took the most “direct” route into the war effort. Enlisting at 44 years of age a few days after Pearl Harbor, he had left his role as arguably the biggest (certainly most award-winning) headlining director in Hollywood because of what he called “guilt” but more closely resembled insecurity stemming from his status as an Italian-born immigrant. Capra was awarded the rank of Major and was assigned to work directly under Army Chief of Staff George Marshall (who later would become Secretary of State under Truman and mastermind the Marshall Plan). Over the course of the war, Capra would produce a seven-film series of films titled “Why We Fight”, a series of documentary films to be screened to soldiers. Although doubtlessly of great propagandistic value in terms of their effects on morale, the films also went into great detail to explain the specific social and political situation in Europe and the Far East, laying down under no uncertain terms why, precisely, the American G.I.’s were fighting. The films were a huge success, in both terms of impact on the troops and in terms of achievement as films; the first in the series, ‘Prelude to War” won the 1943 Academy Award for best documentary. Capra’s star power was integral in securing participation from Walt Disney to create animated diagrams, and several Hollywood composers were involved in composing the score. Today the films are considered a vital piece of Americana.

John Huston was slightly disappointed on having joined only to find himself attached to the Army Signal Corps on the Aleutian Islands in 1941 (he was 35 at the time). This didn’t stop him from producing a short but critically acclaimed documentary on the Air Force pilots that repelled the Japanese offensive at Dutch Harbor, dangerously close to the Alaskan mainland, as well as the Battle of Midway farther south. Huston, who was first and foremost a screenwriter (he had only directed one feature before enlisting, albeit a massively successful one: The Maltese Falcon) he found himself on the short end of Army censorship at the time, and his features were heavily edited (Army leadership believed them to be "demoralizing"). His documentary on PTSD Let There Be Light was only de-censored in 1981. Unlike Capra and Ford, Huston was less of a headlining director, and his war service was a great career trampoline: he would go on to direct a number of classics between 1949 and 1975.

The most difficult and traumatizing wartime experiences are tied to George Stevens, and they weren’t all in combat. Made commander of the Pictorial Services of the Army when he enlisted in 1943, he filmed D-Day and the liberation of Paris, but his most noteworthy work he produced was shot when he entered Dachau Concentration camp with his film crew on its liberation. Following the war, it would take him a few years before he would return to directing. He never again worked on a comedy, a huge deal for the director who prior to the war had made a name for himself filming light-hearted movies starring Katharine Hepburn, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Following his service, he would direct A Place in the Sun in 1951 (and win six Academy Awards including Best Director), Shane in 1953 (nominated for an oscar), Giant in 1956 (and win the Oscar for Best Director) and finally The Diary of Anne Frank in 1959 (for which he would be nominated for Best Director).

Finally, William Wyler was a German-born Jew with more to prove than Frank Capra: his cousin was Carl Laemmle, founder of Universal Pictures. He had been shipped off to Los Angeles in 1923 at the age of 21 to work for his cousin after the young man showed little or no interest in the family haberdashery business. However, once in Los Angeles, he (slowly, with ups and downs) worked his way from the bottom of the studio ladder, and once he got into a directors chair he proved that he belonged there: directing such classics as Dodsworth (1936), These Three (1936),Dead End (1937), and Wuthering Heights (1939), gaining a reputation as a perfectionist who demanded take after take from his actors. However, some guilt attached to his german roots might have pushed him to direct Mrs. Miniver in 1941, the story of a middle class English family adjusting to the war in Europe. Mrs. Miniver won five academy Academy Awards, including Best Director. Wyler, who had become a U.S. citizen in 1928, then enlisted in the Army Signal Corps in 1942. He was attached to several bombing missions. His documentaries gained critical acclaim: Memphis Belle, the story of a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber was a personal favorite of President Roosevelt, while The Fighting Lady, the story of an aircraft carrier, won the 1945 oscar for best documentary. For Wyler, the war was also a great trampoline, after his service he would direct such classics as Roman Holiday in 1953 and Ben-Hur in 1959.

If you'd like to read more, check out Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War By Mark Harris

Edit: Fixed abuse to the common comma.