Actors were seen as a very "expendable" profession to draft boards, and were usually among the first to be selected. According to the 1940 census, there were 6,931 working "actors" in the United States; by the middle of 1942, 3,503 (a full 50 percent) had been inducted into the military, a far higher percentage than for valued occupations such as machinists and agricultural workers. War workers and men who were married had dependents (until the end of 1943) were usually deferred from being drafted if their induction would cripple a war industry or cause unnecessary hardship to their families. I previously covered the experience of the draftee in a very long post here, but I will summarize in a few paragraphs below.

With the passage of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 (September 16, 1940) all men between the ages of 21 and 35 (21st birthday to the last day of the 35th year) were required to register to potentially be selected for one year's peacetime military service in the Western Hemisphere or U.S. territories. On August 18, 1941, seeing the events transpiring in Europe, President Roosevelt extended the draftees' term of service for an additional 18 months.

To conduct the registration, the United States was divided up into 6,443 draft boards, each exercising control of a maximum of 30,000 residents to avoid going over the Selective Service-mandated limit of 7,836 age-eligible males. Men in each district were sent the D.S.S. Form 40 (an eight-page general questionnaire) and the D.S.S. Form 311 (an occupational questionnaire) to be filled out and returned within ten days. Each registrant then received the D.S.S. Form 57, a notice to report for a medical examination and classification (I-A; eligible for unrestricted military service, to IV-F; physically, mentally, or morally unfit) This classification, along with a random draft order number from 1 to 7,836 (if applicable) was printed on the D.S.S. Form 2, or draft registration card, which a man had to carry with him at all times.

Immediately after Pearl Harbor, the Selective Training and Service Act was amended in order to make all men aged 18 to 37 liable for induction, and all men aged 18 to 45 liable for some form of military service if the need arose. In 1942, men aged 45 to 64 were required to register as well, (but they were not liable for service) to create an inventory of those men who could be put to work in war industry. On December 5, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9279, which made it so that men who were 18 to 37 could not voluntarily enlist anymore, but could only be drafted, to avoid disrupting the United States' war manpower and causing undue stress on the military. Those men who were 17 and 38 to 45 could still voluntarily enlist, provided they met the military's qualifications. The Navy (and Marine Corps) were not placed under the authority of the Selective Service until early 1943; previously, all draftees went to the Army, and all Navy men were volunteers.

Throughout the registrations of 1941 and 1942, dates were given upon which groups of men of the specified age were to report for registration; beginning on January 1, 1943, formal registration "days" were stopped and all men were required by law to register on their 18th birthday or as soon as possible afterwards. Beginning also on January 1, 1943, "random" draft order numbers were scrapped, replaced with a system that assigned each birth date its own unique sequential number.

If a man's number was selected, he was sent a letter which told him to report for military service in the branch selected for him (in this case, the Army; the Selective Service established monthly quotas for each branch of the military, and divided them up proportionally to each state, where boards picked men based upon the results of their physical and mental examinations, as well as "quality" guidelines given by each service) at a local induction station, where another medical examination was performed. If the examination was passed, the man was administered the Soldier's Oath and inducted into the Enlisted Reserve Corps of the United States Army. He was given one week to clear up any personal matters, and reported back to the induction station for placement onto active duty and transport to a reception center, where the process of qualification testing and classification into a military occupational specialty took place; the man, along with others classified similarly to him or assigned to the same unit, would then proceed to his assigned training location.

Source:

G.I.: The American Soldier in World War II, by Lee B. Kennett