The North Star
US (1943): War/Drama
President Franklin Roosevelt initiated this project with a personal plea to depict the gallant Soviet defense against the Nazis. His son James was president of Goldwyn Studios and Lillian Hellman developed a screenplay, ultimately directed by Lewis Milestone and shot by James Wong Howe, with a very impressive cast (including Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, Walter Huston, Walter Brennan, Ann Harding, Jane Withers, Farley Granger, Erich Von Stroheim and Dean Jagger) and the debut of Stewart Granger.
The story focuses on the tenacious defense of a village near Kiev by a group of citizen-partisans against barbarous Nazis. However, Hellman's work was altered and the movie condemned by the Hearst organization as Bolshevist. The film was then savaged by HUAC in the 1950s, mangled, and rereleased in 1957 as Armored Command with every use of the word "comrade" carefully deleted. (amctv.com)
6 nominations
· Writing (Original Screenplay) 1943: Lillian Hellman
· Interior Decoration (Black and White) 1943: Perry Ferguson - Art Direction; Howard Bristol - Set Decoration
· Cinematography (Black and White) 1943: James Wong Howe
· Music Scoring Awards (Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture) 1943: Aaron Copland
· Sound Recording 1943: Thomas T. Moulton
· Special Effects 1943: Clarence Slifer, R.O. Binger - Photographic, Thomas T. Moulton - Sound