Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War

Harris's first book, Pictures at a Revolution, which be built around the five Best Picture Oscar nominees from 1967, was a smart treat, and in his second he returns to that magic number, telling the parallel tales of the five major Hollywood directors—Frank Capra, John Ford, George Stevens, William Wyler, and John Huston, indelible characters all—who put their careers aside to make documentaries for the Allies. They found red tape and frustration as well as moments of action, terror, and heroism, including Wyler losing his hearing filming from the belly of a B-25 and Stevens recording the horrors of Dachau. They all did return—and each made classic post-war movies—but none was unchanged by what he saw and survived.