“For one, the films emerging from the war simply weren't that good," he says of a spate of forgettable movies that included 1952's Japanese War Bride and 1953's Battle Circus. "Hollywood spent the better part of the '40s churning out war films, and the lack of imagination and inventiveness in Korean War films may simply result from imaginative exhaustion." The stakes also paled compared with WWII, says Steven Gillon, resident historian for the History Channel and history professor at the University of Oklahoma. "The same generation that fought in World War II also fought in Korea," he says. "It was the first 'limited war' of the nuclear age. It ended in a stalemate and left Americans divided. There were no victory parades, no celebrations of the triumph of good over evil. Most Americans of that generation preferred to remember the earlier war.”
KW