A&E 4-disk set of Victory at Sea is visually best version of the 1950s series

In 1952....

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the recently retired five-star general who had led the Allied forces to victory in Europe during World War II, is running for President as a Republican candidate against Adlai Stevenson.

Joseph Stalin, the ailing but still-bloodthirsty Soviet dictator, is preparing for another repressive purge against those he perceives as enemies.

The Cold War between the U.S. and Russia gets colder; both sides are racing each other to develop the hydrogen bomb.

Even though the public won't be able to buy it until 1960, the birth control pill is introduced.

Also premiering in 1952, the same year that Dick Clark first hosted American Bandstand and Rocky Marciano defeated "Jersey Joe" Walcott in the boxing heavyweight championship match, was producer Henry Salomon's Emmy-award winning TV documentary, Victory at Sea.

Presented in 26 half-hour episodes during the 1952-1953 television season, Victory at Sea is an admittedly flag-waving, stirring, entertaining yet sometimes uneven account of the United States Navy and its Allied counterparts during World War II. Culled from thousands of hours of propaganda newsreels and combat photography shot by American, British, Canadian, German, Italian, Japanese and Russian cameramen aboard ships at sea and on many land battlefields, Salomon's look at World War II was produced by the National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with the U.S. Navy.

In comparison to later and more balanced documentaries about the world's greatest clash of arms and men, Victory at Sea is definitely best viewed as a window into how we Americans saw World War II and our role in it rather than as a definitive and unbiased account of the conflict. For even though it uses actual combat footage and (in one episode) quotes from official Navy documents, the balance between historical fact and pure entertainment is skewed more toward the latter, and it does have a jingoistic sensibility in its "America First" approach.

Take for instance, Volume 1: Design for War. Most World War II buffs (the target audience of this DVD set) know that even though the U.S. entered the war on December 7, 1941 with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Britain and Canada had been fighting against Germany and her Italian ally since 1939, with the Soviets joining the fray less than six months before "the day of infamy" as a result of Hitler's invasion. Yet the "European War" is dispensed with almost dismissively, even though the first two years of the war were very eventful and included many naval battles between the Axis and Allies.

Yet Volume 2: The Pacific Boils Over devotes most of its running time to the Pearl Harbor fiasco; it's an extremely interesting episode, to be sure, but avid documentary fans will note that (a) it glosses over many of the mistakes made by American civilian and military leaders, (b) uses obviously staged footage shot in 1942 for John Ford's December 7th propaganda film, and (c) doesn't have a "fair and balanced" view of the war.

There are also, much to a modern TV audience's dismay, no interviews or critical commentary on the events shown in the series, making Victory at Sea less of a valuable source of facts and analysis and more of a pro-Navy entertainment spectacular.

Yet for all its flaws, Victory at Sea is still a very watchable production. Editor Isaac Kleinerman, working from scripts by producer Salomon and co-writer Richard Hanser, took many different clips of combat and newsreel footage and "copy/pasted" them into fast-paced and emotionally stirring montages of naval, air and land battles on a global scale. In conjunction with composer Richard Rodgers' now-famous score and Leonard Graves' over-the-top yet sometimes poetic narration, Kleinerman and series director M. Clay Adams (who would later be a director for The Phil Silvers Show) present the Navy and Marines as participants in an epic struggle against the nefarious Nazis, Fascists, and Japanese militarists.

Released by A&E Home Video (the same company that produced the 2004 DVD re-issue of the superb World at War series), this 2003 4-disk set includes all 26 episodes of Victory at Sea, with none of the video flaws present in similar box sets issued by other entities. (However, as in the less-expensive 2005 Mill Creek edition, the sound quality suffers; apparently the limitations of early 1950s audio technology can't be overcome by the modern marvels of 21st Century digital "magic.")





Victory at Sea - Main Credits:
Directed by: M. Clay Adams
Written by: Henry Salomon and Richard Hanser
Narrated by: Leonard Graves
Musical Score: Richard Rodgers
Music Arranged and Conducted by: Robert Russell Bennett
Technical Advisor: Capt. Walter Karig, USN

Episode List:

Victory at Sea - Volume 1: Design for War

Victory at Sea - Volume 2: The Pacific Boils Over

Victory at Sea - Volume 3: Sealing the Breach

Victory at Sea - Volume 4: Midway is East

Victory at Sea - Volume 5: Mediterranean Mosaic

Victory at Sea - Volume 6: Guadalcanal

Victory at Sea - Volume 7. Rings Around Rabaul

Victory at Sea - Volume 8. Mare Nostrum

Victory at Sea - Volume 9: Sea and Sand

Victory at Sea - Volume 10: Beneath the Southern Cross

Victory at Sea - Volume 11: The Magnetic North

Victory at Sea - Volume 12: Conquest of Micronesia

Victory at Sea - Volume 13: Melanesian Nightmare

Victory at Sea - Volume 14: Roman Renaissance

Victory at Sea - Vol. 15: D-Day

Victory at Sea - Vol. 16: Killers and the Kill

Victory at Sea – Vol. 17: The Turkey Shoot

Victory at Sea – Vol. 18: Two If By Sea

Victory at Sea – Vol. 19: The Battle For Leyte Gulf

Victory at Sea – Vol. 20: Return of the Allies

Victory at Sea - Vol. 21: Full Fathom Five

Victory at Sea - Vol. 22: The Fate of Europe

Victory at Sea - Vol. 23: Target Suribachi

Victory at Sea - Vol. 24: The Road to Mandalay

Victory at Sea - Vol. 25: Suicide for Glory

Victory at Sea - Vol. 26: Design for Peace


# DVD Features:

* Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 2.0)
* Wraps by Peter Graves
* Interactive Menus
* Scene Selection