Davies' work in the Soviet Union resulted in his popular book, Mission to Moscow. The book—published by Simon and Schuster in 1941 which sold close to 700,000 copies world wide in many languages—consists of letters, diary entries, and Davies’ State Department reports between 1936 and 1938, which Roosevelt agreed for Davies to use.
In 1943, the book was adapted as a Warner Brothers movie in starring Walter Huston as Davies and Ann Harding as his wife Marjorie Post Davies. As part of his book contract, Davies retained absolute control of the script, and his rejection of the original script caused Warner Brothers to hire a new screenwriter, Howard Koch, to rewrite the script in order to gain Davies' approval. The movie, made during World War II, showed the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin in an extremely positive light. Completed in late April 1943, the film was, in the words of Robert Buckner, the film's producer, "an expedient lie for political purposes, glossily covering up important facts with full or partial knowledge of their false presentation...
- I did not fully respect Mr. Davies' integrity, both before, during and after the film. I knew that FDR had brainwashed him..."
The movie whitewashed the Moscow trials, rationalized Moscow's participation in the Nazi-Soviet Pact and its unprovoked invasion of Finland, and portrayed the Soviet Union as a non-totalitarian state that was moving towards the American democratic model, a Soviet Union committed to internationalism. As did the book, the final screenplay portrayed the defendants in the Moscow trials as undeniably guilty. It also showed the purges as an attempt by Stalin to rid his country of pro-German fifth columnists.
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