Release
The movie premiered at the Warner's Earle Theater on August 12, 1943. It grossed $9,555,586.44, which was donated to Army Emergency Relief.
The ending of the war saw the ending of the road show, the last performance being on Maui, Hawaii October 22, 1945 with Irving Berlin once again singing his "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning." The Army Emergency Relief Fund collected millions of dollars, but the total amount was never accounted, nor released to the public. By the mid-1970s, the movie itself fell into the public domain, occasionally airing on television to a new generation of viewers. Renewed interest in some of the actors helped those players that might have been considered down-and-out, most notably Stump and Stumpy's Jimmy Cross and Harold Cromer.
George Murphy and Ronald Reagan would run for public office in California. George Murphy served one term, (1965–1971) in the U.S. Senate. Ronald Reagan served two terms as Governor of California (1967–1975) and then President of the United States (1981–1989), with both contributing to each other's Republican campaigns. Reagan would warmly and jokingly refer to Murphy, who preceded him into politics by a couple of years, as "my John the Baptist."
Many of the soldiers who had participated in the show held reunions every five years after the end of World War II. Their 50th and final reunion (1992) was held in New York's Theater District.
Read more about this topic: This Is The Army
Famous quotes containing the word release:
“The steel decks rock with the lightning shock, and shake with the
great recoil,
And the sea grows red with the blood of the dead and reaches for his spoil—
But not till the foe has gone below or turns his prow and runs,
Shall the voice of peace bring sweet release to the men behind the
guns!”
—John Jerome Rooney (1866–1934)
“The near touch of death may be a release into life; if only it will break the egoistic will, and release that other flow.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)