Talk:Don't Be a Sucker/GA1

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Reviewer: Kusma (talk · contribs) 21:30, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Content and prose review

A nice little article about a propaganda film that I had never seen in its entirety before today (I just knew the part with the street speaker and the sudden move against Freemasons, which just immediately reminds probably everyone of Niemöller's First they came ...). I do have one question about the dates. The infobox says the 23 minute version is from 1943, but the 23 minute version File:Don't Be a Sucker (high resolution 35mm transfer).webm clearly is not from 1943 (it mentions D-Day and the overall narrative would not make sense unless it was known Germany lost the war). The file description page says 1945. Is "1943" wrong or is there another 1943 version? (In which case it would make sense to mention the 1945 version). —Kusma (talk) 22:13, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The sources are pretty confident about 1943 and 1947. I don't see any reference to a 1945 version except the video description. The runtimes are a little iffier, and the sources don't really cover them all that much.

I still see no evidence that a 1943 version exists (certainly the 1947 version is more than just "a shortened version" of the mythical 1943 version, as it mentions events unknown in 1943), and the 23 minute version is certainly not from 1943. The film is described as being from 1945 in Alpers 2003, your only modern scholarly source. —Kusma (talk) 18:19, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here's everything I've found on the issue:

• National Archives: This item was produced or created in 1945.
• Gabbatt (2017): Don’t Be a Sucker was released in 1947 by the US war department, building on an earlier wartime version made in 1943.
• Cooper & Schneider (1948): produced during World War II by the Army Signal Corps for use with the armed forces. After the war, a shortened version of the film was widely shown both commercially and under educational auspices. In 1947, the Department of Scientific Research of the American Jewish Committee undertook to study the impact of the film.
• Alpers (2003): Don't Be a Sucker (1945)
• Hawkins (2017): Produced by the U.S. War Department in 1943 and rereleased in an updated form in 1947
• Meyer (2017): made by the U.S. War Department in 1943
• Wilkinson (2018): first produced in 1943 by the US Department of Defense and then re-released in 1947
• Romero (2017): In 1943, the U.S. War Department produced a 17-minute educational short titled “Don’t Be a Sucker.”
• Emery (2017): was produced by the U.S. Signal Corps and distributed by Paramount Pictures for viewing in civilian movie theaters in 1943 and again in 1947

I'm not willing to conduct any original research to deduce the exact release dates and corresponding runtimes, but I'll note that I can't find any record of its existence on newspapers.com until 1946, at which point many newspapers cover theaters playing it. I'm worried that this information might be buried deep in some government archive if not outright lost. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:08, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My main point is that even if there was a 1943 version, it certainly isn't the one in the article. I just can't shake the suspicion that the original source for the 1943 claim is some dude on IMDB, and it has then proliferated into reliable sources after one lazy person copied from IMDB. Citogenesis sucks. But I have actually found another hint of a pre-May 1945 release to soldiers. In any case, a version of the film was released on July 4, 1946. [1]. (One of Boxoffice Barometer's Ten Best Shorts). The Washington Post agrees. This scholarly book on propaganda films says it was the "last Signal Corps film of the war", whatever that means (sounds more like 1945 than 1943). I might try to find the book in my uni library tomorrow or Thursday.

Other sources I just looked at:

• [2] film was revised in 1947 but withdrawn from all types of public circulation before 1959
• [3] mentions it as part of indoctrination efforts to promote black soldiers
• [4] another claim the film is from 1945

OK, how to sort this mess? We do know that there are two archive versions, a longer one (from 1945 according to the metadata) and a shorter one dated 1947. Both of them are from after 1943 no matter what the metadata says because they mention D-Day, and so they are not simply cuts from a longer 1943 original. I am confident that some version of the film was released to soldiers during wartime and that there was a civilian release in 1946 and that a shortened version was produced in 1947. I would not use the 1943 claim in wikivoice, but attribute it to the 2017 sources and mention that earlier and scholarly sources claim the film is from 1945. —Kusma (talk) 22:52, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Got the book I mentioned above. Not a huge lot extra to say (a little more on the anti-racism message that the Army was pushing at the time), but I'm happy to send you scans of any pages you can't access on archive.org. Proper original research would probably look through this Hollywood archive: [5] but that is not our job here of course :) —Kusma (talk) 17:43, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Kusma I did my best to get all of the information straightened out using these sources. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:09, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Much better! You report dispassionately on what we know without explicitly claiming anyone is wrong. —Kusma (talk) 22:39, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Is there a particular reason why you do not cite the "1951 Cooper and Dinerman study" directly [6]? (It is the same study as Cooper-Schneider 1947, just published in a proper scholarly journal). —Kusma (talk) 22:46, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • The older one is twice the length of the newer one. Especially useful was that the older one had a summary of the film's events that guided the plot section.
    • Makes sense, although a citation of the 1951 version in the section about the 1951 version would be helpful. —Kusma (talk) 22:42, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Plot: Link
  sucker (slang)
  ?
  • Done.
• the narrator warns that Mike a potential victim of those who wish to rob him of this birthright. this misses something ("is a potential victim"?) and it is not so clear what this birthright is supposed to be.
  • Fixed, I think.
• Is it worth mentioning that all of the people conned by the Nazis die in the war, far from home?
  • Added.
• Production: The original film was produced in 1943 does not seem to be in the sources given, and I see no reason to believe it.
  • I added some more citations to confirm this.
• What roles do the stars play?
  • IMDb seems to be the only place that lists this, and I don't know where they got it from. There was a cast list, but I suspect that whoever added it did so using IMDb.
• to raise the morale of American soldiers during World War II seems the film was a bit late for this if it was released in 1945 and 1947
  • According to The Guardian, it was first produced in 1943.
• Some context about the
  National Conference of Christians and Jews
  might be nice (certainly optional for GA, but this hints to me at why the film is so amazingly pro-Catholic in its pretense that Catholics opposed the Nazis)
  • This was the only source I found that mentioned it.
• Legacy: not sure that the 19511947 study that appeared in 1951 is "legacy", it is more "reception". Actually the article is missing a "reception" section.
  • There, now it has one (meaning I changed the heading)
• Don't Be a Sucker saw increased popularity beginning in 2016 do we know why? And was it the whole film or just the section with the American demagogue?
  • I can take a pretty strong guess why, but the source doesn't confirm it. I specified that the 2017 sharing was of a clip.
• It would be nice to have some commentary on the 2017 resurgence, not just that it happened. Did anyone say why they liked the video?
  • The sources don't give much to work with, but I added a few details.
• I'm not convinced there should be a See Also to Nazi anti-Masonry; isn't anti-masonry only mentioned as an American thing here?
  • I considered removing it myself. Done.
• External links: could comment on which versions of the film are being linked to.
  • Done.

First pass done! —Kusma (talk) 12:33, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've made all the changes except for the runtime issue, where I'm trying to find a source that clears it up. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:36, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Happy with changes! —Kusma (talk) 22:42, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Will pass the article now. It was fun to learn more about the background of the short viral clip, and I enjoyed the research. Thank you for working on this! —Kusma (talk) 22:56, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

General comments and GA criteria

Good Article review progress box WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

• Prose is fine as far as I can see, minor comments above.
• Compliant with MoS; could consider expanding the lead slightly though.
• No issues with focus. Slightly more on cast or reception would be good, but we are not looking for "comprehensive".
• Seems neutral, clearly describing a propaganda film as a product of its time and putting it in its (less tolerant) context
• Recently expanded, no edit warring.
• Video is PD, so is fine. Caption could be improved to clarify which version of the film it is. You could consider illustrating the actors or the plot with a well-chosen screenshot (something like the Mason and the Hungarian might be more easily identifiable for a casual reader) but that is certainly optional.
• Sourcing is generally reliable, but the modern sources are probably wrong about the existence of a separate 1943 version (the most likely culprits for this are IMDB and Wikipedia) and do not seem to mention the 1945 version that is in the article. None of the sources from before the Internet age seem to be aware of the "1943 version".
  • This issue is fixed.

Individual source spotchecks to follow. —Kusma (talk) 17:08, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• 2f checks out
• 5c checks out
• 8b couldn't access (too lazy to search), but I've seen other sources for the claim so I'm happy
• 9a checks out, and I've seen 1940s sources corroborating this
• 15 as with 8b
• 19a couldn't access

Source check is a pass. No original research, no evidence of copyvio or CLOP. —Kusma (talk) 22:53, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]