My Country 'Tis of Thee

There's nothing terribly original in My Country Tis Of Thee, it's a compilation of newsreel footage and footage from previous Warner Brothers productions and it tells the story of America that a member of today's Tea Party would find admirable. The film was done in the time of the Cold War and something like this could never be produced today. Frankly it's quite mediocre.

But what floored me was that this film got a nomination for Best Short Subject. That says a lot about the times of the Cold War and what was the start of the blacklisting era. My guess is that they were afraid not to nominate this thing. The competition was Beaver Valley a Walt Disney True Life nature film and a documentary of super senior citizen painter Grandma Moses. The Beavers took home the Oscar gold.

I've not seen either of the other films but I'm betting they're far more worthy of Oscar consideration than this was.