This involved enforcing sexual abstinence while simultaneously exposing soldiers to carefully controlled forms of sexual stimulation. Believing that sexually satisfied men could not be easily motivated, the aim of this teasing was to generate unmet sexual desire, which the War Department could leverage as motivation to fight, especially through appeals to chivalry and heroism.

I'm a huge Randolph Scott fan, but this film is a dud. The whole thing has a canned, fake, soundstage feel to it, with truly awful rear-screen projection. It has a good plot idea that the screenwriter has successfully buried in a nitwit script, which makes it impossible for the audience to become immersed in the action and truly care about any of the characters. The directing is pedestrian, and only accentuates how bad the script is instead of helping to improve it. I've seen plenty of thoroughly enjoyable "soundstage productions" before, but this is not one of them. All it does is make you appreciate the gritty Scott/Boetticher films all the more. Randolph Scott is Major Ransome Callicut, who goes undercover as a school teacher in 1850s California to hopefully thwart separatist plotting as secessionist fervour starts to boil over. Those plotting the revolt apparently want to make California a slave state and figure they’ll have the upper hand if they can gain control of the scarce water supply in Los Angeles. Oh dear! What a disappointment. I've been watching old Westerns on British TV for decades, and I wasn't aware of this one until its showing yesterday - most other Scott Westerns come around every few years or so and are usually worth watching again. Callicut: “I can’t make up my mind. That school teacher’s alright, but Chona’s a little more unique.”The John Johnson Collection participates in a scheme run by Oxford University’s Department of Art History, through which students can gain experience of the curation of collections. We have been fortunate to welcome Nina Foster, who has been working on posters in the First World War.

The campaigns to police women’s sexual behaviours – labelled the ‘American Plan’– continued for over two decades, with police detaining thousands of women accused of being infected with STDs.

Object Details

It is good action entertainment for those who like their westerns action filled. An Easy-Going Gent with Deadly Guns...and a Reputation to Match! The film boasts a top notch cast of players that include Roy Roberts, Douglas Fowley, Anthony Caruso, Katharine Warren, Morris Ankrum, and as a young Joaquin Murietta, Robert Cabal. The two female leads are Patrice Wymore better known as the third Mrs. Errol Flynn and band singer Lina Romay who formally was with both the Xavier Cugar Orchestra and the Bing Crosby radio show at different times. Romay gets to sing a couple of sultry songs in Spanish. Also since this was a Warner Brothers film, Some Sunday Morning which was introduced in the Errol Flynn film San Antonio gets interpolated here. Posters now began to show women in masculine, military style uniform looking confident, commanding and self-assured such as the flag-wielding woman of the Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps recruitment poster. Randolph Scott is Maj. Ransome Callicut, sent on an undercover mission to California to head off a possible revolt in the state. In this context, the War Department actively exploited sexuality to psychologically manipulate American soldiers to fight.”

According to Rogers, the spillover of the wartime programmes testifies to their enduring significance in modern society, and complicates how we periodize historical eras. There’s a startling contradiction in the way Mikhail Kalashnikov has been portrayed by the media since his death less than a decade ago. On the one hand, according to the Associated Press, the inventor of the AK-47 automatic rifle apparently lost no sleep due to ‘the havoc wrought with his invention.’ On the other, Reuters says Kalashnikov decried and objected to the ‘criminal use of his rifles.’ The BBC claims that towards the end of his life, the Russian military engineer feared he ‘was to blame’ for, and was suffering ‘spiritual pain’ over, the deaths his Avtomat Kalashnikova model 1947 (hence AK-47) had caused, while news agency AFP ran a story on how he had found peace in his nineties and had died a ‘happy man’. Robert Cabal, the young actor who plays Joaquin Murietta here, is best known as Hey Soos from the “Rawhide” TV series (1959-1965)It's a shame because there was some good work that went into this film from both the cast and the crew. There are elements of humour, action, romantic scenes. Good location photography and sound. Some good performances from the supporting cast as well. When Sen. Mark Sheldon is assassinated, Callicut figures his suspects include pretty saloon owner Chona Degnon (Lina Romay), outlaw Vic Sutro (Anthony Caruso) and Southern sympathiser Bram Creegan (Morris Ankrum).

Boot goes one step further, saying: “we routinely credit the design of the AK-47 to a man who, though by all accounts decent and talented, didn’t quite deserve the accolades,” further claiming that “Kalashnikov didn’t really design the Kalashnikovs, and was certainly not the patriarch of the family, the AK-47.” Alan Petrov of the Russian defence blog Maxpark suspects the influence of the communist propaganda machine at work: “Avtomat Kalashnikova has precious little to do with Mikhail Timofeyevich himself – he was merely appointed to be its inventor.” The military’s ‘parasexual’ blend of constraint and stimulation offers a clear sketch of a cultural logic that runs deep in American culture: the use of sexual allure to motivate and to sell non-sexual experiences and products.” Such revisionism bears the hallmarks of an attempt to create distance between the historical record and the uncomfortable notion that one fifth of the world’s firearms today bear the Kalashnikov maker’s mark. But whatever version of events history eventually settles on, there can be no disputing that the Russian soldier, who would rise to the rank of lieutenant general, was one of the most obviously successful small-arms designers of the 20th century. Far from being a ‘one hit wonder’ as his critics have sometimes suggested, Kalashnikov would develop his portfolio of weapons to include the superior AKM (where the ‘m’ stands for ‘modernised’), that would in turn evolve into the RPK light machine gun. All these iterations were based on a philosophy centred on simplicity of design, ruggedness and ease of maintenance in all conditions. And yet by adhering to these engineering principles Kalashnikov became a victim of his own success. He complained: “Whenever I look at TV and I see the weapon I invented to defend my motherland in the hands of these bin Ladens, I ask myself the same question: ‘How did it get into their hands?’ I didn’t put it in the hands of bandits and terrorists … Can I be blamed that they consider it the most reliable weapon?”The criminals are ostensibly attempting to make Southern California a slave state area. But this is only a blind for the true goal of cornering water rights and undiscovered oil land. While earlier historians have covered aspects of the CTCA, Rogers has shown that it was part of a broader morale-building machine that had its own logic. The CTCA was established in April 1917 to get soldiers’ sexual behaviours under control as they trained for combat. The Military Morale Section (MMS), which became the Morale Branch at the end of the war,was founded a year later as American Expeditionary Forces were being deployed to Europe. Led by Edward Lyman Munson, a high-ranking medical officer, the Morale Branch and its predecessor took increasing control over the CTCA.