Flag of Mercy (1942) User Reviews

We've got a new war and need more nurses

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 1 August 2019]

MGM updated its 1939 short subject Angels Of Mercy to include World War II footage and makes it a recruiting film for women who want to do something for the war effort.

Clara Barton our own Florence Nightingale is played here by Sara Haden best known for playing Aunt Milly in the Hardy Family series. A woman who believed that woman's place was most definitely not the home in a moment of crisis.

Nice flag waver.

"Clara Barton knew James A. Garfield had once been General Garfield"

[boblipton · 5/10 · 31 July 2019]

This episode of John Nesbitt's PASSING PARADE series is an edited version of 1939's ANGEL OF MERCY, with a bit about the Second World War added to bring it up to date.

It's about Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross and the Woman's Nursing Corps. Sara Haden plays Miss Barton, in the mum shows that Nesbitt's MGM series featured. Mr. Nesbitt would narrate the events in an overwrought, dramatic style, trained on radio, telling these little stories about the commonplace world or bits of forgotten history that he dragged up to inspire his audience. With the Second World War on, the armed forces needed nurses, and needed a lot of them!

Fortunately for the narrator, he doesn't have to . . .

[oscaralbert · 6/10 · 3 August 2019]

. . . "keep a straight face" when he bloviates a string of bald-faced lies to kick off his FLAG OF MERCY spiel. Released under the banner of the Groaning Fat Cat One Per Centers--the U.S. Pachyderm Party's long-time official propaganda organ--FLAG OF MERCY's opening pontificates that after a crushing American defeat at Pearl Harbor, "As always men forget their differences . . . Rich Man and Working Man." Is there any grain of Truth tucked into this Load of Carp? Heck no!! I own a shelf full of World War Two Era Pachyderm Party Fifth Columnist Conspiracy Theory books accusing our beloved hero President FDR of responsibility for Japan's infamous sneak attack, which came AFTER years of Pachyderm Crusading to keep America "neutral" while the Fat Cats made Big Bucks clandestinely aiding the Axis of Evil to impose their New World Order! Even in the context of FLAG OF MERCY, the obtuse narrator voices no irony while noting the fact that Lucifer's Earthly Minions--the demonically-possessed Pachyderm fiends--fought the advent of the International Red Cross tooth and nail, insuring that the USA was the final holdout against angelic mercy!

"Flag of Mercy" is Basically the "Angel of Mercy" short from 1939

[nammage · 4/10 · 25 December 2016]

Going with my review of "Angel of Mercy (1939)" short narrated as well by John Nesbitt, this is basically the same short. While the first one had it as Clara Barton as the centerpiece with Civil War battles edited in, this one is Clara Barton with World War II And the Civil War edited in which really makes no sense except of course expressing the message (as I stated in my last review) that this is a "Man's World" and women belong at home. But, Clara Barton defies that and continues on. They keep pushing in these two fictional accounts of Barton's life saying that it took her years to get men to listen to her. After the Civil War she created "Office of Missing Soldiers" where she and other women responded to letters, looked for the soldiers who were killed or missing, and that began right after the war in 1865. By 1868 she traveled around Europe and came into contact with the Red Cross organization and then introduced it to the US. She helped other countries build hospitals during wars at that time. In the US she wasn't denied the creation of the American Cross because she was a woman (though I'm sure for a minority that was an issue) but because the US just had the biggest war of its existence and didn't see itself getting into other huge conflicts (though I wonder what the Indian Wars were about if not huge conflicts?). She didn't attempt to get the Red Cross to the States until the 1870s and was successful in 1881. Of course she was forced out by men in 1904 because they believed it was a "Man's world" and only men could actually run it better.

These shorts were two things: adverts for the Red Cross and propaganda for the US government. Neither of which did Clara Barton and who she was justice.

Again: I could be wrong.