Michael Goulding / McClatchy Tribune

Early in Spike Lee’s World War II movie, “Miracle at St. Anna,â€Â there’s a clip of John Wayne rallying the troops in the famous Hollywood D-Day pic, “The Longest Day.â€Â There are no black actors to speak of in that film, although thousands of African-American soldiers landed on the beaches of Normandy in June 1944.

In fact, there are few black actors in most of Hollywood’s World War II accounts, a war in which almost one million African Americans served. So when Lee was a kid growing up in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and he and his brothers watched “The Dirty Dozen,â€Â it was a revelation.

“Jim Brown!â€Â Lee exclaims, remembering the sight of the football hero-turned-movie star on the big screen. “My brothers and I were so happy to see a black man in a World War II film. Because even though we loved World War II films as kids, we knew, because my father’s older brothers were in World War II, that there were stories not being told.â€Â

Lee seeks to tell stories of minority heroes

That’s a key reason Lee wanted to tell this one. In “Miracle at St. Anna,â€Â four “Buffalo soldiers,â€Â members of the all-black 92d Infantry Division, the only segregated unit that saw combat, are trapped behind enemy lines in the hills of Tuscany. Lee’s film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, stars Laz Alonso, Michael Ealy, Derek Luke and Omar Benson Miller.

In “Patton,â€Â Lee notes, the only black actor of consequence is James Edwards, who played the legendary general’s personal valet. But in reality, black soldiers, like the ones in the U.S. Army’s 761st Tank Battalion, “saved Patton … during the Battle of the Bulge. No one knows about this,â€Â he says.

“And there was the Red Ball Express, which was a caravan of black drivers whose job was to keep the supply lines open so Patton could advance. They were in German territory, driving at night without lights, the unsung heroes.â€Â

And it wasn̢۪t just blacks, Lee adds.

“The Nisei was a Japanese-American unit that fought side by side in the later stages of the campaign in Italy against the Nazis. Japanese Americans! No one knows about them either.â€Â

Lee, 51, hopes that “Miracle at St. Annaâ€Â will be the first of many films to bring these stories to notice.
“In the spring, George Lucas will do his Tuskegee Airmen film; it’s called ‘Red Tails.’ He’s producing it,â€Â Lee says. “So, hopefully, these two films, back-to-back, will get the ball rolling.â€Â

James McBride, author of the “Miracle at St. Annaâ€Â novel, and writer of the screenplay, said he hoped the film would pay tribute to other forgotten heroes of the war.

“It needs to be said that while ‘Miracle at St. Anna’ is about the 92d Division, about the struggles of the African-American soldier, the Italian story in this … is very important. The Italians suffered terribly during World War II, and they have been portrayed stereotypically in our media and in our movies as the little partisans with the little guns waiting for the great Americans to come and save them.â€Â

By Steven Rea / McClatchy Tribune