I've watched this movie many times but realized something tonight. Oddball mentions that they play music very loud when they go into battle. What kind of sources did they have in WW2 for portable music? Just turntables? I would imagine if they did have a turntable, wouldn't it skip alot?
shareThey had to have a reel to reel they rigged into the power source.....There's no way a record would play in a tank even on smooth dirt. Those steel tracks made a bumpy ride. They most likely had reel to reel then if they recorded records. But here's something to consider none the less. What's this 1941? A reel to reel was high tech for the time and probably out of reach for anyone only having a GI's pay. So it's still really remarkable that they would have one unless they lifted from someplace....
shareAnd it wouldn't have been small either would it? I can't exactly imagine Shermans having much room for luxury items.
...then whoa, differences...
I'm gonna go with poetic license for this. The Germans had reel to reel in the 20s, but state of the art for the Allies was wire recorders which were pretty poor quality. (The spies cut records for their deceptions).
In 1947, a captured reel to reel was shown to Bing Crosby who thought it the most amazing thing and immediately gave $50K to develop the tech.
poetic license
What's really remarkable is that they somehow acquired a recording of Hank Williams Jr's 'All for the Love of Sunshine' 26 years before it was released.
"You may have come on no bicycle, but that does not say that you know everything."
Armed Forces Radio!
shareThat's actually possible; car radios were becoming fairly common by the 1940s, and the tanks did have huge whip antennas. I'm just not sure if AFR - or any French civilian station - would have been playing country music, which was still known as 'hillbilly music,' in those days.
- You may have come on no bicycle, but that does not say that you know everything.
Yeah, I think it would be radio music. He just said they played loud music- he didn't claim to have a reel to reel or a record player so Moriarty probably rigged up a radio to the loudspeaker.
shareThey could have used a wire recorder. Wire recorders predate reel-to-reel recorders and were the size of a small suitcase.They used thin copper wire to record sounds. Wire recorders were used by the U.S.Army's "Ghost Army" to simulate the sounds of tanks,guns and trucks to fool the enemy.
shareSteel wire, surely? Didn't they work on magnetism?
...then whoa, differences...
Maybe Oddball liberated a tape recorder from the Germans. However they did it this resulted in a great scene with Germans being machine gunned and blasted to the sound of some upbeat and happy sounding tune. Then after all the destruction and havoc they caused in the railway yard, the American tanks rolled off to the tune I've Been Working on the Railroad. Very clever. I'll bet Colonel Kilgore got his idea from watching Kelly's Heroes.
shareDoes anybody realize that the song being played is sung by Hank Williams Jr., who wasn't even born yet? Poetic license...I think so.
share