The Fighting Lady (1944). US Navy, with Twentieth Century-Fox. Held by the Internet Archive; public domain.
The Fighting Lady
The wartime record of an Essex-class carrier — unnamed in the film for security — through strikes across the Pacific; Academy Award for documentary feature.
- Year
- 1944
- Made by
- US Navy, with Twentieth Century-Fox
- Directed by
- Edward Steichen, photographic unit
- Free to use because
- A work of the United States government — no copyright, anywhere
The note
Steichen, sixty-three years old and already one of the great photographers, ran the Navy unit that made this. The film keeps the ship anonymous, which gives it a curious universality: it is every carrier. Robert Taylor narrates. Long passages are flight deck operations, and the sound of that — catapults, engines, the loudspeaker — is as vivid a picture of the industrial side of the war as anything filmed. Public domain.
The Fighting Lady, 1944. US Navy, with Twentieth Century-Fox. Directed by Edward Steichen, photographic unit. This is the film’s soundtrack: narration, score and location sound, streamed from the Internet Archive’s master. No picture — the audio is the work. A work of the United States government, and therefore free of copyright anywhere it is used.
The soundtrack