This short was nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary, Short, losing to December 7th. There will be spoilers ahead:
This is an unusual piece, in more ways than one. The subject matter, first of all, is venereal disease, specifically syphilis. Not exactly the kind of subject one would associate with a night out at the movies in 1943. I would like to have been in a movie theater the first time this was shown! Second, though this is billed as a documentary, it's more recreation/docudrama than it is a documentary.
Jean Hersholt, an actor, plays a military doctor, guiding the audience through the subject of the cost of syphilis to the war effort and also ways to diagnose, treat and prevent the disease. This opens on a bomber crew standing near their plane-a plane which won't be taking off, because the pilot has been removed from duty for an "illness". Two of the actors playing crew are Robert Mitchum and Noah Beery, Jr. They may be the most entertaining aspect of this.
The short is mostly rather dry statistics of infection rates and the cost, both financially and in human terms. It's all very competently done and I have no doubt that the figures presented were accurate, for the 1940s. But treatments have changed since then and much of the advice given here is of little value.
Still worth watching for the sake of curiosity, if nothing else.
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