Millions Like Us is a tribute film to the women of the United Kingdom who were the Rosie the Riveteers of the Blessed Isle. With a much less population base to draw from, Great Britain relied far more than the United States to keep the war production running so the men could do the fighting. And being under aerial attack by the Nazis, they endured a lot more than American factory workers of any sex did.
On the American home-front, my mother freshly graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in Rochester, worked in the Bausch&Lomb factory, making all kinds of optical lenses for war production as that was all Bausch&Lomb was doing in 1943 when this film was made. Before that she worked after school there part time. Still it was a voluntary thing because she had a brother in the service. It was hardly the regimented lives you see these women leading, moved to far away location with new factories springing up in the country to avoid bombing. There's a reference in the film to Mr. Bevin's manpower needs filled by women and they are referring to Ernest Bevin, trade union leader, Labor MP, and in charge in the wartime Coalition Cabinet of such mobilization.
The film centers primarily around two women, Patricia Roc and Anne Crawford, two of the loveliest beauties ever to grace the screen for the UK. Both are transplanted from the city, Roc is one of three sisters living with their widowed father Moore Marriott who's a member of the Home Guard. She has a bittersweet romance with RAF sergeant young Gordon Jackson in his first role of notice.
Anne Crawford's a sexy thing used who's been around. She's not taking to factory work at all, but in spite of herself and in spite of himself, she's taking nicely to factory foreman Eric Portman and he, her.
Roc is best remembered by Americans in her one and only Hollywood film, the western Canyon Passage. And Crawford before she died tragically at the age of 36 made her mark across the pond as Morgan LeFay in Knights of the Round Table with Robert Taylor and Ava Gardner. Anne didn't yield an inch to Ava in the beauty department.
Today's audience will have it driven home just how much danger of invasion the United Kingdom was in when they see the direction signs on roads cut down and painted over. The better for the enemy not to be helped should he land.
This film is a historic classic, a must for today's audience to learn what and how much a free people might endure to stay free. Women like Roc and Crawford and the Millions Like {Us} them kept the men in the fight, kept Great Britain free and ultimately kept us all free.
