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The G.I. Bill: The Law That Changed America. Prod. and dir. by Karen Thomas. Educational Broadcasting Corp. and Film Odyssey, Inc., 1997. 58 mins. (PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314-1698)
This documentary tells the story of the G.I. Bill (Servicemen@s Readjustment Act of 1944), focusing mainly on its free-college provisions. It makes a big pitch for the transforming effect of the bill on individual lives and on the nation. It does this largely through the grittily eloquent testimony of a small number of veterans-several of them ordinary joes (and one jill), but many of them stars. They include the actors Tony Curtis, Rod Steiger, and Walter Matthau, the singer Harry Belafonte, and the columnist Art Buchwald.
The film's ideological subtext is that the bill "made America what it is" by being...