For more information:
Callie R. Oettinger, callie@o-a-inc.com
Ph: 703-451-2476, Fax: 703-451-6870

The Role of Al McIntosh in The War

On September 23, 2007, the premiere of The War, a documentary series by Ken Burns that explores the effects of World War II on Americans and a handful of American cities—one of which is Luverne, MN—will be airing to millions of viewers across the nation on PBS. As was the case when his wildly popular documentaries Baseball and The Civil War— when Ken Burns puts his work to film, the nation watches. This time around they will be watching, in large part, scenes and stories from Luverne.

In 1941, the Rock County Star, as this paper was named then, featured its editor and publisher, Al McIntosh, in a front-page weekly column titled “More or Less Personal Chaff.” Each week McIntosh provided the people of Luverne with a constant narrative during the course of the war—sometimes discussing the war happenings, other times highlighting Main Street issues. So representative of the American experience of the time were McIntosh’s columns that Ken Burns could hardly pass them up when researching for The War.

“Al McIntosh is in every episode,” Burns has said. “He is the one-man Greek chorus. Not only does he help explain the unexplainable to the folks of Luverne, MN, he explains it to us. He stands on a street corner in the center of town and watches Scotty Doers, the depot agent, walk across the street to deliver a telegram to the Lester family and the father says, ‘Which one?’ He had two sons in the war.”

Burns calls McIntosh’s writing “gorgeous” and in the style of Mark Twain, also saying “it just goes right to your heart.”

Two-time Academy Award® winner Tom Hanks asked to be the voice of Al McIntosh in the Burns film once he learned production was underway. Hanks was reportedly so moved by McIntosh’s writing that, in the final editing stages of the series, he urged Burns to use more of it to narrate the film. As a result, McIntosh (through the voice of Hanks) is in every episode.

Ultimately, McIntosh’s columns played such a large role in the making of The War that producers decided to hold the world premiere of the series in St. Paul, MN, on September 5, 2007, and in Luverne, MN, on September 6, 2007—17 days prior to the nationwide broadcast premiere on PBS. Attending this very special premiere will be director Ken Burns, legendary broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw, co-producer/director Lynn Novick, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, and Al McIntosh’s daughter Jean Vickstrom, to name a few.

Selected Chaff, along with Geoffrey Ward’s book The War: An Intimate History (published by Knopf as a supplement to the series), serves an important role in bringing all the pride and fear, triumph, and tragedy of Burns’ latest documentary achievement to print, giving readers a true feel for the impact of war on the home-front during the time.