Produced 80 years ago, the George Cukor film "Keeper of the Flame" was one of many anti-fascist films of the World War II era. Starring Spencer Tracy as reporter Stephen O'Malley and Katharine Hepburn as Christine Forrest, the widow of national hero Robert Forrest. Forrest is revealed to be a would- be American Mussolini, backed by wealthy interests. Just happened upon it on TCM while channel surfing.
Unlike some other anti- fascist films of the time, "Keeper of the Flame" casts its eye on domestic threats to America. Several of the scenes seem prescient in their view of how fascism ("Americanism", i.e., "America First") would be introduced into our politics and culture. This is one of those brief scenes, wherein the widow (Hepburn) reveals the secret trove of fascist planning documents her late husband had to Tracy, who had planned to write a biography of the "great man." He then promises to instead focus the book on the widow's revelations about her fascist husband.
If you see echoes of Murdoch's Fox "News" and the rest of the seditionist right-wing media, and the Malignant Loser and his legion of flying monkeys, you've been paying attention. Also, when the film was released in early 1943, Republicans in Congress howled about the film's "leftist" perspective and it's linkage of plutocrats with fascism (again, echoes):
