A quick reply to Donald Larsson's suggestion of a couple days ago that CHINA GATE, in 1957, was the earliest Hollywood Vietnam movie. Instead, that distinction probably belongs to ROGUES' REGIMENT, made nearly a decade earlier and released by Universal in 1948. ROGUES' REGIMENT was written (in collaboration with Robert Buckner) and directed by Robert Florey as a follow-up to their unusual wartime version of THE DESERT SONG (1943), which linked fascism with imperialism, showing Nazi Germany manipulating French control of Northwest Africa for its own ends. The Arab rebels were valorized as heroes whose struggle for freedom promoted the goals of the Allies. In ROGUES' REGIMENT, the French Foreign Legion is shown, as it had become, a haven for escaped Nazis, and by depicting Nazis as the enforcers of colonial power, imperialism again implicitly links colonialism with fascism. Communist influence is not ignored, but the Vietnamese rebels are portrayed as using communist agents for their own goals. Just as THE DESERT SONG ran into censorship troubles in the US, ROGUES' REGIMENT was banned by the French, making it a commercial failure. As a result, it has often been overlooked in noting early critiques of the conflict, despite delineating the issues in the same manner as they would face the United States more than a dozen years later. Brian Taves, Motion Picture Division Library of Congress Tavesmail.loc.gov