In 1968, John Bard Manulis and his classmates entered seventh grade at Harvard School for Boys in Los Angeles, an all-male, Episcopalian prep school that still carried the structure of a military academy. They wore uniforms. They marched with rifles. They learned hierarchy early. Seniors had privileges younger students did no. Manulis remembers the school as a place shaped by discipline, authority and, at times, hazing. More than 50 years later, those boys—now older men—found each other again on Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their conversations, arriving for a wider audience during Mental Health Awareness Month, became something Manulis did not often see: dozens of men talking honestly about their lives.
It’s a deep dive into stuff you don’t really hear from men very much.
Those conversations became Fortunate Sons, a documentary directed by Emmy-winning filmmaker Peter Jones and produced by Manulis, a member of Harvard School’s class of 1974. After airing on PBS, the film will be available May 26 on major video-on-demand platforms, including Amazon, Apple, YouTube Movies and TV, Kinema and Vimeo on Demand. The film is not a military documentary in the traditional sense. But its questions about discipline, hierarchy, stoicism, male friendship and emotional silence may feel familiar to veterans, service members and military families who understand how easily composure can become armor. Manulis told Military.com the project revealed “the power of connection, the power of friendship, the power of vulnerability” at a stage in life when many men have spent decades learning not to ask for help.
