World War II and the Postwar Years in America: A Historical and Cultural Encyclopedia

World War II and the Postwar Years in America © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved. World War II and the Postwar Yea...

Author: William H. Young | Nancy K. Young

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World War II and the Postwar Years in America

© 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

World War II and the Postwar Years in America A Historical and Cultural Encyclopedia VOLUME 1: A–I VOLUME 2 : J–Z

William H. Young and Nancy K. Young

Santa Barbara, California • Denver, Colorado • Oxford, England


Copyright 2010 by ABC-CLIO, LLC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Young, William H., 1939– World War II and the postwar years in America : a historical and cultural encyclopedia / William H. Young and Nancy K. Young. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-313-35652-0 (alk. paper) —ISBN 978-0-313-35653-7 (ebook) 1. United States—History—1933–1945—Encyclopedias. 2. United States— History—1945–1953—Encyclopedias. 3. World War, 1939–1945— United States—Encyclopedias. I. Young, Nancy K., 1940– II. Title. E806.Y73 2010 973.91—dc22 2010021470 ISBN: 978–0-313–35652–0 EISBN: 978–0-313–35653–7 14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5 This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116–1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America


Contents

VOLUME 1 Alphabetical List of Entries vii Guide to Related Topics xi Preface xvii Acknowledgments xxi Introduction xxiii The Encyclopedia, Entries A–I Index

1

I-1

VOLUME 2 Alphabetical List of Entries vii Guide to Related Topics xi The Encyclopedia, Entries J–Y

417

Timeline for the 1940s 787 Selected Resources 801 Index I-1

v


Alphabetical List of Entries

Blackouts, Brownouts, and Dim-Outs Bogart, Humphrey Boogie-Woogie Book Clubs Bowling Boxing Boyd, William (Hopalong Cassidy) Broadway Shows (Comedy and Drama) Broadway Shows (Musicals)

ABC (American Broadcasting Company) Abstract Expressionism Acuff, Roy Advertising All-Girl Orchestras Andrews Sisters, The Architecture Art (Painting) ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban Atomic Bomb, The Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry Autry, Gene, and Roy Rogers Aviation Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose

Canteens Cartoons (Film) Casablanca (Michael Curtiz) Children’s Films Citizen Kane (Orson Welles) Civil Defense Classical Music Cold War, The Cole, Nat King Comedies (Film) Comic Books Comic Strips Copland, Aaron Costume and Spectacle Films Country Music Crime and Mystery Films Crosby, Bing Crosley Automobiles

Baby Boom Baseball Basie, Count Basketball Bebop (Bop) Berlin Airlift, The Best Sellers (Books) Best Years of Our Lives, The (William Wyler) Beverages Black Market vii


viii

| Alphabetical List of Entries

Dance D-Day Design Desserts, Candy, and Ice Cream Disney, Walt Drama (Film) Drive-Ins: Movie Theaters, Restaurants, and Banks DuMont Network Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show, The Education Eisenhower, General Dwight David Ellington, Duke

Jack Benny Program, The Jazz Jones, Spike Jukeboxes Juvenile Delinquency Kinsey, Alfred C. Kraft Television Theatre Labor Unrest Lawns, Lawnmowers, and Fertilizers Leisure and Recreation Levittown and Suburbanization Lone Ranger, The Louis, Joe MacArthur, General Douglas Magazines Marshall, General George Catlett MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System) Miller, Glenn Miranda, Carmen Motorsports Movies Murphy, Audie Musicals (Film)

Fads Fashion Fast Food Film Noir FM Radio Folk Music Food Football Frozen Foods Games GI Bill (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944) Godfrey, Arthur Golf Grocery Stores and Supermarkets Health and Medicine Hobbies Hockey Hope, Bob Horror and Thriller Films Horse Racing Hot Rods and Drag Racing House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) Howdy Doody Show, The Illustrators Internment Camps (Relocation Centers) It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra)

Newspapers Photography Political and Propaganda Films Posters Pyle, Ernie, and Bill Mauldin Race Relations and Stereotyping Radio Radio Programming: Action, Crime, Police, and Detective Shows Radio Programming: Children’s Shows, Serials, and Adventure Series Radio Programming: Comedy Shows Radio Programming: Drama and Anthology Shows Radio Programming: Educational Shows Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk


Alphabetical List of Entries | ix Radio Programming: Quiz Shows Radio Programming: Soap Operas Rationing Religion Restaurants Rhythm ’n’ Blues Roller Derby Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, President Franklin Delano Rosie the Riveter Scrap Drives Sculpture Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 (Selective Service, or Draft) Serial Films Service Flags (Gold Stars and Blue Stars) Seventeen Shore, Dinah Sinatra, Frank Skating (Figure) Skating (Roller) Skiing Smith, Kate Softball Songwriters and Lyricists Spam Spock, Dr. Benjamin O. Steel Pennies (1943) Superman

Swimming and Water Skiing Swing Technology Television Tennis Terry and the Pirates (Milton Caniff) Texaco Star Theater (Milton Berle) Toast of the Town (Ed Sullivan) Toys Trains Transportation Travel Truman, President Harry S. UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) United Nations, The USO (United Service Organizations) V-E and V-J Day Victory Gardens Voice of America War Bonds War Films Westerns (Film) “White Christmas” (Irving Berlin) Women in the Military: WACs, WASPs, WAVES, SPARS, and Others Youth


Guide to Related Topics

Art

Transportation Travel

Abstract Expressionism Advertising Art (Painting) Comic Books Comic Strips Design Disney, Walt Fashion Illustrators Magazines Photography Posters Pyle, Ernie, and Bill Mauldin Sculpture

Comic Books and Strips Cartoons (Film) Comic Books Comic Strips Illustrators Newspapers Serial Films Superman Terry and the Pirates Fads and Games Book Clubs Dance Fads Games Hobbies Hot Rods and Drag Racing Leisure and Recreation Radio Programming: Quiz Shows Skating (Roller) Swing Toys

Architecture Architecture Design Drive-Ins: Movie Theaters, Restaurants, and Banks Levittown and Suburbanization Technology Aviation Aviation Berlin Airlift, The Technology

Food and Drink Advertising xi


xii

| Guide to Related Topics

Beverages Canteens Desserts, Candy, and Ice Cream Drive-Ins: Movie Theaters, Restaurants, and Banks Fast Food Frozen Foods Grocery Stores and Supermarkets Health and Medicine Rationing Restaurants Spam USO (United Service Organizations) Victory Gardens Government Atomic Bomb, The Civil Defense Cold War, The Education GI Bill (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944) Health and Medicine House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) Illustrators Internment Camps (Relocation Centers) Labor Unrest Photography Political and Propaganda Films Posters Race Relations and Stereotyping Rationing Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, President Franklin Delano Rosie the Riveter Scrap Drives Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 (Selective Service, or Draft) Service Flags (Gold Stars and Blue Stars) Steel Pennies (1943) Trains Transportation Truman, President Harry S. UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) United Nations, The

USO (United Service Organizations) Victory Gardens Voice of America War Bonds Women in the Military: WACs, WASPs, WAVES, SPARS, and Others Individuals Acuff, Roy Andrews Sisters, The Autry, Gene, and Roy Rogers Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose Basie, Count Boyd, William Cole, Nat King Copland, Aaron Crosby, Bing Disney, Walt Eisenhower, General Dwight David Ellington, Duke Godfrey, Arthur Hope, Bob Jones, Spike Kinsey, Alfred C. Louis, Joe MacArthur, General Douglas Marshall, General George Catlett Miller, Glenn Miranda, Carmen Murphy, Audie Pyle, Ernie, and Bill Maudlin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, President Franklin Delano Shore, Dinah Sinatra, Frank Smith, Kate Spock, Dr. Benjamin O. Truman, President Harry S. Literature Best Sellers (Books) Book Clubs Comic Books Illustrators Magazines Newspapers Seventeen


Guide to Related Topics | xiii Magazines Advertising Illustrators Magazines Photography Seventeen Movies Autry, Gene, and Roy Rogers Best Years of Our Lives, The (William Wyler) Bogart, Humphrey Boyd, William (Hopalong Cassidy) Casablanca (Michael Curtiz) Children’s Films Citizen Kane (Orson Welles) Comedies (Film) Costume and Spectacle Films Crime and Mystery Films Crosby, Bing Dance Disney, Walt Drama (Film) Drive-Ins: Movie Theaters, Restaurants, and Banks Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show, The Hope, Bob Horror and Thriller Films House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra) Lone Ranger, The Miranda, Carmen Movies Murphy, Audie Musicals (Film) Political and Propaganda Films Race Relations and Stereotyping Serial Films Superman Television War Films Westerns (Film) Music Acuff, Roy

All-Girl Orchestras Andrews Sisters, The ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban Autry, Gene, and Roy Rogers Basie, Count Bebop (Bop) Boogie-Woogie Broadway Shows (Musicals) Classical Music Cole, Nat King Copland, Aaron Country Music Crosby, Bing Dance Disney, Walt Ellington, Duke FM Radio Folk Music Jazz Jones, Spike Jukeboxes Miller, Glenn Miranda, Carmen Race Relations and Stereotyping Radio Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows Rhythm ’n’ Blues Shore, Dinah Sinatra, Frank Smith, Kate Songwriters and Lyricists Swing Television “White Christmas” ( Irving Berlin) Musicians Acuff, Roy Andrews Sisters, The Autry, Gene, and Roy Rogers Basie, Count Cole, Nat King Copland, Aaron Crosby, Bing Jones, Spike Miller, Glenn Miranda, Carmen


xiv


Shore, Dinah Sinatra, Frank Smith, Kate Newspapers Advertising Atomic Bomb, The Blackouts, Brownouts, and Dim-Outs Berlin Airlift, The Civil Defense Cold War, The Comic Strips Newspapers Pyle, Ernie, and Bill Maudlin Rationing Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, President Franklin Delano Scrap Drives Superman Terry and the Pirates Truman, President Harry S. UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) USO (United Service Organizations) V-E and V-J Day Victory Gardens War Bonds Organizations All-Girl Orchestras House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) USO (United Service Organizations) Voice of America Radio Advertising ABC (American Broadcasting Company) ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show, The FM Radio Jack Benny Program, The Leisure and Recreation Lone Ranger, The Radio

Radio Programming: Action, Crime, Police, and Detective Shows Radio Programming: Children’s Shows, Serials, and Adventure Series Radio Programming: Comedy Shows Radio Programming: Drama and Anthology Shows Radio Programming: Educational Shows Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk Radio Programming: Quiz Shows Radio Programming: Soap Operas Religion Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, President Franklin Delano Shore, Dinah Smith, Kate Superman Technology Voice of America Social Issues Baby Boom Berlin Airlift, The Fads Folk Music GI Bill (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944) Health and Medicine Juvenile Delinquency Kinsey, Alfred C. Labor Unrest Race Relations and Stereotyping Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk Religion Roosevelt, Eleanor Rosie the Riveter Spock, Dr. Benjamin O. United Nations, The Sports Baseball Basketball


Guide to Related Topics | xv Bowling Boxing Golf Hockey Horse Racing Hot Rods and Drag Racing Motorsports Roller Derby Skating (Figure) Skating (Roller) Skiing Softball Swimming and Water Skiing Technology Tennis

Radio Programming: Educational Shows Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk Radio Programming: Quiz Shows Radio Programming: Soap Operas Skating (Figure) Skating (Roller) Technology Television Trains Transportation Television

Suburbanization Advertising Architecture Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry Baby Boom Best Sellers (Books) Book Clubs Design Drive-Ins: Movie Theaters, Restaurants, and Banks Education Fast Food Games GI Bill (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944) Golf Grocery Stores and Supermarkets Lawns, Lawnmowers, and Fertilizers Leisure and Recreation Levittown and Suburbanization Magazines Newspapers Radio Radio Programming: Action, Crime, Police, and Detective Shows Radio Programming: Children’s Shows, Serials, and Adventure Series Radio Programming: Comedy Shows Radio Programming: Drama and Anthology Shows

ABC (American Broadcasting Company) DuMont Network Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show, The Hope, Bob Howdy Doody Show, The Jack Benny Program, The Kraft Television Theatre Leisure and Recreation MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System) Technology Television Texaco Star Theater (Milton Berle) Toast of the Town (Ed Sullivan) Theater Broadway Shows (Comedy and Drama) Broadway Shows (Musicals) Copland, Aaron Dance Movies Radio Programming: Drama and Anthology Shows Songwriters and Lyricists Texaco Star Theater (Milton Berle) Travel Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry


xvi


Aviation Crosley Automobiles Trains Transportation Travel World War II Advertising All-Girl Orchestras Atomic Bomb, The Aviation Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose Berlin Airlift, The Best Years of Our Lives, The (William Wyler) Black Market Blackouts, Brownouts, and Dim-Outs Canteens Civil Defense Cold War, The D-Day Education Eisenhower, General Dwight David GI Bill (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944) Health and Medicine Hope, Bob Internment Camps (Relocation Centers) Louis, Joe MacArthur, General Douglas Magazines Marshall, General George Catlett Miller, Glenn Movies Murphy, Audie Newspapers Photography

Political and Propaganda Films Posters Pyle, Ernie, and Bill Maudlin Race Relations and Stereotyping Radio Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk Rationing Roosevelt, President Franklin Delano Rosie the Riveter Scrap Drives Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 (Selective Service, or Draft) Service Flags (Gold Stars and Blue Stars) Smith, Kate Songwriters and Lyricists Spam Steel Pennies (1943) Technology Television Toys Trains Transportation Travel Truman, President Harry S. USO (United Service Organizations) V-E and V-J Day Victory Gardens Voice of America War Bonds War Films “White Christmas” (Irving Berlin) Women in the Military: WACs, WASPs, WAVES, SPARS, and Others Youth


Preface

The 1940s—a decade that witnessed a global conflict of massive proportions followed by unprecedented prosperity—has been, and will continue to be, examined and discussed by scholars, students, and history enthusiasts. The focus of this two-volume encyclopedia centers on one aspect of this decade: the interplay between everyday life and popular culture. Throughout the many entries, readers will sense the presence of unlimited loyalty and patriotism on the part of U.S. citizens toward their country as it plunged into the war and also how they coped on the home front, working their jobs, carrying out their chores, and relaxing with the visual arts, movies, radio shows, pop music, best sellers, sports, and all those other elements that give zest and flavor to living. For example, under the entries “Fast Food,” “Food,” and “Restaurants,” the inclusion of information about related radio programming, magazine and newspaper articles, and posters demonstrates how popular sources of entertainment informed and reinforced habits of healthy eating in a time of rationing and scarcity. The text will stress how scrap drives, victory gardens, and the purchase of war bonds involved everyone, often with the urging of celebrities from the entertainment and sports worlds. When peace finally returned, articles such as “Baby Boom,” “Drive-Ins: Movie Theaters, Restaurants, and Banks,” “Lawns, Lawnmowers, and Fertilizers,” and “Levittown and Suburbanization” explore the emerging postwar lifestyles. With prosperity, Americans acquired new cars, bought houses in the growing suburbs, traveled more, ate out more often, and became aware that new threats, in the form of a Cold War, hovered on the horizon. But even anxiety about Communism and the possibility of a nuclear confrontation could not dispel the overall optimism of the day. Science and technology made advances in all fields, the GI Bill sent thousands of veterans off to college, and religious leaders touted positive thinking. Despite a few clouds, the future looked bright.

xvii


xviii

| Preface

The 179 entries in this encyclopedia deal in a variety of ways with the decade and are listed alphabetically, from “ABC (American Broadcasting Company)” through “Youth,” with plenty of stops in between. If an individual merits an entry, that person’s surname comes first, followed by the given name, so Duke Ellington’s entry reads “Ellington, Duke” in the listing. Birth and death dates are noted parenthetically following the first mention of a name in the text, as “Cartoonist Al Capp (1909–1979) created the Shmoo.” In the front matter of the book, the reader will find a Guide to Related Topics. This feature groups the articles as they pertain to broad areas of interest; for example, the topic Magazines has the following subheadings: “Advertising,” “Art,” “Comic Books,” “Illustrators,” “Magazines,” “Newspapers,” “Photography,” and “Seventeen” receive mention as additional places for investigation. Twenty-three topic areas are identified. Charts appear throughout the encyclopedia to provide easy-to-find details on a subject in a concise and readable format. For example, the article “Baseball” offers two: the first contains statistics on the World Series; the second lists the pennant and playoff winners in the World War II–era women’s leagues. Other charts include radio programming, movie formats, hit songs, and the like. If needed, explanatory comments are provided within a given chart. Ninety-nine photographs, carefully placed within the text, bring visual life to many articles. Portraits often accompany an entry about a specific person, such as Roy Acuff, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Eleanor Roosevelt. A frame taken from The Best Years of Our Lives presents the stellar cast of that important movie, a shot of parked cars at a drive-in theater captures a popular entertainment of the day, and a picture of an early TV camera enhances the “Technology” entry. Other images help to familiarize the reader with aspects of life unique to the 1940s: bandleader Cab Calloway poses in a zoot suit, some pages from a book of ration stamps illustrate something everyone had to have during the war years, and a picture of a military plane emphasizes the impacts World War II had on the nation. Within the text, whenever original monetary amounts receive mention, their 2008 equivalents follow parenthetically. The current-day numbers represent dollars adjusted for inflation, thereby showing approximately what an equivalent product would now cost. Because the worth of dollars has shifted dramatically over the years, the adjusted values have not surprisingly gone through many changes between the 1940s and the present, but the revised figures may be surprising to contemporary readers. Each article contains words or phrases in boldface that indicate additional related entries. For example, the aforementioned “Levittown and Suburbanization” article mentions, in the course of its text, baby boom, design, the GI Bill, magazines, rationing, television, trains, transportation, and travel. Each of these terms appears in boldface upon first mention, a signal to the reader that additional information can be found in the encyclopedia under that entry. At the conclusion of each article, a boldface See also suggests other encyclopedia topics not specifically mentioned in the entry that may also prove helpful in the subject area. In this case, “Levittown and Suburbanization” includes, in addition to the bolded terms, cross-references to Architecture; Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry; Grocery Stores and Supermarkets; Lawns, Lawnmowers, and Fertilizers; Juvenile Delinquency; and Race Relations and Stereotyping.


Preface | xix Immediately following the See also recommendations, a listing called Selected Readings gives titles of useful books, articles, and Web sites about the entry subject. These mini-bibliographies provide a starting point for further research and should not be considered exhaustive. A much more extensive listing of selected audio and print resources, found immediately before the index, presents a wealth of additional LPs, CDs, books, articles, and Web sites covering a myriad of subjects dealing with the 1940s. Many of the citations in this section address relevant topics not discussed directly in any particular entry. In addition, a timeline covers, year by year, highlights from the decade in abbreviated form. In the final pages of this encyclopedia, a detailed index locates information about topics or people not found under individual entries. For example, artist and illustrator Norman Rockwell does not appear in that category. Discussion of him and his influence will be found in articles such as “Illustrators” and “War Bonds”; he can nevertheless be located in the index under his own name. Similarly, the popular Studebaker automobile will not be found under a heading of that name but instead under “Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry” and elsewhere by name in the index. It is the authors’ hope that anyone interested in American life and activities during World War II and the five years following the conflict will find much helpful and informative material within these pages.


Acknowledgments

Any work of this scope requires the help of others. We have been fortunate that many individuals have contributed, directly and indirectly, knowingly and unknowingly, in the creation of this encyclopedia. Once again, our sincere thanks to everyone at the Lynchburg College Knight-Capron Library, always our starting point. Director Chris Millson-Martula made all the library’s facilities available to us, turning what could have been an overwhelming task into something doable. Ariel Myers, the college archivist and the person to see for interlibrary loans, characteristically found items that some considered impossible to locate. Belinda Carroll, Elizabeth Henderson, Michael Ours, and Christa Poparad deftly handled research and Internet questions, dug out the answers, and did it with a smile. Farther south, the staff at the Harman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University guided us through the mysteries of this previously unused treasure, allowing us to find some splendid examples of ads from the 1940s. And, although we did not visit there in person, the online riches—virtually all digitalized and thumbnailed now—at the Library of Congress to the north once again demonstrated that this venerable institution stands out as one of the best uses of tax dollars to be found. The excellence of its electronic resources makes it altogether too easy to postpone actually visiting Washington, which becomes our loss, since the people staffing the various departments are such a pleasure to work with. Maybe next time. At home, folks got tired, we’re sure, of our pulling out obscure facts about the 1940s, and equally tired of incessant questions pertaining to the decade. Tired or not, we gained a wealth of information through our queries. But special mention must be made of Charles Worsham, who brought his considerable expertise to bear on our works dealing with the visual arts; Dr. James Wright did likewise with sections on health and medicine, along with pertinent observations on related topics. Administrative Assistant Cheryl Pendergraft of the School of Education and Human Development at Lynchburg College provided excellent service in the production of xxi


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| Acknowledgments

this text; her willingness to salvage reams of used paper that still had one clean side allowed us to print our many drafts in an environmentally friendly way. As we’ve come to expect, the people at the Greenwood Publishing Group readily extended helping hands. Editor Debby Adams, with whom we had worked before, got us started and then moved on. We miss her, but when Greenwood became a part of ABC-CLIO, the company gave Mike Hermann the reins and he followed the project through; we were glad to have him come on board. Both Debby and Mike assisted immeasurably with text preparation, a task more arduous than it might sound. Appreciation is expressed also to the people at Apex CoVantage; they assisted immeasurably with editing and related details; Robin Tutt of ABC-CLIO took on the task of ordering, organizing, and laying out pictures. And so we offer to all who participated in this project our hearty thanks. Any errors of commission or sins of omission of course remain ours and ours alone.


Introduction

On January 1, 1940, headlines on the front page of the New York Times gave more attention to the growing conflict in Europe than to New Year’s Eve revelries in the city. Articles about the activities of the Third Reich on the continent and the Russians in Finland underscored the tension building on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. One column announced updated regulations for Americans living, working, or traveling abroad; new procedures required the addition of thumbprints to validate passports, documents now good for only six months. And yet, on that previous evening, New Year’s Eve, as worried as some U.S. citizens might have been about the inevitable involvement of the United States in a worldwide conflict, about one and a quarter million of them withstood frigid weather—meteorologists estimated a nighttime temperature of 10 degrees below zero—to welcome in the New Year and a new decade in New York’s Times Square. One year later, on New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1940, another million or so celebrants crowded into Times Square, despite continued discouraging news from abroad. By this time, eligible males faced a military draft with the passage of the Selective Training and Service Act 1940 in September of that year, but Americans put on a brave face. The December 7, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor thrust an ill-prepared nation into World War II, and still yet another million gathered in the famous square, welcoming still another year, a year certain to be fraught with danger. Traditions die hard, and the last night of 1942 saw the crowd’s numbers halved from the previous celebration, and the usual cheery lights and descending ball from atop the Times’ tower were nowhere to be seen. Dim-out and blackout restrictions had by then been imposed and would remain in effect into 1944. Despite the darkened city, however, several hundred thousand hardy souls twice made the trek to Times Square to toast the arrivals of both 1943 and 1944. When civilian defense officials declared, in late 1944, the threat of enemy attacks had sufficiently lessened, the Great White Way could again glow. xxiii


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The promise of ultimate victory brought out another huge throng of merrymakers on December 31, 1944. If milling crowds at Times Square can provide any measurement of the national mood, the millions of people who surged into the famed intersection of Forty-Second Street and Broadway for the 1945 surrenders of Germany in May and Japan in September demonstrated the depth of joy felt with victory and the return to peace. For the remainder of the decade, with the gloomy clouds of war finally lifted, Times Square went back to a semblance of normalcy. With all the lights back on, storefronts glittered with consumer goods, restaurants offered full menus, and traffic snarls resumed. Hundreds of thousands still showed up for New Year’s Eve celebrations, but the urgency of the war years had dissipated. The 1940s might therefore be thought of as two decades—the World War II years, 1940 to 1945, and the postwar era, 1945 to 1949. The first part saw a nation preoccupied with winning the war; little else mattered. The conflict even manipulated time itself: War Time, passed by Congress in 1942, put the nation on year-round daylight saving time in an effort to conserve energy, particularly electricity; legislators did not end it until September 1945, and even then many states chose to retain at least parts of daylight time; most citizens enjoyed the change during the summer months. No matter the time of day or night, no matter how grim the news in newspapers and on radio, American popular culture, as has always been the case, provided moments of respite, relaxation, and enjoyment for everyone. Soldiers on the battlefield and children back home followed the exploits of superheroes like Superman and Batman in comic books and serials; radio stations served up shows of every imaginable kind; and movie houses offered chills, thrills, and laughter to some 80 million patrons a week. Broadway, that main New York thoroughfare, may have been darkened for a few years of the war, but not the theaters. Playgoers, enthralled with dramas written by Tennessee Williams and Henry Miller, also saw musicals rise to new heights, led by the inventive pens of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. Oklahoma! played to full houses from its opening in 1943 until its closing in 1948, a new record. Country music gained ground when some of its most ardent supporters moved from rural locations to defense jobs scattered around the nation and introduced their favorite tunes to new fans. Swing, once king, lost its crown, while vocalists and singing groups rose in prominence and popularity. The immediate postwar years can be seen as a period of rebuilding, of reclaiming what had been lost or put aside during the long years of overseas battles and home front deprivations. Radio grew—from a little over 700 AM stations in 1940 to almost 2,000 in 1949. Television, where available, gained enthusiastic viewers in the waning years of the decade, while another new kid on the block, FM broadcasting, boasted 726 stations by 1949. Many new approaches to the arts and culture, so long under wraps or ignored by the general public, began to appear—abstract expressionism, early rock ’n’ roll, teenage idols, and youth lifestyles in general—but their impacts on American life proved gradual and would be heralded as benchmarks of the 1950s; the few years of innovation following the war were largely trampled in the rush to return to a more normal, modern, and peaceful way of life, and so in many ways, the late 1940s, the postwar years, serve as but prelude to the 1950s.


Introduction | xxv The peace that the Allies finally achieved in 1945 brought with it a difficult transition. Although most shortages and rationing came to an end, an inflationary spending binge resulted as people splurged with the money accumulated during the lean war years. The troops flooded home, married, and produced both a baby boom and a dearth of housing that changed demographics for generations to come. The typical suburb, with its rows of neat, landscaped houses, its comfortable distance from the perceived turmoil of the city, and its perceived retreat from contemporary problems, represented a nostalgic cocoon that would later become a symbol for years to come. The popularity of Early American decor—knotty pine furniture, ladder-back chairs, milk glass, hooked rugs, and so on—symbolized a mythic past emblematic of security and a willful forgetfulness about present-day concerns. Amid this domestic change, foreign relations also went through a transition, as Communism replaced the Axis powers as an external threat. The Cold War led to congressional witch hunts and a new Red Scare, and artists and scholars employed “the Age of Anxiety” as a catchphrase to describe the attitudes of the new postwar world. Perhaps people thought making it through the war could be considered accomplishment enough, but they now had new challenges to face. But face them they did, and a 1948 runaway best seller bore the title How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. And so, on December 31, 1949, the ball again made its stately drop down the Times building, and below, waiting to welcome 1950, stood some 750,000 revelers. The country, poised for the greatest prosperity it had ever experienced, bid adieu to the 1940s—a difficult decade but one that had tested the mettle of the United States. In retrospect, it came through with flying colors.


A

ABC (AMERICAN BROADCASTING COMPANY) In 1941, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ordered the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) to divest itself of one of its two networks in order to prevent it from having too much of a radio monopoly. Out of this divestiture came a new network, ABC. Since its founding in 1926, NBC had operated two networks, or “chains,” a term then employed by many sources. Each affiliate station could thereby be viewed as a link in a metaphorical chain. Under its banner, the company owned NBC Red and NBC Blue. These two parts ran as separate entities, and each had its own staffs, programming, and affiliates. Because of their size, NBC’s Red and Blue networks effectively controlled more than a quarter of the country’s radio stations, with CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) strongly in second place. The remaining stations were either affiliated with much smaller networks (Colonial, Mutual, Texas Quality, Yankee, and others), or operated independently. In the eyes of the FCC, too much influence jointly rested with the Red and Blue networks, particularly in a number of large cities where NBC controlled several stations. The FCC acted accordingly, citing violation of antitrust regulations, and ruled that NBC would have to reduce its holdings. Both NBC and CBS reacted immediately to the FCC challenge, arguing that the agency went beyond the powers granted it, and that the decision impinged on their rights of free speech. The case went to trial, eventually ending up at the United States Supreme Court. In a landmark decision, the Court ruled that the FCC had acted within its jurisdiction and did not deny the networks the right to free speech. NBC then made the corporate decision to shed its Blue network, traditionally the weaker of the two in programming, audience, and income. NBC Blue went on the block in the spring of 1943, and several parties expressed interest. Considerable bidding ensued for the property, but Edward J. Noble (1882–1958), who had made a fortune 1


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| ABC (American Broadcasting Company)

by purchasing, in 1913, the candy company responsible for Life Savers, came away with the network. He paid $8 million for the property (approximately $92 million in 2008 dollars adjusted for inflation) in July of 1943, buying it in the name of American Broadcast Systems, Inc., a company he owned. The FCC approved the terms of the sale in September, and a year later the American Broadcasting Company was born. For his $8 million, Noble gained a network with an absence of big stars or shows. It also had fewer affiliates than either NBC or CBS, all of which translated as fewer listeners. Potential sponsors, keenly aware of this inequity, were reluctant to invest their dollars in ABC, so the fledgling operation faced challenging financial times during the mid- and late 1940s. But, as the underdog among networks, it gained the freedom to take chances and innovate. For example, Bing Crosby (1903–1977), one of the most popular entertainers of the day, from 1936 on, had hosted NBC’s Kraft Music Hall. But in the fall of 1946, Crosby and NBC suffered a break, and the vocalist moved to ABC. Crosby had wanted to prerecord the Music Hall, but NBC and Kraft adamantly refused. Tape recording remained a new technique in 1946, and both NBC and CBS resisted utilizing it, arguing that audiences would not like “canned” radio shows. But Crosby saw advantages in time and professionalism, since tape could be edited, eliminating flubs or questionable performances. Both sides refused to budge, so Crosby quit, and ABC, not as averse to tape, welcomed him. From 1946 until the summer of 1949, Crosby starred on Philco Radio Time, his replacement version of the Kraft show. NBC continued with the original Music Hall, using veteran entertainer Al Jolson (1886–1950) as the primary host. In time, when the other networks saw that audiences did not object to prerecorded shows, and their stance weakened, tape recording eventually became a normal part of broadcasting. Bing Crosby, however, proved to be only one of several entertainers ABC acquired in its early years. Milton Berle (1908–2002), a veteran comedian from the days of vaudeville, had a checkered career in radio. Most of his previous shows had, at best, mediocre runs before being canceled. An energetic, visual comic, his critics found the purely aural qualities of radio unsuited for his antic humor. But ABC, in need of attractions to fill its skimpy schedule, gambled on Berle and produced The Texaco Star Theater (1948–1949). This variety show did little better than his previous efforts, but it allowed him and his writers to polish routines that would distinguish his next venture, a nearly simultaneous television series bearing the same name that premiered in the fall of 1948 for NBC-TV. The ABC radio show failed, but its format paved the way for his enormously successful Texaco television series that ran until 1953. In the process, Berle emerged as one of the first major stars of the new medium. Another radio comedian, Henry Morgan (1915–1994), came to ABC from the Mutual network in 1945, after a two-year hiatus from broadcasting. Always controversial, at least among the sponsors he constantly ribbed in his routines, Morgan’s offbeat, acerbic humor attracted enough listeners that stations strove to get backing for his show. He remained at ABC, unsponsored, until 1948, when he moved on to NBC. Groucho Marx (1890–1977) gained fame as one of the Marx Brothers of the movies. Appearing with brothers Chico (1887–1961) and Harpo (1888–1964) in a long string of Hollywood slapstick comedies, such as Duck Soup (1933), A Night at the Opera


ABC (American Broadcasting Company) | 3 (1935), and A Day at the Races (1937), the zany trio continued on into the 1940s, but the later films did not do well. After Love Happy (1949), the brothers broke up. But by that time, Groucho had moved into other interests, including radio. For the 1947 fall season, ABC premiered You Bet Your Life, a comedy quiz show with Groucho as its wisecracking host. Following in the trend-setting footsteps of Bing Crosby, the producers put the show on tape, editing 60 minutes of banter into a tight 30-minute show. Any dead spots between Groucho and his contestants were cut, along with any questionable material (language, subject matter). It made for a fast-moving half-hour of humor and rapid-fire wit, with Groucho asking the questions and providing one quip after another. You Bet Your Life became an overnight hit, and ABC retained it for two years. With its success, CBS briefly obtained the show in late 1949, only to have NBC take it over in 1950, keeping the quiz on radio but also introducing a televised version. Both continued with high ratings, running on radio until 1956 and on television until 1961. The success of You Bet Your Life led ABC to look into other quiz-show formats. The network found another winner with Stop the Music, a clever audience-participation production that had call-in contestants attempting to guess the correct titles of songs while a vocalist sang the lyrics but hummed the title. At some point in the song, emcee Bert Parks (1914–1992) halted the proceedings by shouting “stop the music!” An operator then placed a random telephone call to someone in the United States; a correct answer brought sizable prizes, so millions of people tuned in on the off chance they might be called. Debuting in March 1948, the show became a sensation, going from nowhere in the ratings to one of the top 10 radio shows in the country. It played on Sunday nights at 8:00 against the seemingly invincible Fred Allen (1894–1956), at that time one of the most popular comedians on radio. But the chance at big prizes caused many listeners to tune into the new ABC quiz, and The Fred Allen Show dropped precipitously. The novelty of a chance telephone call eventually wore off, however, and Stop the Music faded in popularity; it left the air after a four-year run, despite having been one of ABC’s most successful radio efforts. It also ran on ABC television during most of the same time period, a fact that added to its overall popularity. The new network also gained an ongoing situation comedy when, in 1949, it landed The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, then running on NBC, which, in turn, had gotten it from CBS in 1948. A family-oriented series, the show had originated in 1944. It starred Ozzie Nelson (1906–1975; “Ozzie” derived from Oswald) and his real-life wife, Harriett Hilliard Nelson (1909–1994). The Nelsons had formerly been part of the Big Band Era, with Ozzie leading his own orchestra and Harriet serving as a vocalist. When ABC commenced running the series, the couple’s two sons, David (b. 1936) and Ricky (1940–1985) joined the cast, making it a true family show. It remained on the air until 1954; besides being a radio favorite, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet made an easy transition to television in 1952 on ABC-TV. It survived until 1966, making it one of television’s longest-running sitcoms. A movie, Here Come the Nelsons, also played theaters in 1952. Another 1949 addition to the network’s schedule involved gossip columnist Walter Winchell (1897–1972). Once a widely read reporter, syndicated in hundreds of


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newspapers, Winchell had been a fixture on radio since 1930. He made news into entertainment, especially anything concerning the lives of celebrities. The columnist usually opened his broadcasts with a staccato “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North America and all the ships at sea.” As he spoke, he tapped a telegraph key for effect, a gimmick implying that he alone had important breaking news. Over the years, his manner of digging the dirt about famous names gained him a substantial audience, but he grew increasingly strident and opinionated, and many of his former fans drifted away. After many years with NBC, he went to ABC just as anti-Communist hysteria was sweeping much of the nation. No supporter of President Harry S. Truman (1884– 1972), Winchell railed about “Reds in government” and an administration “soft on Communism” (both popular phrases of the day). Despite declining ratings, Winchell continued to tap his telegraph key and claim to possess insider information on a host of subjects. His radio career ended in 1955, but, by that time, ABC had put him in its television schedule for 1952. He remained in that medium until 1958, hat pushed back, tie askew, and sleeves rolled up—the anachronistic picture of a reporter. Edward Noble’s new American Broadcasting Company did not have an easy time of it in the 1940s. Much of the network’s programming consisted of radio hand-me-downs, entertainers and journalists whose best days were behind them when they moved to ABC. Lacking as many affiliates as its primary competitors claimed, and perennially in third place, it would not be until the later1950s that ABC boasted a first-class stable of shows and performers for its growing television audience. By that time, it had virtually dropped its involvement in radio, with the exception of news and sports. See also: Advertising; Comedies (Film); Desserts, Candy, and Ice Cream Selected Reading Barnouw, Erik. A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Vol. 2, The Golden Web. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Nachman, Gerald. Raised on Radio. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Quinlan, Sterling. Inside ABC: American Broadcasting Company’s Rise to Power. New York: Hastings House, 1979.

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM This term came into limited use in 1946, coined by critic Robert Coates (1897–1973) for an article that appeared in The New Yorker magazine reviewing an exhibit by German-born painter and teacher Hans Hofmann (1880–1956). In art, abstraction means to achieve effects through forms, colors, and textures instead of picturing recognizable reality, whereas expressionism suggests depicting the inner world of emotion, usually through distortion or exaggeration. Taken together, abstract expressionism connotes subjective emotional experience, or states of feeling, expressed in a nonrealistic, nonliteral way. Of all the arts—visual, literary, musical, dramatic—the abstract expressionist movement of the late 1940s and on into succeeding decades had virtually nothing to say about World War II. Most of its practitioners, for various legitimate reasons, did no


Abstract Expressionism | 5 military service and studiously avoided depicting the conflict, or anything else, for that matter, in their work. Abstract expressionism, transcends time and place, and exists solely for itself. The trends of the 1930s—regionalism, urban realism, social protest, precisionism—were seen as passé, out of date, and artistically empty by many of the abstract painters of the postwar years. No new cultural movements, including those in painting, spring up completely by chance; a tradition of at least partial abstraction has long held an accepted place in American art, from Milton Avery’s (1893–1964) muted shapes against bands of color to John Marin’s (1870–1953) restless sea and cityscapes to Georgia O’Keeffe’s (1887– 1986) much-magnified flowers. The antecedents for abstract expressionism therefore abound; one need look only at earlier American and European cubists and modernists, at advertising with its bold colors and simplified forms, and at American Indian and Asian motifs, especially calligraphy. It might be expected, then, that the abstract expressionists would borrow from these roots, but the geometry and form found in older abstract works they rejected as sterile and irrelevant. They instead followed two paths in their explorations for a new style. One, so-called color field painting, depends on large, seemingly simple expanses of resonant color devoid of shapes. The actual source of this term remains unknown; critic Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) later coined “post-painterly abstraction,” which means much the same thing. This approach vied with action painting, a technique that relies on the rapid, forceful application of paint, usually with large brushes or directly from the tube (or, in some cases, the can). Often referred to as gestural, or drip painting, action painting did not enter the artistic vocabulary until 1952, when critic Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) used it as part of an essay appearing in ARTnews. In his article, Rosenberg stressed the importance of the spontaneity of the creative act itself. The two paths sometimes intertwined, and elements of both color field and action painting can be found in individual works. Whatever the terminology, this new movement in American art involved oversize canvases with no discernable subject and the creation of nonrepresentational, abstract images freed from both easel and frame. The bigger the painting, the less chance existed that anything could come between it and the observer, or so the theory said. Method became almost as important as the paintings, and the artists strove to immerse themselves in the work, making the act of creation override any overt subject matter or stylistic reference. Some critics characterized this approach as a form of automatism, or the use of unpremeditated automatic techniques—an act of spontaneity that would release the creative forces dwelling in the mind, a kind of visual jazz, not unlike an extended, improvised solo, and thus the term “action painting.” Even titles for canvases often lost most meaning, as if they might influence the viewer’s reaction or interpretation, and consisted of numbers, such as Number 1 or Number 2 (and so on), or more simply, Untitled. The abstractionists felt a title might suggest meaning beyond the painting. By upending cultural traditions, the artists sought to focus attention only on the work, making sure that no referents existed outside the canvas. The movement thereby challenged the authority usually given works of art, and most expressionistic abstract art on the surface seems divorced from any social or historical currents.


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The majority of artists interested in or practicing abstract expressionism during the 1940s could be found on the East Coast, specifically New York City. Some commentators lumped them together as the New York School, making the incorrect assumption that any painters working in New York studios were also abstract expressionists. In the early days of the movement, only a handful of painters were actively involved with this area of abstraction, and even in its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, it remained small, with the vast majority of American artists continuing to follow other styles and genres. During this formative period, two critics in particular—the aforementioned Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg—championed abstract expressionism and frequently wrote reviews and essays about it, although they tended to be intellectual rivals at the time. Their intensely parochial discussions, along with those of their colleagues, were mainly confined to journals with small circulations or in lengthy personal exchanges and seldom received much recognition beyond the immediate New York City region. In addition, a number of these early commentators wrote in such an incomprehensible, complex, mumble-jumble style that it would be difficult to know exactly what they were saying or what they were defending. They successfully placed themselves outside the mainstream, presenting an elitist attitude of superiority to other, more popular, more accessible, artistic styles. Life magazine, an immensely popular weekly journal that featured photo essays on the news of the week, occasionally ran stories on art and artists. In its August 8, 1949, issue, the magazine published a three-page illustrated article by Dorothy Seiberling (b. 1922) with the title “Jackson Pollock: Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?” Thanks to this generous spread, some 4 million subscribers had their first glimpse of the work of Pollock (1912–1956), an artist establishing a name for himself in the area of abstract expressionism and probably the best-known artist then working in the genre. Those same readers also learned a bit about the movement, despite Seiberling’s occasionally flippant tone. Accompanying black-and-white pictures show Pollock hard at work, and the color photographs give a glimpse of some of his paintings. Swift reader reactions appeared in the “Letters” section in subsequent issues and were overwhelmingly negative (e.g., “Is he a painter?”). As abstract expressionism gained both a foothold and increasing notoriety in the contemporary art world, cartoonists had a field day depicting befuddled viewers, usually at a show in a gallery, scratching their heads and trying to make sense of an artist’s latest work. A spate of books and articles also began appearing, condemning the movement’s stubborn refusal to adhere to the traditions of fine art. Even some members of Congress now and then rumbled about the vague threats presented by modern art in general and implied that perhaps these painters were part of a sinister Communist plot. For the average art lover, however, the response more likely involved confusion. President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972; president from 1945 to 1953), always a plain-spoken man, perhaps summed up much popular feeling in 1948: “It looks like scrambled eggs.” In time, abstract expressionism would gain acceptance and appreciation in the American art world, but during the 1940s, most people saw it at best as a cultural curiosity. For the average reader or museumgoer, it remained a mystery, a private luxury apparently enjoyed by the few but hardly a necessity available to the many.


Abstract Expressionism | 7 TABLE 1.

Selected Artists Associated with Abstract Expressionism during the 1940s

Artist and Dates

Comments

Josef Albers (1888–1976)

William Baziotes (1912–1963) Ilya Bolotowsky (1907–1981)

James Brooks (1906–1992) Willem de Kooning (1904–1997)

Burgoyne Diller (1906–1965) Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) Peggy Guggenheim (1898–1979)

Hans Hofmann (1880–1956)

Lee Krasner (1908–1984) Norman Lewis (1909–1979) Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) Barnett Newman (1905–1970) Jackson Pollock (1912–1956)

Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967)

German-born; Albers came to the United States in 1933. An influential teacher and theorist, but usually not thought an abstract expressionist, he influenced numerous postwar artists. He began work on his extended Homage to the Square, his best-known work, in 1949. More of a surrealist; worked with the Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP). A founding member of the American Abstract Artists, a group formed in 1937 to promote abstraction in art. Also worked with WPA/FAP. A WPA/FAP muralist, later an abstract expressionist. One of the most important figures in abstract expressionism. He fused several styles, so that abstract and figurative images can be seen in his work. Had his first show in 1948. His famous Women series began in 1950, but it would be years after that before it reached its conclusion. A WPA/FAP supervisor, founding member of American Abstract Artists. An early figure in abstract expressionism, although he rejected the label. Allusive paintings with sexual imagery. In the abstract expressionist vanguard; he claimed the style represented the chaos of modern times. Not a painter but a wealthy patron of modern art. Her New York gallery, Art of This Century, which held shows and displayed many contemporary artists from 1942 to 1947, exhibited most of the rising abstract expressionists and gave the nascent movement much-needed support. Born in Germany, he settled in the United States in 1932, becoming an influential teacher of many contemporary American artists; his painting career as an abstractionist blossomed in the mid-1940s. One of the few women active in abstract expressionism; also worked with WPA/FAP; married to Jackson Pollock. One of a few black abstractionists. Helped establish the high intellectual tone associated with abstract expressionism. A leading abstract expressionist noted for his “zip,” a vertical line splitting his otherwise spare canvases. Probably the most prominent of the abstract expressionists; had his first show at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery in 1943. His drip technique got him some popular recognition, particularly in Life magazine in 1949. Began expressionistically but later pioneered minimalism, a cultural movement of the 1960s and 1970s that attempted to pare down art and music to the most basic essentials. (continued)


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TABLE 1.

(continued)

Artist and Dates Mark Rothko (1903–1970)

Clyfford Still (1904–1980) Mark Tobey (1890–1976)

Comments A leading abstract expressionist noted for his color field works featuring soft and luminous rectangular compositions. All representation is eliminated; instead he emphasizes the relationships between colors, shapes, and boundaries. An early abstract expressionist, Still had his first show at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery in 1944. Although he denied being an abstract expressionist, he is usually grouped with them. His paintings present a nervous dream world, employing “white writing” or calligraphic style.

See also: Magazines; Photography Selected Reading Haskell, Barbara. The American Century: Art and Culture, 1900–1950. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. Kleeblatt, Norman L., ed. Action/Abstraction: Pollock, De Kooning, and American Art, 1940–1976. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Knott, Robert. American Abstract Art of the 1930s and 1940s. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998.

ACUFF, ROY Singer Roy Acuff (1903–1992) had, by the early 1940s, earned the title “King of Country Music,” and some even called him the “Backwoods Sinatra” because of his crooning style. Born in Maynardsville, Tennessee, he had aspired to be a professional baseball player in his youthful years, but severe sunstroke, suffered in 1929, followed by a nervous breakdown, ended those dreams. While recovering from these setbacks, he listened to recordings of country music and taught himself to play the fiddle. After a brief tour playing and singing to sell patent medicine with a local show traveling in the mountains of Tennessee and Virginia, Acuff formed the Tennessee Crackerjacks. He and his band secured a spot on radio station WNOX in Knoxville, changing their name to the Crazy Tennesseans in the process. The group recorded several songs for the American Record Company (ARC) in 1936, including “Wabash Cannonball” and “The Great Speckled Bird,” two numbers that garnered immediate attention in the country music field. For five years, Acuff unsuccessfully attempted to appear on the Grand Ole Opry, a weekly show broadcast from Nashville, Tennessee, on WSM. Persistence paid off, and he finally landed an invitation in 1938. Opry managers thought his performance to be inferior to other acts, but telegrams and letters poured into the station praising his rendition of “The Great Speckled Bird.” Recognizing the importance of audience approval, the executives relented and invited him back. With each additional appearance, the fans’ enthusiasm grew, and management quickly hired Acuff as the full-time host of a 30-minute Opry segment that aired on NBC radio, a nationwide network. Prince


Acuff, Roy | 9 Albert tobacco sponsored the Acuff portion. He then became Grand Ole Opry’s first solo singer, a new format for the show. By 1940, Acuff had gained star status, replacing Uncle Dave Macon (1870–1952) as the program’s most prominent entertainer. Once ensconced with the Grand Ole Opry, Acuff and the Crazy Tennesseans became Roy Acuff and the Smoky Mountain Boys, a name he considered more sophisticated. Making themselves different from the other country music acts dressed in cowboy garb, they wore plain sports clothing and presented a repertoire of primarily sacred and traditional mountain-style melodies. They enjoyed a string of country hits recorded on the Conqueror, Vocalion, Okeh, and Capitol labels. Some of the popular numbers that Acuff penned included “Beneath the Lonely Mound of Clay” (1940), “Precious Jewel” (1943), “Our Own Jole Blon” (1947), and “Midnight Train” (1948). Throughout the decade, the band also performed and recorded numbers written by other composers. Some well-known ones included “Fireball Mail” (Floyd Jenkins [n.d.], composed and recorded 1942), “Night Train to Memphis” (Beasley Smith [1901–1968], Marvin Hughes [n.d.], and Owen Bradley [1915–1998], composed and recorded 1942), “Pins and Needles (In My Heart)” (Floyd Jenkins, composed and recorded 1943), “The Prodigal Son” (Floyd Jenkins, composed and recorded 1944), “I’ll Forgive You But I Can’t Forget” (Joe Frank [n.d.] and Pee Wee King [1914–2000], composed and recorded 1944), “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” (Fred Rose [1897–1954], composed and recorded 1945), “Wreck on the Highway” (Dorsey Dixon [1897–1968], composed and recorded 1946), “Wait for the Light to Shine” (Fred Rose, composed and recorded 1947), “Freight Train Blues” (John Lair [1894–1985], composed 1935, recorded 1947), and “Tennessee Waltz” (Pee Wee King and Redd Stewart [1923–2003] composed 1948, recorded 1949). Acuff’s quick rise to popularity on the Grand Ole Opry radio show led him to travel to California and appear in movies. In 1940, he portrayed himself in the film Grand Ole Opry, followed by roles in four others—Hi, Neighbor (1942), O, My Darling Clementine (1943), Cowboy Canteen (1944), and Sing, Neighbor, Sing (1944). In the early days of his career, Acuff supplemented his income by compiling and selling songbooks containing his compositions. Based on this experience, he and songwriter Fred Rose founded Acuff-Rose Publishing Company in 1942, using their own songs as a base. The company, perhaps Acuff’s most Roy Acuff, sometimes called the “Backwoods Siimportant venture, held two distinc- natra,” gained star status as Grand Ole Opry’s tions: the first Nashville-based music first solo singer in the early 1940s. (Photofest)


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publishing establishment and the first one exclusively devoted to country music. Acuff-Rose signed Hank Williams (1923–1953), one of their most successful clients, to a contract in 1946. A year later, Williams’ first chart hit, “Move It on Over,” brought major recognition to both him and Acuff-Rose. During the war years, Roy Acuff and the Grand Ole Opry became synonymous, and he, as well as many of the other performers, broadened their fame and fortune across the country through the Opry’s Camel Caravan, sponsored by the R. J. Reynolds Cigarette Company. This traveling unit of performers entertained troops at military bases in the United States and the Panama Canal region. His records sold by the millions all over the world, and he appeared on the Armed Forces Radio Network (AFN) program Country Style USA. Some said that he reigned equally with vocalist Bing Crosby (1903–1977) and bandleader Benny Goodman (1909–1986) and that he became a part of a Japanese battle cry, “To hell with Roosevelt, to hell with Babe Ruth, to hell with Roy Acuff.” Acuff, with singing, acting, personal appearances, and the publishing company, earned $200,000 (a little over $2 million in 2008 dollars) in 1944, a most comfortable income for a hillbilly performer. He left the Grand Ole Opry in April 1946 and initially found himself in constant demand for personal appearances. That same year, he had a leading role in the movie Night Train to Memphis. Without regular network exposure, however, the performance requests began to dwindle, and in 1949 he returned to the Opry to reestablish himself as a major performer. He also traveled again to California and appeared in his final picture, Home in San Antone, in 1949. Once back with the Opry, Acuff in 1949 participated in the company’s first overseas tour. Along with Little Jimmy Dickens (b. 1920), Hank Williams, and others, he performed at military bases in England, Germany, and the Azores. Being especially conscientious about performing for U.S. servicemen, both during and after World War II, Acuff and the Smoky Mountain Boys also entertained troops during the Korean and Vietnam wars. With the return to peace in 1945, Acuff briefly flirted with politics and three years later became the Republican nominee for governor of Tennessee. Capitalizing on his entertainment skills, he campaigned by performing concerts with the Smoky Mountain Boys. Despite his popularity as a country music star, he lost the election and subsequently returned to his career of writing, publishing, and performing. With the arrival of the 1950s and his reputation established, Acuff continued to write and tour, but his work as a major recording artist declined. In 1962, Roy Acuff, widely respected as a fiddler and country music vocalist, became the first living artist elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame. A final, posthumous, accolade for his more than 50 years of contributions to the field of country music came in 2005, when the Library of Congress named his 1947 recording of “Wabash Cannonball” to its National Recording Registry. Selected Reading Peterson, Richard A. Creating Country Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Shestack, Melvin. The Country Music Encyclopedia. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1974. Young, William H., and Nancy K. Young. Music of the World War II Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008.


Advertising | 11

ADVERTISING Following the Great Depression of the 1930s, American business faced the task of restoring public confidence in the economic system. Advertising in particular had been attacked on many fronts, with critics saying its messages could not be trusted, and terms like “ballyhoo,” “bunk,” “flimflam,” “hoopla,” and “hype” (verb only; the noun form did not enter common speech until the 1960s) were attached to numerous ad campaigns by a suspicious public. Public relations experts wanted to recast the negative images associated with advertising, and the onset of World War II gave them a unique opportunity to accomplish just that. During the period 1941–1945, most commercial advertising strove to portray American business as foursquare behind the nation’s war efforts, a mixture of crass commerce and civic virtue. While urging people to buy war bonds and support the troops, it also offered a vision of postwar America lush with consumer goods—but first the war must be won. Just prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, business leaders and advertising executives formed the Advertising Council in November 1941. During the conflict, it went by the name of the War Advertising Council and became an important advocate of national ad campaigns and public service announcements (PSAs) that continually reinforced the idea of patriotic connections between the private sector—American industry—and the government. Together, they would win the war, but the need to sell goods and services remained in order to “Keep ’em Flying” and “Keep ’em Rolling,” two popular slogans of the day. The War Advertising Council cooperated with the Office of War Information (OWI) when placing any public service ads, especially those that referred to scrap drives, rationing, and the need for women in defense jobs. The image of Rosie the Riveter emerged, and countless ads appeared that displayed women in turbans and defense-plant attire hawking all manner of nondefense goods. Despite their obvious attempts to sell products, they also encouraged acceptance of women in the workforce. Wrigley’s gum, for example, claimed chewing gum calmed “war nerves” and urged people to buy a package. Then, returning to the necessity of sacrifice in wartime, their advertising cautioned users to ration that package of gum by chewing each stick longer to make it last; in that way, limited supplies would go around, and everyone could enjoy a stick of Wrigley’s. Many wartime advertisements featured a small square or rectangle, usually in a lower corner of the overall composition, which said such things as “Let’s back the attack! Buy Extra War Bonds”; “For Victory, Buy United States War Bonds and Stamps”; or, in the case of specific products (in this case, Studebaker), “Peacetime Builder of Fine Cars and Trucks, Wartime Builder of Wright Cyclone Engines for Boeing Flying Fortresses.” Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola, long-time soft drink rivals, ran numerous ads throughout the war years extolling the virtues of their beverages. The themes of a needed break and the energy boost sodas provided allowed for considerable copy. Coke, more so than Pepsi, created a long series of ads dedicated to service personnel the world over. With illustrations by leading artists and using its well-known phrase, “the pause that refreshes,” the company stressed that having a Coke with other people made lasting friendships and helped in the cause of peace.


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Frequently, the advertising copy apologized for shortages and attempted to explain why services were not always what the consumer might expect. The sponsors urged public patience with any inconveniences brought about by the conflict. In one classic case, copywriter Nelson C. Metcalf, Jr. (active 1940s) created the New Haven Railroad’s “The Kid in Upper 4” in 1942. The New Haven (now defunct), which covered southern New England from New York City to Boston, daily carried thousands of commuters, but during the war it also transported large numbers of U.S. troops headed for seaports and combat abroad. Magazines ran the New Haven ad, and an accompanying drawing shows a youthful soldier lying awake in his upper berth as the train carries him toward an unknown future. The text urges displaced commuters to be patient. “If you have to stand enroute—it is so he may have a seat. If there is no berth for you—it is so he may sleep.” Widely reprinted and distributed after its initial appearance, the print ad crossed over into other media. Comedian Eddie Cantor (1892–1964) read the text on his NBC network radio show and later recorded it, and Metcalf’s words even got set to music. Among the products most advertised during the early 1940s were alcoholic beverages and cigarettes. Beer ads stressed the idea that having a cold glass of beer improved morale, not just for the civilian drinking it, but somehow for the soldiers and sailors—“ours and his”—far away from such homely comforts. This patriotic link between consumption and the war effort became an important and often-utilized motif for advertisers. Johnny Roventini (1910–1998), in his bell captain costume, cried out on radio, “Call for-r-r Philip Mor-r-rss,” a popular brand of cigarette made by the Virginia-based Philip Morris & Company. In person, the diminutive Roventini gave out free cigarettes at canteens and USO clubs, another example of industry support for the armed forces. The big swing bands quickly landed various tobacco companies as underwriters of their radio programs and concerts. R. J. Reynolds Tobacco sponsored Benny Goodman (1909–1986) and his popular aggregation on Camel Caravan; Liggett & Myers carried Glenn Miller (1904–1944) on Chesterfield Time; Raleighs and Kools, made by Brown & Williamson, boasted Tommy Dorsey (1905–1956) on the NBC network; the P. Lorillard Company, manufacturers of Old Gold cigarettes, underwrote Artie Shaw (1910–2004) and his orchestra on CBS; and, most famously, Lucky Strikes, a product of the American Tobacco Company, sponsored Your Hit Parade, a popular music show that ran on both radio and, later, television. Without exception, all of these programs featured music popular with both military personnel and the civilian public, and scripts made constant reference to “the boys overseas,” solidifying associations between smoking and patriotism. One of the most prominent cases of a cigarette company maximizing its perceived support for the war effort involved Lucky Strikes. The name had originated in 1871 as a chewing tobacco and evolved into a cigarette brand that would do well into the 1950s. A pack of Luckies had traditionally come in a dark green wrapper with a red bull’s eye in the center; gold banding finished it off. During the late 1930s, researchers discovered that the package colors did not appeal to women, an important part of the smoking market. When World War II brought about the rationing of strategic materials, the company found that chromium went into the production of its green ink and


Advertising | 13 copper for the gold trim. With these materials in short supply, the packaging would have to be altered. George Washington Hill (1884–1946), the imperious but canny president of the American Tobacco Company, the manufacturer of Lucky Strikes, saw an opportunity. He had earlier commissioned Raymond Loewy (1893–1986), the distinguished industrial designer, to produce new packaging for Lucky Strikes that would increase the cigarettes’ appeal to women. Loewy’s design eliminated both the traditional green and gold, substituting a sleeker, less masculine pack in white. Only the red bull’s eye remained. When the new packaging appeared, Hill introduced a promotional campaign that said, “Lucky Strike Green has gone to war.” It stressed the scarcity of chromium and copper and suggested how many additional tanks and artillery shells could now be turned out, thanks to the sacrifice being made by Luckies. The ads, of course, made no mention of increasing appeal to women, but as a result of this brilliant strategy, Lucky Strike sales rose 38 percent. People could feel good about smoking Luckies knowing that they assisted in the nation’s defense, never realizing that the looks of the new pack also appealed to them and helped determine their selection. When they lit their Luckies or Chesterfields or Old Golds— or whatever brand— even the tiny matchbooks had printed on their covers “V for Victory,” “Remember Pearl Harbor,” “Loose Lips Sink Ships,” and many other slogans in miniature. Advertisers left no stone unturned in promoting patriotism and commerce. In 1943, the War Advertising Council, financially supported by the private sector, and dominated and run by business leaders, succeeded in influencing Congress to slash the OWI budget. In the eyes of both the Ad Council and Congress, free enterprise should not be hamstrung by government interference, a charge leveled at the OWI. An executive order terminated the OWI in 1945. After that, all public service ads went through the council only, which meant most public service messages, the copy donated by the council’s own members, often displayed a strong, pro-business slant. The group dropped the word “war” from its name and reverted to just the Advertising (or Ad) Council in 1945. It continued to stress public service ads, but now dealt with such peacetime topics as registering to vote, highway safety, and forest fires. For example, the Ad Council worked closely with the National Safety Council to reduce highway accidents and invented the iconic Smoky the Bear in the summer of 1944. Its public relations arm set out to portray businesses as benevolent providers and then strove to create wants for a multitude of goods and services. When peace returned in 1945, and the hard economic times of the Great Depression and the recent war-imposed austerity of the first half of the decade had become history, American ad agencies faced the challenge of touting postwar prosperity. It quickly became a job they relished. No rationing, new cars, innovative appliances, fashionable clothes—in short, abundance, an advertiser’s dream. In five years, 1945 to 1950, ad expenditures doubled, rising from $2.9 billion to $5.7 billion (or from $26 billion to $51 billion in 2008 dollars). The amounts invested in advertising would grow even more rapidly during the 1950s and 1960s, surpassing any other economic indicators. Once automobiles again began rolling off Detroit’s assembly lines, they led the advertising charge, surpassing cigarettes and packaged goods, the two leaders during


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the earlier 1940s. Not only did spending on ads increase in the United States, most larger agencies (J. Walter Thompson; Young & Rubicam; BBDO [Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn]; Foote, Cone, & Belding; and others) commenced a new conquest of war-torn Europe, opening or expanding offices abroad in order to promote American goods. Domestically, postwar copy became shorter and simpler, with color and vivid, arresting visuals replacing black and white. Illustrations tended toward the realistic and representational, creating a nostalgia for the “good old days” before economic crises and war. The rambling essay, perhaps accompanied by a pleasant bucolic scene, gave way to large, aggressive lettering that said little of any substance. As communication philosopher Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) would later famously say in 1967, “the medium is the message.” He meant that the advertisement itself, regardless of product or service, carried an implicit invitation to consume, and all else served as window dressing. Although most Americans probably realized that fact at some level of consciousness, it did little to dim the effectiveness of a well-composed ad. A good example of an ad concealed as something else occurred in 1948. Louisiana Story (1948), a quasi-documentary directed by the renowned Robert Flaherty (1884– 1951) and underwritten by the Standard Oil Company, appears to celebrate the region and its people, but really serves as a public relations coup for the corporation. Underlying the evocative photography by Richard Leacock (b. 1921), a famous cinematographer, there runs a continuous paean to Standard Oil. A memorable, prize-winning score by composer Virgil Thomson (1896–1989) reinforces the positive aspects of drilling for oil in the Acadian swampland, often making the quest for petroleum a heroic endeavor. Thus, without overtly saying so, an image of the inevitability of industrial progress and the benevolence of Standard Oil color the film. The fact that land will be destroyed, people uprooted, and a distinctive culture ignored never receives mention. Clearly, this defined the approach to public service ads the council envisioned. At the same time, advertising agencies, anxious to remain in the good graces of the public, worked to refine their research methods, increasingly referred to as MR (for motivational research). They studied consumer habits and preferences all through the immediate postwar years, a procedure that would see increasing use in the 1950s. They also collected lengthy statistical data on incomes, occupations, education, marital status, preferred neighborhoods, and a wealth of other information in order to predict more accurately what would sell to whom and what would not. The era of the agency copywriter who relied on instincts—possibly honed by years of experience and trial and error—about consumer preferences drew to a close during the 1940s, replaced by a more scientific approach for creating ad campaigns. In 1957, author Vance Packard (1914–1996) would pen a best-selling book about MR and consumer manipulation titled The Hidden Persuaders. Much of its content concerns methodologies introduced in the late 1940s. Although the postwar years witnessed a significant increase in advertising in all media—print, film, radio, even television—it all paled with the explosion of marketing that took place in the 1950s. Consumers soon forgot the relative austerity of the war years and immediately thereafter in a flood of advertising that swept over the country with the advent of the new decade and a continuing spiral of prosperity.


All-Girl Orchestras | 15 See also: Classical Music; Fashion; Illustrators; Photography; Posters; Radio Programming: Comedy Shows; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Trains Selected Reading Fox, Stephen. The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators. New York: William Morrow, 1984. Goodrum, Charles, and Helen Dalrymple. Advertising in America: The First 200 Years. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990. Holme, Bryan. The Art of Advertising. London: Peerage Books, 1985. Lears, Jackson. Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America. New York: Basic Books, 1994.

ALL-GIRL ORCHESTRAS Bandleaders may have thought World War II would have little effect on their orchestras, but the military draft (Selective Service), initiated in the fall of 1940, and its consequences deeply affected the music business. As more and more male musicians went into service, conscription created the phenomenon of women instrumentalists entering the ranks of previously all-male ensembles. As a rule, they encountered considerable resistance and discrimination from critics, the public, and often their own sidemen in the bands. A few, however, cracked the big time and achieved modest success. Some of the women appearing with top-flight but mostly male organizations were vibraphonist Marjorie Hyams (b. 1923), who established her credentials with Woody Herman; Melba Liston (1926–1999), who played in the trombone section of the 1940s band led by Gerald Wilson (1918–2008); and guitarist Mary Osborne (1921– 1992), who performed with several bands, including Joe Venuti (1903–1978) and Stuff Smith (1909–1967). Pianist Mary Lou Williams (1910–1981, nee Mary Elfrieda Scruggs) became, in the 1930s, a star in her own right, especially as a composer in the boogie-woogie vein. During the 1940s, Williams wrote, arranged, played, and generally became a mainstay for the groups led by Andy Kirk (1898–1992). Countless other women labored in relative anonymity, occasionally with well-known orchestras, more often with second- and third-tier groups. Some remained for long stays and others for brief stopovers, but virtually all of them possessed American Federation of Musicians (AFM) union cards and could more than hold their own with their male counterparts, despite an endless barrage of snide remarks about their abilities. The declining pool of eligible male musicians also gave rise to the “girl bands,” a situation where women formed commercial groups of their own. No one would have thought to say “women’s bands” in those less gender-sensitive times; regardless of age, they were girls playing in all-girl aggregations. Not an entirely new phenomenon, a few girl bands had existed prior to World War II, groups that billed themselves as novelties and capitalized on gender. Three pioneers in this area were Peggy Gilbert (1905–2007), Ina Ray Hutton (1916–1984; nee Odessa Cowan), and a man, Phil Spitalny (1890–1970). Gilbert, who both led the way and outlived them all, played saxophone and led a number of groups under her name. She started out leading her first band, the Melody Girls, in 1923.


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The once virtually all-male preserve of commercial bands faced hard times during the war years, and the simultaneous rise of all-girl ensembles demonstrated how capable many of these groups could be. Phil Spitalny, a pioneer in this area, led his own orchestra, the Hour of Charm, beginning in the mid-1930s. He is seen here in the early 1940s, fronting his aggregation of women musicians. Spitalny insisted they always dress in formal gowns. (Photofest)

For the next 60 years, Gilbert fronted various swing-oriented aggregations and sometimes appeared on bills with the likes of Benny Goodman (1909–1986) and Louis Prima (1910–1978). Hutton led one of the best of the early girl bands, the Melodears. The ensemble featured the nonplaying Hutton herself, billed as “the Blonde Bombshell of Rhythm.” Attired in tight, slinky gowns, she exuded seductive sex appeal while waving her baton. She formed the Melodears in 1934, and the group prospered, appearing in several film shorts and a part in the full-length feature movie, The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935). Shortly after dissolving the orchestra in 1939, Hutton formed an allmale group that lasted until 1944 —a curious decision, since men qualified to play in a professional band were in increasingly short supply, given the pressures of World War II. With this new group, she called herself “Queen of the Name Bands.” Hutton continued in the music business in the postwar era, forming another all-girl group and then moving on to television in 1950. She also stars (as herself) in a low-budget 1944 movie musical titled Ever Since Venus. During the Swing Era, however, Hutton and the Melodears earned some well-deserved fame as the only prominent women’s band of that period.


All-Girl Orchestras | 17 Entrepreneur Phil Spitalny (1890–1970), who had endured a nondescript career in popular music during the 1920s, emerged a pioneer in the area of promoting women for roles as competent, professional instrumentalists when he devised the gimmick—no other word adequately describes what he sought—of an orchestra comprised entirely of women. In 1934, the same year Hutton introduced her Melodears, he realized his dream when he unveiled a group that he immodestly called Phil Spitalny and His All-Girl Orchestra. Unlike Hutton’s blatant sex appeal, Spitalny emphasized class and decorum in his productions, and it paid off. He landed a contract in 1935 with CBS radio for a music show that received the name “The Hour of Charm,” a term quickly transferred to the aggregation itself. Despite the program’s title, the broadcast ran only 30 minutes, but it earned good ratings throughout the year. Arch-rival NBC noted its success and picked up the show for the next decade, 1936–1946, only to have CBS regain it for another two years, 1946–1948. Hardly a driving swing band, Spitalny’s crew played light classics and a lot of schmaltz, all part of his concept of “musical femininity.” The Hour of Charm Orchestra at times boasted a choir, and it always featured strings, harp, and piano, instruments that he considered more “ladylike” than brass or reeds—although the aggregation had the requisite trumpets, trombones, and saxophones, too. When on tour, the Hour of Charm staged elaborate production numbers. Aside from Spitalny himself, Evelyn Kaye Klein (1911–1990; sometimes listed as “Evelyn Silverstone” or “Evelyn and Her Magic Violin”) took honors as star of the show. The “magic violin,” reputedly a rare Italian model, received a workout from Evelyn, because she preferred virtuoso numbers. Radio success led to Hollywood, first for some shorts, and then parts in two features, When Johnny Comes Marching Home (1942) and Here Come the Coeds (1945). The novelty of his all-girl orchestra eventually wore off, especially in light of similar groups performing throughout the war years, but Spitalny and his ensemble helped break the ice and survived until the early days of television. In addition, he and Evelyn, who also served as concertmaster during the heyday of the organization, wed in 1946. Gilbert, Hutton, and Spitalny legitimatized the idea of women performing professionally in orchestras. Their acceptance opened the doors for others, and the later 1930s and early 1940s, especially with the war, saw a number of new all-girl bands attempting to make a go of it. One of the best called itself the International Sweethearts of Rhythm. Originally an all-black orchestra, the group was formed in 1937 to raise funds for the Piney Woods Country Life School, a rural Mississippi institution for poor or orphaned minority girls. When the band toured, the members actually lived in their bus, given the racial segregation of the region. In time, their traveling took them to larger cities, and they received favorable reviews as a good, solid swing orchestra. In 1940, they severed their connection to Piney Woods School and moved to northern Virginia as a commercial act and took paid bookings at some of the best clubs in the East. As the performance skills and professionalism of the Sweethearts of Rhythm increased, Eddie Durham (1906–1987), a former Count Basie (1904–1984) arranger, came aboard as the band’s music director. He guided the outfit into the first rank of touring bands. Durham himself went on to become “The Sepia Phil Spitalny” by


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| All-Girl Orchestras TABLE 2.

Some Other All-Girl Orchestras Active during the 1940s

Clora Bryant and the Queens of Swing Herb Cook’s Swinghearts Al D’Artega’s All-Girl Orchestra Bonnie Downs’ All-Girl Orchestra Harlem Play-Girls Ada Leonard’s All-American Girl Orchestra Jean Parks and Her All-Girl Band The Sharon Rogers All-Girl Orchestra Viola Smith and the Coquettes The Syncoettes

Joy Cayler and Her All-Girl Orchestra Count Berni Vici’s All-Girl Theater Band Dixie Rhythm Girls Frances Grey’s Queens of Swing Nita King and Her Queens of Rhythm Betty McGuire’s Sub-Debs Rita Rio and Her All-Girl Orchestra The Freddie Shaffer All-Girl Band The Swinging Rays of Rhythm Virgil Whyte’s Musical Sweethearts

working with the All-Star Girl Orchestra and the Darlings of Rhythm in the 1940s, two other swinging all-girl bands that went on the professional touring circuit. At the end of the war, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm performed for U.S. troops in USO shows staged in Europe and also recorded for RCA Victor, a leading label. Despite problems with both racial and gender-based prejudice, this unusual allwoman organization, one of the most successful both commercially and artistically of its type, continued to entertain audiences until 1949. In a similar vein, Prairie View A & M University, situated in southeast Texas, organized the Prairie View Co-eds in 1943, a band set up as the women’s counterpart to the college’s all-male Prairie View Collegians. When the wartime draft took most of the Collegians’ musicians, the Co-eds became the dominant band on campus and went on tour. The youthful players at Prairie View, founded as a black school, had to face the same problems of segregation and prejudice the International Sweethearts of Rhythm endured. Despite their formidable musical skills, the Co-eds never enjoyed the perks of fame, such as bookings in posh nightclubs or movie contracts; they instead labored in relative obscurity, an endless succession of one-nighters in small towns, traveling in rickety buses to play in gyms, theaters, and small dance halls. Even with the difficulties facing all-girl bands, the idea spread, and promoters found the talent they needed to form groups throughout the later 1930s and on into the war years. The following list does not begin to name every orchestra active during that period and serves instead to suggest the sheer numbers of women playing in organized musical ensembles. Whether playing with bands of their own or with male-dominated orchestras, the strong presence of women in popular music lasted only for the duration of the conflict, or until the troops started coming home; with peace, returning sidemen picked up their dusty instruments and resumed their musical employment at the expense of those women who had, often to their dismay, only temporarily replaced them. For most women in the music field, second-class citizenship accompanied their chosen profession. The “real” musicians continued to be men, a situation that continued for the remainder of the 20th century. See also: Bebop (Bop); Jazz; Musicals (Film); Race Relations and Stereotyping; Rosie the Riveter; Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 (Selective Service, or Draft)


Andrews Sisters, The | 19 Selected Reading Dahl, Linda. Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen. Pompton Plains, NJ: Limelight Editions, 1989. Tucker, Sherrie. Swing Shift: “All-Girl” Bands of the 1940s. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.

ANDREWS SISTERS, THE When the Swing era big bands began to lose some of their steam in the late 1930s and early 1940s, smaller instrumental ensembles, along with countless vocal groups and vocalists, waited in the wings for their chance at fame and fortune. The bands had begun increasingly to feature arrangements that called for vocal accompaniment, making stars out of singers like Doris Day (b. 1924), Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996), Dick Haymes (1918–1980), Peggy Lee (1920–2002), Frank Sinatra (1915–1998), and Jo Stafford (1917–2008). Among the vocal groups, none sparkled more brightly than the Andrews Sisters. The trio consisted of real-life sisters LaVerne (1911–1967), Maxene (1916–1995), and Patty (b. 1918) Andrews. While growing up, they had listened closely to the family

The three Andrews sisters—LaVerne, Maxene, and Patty—rose to the top ranks of popular music during the 1940s. Often teamed with Bing Crosby, shown here, but important in their own right, their close harmony and impeccable rhythm gave them an unprecedented string of hits for a vocal group. (Photofest)


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radio whenever a recording by the Boswell Sisters (Martha, 1905–1958; Connee, 1907–1976; and Helvetia, or “Vet,” 1911–1988) played. A popular trio that rose to stardom during the late 1920s, the Boswell Sisters utilized close harmony and improvisation, skills that greatly influenced the jazzy style the Andrews Sisters developed in the mid-1930s. They cut their first recordings in 1937 for Decca Records, one of the biggest American record companies, and late that year gained recognition with “Bei Mir Bist Du Schon (Means That You’re Grand),” a tune that catapulted them into the front ranks of music stars. For that effort, they initially received a flat $50 (roughly $750 in 2008 dollars) with no subsequent royalties. But “Bei Mir Bist Du Schon (Means That You’re Grand)” changed the sisters’ circumstances, and Decca renegotiated, signing them to a more reasonable and retroactive contract. The company had previously boasted the Boswell Sisters on its label, but when that trio broke up in 1937, Decca wanted a replacement and found it with the Andrews Sisters. No vocal group, past or present, has ever surpassed them in popularity, and they boasted record sales of approximately 100 million disks over their 36-year career. That total includes over 600 individual song titles. More remarkable still, at least 100 of their recordings made the charts, and almost 50 of them reached the top 10, with 19 of them achieving first place for a time. TABLE 3.

Top 10 Charted Songs Performed by the Andrews Sisters, 1938–1950

Year

Song

Highest Chart Position

1938 1939 1940

“Bei Mir Bist Du Schon (Means That You’re Grand)” “Hold Tight (Want Some Seafood, Mama)” “Yodelin’ Jive” [with Bing Crosby] “Say ‘Si Si’ (Para Vigo Me Voy)” “(I’ll Be with You) In Apple Blossom Time” “Strip Polka” “Pistol Packin’ Mama” [with Bing Crosby] “Shoo-Shoo Baby” “Don’t Fence Me In” [with Bing Crosby] “(There’ll Be a) Hot Time in the Town of Berlin (When the Yanks Go Marching in)” [with Bing Crosby] “Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t (Ma’ Baby)” [with Bing Crosby] “Rum and Coca-Cola” “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” [with Bing Crosby] “Along the Navajo Trail” [with Bing Crosby] “South America, Take It Away” [with Bing Crosby] “Near You” “Civilization (Bongo, Bongo, Bongo)” [with Danny Kaye] “Toolie Oolie Doolie (The Yodel Polka)” “Underneath the Arches” [No Charted Songs] “I Can Dream, Can’t I?” “I Wanna Be Loved”

No. 1 No. 1 No. 3 No. 3 No. 5 No. 2 No. 1 No. 9 No. 8 No. 6

1941 1942 1943 1944

1945

1946 1947 1948 1948 1949 1950


No. 1 No. 10 No. 1 No. 1 No. 1 No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 1 No. 1 No. 2

Andrews Sisters, The | 21 As the preceding table indicates, with the exception of 1949, the trio made the top 10 charts every year from 1938 through 1950; their banner year proved to be 1944, with four hits, closely followed by 1945, with three big sellers. In all, they enjoyed 21 top-10 music hits during this period, with countless others also listed among the top 50 for each of those years, a remarkable accomplishment. Several recordings that later generations tend to associate with the Andrews Sisters—“Beer Barrel Polka” (1939), “Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar” (1940), “The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (of Company B)” (1941), and “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me)” (1942)—came relatively early in the trio’s career and initially did not achieve high rankings on the hit charts. Over time, however, these tunes did extremely well and can now be counted among their most successful and enduring performances. An auspicious, albeit informal, musical partnership between Bing Crosby (1903– 1977) and the Andrews Sisters resulted in 47 recordings on which the four sang together. It commenced in 1940 with “Yodelin’ Jive,” a surprise hit. Although none of the sisters read music, they worked well with Crosby, and he soon asked for them at recording sessions. The pairing paid off: 23 of their collaborative efforts made the charts, and they continued to work together for many years. In addition to their unparalleled success in the recording studio, they also appeared in 13 motion pictures, beginning with a Ritz Brothers comedy, Argentine Nights (1940), in which they play themselves. Universal Studios quickly signed them, and 12 more films featured the threesome between 1941 and 1948; their voices can also be heard on the soundtracks of numerous movies made after 1948. Although they substituted energy and good humor for polished acting skills, and most of the productions in which they appear fall into the B-picture category, the films nevertheless did well at the box office. As they became established stars, the Andrews Sisters performed at night clubs, on stage, radio, and eventually on television. In the fall of 1944, they headlined The Andrews Sisters Eight-to-the-Bar Ranch on ABC radio. It ran for a year and evolved into The N-K Musical Show (the N-K stands for Nash-Kelvinator, the program’s sponsors), which remained on the air until mid-1946. They were regulars also on Club Fifteen, a 15-minute musical variety show, throughout the later 1940s. In addition, they could frequently be heard on numerous other programs, making them a true presence on radio broadcasting of the day. During the war years, the Andrews Sisters performed tirelessly to help the nation’s efforts to support the troops and raise money for bonds. They traveled with USO shows and sang at canteens, their cheery manner a sure way to boost the morale of both civilians and military personnel. Able to sing in virtually any style, but especially in swing and boogie-woogie formats, they turned out to be the premier vocal group of the decade. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Comedies (Film); Country Music; Jukeboxes; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; War Bonds Suggested Reading Jones, John Bush. The Songs that Fought the War: Popular Music and the Home Front, 1939–1945. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2006. Young, William H., and Nancy K. Young. American Music through History: The World War II Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005.


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ARCHITECTURE The imposing government office buildings and monuments erected in Washington, DC, during the 1930s, along with Spanish haciendas and Tudor manors built as private residences in neighborhoods across the land, represented a long, last gasp of conservative architectural tradition. In a slightly more modern vein, art deco, with its chevrons and zigzags and seemingly so important in the 1920s and into the 1930s, had begun to peter out around 1940 and virtually disappeared in the immediate postwar years. Streamline moderne, art deco’s likely successor, had a brief moment during the later 1930s and early 1940s, and then likewise went into a sudden decline. Larger, nonresidential buildings of the 1940s. After making sporadic appearances during the Depression, the International Style waited in the wings to become the dominant commercial fashion of the 1940s. A manner of building that had gained popularity with progressive architects in Europe during the latter years of the 1920s, its geometric linearity and lack of surface adornment found appeal in some circles, especially for larger buildings. It looked sleek and modern, and the absence of applied decorative elements permitted considerable financial savings during the construction process. The early 1930s had left a legacy of splendid commercial structures, including the art deco Chrysler Building (1930), the modernistic Empire State Building (1931), the soaring Rockefeller Center complex with it many uses (1931–1939), and the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building (1932) and its imaginative application of the International Style. The Great Depression stalled much construction for the next few years, but toward the end of the 1930s, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) reasserted his claim as one of America’s greatest architects with the Johnson’s Wax buildings (1936–1939) in Racine, Wisconsin. He followed that triumph some 10 years later with the streamlined Johnson’s Research Tower (1948–1950, also Racine). In 1939, Edward Durrell Stone (1902–1978), working with Philip Johnson (1906–2005), made the Manhattan site of the Museum of Modern Art fit the International Style mold, one of the few museums from that era to reflect modernist thinking. Albert Kahn (1869–1942), who had been a force in industrial architecture throughout much This photograph of Frank Lloyd Wright was taken in 1949, when the architect had reached of the 20th century, in the early 1940s an age that many associate with retirement. For designed factories that placed consider- Wright, however, his career would continue to able stress on window walls for maxi- soar until his death, and many significant commum interior light, or what he called missions still lay ahead of him. (Photofest)


Architecture | 23 “the daylight factory.” Perhaps unknowingly, Kahn presaged a striking characteristic of postwar contemporary buildings, structures sheathed in glass. The New York World’s Fair of 1939–1940, with its motto “Building the World of Tomorrow,” promised a streamlined future, where everything would run smoothly. But World War II brought a sudden halt to most attempts to broaden the aesthetic boundaries of design; with both materials and manpower in short supply, and working under strict time limits, the construction that occurred during the war years (1941–1945) reflected the austerity of the period. And although the surrender of the Axis powers in 1945 would seem to have set the stage for significant advances in the styles of large buildings, much nonresidential construction following the war in actuality observed a spare, technological format. Architects, in a rush to fill overdue needs, omitted any romantic or decorative elements. They instead stressed practical services, such as air conditioning, heating, lighting, and acoustics, and these utilitarian amenities often became formal elements of the overall plan. New building types, such as larger airport terminals, shopping centers, parking garages, and even highways also became commonplace, but not in any great numbers until the 1950s. Landscaping and the retention of open space also received more attention; a building need not occupy every inch of its site, but these concerns proved slow in coming. Little of architectural significance therefore transpired during the later 1940s; the great designs associated with the postwar era had to wait, for the most part, until the early 1950s. With the return to peace, the severe International Style slowly asserted itself, and smooth surfaces of glass and steel, along with aluminum and considerable concrete, would characterize office towers in years to come. The few exceptions between 1946 and 1949 included Pietro Belluschi (1899–1994), working in Portland, Oregon. He designed the Equitable Life Assurance Building in 1944 (final construction did not occur until 1948), a structure that provided a dramatic foretaste of the glass box commercial buildings of the 1950s. Similarly, Wallace K. Harrison (1895–1981), among others, in 1949 contributed the slablike United Nations Secretariat in New York City. While the likes of Kahn, Belluschi, and Harrison created plans that served as predictors of later architecture, several of their counterparts challenged the prevailing redbrick Georgian and gray medieval gothic-style designs that had long influenced the look of American college campuses. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969), who came to the United States from Germany in 1939, almost immediately began planning a striking new campus for the Chicago-based Illinois Institute of Technology. Spare and modern in all respects, and a break in academic tradition, his project would continue into the mid-1950s. At about the same time, Frank Lloyd Wright received a commission to lay out a master plan for new buildings at Florida Southern College in Lakeland. As with Mies, Wright would pursue this undertaking until the 1950s, creating a distinctive work that defies categorization other than “Wrightian.” Finally, Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (1898–1976), who had impressed everyone with his striking and influential Finnish Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair in 1939, received an invitation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to design a dormitory along the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge. The resultant Baker House dorm (1947– 1949) gave its residents views of the river from its undulating facade. His use of natural


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materials and respect for the site hinted at innovative approaches to building that only became commonplace some years later. One other area of noncommercial, nonresidential architecture that in the 1940s began breaking with past traditions involved ideas for ecclesiastical, or church, architecture. In Columbus, Indiana, a small town that welcomed modernity in building, Eliel and Eero Saarinen (1873–1950; 1910–1961), father and son, designed the Church of Christ in 1940–1942. One of the first truly modern churches in the United States, it reflected the International Style in its stark linearity. Several years later, the always-pioneering Wright contributed the Unitarian Church in Madison, Wisconsin (1947–1951). The prow-like exterior of its sanctuary resembles for some a pair of hands raised in prayer and demonstrated again that Wright would never be tied to particular styles other than his own. Only with the onset of the 1950s did the landmark buildings that have come to define modernity in commercial architecture begin to rise in any numbers. The firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (better known as SOM; the initials stand for Louis Skidmore, Nathaniel Owings, and John Merrill; 1897–1962, 1903–1984, and 1896– 1975, respectively) became a leader in the field. Thanks to the vision of Gordon Bunshaft (1909–1990), an important architect within the company, SOM in 1952 built the Lever House on New York’s Park Avenue, an elegant glass box that features glass and stainless steel curtain walls surrounding the entire structure. It ushered in a period of unparalleled postwar commercial building. Mies van der Rohe designed the elegant Lakeshore Drive Apartments in Chicago at this time, and shortly thereafter he, along with Philip Johnson, would contribute the striking Seagram Building (1954–1958) to the New York skyline. Many other notable structures followed, but they all came after the 1940s. Housing and residential building during the 1940s. Although the war curtailed the majority of commercial plans, it simultaneously created the need for large-scale housing projects. Thousands of workers found employment in huge new aircraft factories and ship-building facilities, as the “arsenal of democracy” that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) had so famously promised in a speech given in December of 1940, took shape. Envisioned as planned communities, most wartime housing went up hurriedly, and architects seldom received the attention they deserved, with the result their ideas had little impact in the planning processes. Most planners that rose to prominence during the 1930s and 1940s persisted in thinking in terms of standardization and collectivism. The residents moving into these new housing and apartment tracts had to coordinate their individual needs to sometimes grandiose ideas about collective living. Exceptions fortunately did occur. In New Kensington, a town near Pittsburgh, architects Walter Gropius (1883–1969) and Marcel Breuer (1902–1981), both recent European émigrés, in 1941 created workers’ housing that earned considerable praise. Hugh Stubbins Jr. (1912–2006) did likewise in 1942 at Windsor Locks, Connecticut, planning 85 homes in a simplified Cape Cod style to house defense workers. The aforementioned firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, before it had made such an important name for itself in the 1950s, assisted in designing Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the community that had much to do with the development of the atomic bomb.


Architecture | 25 Between its founding in 1942 and 1946, Oak Ridge grew to 75,000 people, and SOM played an important role in that gargantuan task. Channel Heights, a community in San Pedro, outside Los Angeles, had been established near several shipyards. Richard Neutra (1892–1970) in 1943 designed 600 modernistic units for this equally fast-growing town. That same year, Henry Churchill (1893–1962) worked to create 350 units in the development of Aquackanonk, a section of Clifton, New Jersey. In 1944, San Lorenzo Village, located a short distance from San Francisco and Oakland and overseen by developer David Dewey Bohannon (1898–1995), saw 1,500 units erected to house defense workers in the Bay area. In all, thousands of houses and apartments were rushed to completion around the nation during the war years, but only a minority boasted much architectural distinction for mass-produced housing. The end result had the effect of further separating wealthier Americans from poorer ones, at least in housing. For those who could afford a custom-designed home, the 1940s produced some individuality in upper-class neighborhoods, whereas a sense of sameness pervaded poorer ones. In the aftermath of the war, a considerable deficit in needed residential building had occurred despite the attempts to provide adequate shelter. Overwhelming demands on supplies and labor showed that the arsenal of democracy could not be shut down overnight, and so the transition to full-scale consumer production took several years. In addition, archaic building codes and dated union rules paralyzed innovation so that builders could not put in place the very things architects said they wanted. Some wartime restrictions on building materials, especially steel, also persisted during 1947 and 1948, further slowing down residential construction. In the meantime, the soldiers came home, their wives had babies, the GI Bill provided mortgage money at favorable rates, and yet good housing proved hard to find. By the later 1940s, however, the postwar building boom finally commenced. In their haste to satisfy demand, developers usually offered modern appliances and more spacious interiors than in the past, but exteriors tended to be bland, as if stamped out by cookie cutters. By and large, postwar housing lacked proportion, texture, and color. The picture windows looked out on sameness, not something attractive. Once again, a handful of forward-looking architects bucked these trends. Out of this attitude emerged the contemporary ranch-style house. Americans have long been fascinated with their Western heritage. The 1930s and 1940s proved no exception. Music of the era had innumerable Western-themed pop songs, such as “Back in the Saddle Again” (1940) and “I’ve Got Spurs that Jingle Jangle Jingle” (1942), and compositions such as Rodeo (1942). Western movies featured such cowboy stars as Gene Autry (1907–1998), Roy Rogers (1911–1998) and William Boyd (1895–1972, but better known as Hopalong Cassidy), and kids emulated them with their own cowboy outfits and toy six-shooters. The exploits of Red Ryder and the Cisco Kid appeared in comic books, comic strips, and on radio. In short, American popular culture emphasized the West in many ways, and most people carried, consciously or subconsciously, an awareness of the country’s Western myths. It should therefore come as no surprise that architecture would also reflect this background, and the most obvious manifestation of the Western heritage for the 1940s appeared with the rise in popularity of the ranch-style home, although it would not


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achieve real dominance until the 1950s. Although few true ranch buildings ever looked too much like the thousands built after World War II, home buyers relished the symbolism they saw in these new homes. Long and low, with a front picture window looking out on the wide open spaces (more likely their neighbors’ houses), with a patch of green grass and maybe an outdoor barbeque, it appealed to that streak of rugged individualism so dear to most Americans. On the West Coast, William W. Wurster (1895–1973) quietly created houses that featured spacious, open interiors in a style he called soft modernism; Oregon-based Pietro Belluschi designed homes as early as 1941 that looked ahead to the ubiquitous ranch houses of the 1950s. Harwell H. Harris (1903–1990), displaying a sensitivity to materials, worked to blend the interior with the exterior, house and site. His Wyle House, built in Ojai, California, in 1948, also presaged ranch designs. A major California developer, Cliff May (1908–1989), even claimed himself to be “the father of the California ranch style,” although it could be argued that others shared in that parentage. Another real estate developer, Joseph Eichler (1900–1974), built countless postwar homes in the Palo Alto area from 1949 onward, creating subdivisions known as Sunnyvale, Sunnymount, University Gardens, and others. Several important California architects also attempted more modernistic designs for private residences. Richard Neutra, another European émigré, brought elements of the International Style to the justly famous Kaufmann House in Palm Springs and to the Tremaine House in Santa Barbara (both 1946). Neither of Neutra’s plans found a wide audience; costly materials, unique sites, and a futuristic look deterred the average buyer. Charles and Ray Eames (1907–1978, 1912–1988) in 1949 built a modern house for themselves in Santa Monica. In order to hold down costs, they utilized readily available off-the-shelf components, but the Eames’s house remained too ahead of its time for most tastes. While architects based on the West Coast popularized the ranch-style home, Royal Barry Wills (1895–1962) made his own Eastern variations on the design. During the 1940s, he created houses based on the traditional New England Cape Cod plan, sometimes adding a salt box effect, also a New England tradition. But his long, low homes also relied heavily on the ranch patterns emerging in California. Wills thus created a hybrid that spoke to the long history of the Cape Cod on the East Coast and reflected the growing popularity of the Western-tinged ranch. When developer William Levitt (1907–1994) began planning the first of his Levittowns, he used a basic Cape Cod design for his introductory models. In 1947, he and his planners chose an expanse of potato fields near Hicksville, Long Island, for this experiment in massive suburban building, and it proved a rousing success. He would later build other Levittowns in Pennsylvania (1952) and New Jersey (1955). As the Long Island development expanded, he broadened the style choices slightly, eventually adding ranch models in the early 1950s. While either traditional housing or the ranch style became the primary choices of Eastern home buyers in the later 1940s, several architects, like their West Coast colleagues, experimented with more daring approaches to residential design. Mies van der Rohe planned a modern classic with the Farnsworth House (Plano, Illinois) in


Architecture | 27 1946. Essentially an elegant glass box, it was not constructed until 1951, but it reflects his thinking about plain, unadorned steel frames sheathed in glass, much as he would later do at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Marcel Breuer created the forwardlooking Geller House in Lawrence, Long Island, also in 1946. Its “butterfly roofs,” as he termed them, sloped toward the center of the structure, challenging tradition. He would go on to design dozens more modern houses, but seldom found popular acclaim. His personal dwelling in New Canaan, Connecticut, long and low, combines natural stone and glass; begun in 1947, its horizontality suggests a ranch in many ways. Philip Johnson in 1949 created perhaps the most famous glass box house of the era with his own home in New Canaan. A rectangle, all in glass with minimal framing components, it offers unobstructed views of its wooded setting. As critics were quick to point out, it also offers equally unobstructed views of its interior to anyone outside the house. Despite these reservations, the Johnson House has become an icon of postwar modern design. Any discussion of residential design must also consider the contributions of Frank Lloyd Wright, the master iconoclast of American architecture. The 1936 house he called Fallingwater (Bear Run, Pennsylvania) took the precepts of the International Style and ended up as one of his greatest designs. Wright then moved on to smaller, less expensive, less elaborate plans with a series of homes he labeled Usonian houses (the term, a neologism, combines U.S. and a “-nian” suffix suggesting a collective group, in this case, the citizens of the United States). Built during the late 1930s and into the 1940s, many of his Usonian designs incorporate strong ranch-style elements— one story, a stress on the horizontal, low roofs—that put him in league with the trends of the period. The housing shortage of the later 1940s also generated interest in prefabricated residences. If the structural components of a building could be standardized, manufactured, and then shipped to a site, many felt that costs would be reduced and great savings achieved in the needed assembly time. Little came of these discussions, with one significant exception: the prefabricated Lustron House. Devised by inventor Carl Strandlund (1899–1974) in the mid-1940s, he foresaw a large market for an inexpensive ready-made house that combined attractiveness and durability. Strandlund cobbled together a small manufacturing facility in Columbus, Ohio, and began to promote his invention. He initially quoted preproduction prices of his Lustron homes at about $7,000 (about $63,000 in 2008 dollars), which, depending on the model, made them competitive with traditional residences. Strandlund proposed to make all the necessary parts at his factory, ship them to the buyer’s site, whereupon a new house could be assembled in just a matter of days. Instead of wood, his frame, walls, ceilings, and roof would be made of steel panels with a baked-on enamel finish available in eight muted pastel colors. Not only would a Lustron house be fire-, lightning-, rust-, and rodent-proof, it required little maintenance. Easy soap-and-water cleanup would keep it sparkling, inside and out, for years. The company advertised four models ranging from just under 1,000 square feet to just over 1,200 square feet. Architecturally speaking, Lustron homes tended to be


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rather nondescript, a basic one-story box with little originality in its design, and prices eventually ranged from about $6,000 to $10,000 (or from $54,000 to about $90,000 in 2008 dollars), plus the lot chosen by the owner. Public curiosity nevertheless ran high, and Strandlund eventually had 20,000 units on order. Between 1949 and 1950, his company built about 2,500 houses. Lack of sufficient capitalization, delays in assembly and shipping, and flagging customer interest caused the firm to declare bankruptcy in 1950, thus ending the most concerted attempt to introduce prefabricated housing to the American market. Around the country, several dozen Lustron houses still exist, living up to their claims of exceptional durability One final structure from the 1940s merits mention: the lowly Quonset hut. So named because many early models were fabricated at Quonset Point in Rhode Island, they have come to be one of the most enduring building types from the war years, although they seldom receive much attention in architectural histories. But these durable, allpurpose structures were assembled by the tens of thousands for Allied military forces around the world. An outgrowth of the similar British Nissan hut from World War I, Quonset huts constituted a rediscovery of sorts. Faced with a shortage of strong but portable structures for both personnel and materiel, officials looked to the past success of the Nissan hut, improved on it, and proceeded to mass produce the ungainly structure. Built as a half-cylinder that would rest, curved side up, on either a foundation or, in battlefield conditions, bare earth, the exterior of a Quonset hut consisted of galvanized steel laid over a wooden frame. Precut plywood sections then sealed either end. The basic size for most huts measured 20 feet in width and 48 feet in length, which allowed for an approximate 10-foot height at it highest point. Many variations also became available. Following the conflict, the government sold the huts as war surplus, and untold numbers of private citizens bought them cheaply as farm outbuildings, storage units, garages, auto repair shops, and countless other uses. Some became temporary churches, and others served as school rooms. Users were limited only by their imaginations. Newly made Quonset huts can still be purchased economically through specialty catalogs, metal fabricators, and large building supply centers. Because so many were built during World War II, Quonset huts remain an enduring reminder of the 1940s. For the average person, while the new commercial structures going up in postwar America were impressive, the greatest architectural impacts were felt in the countless suburban tracts filled with middle-class houses built with mass-produced materials and cookbook designs. See also: Baby Boom; Children’s Films; Classical Music; Copland, Aaron; Fashion; Lawns, Lawnmowers, and Fertilizers; Levittown and Suburbanization; Radio Programming: Children’s Shows, Serials, and Adventure Series; Rationing; Serial Films; Technology Selected Reading Handlin, David P. American Architecture. London: Thames & Hudson, 1985. Hess, Alan. Ranch House. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2004. Shanken, Andrew M. 194X: Architecture, Planning, and Consumer Culture on the American Home Front. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Stern, Robert A. M. Pride of Place: Building the American Dream. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986.


Art ( Painting) | 29

ART ( PAINTING) Prior to the 1940s, American art, particularly in the area of painting, had been conservative and dominated by realism, both urban and rural. The regionalist painters of the 1930s, as well as those working in the areas of social consciousness and protest during the Great Depression commanded most critical and popular attention. Numerous aspects of more modern movements in art also persisted, quietly and less obviously, always in the background, ready to burst forth at some later time. Regardless of style, the federal government had a hand in the directions art would follow, at least until the early 1940s. The Works Progress Administration, or WPA, had been created during 1935—a wide-ranging New Deal project that, among other things, provided employment for artists. Renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939, it allowed many talented people to pursue their creative interests, especially in the form of the Federal Arts Project (FAP). Countless colorful murals, posters, booklets, and the like brightened a dreary Depression environment. Because familiarity with art usually came through prints, reproductions, and illustrations, exposure to secondhand works caused most citizens to function as spectators instead of supporters of artistic endeavor. The influences of the FAP and allied agencies therefore proved far-reaching, making a considerable audience aware of original art and giving people access to imaginative work in many styles. The long tradition of aloofness between artist and community, between elite and popular culture, displayed some cracks. A number of localities saw the establishment of new museums and art schools toward the end of the 1930s, but just as they began to open their doors, the inexorable pressures of a world war absorbed all the nation’s energies. Artistic endeavors were put on hold “for the duration,” as many called the war years. After 1941, with a world war raging and finances tight, Congress closed down the WPA in 1943, effectively ending the FAP. Local branches discarded hundreds of canvases, finished or not, and suddenly jobless artists had to fend for themselves. The war may have shuttered the FAP, but it also opened new opportunities. In 1942, the Office for Emergency Management (OEM), which had been established in 1940, issued a call for pictures dealing with the nation’s defense efforts. Over 1,100 artists responded. Other agencies, such as the Red Cross, Civil Defense, the War Production Board, and the Office of War Information (OWI), along with commercial advertisers, sought patriotic posters and illustrations. Artists for Victory, a collaborative effort of about two dozen art societies, aided the war effort by holding exhibitions and competitions, and then auctioning off pictures by their members. Despite assistance on many fronts, a survey undertaken in 1943 found that most artists in the United States made less than a living wage from their craft—and women artists made half as much as their male counterparts. Most had to rely on teaching, hack work, or other enterprises to keep food on the table. Nonetheless, after the demise of the FAP, the government remained opposed to federal support for the arts. Museums retrenched, often holding retrospective shows built from their own collections. Restrictions on travel, especially gasoline rationing, precluded traveling exhibitions and made it difficult for people to visit distant shows, causing overall attendance to dwindle. The period 1941–1945 thus proved a bleak period for many artists, as far as


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| Art ( Painting) TABLE 4. Year

Selected Shows Mounted by Museums during the War Years, 1940–1945 Museum

Title or Subject

1940

Art Institute of Chicago Metropolitan Museum Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

50 Years of American Art American Watercolors War Comes to the People

1941

Baltimore Museum of Art Metropolitan Museum [The National Gallery of Art opens in Washington, DC, in 1941 but initially features no American artists in its shows]

Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) retrospective WPA Exhibit

1942

Art Institute of Chicago

The Hudson River School (early- to mid19th-century American painters) Artists for Victory Road to Victory (posters)

Metropolitan Museum MoMA 1943

Art Institute of Chicago

Guggenheim Museum Metropolitan Museum MoMA Whitney Museum

Edward Hopper (1882–1967), Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), and Charles Sheeler (1883–1965), all active during the 1940s The Eight (early 20th-century American painters) Jackson Pollock War Art Airways to Peace Front Line Paintings by War Correspondents

1944

Boston Museum of Fine Arts Metropolitan Museum Philadelphia Museum of Art Whitney Museum

Sporting Art Naval Aviation in the Pacific Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) retrospective Winslow Homer (1836–1910) retrospective

1945

Metropolitan Museum

The War Against Japan; William Sidney Mount (1807–1868) retrospective Stuart Davis (1894–1964) retrospective William Glackens (1870–1938), George Luks (1866–1933), Everett Shinn (1876–1953), and John Sloan (1871–1951) retrospective Early American Art

Brooklyn Museum

MoMA Philadelphia Museum of Art

Whitney Museum

exhibiting or selling their work. Not until 1946, and a return to peace, did the outlook for the arts once again brighten. In the meantime, many noted foreign-born artists, such as Josef Albers (1888– 1976), Marc Chagall (1887–1985), Lyonel Feininger (1871–1956), George Grosz (1893–1959), Hans Hofmann (1880–1966), Ferdnand Leger (1881–1955), Piet Mondrian (1872–1944), and Yves Tanguy (1900–1955), had fled their native lands, seeking shelter from fascism and the unfolding war in Europe, and immigrated to the United States. After 1945, a number of these individuals decided to stay, providing a bracing infusion of new ideas, styles, and techniques for native talents to absorb. By and large, however, the realistic tradition—representational art—remained the popular favorite. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Art ( Painting) | 31 TABLE 5.

Selected Shows Mounted by Museums during the Postwar Years, 1946–1950

Year 1946

Museum Art Institute of Chicago

Show

MoMA Whitney Museum

George Bellows (1882–1925) retrospective Georgia O’Keeffe retrospective Pioneers of Modern Art

1947

Metropolitan Museum MoMA

Survey of American Art Ben Shahn (1898–1969) retrospective

1948

MoMA

Thomas Cole (1801–1848) retrospective

1949

Almost no American-themed shows of note are held at major museums; instead, they feature previously unavailable European treasures made available after World War II.

1950

Boston Museum of Fine Arts Metropolitan Museum Whitney Museum

American Art American Painting Today Edward Hopper retrospective

Abstraction, particularly a postwar movement called abstract expressionism, tended to be misunderstood and rejected by bewildered onlookers and mainly widened the gap between modern artists and the public. The realistic motifs pursued during the 1930s had narrowed that gap, but those working in the most modernistic, or avant-garde, styles appeared to care little about popular opinion. On the other hand, in a carryover of themes explored in the 1930s, anything dealing with the “American scene” continued to appeal to many, especially if it possessed the aura of patriotism that colored so many endeavors while World War II raged. Land- and seascapes, often referred to disparagingly as “calendar art,” found a receptive public. The war fostered a yearning for a more peaceful, tranquil past. Scenes of a river or stream crossed by a picturesque bridge, children frolicking in a forest glade, or a cozy cottage nestled among flowers and trees brought about much mediocre painting disguised as nostalgic or patriotic statements. An inevitable by-product of those years of conflict, such consumer-oriented art sold well in cheap reproductions. The two tables above briefly survey some of the exhibitions in major museums during the war and postwar years. They demonstrate the difficulties faced by many artists anxious to move forward, not backward. The first list, covering the period 1940–1945, reflects how much World War II dominated any public presentation of art or photography. With the exception of abstractionist Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) in 1943, younger artists, particularly abstractionists in any vein, usually had to rely on private galleries to be shown, a situation that limited them to larger cities and cut their potential audience sharply. The second table identifies some of the larger public exhibitions presented from 1946 to 1950. The innate conservatism of most American museums at the time becomes apparent because of the relative absence of any notable modernists in the listing. Once again, it befell small, private galleries to give younger artists an opportunity to be seen by a limited public. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

TABLE 6.

Selected American Artists Active during the 1940s

Artist and Dates Ivan Le Lorraine Albright (1897–1983) Milton Avery (1893–1964) Romare Bearden (1914–1988) Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975) Isabel Bishop (1902–1988) Peter Blume (1906–1992) Charles Burchfield (1893–1967) Paul Cadmus (1904–1999) Ralston Crawford (1906–1978) Stuart Davis (1894–1964) Arthur Dove (1880–1946) Philip Evergood (1901–1973) Morris Graves (1910–2001) William Gropper (1897–1977)

Comments Noted for his realistic depictions of human deterioration and decay, a form of exaggerated naturalism, Albright enjoyed a unique moment of renown when one of his paintings, Dorian Gray (1944), served as the centerpiece in the 1945 Hollywood movie The Picture of Dorian Gray, based on the 1890 tale by Oscar Wilde (1854–1900). Avery maintained some continuity with European modernism by practicing what critics called figural abstraction. Working to eliminate all nonessential details, he created a distinctive style of flattened shapes and muted colors. A black modernist, his work was much influenced by cubism during the 1940s. Often considered a regionalist, Benton created some hard-hitting paintings about the war and the nation’s enemies that had nothing to do with fertile cornfields or the Midwest. Bishop focused mainly on working women and their everyday lives in New York City, done in a style called social realism. Working in a variety of styles, Blume created a surreal, metaphorical world that often included references to contemporary events. A watercolorist, Burchfield depicted older, lonely, and decrepit neighborhoods and created a unique, expressionistic nature vocabulary in many paintings of trees and plants. A veteran of the WPA/FAP programs, Cadmus worked in the area of social realism, often featuring controversial male figures. A precisionist, his unusual studies of bridges offered new perspectives on the built environment; he gradually moved into more geometric abstraction. Employing a colorful mix of abstraction and realistic detail, Davis succeeded in portraying a real America but in abstract forms. An influence on many later painters, he was drawn to jazz, popular culture, and advertising as themes. One of the first American abstractionists, Dove continued to work in that style throughout his life, bringing the bright colors of nature to his canvases. Much concerned with social causes, Evergood came out of the WPA/FAP era with several murals to his credit; a figurative painter, his often cartoonlike characters symbolize his essential humanity. After a brief stint with the WPA art projects, Graves turned inward. Employing mystical symbolism, especially in stylized birds rendered in a calligraphic style, he created his own expressionistic language. A committed radical, Gropper worked in both formal painting and cartooning. Strongly anti-Axis during World War II, he carried on by opposing the repressive political climate of the postwar era. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Philip Guston (1912–1980) Robert Gwathmey (1903–1988) Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) Edward Hopper (1882–1967)

Peter Hurd (1904–1984)

Rockwell Kent (1882–1971) Walt Kuhn (1880–1949) Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000)

Jack Levine (b. 1915) John Marin (1870–1953)

A noted muralist with the WPA/FAP, Guston early on displayed a strong social conscience; he leaned toward the abstract expressionists in the 1940s but later abandoned the style for a more representational approach. Among the first modern white painters to portray black life in the rural South in a dignified manner rather than a stereotypical way, Gwathmey worked in a highly stylized form of realism and attracted attention in the 1940s. An important early abstractionist, Hartley reflected the European modernism of the day and prefigured some of the pop artists of the 1960s. By the late 1930s, he had turned to a muscular, almost primitive, realism focused on the farmers and fishermen of rural Maine. A traditional painter, respected by abstractionists and realists alike, Hopper was already at the peak of a long career when the 1940s decade began. In a series of outstanding paintings, he emerged as one of the premier artists of the 20th century. Many of his works show deserted city streets or near-empty theaters and restaurants. A portrayer of the anomie of the modern urban scene, he created the iconic Nighthawks in 1942, a painting that has taken on a life of its own. Through agreements reached with its owner, the Art Institute of Chicago, countless prints of Nighthawks have sold extremely well, as have parodies that substitute celebrities for the anonymous diners in the painting. A marriage of popular culture and elite art, Nighthawks brought Hopper out of the museum and into everyday life and greatly enlarged the audience for serious American art. A regionalist painter who focused on the Southwest, Hurd married into the famous Wyeth family of artists upon his union with Heniette Wyeth (1907–1997), a noted painter in her own right. Firmly realistic, Hurd served as an overseas artist with Life magazine during World War II. An early American modernist grounded in realism, Kent also created distinctive pen-and-ink illustrations for a number of books, particularly Moby-Dick. He remains noted for his stylized, colorful landscapes, usually of distant, isolated locales. A realist remembered for naturalistic studies of solitary individuals, often vaudeville performers and clowns. Painting in a flat, almost abstract, style that he called dynamic cubism, Lawrence became one of the most recognized and honored black American artists of the mid-20th century. Starting in the late 1930s, he commenced creating a monumental and cyclical historical work called Migration of the Negro, a series of some 60 paintings about the movement of blacks from the rural South to the more industrialized North. A veteran of the WPA/FAP programs, Levine blended satire, searing social realism, and caricature in a series of paintings about U.S. politics, business, and corruption. In his later years, he turned increasingly to religious themes. An early American abstractionist noted for his city and seascapes—particularly those dealing with the coast of Maine—paintings that always contain elements of realism. His work, fluid and filled with energy, places him in the tradition of American romantic individualism. (continued) © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

TABLE 6.

(continued)

Artist and Dates

Comments

Reginald Marsh (1898–1954)

Always recognizable, Marsh’s considerable body of work celebrates the American City (New York) and all its squalor, vulgarity, beauty, and energy. An avowed populist, he created images of subways, burlesque shows, voluptuous sunbathers, and muscled acrobats at Coney Island, the down and out and dispossessed, along with the haughty rich. The murals he executed for the Department of the Treasury in the mid- to late 1930s continue that urban celebration. A self-taught, nonprofessional painter, “Grandma” Moses found herself a popular, sought-after folk artist in the late 1930s and through the next two decades. Discovered in 1938, her primitive, detailed scenes of bygone rural life in upstate New York were widely reproduced and also appeared in glossy magazine advertisements and graced the fronts of sentimental greeting cards. She referred to her art as memory painting, and it struck a chord with the public. No woman in the arts equaled the fame and influence achieved during O’Keeffe’s long tenure as a distinctive American modernist. From the 1920s onward, her studies of buildings, flowers at close range, and a rugged, desert section of New Mexico where she eventually settled, became virtual trademarks. By the 1940s, her reputation established, O’Keeffe continued to follow a disciplined regimen of work, painting, expanding her palette, and refining her techniques. Many works from this period become increasingly abstract, with shape and color overriding any traditional content. O’Keeffe remained active until the last days of her life, a major figure in American art. A superb illustrator, particularly of children’s books, Parrish developed a style of heightened realism that he then blended with fantasy. Skilled in the use of glazes and luminous colors, he achieved a level of success that allowed him to devote himself to landscape painting and only occasionally did calendars or advertisements in the 1940s. Injured in World War I, Pippin came to art in his thirties. A folk, or naïve, painter, he created pictures of everyday black life during the 1930s and 1940s. He included content that denounced segregation and injustice, all done in a flat, almost surreal, style. The best-loved American artist of the 20th century, Rockwell worked primarily as an illustrator. He created hundreds of paintings, with 322 covers for the Saturday Evening Post alone, executing 71 of them during the 1940s. Rockwell also painted countless advertisements, calendars, posters, greeting cards, and magazine and book illustrations, with most of them done in a highly realistic style. Most of his paintings exemplified a narrative tradition and told stories, with the picture providing just enough information that audiences could fill in the missing details. Often blending sentiment and patriotism, especially during the war years, but with a sly sense of humor also permeating his work, he achieved enormous and continuing fame. A WPA/FAP muralist, Shahn early on included often radical political commentary and protest in his works of social realism. He also excelled at photography, working with Walker Evans (1903–1975) for the Farm Security Administration during the 1930s and documenting rural poverty. The war years found Shahn at the Office of War Information creating posters, although his antiwar biases © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved. prevented most of them from being published. Following the conflict, he protested nuclear testing along with labor and racial injustices.

Grandma (Anna Mary Robertson) Moses (1860–1961) Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986)

Maxfield Parrish (1870–1966) Horace Pippin (1888–1946) Norman Rockwell (1894–1978)

Ben Shahn (1898–1969)

Charles Sheeler (1882–1945)

Max Weber (1881–1961)

Grant Wood (1892–1942)

Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009)

A precisionist—a word he coined to describe his work and expanded to include other artists following similar themes and techniques— Sheeler’s realistic paintings of factories and machinery resemble detailed photographic studies. Beneath the sharp edges and flat planes of color, his art possesses an underlying abstract structure. Accomplished in photography and filmmaking, he organized geometric forms into aesthetic composition. Many of Sheeler’s paintings, devoid of human activity and any expressive brushwork, possess an aura of melancholy and stillness as he dispassionately described the manmade environment, not the world of nature. Frequently described as the artist that introduced cubism to the United States, Weber came to the United States from Poland as a child. His great years predated the 1940s. A cubist, an expressionist, a modernist—Weber defied category, but helped immensely in bringing the trends in European modernism to the attention of the American art community. By the 1940s, his work had settled into expressionistic studies of his religious past, especially Hasidic Jewish life. Usually associated with the Midwestern regionalists of the 1930s, Wood’s American Gothic (1930) has become familiar to many people and remains a recurring subject for parodies of all kinds. Wood, however, continued painting, a steadfast regionalist until his early death in 1942. He created scenes of rich Iowa fields, retellings of American historical events, and a number of portraits. But Wood’s rugged nationalism did not find as ready an audience in the days of internationalist thinking leading up to World War II; he would have to await rediscovery in later years. Despite the opinions of a number of critics in the late 1940s, representational art was far from dead. Modernism and abstraction might be in the ascendancy, but well-done, realistically rendered paintings could also rally enthusiastic support. Andrew Wyeth, son of the famous illustrator N. C. Wyeth (1882–1945) proved this statement by becoming one of the most famous—and popular—traditional artists of the postwar era. Working with either egg tempera or watercolors in a spare, uncrowded style, and employing a muted palette, Wyeth focused on depictions of his immediate environments in Pennsylvania and Maine. Throughout the 1940s, barns, leafless tree limbs, barren fields, and an occasional neighbor comprise the basic elements found in many of his paintings. In an increasingly noisy, industrialized world, his admirers embraced this vision, demonstrating that artists need not be separated from their public, as is often the case.


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An alphabetical list can be found above of some of the leading American painters of the 1940s. A rich period in terms of sheer numbers of artists, space does not permit including all the notable individuals active during the decade. Despite World War II, many continued to paint, although for the majority it would take time for their work to be seen by a significant public. Most of these artists avoided the war as an obvious subject in their work, but it undoubtedly had a psychological impact that manifested itself in less clear-cut ways. Abstract art received considerable publicity during the 1940s; ironically, it also spurred a revival of interest in objective painting. Although the two approaches may have been at loggerheads, museum and gallery shows reflected public awareness of the arts in general, regardless of preferences. The horrors of World War II, many of them only coming to light after the conflict ended, likewise influenced many painters. Escapism into a mythic past via nostalgia served as one approach, but the violence of the age also appeared in explosive abstract works in which the struggling inner mind of the artist attempted to comprehend recent events and express them on canvas. Somewhere in between, still other painters looked to beauty and controlled composition to describe the decade, often blending abstract shapes with realistic details. A transitional time, the 1940s in art provided something for everyone, but definitive answers about styles or techniques remained illusory. See also: Advertising; Architecture; Magazines; Sculpture Selected Reading Graebner, William S. The Age of Doubt: American Thought and Culture in the 1940s. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Green, Samuel M. American Art: A Historical Survey. New York: Ronald Press Company, 1966. Haskell, Barbara. The American Century: Art and Culture, 1900–1950. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. Hughes, Robert. American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

ASCAP VS. BMI RADIO BOYCOTT AND THE AFM RECORDING BAN With roots that go back many years, a curious, multifaceted chapter in American musical history played itself out during the early 1940s.

ASCAP vs. BMI In 1914, a group of prominent composers and music publishers completed guidelines for an organization that would protect their creations from those who would perform them without acknowledgement and, more importantly, without paying any fees for the privilege. Known as ASCAP, or the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Producers, the new alliance signed agreements with those individuals who held copyrights for various musical compositions. ASCAP then collected fees from whoever


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used those compositions, distributing monies to the various artists and producers involved. The organization shortly gained a near-monopoly in American music circles, successfully demanding remuneration for any licensing of songs written, performed, or produced by its members. The payment structure increased, and, with no competitors, ASCAP became a prosperous, powerful force, jealously holding the performance rights to most of the sheet music and recordings created in the United States from 1914 to about 1940. Virtually all the major American music publishers belonged to ASCAP, collectively giving them control of more than 80 percent of the popular songs likely to be heard in the country. With both radio and phonographs becoming growing carriers of music in the 1920s and 1930s, ASCAP took the position that playing a record over the air constituted a performance and demanded payment. Radio stations replied that broadcasting a recording equaled free advertising, because listeners might well purchase the record, and stations should not be required to pay royalties to ASCAP. Affected parties united in opposition to the ASCAP position and in 1923 formed their own interest group, the National Association of Broadcasters, or NAB. The new organization opposed any increases in licensing charges levied by ASCAP on stations or networks in order to gain the right to broadcast ASCAP music. For many years, however, ASCAP held sway in the continuing dispute, causing things finally to come to a head in 1939. That year, ASCAP proposed increasing the fees charged stations for the right to play records by its members, a decision that included virtually all notable songwriters of the day. In the meantime, the dispute had been working its way through the courts. In a wide-ranging verdict, a judge ruled that radio stations could play recordings over the air and not pay any royalties to the musicians heard on them and that such use did not constitute infringement of copyright. The pronouncement, along with broadcaster dissatisfaction with ASCAP policies, set the stage for a showdown. Appeals followed, but the United States Supreme Court in 1940 upheld the right of stations to play recorded music without royalties. The decision led to the hiring of countless disk jockeys around the country, because records constituted cheap programming—cheaper than retaining studio orchestras for live on-air performances. To be on the safe side, however, the three major networks—the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), the Mutual Broadcasting System (MBS), and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC)—along with the encouragement of the NAB, had created Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) in 1939. Established as a competitor to ASCAP, networks and their affiliates hoped its presence would counter the influence exerted by the older organization by setting rates and issuing licensing agreements. But ASCAP responded by going ahead and raising its fee structure anyway, unilaterally dismissing the threat posed by BMI. As a result of this imperious approach, BMI, which until then existed mainly on paper, came into active being in February 1940; it immediately announced, with near-unanimous station and network support, a radio boycott of all ASCAP artists. This action meant the disappearance of most well-known popular music from commercial radio broadcasting, since ASCAP furnished over 80 percent of the songs heard on the air. People who wished to hear their favorite performers had to buy records, attend concerts, search out nightclubs and dance halls, or find other performance venues. Despite these predicted inconveniences, BMI did not back down.


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BMI launched its boycott in January 1941; 660 broadcasters, out of almost 800 active stations, promptly signed with BMI, as did a few publishers. The Edward B. Marks Music Company, a publisher holding extensive catalogs of popular and Latin music, joined the new organization, as did the M. M. Cole Publishing Company and Ralph Peer (1892–1960), founder of the Southern Music Publishing Company. These two groups specialized in country-oriented compositions. Stations and disk jockeys therefore began playing considerably more country music than in the past, a situation that led to increased public exposure to this previously seldom-heard genre. As BMI gained strength, ASCAP faced declining fees and public disappointment at the loss of many of their favorite performers on the air. ASCAP claimed to represent all musicians and had long collected their licensing and performance fees from stations and networks; in reality, it only disbursed royalties to those with whom it had contractual agreements. That exclusivity meant that non-ASCAP musicians might have their music performed over the air, but the organization did not recognize them as members and denied them royalties. This unfair practice made many artists more than ready for an organization like BMI, and the upstart group commenced an earnest search for people not directly signed with ASCAP. It also looked for songs in the public domain that possessed no copyright protection, numbers that could freely be played on the air by anyone. As a result of the January boycott, American radio programming went through an abrupt change. Instead of the most current popular tunes, listeners now heard old favorites by the likes of Stephen Foster (1826–1864) or other 19th-century composers long out of copyright. For example, bandleader Glenn Miller (1904–1944) and his arrangers combed old song lists and unearthed a traditional Russian folksong, “The Volga Burlack’s [Boatmen’s] Song,” that goes back at least to the 19th century. Arranger Bill Finegan (1917–2008) turned this morose piece into the swinging “Song of the Volga Boatmen” in 1941, and it soon became a major hit without being subject to any bans. Freddy Martin (1906–1983), leader of another dance aggregation, arranged Tchaikovsky’s 1875 Piano Concerto in B-Flat, a non-ASCAP classical composition, for airplay and recording, calling it “Tonight We Love” (1941). Since it faced little contemporary competition, the new rendition spent a number of weeks on the hit charts. Theme songs for several radio shows that fell under the ASCAP banner likewise underwent changes. Amos ’n’ Andy, one of the most popular comedy series in radio history, dropped “The Perfect Song,” written in 1915 and therefore still an ASCAP property. Producers replaced it with a melody from the 1860s called “Angels’ Serenade.” Comedian Eddie Cantor had to delete the ASCAP-licensed “One Hour with You” (1932), a melody penned by Richard A. Whiting (1891–1938), with lyrics by Leo Robin (1900–1984), with the old “Good Night Ladies” (1853; also known as “Merrily We Roll Along”). The boycott even affected commercials. Cigarette maker Philip Morris, which had excerpted composer Ferde Grofe’s (1892–1972) readily identified “On the Trail” from his 1933 Grand Canyon Suite for its ads, substituted Tchaikovsky’s Andante Cantabile in an adaptation from his String Quartet #1 of the 1880s. In a search for usable, non-ASCAP songs, BMI investigators unearthed a number of more recent South American compositions by songwriters not connected with the organization. In 1941, tunes like “Amapola (Pretty Little Poppy),” “Green Eyes” (Aquellos Ojos Verde),” “Maria Elena,” and “Yours (Quiereme Mucho)” attracted considerable


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attention in English translations, gained airplay, and ended up as American hits. Because these tunes had originally been written outside the United States, they did not fall under ASCAP jurisdiction. Many other Latin composers attempted to break into the profitable U.S. music market during this difficult time. BMI hit additional pay dirt in its musical quest for usable music when it discovered that, over the years, ASCAP had regularly excluded most folk singers, country musicians, jazz and blues artists, along with many black performers connected with the growing field of rhythm and blues. ASCAP had instead sought mainstream performers, such as those in the areas of theater scores, movie soundtracks, classics, and popular songs. Relying on that focus, they tended to ignore more specialized or narrow avenues of expression. Almost immediately, BMI began signing up some of the best artists in these categories, building an enviable country, jazz, and rock ’n’ roll catalog. For a large body of listeners, BMI gave them their first exposure to these formats, and its move in these directions proved a goldmine in subsequent years. Seeing that their standoff led nowhere, both sides reluctantly reached some uneasy understandings; the boycott of ASCAP music effectively ended in late 1941, and many radio stations signed new licensing agreements. Although normalcy returned to the airwaves, BMI had in that short time established itself as a worthy rival to ASCAP. The early 1940s also signaled the beginnings of a transition from the traditional to a new era of pop and rock ’n’ roll, and it would not take long for BMI to emerge in the postwar era as coequal with its once-invincible rival.

The AFM Recording Ban Beginning in 1896, the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) served as the official bargaining agent for U.S. musicians with labor issues. In the summer of 1940, James C. Petrillo (1892–1984) won election as the national president of the AFM. At the time, he headed the Chicago local of the union. When he took office, he quickly set out to improve the lot of member musicians, especially in regard to compensation for recordings. Petrillo urged broadcasters that utilized phonograph records in their programming to pay fees to the AFM for this privilege. These charges would be in addition to anything already paid by stations to ASCAP or BMI for playing music of any kind. Under his plan, record companies would participate by reimbursing the union on a graduated scale based on the number of AFM musicians employed in a recording session. A contentious issue because of the costs involved, lengthy negotiations with the concerned parties ensued but broke down in June 1942. A proud and stubborn labor leader, Petrillo, in retaliation for the collapse, ordered a complete ban on any recording activity by union instrumentalists or bands. He directed the ban to take effect at the beginning of August. Perhaps an oversight in retrospect, he did not prohibit radio stations from playing their libraries of older disks, despite his testy relationship with the broadcast industry. By keeping musicians out of the recording studios, Petrillo’s ban doubtless hurt his membership as much as it hurt the record companies in the long run. He reasoned that the public’s desire for recorded music, either over the air or through record sales, would force stations starved for new material, along with the manufacturers of recordings, to negotiate with the AFM and quickly


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reach a settlement. But when the ban commenced, everyone stood firm, displaying an unforeseen stubbornness. The various manufacturers and distributors relied on existing stocks of recordings to meet public demand. Those inventories, however, all predated the union’s ban, and consumers wanted new songs, music they heard live in concerts or on the soundtracks of movies. Since the ban did not include live performances, the public could still hear their favorite bands and musicians, provided they could find a venue that had booked them. No matter how much listeners might enjoy a particular song, however, unless it had been recorded prior to June 1942, they could not purchase a current recording of the title. Petrillo displayed an unexpected attitude toward singers. The union did not block vocalists from making recordings, who as a rule did not belong to the AFM anyway. And although he expressly forbade bands and their sidemen to record, he made an exception of harmonicas. Petrillo declared it did not qualify as a musical instrument, so harmonicas can sometimes be heard on vocal recordings. Perhaps Petrillo later regretted his decision, but his exemption of vocalists meant that a number of a cappella sides were released by enterprising labels. Frank Sinatra (1915–1998), Bing Crosby (1903–1977), Dick Haymes (1916–1980), and other popular singers attempted a number of such arrangements, and consumers bought them up. Both Haymes and Sinatra, for example, recorded separate solo versions of “You’ll Never Know” in 1943. The tune won a 1943 Academy Award in the category of Best Song, appearing in Hello, Frisco, Hello. By himself, Sinatra crooned “Close to You” that year, and few listeners seemed any the wiser. For his part, Haymes sang solo interpretations of “In My Arms” and “Wait for Me, Mary” in 1943. The Mills Brothers, a popular vocal quartet that had been around since the 1920s, similarly released “Paper Doll” in 1943, a revival of a 1915 song written by Johnny S. Black (active 1920s and 1930s). Even without any instrumentation, it emerged as the No. 2 song of the year. Other enterprising singers occasionally imitated instruments vocally in order to provide more of a backup to their musicianless performances. With the country at war, pleas were made to Petrillo to lift the ban for the sake of morale, especially as regarded service personnel deprived of new recorded music. The uncompromising union president ignored the appeals, although he did agree to a government-run program of Victory Discs, better known as V-Discs. Under terms of an agreement struck with the armed forces, musicians could record virtually anything they wanted, provided the V-Discs were not made commercially or otherwise available within the United States and would not be played over the air. The average citizen at home thus never heard these recordings, although toward the end of the war, returning troops managed to smuggle in their favorites. Long after memories of the recording ban had disappeared, collectors located many of the wartime V-Discs, and most are now readily available. The National War Labor Board (NWLB), which oversaw the utilization of manpower, in 1944 ordered the ban lifted, but Petrillo remained adamant, and, such was his power, nothing happened. Even President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), several months later urged the feisty labor leader to drop it, again to no avail. In the fall of 1943, the first cracks in the record companies’ defense against the union had already appeared. For some time, Decca Records, along with several major radio stations, had


Atomic Bomb, The | 41 been working behind the scenes to solve the impasse. They finally achieved a tentative agreement with the AFM in September 1943, some months prior to the public appeals made by the War Labor Board and Roosevelt. To AFM’s benefit, most smaller labels likewise agreed to the terms, as did a number of broadcasters. Two recording giants, RCA Victor and Columbia, held out until the fall of 1944 before capitulating. Finally, after more than two years’ duration, Petrillo in November lifted the last remnants of the recording ban, and new pressings began to come onto the market. Jubilant consumers flocked to record stores to purchase the latest disks, and things returned to normal in the world of American music. For the next several years, the victorious Petrillo continued to make demands, and relations among officials of ASCAP, BMI, music publishers, record companies, broadcasters, and the AFM remained cool at best. Petrillo’s arrogant tactics eventually led to federal laws limiting the power of unions later in the decade, although he attempted, less successfully, another recording ban in 1948. For the music industry, the onset of peace brought with it the unknown impacts of television and new recording technologies. For Petrillo and the AFM, the threat of government-led investigations into antitrust violations loomed in the immediate future. In short, the postwar era gave every indication of being as confusing and complex as the tumultuous years of the early 1940s. See also: ABC (American Broadcasting Company); All-Girl Orchestras; Andrews Sisters, The; Basie, Count; Boogie-Woogie; Classical Music; Ellington, Duke; FM Radio; Folk Music; Jukeboxes; Labor Unrest; MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Technology Selected Reading Jones, John Bush. The Songs that Fought the War: Popular Music and the Home Front, 1939–1945. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2006. Sanjek, Russell. Pennies from Heaven: The American Popular Music Business in the Twentieth Century. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996. Smith, Kathleen E. R. God Bless America: Tin Pan Alley Goes to War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003. Young, William H., and Nancy K. Young. American Music through History: The World War II Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005.

ATOMIC BOMB, THE In the gray half-light of dawn on a remote New Mexican desert site near Alamogordo, scientists pulled a switch on an experimental bomb nicknamed “The Gadget.” An instant later, a flash of blinding white light, “a thousand suns,” as one observer put it, brightened the sky for miles around. A thunderous roar and accompanying shock waves rumbled across the sands as a towering mushroom-shaped cloud rose into the sky. Abstruse theories, endless discussions, thousands of hours of experiments and planning, meticulous engineering details, and the expenditure of vast sums of money— everything came to fruition on Monday, July 16, 1945. The successful detonation of this first nuclear bomb marked the true beginning of the Atomic Age. In a now-famous letter written to President Franklin Delano


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Roosevelt (1882–1945) in August 1939, two distinguished physicists, Leo Szilard (1898–1964) and Albert Einstein (1879–1955), warned the president that German scientists were working feverishly to develop a working nuclear bomb and that the United States would be at risk if it did not also embark on such a project. Roosevelt heeded their words, but things moved slowly at first. After consulting other experts in the field, the president in 1940 ordered that a National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) be created. It soon grew into the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), with Vannevar Bush (1890–1974), a prominent academic and proponent of defense preparedness, chairing it. From these initial actions came the Manhattan Project, or more formally, the Manhattan Engineer District (MED, 1941–1946). In reality, the MED had little to do with New York City, but since some of its early offices were located there, the name stuck, although much of the project’s coordinating would eventually take place in Tennessee. A vast undertaking comprising both the civilian and military sectors, the Manhattan Project involved over 130,000 people and a cost in excess of $2 billion (approximately $24 billion in 2008 dollars). Its task: develop a practical, working atomic bomb. General Leslie R. Groves (1896–1970), with the Army Corps of Engineers, oversaw administrative duties, and J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967), a leading theoretical physicist, took responsibility for the ongoing scientific research. Working with a virtual blank check, personnel with the Manhattan Project created three top-secret sites to accomplish their goal. Oak Ridge, Tennessee, became the center for work on enriching uranium, one of the elements necessary for a nuclear weapon. Hanford (Richland), Washington, took on the challenge of producing plutonium, another essential component. Los Alamos, New Mexico, received the designation as the center for the actual mechanical design of the weapon. Numerous other cities also became part of the overall project, making it one of the largest, and most far-flung, undertakings in the annals of American science. Atomic research, however, did not begin with the Manhattan Project; throughout the 1920s and 1930s, scientists from many countries had discovered a great deal about nuclear energy. Their work had spawned exciting stories in pulp magazines and other popular media about frightening weapons, laden with radioactivity, which might come about in the future. More serious mass-circulation periodicals, such as Popular Mechanics and Popular Science, foretold of engineering marvels powered by the atom (the details about how were always vague) that would release humankind from burdensome toil. But most of these articles more properly belonged in the realms of science fiction and fantasy. No one really knew the potential of nuclear power, and thus the public had some inklings about the concept but remained unclear as to specifics. The Manhattan Project went about its business under the tightest security possible, and few people even knew of its existence. Under the forceful leadership of Groves, disparate groups of people, military and civilian, made significant advances. In a laboratory beneath the football stadium at the University of Chicago, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) and his team achieved a controlled chain reaction in late 1942, a demonstration that indicated the feasibility of an atomic bomb. Encouraged, scientists moved ahead to devise ways to contain such a reaction and thereby trigger a nuclear explosion. Despite some dead


Atomic Bomb, The | 43 ends and failures, the work progressed, always with the specter of Germany in the background, beating them to a deliverable weapon. Finally, the team’s work led to two types of possible bombs: one made from uranium-235, a rare isotope created from the more plentiful uranium-238, and one from plutonium-239, a synthetic that the Hanford plant could produce. Although a device made from uranium-235 presented fewer problems at the beginning, a shortage of that element caused most of the existing U-235 to go into a single prototype bomb. Two other bombs were also produced using the plutonium approach, giving the United States, in the summer of 1945, a total of three nuclear bombs, with more on the way. Officials wanted a full-scale test of the plutonium mechanism, and they chose a remote area of New Mexico for this crucial exercise because of its desolation and relative proximity to the new Los Alamos facility. No equivalent test could be done with the uranium bomb because just one existed, and army personnel packed it for shipment to the Pacific. Japan would be the target, since Germany had surrendered in May, and everyone expected the Japanese to conduct a bloody, last-ditch defense of the home isles if the United State decided to mount an invasion. Perhaps a weapon more fearsome and destructive than anything yet seen would, in the long run, save untold thousands of American lives. Military and civilian advisors presented this argument to Harry S. Truman (1884– 1972), the new U.S. president, and he accepted their position. Scientists code-named their test Trinity, and the world’s first atomic bomb exploded on schedule on July 16, 1945, vaporizing the steel tower from which the device had been suspended and melting the desert sand beneath it. For sheer destructive capability, it met expectations, delivering a blast equivalent to about 15,000 tons of TNT. But, except for a few curious people in rural New Mexico who, from miles away, had seen the flash from Trinity, nothing had outwardly changed. Truman, hoping against hope for a quick peace, working in concert with Great Britain and China, made the Potsdam Proclamation on July 26, just 10 days after the test, to the Japanese government. In it, the Allies told Japan to surrender, unconditionally, or face the destruction of its homeland. The Japanese, however, rejected the ultimatum. Eleven days later, on August 6, 1945, the Trinity explosion still fresh in everyone’s mind, a single American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, flew over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. It dropped one atomic bomb, the uranium-235 model. Nicknamed “Little Boy,” the 9,700-pound device obliterated five square miles of the city, killing some 70,000 and injuring a like number. It also unleashed deadly radioactivity, and in the days and weeks to follow, thousands more perished. When the Japanese government did not respond, another B-29, the Bockscar, dropped a plutonium-based bomb, this one nicknamed “Fat Man,” on the city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. A 10,000-pound weapon, it killed some 40,000 people and injured an additional 60,000. Because hills ring Nagasaki, the destruction and resultant death toll were slightly less than what occurred at Hiroshima. Shortly thereafter, the Japanese government responded, agreed to Allied terms, and surrendered five days later. The war had ended, but work on nuclear weapons continued unabated. Just under a year later, in July 1946, the United States conducted, for all the world to see, tests in the South Pacific. Using tiny Bikini Atoll as its primary site, scrapped naval vessels


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The devastation caused by the blast of a single atomic bomb can be seen in the remains of the once-vibrant Japanese city of Nagasaki. This picture was taken shortly after the raid of August 9, 1945. (Photofest)

became targets for several demonstrations of atomic bombs. In an exercise called Operation Crossroads, two plutonium weapons, one in the air, one under the sea, were detonated in a spectacular show of destructive power. The world, especially the United States, witnessed these events with a mix of fascination and anxiousness. The purveyors of popular culture, however, wasted no time in capitalizing on this new sensation, marketing all manner of products supposedly related to atomic energy. Cheap rings that purported to show atoms being split if the viewer peered through a tiny attached tube could be obtained for Kix cereal box tops, and hundreds of thousands of curious youngsters took the bait and sent for them. Similar ephemera, equally shoddy, could be found in five-and-dimes or ordered from the back pages of comic books. Several movies in production had hasty script revisions in order to make reference to “a-bombs” or “nuclear weapons,” especially the idea of espionage in regard to military secrets, such as Cloak and Dagger (1946). The Beginning or the End (released in 1947, but made in 1946) stands as a quasi-documentary about the Manhattan Project and delivers a cautionary note about the potential for worldwide destruction now that the atom had been unleashed. In many ways, this motion picture reflects the public apprehensions about possible annihilation and the concurrent curiosity people had toward this new science.


Atomic Bomb, The | 45 The music business quickly released a number of pop songs that make reference to both these attitudes. Titles like “Atomic Cocktail” and “When the Atomic Bomb Fell” (both 1945) and “Atom Buster” and “Atom Polka” (both 1946) tend to convey a sense of relief that the war has ended, plus they support the idea that the nation’s enemies would have done the same to the United States had they succeeded in developing such explosives first. Perhaps the most unusual acknowledgement of the dawning nuclear age came from French engineer and part-time fashion designer Louis Reard (1897–1984). In 1946, he designed a bathing suit made from two miniscule pieces of fabric. In order to call attention to his revealing creation, he christened it a “bikini,” suggesting that he had “split” previously more modest one-piece swimwear into something as small as atoms. And, since virtually everyone at the time had heard about the 1946 tests at tiny Bikini Atoll, his term seemed bizarrely appropriate. In reality, and despite reams of publicity, the bikini bathing suit took years to gain wide acceptance, long after the unique connections among atomic bombs, remote geographical locations, and swimsuits had been forgotten. In the midst of these popular reflections about weapons of unparalleled destructiveness, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) replaced the Manhattan Project. This new group would oversee U.S. interests in the nuclear field, including testing. The spring of 1948 saw Operation Sandstone, this time at tiny, isolated Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific, to further assess nuclear capabilities. Throughout these immediate postwar years, the United States basked in its weapons monopoly, and the various tests seemingly reassured an anxious public that the country maintained full control over its growing arsenal. A number of concerned commentators and scientists, however, called for the country to investigate the idea of international control of all nuclear weaponry, arguing that such destructive power had made the idea of war obsolete and that no single nation should possess these devices. Evidence of the dangers of radiation, following the Japanese experiences at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only heightened their distress. Public opinion also shifted during the postwar years. Overwhelming approval for dropping the bombs slowly swung toward a questioning of the wisdom of employing such devastating weapons. But the arguments largely fell on deaf ears while testing continued unabated and refinements were made in the growing U.S. arsenal. Working closely with industry, the government—especially the AEC—began sponsoring educational seminars and fairs in the late 1940s. They addressed the subject of harnessing atomic energy but also attempted to allay public anxiety about nuclear destruction. The General Electric Company, an important defense contractor, helped defray the costs of publishing a much-seen, much-read cartoon book called Dagwood Splits the Atom. Featuring characters from the most popular comic strips and comic books of the day, it focuses on channeling the immense power of nuclear science for peaceful means, deftly assuaging citizen concerns about the military uses of such devices. Aimed primarily at school-age children, several million copies of the booklet were printed and distributed nationally at various exhibits touting an atomic future. The United States’ complacency received a rude awakening in August 1949; the Soviet Union, through espionage that had been ongoing almost from the birth of the


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Manhattan Project and an accelerated research program of its own, detonated its first atomic bomb. The Germans had never come close to developing a nuclear weapon during World War II, but the USSR, working in great secrecy, achieved the goal in just four years following the end of hostilities. The Cold War had taken an ominous turn as the 1940s drew to a close, and the 1950s would witness a deadly race between the two superpowers for nuclear supremacy as each designed and built ever more powerful weapons. See also: Aviation; Technology Selected Reading Atomic Bomb. www.atomicarchive.com/history/ Boyer, Paul. By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985. Jungk, Robert. James Cleugh, translator. Brighter Than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of Atomic Scientists. New York: Grove Press, 1958. Winkler, Allan M. Life under a Cloud: American Anxiety about the Atom. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

AUTOMOBILES AND THE AMERICAN AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY In 1940, the population of the United States stood at 132 million people, with 27.5 million holding automobile registrations. These figures equal one car for every 4.8 persons, a monumental change from the 1910 ratio of 1:201 and 1920’s 1:13. Just before the war, a new, medium-priced car cost around $800 (or about $12,300 in 2008 dollars) and averaged between 15 and 20 miles per gallon of gasoline, which then sold from 14 to 19 cents a gallon (approximately $2 to a little under $3 in 2008 dollars). Transportation received major space in the Commerce and Industry Zone at the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair, a clear indication of the nation’s fascination with automobiles. The primary American car manufacturers, Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors, familiarly known as the Big Three, created enormous and elaborate displays that presented a futuristic urban culture built around the automobile. By 1940, paved roads were commonplace throughout the United States: the Lincoln Highway, which ran 3,142 miles coast to coast; Route 66, with its 2,400 miles extending from Chicago to Los Angeles; and the recent opening of the first section of a superhighway in the East, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, served as examples of then-contemporary planning. Despite the optimistic picture for the future presented by the fair, the U.S. government recognized the growing threat of Axis conquests occurring in Europe and Asia and began to press for increased industrial involvement to strengthen the country’s military preparedness. In May 1940, industrial mobilization became the responsibility of an advisory committee, the Council of National Defense, chaired by William S. Knudsen (1879–1948), then president of General Motors. But little happened, and a year later President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) dismissed this group and created the Office of Production Management (OPM), also headed by Knudsen, along


Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry | 47

Fords roll off the company’s assembly line at its Edgewater, New Jersey, plant in October 1945. They offered the eager automobile shopper a slightly remodeled design of the company’s 1942 cars. New models did not become available until 1949. (AP Photo)

with Sidney Hillman (1987–1946), president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. An attitude of no great urgency continued to prevail among many; in the automotive industry, the continuing manufacture of all kinds of motor vehicles proceeded under a banner of business as usual, and sales reached a little over 3.7 million cars in both 1940 and 1941, a 22 percent increase over 1939 totals and almost a 46 percent increase over 1938 figures. The December 7, 1941, attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor, and the subsequent entry by the United States into World War II, threw the country into a state of frenzied concentration on defense tactics. The first major step occurred on February 22, 1942, when the U.S. government decreed a ban on the production of consumer automobiles and an immediate transition for auto manufacturers into the building of military equipment. Of all U.S. industries, the automobile companies, with their vast factories, proven assembly-line production, and huge labor pools, had the know-how to produce such work. From 1942 until the end of the war, they turned out $29 billion worth (a little over $99 billion in 2008 dollars) of military products and accounted for 20 percent of the nation’s entire war-effort output. With the energies of the Big Three directed toward military production, citizens on the home front had to adjust to getting along with old, worn-out cars, almost useless


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| Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry TABLE 7.

Automotive Industry War Commodities Output

Product

Percentage of Total Output

Complete Airplanes Machine Guns Carbines Tanks Armored Cars Scout Cars and Carriers Torpedoes Land Mines Naval Mines Helmets Aircraft Bombs

10% 47% 56% 57% 100% 92% 10% 10% 3% 85% 87%

Source: Rae, John B. The American Automobile: A Brief History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965, p. 158.

because of the rationing of tires, motor oils, and gasoline. A little-known ditty, written at this time by singer and songwriter Benny Bell (1906–1999) bears the title “The Automobile Song.” Humorous lyrics run through a catalog of car parts and rely on sexual innuendoes to tell the story of an automobile mechanic asking his sweetheart if she will still love him as various components break down when he and his car age and wear out. By late 1944, with victory in sight, the U.S. government and the country’s industries began to plan for a return to peacetime production. The War Production Board (WPB) authorized resumption of civilian automobile manufacturing in mid-1945. The Ford Company used leftover body parts from its 1942 models and assembled the first of 39,910 Fords for the year in July 1945, thereby getting a jump start on the other companies. Those Americans eager to use their parked cars again welcomed the end of the rationing of gasoline and fuel oil that occurred on August 15, 1945, the same day that Emperor Hirohito (1901–1989) announced Japan’s surrender. With this news, many Americans hopped in their old cars and drove to their dealers to place an order for a 1946 model. Tire rationing in the United States ended December 31, 1945. For some prospective buyers, the choice would be a Studebaker. Prior to World War II, the Studebaker Corporation, at one time the largest wagon builder in the world and the manufacturer of automobiles under its own brand name since 1913, ranked fourth (after Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors) in the production of cars. Although the company turned out military trucks during the war, it returned to civilian production quickly. In 1947, Studebaker launched the nation’s first all-new postwar automobile design, two full years ahead of the Big Three, who at first simply resumed turning out what were essentially their prewar models. Studebaker’s innovative styling in their 1947 Champion Starlight Coupe featured a long rear deck and a wraparound rear window that extended to the sides of the car, providing a panoramic effect similar to a railroad observation car. This creation by Loewy and Associates designer Virgil Exner (1909–1973) caused viewers to joke, “Which way is it going?” The 1950 models added the famous bullet nose for the front grill, giving their cars a distinctive airplanelike appearance. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry | 49 Studebaker managed to pull off this styling coup because of the wartime regulations that had been levied on the Detroit Big Three. As a part of mobilizing the automotive industry for military purposes, the U.S. government, in 1942, placed restrictions on in-house design departments, a step that prevented the three companies from officially working on civilian automobile designs during the war. An exception to the rule gave Indiana-based Studebaker an advantage. In the 1930s, the company had contracted with Loewy and Associates, a firm headed by designer Raymond Loewy (1893–1986), to fashion some modern automotive concepts. Because of this firm’s independence from the Studebaker Corporation, the government policies did not apply; thus, the relationship continued throughout the war years. The loophole allowed Studebaker’s early return to the postwar car market with new models. The company received favorable recognition in May 1946, when Life magazine printed a 10-page display and commentary titled “Studebaker, Its Assembly Line Is First to Produce a Postwar Auto.” Interested consumers flocked to dealer showrooms, and the company enjoyed initially strong sales. Even without the advantage of new designs, the Big Three, as well as the other top independent firms—Hudson, Nash, Packard, and Willys, along with Studebaker— anticipated big sales of their coupes, sedans, convertibles, and station wagons—and big sales they had, with a jump from the industry’s cumulative sales of 100 vehicles in 1943 to 610 in 1944 and 69,500 vehicles in 1945. The numbers kept rising in the postwar years, with 5.1 million units by 1949. A marked slowdown of purchases in late 1948 and 1949 probably reflects the recession of 1948, which ran from November of that year to October 1949. Over the decade, the number of car registrations fluctuated up and down until 1946, when they again climbed rapidly. Overall, from 1941 to 1949, car registrations increased by about 22 percent. Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors had early on established divisions in order to maximize sales by providing a number of models and a wide range of prices. In 1946, the low-end cars—a roomy, gas-guzzling Plymouth, Ford, or Chevrolet—carried an average price tag of $1,000 (a little over $11,000 in 2008 dollars). Even though this represented about 40 percent of median family income, the price did not deter sales. A step up to the next level of a Dodge, Mercury, or Pontiac meant a higher price of around $1,700 ($18,760 in 2008 dollars), cars that nonetheless readily sold. TABLE 8.

Postwar Automobile Factory Sales and Consumer Registrations

Year

New Passenger Car Sales

Percent of Preceding Year

Car Registrations

1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949

3,799,600 222,800 100 610 69,500 2,148,600 3,558,100 3,909,200 5,119,400

n.d. 5.86% .04% 610% 11,393% 3,091% 166% 110% 131%

29,624,000 27,972,000 36,009,000 25,566,000 25,796,900 28,217,000 30,849,300 33,355,200 36,457,900

Source: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. Washington, DC: Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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| Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry TABLE 9.

Representative Postwar Automobiles from the Big Three Chrysler

Brand/Division Plymouth P15S Deluxe

P15 Special Deluxe

Dodge Custom D-24

Dodge Coronet D-30

DeSoto Deluxe DeSoto Suburban

Chrysler Town & Country Chrysler Royal

Chrysler New Yorker

Chrysler Imperial

Comments This model, along with the P15 Special Deluxe, became available in 1946 and included a four-door sedan, a two-door sedan, a club coupe, and a business coupe and featured 15-inch wheels and Goodyear Super Cushion tires. The model added a convertible coupe and a wood-body station wagon with exterior wood trim, removable second- and third-row seats, and the first all-steel body. The 1946 to 1948 cars remained similar in appearance and deviated from prewar models with front fender shapes that carried into the door panels. Dodge’s first major postwar design change offered three options: the Wayfarer, Meadowbrook, and Coronet. New improvements included a combination starter-ignition switch, sea-leg shock absorbers, and GyroMatic semiautomatic transmission. Used an improved Gyrol Fluid Drive and Tip-Toe Hydraulic Shift. A nine-passenger car that offered a folding third seat, roof luggage rack, and two-tone paint sold from 1946 through the 1954 model year and comfortably transported passengers and luggage. A prewar issue, this woody added an all-steel roof after the war; super cushion tires became standard in 1948. This nine-passenger station wagon used a photographic transfer process to achieve a simulation of highly polished mahogany to cover the sheet metal. Known for many years as Chrysler’s flagship model, the New Yorker first became available in 1939 and again in 1946. The next year saw a minor design change in tires, trim, and instrument panel. First introduced in 1926, the Imperial served as Chrysler’s answer to the most expensive Lincolns and Cadillacs. Large, heavy cars, they bespoke luxury. Ford

Brand/Division Ford Custom 1949 Ford

Mercury Sportsman

Lincoln Cosmopolitan

Comments First built in the 1930s, this car represented the deluxe or upper range of Ford’s offerings until the late 1940s. From the end of the war until the 1949 model year, Ford had only produced remodeled designs of its 1942 cars. The 1949 Ford, a sleek automobile for the day, broke away from all previous designs; as a totally new and different car on the marketplace, it gave Ford a muchneeded strong seller. This woody convertible, introduced in 1946, was nothing more than a gussied-up Ford trying to be different with solid maple or yellow birch framing and mahogany insert panels. It carried a steep price of $2,200 (almost $24,300 in 2008 dollars) and did not sell well. This full-size sedan sold from 1948 to 1955 and featured a four-speed manual transmission and an aerodynamic hood ornament. The 1949 model used a one-piece curved windshield. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry | 51 Lincoln Continental

Introduced in 1939, the Continental became available again in 1946 with no changes other than some new pieces of trim. Production stopped in 1948, and the car was reintroduced in 1955 as the Continental Mark II. In the 1940s, a new Continental cost in the neighborhood of $10,000 (or around $100,000 in 2008 dollars), making it one of the most expensive American cars of any make. General Motors

Brand/Division

Comments

Chevrolet Master

Built from 1933 through 1942, this basic midsize car could be purchased in 1940 for as little as $659 (approximately $10,130 in 2008 dollars). This large personal version of a panel truck, first introduced in 1935, continues relatively unchanged in production today except for more modern exterior lines. The 1940s models had seating for up to eight people Initially available in early 1942, it reappeared on the market in 1946 with a full-width grill and decorative chrome fender strips to complement Pontiac’s standard chrome trim on the hood and back. General Motors discontinued this model in 1948. Introduced in 1949 with four models: sedan, sedan coupe, business coupe, and deluxe convertible coupe, this brand came with a choice of V-6 or V-8 engines. Represented the division’s entry-level model. First manufactured in 1940 and reintroduced in 1946, it rested on Buick’s longest wheelbase, one shared by the Roadmaster and some Oldsmobiles. Between 1946 and 1957, this model reigned as Buick’s premier vehicle; from 1936 to 1948, it came in sedan, coupe, convertible, and stationwagon body styles. A hardtop coupe joined the model lineup in 1949. In 1948, Roadmaster models featured Dynaflow, an optional automatic transmission. Popularly called “The Eighty-Eight” and first on the market in 1949, this full-size car ranked as one of the country’s best-performing cars because of its relatively small size, light weight, and advanced V-8 engine. In production since 1941 and reintroduced after the war, the Oldsmobile 98, the division’s top-of-the-line model, rested on a Cadillac chassis. Cadillac used the Fleetwood name for its premier offering starting in 1927 and introduced the Sixty Special Fleetwood and Series 75 Fleetwood in 1946. The first Cadillac model to reenter production after World War II, this car came as a coupe or sedan with a four-door convertible version available in 1947. Two years later, it sported incipient tailfins, at that time the latest in Detroit styling. Related to the Series 62 line, the DeVille—a two-door coupe with a hardtop showing chrome bows to simulate the ribs of a convertible top—entered the market in late 1949, and a real convertible was also available. One of the most expensive models of the series, it was luxuriously trimmed with leather upholstery. Popular throughout the 1950s, it became the company’s best seller in 1961.

Chevrolet Suburban

Pontiac Streamliner

Pontiac Chieftain

Buick Special Buick Super

Buick Roadmaster

Oldsmobile 88

Oldsmobile 98 Cadillac Fleetwood

Cadillac Series 62

Cadillac Coupe DeVille


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| Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry

By the last years of the decade, the average cost in the lowest price range had risen to around $1,800 (a little over $16,000 in 2008 dollars), giving the consumer a car with an eight-cylinder engine of about 100 horsepower, a sleek body slightly longer and lower than prewar models, sealed-beam headlights, and a manual gearshift, although all makes offered automatic transmissions as extras. A heater and radio were optional, but few vehicles sold without them. A purchase at yet another level, a Chrysler, Buick or Oldsmobile, required a financial jump to an average cost of $2,500 ($22,600 in 2008 dollars). Those who desired the largest and most luxurious cars, such as Chrysler Imperials, Lincolns, or Cadillacs, paid around $3,500 (almost $32,000 in 2008 dollars), plus any optional accessories. On the commercial side of automobile production, station wagons had served for years as taxis for travelers, especially those riding trains, because the modified back accommodated large amounts of luggage. In 1938, banking on a prestige aura that had developed around this vehicle primarily from articles in magazines, Dodge/Plymouth offered the P6 Westchester Suburban under the classification of a car. Chrysler followed in 1941 with its Town & Country station wagon, a forerunner of the modern-day minivan. It offered an optional nine-passenger seating arrangement, a rear hatch, and wooden exterior panels. Station wagons, affectionately known as woodies, could be purchased after the war from all the major car manufacturers, both with wooden construction and all-steel composition, a production technique learned during the war. Station wagons required a payment of around $2,500 (approximately $24,000 in 2008 dollars). At the conclusion of World War II, pent-up demand and short supplies worked to the advantage of the automotive industry and the advertising world. Competition ran high as anxious consumers were ready to buy any and all varieties of cars. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, as car sales increased, owning a car no longer carried the social status of the prewar days. Advertisements took a new direction, trying to create market niches for various brands and models, suggesting that each car served as a symbol of the manufacturer as well as the owner’s personality and psyche, thus establishing the buyer as an extension of the automobile company. Popular culture outlets likewise linked the car to lifestyle. American songwriter Bobby Troup (1918–1999) composed the standard “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66” in 1946. Recorded that same year by Nat King Cole (1919–1965), the lyrics follow the path of the famous highway, making reference to many of the cities and towns through which it passes. Hot rods and drag racing, a West Coast phenomenon born in the early 1940s, produced a number of songs, such as “Hot Rod Race.” A recounting of a contest between a Ford and Mercury, it became a hit for Arkie Shibley (1914–1975) and presaged a string of tunes about hopped-up cars. The comic strip Gasoline Alley, created by Frank King (1883–1969) and first published in1918, initially focused on America’s love affair with automobiles through a cast of car-tinkering buddies. By the 1940s, Gasoline Alley had evolved into a family strip with the cast operating in real time. In addition to gracing the comics page of newspapers, the characters appeared in several radio adaptations with a 1948–1949 syndicated series focusing on the lead figure, Skeezix Wallet, who runs a gas station and garage, the Wallet and Bobble Garage, with a partner, Wilmer Bobble. Toy cars had been popular with children since the automobile’s inception, and prior to World War II they mostly came as die-cast metal replicas of the various brands © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Autry, Gene, and Roy Rogers | 53 then rolling off the manufactures’ assembly lines. In mid-1942, production of all toys utilizing metal and rubber in their building ceased, and toy manufacturers, wanting to hold on to their markets, produced cars out of wood. Kits were also available, which required punching parts out of a piece of stiff paperboard and then assembling the motor vehicle. Not too long after the war, plastic became a favorite substance for the construction of a variety of toys. Automobiles also entered the sports world. Official stock car racing first occurred in 1936 on the Daytona Beach Road Course. In 1938, William France Sr. (1909–1992), the owner of a car repair shop in Daytona, assumed management responsibilities of the annual event. As with many sports activities, these races came to a halt in 1942 and did not return until 1946. Once the races resumed, France saw a need for a business that would professionalize the sport as well as govern multiple car racing events. On February 21, 1948, he officially formed the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR); the rest is history. The closing years of the 1940s held promise for a bright future for most Americans. Their lifestyles now required owning a car, and automobiles allowed for more choices on where to settle and assisted in a massive migration of city dwellers to rapidly expanding suburbs. The car also became the means for shopping and expanded entertainment and recreational possibilities. The increased number of motor vehicles on the road soon required the states and the federal government to oversee the building of a countrywide system of intersecting super highways. Farm land not only gave way to paved roads but also to new businesses, such as drive-ins, motels, and gas stations, all to service the car and its occupants. Detroit, striving for ways to continue to increase sales, provided remodeled exteriors on an annual basis, causing previous editions of the same car to look obsolete. Although the mechanics might change little, the one-year-old car had to be turned in for the newest and most enhanced version. With flashy chrome and ever-sleeker and longer bodies ending in tail fins, postwar American automobiles became objects of style and art that consumers wanted parked in their driveways. See also: Architecture; Aviation; Comic Strips; Design; Fast Food; Hobbies; Leisure and Recreation; Levittown and Suburbanization; Radio Programming: Children’s Shows, Serials, and Adventure Series; Radio Programming: Comedy Shows; Technology; Travel Selected Reading Flink, James J. The Automobile Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990. Rae, John B. The American Automobile, A Brief History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965. ———. The Road and the Car in American Life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971.

AUTRY, GENE, AND ROY ROGERS Throughout the later 1930s and all of the 1940s, Gene Autry (1907–1998) and Roy Rogers (1911–1998) performed both as cowboy actors and singers in dozens upon dozens of Westerns, achieving a level of stardom and success that overshadowed anything © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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| Autry, Gene, and Roy Rogers

their counterparts attempted. In terms of popularity, fame, or even life spans, the two closely matched one another. They both had network radio shows and, later, their own television series, plus their countless recordings sold in the millions. For over 15 years, they virtually defined what has come to be called the singing cowboy. With the advent of sound technology in the late 1920s, the movies learned not only to talk, but also to sing. It broadened the possibilities of what could be included in films and, across the board, directors and sound engineers experimented with ways performers could effectively utilize their vocal skills. Even Westerns, one of the most traditional Horses and campfires played important roles in of Hollywood genres, looked for ways Western films. Roy Rogers and his horse Trigger frequently shared the spotlight in both movies to introduce music and songs into their formats. How could a cowboy, usually and guest appearances. (Photofest) at best a laconic figure, be made to sing and have the audiences go along with this break from tradition? Montana Moon (1930), hardly a memorable Western by any estimate, marks the beginning of music in sound Westerns. It stars a young Joan Crawford (1906–1977) and Johnny Mack Brown (1904–1974) as a pretty flapper and a naïve cowboy. In the course of the story, the two get to sing, usually with a chorus of ranch hands accompanying them. It may all be pretty artificial, but Montana Moon paved the way to a new kind of Western, one featuring the singing cowboy. In short order, others followed, establishing such familiar scenes as the hero who would rather draw out his guitar than his six-gun, the musical cowpokes gathered around a campfire out on the range, and ranch romances couched in song. Even John Wayne (1907–1979), such a stalwart figure later in his career, had to play “Singin’ Sandy Saunders” in some of his early movie outings (Riders of Destiny, 1933, and others). Such was the quality of his voice that Smith Ballew (1902–1984), later a minor star in his own right, dubbed Wayne’s songs for him. The singing cowboy films almost always fit the category of “B” Westerns—cheap, quickly made, repetitive movies that filled out a double feature or played primarily rural areas. Despite their deficiencies, they usually earned a modest amount of money throughout the 1930s and 1940s, finally disappearing from screens in the early 1950s with the rising competition of television. In their heyday, they kept both the studios, usually small and struggling, that produced them and the audiences that attended them happy. Second-tier players like Rex Allen (1920–1999), Dick Foran (1910–1979), Tex Ritter (1905–1974), Jimmy Wakely (1914–1982), Ray Whitley (1901–1979), and a host of others found steady employment, got to cut an occasional record, and created a


Autry, Gene, and Roy Rogers | 55 subgenre of Westerns that flourished for about 20 years. Gene Autry, born Orvon Grover Autry in rural Texas, had already made recordings, issued a cowboy songbook, and performed on radio’s The National Barn Dance when he made his 1934 film debut as an uncredited player in two Ken Maynard (1895–1973) vehicles from Mascot Pictures: In Old Santa Fe and a 12-part serial, Mystery Mountain. His appearances apparently stirred audience enthusiasm, because more contracts awaited him. Despite some obvious deficiencies in acting, along with limited riding experience, Autry found himself getting top billing in another serial, The Phantom Empire (1935), in which he reprised a number he had earlier writ- By 1940, Gene Autry enjoyed a strong career in ten called “That Silver-Haired Daddy the movies, radio, and recordings, but service with the U.S. Army interrupted his show busiof Mine” in no less than eight separate ness activities. Seen here after the war, Autry episodes. From then on, his association again experienced success in the entertainment with country music was fixed, and pro- field. (Photofest) moters touted him as “the screen’s new singing cowboy star.” Incidentally, “That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine,” initially released in 1931, achieved some fame of its own, reputedly being among the first gold records that sold a million copies or more. Autry also appeared in Tumbling Tumbleweeds (1935), a mix of music and adventure; it features his horse Champion (or a look-alike), destined to appear with him in all his subsequent pictures, and gravel-voiced Smiley Burnette (1911–1967), another regular in Autry’s films. Burnette provides comic relief and serves as a loyal sidekick, a standard character in most B Westerns of the day. Between 1935 and the beginning of 1940, Autry made a remarkable total of 36 low-budget pictures, or some seven or eight each year. In all of them, he performs numerous songs, many his own compositions, in addition to maintaining law and order in the West. As a measure of his success, merchandising giant Sears, Roebuck in the late 1930s offered a Gene Autry guitar in its catalog, the perfect gift for any aspiring singing cowboy. Autry found he often could make more money from product endorsements, such as toy cap pistols bearing his name, than from his movies and records combined. A radio show called Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch debuted on the CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) network at the beginning of 1940. As its theme song, Autry used “Back in the Saddle Again,” a 1939 tune he had composed, and it remained forever associated with him. Melody Ranch, a mix of music and stories, usually with comic Pat Buttram (1915– 1994) as his bumbling pal, ran until 1956, except for a wartime break in 1943–1945.


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| Autry, Gene, and Roy Rogers TABLE 10. Year

The Films of Gene Autry, 1940–1949 Movie Titles

Actors

1940

Carolina Moon Gaucho Serenade Melody Ranch Men with Steel Faces Rancho Grande Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride Shooting High

Gene Autry, Smiley Burnette Autry, Burnette Autry, George “Gabby” Hayes Autry, Smiley Burnette Autry, Burnette Autry, Burnette Autry, Jane Withers

1941

Back in the Saddle Down Mexico Way Ridin’ on a Rainbow Sierra Sue The Singing Hill Sunset in Wyoming Under Fiesta Stars

Autry, Smiley Burnette Autry, Burnette Autry, Burnette Autry, Burnette Autry, Burnette Autry, Burnette Autry, Burnette

1942

Bells of Capistrano Call of the Canyon Cowboy Serenade Heart of the Rio Grande Home in Wyomin’ Stardust on the Sage

Autry, Burnette Autry, Burnette Autry, Burnette Autry, Burnette Autry, Burnette Autry, Burnette

1943–1945

[Military Service]

1946

Sioux City Sue

Autry, Lynne Roberts

1947

The Last Round-Up Robin Hood of Texas Saddle Pals Trail to San Antone Twilight on the Rio Grande

Autry, Robert Blake Autry, Lynne Roberts Autry, Roberts Autry, Peggy Stewart Autry, Sterling Holloway

1948

Loaded Pistols The Strawberry Roan

Autry, Chill Wills Autry, Pat Buttram

1949

The Big Sombrero The Cowboy and the Indians Riders in the Sky Riders of the Whistling Pines Rim of the Canyon Sons of New Mexico

Autry, Elena Verdugo Autry, Sheila Ryan Autry, Pat Buttram Autry, Smiley Burnette Autry, Nan Leslie Autry, Gail Davis

For its entire duration, Wrigley’s Doublemint gum sponsored the program. Success on the airwaves also brought numerous guest appearances on the leading variety shows of the day, furthering his fame and popularity. With World War II in the offing, Autry had just finished filming Republic Pictures’ Ridin’ on a Rainbow (1941). In the movie, he performs another of his compositions, “Be Honest with Me,” and it received an Academy Award nomination for best song that year, a first for the versatile entertainer. The tune lost, however, to “The Last Time © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Autry, Gene, and Roy Rogers | 57 I Saw Paris” (1940), a melancholy composition that reflected growing apprehensions about the war and featured in the musical Lady Be Good (1941). Firmly established as a singing cowboy star by the opening of the 1940s, it seemed that nothing could slow down the entertainer. And nothing did, until the outbreak of World War II. A patriotic citizen, Autry enlisted in the Army Air Corps, a move that brought his movie career to a halt, but only temporarily. While in the service, and because of his widespread fame, army officials broke with military tradition and allowed him to wear his cowboy boots with his uniform. Occasions for photographic opportunities (“photo ops”) abounded, and Technical Sergeant Gene Autry (later Flight Officer) could frequently be seen in newspapers and magazines, resplendent in fancy boots for good public relations. Following his honorable discharge in 1945, Autry immediately resumed his interrupted recording and movie careers. Autry made 92 motion pictures (36 from 1935 to 1939, 33 from 1940 to 1949, and 23 from 1950 to 1953), an average of just over five movies a year. He appeared in none during 1943–1945 because of his military service. Note: Men with Steel Faces (1940) consists of edited segments taken from the 1935 serial The Phantom Empire and received a subsequent re-release as a standard 70-minute feature; it has not been counted as one of his 1940 efforts. Of all the Western actors of the 1930s and 1940s, Gene Autry perhaps most deserves the title of singing cowboy. Along with his busy Hollywood schedule, he recorded many hits, such as “You Are My Sunshine” (1940), “(I’ve Got Spurs that) Jingle Jangle Jingle” (1942), “Don’t Fence Me In” (1944 [a revival of a popular 1934 song]; “Sioux City Sue” (1945), “Here Comes Santa Claus” (1947), “Ghost Riders in the Sky” (1949), and “Peter Cottontail” (1949). Undoubtedly, the best-remembered, best-loved of his recordings was—and continues to be—“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” a tune he cut in 1949. With the exception of Irving Berlin’s (1889–1989) “White Christmas” (1942), no Christmas song has ever sold better. Roy Rogers, born Leonard Franklin Slye in Cincinnati, Ohio, followed in the singing cowboy footsteps made by Gene Autry. Ironically, it was because of Autry that Rogers initially achieved success. When Autry’s contract for renewal with Republic Pictures (Autry’s former Mascot organization had been absorbed by Republic in a 1935 merger of several small studios) came up in 1938, the actor asked for more money. The Republic executives refused, and because of this dispute, Autry failed to report for his next movie, a tale to be called Washington Cowboy. But the studio expected this move and had scouted Hollywood for a replacement, which turned out to be Roy Rogers. No newcomer to motion pictures, Rogers had appeared in 13 minor, mostly uncredited, film roles since 1935 but made little impact. He also participated as a member of a Western singing group that called itself the International Cowboys. From there he founded and led the Pioneer Trio along with Tim Spencer (1908–1974) and Bob Nolan (1908–1990). In 1934, the trio became the Sons of the Pioneers. Experiencing some success, the group appeared on radio shows and cut several records as a quartet, activities that gave Rogers exposure and a varied musical background. He changed his professional name to Dick Weston in 1937–1938, but when Republic approached him, the Sons of the Pioneers had just signed a contract with another studio, Columbia Pictures. In order to work for Republic, Slye/Weston withdrew from the group and assumed the name Roy Rogers. With this new billing, he took the lead in © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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Washington Cowboy, and the studio retitled the feature Under Western Stars (1938). In its promotional material, Republic boasted that “a new Western star is born.” Pleased with Rogers’ work, the studio released an additional 13 features between 1938 and the end of 1939 and continued to bill their newfound star as Roy Rogers. At some point, the company’s publicity office even gave him the nickname “King of the Cowboys,” and he retained it for the rest of his life. Although Rogers’s career did not blossom as early as Gene Autry’s, he quickly became the only rival to the more established cowboy star. Rogers’ pictures all serve up generous amounts of singing and light humor, and the early titles range from Shine On, Harvest Moon (1938) to Jeepers Creepers (1940), both of which typically include the title numbers. No big musical hits came from his efforts, just a steady stream of Western-tinged songs that sold steadily and well. With the advent of the 1940s, his movie output increased, although the formulaic storylines remained unchanged. When Gene Autry temporarily sacrificed his movie career in 1942 to enlist in the Army Air Corps, Roy Rogers got his chance to become the top singing cowboy. He qualified for a draft deferment because he had three children. He did, however, participate in numerous USO tours, raising millions of dollars for the war effort through the sale of war bonds. But with Autry absent from movie theaters, Rogers achieved the status of the leading Western star at the box office. Through the decade, he made 60 motion pictures; coupled with his 13 movies from the late 1930s and 11 additional releases in the early 1950s, Rogers appeared in 84 Westerns. Only Autry, with 92 films, surpasses that number, and no other leading cowboy actors, singing or otherwise, come close. Between 1940 and the end of 1943, the energetic Rogers churned out 26 Westerns; just as Gene Autry had Smiley Burnette for comic relief, most of Rogers’ early 1940s pictures feature George “Gabby” Hayes (1885–1965), a longtime character actor who spent most of his professional acting career playing a cantankerous old curmudgeon. Hayes appeared alongside not just Rogers, but also with Gene Autry and William Boyd (Hopalong Cassidy) during the 1930s. A popular performer in his own right, once Hayes became associated with Rogers, he soon enjoyed second billing as the singer’s crusty sidekick. In addition to Gabby Hayes, mention must also be made of horses. Gene Autry boasted Champion, “the wonder horse of the West,” whereas Roy Rogers rode Trigger, “the smartest horse in the movies.” Although the actors and their publicists seldom mentioned the fact, several different horses appeared as both Champion and Trigger, and sharp-eyed fans could notice differences. Original or stand-in, both Champion and Trigger played integral roles in both actors’ pictures. As tributes to their mounts, Autry featured Champion in The Strawberry Roan (1948), and Rogers used the original Trigger in My Pal Trigger (1946) and a younger version in Trigger, Jr. (1950). Starting in 1944 with The Cowboy and the Senorita, Rogers also found another costar with whom he would spend increasing amounts of time, both on screen and off. Singer Dale Evans (1912–2001), a minor player in Republic’s roster of performers, found for herself a comfortable niche playing the pretty girl that seems so necessary to the plots of Westerns involving singing cowboys. But life sometimes imitates art, and in 1947 the two married and Evans assumed a larger role in Rogers’ movies; the couple frequently


Autry, Gene, and Roy Rogers | 59 TABLE 11. Year 1940

The Films of Roy Rogers, 1940–1949 Movie Titles The Border Legion

Actors

Carson City Kid Colorado The Ranger and the Lady Young Bill Hickok Young Buffalo Bill

Roy Rogers, George “Gabby” Hayes Rogers, Hayes Rogers, Hayes Rogers, Hayes Rogers, Hayes Rogers, Hayes

1941

Arkansas Judge Bad Man of Deadwood In Old Cheyenne Jesse James at Bay Nevada City Red River Valley Robin Hood of the Pecos Sheriff of Tombstone

Rogers, Spring Byington Rogers, Hayes Rogers, Hayes Rogers, Hayes Rogers, Hayes Rogers, Hayes Rogers, Hayes Rogers, Hayes

1942

Heart of the Golden West Man from Cheyenne Ridin’ Down the Canyon Romance on the Range Sons of the Pioneers South of Santa Fe Sunset on the Desert Sunset Serenade

Rogers, Hayes, Smiley Burnette Rogers, Hayes Rogers, Hayes Rogers, Hayes Rogers, Hayes Rogers, Hayes Rogers, Hayes Rogers, Hayes

1943

Idaho King of the Cowboys The Man from Music Mountain Silver Spurs

Rogers, Smiley Burnette Rogers, Burnette Rogers, Sons of the Pioneers Rogers, Smiley Burnette

1944

Song of Texas The Cowboy and the Senorita Hands Across the Border Lights of Old Santa Fe San Fernando Valley Song of Nevada Yellow Rose of Texas

Rogers, Sons of the Pioneers Rogers, Dale Evans Rogers, Ruth Terry Rogers, Evans, Hayes Rogers, Evans Rogers, Evans Rogers, Evans

1945

Along the Navajo Trail Bells of Rosarita Don’t Fence Me In Man from Oklahoma Sunset in El Dorado Utah

Rogers, Evans, Hayes Rogers, Evans, Hayes Rogers, Evans, Hayes Rogers, Evans, Hayes Rogers, Evans, Hayes Rogers, Evans, Hayes

1946

Helldorado Home in Oklahoma My Pal Trigger

Rogers, Evans, Hayes Rogers, Evans, Hayes Rogers, Evans, Hayes (continued)


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| Autry, Gene, and Roy Rogers TABLE 11. Year

(continued) Movie Titles

Actors

Out California Way Rainbow Over Texas Roll On Texas Moon Song of Arizona Under Nevada Skies

Rogers, Evans, Hayes Rogers, Evans, Hayes Rogers, Evans, Hayes Rogers, Evans, Hayes Rogers, Evans, Hayes

1947

Apache Rose Bells of San Angelo On the Old Spanish Trail Springtime in the Sierras

Rogers, Evans Rogers, Evans, Andy Devine Rogers, Devine Rogers, Devine

1948

Eyes of Texas The Far Frontier The Gay Ranchero Grand Canyon Trail Night Time in Nevada Under California Stars

Rogers, Lynne Roberts Rogers, Gail Davis Rogers, Andy Devine Rogers, Devine Rogers, Devine Rogers, Devine

1949

Down Dakota Way The Golden Stallion Susanna Pass

Rogers, Dale Evans Rogers, Evans Rogers, Evans

received joint billing on lobby cards and theater marquees as Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. She even shared royalty with the King of the Cowboys, becoming “Queen of the Cowgirls.” For her part, Evans rode Buttermilk, another popular movie horse. All told, she eventually appeared with Rogers in 23 features from early 1944 through 1949. During this time, she also starred in three Republic pictures without Rogers—the musical Hitchhike to Happiness (1945) and two mysteries, The Trespasser (1947) and Slippy McGee (1948)—but by that time, her star was firmly hitched to Roy Rogers’ career. In the fall of 1944, MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System) commenced carrying The Roy Rogers Show, a musical variety offering, on its network of radio stations. The show changed networks off and on but ran without interruption until 1954. The Sons of the Pioneers, or similar Western groups, usually accompanied Rogers on the air. Dale Evans exhibited her songwriting talents when, in 1950, she penned “Happy Trails,” a tune destined to become associated with the couple. They quickly adopted it as the closing theme for both their radio and later television productions. Evans and Rogers took the plunge into TV in 1951 with The Roy Rogers Show; it ran until 1957 and broadcast more than 100 episodes. The singing cowboy movies offered audiences a nostalgic vision of the American West and proved to be a popular movie genre throughout the 1940s. They never claimed to be realistic, and their simple plots generally revolved around good people (or more likely a pretty girl) caught in predicaments brought about by villains of one sort or another. In the nick of time, a singing cowboy, usually surrounded by a group of wellrehearsed fellow musicians, takes control of the situation and calms everyone with a soothing song. In the end, he rides into the sunset with his trusty horse and guitar.


Aviation | 61 See also: Desserts, Candy, and Ice Cream; Photography; Toys Selected Reading Fenin, George N., and William K. Everson. The Western: From Silents to Cinerama. New York: Orion Press, 1962. Green, Douglas B. Singing in the Saddle: The History of the Singing Cowboy. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002. Turner, Lillian. “The Singing Cowboys: Real to Reel.” www.bbhc.org/pointswest/ Young, William H., and Nancy K. Young. Music of the World War II Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008.

AVIATION Brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright (1871–1948; 1867–1912) piloted the first powered flight in a heavier-than-air craft in 1903, giving birth to a mode of transportation that immediately experienced dramatic growth. Just 11 years after the Wrights’ accomplishment, Tony Jannus (1889–1916) piloted the first U.S. commercial trip between St. Petersburg and Tampa, Florida. Despite the success of this venture and the appearance of other small airline companies across the country, passenger service for some time was sporadic. During the airline industry’s infancy, the biggest source of business came from the United States Post Office; the agency awarded airmail delivery contracts to commercial bidders beginning in 1918. To support the growth of aviation, the industry worked to develop bigger, faster, more comfortable airplanes. During the 1930s and continuing into the 1940s, various

A picture of a Grumman TBF/TBM Avenger in flight. The navy used this versatile aircraft, capable of carrying bombs or a torpedo, in the Pacific theater throughout World War II. (AP Photo)


62

| Aviation

aircraft manufacturers entered both production models and experimental prototypes of their speediest, most maneuverable planes in air races around the country. The makers of aviation-related products gladly sponsored these spectacles, as planes zipped around pylons mounted on towers or raced from point to point in the shortest time, all of which provided spectators displays of speed and piloting skills. The National Air Races incorporated several events, the two most important of which were the Bendix Trophy and Thompson Trophy competitions. The Bendix race, held between 1931 and 1962 (with time out for the war), emphasized the distance abilities of propeller-driven craft and also allowed a separate class for jets after 1946. The Thompson Trophy Races, usually presented in Cleveland, Ohio, employed a tight course marked by pylons, and pilots jockeyed for position. They continued until 1949, but were also halted during the war. On the other hand, the more prosaic business of transporting passengers comfortably and safely fell to less glamorous airliners of various types. Leading into the 1940s, the twin-engine Douglas DC-3 airliner, which had become available in 1935, popularized cross-country travel; it needed only three fuel stops for a coast-to-coast flight and offered the convenience of sleeping berths and an onboard kitchen. The four-engine Douglas DC-4, initially built in 1938 to complement the company’s successful DC-3, got diverted to the United States Army Air Forces because of the outbreak of World War II, becoming the C-54 Skymaster. Pan American Airway’s Boeing-314 Yankee Clipper, a huge flying boat, made a trial flight across the mid-Atlantic, from Baltimore to Ireland, on March 26, 1939; by May it began regular mail service, and in June inaugurated the world’s first transatlantic passenger service between New York and Marseilles, France. The Boeing 307 Stratoliner, a pressurized plane that allowed flying above 20,000 feet and bad weather conditions, offered flights in 1940 between New York and Los Angeles, as well as to locations in Latin America. With the onset of World War II, however, the heretofore steady growth of commercial aviation came to an abrupt halt. Because of the exigencies of the conflict, military aviation grew in quantum leaps, while the airlines took a back seat. The war guaranteed massive support for research and development of new and improved aircraft. In the late 1930s, the army and the navy lacked modern airplanes, but new, sprawling aircraft manufacturing plants soon alleviated the shortages. Between 1940 and 1945, U.S. factories churned out some 300,000 military planes, an unprecedented number. This continuous flood of bombers, fighters, and everything in between, turned the tide of battle. By war’s end in 1945, the nation faced a surplus of warplanes. Officials destroyed many of them, disassembled some for parts, and placed still others in aviation graveyards, huge expanses of open land, usually in dry desert climates, where they bake under the sun, never to fly again. Table 12 outlines a few of the innumerable military airplanes used by the United States armed forces during World War II and likely to be known on the home front by name and reputation. Most of these planes went out of production with the conclusion of the war, although some continued to be built and utilized in the Korean conflict (1950–1953). An immediate postwar benefit from the overnight expansion of aviation technology and industrial output accrued to commercial and civilian flying. Much of this wartime


Aviation | 63 TABLE 12. Representative U.S. Military Aircraft of the World War II Era, 1940–1945 (Alphabetical by Category) Type of Airplane Amphibious Aircraft

Examples Consolidated PBY Catalina

Martin PBM Mariner

Vought OS2U Kingfisher Bombers, Attack

Douglas A-26 Invader

Martin B-26 Marauder

Comments A multipurpose plane used for patrolling, antisubmarine warfare, light bombing, mining, convoy escorts, search-and-rescue missions, and cargo transport. Its long range (over 3,000 miles in some models) made it invaluable in the vast Pacific; Consolidated manufactured over 4,000 Catalinas. A naval patrol bomber designed to complement the PBY Catalina; it sank 10 German U-boats in the Atlantic; just over 1,200 built. The main ship-launched observation aircraft used by the U.S. Navy; it served on battleships and cruisers in both theaters. Over 1,500 were built. A rugged and dependable bomber, first introduced to combat in November 1944; also used in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. First deployed in the Pacific in 1942, but then based mainly in Europe; initially it took heavy losses but became one of the most successful medium-range attack bombers. A little over 5,000 built before its retirement in 1945.

Bombers, Dive

Douglas SBD Dauntless Curtis SB2C Helldiver (called “Shrike” in a version manufactured for the Army Air Force)

Served as the navy’s main dive bomber until 1943, when it the SB2C supplanted it; almost 6,000 built. After 1943, the navy’s prime dive bomber, replacing the Douglas Dauntless. It saw action until the end of the conflict; over 7,000 built.

Bombers, Heavy

Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress

One of the most famous aircraft ever built; best known for daylight strategic bombing of German industrial sites. Production ended in 1945 and totaled 12,726. Served as a heavy bomber, maritime patrol, and transport plane and deployed in every combat theater of World War II. Over 18,000 built, making it the most-produced U.S. military aircraft of the war. Designed as a long-range strategic bomber, it saw service in the Pacific theater. One, the Enola Gay, dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945; it was followed by Bockscar, which delivered a second nuclear weapon on Nagasaki three days later, effectively ending the war. Boeing manufactured almost 4,000 B-29s, some of which later saw action in the Korean conflict.

Consolidated B-24 Liberator

Boeing B-29 Superfortress

(continued)


64

| Aviation TABLE 12.

(continued)

Type of Airplane

Examples

Comments

Bombers, Medium

North American B-25 Mitchell

In 1942, B-25s were the first bombers to raid Japan. Launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, they hit oil fields, factory areas, and military installations in the Tokyo area. North American Aircraft built almost 10,000 Mitchell bombers. Flying in fog on July 28, 1945, a B-25 crashed into the Empire State Building in New York City, hitting the structure between the 79th and 80th floors and killing 14 people, including the 3 occupants of the bomber.

Bombers, Torpedo

Grumman TBF Avenger

First saw action during the Battle of Midway, June 4–7, 1942. Late in the war, George H. W. Bush (b. 1924), who would later become the 41st president of the United States, piloted Avengers, and famed actor Paul Newman (1925–2008) served as a rear gunner on this kind of plane.

Cargo and Passenger Planes

Douglas C-47 Skytrain (also called a Dakota)

Adapted from the famous DC-3 commercial airliner and nicknamed the “Gooney Bird,” the C-47 hauled cargo and personnel, towed troopcarrying gliders, and dropped paratroopers into enemy territory; over 9,000 built by the end of World War II. Similar to the Skytrain but not as extensively produced, Curtis-Wright built over 3,000 Commandos. Because of its high-altitude capabilities, this aircraft primarily moved supplies to troops in China from bases in India and Burma by flying “the Hump,” an aerial route over the Himalayan Mountains.

Curtiss-Wright C-46 Commando

Fighters

Curtiss P-40 Warhawk (also known as Tomahawk, Kittyhawk)

Lockheed P-38 Lightning

Chance Vought F4U Corsair

The United States’ foremost fighter when World War II began; it engaged Japanese aircraft during their attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines. With fierce teeth painted on its nose, the P-40 gained fame as the primary fighter used by the Flying Tigers in China. Debuted in 1939 by flying from California to New York in a record seven hours; the Lightning was first used in World War II in 1942 as a long-range escort fighter and reconnaissance plane; by the end of production in 1945, almost 10,000 had been manufactured. This unique, gull-winged carrier-based fighter made its debut in 1942, and both the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps used it extensively; over 12,000 built.


Aviation | 65 Type of Airplane

Examples Republic P-47 Thunderbolt

North American P-51 Mustang

Comments Made its first flight on May 6, 1941, and later became one of the more famous aircraft active during the war, working both as a high-altitude escort fighter and a low-level fighter and bomber. Its sturdy construction allowed it to sustain severe battle damage and continue flying; more than 15,600 built. This fast, maneuverable fighter provided highaltitude escort and destroyed 4,950 enemy planes in the air, more than any other aircraft in the European theater. It continued in active military service until 1984, and almost 16,000 were manufactured.

Helicopters

Sikorsky R-4

The world’s first mass-produced helicopter and the first such craft to enter service with the U.S. Army Air Forces and Coast Guard; the 131 built primarily participated in rescue operations and ferried parts to aviation repair units in the South Pacific.

Jets

Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star

The first operational military jet produced for the United States; a few were sent to Europe shortly before the end of the hostilities in 1945, but they did not see any combat. In 1950, while in service for the Korean conflict, they engaged enemy aircraft, the first recorded jet-to-jet aerial combat.

Reconnaissance

Lockheed P-38 Lightning

Used for photo reconnaissance as well as longrange fighter escort duties; the P-38 saw action in every major combat area of World War II; almost 10,000 built. A military version of the popular civilian Piper J-3 Cub. Featuring larger windows for improved viewing and photography, over 5,000 of this versatile light plane saw service both in World War II and Korea.

Piper L-4 Grasshopper

Trainers

North American T-6 Texan

This single-engine aircraft filled the need for basic combat training for most Army Air Forces fighter pilots; almost 15,000 built.

Sources: “U.S. Army Planes of World War II.” Aviation-Central.com. www.aviation-central.com/ 1940-1945/aeb00.htm; “Warbird Alley’s Aircraft Information, Histories, Links and More.” www. warbirdalley.com/acft.htm

know-how transferred to the private sector. In addition, the many pilots and technicians trained by the various armed services found careers in commercial aviation or pursued their love of flying with private planes of their own. Even with the interruption to travel experienced by civilians during World War II, Table 13 shows continuous growth for the aviation field from 1934 to 1949. The number of certified airplane pilots and U.S. airports in operation increased for each year presented. The decrease in the number of air carriers in 1940 compared to 1934 can be


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| Aviation TABLE 13.

Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) Statistics, 1934–1949

Description Certified Airplane Pilots U.S. Airports in Operation Number of Air Carriers Domestic International Average Number of Seats Domestic International

1934

1940

1945

1949

13,949

69,829

296,895

525,174

2,297

2,331

4,025

6,484

24 2

19 3

20 4

37 13

8.86 n.a.

16.54 18.28

19.68 18.91

35.03 36.00

Source: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. Washington, DC: Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975.

attributed to the buying of smaller companies by the larger ones, business transactions that created the major airlines. The change in the average available seats for domestic trips as compared to international flights reflects a rise in civilian interest in traveling by airplane both within the United States and abroad; the size of the planes for both domestic and international flights remained relatively the same. Hollywood also contributed to public perceptions about aviation during the 1940s, releasing dozens of films filled with pilots and their planes. Even before World War II had started, Warner Bros. released Dive Bomber (1941), an Errol Flynn (1909–1959) vehicle that featured pre-WWII navy aircraft; it focused on a flight surgeon and pilot working together to solve the problem of altitude sickness, which causes blackouts at high altitudes. Wings for the Eagle (1942), starring Ann Sheridan (1915–1967), Dennis Morgan (1908–1994), and Jack Carson (1910–1963), takes place in a factory that manufactures military aircraft and deals with marital discord and men seeking defense work as a way to avoid the draft. Several movies made shortly before the end of the war likewise focus on aviation topics. A Wing and a Prayer (1944) tells the story of the carrier war in the Pacific. It stars Don Ameche (1908–1993) and Dana Andrews (1909–1992). Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1944) from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) gives a detailed account of the Doolittle raid led by Colonel Jimmy Doolittle (1896–1993), former air racer and stunt pilot. This attack on Japan took place on April 18, 1942, in retaliation for its bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The unique feature of the raid, a highlight of the movie, involves the launching of 16 fully loaded B-25s from the USS Hornet in stormy seas, something no one thought possible at the time. In 1945, the First Motion Picture Unit of the United States Army Air Forces distributed Wings for This Man, narrated by actor, and later president of the United States, Ronald Reagan (1911–2004). This documentary celebrates and tells the story of the pilots and crewmen trained at Tuskegee Air Field in Alabama. Known as the Tuskegee Airmen, these black troops were the first to serve as flight personnel in the U.S. armed forces during World War II. Also, in 1945, Consolidated Pictures Corporation issued


Aviation | 67 a documentary, The Story of Willow Run. With a voice-over by Harry Wismer (1913– 1967), this Ford Motor Company promotional film tells the story of the factory located at Willow Run, Michigan, and its manufacture of the B-24 Liberator heavy bombers. At peak capacity, the plant employed 42,000 workers and one complete, four-engine B-24 rolled out of the door every 55 minutes. Other wartime titles include such efforts as Aerial Gunner, Bombardier, Pilot #5 (all 1943), and God Is My Co-Pilot (1945). Once World War II ended, a number of U.S. citizens expressed an eagerness to travel, and commercial aviation again grew rapidly. The Lockheed Constellation, a four-engine propeller-driven aircraft, introduced in 1943 as the C-69 transport for the Army Air Force, and then acquired in 1945 by Trans World Airlines (TWA) for commercial passengers, substantially cut the flying time for both continental and ocean crossings. Its graceful lines and spacious interior added to the public interest in air travel. Also that year, the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board granted permission to three airlines to operate air services across the North Atlantic. Pan American, which had held a monopoly over international air travel, was now joined by American and TWA, thus offering the consumer a competitive market for the first time. The airline companies continued their research and development of bigger, better, and faster planes. The 1947 production of the Douglas DC-6, initially intended for military use as the C-118 Liftmaster and as the official aircraft for the U.S. president, signaled major changes in airliners. It was soon acquired by Pan American for transatlantic flights in the early 1950s. The Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, the airliner version of their military C-75 Stratofreighter transport, featured accommodations for between 55 and 100 passengers or 28 sleeping berths and five seats. In addition, the continuing evolution of jet-powered aircraft promised even greater changes for the coming decade. Captain Charles E. (Chuck) Yeager (b. 1923) of the United States Air Force flew the rocket-powered Bell X-1 past the speed of sound in 1947 and awakened the United States and the world to the possibility of previously unimagined fast travel. Evidence grew when, on September 22, 1950, Air Force Colonel David C. Schilling (1918– 1956) flew the first nonstop transatlantic jet flight from England to Limestone, Maine, in 10 hours 1 minute. With that accomplishment, fast air travel over great distances became a reality. Since the epochal 1903 flight of the Wright Brothers, vast changes have come about in aviation. Aircraft soon ceased to be laboriously hand-crafted items, but instead rolled off the assembly lines of large companies such as Boeing, Douglas, Lockheed, Martin, and North American Aviation; air travel went from a privilege of the few to a means of transport for the many. When World War II broke out, the manufacture of aircraft underwent drastic changes—huge factories operated 24 hours a day, six to seven days a week. Women joined the workforce, bringing the aviation industry labor pool to a high of 2.1 million workers by the end of 1943. At the war’s conclusion in 1945, about 300,000 military planes had been produced for the nation’s armed forces and its allies. While endless planes were being built, countless pilots received training—193,000 between 1939 and 1945. During the 1940s, research and development led to faster, more powerful, and more durable airplanes; the sound barrier fell, heralding the arrival of the jet age that would make long-range travel efficient and comfortable.


TABLE 14.

Representative U.S. Aircraft of the Postwar Era, 1945–1950 (Alphabetical by Category)

Type of Airplane Commercial Airliners

Examples Douglas DC-4

Lockheed Constellation

Douglas DC-6

Martin 202 (later 404)

Small Private Aircraft

Beechcraft Bonanza

Cessna 120, 140, and 170 Piper J-3 Cub (plus many variations)

Bombers, Heavy

Boeing B-50 Superfortress

Comments The civilian version of the military C-54 Skymaster; first developed in 1938 as a successor to Douglas’s famed DC-3, but converted to a troop and cargo transport when the war began. Over 1,000 Skymasters rolled off production lines, many of which then went into the peacetime market after 1945, and numerous airlines adapted them. First introduced in 1943 as a military transport, the C-69 Constellation. In 1945, airlines, led by TWA, commenced using both C-69s and civilian models; fast and sleek, “Connies” personified modern air travel in the late 1940s. Over 800 (including C-69s) were manufactured. An improved and larger version of the DC-4, the Navy and the Air Force also purchased large numbers of this transport plane, calling it the C-119 Liftmaster. Popular with many airlines, it continued in service until recently, with over 700 being built. Introduced in 1947 as a two-engine competitor to the aging Douglas DC-3; Martin’s 202 gained popularity, but structural problems led to the development of improved models, the 303 and 404. The 404, which debuted in 1951, became a mainstay of many smaller, regional airlines. Over 100 were built, whereas the company produced only about 50 of its earlier 202s. Introduced in 1947 as a general-purpose civilian aircraft, it proved so popular that the Beech Aircraft Corporation eventually manufactured some 17,000 in various models. It featured a distinctive V-tail assembly, making it quickly recognizable. Introduced in the immediate postwar years, this trio of light planes continued in production until the mid-1950s, making them some of the most popular private planes ever created, with over 7,000 manufactured. A plane that first appeared in 1937, the J-3 attempted to make aviation available to all. World War II interrupted this dream, but the Piper Company continued to produce aircraft, including a military version of the J-3 called the L-4, or “Grasshopper,” which the Army used for reconnaissance, among many other duties. In the late 1940s, Piper introduced the Super Cub, an improved version of the classic J-3. Over 19,000 J-3s alone were manufactured between 1938 and 1947. A revised (1947) version of the B-29, more powerful and capable of longer-range flights. In 1949, a B-50 called Lucky Lady II flew around the world nonstop (with aerial refueling), the first aircraft to do so. Over 350 delivered to the Air Force. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Bombers, Medium

Consolidated-Vultee (later Convair) B-36 Peacemaker

Introduced in 1949, the B-36 served as a transitional bomber between the propeller-driven Superfortress and the later jet-propelled bombers of the 1950s. It boasted an intercontinental range of over 6,500 miles, could fly at more than 400 miles per hour, and carried a bomb load of well over 72,000 pounds, meaning it could carry thermonuclear payloads on its missions. It served as the mainstay weapon of the Strategic Air Command during the Cold War days of the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Northrop YB-49

A unique craft, the YB-49 was a “flying wing,” a design that somewhat resembled a boomerang. Lacking a discernable fuselage and with four small rudders on its immense expanse of wing, its futuristic look captured the popular imagination. Because of recurring problems, however, it never got beyond the testing stage, and only a few were actually built. The nation’s first jet bomber, introduced in 1948. Never in widespread use—it would soon be replaced by the superior B-47 Stratojet in 1951—the B-45 served as an interim craft. Only about 140 were built. The Boeing B-47 began tests in 1947 but did not become a standard Air Force bomber until 1951. Its swept-wing design would greatly influence the look of commercial jets in ensuing years. Over 2,000 Stratojets became part of the Air Force arsenal, but with the delivery of the much larger B-52 Stratofortress in early 1955, they quickly became obsolete.

North American B-45 Tornado Boeing B-47 Stratojet

Fighters

Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star Republic F-84 Thunderjet North American F-86 Sabre

The first military jet manufactured for the Army Air Force saw duty in mid-1945, too late to be a combatant. Soon rendered obsolete by constantly improving jet propulsion technology, the F-80 nonetheless served in the Korean conflict and performed well. Lockheed produced about 1,700 Shooting Stars, including a training version, the T-33. In the evolution of fighter jets, the F-84 replaced the F-80 and was in turn superseded by the F-86 Sabre. It came into active service in 1947 and compiled an outstanding record in the Korean war. Republic manufactured over 7,500 F-84s. Introduced in 1949, the swept-wing Sabre proved a worthy opponent to the similar Soviet-built MIG aircraft in Korea. Because of its high speed—about 675 miles per hour—and reliability, almost 10,000 Sabres were built.

Helicopters

Bell 47

Introduced in 1946 and the successor to the Sikorsky R-4, the Bell model gained quick acceptance for both military and civilian uses. Over 5,600 were manufactured between 1946 and 1974. Its unusual, dragonfly-like appearance made the 47 instantly recognizable.

Transports

Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar

Developed in 1947 and accepted by the Air Force in 1949, the Flying Boxcar was an improved version of Fairchild’s C-82 Packet, introduced in late 1945. A twin-boom transport, its voluminous center fuselage could carry just about anything, from tanks to troops—thus its nickname. Over 1,100 C-119s saw service.


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| Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose See also: Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry; Civil Defense; Newspapers; Race Relations and Stereotyping; Rosie the Riveter; Trains; War Films Selected Reading Bilstein, Roger E. Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984. Emde, Heiner. Conquerors of the Air. New York: Bonanza Books, 1968. Rose, Mark H., Bruce E. Seely, and Paul F. Barrett. The Best Transportation System in the World. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006.

AXIS SALLY AND TOKYO ROSE Today, Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose exist as little more than footnotes in the multifaceted history of World War II, but at the time of the conflict, many people believed they posed a genuine threat to national morale. These two women (in the case of Tokyo Rose, possibly several individuals assumed her role) broadcast to Allied service personnel over Radio Berlin and Radio Tokyo, mixing news, popular music, and commentary. Following the end of the war, arrests were made, trials were held for treason, and convictions reached. But what seemed treasonous in the late 1940s has been moderated by time, and the principals in both cases eventually returned to private life, the furor over their actions long forgotten. The battles of World War II did not involve just military campaigns on land, sea, and air; each side also waged war psychologically, contesting for the minds of people. No previous conflict witnessed as much propaganda, misdirection, persuasion, exaggeration, and lies utilized in the various adversaries’ causes. Neither the Axis powers—Germany, Japan, and Italy—nor the United States and its allies—Great Britain, the Soviet Union, China, France, and others—felt any compunctions about using every trick at their command to gain an advantage of A photograph of Iva Toguri, better known as any kind in any way. Tokyo Rose during the war years. Some indiRadio, a relatively new technological viduals found her Japanese radio broadcasts device in the years immediately followtreasonous, and a jury convicted her on one count. Cooler heads later prevailed, and she re- ing World War I, had emerged as one ceived a full pardon in 1977. (Hulton-Deutsch of the primary means of mass commuCollection/CORBIS) nication by the later 1930s. President


Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose | 71 Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) employed the medium to great effect during the grim days of the Great Depression. His famous Fireside Chats, delivered over the major commercial networks, reassured an anxious nation and demonstrated the persuasive power of radio. On the other hand, actor and producer Orson Welles (1915–1985) showed another side of broadcasting when he dramatized The War of the Worlds in 1938 and convinced many that Martians had landed somewhere in New Jersey. More than a few people panicked at the show’s realism, another example of the power inherent in mass media. Both the Germans and the Japanese well understood media and the uses of propaganda, becoming masters of it during the 1930s. Their technological resources—radio, film, photography, recording, journalism, publishing—had the firm backing of their governments, and those involved worked earnestly in getting pro-Axis messages out to friend and foe. Among the many approaches their efforts took, both nations employed the radio voices and talents of women they hoped would demoralize Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen and convince them to question the war. Any seeds of discontent their scripted words could plant would be thought a psychological victory, possibly equal to one achieved on the battlefield. For the Germans, Mildred Gillars (nee Sisk 1900–1988), a U.S. citizen and native of Maine, served as their propaganda star on Radio Berlin. She called herself “Midge at the Mike,” but she apparently also liked the name “Axis Sally,” one visited on her by the troops that heard her broadcasts, although some used more derogatory labels. Gillars had come to Germany in the 1930s and found employment with the national network as an announcer. With the war, Nazi propagandists saw an opportunity to undermine the morale of Allied soldiers by creating a show built on loneliness and nostalgia. They called the production Home Sweet Home. Gillars played current popular music and, using a sultry voice, raised questions about distant loved ones. But she also dropped in anti-Semitic remarks and often attacked Roosevelt as a warmonger. Most damning of all, in the eyes of later inquisitors, she tried to convince Allied troops to desert or disobey orders in the face of German opposition and sometimes posed as a Red Cross worker when visiting hospitals in order to get interviews with wounded U.S. servicemen that she later incorporated into her broadcasts. The Japanese, on the other hand, enlisted Iva Toguri (b. Ikuko Toguri, 1916–2006), another U.S. citizen, born of Japanese immigrant parents in California. She found herself stranded in Japan visiting relatives when the war broke out in 1941. The Japanese government prevented Toguri from returning to the United States and denied her a ration card because she refused to denounce the United States, which made her suspect and a victim of police harassment throughout her years in Japan. Desperate for work, she joined a news agency as a typist and later moved to Radio Tokyo. Toguri soon thereafter participated in a show called Zero Hour, a production put together by Allied prisoners of war. The format of the show limited her role to a few comments, written by others and usually consisting of light banter, that she made before and after playing American recordings. At first, Toguri called herself “Ann” and later “Orphan Ann,” a reference to the popular newspaper comic strip and radio serial Little Orphan Annie and to her status as an isolated U.S. citizen living in wartime Japan. The name Tokyo Rose, as with Axis Sally, came about from her audience, and she did not personally use


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the term to introduce herself. At times, apparently, other women announcers with the station took her role, but little in Zero Hour can be considered seditious. Most of the show dealt with music, news, and nostalgia, and Allied prisoners prepared the scripts, not Japanese officials. U.S. authorities arrested Toguri in 1945 and Gillars in 1948; they held Toguri in Japan and promptly returned Gillars to the United States. The two women would face separate trials for treason. The evidence against Gillars, based on recordings of her broadcasts, proved overwhelming. Her defense attorneys said she did no actual harm, but the jury thought otherwise and convicted her on one count of treason in 1949. She received a prison sentence of 10 to 30 years but gained parole in 1961. Despite her past, Gillars lived a quiet life after that and died in 1988. Toguri’s arrest occurred at war’s end, but the FBI did not find sufficient evidence for a trial and released her in 1946. Still in Japan, she lobbied to return to the United States, but several journalists by this time had heard about her case. Walter Winchell (1897–1972), a popular investigative reporter who delighted in gossip and scandal, used his considerable influence to have her forcibly returned to the States where new charges awaited her. Accused of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, her trial began in the summer of 1949, a period when anti-Japanese sentiment still lived in the minds of many people. An all-white jury found Toguri guilty on a single count of treason, whereupon the court levied a fine and sentenced her to 10 years in prison. She received parole at the beginning of 1956 and moved to Chicago. Over time, many questioned Toguri’s punishment, because little evidence supported any of the charges. The Chicago Tribune and television’s 60 Minutes looked into the case in 1976 and found that several key witnesses had lied under oath, apparently pressured by federal authorities to do so. Toguri appealed to President Gerald Ford (1913– 2006), and with considerable support from various organizations, he granted her a pardon in January 1977. Her citizenship restored and her case vindicated, a number of groups honored her as a patriotic American, gestures that came too late to help her when she needed them. Toguri continued to live in Chicago until her death in 2006. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Comic Strips; Newspapers; Television Selected Reading Bernstein, Adam. “Iva Toguri D’Aquino, 90: ‘Tokyo Rose’ in WWII.” www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/ar2006092700133.html Duus, Masayo. Tokyo Rose: Orphan of the Pacific. New York: Kodansha Amer, 1979. Fuller, M. Williams. Axis Sally. Santa Barbara, CA: Paradise West, 2004. Harper, Dale P. “Mildred Elizabeth Sisk: American-Born Axis Sally.” www.historynet.com/mildredelizabeth-sisk-american-born-axis-sally.htm


B

BABY BOOM This term, coined around 1941, describes a spike in the ongoing birth rate. As more and more U.S. soldiers departed for war, social scientists began noting increasing numbers of pregnancies and births throughout the country. When these same soldiers returned home after the German and Japanese surrenders in 1945, the numbers grew even more sharply in the postwar years. The number of live births in the United States swiftly climbed from 2,858,000 in 1945 to 4,027,000 in 1964, and the decennial census counts show that the once typical American family of two children had almost doubled by the early 1960s, the peak years of the baby boom. The 76 million infants born over this period therefore came to be labeled the baby boomer generation. Similar conditions also prevailed in much of Europe, Asia, and Australia, although not at the pace displayed in the United States. Economic conditions and the war influenced this population explosion. Prior to the baby boom years, financial hardships created by the Great Depression of the 1930s caused some engaged individuals to postpone marriage and those newly married to delay having children. With the United States’ entry into World War II on December 7, 1941, attitudes about marriage and babies quickly changed. Couples rushed to the altar, resulting in a wartime high in 1942 of 1.77 million ceremonies and a corresponding high of 2.99 million live births. The aftermath of the war produced even higher numbers: 2.29 million marriages and 3.4 million live births in 1946. After that year, the marriage figures decline, but live births continue to escalate because couples opted for two, three, or four children in rapid succession. The following table shows the number of marriages, live births, and the nation’s population for each year of the decade. Live birth rates continued to rise after 1949 and finally peaked in 1957 at 4.3 million. They then declined until 1961, a year that

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| Baby Boom TABLE 15.

Marriages, Live Births, and U.S. Population, 1940–1949 (in thousands)

Year

Number of Marriages

Number of Live Births

Population

1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949

1,596,000 1,696,000 1,772,000 1,577,000 1,452,000 1,613,000 2,291,000 1,992,000 1,811,000 1,580,000

2,559,000 2,703,000 2,989,000 3,104,000 2,939,000 2,858,000 3,411,000 3,817,000 3,637,000 3,649,000

132,122,000 133,402,000 134,860,000 136,739,000 138,397,000 139,928,000 141,389,000 144,126,000 146,631,300 149,188,000


recorded a second high of 4.2 million. In 1965, the number dropped below 4 million and proceeded to plunge to 3.1 million by 1973. By 1989, live births once again exceeded 4 million and some refer to the years 1980–1999 as an echo baby boom. A return to peacetime industrial output commenced in 1945, and postwar prosperity thereafter supported the baby boom and changed the economic and sociocultural landscape of the United States. Financial incentives contained in the 1944 Serviceman’s Readjustment Act, better known as the GI Bill, specifically assisted veterans in a number of ways. Money for a college education and job training enabled returning service personnel to obtain work that paid more than jobs that did not require education and training. For families, this translated as well-paid husbands and fathers. Wives and mothers, many of whom worked during the war, could now remain at home, and the couple could afford several children with the bonus of a stay-at-home mom. New families with growing numbers of children of course needed a place to live. To address this situation, the federal government granted veterans low interest rates on home mortgage loans. This led to the construction of thousands upon thousands of new dwellings in open suburban spaces located away from traditional downtowns. Prospective homeowners quickly perceived these developments as ideal places to raise families. The baby boom also created jobs, an important factor in maintaining postwar prosperity. In addition to new housing, Americans needed new automobiles to drive to work and the grocery store. Baby food, educational toys, playgrounds, furniture, and diaper service became big business. The new suburban homes boasted modern appliances; the installation and upkeep of the lawns necessitated special products and equipment. An enlarged and improved highway system had to be built to handle increased motor vehicle traffic. To accommodate manufacturers who wanted to make


Baby Boom | 75 consumers aware of all of these new buying possibilities, the advertising world likewise experienced rapid growth. Along with dealing with the material aspects of the baby boom, new parents expressed anxiety and concern about how to best raise their children. In a fortunate stroke of timing, Dr. Benjamin O. Spock (1903–1998) came to the rescue with his 1946 book, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. In opposition to the past strategies of rigid schedules for feeding, weaning, sleeping, and toilet training, Spock’s text, in easy-to-understand words, advises parents to employ flexible schedules, show lots of affection, see their children as individuals, and enjoy them. He offered a new direction in child rearing at a time when the country was rapidly experiencing a number of changes, and his ideas caught on immediately. The book initially sold for 25 cents (approximately $2.65 in 2008 dollars) and circulated an astonishing 750,000 copies in its first year, followed by 4 million copies during its first six years. Baby and Child Care went through seven editions, saw translations into 39 languages, and influenced millions of parents. In addition to housing, transportation, and parenting, the baby boom had a huge effect on educational systems across the country. A need to enlarge or build new facilities and obtain teachers for the increased numbers of schoolchildren quickly became apparent. In 1947, statisticians estimated that more than 5 million children would enter elementary school during the next 10 years, and junior and senior high school enrollments would skyrocket in due time. Most communities found it economically difficult to address these challenges. In a meeting of the National Education Association (NEA) in July 1948, 3,000 teachers, superintendents, and college officials called on President Harry S. Truman (1884– 1972) to summon a special session of Congress to approve a bill for federal aid to education. First introduced by Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft (1889–1953) in 1946, it had been released from committee in 1947. Despite its 1948 passage by the Senate and outcries for help from the NEA and other organizations, political differences on a number of topics caused the bill to stall in the House of Representatives twice, 1948 and 1949. Thus much-needed financial assistance for education, especially construction and teachers’ salaries, did not come from the federal government in the 1940s. The struggle continued throughout the 1950s with a substantial federal aid to education bill coming close to passage in 1959, making educational aid a major issue in the presidential campaign of that year. World War II and the postwar years created significant changes in family life in the United States. During the conflict, many families moved in order for some members to obtain defense jobs or to be close to a military base. Many couples faced separation because of the war; understanding its life and death realities, they married and had their first child. With postwar prosperity, husbands and wives reunited and became optimistic and looked forward to the future. They celebrated with increases in family size and the onset of the baby boom. This prosperous period of American history reflects a decline in economic hardships that had kept people from marrying and having children prior to the war. Peace allowed couples to comfortably raise children and spouses to return to traditional roles.


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| Baseball See also: Grocery Stores and Supermarkets; Lawns, Lawnmowers, and Fertilizers; Leisure and Recreation; Levittown and Suburbanization Selected Reading “Education and the Baby Boom.” New York Times, July 11, 1948. www.proquest.com Kaledin, Eugenia. Daily Life in the United States, 1940–1959: Shifting Worlds. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. Kizer, George A. “Federal Aid to Education: 1945–1963.” History of Education Quarterly 10 (1) (Spring 1970): pp. 84–102. Spock, Benjamin, Dr. www.drspock.com/about/drbenjaminspock/0,1781,00.html Historical U.S. Population Growth by Year 1900–1998. NPG Facts & Figures. www.npg.org/facts/ us_historical_pops.htm

BASEBALL Until World War II, baseball had long enjoyed nationwide popularity and deserved its title of the national pastime. In 1939, the National Baseball Hall of Fame had opened in Cooperstown, New York. To underscore the importance of this event, the United States Post Office issued a three-cent (about 44 cents in 2008 money) commemorative stamp to acknowledge the sport. Annual attendance at major league games for 1940 stood at almost 10 million spectators, the highest since 1931. Baseball, however, faced extreme hardships during the subsequent war years as the draft and enlistments stripped the teams of eligible players. The numbers of people present at games dropped slightly, bottoming out at about 7.5 million for the 1943 season. When hostilities ended, the nation witnessed the return of thousands of veterans eager to recoup lost time and enjoy themselves. As a result, baseball, like many other aspects of life in the United States, experienced a postwar boom. By 1949, a little over 20 million fans, or twice as many as in 1940, cheered their favorite teams; the period represented a time of unprecedented change and growth. As evidence of its continuing popularity, songwriters throughout the 20th century penned several hundred tunes extolling the game in one way or another. The 1940s certainly had its share of baseball-oriented music, with at least 40 melodies available for fans. For example, the decade saw some six compositions about the Brooklyn Dodgers alone, the beloved “Bums of Flatbush.” They ranged from 1943’s “Leave Us Go Root for the Dodgers, Rodger” to 1947’s “Dodger Polka” and finally to 1949’s “Brooklyn Baseball Cantata.” Few, if any, however, achieved the lasting fame of a song like “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” composed in 1908. The film industry likewise utilized baseball as thematic material in a number of movies. 1942’s Pride of the Yankees stars Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig (1903–1941), the former Iron Man of the New York Yankees. Actor William Bendix convincingly plays the immortal Babe Ruth in the biographical Babe Ruth Story (1948). That same year, MGM offered Take Me Out to the Ball Game, a musical comedy showcasing Frank Sinatra (1915–1998), Esther Williams (b. 1921), and Gene Kelly (1912–1996). Some B movies with weak plots, such as It Happened in Flatbush (1942) and It Happens Every Spring (1949) also deal with baseball themes. An offbeat 1949 picture, The Stratton Story, highlights a true story. It tells of Monty Stratton (1912–1982), a pitcher


Baseball | 77 who lost his leg in a hunting accident; he stunned fans when, in 1946, he returned to the sport with a minor league team. James Stewart (1908–1997) plays Stratton, and June Allyson (1917–2006) portrays his wife. On a lighter side, Bud Abbott (1895– 1974) and Lou Costello (1906–1959) perform their famous comedy routine, “Who’s on First?” in Universal Pictures’ 1945 Naughty Nineties. American advertising also capitalized on the surging popularity of the national game, and many businesses offered trading cards, player photographs mounted on stiff cardboard, as a means of stimulating sales of their products. This practice had originated early in the 20th century, when tobacco companies and gum and confectionary enterprises spurred sales by giving away similar cards. The Goudey Gum Company reigned as the primary card distributor from 1933 to 1941, offering attractive designs with full-color line drawings on thick stock. The war, however, brought an abrupt end to the manufacture of baseball cards because of paper shortages. Production resumed in 1948, when the Bowman Gum Company issued a set of black-and-white prints, giving one card with each piece of gum for a penny (about 9 cents in 2008 money), and the Leaf Company offered a set of colorized picture cards with its chewing gum. The war may have ended baseball cards but not baseball. On December 7, 1941, while the citizens of the United States briefly reeled in shock from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the commissioner of baseball, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis (1866–1944), approached President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) for guidance on whether to suspend the sport in light of the national emergency. Roosevelt, after brief consultation with Clark Griffith (1869–1955), owner of the locally based Washington Senators, urged its continuance, because he believed the game could provide a much-needed diversion for war-weary citizens. A longtime fan of baseball himself, Roosevelt continued through the early years of the decade to be a faithful spectator at the Senators’ home games. Despite this official sanctioning of the game, baseball struggled to maintain any semblance of its former identity, both in retaining players and attracting spectators. The armed forces depleted most rosters of both the major and minor league teams. Two top-ranked players happened to be among the first inductees: the Detroit Tigers’ star first baseman Hank Greenberg (1911–1986), who joined the army, and the Cleveland Indians’ ace pitcher Bob Feller (b. 1918), who went with the navy. The entry of Greenberg (also known as “Hammerin’ Hank”) into professional baseball had not been easy. Jews, blacks, and other outsiders encountered prejudicial obstacles qualifying for the major leagues, but after spending three years in the minors, the Detroit Tigers finally signed Greenberg to a contract. He played with them from 1933 until 1946, with the years 1940 to 1945 out for service. He then joined the Pittsburgh Pirates for the 1947 season before retiring. In 1949, Greenberg, along with pitcher Satchel Paige (1906–1982) and 15 members of the Indians’ team, appeared in a Republic Pictures movie, The Kid from Cleveland. A more significant achievement occurred for Greenberg in 1954, when he became the first Jewish player elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Feller, known as “Bullet Bob” and “Rapid Robert,” in 1940 became the first American League pitcher to throw a complete no-hitter on the opening day of a season. Just one year later, he was fighting in the war. He had joined the Cleveland Indians in 1936


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and remained with them until his retirement in 1956. After serving from 1941 to 1945, he returned to major league baseball, regained his dominance on the mound, and in 1962 was inducted into the Hall of Fame. Other notable baseball players who saw active duty included Joe DiMaggio (1914–1999) and Ted Williams (1918– 2002). DiMaggio entered semipro ball in 1932 and in 1941 achieved a 56game hitting streak, an unbroken record. When war broke out, he held the position of center fielder for the New York Yankees, for whom he played from 1936 until 1951. He joined the U.S. Army Air Force in 1943 but never saw action. Instead he worked as a physical education Ted Williams, the “Splendid Splinter,” at bat for instructor and played baseball during his the Boston Red Sox, a team for which he played 31-month stint. He appeared in his last from 1939 to 1960. (Photofest) game on September 30, 1951, and entered the Hall of Fame in 1955. A pop song of the day, “Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio” (1941), celebrates his prowess at the plate. Bandleader Les Brown (1912–2001), with a vocal by Betty Bonney (active 1940s), recorded the tune and it claimed some modest success. Ted Williams, the star left fielder for the Boston Red Sox, played 19 seasons with the team. In his peak year, 1941, the “Splendid Splinter” batted.406, a feat no one has since equaled or surpassed. Military service as a Marine Corps pilot interrupted his career twice, first in World War II and again during the Korean conflict. Williams led the American League in batting average, runs batted in, and home runs in both 1942 and 1947, a feat that earned him baseball’s Triple Crown, the prestigious award for a hitter who leads in those three statistics. Williams entered the Hall of Fame in 1966. These outstanding players provide the briefest of sketches about career interruptions and their impacts on the sport because of the war; in total, more than a thousand professional baseball players served in the armed forces. But from these hardships came opportunities for others. As teams with members off to war jockeyed to maintain full rosters, older major-leaguers suddenly found that they could extend their careers, while rookies got an unexpectedly early chance to play. It also opened doors for women who could play well, although they never competed directly with men on the field. Philip K. Wrigley (1894–1977), chewing gum magnate and owner of the Chicago Cubs, established the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in1943. Each team consisted of 15 players, a coach, a business manager, and a chaperone who instructed the members in proper posture, etiquette, and appropriate responses whenever they had a called third strike. Their distinctive uniforms included short skirts that offered some modesty but little protection when sliding into home plate. Like their male counterparts, they donned the traditional brimmed beanie caps. Initially, 60 women


Baseball | 79 received the honor of being the first to play professional baseball on one of four inaugural teams: the Kenosha Comets and Racine Belles in Wisconsin, the Rockford Peaches in Illinois, and the South Bend Blue Sox in Indiana. By 1948, the number of teams had grown to 10, with attendance reaching a peak of nearly a million spectators turning out for their games. Spring training took place in distant locations such as Havana, Cuba, and Opa-Locka, Florida. Postseason tours to Cuba and South America were planned in hopes of creating an International League of Girls Baseball, while the All-American League cities organized Junior Leagues for young women 14 years and older. After 1945, however, the men started coming home, and fans returned to the tried and true. Enthusiasm for women’s baseball slowly waned, attendance declined, competition from the men’s teams overshadowed them, and the televising of big-league games finally brought the women’s league to a close in 1954. Columbia Pictures Corporation immortalized this unique moment in baseball history with A League of Their Own (1992). The table below shows the top two All-American Girls League teams for each season. The Racine Belles and the Rockford Peaches, two of the original four teams, clearly dominated during the 1940s. The Milwaukee Chicks had formed in 1944 and got off to a very successful start. The Grand Rapids Chicks joined the league in 1945 and the Muskegon Lassies in 1946. Women were not the only ones who had difficulty entering the world of baseball. In the racially segregated United States, blacks could not join white professional leagues even though they had played on military, college, and company teams. A few Midwestern team owners organized the Negro National League in 1920, and soon a second one, the Negro American League, formed in 1937. The all black East-West All-Star Game, first played in 1933, served as the premier annual event for the players in these leagues. In 1946, Hollywood acknowledged the presence of the black leagues when Image Entertainment produced a documentary, Negro Leagues Baseball. The film featured two teams, the Indianapolis Clowns and the Kansas City Monarchs. A later commercial movie, The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976), humorously chronicles life on the road for a fictionalized black team during the 1930s. Although racial segregation remained in force throughout baseball until the later 1940s, several people of considerable importance in the major leagues had tried to TABLE 16.

Women’s League Pennant and Playoff Winners, 1943–1949

Year

Pennant Winner

Playoff Winner

1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949

Racine Belles Milwaukee Chicks Rockford Peaches Racine Belles Muskegon Lassies Grand Rapids Chicks Rockford Peaches

Racine Belles Milwaukee Chicks Rockford Peaches Racine Belles Racine Belles Rockford Peaches Rockford Peaches

Source: Lahman, Sean. “The All American Girls Professional Baseball League.” The Baseball Archive. www.baseball1.com/bb-data/bbd-wb1.html


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end this practice in the sport, but to no avail. Branch Rickey (1881–1965), president and general manager of the National League’s Brooklyn Dodgers, was instrumental in assisting Jackie Robinson (1919–1972) to break the color barrier. Robinson, who had played with the Negro League’s Kansas City Monarchs, took this momentous step in 1947 when he signed a contract to play for the Dodgers at second base. Racist pressures pummeled him from the day he donned his new uniform, but his athletic abilities, outgoing personality, and calm disposition prevailed; he soon won respect and became a symbol of black opportunity. The Sporting News magazine had opposed blacks in the major leagues, but nonetheless recognized Robinson with its first Rookie of the Year Award in 1947, an award renamed for Robinson in 1987. Hollywood recounted this historic Jackie Robinson, the first black major league moment with a 1950 biopic, The Jackie baseball player, broke the color barrier in 1947. He had gained enough popularRobinson Story, that stars the Dodger star ity by 1950 to play himself in Legend Film’s as himself. Songwriters offered “Jackie The Jackie Robinson Story. (Kisch / Photofest) Robinson” (1947) and “Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit that Ball?” (1949). He won election to the Hall of Fame in 1962. Just 11 weeks after Robinson’s entry into previously all-white professional baseball, Larry Doby (1923–2003) from the Newark Eagles joined the Cleveland Indians to play center field. As such, he became the second black player to join the majors and the first on an American League team. A fine addition to the Indians’ lineup, Doby was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1998. Satchel Paige (“The Ageless”), yet another outstanding star, had played with several Negro League teams during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1948, just one year after Robinson’s and Doby’s historic moves, he became, at age 42, the third black player to join this growing revolution. Paige moved from the Kansas City Monarchs to the Cleveland Indians and broke records as the first black pitcher to throw in the World Series when he started game 5 of the 1948 World Series against the Boston Braves. The Indians went on to win the series 4 to 2. He continued to pitch actively until 1956, and then made occasional appearances on the mound until 1967. Four years later, at the age of 65, Paige was elected to the Hall of Fame. Since 1903, the primary goal of National and American League teams has been to win the season’s culminating event, the World Series. Each year the country asks, “Which rivals will meet in this championship race and emerge victorious from the


Baseball | 81 TABLE 17.

The World Series, 1940–1949

Year

Teams

League

Wins

1940

CINNCINNATI REDS Detroit Tigers NEW YORK YANKEES Brooklyn Dodgers ST. LOUIS CARDINALS New York Yankees NEW YORK YANKEES St. Louis Cardinals ST. LOUIS CARDINALS St. Louis Browns DETROIT TIGERS Chicago Cubs ST. LOUIS CARDINALS Boston Red Sox NEW YORK YANKEES Brooklyn Dodgers CLEVELAND INDIANS Boston Braves NEW YORK YANKEES Brooklyn Dodgers

National League American League American League National League National League American League American League National League National League American League American League National League National League American League American League National League American League National League American League National League

4 3 4 1 4 1 4 1 4 2 4 3 4 3 4 3 4 2 4 1

1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947* 1948 1949

Source: Wallechinsky, David. Wallechinsky’s Twentieth Century History with the Boring Parts Left Out. Boston Little, Brown, 1995, pp. 681–682. *In 1947, cameras televised the World Series for the first time.

best-of-seven contest?” The table shows the World Series results during the 1940s and lists the participating teams and final winners (in caps), each team’s respective league, and the number of wins for each. During the decade, the American League captured 6 of the 10 events, with the New York Yankees winning 4 of those 6 championships. In the National League’s 4 wins, the St. Louis Cardinals dominated with 3. During the 1940s, the nation experienced baseball perhaps as in no other decade and provided the sport with many important firsts: the first Jewish superstar, the first women to play professional baseball, the first black to join a previously all-white major league team, and the first black to pitch in the World Series. But good things sometimes come to an end, and, eventually, the uncontested televising of professional football, along with the inclusion of other spectator sports, brought baseball down from the heights it had achieved in the 1940s. See also: Movies; Race Relations and Stereotyping; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk; Technology; Television Selected Reading All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. www.aagpbl.org/league/history.cfm Baseball Songs. www.loc.gov/rr/perform/baseballbib.html Marshall, William. Baseball’s Pivotal Era, 1945–1951. Lexington-Fayette: University Press of Kentucky, 1999.


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| Basie, Count Rader, Benjamin G. Baseball, A History of America’s Game. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Wallechinsky, David. Wallechinsky’s Twentieth Century History with the Boring Parts Left Out. New York: Little, Brown, 1995.

BASIE, COUNT Born William James Basie (1904–1984) in Red Bank, New Jersey, this outstanding pianist and bandleader enjoyed a long and storied career. A natural piano player, he quickly learned to improvise and picked up odd jobs playing along with silent movies while still in his teens. After dropping out of junior high school and “scuffling” (a popular term among musicians, meaning to move from one job, or “gig,” to another) around New Jersey as best he could, he eventually landed in Harlem during the early 1920s. There he met many of the leading jazz players of the day, including pianist Willie “the Lion” Smith (1893–1973), who advanced his piano skills, and pianist Fats Waller (1904–1943), who taught him to play the organ. Basie toured with several traveling vaudeville shows in the mid-1920s, employment that took him to the Midwest. He joined the Tulsa-based Blue Devils band, led by

Leader of some of the greatest jazz and swing bands of all time, William “Count” Basie began his career in the 1920s. Many consider the orchestra he led from the mid-1930s to the mid1940s to be his best group. An accomplished pianist, he had the knack of attracting outstanding musicians of the day. (Photofest)


Basie, Count | 83 bassist Walter Page (1900–1957), in 1928. Around this time, someone, possibly himself, anointed him “Count,” and the title/name stuck. The following year, he became an arranger in pianist Bennie Moten’s (1894–1935) orchestra based in Kansas City. Page also joined Moten. Basie played so impressively that he soon became the group’s pianist, and Moten served as leader. Moten had pioneered a riffing style in which brief musical lines are repeated, and it would come to characterize Basie’s later orchestras, especially those of the late 1930s and 1940s. In addition, Page’s powerful, rhythmic bass—called a “walking bass” because it helped propel the band—and Basie’s short, but effective, piano fills gave the aggregation a new, light, modern sound. Moten died in 1935 and Basie strove to keep the band going, but it folded. He then formed the first Count Basie Orchestra and used a number of players from the defunct group and recruited the inimitable tenor saxophone player Lester Young (1909–1959), a move that contributed immeasurably to the sound of the Basie band in upcoming years. The new Basie ensemble, in addition to playing Kansas City clubs, also participated in nighttime radio broadcasts. An announcer christened the group Count Basie and His Barons of Rhythm, and noted music writer and talent scout John Hammond (1910–1987), traveling in Chicago, happened to hear one of these programs on his car radio in 1936. He quickly journeyed to Kansas City to hear them in person. Shortly thereafter, Hammond brought a quintet from the band into a recording studio to cut several memorable sides as “Jones-Smith Incorporated” (Basie, piano; Walter Page, bass; Lester Young, tenor sax; Jo Jones [1911–1985], drums; and Carl “Tatti” Smith [1908–?], trumpet), because prior commitments to Decca Records forbade them recording under Basie’s name. In 1937, the band as a whole began recording for Decca, a major label, turning out dozens of sides. After years of scuffling, Count Basie and his gifted associates were on their way. The later 1930s found the rising band ensconced in New York City, playing the best venues: the Apollo Theater, the Famous Door, the Roseland Ballroom, the Savoy Ballroom, and others. Famed singer Billie Holiday (1915–1959) performed with them, but contractual conflicts prevented her from recording. Bluesman Jimmy Rushing (1901–1971) and vocalist Helen Humes (1913–1981) took care of singing chores, top arrangers like Jimmy Mundy (1907–1983) and Eddie Durham (1906–1987) contributed charts, and a string of successful records gained the band a popular following. Basie himself wrote many of the orchestra’s numbers, and his “One O’Clock Jump,” first recorded on Decca in 1937, made the charts, giving the band its first national hit; it soon became the group’s theme song. At the urging of Hammond, Basie left Decca and in 1939 signed a contract with Columbia Records, a growing label that would soon become a leader in swing and big-band recordings. The addition of Basie to its roster of artists only burnished that reputation. During the early 1940s, before the draft took some of its best players, the orchestra’s personnel reads more or less—some shifting occurs, as with any band—as seen in Table 18. In the judgment of most critics, a truly all-star lineup, this orchestra skillfully melded jazz, the blues, swing, and even popular music into a distinctive formula. Unlike many bands, Basie managed to retain high-caliber musicians year in and year out, and people noticed the consistently high morale of the orchestra as a whole. The


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The Count Basie Orchestra, Early 1940s (an approximation)

Instrument

Musician

Trumpets

Buck Clayton (1911–1991) Al Killian (1916–1950) Harry “Sweets” Edison (1915–1999) Ed Lewis (1909–1985)

Trombones

Vic Dickenson (1906–1984) Dickie Wells (1907–1985) Dan Minor (1909–1982)

Reeds

Earle Warren (1914–1995; alto) Lester Young (tenor) Buddy Tate (1913–2001; tenor) Jack Washington (1910–1964; baritone)

The “All-American Rhythm Section,” as many referred to it

Basie (piano) Freddie Green (1911–1987; rhythm guitar) Walter Page (bass) Jo Jones (drums)

Vocals

Jimmy Rushing or Helen Humes

hits on Columbia rolled out, even given the recording ban of 1942–1944, which hurt all big bands. “Tickle Toe” (1940), “Goin’ to Chicago Blues” (1941), and a definitive version of “One O’Clock Jump” in 1942 constituted just a few of the many successes that Basie enjoyed. Since he could not make new recordings during the bans, Basie looked to Hollywood and guest appearances in movies. No stranger to film, he had made several musical shorts in the early 1940s. He struck gold in 1943, appearing with his orchestra in six features, including such titles as Hit Parade of 1943, Reveille with Beverly, and Stage Door Canteen. If people could not buy his records, they could at least hear and see him and the band on screen. He also toured with the USO; cut V-Discs (recordings made expressly for the armed forces and not available commercially during the war; most have subsequently appeared in various anthologies); and, if all that were not enough, the band spent much of its time on the road, going from one appearance to another. The postwar era turned out to be one of transition for the music business. As the big-band era drew to a close, vocalists and small groups vied for the public’s attention, chilling the climate for swing orchestras. Basie, however, cut several more successful disks in the mid-1940s, including such classics as “Avenue C” and “Rambo.” He even had an unexpected 1947 hit with the novelty tune, “Open the Door, Richard!” It features an unusual vocal from trumpeter Harry Edison and went briefly to No. 1 on the charts. But reacting to the economic realities facing big bands, Basie reduced the size of his orchestra, playing mainly with sextets or octets. He signed with RCA Victor in 1947, but most of the sides veer away from his usual swinging style, heading in the direction of more modern jazz and bebop, such as 1949’s “Normania” (also known as “Blee Blop Blues”) or “Futile Frustration” (1947)—an emotion he perhaps felt as he moved away from his Kansas City roots.


Basketball | 85 Undiscouraged, Basie returned with a reconstituted big band in 1952, which some fondly nicknamed a “swing machine,” allowing old and new audiences to rediscover— or discover for the first time—his ability to play in all styles. He landed new recording contracts, hired new arrangers, added a number of young musicians to the aggregation’s ranks, toured Europe, and moved into the 1950s, 1960s, and beyond a popular living legend of jazz. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Race Relations and Stereotyping Selected Reading “Count Basie.” www.rutgers.edu/ijs/cb/index.html Dance, Stanley. The World of Count Basie. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1980. Schoenberg, Loren. Count Basie: The Columbia Years. Booklet accompanying Count Basie and His Orchestra: America’s #1 Band! Columbia/Legacy C4K 87110. 4 CDs. 2003. Shapiro, Nat. “William ‘Count’ Basie.” In The Jazz Makers, eds. Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, 232– 242. New York: Grove Press, 1957.

BASKETBALL As with many activities, basketball struggled as a viable sport during World War II but experienced stability and growth during the postwar years. The game had been created in 1891 by James Naismith (1861–1939), a Canadian physical education professor and instructor at the Young Men’s Christian Association Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. Naismith wanted to provide his students vigorous exercise during the long, cold New England winters. He finalized 13 basic rules that described appropriate handling and throwing of the ball, fouls, scoring, length of play, and the role of a referee and umpire. He nailed a wooden basket 10 feet above the floor and oversaw the first official game with a handful of players on January 20, 1892. Students at the training school moved on to jobs across the country, teaching the game wherever they went, and soon a number of American colleges added it to their roster of athletic offerings. In 1906, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS) was formed to govern the rules of eligibility for college athletics, including basketball; the organization changed its name four years later to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). By the mid-1930s, basketball had gained enough prominence to hold its own against baseball and football as a popular pastime. New York City’s Madison Square Garden hosted its first college basketball contests in 1934; the sport made an official appearance as an Olympic game in Berlin in 1936; a rule change in 1938 removed a mandatory jump ball at the center of the court after every basket, thereby adding speed and nonstop action to the game; and the NCAA held its first collegiate basketball tournament in 1939. Momentum continued when W2XBS, an experimental television station affiliated with NBC (the National Broadcasting Company) in New York City, broadcast the first college basketball game on February 28, 1940, and MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System) followed suit on national radio with the 1941 NCAA tournament final. Basketball


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had spread beyond college campuses and regional interests; in neighborhoods and schools, games took place in gymnasiums as well as outside when weather allowed. High school and college administrations appreciated the game’s modest equipment requirements and quickly added it to their sports programs. With the onset of World War II, player shortages caused by able-bodied men joining the military forced many colleges to either drop team sports for the duration of the war or enlist freshmen not yet old enough for the draft. Soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the American public voiced concern about continuation of their favorite athletic contests. In response, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (1882–1945) endorsed carrying on professional baseball—and, by extension, other major sports—as long as eligible players did not avoid the draft. He proposed that a good game would provide brief relief to a war-weary country. The wartime depletion of white players in all sports opened the door for participation by minorities. Prior to 1940, teams had been segregated, both in their member composition and games. Black teams had no league organization for scheduling games or guaranteeing fairness and safety in their play. Nevertheless, the New York Renaissance, or Rens, formed in 1923, crisscrossed the country playing any team that would take them on, and in 1939 entered the World Basketball Tournament held in Chicago. They defeated a white team from Wisconsin, the Oshkosh All-Stars, becoming the first black team to win a world championship. Despite many disadvantages, another all-black basketball team, the Harlem Globetrotters, organized in 1927, rose to prominence because of their display of extraordinary skills and high level of entertainment. In 1941, they took the world championship away from the Rens. One year later, the Chicago Studebaker Flyers, funded by the United Auto Workers, and the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets, affiliated with an Ohio automotive company, became the first members of the National Basketball League (NBL) to integrate their teams, a step that led the way for other blacks to assert themselves in basketball at both the college and professional levels. After the war, soldiers returned home and enrolled or reenrolled in college on the GI Bill and, in turn, advanced basketball to another level for both whites and blacks. Exceptionally physically fit players enthusiastic for the sport joined college teams, and extremely tall players became more of a norm. The number of fans increased as the game moved from one of speed and agility on the court to include shooting and defensive skills under the basket. For the first time in history, two teams won the NCAA championship two years in a row; Oklahoma A&M in the 1945–1946 and 1946–1947 seasons, followed by the Kentucky Wildcats in 1947–1948 and 1948–1949. These victories generated publicity for basketball as a major college sport and paved the way for a growing interest in professional teams. The NBL, established in 1898, had been the first pro league, but it lasted only five years before disbanding. A number of loosely organized groups muddled through the early decades of the 20th century, and in 1937 a second NBL formed. In 1949, the NBL and the Basketball Association of America (founded in 1946) merged to create the National Basketball Association (NBA). As a part of the merger, rule changes such as allowing for one-on-one plays, along with a format for championship playoffs, went


Basketball | 87 into effect, all in an attempt to attract large numbers of fans by creating the most exciting game possible. Over the years, the NBA has featured many famous players, and three, Joe Fulks (1921–1976), George Mikan (1924–2005), and Bob Cousy (b. 1928), began their careers as the 1940s drew to a close. Fulks, who joined the Philadelphia Warriors, was considered the greatest offensive player of his day. On February 10, 1949, he scored 63 points, at the time the most for an individual in an NBA game and a figure generally higher than a winning team score. He held the record for 10 years and became the first player to be enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. George Mikan played for one year with the NBL’s Chicago American Gears team before signing in 1947 with the NBA’s Minneapolis Lakers; he retired after an outstanding eight-year career with the latter team. With an unusual height for the time, (6 feet, 10 inches), superior coordination, and a fierce competitive spirit, Mikan led the Lakers to five championships and became professional basketball’s first superstar by being voted by the Associated Press (AP) in 1950 as the Basketball Player of the Half-Century. Bob Cousy began his career playing college basketball in the late 1940s. Known for his outstanding passing ability, he joined the Boston Celtics in 1950 and, during the course of his career, played in 13 straight NBA All-Star Games. In the process, Cousy helped build the Celtics into one of basketball’s greatest teams during the 1950s and 1960s. As interest in professional basketball grew, the sport began integrating in 1950, when Charles “Chuck” Cooper (1926–1984) joined the Boston Celtics and later moved to the Milwaukee Hawks. At almost the same time as Cooper’s entry into the NBA, Earl Lloyd (b. 1928) went with the Washington Capitols. It turned out that, although Cooper was the first black to sign a contract, Lloyd was the first to play in a game. The New York Knicks added Nathaniel “Sweetwater” Clifton (1922–1990) to their roster after he completed his 1950 contract with the Harlem Globetrotters, bringing the total of black players in the NBA to three. Basketball has the distinction of being one of the few games that developed in tandem for men and women. Just a few months after Naismith’s first official game in 1892, Senda Berenson Abbott (1868–1954), a physical education teacher at Smith College, adapted his rules for women and the game spread from the East Coast of the United States to the West via women’s colleges and the playing of intercollegiate games. Abbott, to remove the possibility of overexertion and the “vapors”—popular ideas about women at the time—introduced changes that included shortening the court by half, limiting dribbling to just three bounces, and not allowing players to run, conditions that continued until 1971. Over the decades, women’s basketball teams formed at colleges and high schools but did not gain league and championship status until well after the 1940s. National collegiate championship games got under way in 1969; women’s basketball qualified as an Olympic game in 1976; and the Women’s Professional Basketball League (WBL), the first such league for women, was organized in 1978; it unfortunately folded three years later.


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The men playing in the NBA took a different route. The prosperity that followed the war, along with the development of television, led to the merchandising of their games in order to attract revenue from sources other than ticket sales. By the late 1950s, men’s basketball had become a big business, providing untold hours of armchair athletics for Americans, while creating heroes who could be used to sell goods. See also: Race Relations and Stereotyping; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk Selected Reading Batchelor, Bob, ed. Basketball in America: From the Playgrounds to Jordan’s Game and Beyond. New York: Haworth Press, 2005. McCallum, John D. College Basketball, USA, Since 1892. New York: Stein and Day, 1978. Pluto, Terry. Tall Tales: The Glory Years of the NBA, in the Words of the Men Who Played, Coached, and Built Pro Basketball. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. Thomas, Ron. They Cleared the Lane: The NBA’s Black Pioneers. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

BEBOP (BOP) In the early 1940s, and in their after hours, many young and enterprising jazz musicians who would later come to fame throughout the 1940s went to a place called Minton’s Playhouse. A small club in Harlem that had opened in 1940, Henry Minton (active 1940s) owned it; he hired Teddy Hill (1909–1978), a musician, in 1941 as manager. Regulars at the club made for a veritable who’s who of modern jazz. The brass players included Roy Eldridge (1911–1989) and Fats Navarro (1923–1950), while Lester “Prez” Young (1909–1959), Coleman Hawkins (1904–1969), and Budd Johnson (1910–1984) could be counted among the reed players; pianists Thelonious Monk (1917–1982), Mary Lou Williams (1910–1981), and George Wallington (1923–1993); drummers Kenny “Klook” Clarke (1914–1985), and Max Roach (1924–2007); bassists Milt Hinton (1910–2000) and Oscar Pettiford (1922–1960); and guitarists Danny Barker (1909–1994) and Charlie Christian (1916–1942) made up an enviable rhythm ensemble. On any given night, some of these musicians could be found in attendance, experimenting with new sounds in contemporary American music. While these artists were jamming at Minton’s, other up-and-coming artists congregated at the many jazz clubs then lining New York City’s Fifty-Second Street between Fifth and Seventh Avenues. This locale, often called “Swing Street,” or more simply “the Street,” had reigned as a jazz mecca for musicians black and white, traditional and modern, since the mid-1930s. Just as Minton’s had attracted artists in Harlem, most of the clubs on the Street likewise encouraged impromptu jam sessions where players could test their skills in a competitive but friendly atmosphere. Some of the clubs featured traditional jazz, or Dixieland, but they were in the minority. The music most likely to be heard in the early 1940s came to be called “bebop.” A few at first referred to it as “rebop,” but both forms soon came to be shortened to “bop.” Etymologically, bebop-rebop-bop probably derives from the music itself. A musician might take several bars and rhythmically play them be-bop, be-bop, and so on. Singers, instead of articulating words when imitating instruments, might also use


Bebop (Bop) | 89 these terms as part of their scat singing, improvisational vocalizing that replaces regular speech with made-up syllables, such as “oop boop bop sha bam.” Whatever its roots, bop became the commonplace term when referring to this new jazz format. Amid all this club activity, veteran pianist Earl Hines (1903–1983), a virtuoso performer in almost any style, formed a band under his own name during the 1942–1943 period. Hines hired many young musicians as his sidemen, including John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie (1917–1993), a trumpet virtuoso from South Carolina, and Charlie “Bird” Parker (1920–1955), an alto saxophone player from Kansas City. Gillespie already had some band experience, play- John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie, a gifted trumpeter, ing with the Cab Calloway (1907–1994) was one of the unofficial leaders of a new moveband, and Parker had arrived in New ment in jazz that came to be called bebop. His York with the Kansas City–based Jay colorful personality made him a favorite of club audiences, and a series of recordings he cut—ofMcShann (1916–2006) group earlier in ten alongside Charlie Parker—introduced count1942. less listeners to this innovative music during the Both Gillespie and Parker were des- mid- and late 1940s. (Photofest) tined to become two of the leading lights in the development of modern jazz, especially bebop. An equally youthful Sarah Vaughan (1924–1990) doubled on vocals and occasional piano, and Billy Eckstine (1914–1993), the “sepia Sinatra,” as some labeled him, carried the male singing duties. In all, the Hines band featured a remarkable lineup of jazz innovators and would come to perform some of the now-classic tunes associated with the musical changes of the early 1940s. For example, Gillespie’s “A Night in Tunisia,” composed in 1942 by the trumpeter, could be found in Hines’s repertoire; it would eventually become a jazz standard, and countless musicians would perform and record it. Perhaps encouraged by his work with Hines, Billy Eckstine branched out with his own band in late 1943. Starting out at the Onyx, a nightclub located on Fifty-Second Street, this pivotal orchestra featured some top modern innovators, presaging many of the changes ahead for traditional swing bands and also for jazz. He hired Gillespie and Parker, along with reed players Lucky Thompson (1924–2005) and Gene Ammons (1925–1974). George Wallington sat at the piano, Max Roach first kept time on the drums, followed by Art Blakey (1919–1990), and Sarah Vaughan returned to the bandstand as vocalist alongside Eckstine. Most importantly, the leader counted among his arrangers Tadd Dameron (1917–1965), Boyd Raeburn (1913–1966), Budd Johnson, and Gillespie—a stellar group of writers in the evolving jazz idiom. In no way did this orchestra qualify as a traditional swing ensemble. Thanks to recording contracts


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with the DeLuxe and National labels, two pioneering independents, Eckstine’s group survived the war years and looked toward the second half of the decade with some optimism. Bop mixes swing, gospel, stride, and the blues, but it also has silences, starts and stops, unusual rhythms, unexpected chord changes, and flatted fifths. It will mix 12bar blues and 32-bar popular songs, as players create intricate solos that completely disguise the original melody. Whereas most swing bands relied on a steady 4/4 beat, in bop the drummer employs the top cymbal to carry the beat, and the bass drum (or snare) drops “bombs”—explosive accents. The brass and reeds then build solos on long improvisational lines instead of short bits, but perform them in a rapid-fire manner that often consists of eighth notes. In the early 1940s, it all sounded like nothing that had come before. And not everyone liked it. Traditionalists and other nay-sayers called the music dissonant, nervous, even frantic, and deemed it unlistenable. On the other side, the boppers called those who opposed their music “moldy figs”—people stuck in a musical rut, unable to move ahead. At first, bop attracted mainly young black musicians, most of whom expressed disdain for swing, calling it “too white,” too arranged, too predictable.” They had also grown restive with the artificial racial restrictions they saw around them, especially in the segregated South. In time, however, a number of white artists also found it

An artistic and performing colleague of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie “Bird” Parker played alto saxophone and helped revolutionize the modern jazz of the 1940s. Unusual chord progressions and a complete mastery of his instrument marked his playing, but a troubled personal life unfortunately took him early in the bop movement. (Photofest)


Bebop (Bop) | 91 attractive, although much of the integration in bop occurred during the postwar years. Black or white, the players turned their backs on tradition and challenged their audiences to discard the past and come along with them. Bop was revolutionary, a musical expression by youth. In the eyes of many, however, especially commercial promoters, the biggest downside to bop rested with the fact that people could not dance to it. Some of the smaller independent record labels—Blue Note, Dial, Guild, Keynote, Manor, Musicraft, Savoy, and several others—emboldened by Decca’s capitulation to the AFM’s (American Federation of Musicians) terms during the 1942–1944 recording ban, began capturing this new music in late 1943, so at least some of it got preserved. Also, a few individuals in possession of recording equipment taped a number of early performances. In some instances, their efforts eventually turned up in commercial markets, sometimes long after the event took place. For the most part, these early recordings, both professional and amateur, tended not to be the best examples of bop. They often possess inferior sound quality, the performances tend to be uneven, and so they display an art in its formative period as the musicians struggle with this often unfamiliar music. Finally, in the fall of 1945, a few of the leading interpreters of bebop—Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, and several others—created some timeless examples of early bop when they gathered at the recording studios of Savoy Records. A teenaged Miles Davis (1926–1991) even participated in a session or two, but his fame still lay years ahead of him. Among the tunes, Dizzy Gillespie’s “Salt Peanuts” and “Groovin’ High,” and a song with a prescient title, Charlie Parker’s “Now’s the Time,” were destined to become jazz classics, although they did not receive that kind of praise immediately. Several tunes took their structure from older, more established numbers: Parker’s “Ko Ko” originated with the chord changes found in the 1938 swing classic “Cherokee,” written by bandleader Ray Noble (1903–1978). It should not be confused with the 1940 tune bearing the same title but composed by Duke Ellington (1899– 1974). In a similar vein, Parker’s “Ornithology” can be traced to the chord structure of the 1940 tune “How High the Moon” and Tadd Dameron’s “Hothouse” grew out 1930’s “What Is This Thing Called Love?” written by Cole Porter (1891–1964). These songs received new names in order not to pay ASCAP licensing fees for the originals, a common practice in bop during those formative days. Plus, most casual listeners probably would not recognize them in their reinvented form. In 1947, Gillespie formed his own orchestra. Although it had to struggle against ingrained tastes in jazz, the aggregation nonetheless managed to translate into a big-band setting many of the experiments that he and others had attempted in small groups. In addition, Gillespie finally had an opportunity to explore Afro-Cuban music, an interest he had held for some years. He met Chano Pozo (1915–1948), a brilliant Cuban-born percussionist, and the two collaborated on several compositions. Working with arranger/composer George Russell (b. 1923), Gillespie unveiled “Cubano Be/Cubano Bop,” a classic vehicle that showcased Pozo’s rhythmic skills. Pozo also contributed the melody for “Manteca” in late 1947, another important Cuban-influenced number for the band. Although Latin tunes had been around for years, Gillespie’s use of them in a jazz setting ushered in a new musical element heretofore limited to novelties.


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In addition to being a force in the development of bop (by the mid-1940s, most fans and commentators had dropped the prefix “be-” from the term), Gillespie also became the much-publicized face of the music. Onlookers soon associated the tuft of hair beneath his lower lip, beret, horn-rimmed glasses (sometimes sunglasses), and other sartorial accoutrements with the music. His on-stage antics and hipster-style talk warmed audiences to the band, adding to the mystique of the modern jazz musician. Woody Herman’s “Second Herd,” which he formed in 1947 in response to the publicity bop was receiving, played a number of boppish arrangements, most notably “Four Brothers,” composed by Jimmy Giuffre (1921–2008), one of the members of Herman’s sax section. Even Benny Goodman (1909–1986), the King of Swing himself, dipped his clarinet into some bop-style arrangements during 1947–1949, when he recorded for Capitol Records. That period’s “Undercurrent Blues,” written by Chico O’Farrell (1921–2001), typifies the Goodman approach—not as daring as the things Gillespie, Parker, and others attempted, but a far cry from his swing work of the 1930s and early 1940s. As bop became another piece in the multipatterned mosaic that is jazz, it lost much of its controversy. A sign of the growing acceptance acceded bop occurred in late 1949. The Clique Club on 52nd Street closed its doors only to reopen them as Birdland, a new jazz venue named in honor of Charlie “Bird” Parker. “Lullaby of Birdland,” penned by pianist George Shearing (b. 1919) and one of the anthems of the new music, came out in 1952. Birdland in its heyday regularly booked the best jazz musicians to be found, and that included many players associated with the bop movement. But the club’s openness to any and all meant that it existed as a jazz club, not a place for boppers only. The intense scrutiny and reams of criticism—both pro and con—that bop received throughout the decade waned in time, and it began to be accepted as yet another addition to the jazz palette. Herman broke up the Second Herd in 1950, Goodman returned to swing, and many other musicians disassociated themselves from playing bop exclusively. The revolution, so fiery and insistent for a while, came to an end in the early 1950s. In its heyday, however, bebop signaled a musical impatience, particularly from young black artists, to move ahead. It had bubbled just beneath the surface of the wartime swing years, and in the second half of the decade it finally burst forth. With peace, new music of every description, from country to classical, found an audience ready to shed the past. Bebop—fast, frantic, and esoteric for the noninitiated—served as only one manifestation of this restlessness, but it gained more than its share of publicity from critics and audiences alike. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Classical Music; Country Music; Race Relations and Stereotyping; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Rhythm ’n’ Blues Selected Reading DeVeaux, Scott. The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Feather, Leonard. Jazz. Los Angeles: Trend Books, 1957. Giddens, Gary. Visions of Jazz: The First Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Ward, Geoffrey C., and Ken Burns. Jazz: A History of America’s Music. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.


Berlin Airlift, The | 93

BERLIN AIRLIFT, THE Instead of peace and harmony, tensions grew between Russia and the other Allied powers after the conclusion of World War II. The world drifted into a protracted era of anxiety as the USSR sought to extend its sphere of influence over Eastern Europe, while Britain, France, and the United States looked for ways to block any Communist expansion. This post-1945 period, which soon came to be called the Cold War era, saw the adversaries waging a continuous battle of words and threats, as each side strove to gain an advantage over the other. Although the political posturing stopped just short of actual warfare, it at times threatened to escalate into situations that diplomacy might not be able to contain. The 1948 Soviet blockade of Berlin serves as a case in point. At the cessation of hostilities in Germany in May 1945, U.S. and British armies controlled most of the western part of the country, while Soviet forces occupied the eastern sections. For a number of reasons, most of them political instead of military, the Americans and their allies stopped short of Berlin, ceding the city to the Soviet armies advancing from the east. An agreement hammered out by the victors partitioned the conquered city into four zones: U.S., British, French, and Soviet, although the location of Berlin itself placed it deep within Soviet–controlled territory. It thus existed as an occupied island of sorts, surrounded by hostile Soviet forces. The terms of the treaty creating a divided Berlin guaranteed the Western Allies specified routes through Eastern Germany, granting them ground, water, and air access to the city. Just over three years later, on the flimsy pretext that Western-approved German currency had not received Russian acceptance, Soviet forces, on June 23, 1948, blocked all trains, vehicles, and barge traffic headed toward the occupied city. They did not, however, forbid Western aircraft from flying into Berlin. With the city effectively blockaded, the Western powers had to decide: should they force their way militarily into the beleaguered city, thus risking war with the Soviet Union, or should they give in to Russian demands and surrender any effective control of Berlin? The U.S. president, Harry S. Truman (1884–1972), in his typically blunt way, probably spoke for the majority when he said of the Western allies, “We are going to stay. Period.” How they would manage to do so remained undecided. Three years after the end of World War II, Europe again seemed poised to go into battle over politics and disputed territory. In reality, a third course of action existed, one hardly entertained at the beginning of the blockade; it involved supplying the British, French, and American zones by air. When continuing negotiations with the Soviet Union went nowhere, the three powers reluctantly agreed that this latter strategy would be followed. General Lucius Clay (1897–1978), the commander of U.S. forces in Europe and the military governor of the American zone in West Germany, responded to the Soviet threat by cobbling together a fleet of transport aircraft, mainly veteran C-47 Skytrains and C-54 Skymasters. Much of the once-mighty Allied air armada had been dismantled after 1945, so suitable planes were initially in short supply, and pilots had to be hurriedly assigned to the mission. Almost immediately, planes began to ferry in desperately needed food, fuel, and medicines to the citizens living in the Western zones. In an airlift dubbed Operation Vittles, they flew along three narrow corridors over the Soviet zone, landed at Berlin’s


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| Berlin Airlift, The

Tempelhof and Gatow airports, unloaded their cargoes, and then took off and returned to West Germany, only to repeat the procedure again and again. At first, the U.S. Air Force pilots and their Royal Air Force (RAF) counterparts managed just over 1,000 tons of supplies each day, which would not be sufficient to satisfy the city’s needs. Then, throughout August 1948, they boosted their average to 4,000 tons of cargo per day, a bare subsistence load. But colder weather would soon arrive, making flying more difficult and necessitating greater tonnage to satisfy living requirements in the months to come. In the meantime, the Soviet Union worked to make its zone completely separate from its Western counterparts. Before long, the city’s British, French, and American zones came to be thought of as West Berlin, whereas people called the Soviet sector East Berlin—names that remained in place for years to come. The summer eventually drew to a close, but the nonstop flights continued. Neither the Western powers nor the Soviets could reach any agreements, and Berliners looked toward a long and difficult winter. But General Clay had received more and larger aircraft, the French joined in, and January and February saw 5,500 tons become the new daily average. March and April raised the total again, to over 8,000 tons a day, exceeding what had previously been brought in by rail in preblockade times, and more than enough to sustain the city and its inhabitants. In the spring of 1949, a frustrated Soviet Union, faced with strong negative opinion from much of the world and knowing full well that the now-successful airlift could go on indefinitely, returned to serious discussions about the fate of the divided city. In early May, the four powers announced that restrictions on travel to and from West Berlin would be relaxed. Shortly thereafter, on May 12, 1949, the Berlin blockade officially ended, a humiliating failure for Soviet planners and a solid victory for Allied resolve. Flights continued until September, however, while the Allies built up surplus supplies in case the Soviets should choose to block access to the city again. Understandably, such a humanitarian undertaking caught the imagination of the American people. Journalists filled columns with reports of plane after plane landing on the tarmac, just minutes separating one from another. They told of grateful Berliners turning out by the thousands to upgrade dated runways and helping to unload the priceless supplies that were keeping the city alive. Photographers captured the drama of a transport coming in out of the clouds, landing lights blazing, with another close behind. Press microphones picked up the roar of the engines and the cheers of the waiting crowds. These sounds and images played in newsreels shown nightly in U.S. theaters, and people read about the continuing airlift in their magazines and daily newspapers. Some of the transport crews carried candy bars, other sweets, and small toys, which they had purchased with their own money. They would drop them from their planes, often utilizing tiny, homemade parachutes, as they came in toward Tempelhof or Gatow. Children, many still clad in worn clothing left over from the war, scrambled after the goodies, and the West could not have asked for better propaganda. This unofficial act of generosity soon gained the approval of air force commanders, and Americans reacted in kind. Children in the United States contributed candy, and several large confectioners likewise made donations. The popularity of this movement gained it the


Best Sellers (Books) | 95 name Operation Little Vittles; in all, it logged over 275,000 flights and carried almost 2.5 million tons of food and other essentials, a number that equates to almost a ton apiece for every citizen then dwelling in West Berlin. Authorities had envisioned the airlift lasting, at most, three weeks before agreements could be reached with the Soviet Union. It instead lasted almost 11 months. Operation Vittles was not without cost; over 100 Allied pilots, crewmen, and airfield personnel died during the course of the operation, including 31 Americans. A commercial movie, The Big Lift, came out in 1950 and uses the background of the Berlin Airlift as the basis for its fictional plot. See also: Aviation; Desserts, Candy, and Ice Cream; Movies; Photography Selected Reading Diggins, John Patrick. The Proud Decades: America in War and Peace, 1941–1960. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988. Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin Press, 2005. Knapp, Wilfred. A History of War and Peace: 1939–1965. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.

BEST SELLERS (BOOKS) The term “best seller” entered the language in the late 19th or early 20th centuries. It applies to anything that sells in large numbers, a meaning that has been largely restricted to the book trade, although exceptions can also be found (best-selling automobiles, best-selling records, and so on). It generally refers to those books that have sold in significant numbers in a brief span of time. Because so many different types of books, genres of literature, audiences, and countless other variables apply, it would be difficult to attach a precise, quantitative meaning to best seller. As a result, publishers have freely employed the term to generate interest—a best-selling novel, but according to what standards? Some books sell remarkably well when first issued, but the novelty soon wears off and they disappear, forgotten over time. Other books, however, sell only moderately well at any given period, but they continue that pattern over A publicity shot of author Mickey Spillane whose I, the Jury (1948) became one of the many years. Most classics of literature biggest fiction best sellers in the history of eventually sell far more copies than a American publishing; the paperback edimomentarily popular book does in its tion has sold millions of copies. (Bettmann/ CORBIS) brief moment of fame or acclaim.


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American book publishing underwent a number of significant changes with the onset of the 1940s. Paperback (also known as paperbound, softbound, and soft cover) books rose to become a powerful force in the industry, with most titles outselling their traditional hardback (clothbound, hardbound, and hard cover) counterparts by the thousands—and even millions, on occasion. In 1939, the beginning of the modern paperback era, dealers sold about 3 million softbound books; by 1949, sales exceeded 175 million copies. Conversely, traditional book (hardback) sales in 1939 totaled approximately 11 million copies; in 1949, this category had not changed significantly, with about 12 million hardcover books sold. In the space of a decade, the marketplace had profoundly changed. Paperback publishers achieved their remarkable sales by utilizing the distribution channels favored by newspapers and magazines. These inexpensive volumes could be found at newsstands and kiosks, supermarkets and drug stores, variety and department stores, as well as venues like airports and bus stations. The country supported about 5,000 traditional book stores in 1950, but over 100,000 establishments sold paperback books. Glued spines instead of sewn bindings kept costs down, as did cheap papers and inks; and colorful, eye-catching, often lurid, covers further boosted sales. In June 1939, publishing giant Simon & Schuster created a subsidiary firm called Pocket Books. Led by Robert de Graff (1895–1981), who had studied the ongoing success of paperback publishing in Europe, Pocket Books initially issued 10 paperbound reprints of existing hardbound books pricing them at 25 cents each (about $3.85 in 2008 dollars), compared to the average $2 to $4 most hardcover books cost then (or about $31 to $62 in 2008 dollars). True to their name, these volumes, roughly 4-1/4 inches by 6-1/2 inches, fit easily into a jacket pocket, unlike a larger, bulkier hardcover book. In quick succession, competing publishers took the plunge, anxious to have a share of the vast, untapped American paperback market. Penguin Books, an established English firm already in the paperback business, set up New York offices just a month after de Graff’s Pocket Books had made its debut and began issuing titles under its imprint shortly thereafter. Avon Books came along in 1941, Popular Library (originally Popular Books) in 1942, Dell Books in 1943, Bantam Books in 1945, New American Library (Signet and Mentor imprints) in 1948, Pyramid Books and Harlequin Books (the latter a Canadian enterprise specializing in romance novels) in 1949, along with a number of smaller houses in the later 1940s. As a rule, most paperback titles published during the decade tended toward lighter, middle-brow fare, with mysteries, Westerns, and self-help books leading the way in sales. Movie tie-ins soon became commonplace. Pioneering Pocket Books soon learned that mystery novelists Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) and Agatha Christie (1890–1976) consistently ranked as their overall top sellers for many years, although individual titles by either writer seldom made any best-seller lists. Regardless of author, initial print runs by the 1940s averaged 200,000 copies, considerably more than the normal number of hardcover copies for a title. And although they had, at best, wafer-thin profits, the new paperback publishers strove to retain the 25-cent cover price; not until the 1950s did the industry begin charging more for the average title. While paperbound books were establishing a strong foothold in the American marketplace, the many publishers of clothbound titles—Appleton-Century-Crofts; Crown;


TABLE 19.

Best-Selling Books, Fiction and Nonfiction, 1940–1950

Year

Title and Author; Those Books Most Often Found on Best-Seller Lists

Title and Author; Other Significant Books, Not Often Found on Best-Seller Lists

1940

Fiction 1. How Green Was My Valley, Richard Llewellyn (1906–1983) 2. Kitty Foyle, Christopher Morley (1890–1957) 3. Mrs. Miniver, Jan Struther (1901–1953; b. Joyce Anstruther) 4. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) 5. The Nazarene, Sholem Asch (1880–1957) Nonfiction 1. I Married Adventure, Osa Johnson (1894–1953) 2. How to Read a Book, Mortimer Adler (1902–2001) 3. A Smattering of Ignorance, Oscar Levant (1906–1972) 4. Country Squire in the White House, John T. Flynn (1882–1964) 5. Land Below the Wind, Agnes Newton Keith (1901–1982)

Fiction Journey into Fear, Eric Ambler (1909–1998) Farewell, My Lovely, Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie (1890–1976) The Ox-Bow Incident, Walter van Tilburg Clark (1909–1971) The Hamlet, William Faulkner (1897–1962) [an important American author rarely found on any best-seller lists] The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers (1917–1967) New Adventures of Ellery Queen, Ellery Queen (pseudonym of Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee, 1905–1982 and 1905–1971) The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck [published in 1939 but still selling well in 1940; Steinbeck would go on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962] You Can’t Go Home Again, Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938) [a major American writer, but seldom a top seller] Native Son, Richard Wright (1908–1960) [the debut novel of a significant black writer] Comment: The above books also reflect the growing importance of mysteries and related themes (Ambler, Chandler, Christie, and Queen), plus the lack of recognition given major writers at the time.

1941

Fiction 1. The Keys of the Kingdom, A. J. Cronin (1896–1981) 2. Random Harvest, James Hilton (1900–1954) 3. This Above All, Eric Knight (1897–1943) 4. The Sun Is My Undoing, Marguerite Steen (1894–1975) 5. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) [Hemingway’s most topical novel, it sold well and enjoyed the boost of a popular 1943 movie] Nonfiction 1. Berlin Diary, William L. Shirer (1904–1993) 2. The White Cliffs, Alice Duer Miller (1874–1942) 3. Out of the Night, Jan Valtin (1905–1951) 4. Inside Latin America, John Gunther (1901–1970) 5. Blood, Sweat and Tears, Winston S. Churchill (1974–1965)

Fiction Young Dr. Kildare, Max Brand [Frederick Faust] (1892–1944) [Brand, normally thought a writer of Westerns, also created the immensely popular Kildare] Mildred Pierce, James M. Cain (1892–1977) The Patriotic Murders, Agatha Christie (1890–1976) Above Suspicion, Helen MacInnes (1907–1985) My Friend Flicka, Mary O’Hara (1885–1980) Strange Woman, Ben Ames Williams (1889–1953)


(continued)

TABLE 19.

(continued)

Year



1942

Fiction 1. The Song of Bernadette, Franz Werfel (1890–1945) [another book made into a successful 1943 film] 2. The Moon Is Down, John Steinbeck (1902–1968) [a powerful novel about World War II] 3. Dragon Seed, Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) 4. And Now Tomorrow, Rachel Field (1892–1942) 5. Drivin’ Woman, Elizabeth Pickett (1896–1984) Nonfiction 1. See Here, Private Hargrove, Marion Hargrove (1919–2003) [the misadventures of a raw recruit in the U.S. Army] 2. Mission to Moscow, Joseph E. Davies (1876–1958) 3. The Last Time I Saw Paris, Elliot Paul (1891–1958) 4. Cross Creek, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896–1953) 5. Victory Through Air Power, Alexander P. de Seversky (1894– 1974)

Fiction The High Window, Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Go Down Moses and Other Stories, William Faulkner (1897–1962) [the collection included his story “The Bear,” considered one of his best] Damon Runyon Favorites, Damon Runyon (1880–1946)

Fiction 1. The Robe, Lloyd C. Douglas (1877–1951) 2. The Valley of Decision, Marcia Davenport (1903–1996) 3. So Little Time, John P. Marquand (1893–1960) 4. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith (1896–1972) 5. The Human Comedy, William Saroyan (1908–1981)

Fiction Silvertip’s Roundup, Max Brand [Frederick Faust] (1892–1944) [even with the success of Dr. Kildare, Brand continued to turn out popular Westerns] The Lady in the Lake, Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Claudia, Rose Franken (1895–1988) Kitty, Rosamond Marshall (1902–1957) The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Nonfiction Comment: Whereas much of the fiction of 1942 and 1943 provided escapism for war-weary readers, nonfiction remained basically topical.

1943

Nonfiction 1. Under Cover, John Roy Carlson (1909–1991) 2. One World, Wendell L. Willkie (1892–1944) 3. Journey Among Warriors, Eve Curie (1904–2007) 4. On Being a Real Person, Harry Emerson Fosdick (1978–1969) 5. Guadalcanal Diary, Richard Tregaskis (1916–1973)

Nonfiction Comment: Most nonfiction during 1942 and 1943 concerned itself with the war or related topical subjects.


1944

Fiction 1. Strange Fruit, Lillian Smith (1897–1966) [a controversial indictment of racism by a white writer] 2. The Robe, Lloyd C. Douglas (1877–1951) 3. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith (1896–1972) 4. Forever Amber, Kathleen Winsor (1919–2003) [one of the decade’s biggest sellers, it sold over 3 million copies] 5. The Razor’s Edge, W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) Nonfiction 1. I Never Left Home, Bob Hope (1903–2003) 2. Brave Men, Ernie Pyle (1900–1945) 3. Good Night, Sweet Prince, Gene Fowler (1890–1960) 4. Under Cover, John Roy Carlson (1909–1991) 5. Yankee from Olympus, Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)

Fiction Dangling Man, Saul Bellow (1915–2005) [Bellow would eventually win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976] Dragonwyck, Anya Seton (1904–1990)

1945

Fiction 1. Forever Amber, Kathleen Winsor (1919–2003) 2. The Robe, Lloyd C. Douglas (1877–1951) 3. The Black Rose, Thomas B. Costain (1885–1965) 4. The White Tower, James Ramsey Ullman (1907–1971) 5. Cass Timberlane, Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) Nonfiction 1. Brave Men, Ernie Pyle (1900–1945) 2. Dear Sir, Juliet Lowell (1901–1998) 3. Up Front, Bill Mauldin (1921–2003) [a collection of cartoons about World War II, much beloved by both service personnel and civilians] 4. Black Boy, Richard Wright (1908–1960) [an autobiographical book about growing up in a segregated society] 5. Try and Stop Me, Bennett Cerf (1998–1971)

Fiction If He Hollers Let Him Go, Chester Himes (1909–1984) [Himes, like Richard Wright before him, remained an often-neglected black author] Cannery Row, John Steinbeck (1902–1968)

(continued) © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

TABLE 19.

(continued)

Year



1946

Fiction 1. The King’s General, Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989) 2. This Side of Innocence, Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) 3. The River Road, Frances Parkinson Keyes (1885–1970) 4. The Miracle of the Bells, Russell Janney (1884–1963) 5. The Hucksters, Frederic Wakeman (1909–1998)

Fiction God’s Little Acre, Erskine Caldwell (1903–1987) [this book originally came out in 1933 and did little; not until its 1946 paperback edition did it take off—over 4.5 million copies sold] The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers (1917–1967) Tales of the South Pacific, James A. Michener (1907–1997) The Street, Ann Petry (1908–1997) [another neglected black author] All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren The Foxes of Harrow, Frank Yerby [his first of many appearances, although not in the top five]

Nonfiction 1. The Egg and I, Betty MacDonald (1908–1958) 2. Peace of Mind, Joshua L. Liebman (1907–1948) 3. As He Saw It, Elliott Roosevelt (1910–1990) 4. The Roosevelt I Knew, Frances Perkins (1882–1965) 5. Last Chapter, Ernie Pyle (1900–1945) 1947

Nonfiction The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, Dr. Benjamin Spock (1903–1998) [an American standard, this title has sold in the millions over the years]

Fiction Fiction 1. The Miracle of the Bells, Russell Janney (1884–1963) The Victim, Saul Bellow (1915–2005) 2. The Moneyman, Thomas B. Costain (1885–1965) I, the Jury, Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) [the paperback release in 1948, along with 3. Gentleman’s Agreement, Laura Z. Hobson (1900–1986) subsequent editions, has sold more than 6 million copies, making it one of the all-time best 4. Lydia Bailey, Kenneth Roberts (1885–1957) sellers in the United States] 5. The Vixens, Frank Yerby (1916–1991) Nonfiction Nonfiction 1. Peace of Mind, Joshua L. Liebman (1907–1948) Merriam-Webster Pocket Dictionary [the paperback edition of this reference work has sold 2. Information Please Almanac, 1947, John Kieran, editor (1892– millions] 1981) 3. Inside U.S.A., John Gunther (1901–1970) 4. A Study of History, Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975)© 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved. 5. Speaking Frankly, James F. Byrnes (1882–1972)

1948

Fiction 1. The Big Fisherman, Lloyd C. Douglas (1977–1951) 2. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer (1923–2007) 3. Dinner at Antoine’s, Frances Parkinson Keyes (1885–1970) 4. The Bishop’s Mantle, Agnes Sligh Turnbull (1888–1982) 5. Tomorrow Will Be Better, Betty Smith (1896–1972) Nonfiction 1. Crusade in Europe, Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) 2. How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, Dale Carnegie (1888– 1955) [a book destined to be a perennial best-seller] 3. Peace of Mind, Joshua L. Liebman (1907–1948) 4. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Alfred C. Kinsey (1894– 1956) et al. [sequel, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, 1953; both become known as Kinsey Reports] 5. Wine, Women and Words, Billy Rose (1899–1966)

Fiction Other Voices, Other Rooms, Truman Capote (1924–1984) Intruder in the Dust, William Faulkner (1897–1962) [one of the few appearances of Faulkner in any listing, this novel sold relatively well] The Amboy Dukes, Irving Shulman (1913–1996) Comment: T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) wins the 1948 Nobel Prize for Literature, boosting his own sales and poetry in general

1949

Fiction 1. The Egyptian, Mika Waltari (1908–1979) 2. The Big Fisherman, Lloyd C. Douglas (1977–1951) 3. Mary, Sholem Asch (1880–1957) 4. A Rage to Live, John O’Hara (1905–1970) 5. Point of No Return, John P. Marquand (1893–1960) Nonfiction 1. White Collar Zoo, Clare Barnes Jr. (active 1940s) 2. How to Win at Canasta, Oswald Jacoby (1902–1984) 3. The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton (1915–1968) 4. Home Sweet Zoo, Clare Barnes Jr. (active 1940s) 5. Cheaper by the Dozen, Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. (1911–2001) and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey (1908–1906)

Fiction The Little Sister, Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Comment: William Faulkner wins the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature, significantly boosting his subsequent sales

Nonfiction Canasta, the Argentine Rummy Game, Ottilie H. Reilly; Canasta, Josephine Artayeta de Viel and Ralph Michael [together with Jacoby’s books, both below and on the following page, these titles illustrate the runaway popularity of Canasta in the late 1940s]


TABLE 19.

(continued)

Year



1950

Fiction 1. The Cardinal, Henry Morton Robinson (1898–1961) 2. Joy Street, Frances Parkinson Keyes (1885–1970) 3. Across the River and into the Trees, Ernest Hemingway (1899– 1961) [one of his lesser novels; Hemingway would, however, win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954] 4. The Wall, John Hersey (1914–1993) 5. Star Money, Kathleen Winsor (1919–2003) Nonfiction 1. Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book (creation of General Mills) 2. The Baby (creation of Pet Milk Company) 3. Look Younger, Live Longer, Gayelord Hauser (1895–1984) 4. How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling, Frank Bettger (1888–1981) 5. Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl (1914–2002) [the story of an expedition in the Pacific aboard balsa rafts]

Fiction My Gun Is Quick, Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) [shunned by critics, Spillane nonetheless became a popular favorite, selling millions of copies, particularly during the 1950s]

Nonfiction Oswald Jacoby’s Complete Canasta, Oswald Jacoby (1902–1984) The Flying Saucers Are Real, Donald Keyhoe (1897–1988) [yet another book reflecting faddish news of the day]


Best Years of Our Lives, The (William Wyler) | 103 Doubleday; Harcourt; Harper Brothers; Houghton-Mifflin; Little, Brown; Macmillan; McGraw-Hill; Prentice Hall; Random House; and Vanguard, to name just some of the larger ones—continued to release new titles in all fields, despite the difficulties imposed by wartime rationing (particularly a scarcity of quality paper) and uncertain, changing public tastes. Reading served as a popular leisure pastime, both during the war and into the prosperous postwar years. In addition, publishers, working with the government, made over 1,000 titles in free, paperbound editions, available to those in active military service, with some 125 million copies distributed worldwide during the war years. Most firms participated, using the slogan, “Books Are Weapons.” Homefront drives called Victory Book Rallies collected still more reading materials for service personnel. The 1940s also saw the growth of book clubs that kept the public abreast of the newest best sellers. When assessing what people read and which books topped the best-seller lists, expectations and actualities seldom agree. The preceding lists, of necessity, focus on those best sellers available in hardbound format; rankings of paperbacks based on sales did not appear with any regularity until the 1970s. Best sellers in the book trade should not be considered infallible barometers of the nation’s reading tastes; they do provide, however, a snapshot of popular trends. For the 1940s, most fiction kept the war at a distance, providing a blend of escapism and inspiration, with sex and crime adding spice to the mix. Many deserving works escaped notice at the time of publication, and their worth only became known in later years. On the nonfiction side, the reverse held true, with many titles tackling the issues of war and peace, providing readers with information on many sides of current issues. But biographies, self-help, and discussions of popular pastimes also appealed to readers. See also: Leisure and Recreation; Movies Selected Reading Hackett, Alice Payne, and James Henry Burke. 80 Years of Best Sellers, 1895–1975. New York: R. R. Bowker, 1977. Hart, James D. The Popular Book: A History of America’s Literary Taste. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961. Lupoff, Richard. The Great American Paperback: An Illustrated Tribute to Legends of the Book. Portland, OR: Collectors Press, 2001.

BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, THE (WILLIAM WYLER) Winner of seven Academy Awards (eight, counting a special honorary award), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) captures some of the problems faced by veterans in the first years following World War II. The film grew out of a 1945 short novel written by MacKinlay Kantor (1904–1977). After hearing about difficulties encountered by returning GIs, famed Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn (1879–1974) urged Kantor to do a possible story treatment about the difficulties of readjusting to civilian life. The author responded by writing, in blank verse, a novella called Glory for Me just as the war entered its last days.


104

| Best Years of Our Lives, The (William Wyler)

Two powerful performances from The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) involve newcomer Harold Russell, a veteran himself and a double amputee from war wounds, and Cathy O’Donnell, who plays his understanding girlfriend. Russell’s role has him as a man attempting to deal with his special circumstances, and he brings a touching realism to the part. (RKO / Samuel Goldwyn / Photofest)

The distinguished playwright Robert E. Sherwood (1896–1955) then converted Glory for Me into a workable screenplay. During this adaptation, prose replaced Kantor’s previous verse construction, and a new, more meaningful, title was found. Working quickly in order to be as topical as possible, Goldwyn secured William Wyler (1902–1981) as director and cast the popular Fredric March (1897–1975) and Dana Andrews (1909–1992) for two of the three male leads. A newcomer to the screen, Harold Russell (1914–2002), received the nod for the remaining role. A number of other familiar stars rounded out the cast, including Hoagy Carmichael (1899–1981), Myrna Loy (1905–1993), Virginia Mayo (1920–2005), and Teresa Wright (1918–2005). The Best Years of Our Lives had its American release in November 1946, little more than a year after the final surrenders marking the end of World War II had occurred. The picture earned immediate critical praise and did well at the box office. At the 1946 Academy Award ceremonies, it earned top honors for best picture, best actor (Fredric March), best supporting actor (Harold Russell), best director (William Wyler), best screenplay (Robert Sherwood), along with Oscars for scoring (Hugo Friedhofer, 1901–1981) and editing (Daniel Mandell, 1895–1987). In addition, Harold Russell, a double amputee (he had lost both hands in a war-related accident and wore prostheses), won an honorary Academy Award for being an inspiration to other wounded


Best Years of Our Lives, The (William Wyler) | 105 veterans. Unknown to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the time— and doubtless much to its surprise—Russell also won the supporting actor award for which he had been nominated, the only person ever to win two Academy Awards for the same role. Until 1946, only 1939’s Gone with the Wind had accumulated eight victories, putting The Best Years of Our Lives in select company. During the 1950s and beyond, however, a handful of other motion pictures have accumulated as many—and more—Oscars, but The Best Years of Our Lives stood alone during the 1940s in total awards. The movie’s plot focuses on events in the lives of three servicemen returning to their home town, the fictitious Boone City, a typical community located in the Midwest. One of the three, Dana Andrews, had been a captain in the air force and thinks he can easily get a commercial flight, but it ends that he must rely on the military’s Air Transport Command. Thus, he meets the other two veterans of the story, and they board a B-17 bomber ferrying people and supplies for the long trip home. In conversation, the trio reveals a collective nervousness about being stateside again, and justifiably so. Andrews’ character has a wife he knows little about, March worries about a reunion with his family, and Russell dreads people seeing his “hooks.” Nothing goes well at first, and the veterans encounter a United States not overly eager to have them back. No heroes’ welcome awaits them, and their service to their

Critically acclaimed, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) could not have been more topical, dealing with the problems faced by veterans returning to an unfamiliar civilian world; Fredric March portrays a former sergeant who has begun to drink too much, and Myrna Loy plays his patient wife. (RKO / Samuel Goldwyn / Photofest)


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country seems to count for little. Andrews discovers his war-bride wife has cheated on him, March cannot comfortably step back into his former life, and Russell finds it hard to believe that the girl he left behind might accept his prostheses. All of this takes place at a leisurely pace; The Best Years of Our Lives runs for almost three hours, far more than the usual 90-minute film of that day. But this tempo allows for extended character development and social commentary. Time passes as the three veterans try to come to grips with their changed lives. Andrews cannot find a good job (“no qualifications,” despite his service), March must bend to the ways of a hard-hearted banking system and reject the loan applications of men on the GI Bill, and Russell slowly learns to deal with his handicap and his sweetheart’s acceptance of it. Several memorable scenes highlight these predicaments: Andrews wandering a vast field of abandoned military aircraft and wondering if he, too, has been similarly discarded; March giving a speech, while drunk, to fellow bankers about how they have lost sight of human needs in their quest for profits; and Russell taking his girl to his bedroom and revealing to her how the prostheses function. In the end, resolution occurs. It could be argued that the movie’s conclusion sugarcoats the preceding problems, but, in so doing, it paints an optimistic picture of postwar America. Opportunity—financial, occupational, romantic—awaits those willing to strive for it, a message most people wanted to believe in 1946. And things did get better for most veterans after the first rocky adjustments to civilian life. Later in the 1940s and 1950s, several members of congressional committees investigating Communist infiltration into the movie industry criticized The Best Years of Our Lives for being anti-American and antagonistic toward a capitalist economic system. But their complaints had little impact; few critics and film buffs saw the arguments as legitimate, and the film continued to ride on its reputation as a meaningful and ultimately positive exploration of the transitional period between war and peace. Over the years, a consensus has arisen about two American films from the 1940s. Much of the critical community has declared Casablanca (1942) to be the best film about the actual war years, even though it has no battle scenes; by the same token, The Best Years of Our Lives may well rank as the outstanding motion picture about the difficult postwar aftermath. See also: Drama (Film); House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC); Political and Propaganda Films Selected Reading Dixon, Wheeler Winston, ed. American Cinema of the 1940s: Themes and Variations. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006. McLaughlin, Robert L., and Sally E. Perry. We’ll Always Have the Movies: American Cinema during World War II. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006. Muller, Jurgen. Movies of the 40s. Cologne, Germany: Taschen, 2005.

BEVERAGES Water clearly serves as the best way to quench thirst. Nonetheless, there has always been a market for other beverages, including tart and sweet, simple and complex, and


Beverages | 107 alcoholic and nonalcoholic varieties. Because of World War II, the beverage industry, as did most industries and citizens, faced economic challenges during the first half of the decade, followed by postwar prosperity. Soft drinks. Sometimes called soda or pop and originally made of sugar or another sweetener, carbonated water, and flavorings, these beverages date back to the early 1800s and the first days of drug store soda fountains. Sold then primarily for medicinal uses, enterprising pharmacists during the first decades of the 20th century succeeded in adding more interesting flavors; soon all ages enjoyed them simply for their pleasant taste. Mass production followed, and, by 1940, several brands could be bought in virtu- “The pause that refreshes” served as an adally any part of the United States. Two vertising phrase for Coca-Cola, a popular soft manufacturers, the Coca-Cola Company, drink during the 1940s. The company actively founded in 1886, and Pepsi-Cola, in supported the war effort by supplying five-cent Cokes to U.S. troops everywhere. (Photofest) 1898, clearly ranked as the primary producers, although 7-Up and Nehi’s Royal Crown Cola offered some competition. Others— Dr. Pepper, Orange Crush, Canada Dry, Kist, Cheer Up, A&W Root Beer, and Moxie, to name a few—lingered in the background, but also had their fans. During the 1930s, Coca-Cola and Pepsi engaged in escalating advertising wars as each attempted to achieve sales supremacy. Sparing no expense, Coca-Cola had artists such as Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) and Haddon Sundblom (1899–1976) provide images for its massive marketing efforts through magazines, billboards, calendars, and giveaways—depictions that made Coca-Cola as much an icon in American culture as the Statue of Liberty or apple pie. Pepsi also employed artists, such as cartoonist Otto Soglow (1900–1975), to assist with advertisements appearing in magazines. The company gained renown by introducing a short jingle on radio and premiering skywriting at the 1939 New York World’s Fair as an advertising tool. Coca-Cola entered the 1940s anticipating continued growth and financial success. Its 1941 advertising budget of over $10 million (about $141 million in 2008 dollars) exceeded any previous year in its history. As proof of the success of this extraordinary marketing effort, the nickname Coke, which had been used by customers for many years, now appeared on all the bottles. Pepsi-Cola’s 1939 newspaper advertising cartoon strip, Pepsi & Pete, had introduced a marketing theme, “Twice as Much for a Nickel,” which made reference to the fact that Pepsi came in a 12-ounce bottle for just a nickel (about 75 cents in 2008 money), double the amount of refreshment that any other soft drink companies gave for the same price at the time. This campaign led to the development of the company’s famous


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advertising jingle titled “Pepsi-Cola Hits the Spot.” Commonly known as “Nickel, Nickel,” two songwriters adapted it from the 1890 English song, “John Peel.” It was the first advertising jingle to be broadcast nationwide, a history-making opportunity for Pepsi. “Nickel, Nickel” eventually became a popular record with translations into 55 languages. When the United States joined its allies in the battles of World War II, soft drink companies, as well as many other industries, suddenly found their businesses limited by wartime restrictions and regulations. The rationing of sugar, a key ingredient in a soft drink, caused a severe curtailment of production and the possibility of zero growth for most producers. Pepsi-Cola proved the exception. Unlike Coca-Cola and others that sold a sugary syrup to bottlers, Pepsi provided a concentrated substance, and the bottlers added the sugar in their plants. Most of Pepsi’s people were able to find supplemental supplies of sugar, sometimes by reducing their production of other soft drink lines. In 1943, Pepsi president Walter S. Mack (1897–1990) purchased a sugar plantation in Cuba, an effective and profitable way to further strengthen the company’s position in dealing with the rationing of sugar and its bottlers. Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, in an extraordinary show of patriotism, and what turned out to be a financial boon for the company, Coca-Cola board chairman Robert W. Woodruff (1889–1985) announced that throughout the conflict all servicemen and women could buy a bottle of Coke for 5 cents (about 71 cents in 2008 money) no matter where they were, no matter what the cost to the company. New slogans, such as “It’s the real thing,” “Coca-Cola goes along,” and “That Extra Something!” along with pictures of individuals in the military, spoke to GIs far away from home. Not surprisingly, Coca-Cola struggled throughout 1942 with fulfilling this promise. Before the war, it had gone international with distribution of its soda fountain syrup for bottling plants in 44 countries. But now it lacked the necessary sugar for production both at home and abroad. Also, to reach American GIs in significant numbers, the company needed more bottling plants, especially ones close to the battlefields. To Coca-Cola’s relief, because of its intention to support the troops, the War Production Board (WPB) increased its allotment of sugar and eventually placed the company on the list of industries that provided military necessities, thereby allowing production to meet demand. A final business boost occurred in 1943, when General Dwight David Eisenhower (1890–1969) asked for 10 Coca-Cola bottling plants and enough syrup to provide his men in North Africa with 6 million bottles a month. Despite protests from Pepsi and accusations that the army had created a monopoly, Army Chief of Staff General George Catlett Marshall (1880–1959), gave not just Eisenhower, but all theater and area commanders, full discretion to set up soft drink bottling operations and to request personnel to operate the facilities. He also authorized government payment to cover the transportation expenses of entire Coca-Cola bottling plants. Military personnel followed through on all these allowances, and 250 Coca-Cola technical observers, or TOs, followed the troops to every continent except Antarctica to make sure that all those in service, as well as the local inhabitants, had Coke to drink. By the end of the war, the number of international Coca-Cola bottling plants had increased to 108, growth that cost Coca-Cola very little money. The TO program © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Beverages | 109 continued until 1948, further establishing the selling of Coke in the areas housing bottling plants, steps that cemented worldwide recognition and the expansion of CocaCola’s international trade throughout the decade and years to follow. On the home front, returning veterans brought home a preference for the drink as supported by a 1948 survey conducted by American Legion Magazine. The report had 63.67 percent of the respondents preferring Coke as a soft drink, with Pepsi showing a low 7.78 percent. This same year, the Coca-Cola Company had a gross profit of $126 million (a little over $1 billion in 2008 dollars), compared to the Pepsi Company’s $25 million (a little over $215 million in 2008 dollars—hardly a paltry figure itself). Coca-Cola had turned a world war into a marketing boom with a secure future and had become a firmly established American icon, along with strengthening the soft drink market for all brands. The Pepsi-Cola Company, even with the challenges of wartime restrictions and Coca-Cola’s runaway success, stayed in business and made significant competitive headway. Likewise looking for ways to support the war effort and to show its patriotism, Pepsi changed the color of its bottle caps to red, white, and blue—pieces that eventually became collectors’ items. The company established three integrated military service centers, unlike the segregated U.S. Army versions. Located in New York City at Times Square, Washington, DC, and San Francisco, these canteens assisted millions of armed forces personnel during the war and earned favorable recognition for Pepsi-Cola. After the war, Pepsi experimented with selling its product in steel cans instead of glass bottles, and, by 1948, the company had its drink in a 12-ounce, lined, cone-top can at a price of three for a quarter. But the interior lining failed, resulting in leaky cans on grocery and pantry shelves. It would not be until the late 1950s and the introduction of aluminum cans that this problem would be solved. Pepsi’s international business, along with its U.S. trade, grew, but more historic was the effort made by Pepsi in 1947 to hire an all-black sales force to sell its soft drink to this underserved minority market. To head up this work, Walter Mack hired Edward F. Boyd (1914–2007) from the National Urban League. Mack had already created a business internship program in 1940 with a nationwide essay contest for college graduates; it took a step toward breaking racial barriers by including 2 blacks in the first 13 winners. Even more significant steps on this matter occurred through Boyd’s advertising campaigns of 1948, 1949, and 1951, when the image of the black U.S. citizen changed from a caricature to an attractive, everyday, middle-class individual. The sales team, working in the days of Jim Crow segregation laws, met with resistance in some parts of the country; they had to ride at the back of buses and in separate train cars and had to look for restaurants and establishments that would serve them. They persevered, however, producing double-digit sales. Both soft drink companies grew and increased sales during the 1940s and following years, and the Pepsi-Coke competition continues unabated into the present. Coffee. Soft drinks may have provided “the pause that refreshes,” but it was coffee that got the day started. Adventures in Good Eating, by Duncan Hines (1880–1959), appeared on best-seller lists in 1939 and included a good cup of coffee as a requirement for a restaurant to receive his stamp of approval. Three years earlier, coffee© 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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producing countries had funded the formation of the Pan American Coffee Bureau, an organization with the sole intent to promote coffee consumption in North America. By 1941, the United States imported 70 percent of the world’s coffee crop, up from 50 percent in 1934. Starting in September 1942, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) aired “Over Our Coffee Cups” on NBC’s (National Broadcasting Company) Blue Network on Sunday evenings. Sponsored by the Pan American Coffee Bureau, the radio program offered a discussion of current events over a cup of coffee. The show ran until April 1942. Time magazine, in May of that year, described coffee “as typical of U.S. life as gasoline,” and in October, when the WPB announced its November rationing regulations, lovers of the brew rushed to stores and swept the shelves clean. For some unknown reason, even non-coffee-drinking citizens became enamored of the beverage. During the brief period of rationing, November 1942 to July 1943, the allowance of one pound every five weeks left many grabbing at a variety of substitutions. Newspaper articles published a number of recommendations, such as brewing coffee grounds twice. They also suggested the addition of roasted chicory root, a New Orleans favorite, to an amount of coffee smaller than usual, along with recipes for several mixtures, some containing coffee and grains and others using just grains. Barley, figs, malt, chick peas, and molasses seemed the most popular. Postum, a caffeine-free roasted grain beverage sold since 1895 as a coffee substitute, experienced a resurgence in sales. World War II energized the coffee industry. Defense factory workers were allowed time to drink coffee (a rest period in the work routine but not called a coffee break until the 1950s), and military commanders regarded the drink as essential to successful warfare. Producers of instant coffee, such as Maxwell House, Nescafe, and George Washington Coffee, provided lightweight aluminum foil packets of soluble coffee in soldiers’ K rations. Maxwell House introduced this product to the public after the war as Instant Maxwell House coffee. In Europe, 300 Red Cross “clubmobiles” dispensed coffee and doughnuts to troops; volunteers across the United States provided the same in canteens, as well as met troop trains to do likewise. Even those stationed in the far Pacific and North Africa enjoyed coffee on a regular basis. By 1944, coffee drinking on the home front had risen beyond prewar levels. Annual per capita consumption in 1941 stood at 15.9 pounds and increased to 19.8 pounds by the end of 1945; coffee had become a standard product on grocery shelves. After the war, chain restaurants, such as Howard Johnson’s, increased the number of their sites and advertised coffee shops. Chase and Sanborn sponsored The Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show on the NBC radio network. It starred ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (1903–1978) and his dummy Charlie McCarthy and ran from 1937 until 1948. Tea. During America’s colonial days, tea surpassed coffee in popularity, but a national shift began to occur following World War I. With Prohibition, iced tea served as an alternative to illegal beer, wine, and liquor; with Repeal in 1933, tea remained popular well into the 1940s, particularly in hot weather. In the South, it became a year-round beverage. By the 1940s, coffee, however, had clearly won out over tea. Many people, perhaps mostly men, avoided drinking tea, because they mistakenly assumed it to be


Beverages | 111 a beverage for clubwomen and their annual charity teas, spinsters, those of British or Asian origin, or the sick and weak. Because of shipping difficulties during World War II, the tea supply for the United States, which came from India and Ceylon, meant black tea only; the war had cut off the possibility of tea from the Dutch East Indies, Formosa, China, and Japan, making teas such as oolong, jasmine, and green unavailable. During the first year of the war, supplies of tea in the United States had been reduced to about 75 percent of prewar amounts. By July 1943, however, all kinds of tea once again began to arrive in the United States, and, by the end of the war, the annual per capita consumption rose to the peacetime rate of three-quarters of a pound or 150 cups. Constant Comment appeared on the market as a new postwar tea product. This innovation came out of the New York kitchen of Ruth Bigelow (1896–1966), who, along with her husband David (d. 1970), was struggling to make ends meet. Intrigued by the tea business and looking for something that would solve their money problems, Ruth experimented with blending teas to create unique new products. She soon settled for a combination of black tea, orange peel, and spices. The couple succeeded in convincing neighborhood gourmet and gift shops, along with Bloomingdale’s department store, to carry their tea. By 1950, the business had moved out of the kitchen and into a factory in Norwalk, Connecticut; Constant Comment eventually became a top-selling specialty tea in the United States. Juice. Frozen concentrated orange juice offers another success story with roots in World War II. Early in the conflict, the Boston-based National Research Corporation (NRC) developed high-vacuum evaporation processes for dehydrating, among other things, penicillin and blood plasma for use in the war effort. The military asked that this technological advance also be applied to food, especially orange juice, and, in early 1945, NRC organized Florida Foods Corporation to provide powdered orange juice to the army. When the war ended, however, the army cancelled the order. The focus of the company immediately shifted to the commercial market and away from a powder to a frozen orange juice concentrate. In hopes of conveying convenience and ease of preparation, the firm adopted the brand name Minute Maid, and the first shipment of this revolutionary product took place on April 15, 1946, the same month the company changed its name to Vacuum Foods Corporation. Once established as a popular juice, money became available for extensive advertising. In 1948, the company launched a radio campaign with singer Bing Crosby (1903– 1977) endorsing Minute Maid frozen orange juice on his daily transcribed show. Although the Philco Corporation had Crosby under exclusive contract, they agreed to let him be Minute Maid’s man as long as he also included a daily kind word for Philco products. Purchases of Minute Maid across the country increased dramatically from 1946 to 1951. Miscellaneous beverages. Americans consumed other beverages during the 1940s, with many improving in quality and increasing in sales after the war. By 1940, milk came in a homogenized form. Kool-Aid, first distributed nationwide to grocery stores in 1929, ceased expansion during the war because of the rationing of fruit and dextrose. After 1945, Kool-Aid accelerated in growth and, by 1950, produced nearly 1 million


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packets each day. A&W Root Beer offers another example of postwar growth, greatly increasing the number of its drive-in stands throughout the 1940s. Alcoholic beverages. The liquor industry, like many U.S. operations, experienced operational difficulties because of wartime restrictions. The production of beverage alcohol came to a halt in late 1942, but distillers immediately informed the drinking public that the available stock of whiskey could easily satisfy the nation’s thirst for at least four years. Wine production also had to be curtailed in order to have sufficient grapes to increase the quantity of raisins available for men and women in the armed forces. Breweries had lower production rates but not to the extent of distilleries and vineyards. Unable to convert their plants to war production, beer establishments continued to receive the necessary ingredients needed for making their brew. Cocktails and cocktail parties, encouraged by liquor advertisements and already a common social event, grew in popularity during the 1940s, especially in the years following the war. For those needing help in planning a party, pamphlets and books could be consulted. For example, G. F. Heublein & Bros., a food and beverage importing firm, published The Club Cocktail Party Book in 1941. Just one year earlier, James Beard (1903–1985), chef, writer, and promoter of American cuisine had authored Hors d’Oeuvre and Canapes. He also contributed to Broadway producer and author Crosby Gaige’s (1882–1949) The Standard Cocktail Guide (1944). Morrison Wood (active 1930s–1960s), food writer with the Chicago Tribune, published With a Jug of Wine in 1949. Even though the singing group the Andrews Sisters (Patty [b. 1918], Maxene [1916–1995], LaVerene [1911–1967]) recorded “Rum and Coca-Cola,” which hit No. 1 on the popular music charts in 1945, many sources reported martinis, followed by Manhattans, whiskey sours, rickeys, fizzes, Collinses, and old-fashioneds as America’s favorite party drinks. A new lemon-lime nonalcoholic beverage called Mountain Dew, slang for moonshine, created by brothers Barney (d. 1949) and Ally Hartman (n.d.), owners of Hartman Beverage bottling plant in Knoxville, became known as a good mixer with Tennessee whiskey. By 1940, the American beer industry had regained the production levels enjoyed prior to Prohibition, but with fewer breweries. More and more small operations closed as their sales lagged, with the bulk of consumer business going to the larger ones, such as Anheuser-Busch, Coors Brewing Company, and Pabst Brewing Company. At the end of the decade, the New York Times reported all-time high sales of beer. Beer producers made large contributions to the war effort. In 1942, each member of the armed forces in North Africa received a pound of beef or chicken and an American beer for a special Christmas meal. In 1943, 15 percent of beer production went to the armed forces. Throughout the war, all cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, exclusively made for the troops because of tin rationing, came painted a military green. The war years were difficult ones for the beverage industry; it struggled to recover and, in the postwar period, did achieve a comeback. Growth for the soft drink branch became easier after the Second World War, when the government set aside 50,000 pounds of sugar for each returning veteran willing to open a soft drink bottling plant, and GI loans allowed many to do so. Vending took a giant leap forward as machines, which previously had been considered suitable only for the workplace, started


Black Market | 113 appearing in grocery stores and supermarkets and other retail outlets. At the end of the decade, about 70 percent of the milk sold came in homogenized form, up from 33 percent in 1940. Frozen orange juice concentrate reached new sales highs in 1949. Whatever the preferred alcoholic beverage during the 1940s, industry revenue grew by $2 billion ($21 billion in 2008 dollars) between 1945 and 1947. These events set the stage for fierce competition within the nonalcoholic and alcoholic drink industries and the introduction of a host of new beverages during the 1950s. See also: Best Sellers (Books); Comic Strips; Newspapers; Race Relations and Stereotyping; Radio Programming: Comedy Shows; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Television Selected Reading Allen, Frederick. Secret Formula: How Brilliant Marketing and Relentless Salesmanship Made Coca-Cola the Best-Known Product in The World. New York: Harper Business, 1994. Beverages. New York Times. November 4, 1941; January 6, 1942; March 30, 1942; April 3, 1942; July 22, 1942; November 8, 1942; November 18, 1942; December 25, 1942; January 3, 1943; July 22, 1943; July 31, 1945; October 5, 1948; August 4, 1949. www.proquest.com Pendergrast, Mark. For God, Country, and Coca-Cola: The Unauthorized History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993. ———. Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Trager, James. The Food Chronology: A Food Lover’s Compendium of Events and Anecdotes from Prehistory to the Present. New York: Henry Holt, 1995.

BLACK MARKET In times of war, natural or manmade disasters, economic dysfunctions, or other instances where prolonged shortages of essential goods emerge as a problem, black markets will begin to appear. Not stores or merchandisers in the conventional sense, these businesses function outside the law and supply items otherwise not available. They rely on genuine scarcity or because government controls or taxes have priced certain items beyond the means of many consumers. Black marketeers operate in one of two ways, either by charging exorbitant prices for articles they stock or undercutting legally sanctioned prices. Although the practice of offering goods illegally has been around since time immemorial, the actual term “black market” first came into use around 1931, in the waning days of Prohibition and the onset of the Great Depression. No credence has been given to the notion that it once referred to slavery or somehow carries other racial connotations, although that belief has persisted, even into contemporary times. The word “black” in this instance refers to anything extralegal or underhanded, giving the phrase the literal meaning of an illegal market or an establishment that avoids any regulations. To cite a classic example: during the 1920s and early 1930s, the U.S. government attempted, unsuccessfully, to ban the sale of alcohol under the terms of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Prohibition, as most Americans called it, set up a flourishing black market for intoxicating beverages of all kinds, and people openly flouted the restrictions. By 1933, the Twenty-first Amendment repealed Prohibition,


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and with the sale of alcohol once again legal in most areas of the country, the oncepervasive black markets for liquor effectively withered and died. When the nation entered World War II, the government immediately put in place extensive rationing programs and set price controls on a wide range of goods. Beginning in early 1942, the federal Office of Price Administration (OPA) oversaw these efforts. Automotive goods, such as tires and mechanical parts, practically disappeared from the open market because the war effort needed the materials used in their manufacture. Almost overnight, clandestine dealers in these articles appeared. For a price, a new or used tire might be obtained if an individual knew the right people. The OPA restrictions also limited how much gasoline one could purchase, but there always seemed to be someone who knew someone who had an extra supply of the precious fuel hidden away somewhere. Of course, that illegal gallon or two would cost far more than the price posted at a legitimate station pump. And it might have impurities, might even be diluted, but that was part of the risk when dealing with the black market. The motion picture industry, always quick to exploit the latest in criminal ventures, in 1942 released Boss of Big Town through PRC Studios, no strangers to fast, cheap movies. Racketeers take over “Big Town’s” food distribution system and hope to make exorbitant profits, but a crusading city market manager (played by John Litel, 1892–1972) soon gets to the bottom of things. A second-rate picture, but the topic reflects national concerns about the existence of black marketers and consequent threats to food supplies. Although Hollywood simplified a complex situation, nylon stockings, silk lingerie, medicines, extra train reservations, and a host of other goods became increasingly scarce with the war. A butcher might obtain some additional meat (best not to ask from where or how—horsemeat as a main course was not unheard of) and tell longtime customers they need not use their valuable ration stamps to buy it, although a surcharge might be added to the off-the-record price. Government inspectors, despite their best efforts, could not possibly keep up with these small exchanges and expended most of their efforts on catching professional criminals moving in on this lucrative trade. One of the more popular rackets involved printing counterfeit ration stamps. Although both seller and buyer ran the risk of getting caught, the advantages to the buyer—access to otherwise restricted goods—and the monetary gains to the seller kept counterfeiters busy throughout the war. Estimates place the amount of gasoline purchased with fake stamps at 1 to 2 million gallons per week, and several thousand service stations around the country lost their business licenses when authorities found them violating rationing guidelines. And, in shades of Prohibition, bootlegging and moonshining again flourished. Distillers, limited to stocks on hand, could not keep up with demand, and so thirsty consumers looked to alternative suppliers. If needs could not be met legally, and if someone had what a buyer wanted, beating the system did not present too much of a moral dilemma for many, no matter how law abiding they were in other matters. Shortages did not magically end in 1945 and the return to peace. In the waning days of the war, meat and some clothing, especially shoes, remained in short supply. The delay meant that black marketeers stayed busy until scarce items again became available at reasonable prices. In the meantime, cattle were rustled and sold under the counter to cooperating retailers. Truckloads of shoes destined for stores were stolen


Blackouts, Brownouts, and Dim-Outs | 115 and then reappeared in selected shops; such activities kept the OPA active into 1946 as farmers and industry shifted to civilian production schedules. The OPA price controls remained in place to prevent inflationary pressures from elevating prices to a point that black market alternatives might appear attractive to consumers. In time, however, legitimate suppliers again filled shelves, once-scarce items reappeared, and the need, real or perceived, for a black market disappeared. See also: Civil Defense; Grocery Stores and Supermarkets Selected Reading Lingeman, Richard. Don’t You Know There’s a War On? The American Home Front, 1941–1945. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1970. Manchester, William. The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932–1972. 2 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974.

BLACKOUTS, BROWNOUTS, AND DIM-OUTS Journalist Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965), reporting for CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) in a nightly radio newscast picked up in the United States and Canada, stood atop tall buildings in London and vividly described, with the explosions audible in the background, the destruction wrought by the Germans during the Blitz of 1940. On the American home front, civilians grew increasingly apprehensive about the possibility of enemy aircraft appearing over their cities carrying deadly loads of bombs, especially after hearing and reading about the extensive damage and loss of life. The December 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor heightened those fears, and one of the first measures put into effect following the attack consisted of darkening much of the West and East Coasts. Under government orders, cities and towns, when threatened with aerial attack, had to extinguish all visible nighttime lighting, both exterior and interior. This directive included homes and apartments, commercial and industrial buildings, and streetlights and advertising signs. “Blackout” came to be the term used to describe such an event, one first used in a military sense during the later The Federal Arts Project created this poster in 1930s. At night, a blacked-out city pro- the early 1940s to remind citizens about their vides a much more difficult target to responsibilities during any kind of air raid aircraft than a brightly lit one. Plans warning. (Library of Congress)


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called for warning sirens to signal the approach of enemy planes and the immediate need for people to eliminate all possible artificial illumination that might be visible from the air. Confusion marred some of the early efforts to achieve blackouts, such as many cities lacking the sirens needed to signal imminent danger and having a trained staff on hand to explain to worried citizens what was happening. But time and experience overcame these logistical problems. City dwellers acquired opaque blackout curtains and shades, and localities put into action a system of air raid wardens who worked to see that extraneous lights were darkened. Before long, and in the absence of any actual enemy attacks, cities across the country learned how to plunge themselves into comparative darkness quickly and efficiently. Many of these approaches to blacking out U.S. cities were already in the planning stages in the months preceding Pearl Harbor. Federal, state, and local officials had worked to create civil defense councils, correctly anticipating the country’s entry into the war. The groups recruited thousands of citizens to act as zone and block wardens in their respective neighborhoods. Federal and state funding supplied them with World War I-era helmets painted white and emblazoned with a civil defense emblem, along with countless identifying armbands. The wardens had the authority to knock on doors and remind offenders about “lights out” or, more emphatically, “douse those lights!” By 1942 and 1943, well over 600,000 individuals nationwide, all volunteers, stood ready to take to the streets upon hearing the insistent call of the warning siren. In time, practice blackouts—unannounced, unexpected—became a part of nighttime America in cities across the land. Most of them occurred in communities situated near key defense industries, because they were thought to be prime targets for the enemy. At times, searchlights would probe the skies, their white beams crisscrossing one another. Inside the darkened buildings, people often used masking tape or thumb tacks to seal unruly curtains or ill-fitting shades. They would retreat to interior rooms, away from windows and the possibility of flying glass, and read or play games by candlelight or a low-wattage bulb. Since virtually everyone knew (or hoped they knew) that these blackouts were practice alerts and not the real thing, the time spent waiting for the all-clear signal could be a pleasant experience. Along the coasts, a different kind of darkening took place. Even before the formal declarations of hostilities in December 1941, German submarines had been harassing shipping in the Atlantic. Since Germany had been at war with England since September 1939, ships destined for the British Isles, especially those with Lend-Lease supplies, became targets for roving U-boats (for Unterseeboot, or undersea boat). When the Nazi government declared open war against the United States, all U.S. ships risked attacks, and they shortly occurred with deadly regularity off the Atlantic coast. At first, the cost in lost shipping and crews proved horrendous. Almost daily, a fresh column of smoke off New Jersey or Virginia or Florida indicated another freighter or tanker had been torpedoed. Most of these sinkings took place at night, and onlookers marveled at the accuracy of the German sailors. And then the answer came to officials: glittering coastal cities, automobile headlights shining toward the sea, garish beach amusements—any kind of bright land lights tended to silhouette ships at sea, particularly for submariners lurking farther out and


Bogart, Humphrey | 117 looking back toward the illuminated coastline. They became easy targets—sitting ducks—for torpedoes, with the result that over 300 Allied ships were sunk during 1942–1943 (this figure also includes losses in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, and not all went down at night). Civil defense and military personnel moved quickly to slow this carnage, with the result that the coastal portions of the continental United States underwent a dusk-todawn brownout on a nightly basis. Starting in March 1942, no one could display bright lights along the immediate shoreline and up to 10 to 15 miles inland; any illumination likely to be observed offshore had to be dimmed, a fact that led to the additional term “dim-out” to describe the situation. This order included vehicles of all kinds: a car or truck had to use parking lights and should avoid aiming them directly toward the ocean. This sweeping edict included streetlights and advertising signs; New York City, home of the Great White Way, protested, but to no avail. For over two years, until officials relaxed the order in 1944, when much of the German U-boat fleet had retreated or lay at the bottom of the ocean and no longer presented such a threat, coastal cities existed in a murky half-light designed to foil the undersea raiders. Fortunately, no air raids occurred and no bombs fell, but the vigilance of thousands of civil defense volunteers undoubtedly reassured the nation that every precaution had been taken to avoid another sneak attack. But despite all the precautions against surprise, everyone gave a sigh of relief when any blackout, practice or otherwise, came to a close and the mournful whine of the all-clear sirens announced the lights could again come on. Such an exhibition of community spirit further bound the country in its quest for total victory. See also: Black Market Selected Reading Hoopes, Roy. Americans Remember the Home Front: An Oral Narrative. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1977. Lingeman, Richard. Don’t You Know There’s a War On? The American Home Front, 1941–1945. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1970. McCutcheon, Marc. The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life from Prohibition through World War II. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1995.

BOGART, HUMPHREY The epitome of the hard-boiled movie tough guy, yet capable of playing sympathetic, conflicted characters as well, Humphrey Bogart (1899–1957) was born into a wealthy New York City family and seemed destined for a career in medicine, his father’s profession. But 1920 found him drifting after his discharge from the navy, and he ended up working for a theatrical company on Broadway. Bogart played a variety of bit parts to no great acclaim until late 1934, when he landed the role of gangster Duke Mantee in Robert Sherwood’s (1896–1955) play The Petrified Forest. The show ran for almost 200 performances, and Bogart received favorable notices. Warner Bros. Pictures acquired rights to the production and in the winter of 1936 released a movie version of the play with stars Bette Davis (1908–1999) and Leslie


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One of the top movie stars of the 1940s, Humphrey Bogart epitomized the hard-boiled hero. This advertisement shows him with Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon (1941); Bogart plays Sam Spade, a private detective. (Warner Bros. Pictures/Photofest)

Howard (1893–1943), plus Bogart in a re-creation of his stage role. A modest success, it led the studio to sign the actor to a contract, which in those days guaranteed work but not necessarily stardom. He played in two dozen films between 1936 and 1940, but few worth mentioning. Relegated to supporting roles, and usually typecast as a gangster, Bogart played second fiddle to Warner’s stable of male leads, such as James Cagney (1899–1986), Pat O’Brien (1899–1983), Edward G. Robinson (1893–1973), and George Raft (1895–1980). Elusive top billing finally came to the actor with High Sierra in 1941, a mystery costarring Ida Lupino (1914–1995). Bogart plays “Mad Dog” Roy Earle, an escaped criminal who meets his defiant end atop a California mountain. Bogart’s fatalism, his acceptance of things as they are, created a new side to his character, one that worked well for him. Outwardly an amoral, insouciant type, always ready with a sardonic remark, the rough exterior hides a more sensitive and complex personality within; he has deliberately erected a wall between himself and others. As a tribute to his acting ability, Bogart allows the audience to see bits of this inner man, while the other players remain unaware of him. This kind of characterization made Bogart one of the first of what came to be popularly called antiheroes, reluctant protagonists who often exhibit nonheroic traits such as cynicism and avoidance of responsibility. Its attributes go back in literature and the arts, but “antihero” in fact first found widespread use as a critical term in the early 1940s. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Bogart, Humphrey | 119 TABLE 20.

The Films of Humphrey Bogart, 1940–1949

Year

Movie Titles

Actors

1940

Brother Orchid It All Came True They Drive by Night Virginia City

Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson Bogart, Ann Sheridan Bogart, George Raft Bogart, Errol Flynn, Randolph Scott

1941

All Through the Night High Sierra The Maltese Falcon The Wagons Rolls at Night

Bogart, Conrad Veidt Bogart, Ida Lupino Bogart, Mary Astor Bogart, Sylvia Sidney

1942

Across the Pacific The Big Shot Casablanca

Bogart, Mary Astor Bogart, Irene Manning Bogart, Ingrid Bergman

1943

Action in the North Atlantic Sahara

Bogart, Raymond Massey Bogart, Bruce Bennett

1944

Passage to Marseille To Have and Have Not

Bogart, Claude Rains Bogart, Lauren Bacall

1945

Conflict

Bogart, Alexis Smith

1946

The Big Sleep

Bogart, Lauren Bacall

1947

Dark Passage Dead Reckoning The Two Mrs. Carrolls

Bogart, Lauren Bacall Bogart, Lizabeth Scott Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck

1948

Key Largo The Treasure of Sierra Madre

Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Edward G. Robinson Bogart, Walter Huston

1949

Knock on Any Door Tokyo Joe

Bogart, John Derek Bogart, Alexander Knox

Realizing they had a winning property, Warner Bros. soon followed High Sierra with The Maltese Falcon (1941). Based on a memorable 1930 novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961), it introduced moviegoers to Sam Spade, the archetypal private detective. Spade had previously appeared on film in 1931, when an early Maltese Falcon came out with Ricardo Cortez (1899–1977) in the lead. Virtually impossible to find today, the movie suffers in comparison to the 1941 version, because Cortez’s performance lacks the intensity of Bogart’s. In 1936, Satan Met a Lady reinterpreted the story, but Spade becomes Ted Shayne, and the little-known Warren William (1894–1948) plays the Spade/Shayne character too lightly for good effect. It therefore befell Humphrey Bogart to create the definitive private eye. Warner Bros. paired the actor with John Huston (1906–1987), an untried director making his debut with the Hammett story, one that he also scripted. Both apparently took to one another, and the 1941 Maltese Falcon ranks as an American film classic. A fine supporting cast—Mary Astor (1906–1987), Elisha Cook Jr. (1903–1995), Sidney Greenstreet (1879–1954), and Peter Lorre (1904–1964)—adds to the richness of the production. Dark and moody, an early example of the film noir stylistics that would © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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dominate the crime and mystery films of the decade, the picture proceeds briskly and economically and avoids much overt violence, relying instead on intelligent dialogue and solid acting. Following several forgettable films, Bogart endeared himself to audiences with one of his most memorable performances, that of night club owner Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1942). A romantic classic about World War II, it won Academy Awards for best picture, best director (Michael Curtiz, 1886–1962), and best screenplay. Five additional nominations included Claude Rains (1889–1967) for best supporting actor and Bogart himself for best actor, but he lost to Paul Lukas (1891–1971) for Watch on the Rhine. A bittersweet romance and perfect for the war years, Casablanca tells a love story about Rick and Ilsa (played by Ingrid Bergman, 1915–1982). Bogart, typically seen with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, loves Ilsa, but she happens to be married, and his personal code of honor will not allow him to interfere in that relationship. Under other circumstances, perhaps the lovers would have a chance, but Ilsa’s loyalty to her husband and to the anti-Nazi resistance causes Rick to step away in a classic ending, as she tearfully boards a waiting plane and he helplessly watches her go. What sounds like a soap opera plot works in this dark, smoke-filled drama; duty overrides affairs of the heart, especially in time of war, the looming background for Casablanca. For audiences in the grim year of 1943, it gave an inescapable message: citizens everywhere have to make sacrifices, and anything less would be selfish and unpatriotic. Later generations of audiences might view Casablanca as a sad tale of love denied, but their context would differ markedly from those who endured the countless deprivations, both personal and material, brought about by World War II. Despite the success of The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, Warner Bros. persisted in giving Bogart roles in mediocre pictures. In addition, the ongoing war affected all of Hollywood; the studios felt pressure to produce patriotic movies, and they often sacrificed quality to churn out tales featuring all-American heroes up against the evil Axis forces. And so with Action in the North Atlantic, Sahara (two 1943 motion pictures but with the latter produced by Columbia; studios occasionally loaned out their contract players), and Passage to Marseille (1944), Bogart gets to play a merchant marine officer, a tough army sergeant, and a French journalist. In each picture, he portrays his by-now characteristic reluctant hero; he does not look for conflict, but he accepts it, and in time rallies to the cause with the expected good results. The actor regained his stride that same year with To Have and Have Not (1944), a loose adaptation of American writer Ernest Hemingway’s (1899–1961) 1937 novel. Warner Bros. had given the story to William Faulkner (1897–1962), another famous novelist, for scripting, and then hired Howard Hawks (1896–1977) as director. Hawks and Faulkner proceeded to create a drama that may not be great literature (Hemingway played no role in the adaptation, and book and movie share little other than the same title), but it remains a motion picture that critics continue to dissect today. The movie also introduces audiences to Bogart’s costar, a young Lauren Bacall (b. 1924) making her film debut. Legend has it that sparks erupted on the shooting stage almost daily, as Hawks, Bacall, and Bogart, along with a number of other players,


Bogart, Humphrey | 121 provided a steady supply of fodder for the Hollywood gossip columnists. Shortly thereafter, Bogart divorced his third wife and married Bacall, a match that would endure until his death in 1957. On screen, the chemistry between the two seems palpable, and Bacall proves herself an equal to Bogart. The wisecracks and innuendoes fly thick and fast, and understanding the complex plot becomes secondary to watching the two stars play off one another. Ostensibly it revolves around the Caribbean island of Martinique during 1940, the dark days preceding the full-blown outbreak of World War II. Bogart plays Harry Morgan, a politically apathetic captain of a charter fishing boat, while Bacall portrays Slim Browning, a stranded American anxious to get back to the States. With obvious shades of Casablanca, these two characters must contend with the Gestapo and appear neutral, but of course Bogart eventually must make choices and drop the pretense of not caring and finds he has fallen in love and also taken sides. The commercial success of To Have and Have Not led Warner Bros. to pair up the team of Bogart and Bacall for other pictures. Conflict (1945) stands as below-average even for his most devoted fans. By this time, however, Humphrey Bogart commanded the box office; posters advertising his films usually had his name in print larger than that promoting the titles of his features. Virtually anything he appeared in drew a crowd. So it was that marquees were soon flashing “Bogart-Bacall!” for a new picture directed by Howard Hawks. The Big Sleep (1946), a mystery opus based on a similarly titled 1939 novel by Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) and Bogart’s first postwar effort, boasts screenplay credits by none other than William Faulkner, just as in To Have and Have Not. Bogart plays Philip Marlowe, the battered and slightly worn private detective whom Chandler had introduced in his book, a character not unlike Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade from The Maltese Falcon. Bacall takes the role of the rich daughter of the even wealthier man who hired Marlowe. Raymond Chandler seemingly created Philip Marlowe in 1939 with Bogart in mind, although the actor had hardly established his movie persona at that time, and the movie version of The Big Sleep lay six years in the future. But Marlowe, a reluctant knighterrant who holds off a world of cheats, liars, and frauds through weary cynicism and a detached view of his surroundings, reads on the printed page much like Bogart performing on the silver screen. Several lesser movies followed The Big Sleep in what seemed a recurring cyclical pattern of two or three mediocre pictures and then an outstanding one. In this instance, Bogart resumed his winning ways with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), an adventure film that reunited him with director John Huston for the third time, a fruitful collaboration. With this motion picture, Huston won an another Academy Award for best director, and his father, Walter Huston (1884–1950), a fine actor who costars with Bogart, won best supporting actor from the Academy, making them the first father-son pairing to be so honored. The story, for which John Huston also wrote the screenplay—and won yet an additional Academy Award for his efforts—originated in a novel by the enigmatic American author B. Traven (ca.1882–1969). First published in 1927 in a German edition, it received an English translation during the early 1930s. In 1947, the novel caught director Huston’s eye, and the film, now a classic, appeared in theaters the following year.


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Focusing on greed and what it does to otherwise decent people, the movie shows the disintegration of Fred C. Dobbs (played by Bogart) and his two companions, played by Walter Huston and Tim Holt (1918–1973), while searching for gold in a remote, mountainous section of Mexico. After striking it rich, but pursued by bandits and victims of their own incompetence and distrust, they lose everything. A bleak, uncompromising picture, with Bogart playing against type, it did not initially do well at the box office. In time, however, audiences came to appreciate the superior acting and tight storyline, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre has long since joined a select group of motion pictures deemed among the best of the 20th century. The team of Warner Bros., John Huston, and Humphrey Bogart immediately followed The Treasure of the Sierra Madre with Key Largo (1948). This film also features Lauren Bacall and a classic movie villain, Edward G. Robinson, here portraying a gangster reminiscent of some of the characters he played over a decade earlier, especially Little Caesar (1931). He was Rico then, and now he becomes (Johnny) Rocco. The plot gathers the cast in a seedy, semitropical hotel on the Florida Keys, and it all becomes rather stagy, as well it should, since Huston based his picture on a 1939 Broadway play by the renowned Maxwell Anderson (1888–1959). Bogart plays his alienated, reluctant antihero well; Bacall adds a note of glamour; and Robinson steals the show, sneering and snarling his way through the entire production. Key Largo captures some of the disappointment the country experienced in the immediate postwar years. After successfully fighting a world war, returning veterans—the role taken by Bogart—found that numerous problems such as crime and inequality— still plagued the nation. The promise of the peacetime era continued to elude some citizens, and the disillusionment that marks many of his film characterizations constitutes a significant part of this motion picture. Humphrey Bogart closed out the 1940s as one of the biggest stars in American movies; his presence in a picture practically guaranteed at least some box office success. As a result, in 1949 he broke with Warner Bros. and formed his own production company, Santana Pictures Corporation (distributed by Columbia), in order to have more control over his material and the roles he played. Unfortunately, his new enterprise got off to a disappointing start with Knock on Any Door and Tokyo Joe (both 1949). Despite some effective film noir photography, two-dimensional characters and didactic plotting serve mainly to create a gloomy mood that Bogart’s presence does little to lessen. Made in 1949 but not released until early 1950, Chain Lightning traded on his name as a star, but Bogart gives a listless performance playing a test pilot and World War II veteran. Not in any league with The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, or The Big Sleep, it only adds to a short string of mediocre films he appeared in during the close of the decade. With the 1950s, things picked up again for the actor. United Artists released The African Queen in 1951, one of those enduring movies that deserves the term “classic.” Not really a film of the 1940s but one that gives Bogart a meaty role to show off his skills, it finally earned him a much-deserved Academy Award for best actor and capped off over a decade of extraordinary filmmaking. Of all the big-name male movie stars of the 1940s, perhaps none summed up, for the times, an attitude, an approach to life, better than Humphrey Bogart. He became an icon for the war and postwar years, one of a handful of stars who can be thought representative of the 1940s. His


Boogie-Woogie | 123 cynicism, his outsider stance, may act as barriers to keep others at a distance and block involvement, but, like most masks, beneath those traits, a more traditional, involved protagonist can be found. See also: Radio Programming: Action, Crime, Police, and Detective Shows Selected Reading Schickel, Richard, with George Perry. Bogie: A Celebration of the Life and Films of Humphrey Bogart. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006. Ursini, James. Humphrey Bogart. Los Angeles: Taschen, 2007.

BOOGIE-WOOGIE No one knows, with any precision, where or how the term “boogie-woogie” originated or evolved. Theories abound: from the French bouger, to move or stir; from West African bogi, to dance; a 19th-century slang term, “boogie,” used by rural Southern blacks for syphilis; and another black term, this time a verb, for either partying or having sex (“going to boogie”). All the foregoing possibilities doubtless possess elements of truth, some probably more than others. The addition of “woogie,” possibly a nonsense word in itself, made a duplication of sounds when combined with boogie. The first documented used of boogie-woogie as a musical term occurred in the late 1920s, appearing in a tune called “Pinetop’s Boogie-Woogie” (recorded in 1928), and written by pianist Clarence “Pinetop” Smith (1904–1929). Regardless of its linguistic origins, boogie-woogie emerged as a distinctive musical style for piano, one marked by a strong, percussive beat that encouraged unrestrained dancing. The pianist’s left hand played a repeated bass line while the right created the melody. A sensual music, almost primitive in its simplicity, its incessant beat and suggestive pauses contained sexual overtones, particularly in the hands of skilled performers. Growing out of traditions found in ragtime, barrelhouse piano, and early jazz, it became enormously popular in the late 1930s and early 1940s. George Thomas (1885–1930) can be counted a pioneer in the idiom; he cre- Essentially a piano player’s music, boogieated an early form of boogie-woogie woogie enjoyed its greatest commercial success during the 1940s. Shown here is Pete Johnson, in his “New Orleans Hop Scop Blues” a popular boogie-woogie stylist; he frequently (1916). Following that groundbreaking teamed up with blues singer “Big Joe” Turner work, a group of talented black pianists, for a series of recordings. (Photofest)


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including Albert Ammons (1907–1949), Charles Edward “Cow Cow” Davenport (1894–1955), Pete Johnson (1904–1967), and Meade “Lux” Lewis (1905–1964), all of whom played piano in the 1920s and on into the 1940s, took Thomas’s innovations and created the format that took the country by storm a few years later. When aficionado and producer John Hammond (1910–1987) staged two concerts at Carnegie Hall in 1938 and 1939, promoters called them From Spirituals to Swing. The programs featured boogie-woogie, among many other types of blues, jazz, and swing, and helped bring about increased public awareness of the style. Pete Johnson, along with singer “Big Joe” Turner (1911–1985), roused the audience with “Roll ‘Em, Pete”; Meade “Lux” Lewis executed “Honky Tonk Train Blues,” and Albert Ammons offered “Swanee River Boogie.” For many in the audience, these performances introduced them to boogie-woogie. Country artists, intrigued by the insistent boogie-woogie beat, experimented with combining it with traditional Western music. Johnny Barfield (1909–1974), a regional favorite in the South, recorded his own version of Pinetop Smith’s “Boogie Woogie” in 1939; its success led to groups such as the Delmore Brothers (Alton, 1908–1964, and Rabon, 1916–1952) issuing titles like “Freight Train Boogie,” “Boogie Woogie Baby,” “Mobile Boogie,” and “Hillbilly Boogie.” Bob Wills (1905–1975), one of the leaders of Western Swing, also experimented with the format. Meanwhile, the leading swing bands made up mainly of white performers, began putting boogie-woogie numbers in their repertoires, since dancers liked them so much. Tommy Dorsey (1905–1956) and his band in 1938 had scored with “Boogie Woogie,” an adaptation of the Pinetop Smith chestnut. A new ensemble emerged when two sidemen from the big bands of the 1930s joined forces in 1939. They called their creation Will Bradley and His Orchestra, featuring Ray McKinley. Bradley (1912–1989; ne Wilbur Schwichtenberg), a trombonist, and McKinley (1910–1995), a drummer, quickly capitalized on the craze for boogie-woogie by stringing together a succession of hits with titles like “Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar,” “Scrub Me, Mama, with a Boogie Beat” (both 1940), and “Bounce Me, Brother, with a Solid Four” (1941). They received invaluable assistance in these efforts from their pianist, Freddie Slack (1910–1965), himself a virtuoso interpreter of the boogie-woogie style. The BradleyMcKinley orchestra enjoyed its biggest hit, however, with a novelty number incongruously called “Celery Stalks at Midnight” (1940); as imaginative as it sounds, the title, conceived on the spot, really means nothing beyond its playfulness. But listeners liked its bouncy rhythm, and “Celery Stalks at Midnight” served as one of the few charted tunes produced by this clever but swinging band. The popular Andrews Sisters (LaVerne, 1911–1967; Maxene, 1916–1995; Patty, b. 1918) created a wartime classic with “The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (of Company B).” Freddie Slack, who had formed his own band featuring vocalist Ella Mae Morse (1924–1999), likewise struck gold with “Cow Cow Boogie” in 1943. Shortly thereafter, however, the boogie-woogie craze began to fade, and soon became a relic of the musical past. Although the greatest commercial successes with boogie-woogie were scored by white swing bands, their version of the style drained the music of its elemental force, diluting it into a form of bland popular music. The sensuality—the sexuality—inherent


Book Clubs | 125 in authentic boogie-woogie had disappeared. But, like later protests about rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s, these “cleaned up” (i.e., white, commercial, mass market) versions assuaged nervous critics, convinced that no good could come from such a suggestive form of music. See also: Country Music; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows Selected Reading Boogie-Woogie. www.boogiewoogie.com/index.php/history/ Silvester, Peter J. A Left Hand Like God: A History of Boogie-Woogie Piano. New York: Da Capo, 1989.

BOOK CLUBS Membership in a book club offered people an easy way to decide what to read and a convenient way to purchase a book. It proved particularly attractive to readers who lived in rural areas and small communities during World War II, a time of gasoline rationing. A 1946 article in the New York Times estimated that most of the mailings from the nation’s two largest book clubs, Book-of-the-Month Club (BOMC), founded in 1926, and the Literary Guild, which began in 1927, went to people who resided in towns and cities of fewer than 100,000 residents and 10 miles from a book store. These two mail-order operations survived the Great Depression, flourished in the second half of the 1930s, and entered the 1940s expecting even greater success. They were not disappointed. With other commodities in short supply and cash in abundance because of the war, a book craze transpired. Americans read as never before, with about 50 different clubs offering memberships, a wide variety of choices, and bargains. The BOMC’s selections tended to be more literary, while the Literary Guild, despite its name, offered lighter reading. Other clubs specialized with volumes tailored to varying tastes: the Catholic Children’s Book Club, Classics Club, Executive Book Club, History Book Club, Limited Editions Club, Mystery Book Club, Non-Fiction Book Club, and Scientific Book Club, to mention a few. Readers who could not find a topic to satisfy their preferences from all of these choices could join the Surprise Package Book Club and perhaps enjoy whatever arrived in the mail. Doubleday & Company, one of the nation’s largest publishing houses, dating back to the 19th century, purchased the Literary Guild in 1934, and during the 1940s added three additional clubs: Junior Literary Guild, Dollar Book Club, and Book League of America. Particularly successful was its One Dollar Book Club, introduced in 1930. Ten years later the name had been shortened to the Dollar Book Club, and selections consisted of reprints of best sellers. To secure membership, Doubleday advertised its clubs heavily in newspapers and magazines. Large display ads for the Dollar Book Club highlighted the benefits of membership; for example, one that appeared in the New York Times during 1942 shows a book that originally cost $2.75 (approximately $35 in 2008 dollars) in stores and the club’s bargain price of $1 (approximately $13 in 2008 dollars).


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In 1943, Sears, Roebuck and Company, Simon & Schuster, and Consolidated Book Publishers jointly created the People’s Book Club, evidence that such ventures had attained the status of a big business. This partnership correctly predicted the existence of a market for books not yet reached by other clubs, one that could be tapped through Sears’ catalog and retail outlets. The club operated on a membership plan already tested by the pioneers, one that offered subscribers a bonus gift book for joining, required the purchase of at least four selections a year at the price of $1.66 each (approximately $20 in 2008 dollars), and a free book for every four bought, a good deal for readers when looked at in its entirety. But the People’s Book Club differed from the older clubs, as promised by its name. The monthly selections for the organization came from the results of surveys conducted by the Gallup Poll, not from a panel or committee of literary experts. With members regularly asked about their reading interests and backgrounds, the club could honestly advertise its selections as “The People’s Choice.” The Sears-backed club claimed a membership of 300,000 in 1946, with women making up 80 percent of the total. Sixty-six percent of all members resided in towns with populations under 10,000 people, and they averaged 35 years in age. Education levels were mixed: 60 percent had attended high school, and 40 percent had some college experience. After just three years of existence, the People’s Book Club attained fourth place in total members to the Literary Guild’s 1,100,000, the Book-of-the-Month Club’s 900,000, and the Dollar Book Club’s 600,000. Doubleday, noting the success of the Sears project, started promoting the Literary Guild in the 1946 spring catalog for Montgomery Ward, another large mail-order retailer. Many factors contributed to an increase in the number of readers and the proliferation of book clubs during the 1940s. Inexpensive paperback reprints of hardcover best sellers made their appearance at the beginning of the decade and could be found at a variety of shopping locations in addition to bookstores—newsstands, supermarkets, cigar stores, and novelty shops. At an average price of 25 cents each ($3.53 in 2008 dollars), a large number of people purchased them, increasing the number of active readers across the country. Throughout World War II, most USO (United Service Organizations) clubs included libraries that quickly became well stocked with thousands of volumes donated through Victory Book Rallies held weekly across the United States. Soldiers, frequently with time on their hands and looking for something to do, regularly visited USO clubs and became accustomed to picking up a book, reading it, and then trading it for another. When the war ended, they took this habit home. As the country adjusted to a peacetime existence and families reunited, some recreational pursuits were briefly put on hold. In this atmosphere, book clubs experienced a drop in membership even though returning veterans and others were eager to read. An increase in the costs of publishing and distribution through the mail also contributed to the decline. Once businesses and industries retooled for postwar production, however, a boom began on many fronts, including book clubs. By late 1947, with more discretionary money in their pockets, countless Americans easily supported a wave of new publications, the reprinting of old standards, and the offerings from the clubs. In fact, in 1949, BOMC shipped its 100 millionth book and continued trying out new services


Bowling | 127 such as the Classical Music Club. Other book clubs also prospered and their growth continued throughout the 20th century. See also: Advertising; Hobbies; Leisure and Recreation Selected Reading Tebbel, John. A History of Book Publishing in the United States. Vol. 4, The Great Change, 1940– 1980. New York: R. R. Bowker, 1981. West, James L. W., III. American Authors and the Literary Marketplace since 1900. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.

BOWLING By 1946, tenpin bowling had become a well-established American sport, a pleasurable recreational activity for men, women, and children. A study for Bowling magazine reported the number of bowlers in the United States to be somewhere between 10 million and 15 million, a higher figure than for any other competitive sport and considerably greater than that reported by the U.S. government (slightly over 1 million). Whichever can be considered the correct statistic, the number of bowlers dramatically increased from 1940 to 1949 as Americans fell in love with the game. What had once been an activity for working-class men of modest means now attracted women in significant numbers and had attained participation for both genders across occupational categories and income levels. Brought to the New World by the earliest European settlers and usually played on lawns outside taverns, bowling involves throwing a heavy ball down a cleared lane in an attempt to knock over wooden pins. By the early 1800s, bowling had gained popularity among working-class men, and New York City saw the country’s first indoor alley in 1840. The original nine-pin game between two players or teams frequently served as a means of gambling and because of this component was outlawed in 1841. From the wording of the prohibition, the addition of a 10th pin made the game legal. By the late 1800s, this new form of bowling, now a more respectable activity, had advanced from just a passing recreational pastime to a recognized American sport. Around the turn of the 20th century, a few women and children also played the game. During World War I, participation by women, mainly those holding factory jobs, grew and bowling prospered. Commercial establishments began to sponsor women’s teams and tournaments, and the Women’s National Bowling Association, later renamed the Women’s International Bowling Congress (WIBC), formed in 1916. Nevertheless, men still represented two out of every three bowlers. In the early decades of the 20th century, most bowling alleys were located in sleazy downtown buildings or off back alleys. But during the 1930s and 1940s, various community groups recognized the game’s social and health benefits, and bowling alleys started to appear in church basements, lodge halls, student unions, industrial plants, and in respectable facilities built specifically for the game. The proliferation of alleys proved helpful in making the game available to many during wartime gasoline rationing, a condition that forced people to seek leisure and recreational outlets near their homes.


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World War II touched off another surge for women bowlers. As they replaced men on industrial assembly lines, they formed their own company leagues. Bowling alley managers claimed that women accounted for 60 percent of their business. The WIBC supported the war effort and provided money for a bomber christened Miss WIBC and then raised funds for the purchase of an ambulance and three ambulance planes, activities that brought national attention to bowling, especially women bowlers. Military administrators also recognized the importance of soldiers being able to continue to engage in their favorite sports and also encouraged the taking up of new ones. The installation of more than 3,000 alleys at military bases in the United States and overseas enabled seasoned bowlers to continue to play and introduced this pastime to thousands of newcomers. The Bowlers Victory Legion, founded in 1942 to raise money for recreational equipment for men and women in the armed forces, assisted in these efforts. Also, the National Bowling Congress (NBC) arranged for special tournaments and matches to raise funds for the war effort. After the war, Americans gained more leisure time; bowling, as an inexpensive and easy-to-learn sport with no age or gender restrictions, entered its golden age. It received a huge boost as a universally popular pastime when, in 1947, President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) had lanes installed in the White House. That same year, the first televised coverage of bowling occurred, an event that had a significant impact on the future popularity of this game as a healthy family outing. Whereas in the 1930s newspapers devoted space to individual games and players’ averages and scores, and magazines provided cover stories on the sport, it took television in the late 1940s and early 1950s to popularize bowling on a national scale. Easy and inexpensive to shoot with the clumsy equipment that characterized the early days of TV, the medium offered Americans an intimate view of this developing activity. But a technological innovation, the automatic pinsetter, patented by Gottfried Schmidt (n.d.) in 1946, perhaps provided the tipping point that transformed bowling alleys from seedy operations to family centers. First shown to the public at the national championships sponsored by the American Bowling Congress (ABC) in 1946, they did not become available for widespread use until the early 1950s. Schmidt’s invention eliminated the need for pin boys and made pin setting and ball retrieval safer, faster, and more reliable. Since the alleys no longer needed schoolboys for the operation of the alleys, the establishments could present a more respectable appearance, making bowling more attractive to housewives during the day while their husbands were at work. Throughout the later 1940s, bowling alley proprietors, in order to fill their alleys, provided a clean and attractive venue; formed leagues for men, women, families, and youth; and sponsored industrial leagues and tournaments. The Bowling Proprietors’ Association of America supported these efforts by holding sanctioned tournaments as a way to create national champions, legitimize the sport, and bring even more people to the alleys. These tournaments and subsequent challenge matches featured notables such as Hank Marino (1889–1976), Andy Varipapa (1891–1984), and Ned Day (1911– 1971), three of the professional stars of the era. Varipapa and Day also served as goodwill ambassadors, advancing bowling as both a sport and a family game. Some time prior to the 1940s, Varipapa developed a


Boxing | 129 unique style of trick shot bowling and in 1934 starred in the first bowling film short, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Strikes and Spares. The studio featured him again in 1948 with another short feature, Bowling Tricks. In addition to working as an instructor and exhibition bowler, Varipapa won the 1946 and 1947 all-star tournaments and was recognized as the bowler of the year in 1948. Day, in addition to obtaining championship status, toured widely promoting the sport. In 1948, he authored a book titled How to Bowl. That year, Day also journeyed to the White House to give President Truman a bowling demonstration. The American Bowling Congress contributed to these efforts by instituting a hall of fame in 1941; only baseball (1936) and golf (1940) have older halls of fame. Eleven inductees made the grade that year, including past greats such as Gilbert Zunker (1901– 1938) and 1940s tournament champion Hank Marino. Ned Day finally received the honor in 1952 and Andy Varipapa in 1957. By the end of the 1940s, the working man’s game had changed to an activity for everyone. But marketing often focused on middle-class women by advertising beauty salons and other shopping opportunities for the convenience of its female clientele. The establishments continued to host leagues and tournaments as they simultaneously evolved into family entertainment centers that contained game rooms for children along with snack bars and other amenities. By 1949, over 6,000 bowling centers dotted the nation and demonstrated extraordinary growth and change. Affordable and playable by all, the United States Bowling Congress, an organization formed in 2005 by a merger of the American Bowling Congress, Women’s International Bowling Congress, Young American Bowling Alliance, and USA Bowling, currently governs and sanctions the sport. See also: Leisure and Recreation; Technology Selected Reading Bowling. www.bowl.com/aboutUSBC/history/ Grinfelds, Vesma, and Bonnie Hulstrand. Right Down Your Alley: The Complete Book of Bowling. West Point, NY: Leisure Press, 1985. Hurley, Andrew. Diners, Bowling Alleys, and Trailer Parks: Chasing the American Dream in Postwar Consumer Culture. New York: Basic Books, 2001. Weiskopf, Herman. The Perfect Game: The World of Bowling. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1978.

BOXING Despite setbacks created by World War II, the 1940s were a popular period for boxing. Champions became war heroes as they fought in battles on foreign soil, helped sell war bonds back home, and posed for defense posters. Championships were won and lost; world heavyweight champion Joe Louis (1914–1981) received both civilian and military awards for sportsmanship and extraordinary service and sacrifice; middleweights Rocky Graziano (1922–1990) and Tony Zale (1913–1997) formed a rivalry often described as one of the fiercest in boxing history.


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Following three years of service in the U.S. Army, heavyweight champion Joe Louis returned to the ring. He electrified the boxing world with this close win against Jersey Joe Walcott (above, right) in 1948. (Photofest)

Fistfighting can be traced to ancient times, and bare-knuckle bouts for the sake of holding an event frequently occurred throughout the United States during its early history. A reputation of lawlessness surrounded these matches, usually held at gambling establishments and accompanied by drinking and spectators having their own fights. The introduction of rules and gloves in the mid-1800s gradually changed the nature of boxing. Further legitimizing occurred in 1921 with the founding of the National Boxing Association (NBA), renamed the World Boxing Association (WBA) in 1962. Since then, three other groups—the World Boxing Council (WBC; 1963), the International Boxing Federation (IBF; 1983), and World Boxing Organization (WBO; 1988)—have also formed to sanction official matches and award world championship titles at the professional level. The popularity of prizefighting declined in the early 1930s, but the ascendancy of Joe Louis, champion from 1937 until his retirement in 1949, brought new life and enthusiasm to boxing events. A June 18, 1941, match between Louis, “The Brown


Boxing | 131 Bomber,” and Billy Conn (1917–1993), “The Pittsburgh Kid,” at the Polo Grounds in New York, has come to be known as one of the greatest fights of all time. Conn gave up his light heavyweight title in order to qualify as a heavyweight. In this match, Louis outweighed Conn by 30 pounds, but the doughty challenger often outboxed and outslugged the champion. When Conn left his corner for the 13th round, he led in points; the two boxers parried, but then Louis unleashed a flurry of devastating blows that knocked Conn to the canvas; he tried to get up, but with two seconds remaining in the round, the referee counted him out and Louis retained his heavyweight crown. Soon after this event, World War II practically froze boxing activities while many fighters entered military service. In December 1943, the New York Times reported that 4,019 boxers including active and inactive world champions Billy Conn (light heavyweight, army), Jack Dempsey (1895–1983, heavyweight; coast guard), Beau Jack (b. Sidney Jack, 1921–2000, lightweight, army), Joe Louis (army), Bob Montgomery (1919–1998, lightweight, army), Sugar Ray Robinson (1921–1989, welterweight and middleweight, army), Barney Ross (1909–1967, lightweight and welterweight, U.S. Marines), and Tony Zale (1913–1997, middleweight, navy) were fighting the Axis powers instead of each other. Dempsey and Louis never saw combat but served as instructors of physical education instead. Boxing promoters quickly joined the athletes in supporting the war and staged tournaments to sell war bonds, often holding them in the early morning hours for the benefit of night-shift defense workers. Exhibition bouts regularly occurred at military training camps. Joe Louis fought Buddy Baer (1915–1986) on January 9, 1942, and gave his entire purse to the Navy Relief Fund. In a fight with Abe Simon (1913–1969) on March 27, 1942, he again gave his winnings to the war effort, this time to the Army Emergency Relief Organization. After the war, Joe Louis resumed professional boxing and dominated both his division and the sport, while other notable American boxers won championships in their respective divisions. This new group of boxers attracted larger and larger crowds and rose to stardom by the end of the decade. Each of the champions listed in Table 21 managed to gain individualized fame during the 1940s. Rocky Graziano, who fought for 10 years and held the title of world middleweight champion for less than a year, came the closest to being as famous as Joe Louis. As a professional boxer, he received heavy publicity because of a combination of boxing successes and a colorful lifestyle that included imprisonment for being AWOL (Absent With Out Leave) from the army and a suspension by the New York State Athletic Commission for failure to report an alleged bribery attempt. The highpoint of Graziano’s career came over a 21-month period that included three fiercely competitive fights against Tony Zale for the middleweight title. Zale, nine years Graziano’s senior, knocked out Graziano in the sixth round in 1946 before a crowd of over 39,000 fans at Yankee Stadium. Graziano likewise stopped Zale in six rounds in 1947 in Chicago, only to lose the third match, held in 1948 at Ruppert Stadium in Newark, New Jersey, on a third-round knockout. Zale met defeat three months later when he lost the championship to French boxer Marcel Cerdan (1916–1949). Graziano and Zale retired shortly thereafter with similar records—Graziano, 67 wins


TABLE 21.

Representative Titled American Boxers, 1940–1949, Sanctioned by the World Boxing Association

Name

Turned Professional

Heavyweight Division (Over 175 pounds) Joe Louis Ezzard Charles

1934 1940

Light Heavyweight Division (Between 160 and 175 pounds) Gus Lesnevich 1934 Middleweight Division (Between 147 and 160 pounds) Rocky Graziano 1940 Tony Zale Late 1930s

Nickname

The Ring magazine’s Fighter of the Year

1937–1949 1949–1950

Brown Bomber Cincinnati Cobra

1941 1949

1941; 1946–1948

None

1947

The Rock Man of Steel

1946

Year(s) Held World Title

Jake LaMotta

1941

1947–1948 1941–1947; June 1948–September 1948 1949–1951

Welterweight Division (Between 135 and 147pounds) Sugar Ray Robinson

1940

1946–1950

Sugar Ray.

1942 1951

Lightweight Division (Between 126 and 135 pounds) Beau Jack Ike Williams

1940 1940

1943–1944 1945–1951

No nickname No nickname

1944 1948

Featherweight Division (118–126 pounds) Willie Pep

1940

1942 June 1946–October 1948 February 1949–September 1950

Will o’ the Wisp

1945

Sandy Saddler

1944

October 1948–February 1949

No nickname


Bronx Bull and Raging Bull

Boxing | 133 out of 83 matches and Zale, 67 out of 87. Graziano wrote a somewhat fictional autobiography, Somebody Up There Likes Me, in 1955, which became a 1956 movie starring Paul Newman (1925–2008) as the fighter. Another popular boxer, Jake LaMotta (b. 1921), gained renown for his immense punching power. Early in his career, he adopted a fighting style of staying physically close and stalking his opponent. With this approach, he managed to defeat Sugar Ray Robinson in 1943, the first upset for Robinson as a professional after 40 consecutive wins. LaMotta, known as the “Bronx Bull,” wrote a memoir, Raging Bull: My Story (1970), which gave him a second nickname. It served as the basis of a 1980 movie of the same name starring Robert De Niro (b. 1943) in an Academy Award–winning performance. Ranked among the top three welterweight and middleweight boxers of his era, and frequently cited as one of the greatest boxers of all time, Sugar Ray Robinson held the welterweight title for six years during the 1940s and won the middleweight title five times between 1951 and 1960. In the early 1940s, having just turned professional, Robinson attracted some of the largest crowds ever assembled for a fight. While in the army, he served with Joe Louis. Each went on tours performing exhibition bouts in front of U.S. troops. The Ring magazine named him the fighter of the decade for the 1950s. Robinson retired in 1965 after a career of 25 years and a record of 174 wins, 19 losses, and 6 draws. Willie Pep fought for 26 years and lays claim to the most wins in boxing history— 230 out of 242 bouts. Known for his speed and finesse, he was likened to a tap dancer in boxing gloves and earned the nickname “Will o’ the Wisp.” He achieved his first world championship just two years after becoming a professional in 1940. Three years later, he had a record of 61–0 when he met defeat for the first time in a contest with Sammy Angott (1915–1980). A favorite boxing legend has it that, in 1946, in a match with a relatively unknown Jackie Graves (1915–2005), “The Austin Atom.” Pep won the third round without throwing a punch, although contemporary reports show otherwise. Fable or truth, Pep won with a knockout in the eighth round. As reigning world featherweight champion, Pep boasted a record of 134–1–1 with 43 knockouts when he met Sandy Saddler on October 29, 1948. Saddler had a knockout victory in the fourth round, giving Pep his second defeat and taking the featherweight crown away from him. Saddler went on to be best known for a four-bout series with Pep, who recaptured the title in February 1949, but lost again to Saddler in 1950 and 1951. This last fight, reported to be one of the dirtiest championship fights ever fought at that time, caused the referee to stop it in the 10th round. Saddler retired in 1956 and Pep in 1960. Hollywood started producing motion pictures with boxing plots during the silent movie days. The 1930s saw many stories of this sport come to the screen, such as Winner Take All (1932) with James Cagney (1899–1986) in the lead and They Made Me A Criminal (1939) starring John Garfield (1913–1969). Studios produced only a few such pictures during the war years. In the postwar period, features on the topic included Joe Palooka, Champ (1946), based on the heavyweight boxer in cartoonist Ham Fisher’s (1901–1955) highly successful comic strip creation, Joe Palooka. It ran in newspapers from 1930 to 1984, with new artists taking it over after Fisher’s death.


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In the boxing world, the term “palooka,” which predates Fisher’s series, describes a mediocre prizefighter. Other films from this time dealing with the sport of boxing include Body and Soul (1947), In This Corner (1948), The Fight Never Ends (1949), and The Set-Up (1949). Plots tend to revolve around boxers either breaking into the profession or those over the hill. Beautiful girlfriends or sexy wives plead with them to quit as shady promoters and managers lurk in the background. The popularity of boxing grew in the 1940s, thanks to crowd-pleasing and recordbreaking fighters, but also because of the availability of television. Because of the ease of televising events in the ring, this new technological phenomenon featured prizefighting in its early years. Over time, televised bouts elevated many boxers to household names. Despite the brutality and physical dangers that could now be viewed on a TV screen, the number of fans grew. Although television brought boxing to the attention of more people, it also contributed to a significant decline in ringside attendance in the 1950s. See also: Comic Strips; Movies; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk; Technology Selected Reading Boxing events. www.youtube.com, Marcel Cerdan vs. Tony Zale, 1948; Zale vs. Graziano, 1948; Rocky Graziano vs. Tony Zale III; Sugar Ray Robinson Fights Jake Lamotta 1; Sugar Ray Robinson Highlights; Ike Williams vs. Beau Jack, July 12, 1948; In This Corner—Willie Pep; Willie Pep vs. Sandy Saddler. Sammons, Jeffrey T. Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Sugar, Bert Randolph, and the Editors of Ring Magazine. 100 Years of Boxing. New York: Galley Press, 1982.

BOYD, WILLIAM (HOPALONG CASSIDY) As a young man, William Boyd (1895–1972) journeyed to Hollywood in the 1920s in search of fame and fortune. The celebrated director Cecil B. De Mille (1881–1959) took notice of the actor, and thereafter his star rose quickly. Boyd soon became a dashing leading man in a number of big-budget silent pictures, including top billing in The Volga Boatman (1926). A good speaking voice led Boyd into sound movies, and his future looked bright, but a publicity mix-up with another actor named Boyd dimmed his hopes and he soon had to search for lesser roles, including Westerns. Fortune again smiled in 1935, when he won the lead in a new cowboy film then in the planning stages. That year, Boyd appeared in Hop-Along Cassidy (1935; retitled in 1951 as Hopalong Cassidy Enters), the first release in a long-running series of motion pictures that would endure until 1948 and Strange Gamble, the last feature-length entry in the saga of Hopalong Cassidy. These events transpired because Harry Sherman (1884–1952), an independent Hollywood producer with a good eye for potential properties, discovered both Boyd and the writings of Clarence E. Mulford (1883–1956). In 1907, Mulford had published a book of his short Western tales that had previously appeared in magazines. He called the collection Bar 20, and in it he featured a ranch foreman named Buck Peters. Readers, however, were intrigued by a whiskey-drinking, tobacco-chewing, foul-mouthed, © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Boyd, William (Hopalong Cassidy) | 135 mean-spirited character who worked at the Bar 20 named Hop-a-Long Cassidy (later simplified to “Hopalong”). This generally disreputable cowhand had earned his unusual first name because of a gunshot wound in the thigh that created a unique gait. Mulford wisely sensed that Cassidy should play a larger role in subsequent works, and the author created 27 additional novels that ran until 1941 and Hopalong Cassidy Serves a Writ. During those 34 years, the books sold well. In fact, after a nine-year absence from bookstores, Cassidy reappeared in a print format, but this time Mulford did not do the writing. In 1950, and employing the pen name of Tex Burns, Louis L’Amour (1908–1988), later a best-selling author of This picture, taken in 1940, shows actor WilWestern novels himself, wrote four addi- liam Boyd (1895–1972). He made his fame and tional Cassidy tales for paperback distri- fortune portraying Hopalong Cassidy, an upbution. His publishers timed their release right cowboy that appeared in a string of Hollyto capitalize on the enormously popular wood B Westerns made between 1935 and 1948. Hopalong Cassidy show then playing on His greatest popularity came in the late 1940s, when these movies played on early television. the NBC (National Broadcasting Com- (Photofest) pany) television network; aside from payment at the time, however, L’Amour neither received nor took credit for his work. With Mulford’s continuing success, Harry Sherman gained movie rights to them and convinced Paramount Pictures to distribute any motion pictures that might result. He then proceeded to search for the proper leading man to play Cassidy. Although several actors sought the role, the handsome Boyd, now prematurely gray and suitably mature, landed the part. During the 34 years Mulford worked on the series, the once-notorious Cassidy had evolved into a nondrinking, nonsmoking, well-spoken, generous cowboy who sought justice and fair play in the West. Almost from the beginning of his association with Sherman, William Boyd made it clear he had his own ideas about the development of the character, although Cassidy’s cinematic evolution mirrored in many ways Mulford’s literary approach. Despite the many similarities in characterization, only the first few movies in the series were derived directly from Mulford’s stories; within a short time, professional script writers had taken on the task of writing new adventures and refining the film persona of Hopalong Cassidy to better fit the ways in which Boyd perceived him. Between 1935 and 1948, the duration of the movie series, Boyd made a remarkable 66 Hopalong Cassidy feature films. Of these, 26 came out in the 1930s, and the remaining 40 saw release in the 1940s, which means that Boyd averaged over 4 new productions a year for some 15 years. With an eye to television, Boyd in the late 1940s © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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bought up the rights to all 66 motion pictures, since the Hollywood studios thought they had run their course and saw no use for such a large stock of B Westerns. The move cost him dearly—he sold virtually everything he owned, including his ranch, to acquire them—but it paid substantial rewards in due time. Television stations were hungry for usable motion pictures, and the movie industry displayed a reluctance to release anything to this erstwhile competitor. Boyd, however, harbored no such reluctance, and in a brilliant move edited many of his earlier movies, which usually ran an hour or so, so that they played for 30 minutes, making them extremely attractive to television stations around the country. In order to have an ample supply of material, he also appeared in an additional 52 new 30-minute productions specifically designed for the small screen. These efforts paid off handsomely for Boyd. At first he leased his movies to individual stations, but, as the medium evolved, he found a taker with NBC-TV. Beginning in the summer of 1949, the network carried Hopalong Cassidy to its affiliates, a relationship that continued until the end of 1951 and made its star a household name. In 1952–1953, the show went into syndication, whereby any station, network or not, could rent Boyd’s films, a move that only heightened Cassidy’s popularity. Since interest in Hopalong Cassidy never flagged during the decade, Boyd also moved into the medium of radio. In 1948, he agreed to work with a small specialty radio company, Commodore Productions, based in California. He prepared sample transcription disks that were sent to numerous independent stations, and slowly a handful responded positively. Audiences liked these early shows, and they received good ratings. The small MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System) agreed to carry Hopalong Cassidy at the beginning of 1950, and in the fall of that year, CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), a much larger network, picked up rights to the show. It ran nationally until March 1952. If all that were not enough, Boyd endorsed products of every description during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Lunchboxes, comic books, pens and pencils, coloring books, cowboy outfits, pajamas—all bore the smiling countenance of “Hoppy” (as his fans called him). Even Clarence Mulford’s books, long out of print, came back with new covers, along with some editing to keep events true to the character Boyd had created, and a new generation of readers thrilled to adventures at the Bar 20 ranch. This celebrity also made Boyd a wealthy man, and he retired to a comfortable life. As the list in Table 22 indicates, Boyd used only a few actors as his regular cinematic companions. They play sidekicks to the paternal Cassidy. James “Jimmy” Ellison (1910–1993) led the way, Russell Hayden (1912–1981) followed, and Andy Clyde (1892–1967) finished the series, although George “Gabby” Hayes (1885–1969), one of the most famous and popular character actors in the history of Westerns, also filled this role at times. By and large, the Boyd/Cassidy Westerns subscribe to a formula: the hero (Cassidy) learns of problems or troubles somewhere nearby. He investigates, clad in his trademark black outfit with white piping (some maintain it was actually dark blue, but would photograph as black since camera crews shots all his movies on black-andwhite stock), his shiny plated pistols and spurs, and accompanied by Topper, his splendid white horse. This leads to a showdown with the miscreants, usually after a furious chase and possibly a shootout, and justice prevails.


Boyd, William (Hopalong Cassidy) | 137 TABLE 22.

The Hopalong Cassidy Films, 1935–1948

Year

Movie Titles

Actors

1935

Bar 20 Rides Again The Eagle’s Brood Hop-Along Cassidy

William Boyd, James Ellison Boyd, Ellison Boyd, Ellison

1936

Call of the Prairie Heart of the West Hopalong Cassidy Returns Three on the Trail Trail Dust

Boyd, Ellison Boyd, Ellison Boyd, George “Gabby” Hayes Boyd, James Ellison Boyd, Ellison

1937

Borderland Hills of Old Wyoming Hopalong Rides Again North of the Rio Grande Rustlers’ Valley Texas Trail

Boyd, Ellison Boyd, George “Gabby” Hayes Boyd, Hayes Boyd, Hayes Boyd, Hayes Boyd, Hayes

1938

Bar 20 Justice Cassidy of Bar 20 The Frontiersmen Heart of Arizona In Old Mexico Partners of the Plains Pride of the West

Boyd, Russell Hayden Boyd, Hayden Boyd, George “Gabby” Hayes Boyd, Hayes Boyd, Hayes Boyd, Russell Hayden Boyd, George “Gabby” Hayes

1939

Law of the Pampas Range War The Renegade Trail Silver on the Sage Sunset Trail

Boyd, Russell Hayden Boyd, Hayden Boyd, Hayden Boyd, Hayden Boyd, George “Gabby” Hayes

1940

Hidden Gold Santa Fe Marshall The Showdown Stagecoach War Three Men from Texas

Boyd, Russell Hayden Boyd, Hayden Boyd, Hayden Boyd, Hayden Boyd, Hayden

1941

Border Vigilantes Doomed Caravan In Old Colorado Outlaws of the Desert Pirates on Horseback Riders of the Timberlane Secret of the Wastelands Stick to Your Guns Twilight on the Trail Wide Open Town

Boyd, Hayden Boyd, Hayden Boyd, Hayden Boyd, Andy Clyde Boyd, Russell Hayden Boyd, Andy Clyde Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Russell Hayden

1942

Lost Canyon Undercover Man

Boyd, Andy Clyde Boyd, Clyde (continued)


138

| Broadway Shows (Comedy and Drama) TABLE 22.

(continued)

Year

Movie Titles

Actors

1943

Bar 20 Border Patrol Colt Comrades False Colors Hoppy Serves a Writ Leather Burners Riders of the Deadline

Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde

1944

Forty Thieves Lumberjack Mystery Man Texas Masquerade

Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde

1945

no releases

1946

The Devil’s Playground

Boyd, Clyde

1947

Dangerous Venture Fool’s Gold Hoppy’s Holiday The Marauders Unexpected Guest

Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde

1948

Borrowed Trouble The Dead Don’t Dream False Paradise Silent Conflict Sinister Journey Strange Gamble

Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde Boyd, Clyde

If any love interest develops, it takes place between other performers; Hopalong never kisses the girl nor gets involved in any way. He can be friendly and offer sage advice, but he avoids romance, just as he avoids liquor, cussing, smoking, and bad grammar. Boyd envisioned Cassidy as a paragon of virtue and portrays him in that manner. Somehow, Cassidy escapes being a wooden, two-dimensional do-gooder and instead comes across as a vigorous, affable cowboy, and therein lies the success of this series and also the success of William Boyd. Selected Reading B Westerns. www.b-westerns.com/ Boyd, William. www.hoppyandthebar-20.50megs.com Hopalong Cassidy. www.hopalong.com/home.asp Nevins, Francis M. Bar-20: The Life of Clarence E. Mulford, Creator of Hopalong Cassidy. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1993.

BROADWAY SHOWS (COMEDY AND DRAMA) Broadway, a major thoroughfare of New York City, runs from the southern tip of Manhattan to the city limits in the Bronx and cuts diagonally through Times Square, an area © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Broadway Shows (Comedy and Drama) | 139 known worldwide for its wealth of theaters, both stage and movie. During the 1930s, the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), a New Deal program that ran from 1935 to 1939, provided playwrights opportunities to have their works produced not only in New York but in other cities and communities across the country. Controversies and politics brought the FTP to an abrupt end, and, coupled with the war during the early 1940s, the number of plays appearing in Broadway theaters diminished. Attendance nonetheless rose, more so at musicals and comedies than at dramas. Wartime defense workers had extra money to spend and could join already committed theatergoers for an evening on the town, including a Broadway play or movie. Comedies and musicals proved to be Arthur Miller’s Broadway hit, All My Sons, popular throughout the decade. At this ran in 1947. This cover of Playbill features time of high anxiety and concern for the cast members (from the left) Arthur Kennedy, country and its soldiers, sailors, and air- Karl Malden, Beth Merrill, Ed Begley, and Lois Wheeler. (Photofest) men, Americans looked for an escape, a couple of hours of relaxation without reminders of the turmoil occurring around the globe. With the end of World War II, an atmosphere of celebration prevailed and theatergoers continued to be interested in light entertainment. Three of the four comedies in the 1940s with over 1,000 performances were produced during the war years: Harvey (1944) with 1,775 shows, The Voice of the Turtle (1943) at 1,557, and Arsenic and Old Lace (1941), 1,444. The fourth hit, Mister Roberts, opened in 1948 and achieved 1,157 performances before closing in 1951. In the musical genre, four also topped the 1,000 mark with Oklahoma! (1943) in the No. 1 spot for all plays of any type at 2,212 shows, South Pacific (1949) boasted 1,925, Annie Get Your Gun (1946) 1,147, and Kiss Me Kate (1948) 1,070. Only one drama, Angel Street (1941), made it to this league with 1,295 performances. Table 23 identifies 42 plays—comedies and dramas holding high attendance records and/or receiving awards. Stage actors, like most Americans, immediately supported the war effort in a number of ways. The American Theatre Wing, an organization started by seven women during World War I, regrouped under the leadership of renowned performers Gertrude Lawrence (1898–1952), Josephine Hull (1886–1957), Lucile Watson (1898–1952), Ruth Gordon (1896–1985), Helen Hayes (1900–1993), Vera-Ellen (1921–1981), and Edith Atwater (1911–1986). One of their first and largest projects involved the establishment of the Stage Door Canteen, housed in the 44th Street Theatre. Like other canteens across the country, it offered a place for those in service to gather and enjoy food, companionship, and entertainment. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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In addition to their work at the canteen and assisting with the selling of war bonds, the theater community continued its efforts to provide the best theater possible. Once rehearsals and staging had been completed, many plays tested the market with a short run outside New York, often Boston, New Haven, or Philadelphia. If successful, they came to Broadway. After closing in New York, some went on to tour the country. Broadway shows, however, remained a form of entertainment enjoyed primarily by New York City residents and visitors to the area. With limited exposure, Broadway shows cannot be considered a major component of national popular culture. They, nevertheless, serve as an important part in the total realm of entertainment. Recognition of the best playwrights, performers, and others necessary to the successful production of a play not only acknowledges their accomplishments but also provides publicity for the plays and Broadway. In 1935, 15 professional theatrical critics formed the New York Drama Critics Circle Awards. Initially, they announced an annual winner for the best American play and the best foreign play. In 1945, the critics added best musical as a third category. Six dramas won as the best American play during the 1940s: Watch on the Rhine by Lillian Hellman (1905–1984) for the 1940–1941 season, The Patriots by Sidney Kingsley (1906–1995) for 1941–1942, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) for 1944–1945, All My Sons by Arthur Miller (1915–2005) for 1946–1947, A Streetcar Named Desire by Williams for 1947–1948, and Death of a Salesman by Miller for 1949–1950. The judges could not reach agreement about winners for the 1942–1943, 1943–1944, and 1945–1946 seasons. Two additional ways of celebrating theatrical performances commenced in the 1940s. The Theatre World Award, first given in 1945 for the 1944–1945 season and each season thereafter, goes to six actors and six actresses for outstanding debut performances. Four recipients, Margaret Phillips (1923–1984) in The Late George Apley (1944), Patricia Neal (b. 1926) in Another Part of the Forest (1946), Ralph Meeker (1920–1988) in Mister Roberts (1948), and Cameron Mitchell (1918–1994) in Death of a Salesman (1949), appeared in shows found in the table below. The Tony Award, bestowed annually since the 1946–1947 Broadway season, honors achievements in several theatrical categories. Named for one of the founders of the American Theatre Wing, Antoinette Perry (1888–1946), this prestigious theater award, the equivalent to Hollywood’s Oscar, the music industry’s Grammy, and television’s Emmy, can be given to more than one individual in each category. One or more persons affiliated with 14 of the plays in the table below received Tony Awards, and those plays and the categories are so noted. Three playwrights from the 1940s stand out as exceptional: Eugene O’Neill (1888– 1953), Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller. O’Neill, one of the first American playwrights to consider the stage appropriate for presenting serious ideas, wrote about the difficulties of family life, the growing pains of an adolescent boy, and a man’s search for identity along with his need to hope for a better life. O’Neill won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936 and had completed most of his major work by 1940, with many of his one-act and full-length plays having been already staged on Broadway. The characters, especially in his later pieces, tend to engage in sordid behavior and live


TABLE 23.

Year

Representative Broadway Dramas and Comedies, 1940–1949 Play Titles and Tony Awards

1940 My Sister Eileen Comedy

Performances

Playwrights

Major Cast Members

864

Joseph Fields 1895–1966), Jerome Shirley Booth, (1898–1992), Jo Ann Chodorov (1911–2004) Sayers (b. 1918)

Separate Rooms Comedy The Corn Is Green Drama

613 533

Alan Dinehart (1890–1944), Joseph Carole (active 1940s) Emlyn Williams (1905–1987)

The Time of Your Life Comedy

217

William Saroyan (1908–1981)

There Shall Be No Night Drama

181

Robert Sherwood (1896–1955)

Alfred Lunt (1893–1977), Lynn Fontaine (1887–1983)

1,444

Joseph O. Kesselring (1902–1967)

1,295 722

Patrick Hamilton (1904–1962) Rose Franken (1898–1988)

Josephine Hull (1886–1957), Boris Karloff (1887–1969), John Alexander (1897– 1982), Jean Adair (1873–1953), Allan Joslyn (1901–1981) Judith Evelyn (1913–1967), Leo G. Carroll (1892–1972), Vincent Price (1911–1993) Donald Cook (1901–1961), Dorothy McGuire (1916–2001)

378

Lillian Hellman

1941 Arsenic and Old Lace Comedy

Angel Street Drama Claudia Comedy Watch on the Rhine Drama Junior Miss Comedy

n.a. [ran until Joseph Fields, Jerome Chodorov 1943]

Revival History on Broadway and Movie Production(s) as of 2009

No revival. 1942 movie: Rosalind Russell (1907–1976), Janet Blair (1921–2007) Alan Dinehart, Glenda Farrell (1904–1971) No revival. Ethel Barrymore (1879–1959), Rhys Williams (1897–1969), Edmond Breon (1907–1951) Eddie Dowling (1895–1976), Julie Haydon (1910–1994), William Bendix (1906– 1964), Celeste Holm (b. 1919)

Lucille Watson (1879–1962), Paul Lukas (1891–1971), Mady Christians (1900– 1951), John Lodge (1903–1985) Francesca Bruning (active 1930s, 1940s), Alexander Kirkland (active 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s), Patricia Peardon (1924–1993)


Two revivals. 1945 movie: Bette Davis (1908–1989), Rhys Williams, Nigel Bruce (1895–1953) Three revivals. 1948 movie: James Cagney (1899–1986), Jeanne Cagney (1919–1984), William Bendix No revival. 1957 movie for TV One revival. 1944 movie: Cary Grant (1904–1986), Josephine Hull, John Alexander, Jean Adair, Raymond Massey (1896–1983) Two revivals. 1946 movie for TV No revival. 1944 movie: Dorothy McGuire, Robert Young (1907–1998) One revival. 1943 movie: Bette Davis, Paul Lukas No revival. 1945 movie: Peggy Ann Garner (1932– 1984), Allyn Joslyn, Mona Freeman (b. 1926) (continued)

TABLE 23.

Year

(continued) Play Titles and Tony Awards

Performances

Playwrights

Major Cast Members

1942 The Doughgirls Comedy

671

Joseph Fields

Janie Comedy

642

Uncle Harry Drama

430

The Eve of St. Mark Drama

307

Herschel V. Williams (active 1940s Gwen Anderson (active 1940s and 1950s), and 1950s), Josephine Bentham Herbert Evers (1922–2005) (active 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s) Thomas Job (1901–1947) Joseph Schildkraut (1895–1964), Eva Le Gallienne (1899–1991), Karl Malden (1912–2009) Maxwell Anderson (1888–1959) William Prince (1913–1996), Aline MacMahon (1899–1991)

1943 The Voice of the Turtle Comedy

Harriet Drama The Skin of Our Teeth Comedy The Patriots Drama

1,557

Arlene Francis (1907–2001)

John Van Druten (1901–1957)

Margaret Sullavan (1911–1960), Elliott Nugent (1900–1980), Audrey Christie (1911–1989) Helen Hayes (1900–1993)

359

Florence Ryerson (active 1940s), Colin Clements (1895–1948) Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)

181

Sidney Kingsley (1906–1995)

377

Tallulah Bankhead (1902–1968), Fredric March (1897–1975) Raymond Edward Johnson (1911–2001), Cecil Humphreys (1883–1947), House Jameson (1902–1971), Madge Evans (1909–1981)


Revival History on Broadway and Movie Production(s) as of 2009 No revival. 1944 movie: Ann Sheridan (1915–1967), Alexis Smith (1921–1993), Jack Carson (1910–1963) No revival. 1944 movie: Joyce Reynolds (b. 1925), Robert Hutton (1920–1994) No revival.

No revival. 1944 movie: Vincent Price (1911–1993), Anne Baxter (1923–1985), William Eythe (1918–1957), Michael O’Shea (1906–1973) No revival. 1947 movie: Ronald Reagan (1911–2004), Eleanor Parker (b. 1922), Eve Arden (1908–1990) One revival. Two revivals. 1983 movie for TV No revival.

1944 Harvey Comedy

1775

Mary Chase (1907–1981)

Anna Lucasta Drama I Remember Mama Comedy

957

Philip Yordan (1914–2003)

713

John Van Druten

Ten Little Indians Drama

426

Agatha Christie (1890–1976)

Jacobowsky and the Colonel Comedy The Late George Apley Comedy

417

S. N. Behrman (1893–1973) (Adapted from the play by Franz Werfel, 1890–1945) John P. Marquand (1893–1960), George S. Kaufman (1889–1961)

1945 State of the Union Comedy

The Glass Menagerie Drama

384

765

563

Howard Lindsay (1889–1968), Russel Crouse (1893–1966)

Frank Fay (1897–1961), Josephine Hull

One revival. 1950 movie: Jimmy Stewart (1908–1997), Josephine Hull Hilda Simms (1920–1994) One revival. 1949 movie: Paulette Goddard (1910–1990) Mady Christians, Oscar Homolka (1898– No revival. 1978) 1948 movie: Irene Dunne (1898–1990), Oscar Homolka; basis for TV series, 1949–1957 Estelle Winwood (1883–1984), Halliwell No revival. Hobbes (1877–1962), Claudia Morgan 1945 movie as And Then There Were (1912–1974), Michael Whalen (1902–1974) None: Walter Huston (1884–1950), Barry Fitzgerald (1888–1961); 1965 movie: Hugh O’Brian (b. 1923), Shirley Eaton (b. 1937) Louis Calhern (1895–1956), Oscar No revival. Karlweis (1894–1956), Annabella (1904– 1958 movie, Me and the Colonel: Danny 1996) Kaye (1918–1987) Leo G. Carroll (1892–1972), Janet Beecher No revival. (1884–1955), Margaret Dale, Margaret 1947 movie: Ronald Coleman (1891–1958), Phillips (1923–1984) Vanessa Brown (1928–1999), Richard Haydn (1905–1985)

Ralph Bellamy (1904–1991), Ruth Hussey No revival. (1917–2005) 1948 movie: Spencer Tracy (1900–1967), Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003), Van Johnson (1916–2008), Angela Lansbury (b. 1925) Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) Laurette Taylor (1884–1946), Eddie One revival. Dowling (1895–1976), Julie Haydon, 1950 movie: Jane Wyman (1917–2007). Anthony Ross (1909–1955) Kirk Douglas (b. 1916), Gertrude Lawrence, Arthur Kennedy; 1987 movie: Joanne Woodward (b. 1930), John Malkovich (b. 1953), Karen Allen (b. 1951) 1966, 1973 TV adaptations © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved. (continued)

TABLE 23.

Year

(continued) Play Titles and Tony Awards

Performances

Playwrights

Major Cast Members

Revival History on Broadway and Movie Production(s) as of 2009

1946 Happy Birthday Comedy Tony: Best Actress O Mistress Mine Comedy Years Ago Drama Tony: Best Actor Joan of Lorraine Drama Tony: Best Actress Another Part of the Forest Drama Tony: Best Featured Actress and Best Costumes

563

Anita Loos (1888–1981)

Helen Hayes

No revival.

482

Terence Rattigan (1911–1977)

No revival.

206

Ruth Gordon (1896–1985)

Lynn Fontaine (1887–1983), Alfred Lunt (1893–1977) Fredric March, Florence Eldridge (1901– 1988)

199

Maxwell Anderson

Ingrid Bergman (1917–1982)

182

Lillian Hellman

Patricia Neal (b. 1926), Mildred Dunnock (1901–1991), Margaret Phillips (1923– 1984), Leo Genn (1905–1978), Percy Waram (1881–1961)

No revival. 1948 movie: Fredric March, Dan Duryea (1907–1968), Edmond O’Brien (1915–1985), Ann Blyth (b. 1928)

1947 A Streetcar Named Desire Drama Tony: Best Actress John Loves Mary Comedy Tony: Best Costumes All My Sons Drama Tony: Best Director

855

Tennessee Williams

Jessica Tandy (1909–1999), Marlon Brando (1924–2004), Kim Hunter (1922– 2002), Karl Malden (1912–2009)

Seven revivals. 1951 movie: Vivien Leigh (1913–1967), Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden

423

Norman Krasna (1909–1984)

Nina Foch (1924–2008), William Prince (1913–1996), Tom Ewell (1909–1994)

328

Arthur Miller (1915–2005)

Ed Begley (1901–1970), Beth Merrill (1892–1986), Arthur Kennedy (1914– 1990), Karl Malden

214

Euripides (ca. 480 B.C.E.–406 B.C.E.); adaptation by Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)

Judith Anderson (1898–1992), Florence Reed (1883–1967), John Gielgud (1904– 2000)

No revival. 1949 movie: Ronald Reagan, Jack Carson, Patricia Neal No revival. 1948 movie: Edward G. Robinson (1893– 1973), Burt Lancaster (1913–1994), Mady Christians, Howard Duff (1913–1990) An ancient Greek tragedy, this was the first of six Broadway revivals. It originally opened in 1920. 1951 movie: Pauline Letts (1917–2001), Robert Speaight (1904–1976) 1988 Danish movie.

Medea Drama Tony: Best Actress


No revival. 1953 movie as The Actress: Spencer Tracy, Jean Simmons (b. 1929) No revival. 1948 movie: Ingrid Bergman

Antony and Cleopatra Drama Tony: Best Actress

126

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) Katharine Cornell (1898–1974), Godfrey Tearle (1884–1953), Lenore Ulric (1892– 1970), Kent Smith (1907–1985)

Fourth of five revivals. A theater classic, it first appeared on Broadway in 1846.

Thomas Heggen (1918–1949), Joshua Logan (1908–1988)

Henry Fonda (1905–1982), William Harrigan (1893–1966), Robert Keith (1898–1966), David Wayne (1914–1995), Ralph Meeker (1920–1988)

One revival. 1955 movie: Henry Fonda, James Cagney (1899–1986), William Powell (1892–1984), Jack Lemmon (1925–2001)

446

Fay Kanin (b. 1917)

Shirley Booth, Madeline Carroll (1906– 1987), Joe Boland (1903–1987)

368

Jean Giaudoux (1882–1944)

Martita Hunt (1900–1969)

No revival. 1951 movie: Joan Crawford (1905–1977), Robert Young, Frank Lovejoy (1912–1962), Eve Arden (1908–1990) No revival. 1969 movie: Katharine Hepburn, Paul Henreid (1905–1992)

288

Maxwell Anderson

Rex Harrison (1908–1990)

No revival. 1969 movie: Richard Burton (1925–1984), Genevieve Bujold (b. 1942), Irene Papas (b. 1926)

1948 Mister Roberts Drama Tony: Best Actor, Best Play, Best Producer, and Best Authors Goodbye, My Fancy Comedy Tony: Best Featured Actress The Madwoman of Chaillot Comedy Tony: Best Actress Anne of the Thousand Days Drama Tony: Best Actor and Best Scenic Design Edward, My Son Drama

1,157

260

Noel Langley (1911–1980)

Shirley Booth

No revival. 1949 movie: Spencer Tracy, Deborah Kerr (1921–2007)

1949 Death of a Salesman Drama Tony: Best Play, Best Supporting Actor, Best Author, Best Director, Best Scenic Designer, Best Producer Clutterbuck Comedy

742

Arthur Miller

Lee J. Cobb (1911–1976), Mildred Dunnock (1901–1991), Arthur Kennedy, Cameron Mitchell (1918–1994)

Four revivals. 1951 movie: Frederic March, Mildred Dunnock, Kevin McCarthy (b. 1914), Cameron Mitchell. 1966, 1985, 1996, and 2000 TV adaptations.

218

Benn W. Levy (1900–1973)

Arthur Margetson (1887–1951)

No revival. No movie.


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outside society’s conventional expectations. Hopes and aspirations usually give way to despair. O’Neill completed some of his plays years before their production. For example, The Iceman Cometh, written in 1939 and published in 1940, did not open until October 1946 and closed March 1947, after 136 performances. He completed two plays in 1941: Hughie, which opened in 1959, and Long Day’s Journey into Night. This autobiographical play, acclaimed as one of his greatest accomplishments, did not make it to the stage until 1956, three years after his death, as he had requested. A Touch of the Poet (1942) went into production in 1958. A Moon for the Misbegotten opened and closed in Columbus, Ohio, in 1947, not arriving on a New York stage until May 1957. Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller made their New York debuts in the 1940s and, like O’Neill, developed realistic plots that usually involve tragic circumstances. Williams’ debut on Broadway came with The Glass Menagerie. From a successful run in Chicago in 1944, the play opened in New York on March 31, 1945. With a gripping story about the daydreams of a mother for her crippled and withdrawn daughter, coupled with an outstanding performance by Laurette Taylor as the mother, the play easily ran for over a year with 563 performances and captured the New York Drama Critics Circle Award as the best play of the season. Williams quickly followed in 1947 with a second powerful play, A Streetcar Named Desire, which brought him a Pulitzer Prize for drama. A superb cast, led by Jessica Tandy as Blanche and Marlon Brando as Stanley, portrays a cultural clash between Blanche, who desperately tries to hold on to an illusion of being an aristocratic woman from the old South, and Stanley, a rising member of the industrial urban class. Williams continued to write plays for Broadway; several became movies produced by Hollywood, starting with The Glass Menagerie in 1950. Arthur Miller’s first Broadway appearance, The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944) closed after four performances. Three years later, he returned with All My Sons, which opened to critical acclaim and won him a Tony Award for best author of the season. In 1948, he wrote Death of a Salesman in six weeks. It opened on Broadway on February 10, 1949, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, and today is considered his masterpiece. It tells the story of Willy Loman, a man who spends more time dreaming the postwar American dream of success than acting on making it come true. Audiences found the downfall and suicide of this ordinary middle-aged man to be a riveting story. Lee J. Cobb (1911–1976) played Willy, and Mildred Dunnock (1901–1991) had the role of Linda, a wife who tries to shield her husband from the reality of his lost dreams. Miller’s career spanned more than seven decades; he wrote screenplays, fiction, nonfiction, and radio dramas in addition to stage plays. Other playwrights, such as Lillian Hellman, William Saroyan, Maxwell Anderson, and Thornton Wilder, already had established reputations by 1940 and continued with meaningful works throughout the decade. The plots of their plays dealt primarily with families, frustrations, and private disillusionment. Comedic playwrights offered zany plots, uproarious situations, a parade of oddball characters, scatterbrained teenagers, and misunderstandings around romance and love in hopes of drawing crowds to the theater; and they did. Joseph Kesselring completed the writing of Arsenic and Old Lace in 1939 shortly before it opened in January 1940.


Broadway Shows (Comedy and Drama) | 147 The plot focuses on a drama critic whose two spinster aunts poison lonely old men with a glass of homemade elderberry wine laced with arsenic. He also has a brother who believes he is Teddy Roosevelt, creating uproarious situations and many welcome laughs. In 1944, the laughs became especially loud and long when, in Mary Chase’s Harvey, Elwood P. Dowd constantly attempts to introduce his imaginary friend Harvey, a six-foot, three-and-half-inch tall rabbit to his mother and sister’s society friends. Mrs. Dowd, in turn, attempts to institutionalize her son, a man who is liked by everyone he meets. Rapid, funny dialogue proved to be the tonic war-weary audiences needed. Four years later and two and a half years after the surrender of Japan, Broadway experienced a huge success with a hilarious production about World War II titled Mister Roberts. Based on a 1946 novel with the same name by Thomas Heggen, the story takes place in the South Pacific aboard the US AK-601, an unimportant navy cargo ship far from any action. Henry Fonda played Mr. Roberts, a young first officer who longs for reassignment to a combat vessel. He reprised his role in a successful 1955 movie. The Time of Your Life (1940), written by William Saroyan, was the first drama to win both the New York Drama Critics Award and Pulitzer Prize in the same year. Pulitzer Prizes, named for Joseph Pulitzer (1847–1911), were first given in 1917, and drama has been a category since 1918. The other Pulitzer recipients during the 1940s include Robert Sherwood’s There Shall Be No Night, 1941; Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, 1943; Mary Chase’s Harvey, 1945; Russel Crouse and Howard Lindsay’s State of the Union, 1946; Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, 1948; and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, 1949. Sherwood had previously won a Pulitzer in 1936 for Idiots Delight and in 1939 for Abe Lincoln in Illinois, as had Wilder in 1938 for Our Town. Tennessee Williams would be the recipient again in 1955 for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Shortly after their successful runs on Broadway, almost three-quarters of the plays listed in the table became movies to be enjoyed by filmgoers across the country. With the subsequent growth of television, some also were adapted to that medium. Many of the playwrights worked on the film version of their play, and a few of the Broadway actors and actresses traveled to Hollywood to repeat their role in the movie. For the most part, however, Hollywood had its own ideas about who to contract for the parts. For some of the Broadway actors, the movie opportunity turned into a career. I Remember Mama afforded Marlon Brando his debut on Broadway, and, after an outstanding performance in A Streetcar Named Desire (1949), he moved to Hollywood and henceforth worked exclusively in film. One Broadway comedy, Junior Miss (1941), aired on CBS radio in 1942, with Shirley Temple (b. 1928) as Judy Graves, a typical radio teenager. CBS radio reinstated the show on a continuing basis for the years 1948 to 1950, with Barbara Whiting (1931–2004) taking on the title role. Throughout the 1940s, the number of Broadway productions remained lower than previous decades, and, by the last years of the 1940s, television had joined the movies in stealing audiences. But fresh new talents emerged, and gripping dramas and amusing comedies had successful runs. The artistic quality of most musicals and musical comedies increased substantially. Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire and


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Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman analyzed people, not politics, an approach that intrigued theatergoers, while the lightweight comedies such as Harvey brought laughter from the first line to the closing curtain, and Mister Roberts dared to make war look ridiculous. See also: Blackouts, Brownouts, and Dim-Outs; Broadway Shows (Musicals); Comedies (Film); Drama (Film); Radio Programming: Comedy Shows; Radio Programming: Drama and Anthology Shows; USO (United Service Organizations) Selected Reading Atkinson, Brooks, and Albert Hirschfeld. The Lively Years, 1920–1973. New York: Association Press, 1973. Foertsch, Jacqueline. American Culture in the 1940s. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. Harris, Andrew B. Broadway Theatre. New York: Routledge, 1994.

BROADWAY SHOWS (MUSICALS) The word “Broadway” refers to both a main thoroughfare that runs diagonally through Manhattan and a small district near Times Square, where the majority of theatrical productions take place in playhouses clustered in that area. In the 1940s, some 25 Broadway theaters presented a variety of shows, including many musicals. Revues featured a series of unrelated comic skits, dances, and songs, while musical comedies added a plot, usually revolving around a tale of romance. Story and character development came to hold as much importance as the music. Many shows, regardless of type, first had a brief trial run outside New York City, often in New Haven, Boston, or Philadelphia. If successful, they came to Broadway, and a long-running musical might eventually go on a national tour once it closed, although with less elaborate sets and lacking the original cast. Even with a Broadway run and pre- and post-performances, only a limited number of people had the opportunity to see one of these productions, a factor that reduces Broadway’s validity as a carrier of true mass culture. That does not, however, change the pleasure of good music and big laughs enjoyed by those lucky enough to see a Broadway show. Other media outlets—specifically radio, recordings, and the movies— Cole Porter’s Panama Hattie provided Ethel brought some of the Broadway pro- Merman her first solo billing on Broadway in ductions, or at least selected aspects of 1940. (Photofest)


Broadway Shows (Musicals) | 149 them, to the level of national entertainment. Songs receiving an enthusiastic response from audiences usually got recorded and then aired on radio, and some gained enough popularity to be considered standards, such as “Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered” (Pal Joey, 1940), “People Will Say We Are in Love” (Oklahoma! 1943), or “You’ll Never Walk Alone” (Carousel, 1945), to name but a few. Hollywood, aware of the appeal of the more successful Broadway musicals, made a number of them into films. Rarely, however, did the New York actors and actresses who initially propelled the show to fame find themselves cast in Hollywood’s version, because the film studios had their own rosters of stars. In 1940, the Broadway season included a black folk musical titled Cabin in the Sky by composer Vernon Duke (1903–1969), with lyrics by John La Touche (1914–1956). A fantasy about love and faith among people living in the South, the show carried a serious story line. With a brief run of 156 performances, Cabin in the Sky does not qualify as a big hit, but it served as an unusual event for Broadway with its all-black cast that included Ethel Waters (1900–1977) and dancer-choreographer Katherine Dunham (1909–2006). The score had several distinguished tunes, including the title song and “Taking a Chance on Love.” But blacks on Broadway remained a rare occurrence, not the norm. A new feature for musicals occurred in 1943 with the successful run of Oklahoma! the first Broadway production by the new team of Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) and Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960), both veterans of the stage musical. In Oklahoma! the singing served as a continuation of the dialogue; in previous shows, a song tended to stop the action of the play and stood as an event unto itself. The innovation gave this production a dramatic richness and quality, and historians would later refer to the 1940s as the golden age of musical theater. Richard Rodgers’ musical career had begun in the 1920s, and until 1943 he partnered with lyricist Lorenz Hart (1895–1943) on 31 projects. After collaborating on Pal Joey (1940) and By Jupiter (1942), a disagreement led to a breakup in 1943, and Rodgers then began working with Oscar Hammerstein II on Oklahoma! Hammerstein, like Rodgers, had written his first Broadway show in the early 1920s. For the remainder of his career, he teamed with many composers, including Jerome Kern, with whom he had an extended and successful partnership, with the classic Showboat (1927) as their biggest hit. In the fall of 1943, Rodgers again joined forces with Hart on a revival of A Connecticut Yankee. It opened on November 17, 1943, just five days before Hart died of pneumonia. Needing a new partner, and with their success with Oklahoma! fresh in everyone’s minds, Rodgers resumed his collaboration with Hammerstein. In addition to Oklahoma! the duo turned out three more Broadway hits in the 1940s: Carousel (1945), Allegro (1947), and South Pacific (1949)—along with original music for a film titled State Fair (1945), a remake of a 1933 nonmusical movie. They continued their successful collaboration until 1959 and The Sound of Music. Hammerstein died the following year, but Rodgers remained active until ill health forced him to retire in the 1970s. At the onset of World War II, the theater community did its part to support the war effort. Years earlier, during World War I, seven theater women had started an


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organization known as the Stage Women’s War Relief. In 1940, with another world war imminent, they reactivated the organization, renaming it the American Theatre Wing. Shortly thereafter, the women inaugurated the famous Stage Door Canteen, housing it in the 44th Street Theatre. Throughout the conflict, stars from Broadway and Hollywood provided men in uniform food, conversation, songs, and dance. The Theatre Wing also produced entertainment programs for veterans’ hospitals, USO clubs, and troops overseas, while actors and actresses participated in drives to sell war bonds. During World War II, as had been the case with the Great Depression just a few years earlier, the number of plays produced in a single season decreased. But even with fewer shows, Broadway experienced an increase in both attendance and revenue throughout the 1940s. Two factors contributed. The war had provided high-paying jobs to both men and women, giving them a new level of prosperity and the financial means to have a night on the town, including a play. Also, most forms of entertainment, especially radio broadcasts, the movies, and newsreels, along with print media, provided constant reminders of the war. The 1940s musicals and comedies, for the most part, avoided topical issues, giving war-weary theatergoers a form of escapism and a couple of hours of relief. Wartime precautionary measures of a mandatory dimming of all city lights from April 29, 1942, until the end of the war, along with frequent blackout drills, did not deter those intent on seeing a play from traveling to a dimmed midtown Manhattan for an evening at the theater. After victory had been achieved in 1945, the economic prosperity in the United States soared, and those seeking entertainment at Broadway theaters came expecting a comparable change in the caliber and quality of the shows. Sets and costumes became more elaborate, adding visual excitement to productions. Increased attention to the importance of the dance routines provided opportunities for choreographers such as Martha Graham (1894–1991), Agnes de Mille (1905–1993), and Jerome Robbins (1918–1998) to create more complex and dramatic numbers. Throughout the decade, a number of seasoned Broadway composers and lyricists including Harold Arlen (1905–1986), Irving Berlin (1888–1989), Dorothy Fields (1905–1974), Ira Gershwin (1896–1983), Oscar Hammerstein II, Lorenz Hart, Jerome Kern (1885–1969), Jimmy McHugh (1895–1969), Cole Porter (1893–1964), Richard Rodgers, and Sigmund Romberg (1887–1951) reached new heights of accomplishment. Established performers such as Eve Arden (1908–1990), Ray Bolger (1906– 1987), Ethel Merman (1909–1984), and Victor Moore (1876–1962) guaranteed the highest quality of singing and acting. Four composers experienced the thrill of having their first hits occur in musicals of the 1940s: Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) for On the Town (1944), George Forrest (1915–1999) for Song of Norway (1944), Jule Styne (1905–1994) for High Button Shoes (1947), and Charles Gaynor (1909–1975) for Lend an Ear (1947). Three lyricists also enjoyed successful debuts: Betty Comden (1919–2006) and Adolph Green (1915–2002) for On the Town and Sammy Cahn (1913–1993) for High Button Shoes. The hit musicals of the 1940s offered major roles for aspiring actors and actresses that included June Allyson (1917–2006) in Best Foot Forward (1941), Carol Channing (b. 1921) in Let’s Face It! (1941), Danny Kaye (1913–1987) in Lady in the Dark


Broadway Shows (Musicals) | 151 (1941), Gene Kelly (1912–1996) in Pal Joey (1940), and Mary Martin (1914–1990) in One Touch of Venus (1943). Recognition for outstanding accomplishments has long been an American tradition, and the 1940s were no exception. In 1935, 15 professional theatrical critics organized the New York Drama Critics Circle Awards with two categories: best American play and best foreign play. Beginning with the 1945–1946 season, they added a third category, best musical. During the years 1946 to 1949, Carousel (1946), Brigadoon (1947), and South Pacific (1949) received these first awards. Some discord and disagreement among the members of the Critics Circle caused no award to be given in 1948. Two other ceremonies for theatrical performances were organized in the 1940s. The first, the Theatre World Award, has been given annually since 1945 to six actors and six actresses for outstanding debut performances either on or off Broadway. Seven of the musical shows in the following table—On the Town (1944); Carousel, Brigadoon, Oklahoma! Finian’s Rainbow (1947); High Button Shoes (1947); Where’s Charley? (1948)—and three revues—Call Me Mister (1946), Lend an Ear (1948), and Inside U.S.A. (1948)—had the honor of one or more of their cast members receiving Theatre World recognition. Since 1947, the American Theatre Wing has given a Tony Award, named in honor of one of its founders, Antoinette Perry (1888–1946), in a number of categories. For Broadway productions, the Tony ranks with the film community’s Oscar, the Grammys in the music industry, and the Emmys for television. In 1947, a Tony for best choreography went to Agnes de Mille for Brigadoon and Michael Kidd (1915–2007) for Finian’s Rainbow. The next year, Jerome Robbins captured the Tony for his dance routines in High Button Shoes, and, in 1949, choreographer Gower Champion accepted the award for his work in Lend an Ear. Also in 1949, Kiss Me Kate (1948) dominated the season with five Tony wins: best musical, best author, best composer and lyricist, best costume designer, and best producer. South Pacific topped that in 1950 by winning in nine categories: best musical, best libretto, best original score, best actor, best actress, best featured actor, best featured actress, best producer, and best director. The table below identifies 31 musicals that opened in the 1940s and achieved 300 or more performances before closing. Nineteen of them exceeded 500 performances, with Oklahoma! leading the pack with 2,212 performances, a long-standing record. Fifteen have had successful revivals on Broadway since the 1940s, and 22 appeared again as Hollywood movies, although they often underwent significant changes in the transition. One successful musical, Irving Berlin’s This Is the Army, which tells about military life through songs and skits, will not be found in the table. When the United States entered World War II, Berlin decided to rework and update his World War I camp revue Yip Yip Yaphank (1918). The new version, the only production on Broadway that centered on life as a member of the armed forces when the country was at war, opened July 4, 1942, to play a limited 12-week engagement. It closed August 26, 1942, having sold out all 113 performances. It raised $10 million (approximately $132 million in 2008 dollars) for the Army Emergency Relief Fund. Along with Burl Ives (1909– 1995) and a cast of over 300 soldiers assigned to this special Broadway production unit, composer and lyricist Berlin appears on stage to sing “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up


TABLE 24.

Thirty-Two Broadway Musicals with Over 300 Performances, 1940–1949

Year

Musical Title

1940 Panama Hattie (Ethel Merman’s first solo billing)

Ranking and Number of Performances

Composer; Lyrist

19th, 501

Cole Porter (1893– 1964)

Louisiana Purchase (first show after seven-year absence)

23rd, 444

Irving Berlin (1888– 1989)

Pal Joey

27th, 374

Let’s Face It!

15th, 547

Richard Rodgers (1909– 1979); Lorenz Hart (1895–1943) Cole Porter

Lady in the Dark

21st, 467

Best Foot Forward

29th, 326

Major Cast Members

Representative Popular Songs

Ethel Merman (1909–1984), “Make It Another OldJune Allyson (1917–2006), Fashioned, Please” Betty Hutton (1921–2007), Vera-Ellen (1921–1981) Vera Zorina (1917–2003), “Fools Fall in Love” Victor Moore (1876–1962)

Revival History on Broadway as of 2009 and Movie Production No revival; 1942 movie: Red Skelton (1913–1997), Ann Sothern (2001)

No revival; 1941 movie: Bob Hope (1903–2003), Zorina, Moore “Bewitched, Bothered, Four revivals; 1957 movie: Bewildered,” “I Could Rita Hayworth (1918–1987), Write a Book,” others Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) One revival; 1943 movie: Bob Hope, Betty Hutton (1921– 2007)

Gene Kelly 91912–1996), June Havoc (b. 1913), Van Johnson (1916–2008) Danny Kaye (1913–1987), Eve Arden (1908–1990), Nanette Fabray (ca. 1920), Carol Channing (b. 1921), understudy Kurt Weill (1900–1950); Danny Kaye, Victor Mature “My Ship” Ira Gershwin (1913–1999), Gertrude Lawrence (1898–1952) Hugh Martin (b. 1914); June Allyson (1917–2006), “Buckle Down, Ralph Blane (1914– Nancy Walker (1921–1992) Winsocki,” “Ev’ry 1995) Time”

No revival; 1944 movie: Ginger Rogers (1911–1995), Ray Milland (1905–1986) No revival; 1943 movie: Lucille Ball (1911–1989), Allyson, Walker

1942 By Jupiter (last Rodgers and Hart show)

24th, 427

Richard Rodgers; Lorenz Hart

Ray Bolger (1906–1987), Constance Moore (1920– 2005), Vera–Ellen, Nanette Fabray

“Nobody’s Heart”

No revival; no movie version

1943 Oklahoma! (Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first effort together)

1st, 2,212

Richard Rodgers; Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960)

Alfred Drake (1914–1992), Joan Roberts (b. 1918), Celeste Holm (b. 1919)

“Oklahoma,” “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’,” “People Will Say We Are in Love,” many more

Four revivals; 1955 movie: Gordon MacRae (1921–1986), Gloria Graham (1923–1981)


One Touch of Venus

14th, 567

Carmen Jones (based on the 1845 opera by Bizet (1838– 1875)

18th, 502

The Merry Widow

29th, 322

1944 Follow the Girls

6th, 882

Song of Norway

7th, 860

Bloomer Girl

12th, 654

On the Town

22nd, 663

Kurt Weill; Ogden Nash (1902– 1971) and S. J. Perelman (1904–1979) Georges Bizet (1838–1875); Oscar Hammerstein II

Mary Martin (1914–1990)

1948 movie: Robert Walker No revivals; (1918–1951), Ava Gardner (1922–1990), Dick Haymes (1916–1980) Luther Saxon (active Two revivals; 1954 movie: 1930s–1940s), Muriel Rahn Harry Belafonte (b. 1927), (1911–1961) Dorothy Dandridge (1922–1965) Franz Lehar (1870– Jan Kiepura (1902–1956), “I Love You So” (“The Five revivals with this 1948); Adrian Ross Marta Eggerth (1912–1966) Merry Widow Waltz”) production being the fifth; (1859–1933) and Robert original in 1907–1908. Gilbert (1899–1978) Three Hollywood versions: 1925 (silent), 1934, and 1952 with Lana Turner (1921–1995), Fernando Lamas (1915–1982) Philip Charig (1902– Jackie Gleason (1916– 1960), Dan Shapiro 1987), Gertrude Niesen (active 1940s–1950s), (1910–1975) and Milton Pascal (active 1930s–1940s) (loosely based on music Lawrence Brooks (active by Edvard Greig (1843– 1940s–1950s), Helena Bliss 1907); Robert Wright (b. 1919) (1914–2005), George Forrest (1915–1999) Harold Arlen; Celeste Holm, Nanette E. Y. Harburg (1896– Fabray 1981) Leonard Bernstein (1918– John Battles (b. 1921), 1990); Betty Comden Adolph Green, Cris (1919–2006), and Adolph Alexander (b. 1920) © (1915–2002) 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved. Green

“Speak Low”

“I Wanna Get Married”

No revival; no movie version

“I Love You,” “Piano Concerto in A Minor”

No revival; 1970 movie: Toralv Maurstad (b. 1926), Florence Henderson (b. 1934)

“When the Boys Come One revival; no movie version Home,” “Right as the Rain” “New York, New Two revivals; York,” “Lonely Town” 1949 movie: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Vera–Ellen, Betty Garrett (b. 1919) (continued)

TABLE 24.

Year

(continued)

Musical Title Mexican Hayride (movie version dropped Porter songs)

Ranking and Number of Performances

Composer; Lyrist

Major Cast Members

Representative Popular Songs

Revival History on Broadway as of 2009 and Movie Production

“Count Your Blessings,” “I Love You”

No revival; 1948 movie: Bud Abbott (1895–1974), Lou Costello (1906–1959)

20th, 481

Cole Porter

Bobby Clark (1888–1960)

5th, 890

Richard Rodgers; Oscar Hammerstein II

Four revivals; 1956 movie: Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones (b. 1934)

The Red Mill

16th, 531

Up in Central Park

17th, 504

Victor Herbert (1860–1924); Henry Blossom (1867–1919) and Forman Brown (1901–1996) Sigmund Romberg (1887–1951); Dorothy Fields (1905– 1974)

John Raitt (1917–2005), Jan “June Is Bustin’ Out Clayton (1917–1983) All Over,” “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” “If I Loved You,” many more Eddie Foy Jr. (1905–1983), Michael O’Shea (1906– 1973), Dorothy Stone (1905–1974), Odette Mytril (1898–1978) Maureen Cannon (b. 1926), “Close as Pages in a Wilbur Evans (1905–1987) Book”

Ethel Merman

Two revivals. 1950 movie: Betty Hutton (1921–2007), Howard Keel (1919–2004)

1945 Carousel (played across the street from Oklahoma! 1945–1947)

1946 Annie Get Your Gun

Show Boat (also known as Showboat)

3rd, 1,147

Irving Berlin

26th, 418

Jerome Kern; Oscar Hammerstein II


“There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “The Girl That I Marry,” “They Say It’s Wonderful,” many more “Ol’ Man River,” “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” “Why Do I Love You?” many more

A revival of the 1906–1907 original; 1927 silent movie

One revival; 1948 movie: Deanna Durbin (b. 1921), Dick Haymes (1916–1980)

Six revivals, with this production being the second; originally produced in 1927– 1929

1947 High Button Shoes

10th, 727

Finian’s Rainbow

11th, 725

Brigadoon

13th, 581

Allegro

30th, 315

1948 Kiss Me, Kate

4th, 1,070

8th, 792 Where’s Charley? (based on Brandon Thomas’s 1856–1914) Charley’s Aunt (1893) As the Girls Go 26th, 420

1949 South Pacific (opened to 2nd, 1,925 largest advance sale on record, in its second year played to standing audiences, and second musical to win a Pulitzer Prize) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes 9th, 740

Miss Liberty

32nd, 308

Jule Styne; Sammy Cahn (1913– 1993) Burton Lane (1912– 1997); E. Y. Harburg Frederick Loewe, (1904–1998); Alan Jay Lerner (1918– 1986) Richard Rogers; Oscar Hammerstein II Cole Porter

Nanette Fabray, Phil Silvers “Papa Won’t You (1911–1985) Dance with Me?”

No revivals; no movies

Albert Sharpe (1885–1970)

Three revivals; 1968 movie: Fred Astaire (1899–1987), Petula Clark (b. 1932) Four revivals; 1954 movie: Gene Kelly, Van Johnson (1916–2008), Cyd Charisee (1921–2008) No revival; no movie

“How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” “Old Devil Moon” David Brooks (1917–1999), “Almost Like Being in George Keane (1917–1995), Love,” “The Heather Marion Bell (1919–1997) on the Hill” John Battles

“The Gentlemen Is a Dope”

Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison (b. 1915), Lisa Kirk (1925–1990), Harold Lang (1920–1985)

“Too Darn Hot,” “Always True to You (In My Fashion),” many more

Frank Loesser (1910– Ray Bolger 1969); George Abbott (1882–1995) Bobby Clark Jimmy McHugh; Harold Adamson (1906– 1980)

“Once in Love with Amy,” “My Darling, My Darling” “Nobody’s Heart But Mine”

Richard Rodgers; Oscar Hammerstein II

“A Cockeyed Optimist,” “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair,” “Some Enchanted Evening,” many more “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” “Bye, Bye, Baby”

Mary Martin, Ezio Pinza (1892–1957)

Jule Styne; Carol Channing Leo Robin (1900–1984)

Irving Berlin

Eddie Albert (1908–2005)


“Let’s Take an OldFashioned Walk”

Two revivals. 1953 movie: Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel (1919–2004), Ann Miller (1923–2004), Tommy Rall (b. 1929) Two revivals; 1952 movie: Ray Bolger, Allyn Ann McLerie (b. 1926) No revival; no movie

Two revivals. 1958 movie: Rossano Brazzi (1916–1994), Mitzi Gaynor (b. 1931)

One revival; 1953 movie: Jane Russell (b. 1921), Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962), Charles Coburn (1877–1961) No revival; no movie

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in the Morning.” The cast, after completing its Broadway run, set out on a tour starting in Washington, DC, and ending in Los Angeles. Once in California, Warner Bros. added George Murphy (1902–1992) and Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) to the military cast for a filmed version released in August 1943. After completing the film, the revue toured overseas until October 1945. Four other musical revues deserve mention. Call Me Mister (1946), with a theme of servicemen readjusting to civilian life, had a cast of veterans and former USO entertainers and presented a good-humored and optimistic view of military life and demobilization. With 734 performances, it can be called a hit—so much so that Hollywood added a plot and released it in 1951, starring Betty Grable (1916–1973) and Dan Dailey (1913–1978). Lend an Ear (1948), billed as “an intimate musical revue,” written, directed, and choreographed by Charles Gaynor, marked the Broadway debut of Carol Channing and ran a little over one year for 460 performances. Also opening in 1948 and led by comedian Sid Caesar (b. 1922), Make Mine Manhattan in its 429 performances took a light-hearted look at life in New York’s most prominent borough. Richard Lewine (1910–2005) provided the music and Arnold B. Horwitt (1918–1977) the lyrics. An all-American revue, Inside U.S.A. (1948), with music by Arthur Schwartz (1900–1984) and lyrics from Howard Dietz (1896–1983), boasted 399 performances during its almost one-year engagement on Broadway. Beatrice Lillie (1898–1989) and Jack Haley (1902–1976) provided the comedy along with an itinerary that covered various regions of the United States. Inside U.S.A. was the last of seven revues from the pens of Schwartz and Dietz. Beginning in the 1940s and continuing into the 1950s, plays on Broadway—especially musicals that rose to new heights in both artistic achievement and commercial success—drew enthusiastic audiences. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! set new standards for American musicals, and between 1943 and 1959, six out of nine shows from this prolific team became hits, four of them appearing on Broadway before 1950. Contemporaries of Rodgers and Hammerstein, including Irving Berlin, Lorenz Hart, Jerome Kern, and Cole Porter, likewise wrote songs that became standards. New composers—Leonard Bernstein, Frank Loesser, Frederick Loewe, and Jule Styne— also accepted the challenge and adopted the new approach on scores, which brought them well-deserved recognition. Finally, thanks to technological advances, the bountiful richness of the golden age of the American musical went beyond New York to larger audiences by way of cast recordings, radio, and film. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Blackouts, Brownouts, and Dim-Outs; Broadway Shows (Comedy and Drama); Canteens; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Technology Selected Reading Blum, Daniel. A Pictorial History of the American Theatre, 1900–1950. New York: Greenberg, 1950. Foertsch, Jacqueline. American Culture in the 1940s. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. Green, Stanley, and Kay Green. Broadway Musicals, Show by Show. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard, 1994. Jones, John Bush. Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theatre. Hanover, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2003. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

C

CANTEENS The word “canteen,” derived from the French cantine and the Spanish and Italian cantina, all of which mean a tavern or wine shop, one frequently located in or near a military barracks or garrison, has a number of English definitions. In the context of the U.S. military, canteen can denote a snack bar or small cafeteria at a base, a flask for carrying drinking water, or a soldier’s mess kit. During World War II, the term often designated temporary or mobile eating places found at train stations and close to military installations, facilities that proved to be a valuable asset at the time. They made significant contributions to the morale, comfort, and well-being of millions of service personnel and provided citizens on the home front a way to be involved, as well. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the federal government, recognizing a need to transport large numbers of troops, obtained the permission and cooperation of the country’s railroads to use passenger trains for this purpose, first for training and then deployment to either the European or Pacific theaters. Civilians, eager to participate in the war effort, influenced the creation of unique canteens along the routes of these trains. Volunteers, mainly women, who lived in nearby communities saw an opportunity for service. Steam locomotives pulled most of the trains being used to transport military personnel and had to stop at some stations for as much as 10 to 20 minutes while they took on water, allowing the troops to disembark and stretch their legs. Local residents soon organized and awaited the soldiers at these stops, offering a distraction, a smile, a friendly word, and some home-cooked food. Since the war, reports about these train-track canteens have focused on one in North Platte, Nebraska, and others in six Ohio towns. In North Platte, Rae Sleight (nee Wilson, 1916–1986), inspired to support the troops traveling through her town, solicited friends, businesspeople, and civic leaders to assist her in the establishment of 157


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Movie stars ( from the left) Jack Carson, Jane Wyman, John Garfield, and Bette Davis star in Warner Bros.’ 1944 Hollywood Canteen. It tells the story of two soldiers on sick leave spending three nights at the Hollywood Canteen and also sends a message of praise for the war effort and canteens across the United States. (Warner Bros./Photofest)

a community canteen at their train station. Many readily agreed, and the organizers obtained permission from the U.S. War Department and the Union Pacific Railroad to set up shop. On December 25, 1941, several young women greeted the first of over 6 million GIs who would travel through North Platte from that day until April 1, 1946. With as many as 20 trains a day and sometimes 7,000 to 8,000 GIs on board, the town of 12,000 people soon needed help and recruited citizens from 125 farming communities in and around the region to join them in staying up all night to cook chickens and make thousands of sandwiches. It has been reported that 55,000 volunteers worked with the renowned North Platte Canteen, a wartime effort celebrated in a 2003 book, Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen, by Bob Greene (b. 1947), and a PBS (Public Broadcasting System) television documentary, The Canteen Spirit, shown in 2005. Similar stories and statistics have been reported for the Ohio towns of Bellefontaine, Crestline, Dennison, Lima, Marion, Springfield, and Troy. For example, Dennison volunteers had met over 1.3 million troops by the end of the war; Lima accounted for a total of 2.5 million; and in Crestline, 32,500 trains stopped and the troops consumed 600,000 pounds of food. Other canteens in other states likewise fed and assisted many soldiers. Achieving these results required the work of many people. Canteen workers came from all socioeconomic groups, with the wives of railroad employees and the mothers, wives, and sisters of soldiers frequently accounting for the largest numbers.


Canteens | 159 Gold Star mothers, those whose sons had been killed in action, took a particularly active role. At the canteens, the volunteers initially delivered the refreshments to the soldiers and sailors in hand-carried baskets or on teacarts that could be wheeled beside the train. Another simple approach used tables near the train tracks to hold trays of sandwiches and donuts. If time was scarce, soldiers could simply reach out a window to be handed some food. As the popularity of the canteens grew, some station operators donated a room for serving, while others allowed the construction of various shelters, ranging from simple lean-tos offering little protection from the weather to more substantial buildings with a roof and walls, along with preparation and eating areas. For most canteens, the volunteers prepared the food elsewhere and brought it each day to the station. The refreshments offered generally included sandwiches, with bologna, egg salad, and ham the most popular. Varied desserts, along with cookies, donuts, fruit, candy bars, popcorn, and chewing gum, filled out the bill of fare. Coffee, milk, and a few other choices served as beverages. At holidays, extra efforts usually produced special treats in keeping with the occasion, and the grateful troops would respond with songs. Many wrote letters and poetry in repayment for the kindness they experienced. As the war dragged on and shortages set in across the country, the Office of Price Administration (OPA) mandated rationing of a number of food items, and canteen menus had to be adjusted. Community members frequently offered their rationed foods at the canteen as well as items from their pantries and victory gardens, making it possible to always have enough to give something to every soldier on each train. Donations from local businesses helped to fill in any gaps. The workers at most canteens quickly discovered that the GIs could use more than food, so magazines, paperback books, cigarettes, newspapers, razor blades, and stationery became standard additions. Some facilities even added a piano in order to provide music for dancing, and the soldiers and volunteers often took to the floor. Frequently, popcorn balls contained small slips of paper with the addresses of young unmarried women for the soldiers to write to, and doubtless many followed the suggestion. The basic idea of such services for military personnel was not a new one. The American Red Cross had established canteens in World War I, when thousands of soldiers journeyed by train between their homes and military camps or to ships that took them overseas. Even before the onset of World War II, six national nonprofit organizations formed the USO (United Service Organizations) in response to a request from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) to provide recreation and boost the morale of the armed forces. The Stage Door Canteen in Times Square, New York City and the Hollywood Canteen in Los Angeles became the best-known of these USO clubs because entertainers from stage, screen, and radio worked as volunteers. They performed for the soldiers, talked with them, and served refreshments or a meal. Two movies, Stage Door Canteen (1943) and Hollywood Canteen (1944), star performers as themselves and celebrate the activities provided at these clubs. In addition to the cooperative USO efforts, the Red Cross set up canteens somewhat like the community ones, mainly near military installations, ports of embarkation, at military airfields, and sometimes at train stations. Under its Services to the Armed Forces branch, the Red Cross operated what it called a Club Service for American


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troops overseas. These ranged from simple canteens in outdoor settings consisting of tables stacked with trays of sandwiches, donuts, and hot cups of coffee and called Donut Dugouts by the soldiers and Fleet Clubs by the sailors, to former hotels located in large cities that provided meals, overnight accommodations, and amenities such as barbershops and laundries. In 1942, the American Red Cross introduced Clubmobiles in Great Britain and later set up some on the European continent. Usually converted half-ton trucks and singledeck buses, workers equipped these vehicles to be traveling units that served donuts with coffee and distributed newspapers, chewing gum, and other small items. Some contained phonographs and loudspeakers to play music, and a few, outfitted with movie projectors, became known as Cinemobiles. As with the community canteens, the American Red Cross achieved some remarkable statistics. Through its many services, including canteens, clubs, and recreational facilities, the organization had contact with every air base, army camp, and naval station in the United States and overseas. Another group, the Salvation Army, actively rendered a wide variety of services to Allied soldiers, including 3,000 War Service Units for worship and assistance and 1,000 mobile canteens. Within the commercial world, the Pepsi-Cola Company opened a service center for military men in three U.S. cities—San Francisco, Washington, DC, and New York City. These centers provided overnight accommodations, facilities for showering and shaving, stationery and envelopes for writing letters, and a voice letter recording booth. The Pepsi-Cola Times Square Service Men’s Center reported at the end of its first year of operation that 2 million men from all the country’s armed forces had visited the center. In connection with its second anniversary, this same center assisted one soldier with a complete wedding ceremony and gave another the perfect furlough, which consisted of lunch at the Ritz, a ride in Central Park, a swim at Jones Beach, dinner at the Stork Club, and tickets for Broadway’s Oklahoma! With the country’s entry in World War II, U.S. citizens and service organizations asked the questions how can we help and what can we do, and they organized in a number of ways to support the war effort. For the various members of the USO, it became a matter of providing entertainment, recreation, nourishment, and solace for those away from home—an approach that necessitated that the organizations communicate and coordinate their work and resources. For individuals on the home front, such support required active participation. The decision to prepare and serve food at canteens demanded a person’s time on an ongoing basis. Yet thousands of citizens, especially those in towns where the troop trains regularly traveled, established and worked at community canteens. Throughout the war, they offered nourishment, friendship, and compassion to soldiers on passenger trains, troop trains, and wounded GIs on hospital trains. The statistics from this work easily reveal that a large number of people participated and had an immeasurable impact on the soldiers’ lives. See also: Desserts, Candy, and Ice Cream; Transportation Selected Reading Greene, Bob. Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen. New York: Harper, 2003.


Cartoons ( Film) | 161 The Canteen Spirit. PBS Home Video, 2006. “Ohio Canteens.” www.canteenbooks.com “Pepsi-Cola Canteens.” New York Times, March 1, 1943; July 22, 1943; July 22, 1944. www.pro quest.com

CARTOONS (FILM) A staple of movie theater bills almost from their inception early in the 20th century, cartoons had earned a measure of respect and profitability by the 1940s. Many of the major studios, such as MGM, Paramount, and Warner Bros., boasted full-time cartooning staffs and could mass produce short, animated features in quantity. Most of the people connected with cartooning labored in relative anonymity; the characters they conceived—Bugs Bunny, Felix the Cat, Heckle and Jeckle, Mighty Mouse, Tom and Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, to mention but a few—achieved far greater renown than the individuals who drew them. Warner Bros. marketed its Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons so successfully that it had emerged, by 1940, a power in the field of animation, but only a few people could name who created and produced them. Only Walt Disney (1901–1966) emerged as a well-known figure in his own right, his name as identifiable as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and all his other cartoon creations. Walter Elias Disney broke into the animation business in 1919, mastering the craft by producing animated commercial messages for a Kansas City company. By the end of the 1930s, Disney had long since left the Midwest and settled in Hollywood, California. At the same time, he had achieved the position of a leader in the field of motion picture cartooning and become a household name. With the dawn of the 1940s, the term “Walt Disney” signified a brand, a measure of excellence, providing him and his studio monetary security and a level of fame that continued to grow significantly during the next several decades. The Walt Disney studio commenced its march to success by producing a seemingly endless run of short cartoons throughout the 1920s and 1930s, a march that did not slow down in the war years. For the period 1940 to 1949, Disney artists turned out 149 cartoons, or almost 15 new titles a year. Slightly over half of these star Donald Duck, far surpassing Mickey, Pluto, Goofy, or any of the company’s other familiar characters. During the war years, Disney and his artists dedicated numerous cartoons to the cause of victory, with titles like “Donald Gets Drafted” (1942), “Victory Vehicles,” “Home Defense” (both 1943), “How To Be a Sailor,” and “Commando Duck” (both 1944). Credit for the best-known of the short wartime cartoons must go to “Der Fuehrer’s Face,” a 1942 production. Originally titled “Donald Duck in Nutziland,” the studio promptly changed it to “Der Fuehrer’s Face” to capitalize on the growing popularity of the cartoon’s similarly named theme song. Spike Jones and His City Slickers, a raucous band that specialized in satire and parodies, recorded the politically incorrect tune shortly before the movie’s release, and it quickly climbed the charts. Jones’s recording differs slightly from the soundtrack version (some of the musical sound effects come across as ruder than those heard in the movie), but both poke uninhibited fun at the German dictator.


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In the movie, Donald dreams he labors for the Nazis under terrible conditions; the dream turns into a nightmare until he finally awakens safe in his own bed. The song went on to become a major hit for Jones and his musical satirists, and the cartoon became a Disney classic. At the 1942 Academy Awards, Hollywood agreed and bestowed a best short subject/cartoon Oscar on the film. With the nation at war with Germany, both the song and the movie summed up American feelings toward Hitler. As entertaining and popular as his short cartoons were, Disney and his talented staff wanted to put more of their time and effort into full-length animated feature films. The company had first explored the possibilities of this area of moviemaking with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a picture that premiered at the end of 1937. Already in the works were two more films, Pinocchio and Fantasia, both of which went into theaters in 1940. Pinocchio enjoys the same high quality of drawing as Snow White, and it likewise derives from a well-known story. Who can forget Pinocchio’s nose growing longer and longer when he tells a lie? Fantasia, on the other hand, displays even more technical innovation and daring, but it failed initially to attract the appreciative audiences that flocked to Snow White and Pinocchio. It cannot claim a familiar story, no instantly popular songs like “Whistle While You Work” (Snow White) or “When You Wish Upon a Star” (Pinocchio) enliven its soundtrack, its plot is episodic, and word at the time had it that the movie was just too “artsy.” Part of this complaint concerned the picture’s structure: Fantasia attempts to popularize classical music by means of animation. Narrator Deems Taylor (1885–1966), for many years the radio voice of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, provides a learned running commentary on the eight musical pieces that constitute the film. Conductor Leopold Stokowski (1882–1977), noted for leading the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, takes studio musicians through the selections, ranging from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor to Schubert’s Ave Maria, and appears, as himself, at points during the movie. High art and popular culture meet as Disney accompanies the music with animation for each selection. Mickey Mouse, one of the many cartoon characters that appears in this innovative motion picture, portrays the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in a memorable appearance set to Dukas’s music. At other times, hippos dance; goldfish perform ballet; unicorns, centaurs, and fauns romp; and a host of other creatures have their moments on screen. To do justice to the music of Fantasia, studio engineers created “Fantasound,” one of the first uses of stereophonic sound recording in the movie industry. Theaters that booked Fantasia had to be equipped with special audio devices in order to reproduce the thunderous score properly, a factor that severely held back national distribution of the film. Not until 1942 did Fantasia go into general release without the stereophonic effects. Since the picture cost well over $2 million (almost $35 million in 2008 dollars) to produce, it would take some time for the studio to recoup its investment. Despite these obstacles, Walt Disney Productions, using RKO Radio Pictures as a distributor, went ahead with the project. Only with the passage of time and several re-releases and fancier packaging has it earned the studio a profit, and in the ensuing years, the film has been elevated into a classic motion picture.


Cartoons ( Film) | 163 Undeterred by the less than rousing success of Fantasia, the Disney organization continued to produce animated, feature-length movies. The Reluctant Dragon and Dumbo came out in 1941, followed by the immensely popular Bambi in 1942. Saludos Amigos (actually four short films strung together to extol hemispheric harmony in time of war) and Victory Through Air Power (another propaganda piece whose title says it all) marked 1943, a time when everyone in Hollywood was turning out movies that supported the war effort. The Three Caballeros (1945) picks up from Saludos Amigos, with Donald Duck mixed in with live action. Make Mine Music and Song of the South both graced marquees in 1946, although the live-action sequences in the latter might discomfit contemporary audiences because of their racial stereotyping. The cartoon segments, however, would offend no one and stand among Disney’s best. Four additional features round out Disney’s work in the 1940:, Fun and Fancy Free (1947), Melody Time (1948), So Dear to My Heart, and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (both 1949). These films, labeled as package features because they combine both cartoons and some live action, seldom receive much mention in the Disney canon. Competent and entertaining, they represent attempts to minimize production costs and maximize box office profits in order to give the studio the flexibility to undertake more significant projects. Show business celebrities such as vocalist Dinah Shore (1916–1994), ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (1903–1978) and his dummy Charlie McCarthy, actors Roy Rogers (1911–1998), Burl Ives (1909–1995), Bobby Driscoll (1937–1968), and many others make appearances in these pictures. Despite Walt Disney’s acclaim during the 1940s, other artists also strove for recognition. Max Fleischer (1883–1972) probably stood as Disney’s chief competition in the early days of movie animation. Coming into cartooning at about the same time as Disney, and usually working closely with his director brother Dave (1894–1979), Fleischer initially enjoyed the greater success. But he turned out to be less of a businessman and promoter, so that by the 1940s Disney and his powerhouse studio had eclipsed him. With Gulliver’s Travels (1939; because it did not go into theaters until late December, many people consider this film a 1940 release), the two brothers crafted a feature-length cartoon that rivals anything the Disney artists could do at the time. The Fleischers followed Gulliver’s Travels with Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941), another excellent, full-length animated work, but it suffered the misfortune of opening on December 9, 1941—two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the country’s entry into World War II. Amid the confusion of those dark days, the cartoon essentially disappeared. Only in later years have Fleischer fans discovered its qualities. Fleischer also made a last-gasp attempt to capture an audience with a spin-off from the growing popularity of Superman. The Man of Steel made his first appearance in comic books, the 1938 creation of Jerry Siegel (1914–1996) and Joe Shuster (1914– 1992). An immediate hit with the public, the series went into newspaper comic syndication late the following year, and a radio version came on the air in 1940, where it would remain until 1951. It therefore seemed reasonable that a movie version should also be attempted. The Fleischer studios responded in 1941 with nine cartoon episodes


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of Superman, a feat achieved some seven years before the release of the first live-action feature movie. Many consider this work the best Fleischer ever turned out, although he will probably be best remembered for three pre-1940s cartoon characters: Ko-Ko the Clown (ca. 1920), Betty Boop (1930), and Popeye (1933), the last adapted from Elzie Segar’s (1894–1938) popular newspaper comic strip called Thimble Theatre. Despite their quality, none of these later works achieved any significant box office success, and a disappointed Paramount Pictures finally released both Max and Dave Fleischer from their contracts. The studio, however, retained the brothers’ staff and remained in the cartoon business. It kept Popeye and obtained rights to Little Lulu, a magazine panel series drawn by Marge (b. Majorie Henderson Buell, 1904–1993) that enjoyed a large print readership. But basically Paramount coasted through most of the decade, seemingly uninterested in creating anything truly new or innovative. The premature departure of the Fleischers left the cartoon field wide open, and challengers aplenty waited in the wings. If Disney completely dominated the featurelength animated movie, the quality of Gulliver’s Travels notwithstanding, Warner Bros. worked earnestly to establish a firm foothold for itself with the classic short cartoon. Beginning in the 1930s, several artists, some of them Disney alumni, financed and encouraged by producer Leon Schlesinger (1884–1949), cobbled together a new firm they called Looney Tunes, a name inspired by the Disney organization’s musical shorts that collectively went by the title Silly Symphonies. At first, most Looney Tunes productions resembled Disney products, but with support from Warner Bros., the fledgling operation added Merrie Melodies and began to expand. Young, ambitious artists like Fred “Tex” Avery (1908–1980), Bob Clampett (1913–1984), Fritz Freleng (1905–1995), and Chuck Jones (1912–2002) came on board during the 1930s, as well as Mel Blanc (1908–1989), “the man of a thousand voices,” and composer-arranger Carl W. Stalling (1891–1972) and proceeded to give the cartoon studio its distinctive flavor. Combining their talents, Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies in the 1940s forged a new dimension in American cartooning. They threw out older concepts of tempo and content, replacing them with a frenetic pace and stories that stressed an anarchic sense of humor. Stallings’ typically hectic music, which often borrows snippets from popular songs already in the vast Warner Bros. library, complements this approach perfectly, as does Blanc’s repertoire of voices. Porky and Petunia Pig led this revolution at first, although Petunia virtually gets written out of most 1940s-era cartoons. Daffy Duck soon joined the entourage in 1937, the inimitable Bugs Bunny in 1938, Elmer Fudd in 1940 (who evolved from an earlier cartoon character called Egghead), Tweety Bird in 1942, Yosemite Sam in 1944, Foghorn Leghorn in 1946, and Sylvester the Cat in 1947. The decade ended with two more enduring entries in the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies list: Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner (both 1949). Although the Road Runner series’ primary fame lay ahead in the 1950s, the pair easily fit in among the other characters, because the criteria always remained the same at Warner’s: breakneck plotting and total disregard for older cartoon conventions, qualities that left most of the competition in the dust. During the war, the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies crew fought the Axis just as earnestly as their Disney counterparts. In “Confusions of a Nutzy Spy” (1942; the


Cartoons ( Film) | 165 spoofing title comes from Confessions of a Nazi Spy, a 1939 picture that just happens to be a Warner Bros. release), Porky hunts for bomb-bearing Nazi spies amid endless atrocious puns. “Scrap Happy Daffy” (1943) takes place on the home front, and it ostensibly encourages saving metal items for the war effort. But Hitler sends a billy goat to devour Daffy’s accumulated scrap, with the usual mayhem the result, including an unflattering appearance by Hitler himself. “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips” (1944), which may have been hilarious to a war-weary nation at the time of its release, stars the wisecracking hare against viciously stereotyped Japanese foes. The reduction of an enemy to subhuman status, an unfortunate wartime practice in all cultures, makes this cartoon uncomfortable—and unfunny—for contemporary audiences, but it does illustrate one way in which the entertainment industry participated in the war effort. Although patriotism and victory might be underlying themes in the many Warner Bros. cartoons of the period, audiences remember the nonstop jokes and puns, the sight gags, the disregard for authority, and always the madcap pace of the story. Other talented people also contributed to the popularity of cartoons during the 1940s, but they lacked the combination of merchandising and business acumen essential to the kind of success enjoyed by the Disney and Warner Bros. organizations. For example, Paul Terry (1887–1971) created Terrytoons in 1929 and, with a limited staff, began producing cartoons under his own name. His best years occurred during the 1940s, when he had Gandy Goose, Heckle and Jeckle, and Mighty Mouse as his properties. Mighty Mouse actually made his debut in 1942 as Super Mouse, a spoof on the ongoing popularity of Superman in all its formats. After a year or so, “Super” became “Mighty,” and a more identifiable character resulted. The magpies Heckle and Jeckle began entertaining audiences in 1946, and the two jokesters experienced immediate success. But repetition haunted the Terrytoons, and sameness prevented their ever achieving the enduring popularity of the Disney or Warner characters. In a similar vein, Walter Lantz (1899–1994) had his own studio throughout the 1930s, but his most memorable character, Woody Woodpecker, did not come into being until 1940 in a cartoon called “Knock Knock.” The tapping noise of the title comes about because of Woody’s presence on a roof. This brash bird, not unlike Donald Duck, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, and Heckle and Jeckle, quickly intrigued audiences grown accustomed to too many overly cute animals of various species. His signature laugh has been endlessly imitated and even served as the focus of “The Woody Woodpecker Song” (1948), a brief hit. But Lantz never found another character to equal Woody, although the gentle Andy Panda did have a following, especially among younger children. Comfortable with his small share of the animation pie, Lantz continued to turn out Woody Woodpecker cartoons throughout the decade and beyond. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer entered the cartoon production arena in the mid-1930s, but in a half-hearted way. The giant studio had no outstanding cartoon series under contract, and much of its early production consisted of well-drawn but tepid stories taken from an ongoing comic strip called The Captain and the Kids. Drawn for the newspapers by Rudolph Dirks (1877–1968), MGM did little with its crossover variation. But while the studio floundered in the animation arena, it gained the service of two young cartoonists, William “Bill” Hanna (1910–2001) and Joe Barbera (1911–2006). The pair worked up a sample called “Puss Gets the Boot” in 1940. An auspicious start,


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it features a nameless cat and mouse and their shenanigans. Nominated for an Academy Award, MGM urged them to create a sequel, and thereafter the series called the cat Tom and the mouse Jerry. The animals’ slapstick antics quickly made them major stars in the cartoon world, and throughout the 1940s, the Tom and Jerry franchise competed with the best from Disney or Warner’s, as evidenced by seven Academy Awards between 1943 and 1953. MGM also hired Tex Avery, who had been with Leon Schlesinger at Warner’s, in 1942. He brought with him the anarchic humor that characterized so many Looney Tunes/Merry Melodies productions. Despite a handful of delightful films and the creation of Droopy, a charming basset hound, too many MGM cartoons lacked imagination, and, by the mid-1950s, the operation had reached the end of the line, closing in 1957. With that turn of events, Hanna and Barbera moved to the new medium of television, where they found fame. Their production company created numerous TV cartoon series, with The Flintstones (1960–1966) probably being the most famous. In retrospect, the 1940s marked a golden age in cartooning, both for short films and full-length feature productions. By the end of the 1940s, however, disturbing trends had begun to infiltrate the once-freewheeling world of movie cartoons. Expenses, both for new technology and personnel, had risen, and the studios put pressure on the production companies to keep costs down. Television, not yet really a competitor to film in the late 1940s, nonetheless worried people. Movie attendance fell off throughout the decade, and so the warning signs became more obvious. A number of the smaller cartooning studios closed their doors, leaving the field to Disney, Warner Bros., and a few others. Good, quality work would continue to be created, but the golden age had rapidly lost its luster by 1949. See also: Children’s Films; Classical Music; Comic Strips; Games Selected Reading Barrier, Michael. Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Gifford, Denis. The Great Cartoon Stars: A Who’s Who! London: Jupiter Books, 1979. Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980.

CASABLANCA (MICHAEL CURTIZ) In the summer of 1940, as the fury of World War II mounted in Europe, playwrights Murray Burnett (1911–1997) and Joan Alison (1902–1992) collaborated on Everybody Comes to Rick’s. The drama revolves around a popular bar, Rick’s Café Americain in Casablanca, French Morocco, and the varied people that congregate there. Burnett and Alison tried to find a producer willing to put their work on stage but failed to secure any backing. Good fortune, however, came their way when Warner Bros., a major Hollywood film studio, expressed interest in Everybody Comes to Rick’s. The moviemakers purchased rights to the play in 1941 and assigned three screenwriters, Howard Koch (1902–1995), Julius Epstein (1909–2000), and Philip Epstein (1909–1952), the job of translating the book into cinematic format.


Casablanca (Michael Curtiz) | 167

One of the most popular films to come out of World War II, the cast of Casablanca features Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as star-crossed lovers in the exotic North African city as this lobby card shows. (Warner Bros. Pictures/Photofest)

By the spring of 1942, director Michael Curtiz (1886–1962) had been hired to oversee the proposed picture, and Warner Bros. had to make choices about whom to cast in the major roles. Eventually, the studio decided the romantic leads should be Humphrey Bogart (1899–1957) as Rick and Ingrid Bergman (1915–1982) as Ilsa. A stellar supporting cast—Paul Henreid (1905–1992), Claude Rains (1889–1967), Sidney Greenstreet (1879–1954), Peter Lorre (904–1964), and others—ably complement the two stars. Film composer Max Steiner (1888–1971) created the accompanying score. Shooting commenced in May 1942 and finished by early August. By this time, Everybody Comes to Rick’s had received a new title, Casablanca, but much of Burnett and Alison’s storyline survived intact, although they received virtually no credit. In the movie, Bogart plays the expatriate Rick as a weary cynic, wary of politics and beholden to no side in the growing conflict between the Axis powers and the Allies. The city of Casablanca, an outwardly neutral location under the governance of Vichy, France, serves as home or transit point for a passing gallery of disparate characters. Eventually, of course, Rick must take sides, a choice complicated by his continuing love for Ilsa, a woman married to Lazslo, a Czech Resistance fighter, played by Paul Henreid. Set in late 1941, just weeks or days before the December 7 attack on Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into the war as an active combatant, tensions nevertheless run high at Rick’s Café Americain. Movie audiences would naturally grasp


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the significance of mentioning the date and how events would shortly impact on all the characters. The script makes no attempt to hide its pro-American, pro-Resistance point of view. It symbolically depicts, through Rick, the need for the United States to throw off its professed neutrality and come into the conflict on the side of the Allies. Good people must stand up to bullies, personal considerations must be sacrificed so that individuals can unite against evil, and in their unity they will win. Rick, who has a background of fighting fascism, knows this, but he still desires Ilsa. But to be true to the democratic values the movie professes, Rick must lose Ilsa and allow her and her husband to flee the clutches of the Nazis. In the early days of World War II, no other attitude would have been acceptable, especially in the eyes of the Office of War Information (OWI), a government body that oversaw film content. Although it exerted no real censorship powers, the OWI commented and advised on current movies—as did the various branches of the U.S. military—and Hollywood did not wish to run afoul of any such groups. The mere threat of censorship proved sufficient. To qualify for the 1943 Academy Awards, Warner Bros. gave the film its premiere in late November 1942 for New York City audiences (Academy Awards are granted for cinematic excellence displayed during the preceding year). Then, in February 1943, the movie received national and international distribution. As a result, some people consider Casablanca a 1942 release, while others classify it as a 1943 offering. More importantly, its November release coincided with the Allied landings in North Africa, including French Morocco. With headlines daily announcing the progress of U.S. forces, the setting for the film takes on added meaning. At the time of Casablanca’s national issuance, the U.S. Army had secured the city and one of the first meetings of Allied leaders took place there with the January 1943 Casablanca Conference. History and military strategy had provided a fortuitous series of events that added to the picture’s topical prominence. The film did well at the box office, and it won the prestigious Academy Awards for best picture, best director, and best screenplay (shared by Koch and the Epsteins). In addition, it collected nominations for best leading actor (Bogart) and best supporting actor (Rains), along with best original dramatic score (as opposed to best song), best black-and-white cinematography, and best editing. But that proved only the beginning; the sad love story and the interplay between real events and a fictional plot give the picture added resonance, and it has continued, for many, as the definitive World War II movie. For the 21st century, Casablanca remains a crowd-pleasing favorite, a true cult movie for a wide range of fans who know its every scene and can quote numerous passages from the script; it plays frequently on television, and video stores know to keep it stocked on their shelves. Although Max Steiner composed much of the background music in Casablanca, someone else’s melody serves as a leitmotif throughout the film. As a young man, playwright Burnett had been attracted to a romantic ballad entitled “As Time Goes By,” and Steiner skillfully incorporates both its melody and lyrics into his score. Composerlyricist Herman Hupfeld (1894–1951) had originally written the number in 1931 for Everybody’s Welcome, a forgotten musical then struggling to garner attention on Broadway. Although the play enjoyed moderate success with 139 performances, Hupfeld’s


Children’s Films | 169 contribution eventually fell by the wayside of forgotten songs, and he moved on to other projects. In 1932, he wrote “Let’s Put Out the Lights and Go to Sleep,” and the topical “Are You Makin’ Any Money?” in 1933. The latter went nowhere, suggesting the public did not want musical reminders about the crisis. Hupfeld had earlier written “Sing Something Simple” in 1930, and the nonsense song “When Yuba Plays the Rhumba on the Tuba,” a minor hit in 1931. Despite these less than smashing successes, the composer will endure in the annals of American popular song for “As Time Goes By.” Fortunately, vocalist Frances Williams (1902–1959) recorded the number in 1931, as did bandleaders Jacques Renard (n.d.; active 1920s–1930s) and Rudy Vallee (1901– 1986). Burnett adapted Williams’ rendition for Everybody Comes to Rick’s. When Hupfeld penned “As Time Goes By” in the early 1930s, a period marked by the Great Depression and all its resultant woes, the music’s lyrics spoke to many of the hopes and dreams of Americans; more than a decade later, when they faced the new challenges accompanying World War II, the words again addressed their concerns. Certainly in Casablanca, “As Time Goes By” is a song that Rick and Ilsa recognize as their own. In the film, musician Dooley Wilson (1886–1953), a drummer by trade, appears to play the piano while he sings Hupfeld’s song to remarkable effect, both for the lead actors and the audience. Thus, this seemingly forgotten tune, along with Wilson’s performance, provides a movie moment that everyone who has seen it remembers and allows a 1930s song to emerge as a major, enduring hit for the wartime years. By presenting images and ideas appealing to Americans in the early days of World War II, Casablanca creates a mythic time and place where older concepts of isolationism can be discarded. The gradual transformation of Rick, his realization that he cannot escape responsibilities, and, no matter how alluring the thought of romantic love, his need to take a stand against those who would destroy anything good, propels this simultaneously sad but optimistic motion picture. See also: Broadway (Musicals); Drama (Film); Political and Propaganda Films; War Films Selected Reading Anobile, Richard J., ed. Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca. New York: Flare Books, 1974. Dick, Bernard F. The Star-Spangled Screen: The American World War II Film. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985. McLaughlin, Robert L., and Sally E. Perry. We’ll Always Have the Movies: American Cinema during World War II. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006. Zinsser, William. Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs. Jaffrey, NH: David R. Godine, 2000.

CHILDREN’S FILMS Generally speaking, children’s films appeal to viewers ranging in age from preschool to early adolescence. As movies, they must, above all, be entertaining. Hallmarks usually include slapstick, action (with lots of visual mayhem but no real violence or damage), exaggerated characterizations, and plotting that can be easily followed. In addition,


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they often possess a family orientation, and studios frequently market them as motion pictures that reinforce existing cultural mores and values. Over the years, the film industry has never forgotten children. The early two-reel silent comedies of Charlie Chaplin appealed as much to youngsters as to their elders. Shirley Temple (b. 1928) reigned as one of Hollywood’s most popular—and highest-paid—stars throughout the 1930s, and her movies exemplify bright, light children’s fare. More recently, pictures like Mary Poppins (1964), E.T.: The ExtraTerrestrial (1982), and The Lion King (1994) have provided contemporary models of the genre, and film studios annually release a handful of new motion pictures with this audience in mind. The 1940s proved no exception to these patterns, although the war years witnessed a dramatic drop in output aimed at boys and girls. That difficult period, 1941 to 1945, saw Hollywood focusing a major part of its energies on war-related films, not children’s fare. The studios coped with an unwritten mandate to churn out as many morale-boosting pictures as possible, a supposition that left children’s movies a neglected category. Not only did the industry produce a limited number of such films, those that were shown in theaters seldom depict the war in any way. Most suggest a background of peace and normality or refer to the conflict in such vague terms that it hardly intrudes on the story, if at all. Taking the decade as a whole, despite the absence of topicality in both peacetime and war, a number of fine movies for the younger set came out during the 1940s. Since the studios released several hundred feature-length motion pictures each and every year, setting aside room for 15 or 20 productions for a selected audience did not place that great a burden on the industry. Plus, a few children’s productions each year met with better-than-average box office success, and this fact alone justified the continuation of the genre. A number of performers achieved their first success as child actors in films of the 1940s. Although some went on to long careers in the movies, others did not make the jump from child roles to adult stars. Among the more popular and successful of the youthful actors from this period, mention should be made of the following: Robert Blake (b. 1933), Claude Jarman Jr. (b. 1934), Margaret O’Brien (b. 1937), Dean Stockwell (b. 1936), Elizabeth Taylor (b. 1932), and Natalie Wood (1938–1981). Other youthful stars, such as Freddie Bartholomew (1924–1992), Jackie Cooper (b. 1922), Judy Garland (1922–1969), Roddy McDowall (1928–1998), Mickey Rooney (b. 1920), and Shirley Temple (b. 1928) hardly qualified as children with the onset of the 1940s. Popular in films during the 1930s, Hollywood still had them playing characters younger than their years in the early 1940s, although they quickly graduated to teen or young adult roles as time passed. The table below does not attempt to list every child-oriented release marketed to young audiences during the 1940s but instead presents a sampling of some of the betterknown examples. The many cheap B Westerns featuring Gene Autry (1907–1998), Roy Rogers (1911–1998), and others might have been included in the list, and they did indeed claim an enthusiastic youthful following during those years, but such movies fall more accurately into the Westerns (Film) category and therefore receive discussion under that heading.


Children’s Films | 171 TABLE 25.

Representative Children’s Films, 1940–1949

Year

Live-Action Films

Stars

1940

The Biscuit Eater The Bluebird The Swiss Family Robinson

Billy Lee, Cordell Hickman Shirley Temple, Spring Byington Thomas Mitchell, Freddie Bartholomew Sabu, Conrad Veidt Mickey Rooney, Fay Bainter

Fantasia Pinocchio

Roddy McDowall, Walter Pidgeon

Dumbo The Reluctant Dragon (also live action)

The Thief of Bagdad Young Tom Edison 1941

How Green Was My Valley

1942 1943

Bambi Lassie Come Home

Elizabeth Taylor, Roddy McDowall Roddy McDowall, Preston Foster

My Friend Flicka 1944

Home in Indiana Meet Me in St. Louis

Lon McCallister, Walter Brennan Elizabeth Taylor, Margaret O’Brien Elizabeth Taylor, Mickey Rooney

National Velvet 1945

Christmas in Connecticut The Enchanted Forest Our Vines Have Tender Grapes Son of Lassie Thunderhead, Son of Flicka A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

1946

Feature-Length Animated Films

Black Beauty Courage of Lassie Gallant Bess

Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan Edmund Lowe, Billy Severn Edward G. Robinson, Margaret O’Brien Lassie, Peter Lawford Roddy McDowall, Preston Foster Dorothy McGuire, Joan Blondell Make Mine Music

Great Expectations It’s a Wonderful Life Smoky The Yearling

Mona Freeman, Richard Denning Lassie, Elizabeth Taylor Marshall Thompson, George Tobias John Mills, Valerie Hobson James Stewart, Donna Reed Fred McMurray, Anne Baxter Gregory Peck, Claude Jarman Jr.

1947

Cynthia Miracle on 34th Street The Return of Rin Tin Tin

Elizabeth Taylor, George Murphy Natalie Wood, Edmund Gwenn Rin Tin Tin, Robert Blake,

Fun and Fancy Free

1948

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein The Boy with Green Hair The Green Grass of Wyoming Hills of Home Oliver Twist

Bud Abbott, Lou Costello

Melody Time So Dear to My Heart— (also live action)

Dean Stockwell, Pat O’Brien Charles Coburn, Robert Arthur Lassie, Edmund Gwenn Alex Guinness, Robert Newton


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(continued)

Year

Live-Action Films

1949

Challenge to Lassie A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court Little Women The Red Pony The Secret Garden The Story of Seabiscuit The Sun Comes Up

Stars

Feature-Length Animated Films

Lassie, Edmund Gwenn Bing Crosby, William Bendix June Allyson, Elizabeth Taylor, Margaret O’Brien Robert Mitchum, Peter Miles Margaret O’Brien, Dean Stockwell Shirley Temple, Barry Fitzgerald Lassie, Jeanette Mac Donald

Likewise, almost any of the Abbott and Costello (Bud Abbott [1895–1974]; Lou Costello [1906–1959]) comedies of the period would also be appropriate for youngsters, as would the popular short features of the Three Stooges. Both teams employ antic slapstick humor bound to bring laughter to legions of children. Further discussion of both Abbott and Costello and the Three Stooges can be found under Comedies (Film). Among other series that can fit several categories, the nine Tarzan films that came out during the 1940s should be also noted. They range from Tarzan’s Secret Treasure (1941) to Tarzan’s Magic Fountain (1949), and their jungle hokum always appealed to children. They are discussed under Costume and Spectacle Films. For the early adolescent set, the Andy Hardy pictures with Mickey Rooney recount growing up in the United States during the late 1930s and early 1940s; they receive coverage under comedies More family oriented, but still popular among children, the many Blondie movies, adapted from the newspaper comic strip pioneered by cartoonist Chic Young (1901–1973), cover the antics of Dagwood and Blondie Bumstead. They, too, can be found under comedies. All children love cartoons, and the innumerable short animated features released by the likes of the Walt Disney Studio (Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Pluto, etc.), Warner Bros. (Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, etc.), and others are discussed under cartoons. The Disney organization more or less dominated the longer feature-length cartoon genre throughout the decade, and that area of specialization can be found above on the table. Finally, the many serial films—those multipart movie sagas that feature a rousing story broken into a dozen or so installments, with each one shown separately in order to assure audiences would keep returning to find out what happens next—had become established by the 1940s. They possessed great appeal for children, given their simple plots, almost nonstop action, and cliffhanger endings, so no Saturday matinees at neighborhood theaters would be complete without the latest installments. Given the unique qualities of serials, they are covered as a separate film genre. Although children’s films constituted but a small part of Hollywood’s vast film output during the 1940s, they enjoyed a guaranteed, ready-made audience. As such, all the studios produced them, albeit only a few per year in terms of overall production. Seldom marketed like a movie with big-name stars or an audience-getting plot that


Citizen Kane (Orson Welles) | 173 promised sex, violence, and other adult themes, children’s movies showed a quieter side to Hollywood’s usual flamboyance. See also: Comic Strips; Juvenile Delinquency; Newspapers; Youth Selected Reading Jackson, Kathy Merlock. Images of Children in American Film. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1986. Wojcik-Andrews, Ian. Children’s Films: History, Ideology, Pedagogy, Theory. New York: Garland, 2000. Zierold, Norman J. The Child Stars. New York: Coward-McCann, 1965.

CITIZEN KANE (ORSON WELLES) A motion picture that appears on virtually every listing of all-time best films (the prestigious American Film Institute ranked it No. 1 out of 100 American movies), Citizen Kane first played on theater screens in 1941. The picture has as its producer, director, writer, and star Orson Welles (1915–1985), the enfant terrible of American radio (“War of the Worlds,” 1938; The Mercury Theatre on the Air, 1937–1941), stage (Julius Caesar, The Cradle Will Rock, both 1937), and film (in addition to Citizen Kane, accolades for The Magnificent Ambersons, 1942; The Lady from Shanghai, 1947; and The Third Man, 1949). The picture received nine Academy Award nominations (best film, director, actor, original screenplay, musical scoring, art direction, cinematography, editing, and sound recording) but won only for best original screenplay. Welles shared this honor with veteran screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (1897–1953). Although Mankiewicz wrote most of the original story, Welles contributed ideas and the two worked together on the final editing. How Green Was My Valley, however, won for best picture, as did its director John Ford (1894–1973). Gary Cooper (1901–1961) beat out Welles for the acting laurels with his performance in Sergeant York. Gregg Toland (1904–1948), who has been widely lauded over the years for his superlative black-and-white camera skills, provided Citizen Kane with much of its atmosphere. He nonetheless lost out in the cinematography category to Arthur C. Miller (1895–1970), who filmed How Green Was My Valley. In retrospect, the Academy members slighted a masterpiece, but at the time, with World War II just beginning, a warm, nostalgic picture like How Green Was My Valley doubtless held great emotional appeal, just as Cooper’s rousing portrayal of Sergeant York gave a reassuring portrayal of a U.S. soldier in combat. So many subsequent awards and honors have been heaped on both Welles and Citizen Kane that the Academy oversight has faded with time. The Citizen Kane of the title refers to Charles Foster Kane, a fictional character based loosely on newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951). Hearst, a jingoist, a demagogue, and very much alive when Welles made the movie, expressed outrage over the liberties the young filmmaker had taken with his life story. He did not allow the Hearst newspapers to publish reviews of the new film, nor would he permit


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Many critics consider landmark film Citizen Kane one of the most visually exciting productions of all time. Cameraman Gregg Toland, working closely with director Orson Welles, justly won an Academy Award nomination for his cinematography. In this striking shot, Kane (Welles) campaigns for political office. (Photo by Apic/Getty Images)

any advertising about it, including theaters and show times. He threatened the studio, RKO Radio Pictures, with ruin and warned Welles of possible legal repercussions. But much of Hearst’s wrath consisted of bluster and he could accomplish little, although a number of his friends in the movie industry brought pressure to bear on both RKO and theaters to pull the film and thus reduce its availability for audiences. Hearst need not have worried; the film initially did poorly at the box office, despite positive critical reviews; it would eventually do better as it established a reputation as a cinematic work of genius, but it took years. The film begins with the death of Kane and then flashes back to tell, in essentially chronological order, of his life. His lonely childhood; his rise to success as a publisher; the accumulation of great wealth; and then the long, slow deterioration of all his personal affairs—at its most simplistic, a grandiose, albeit acidic, retelling of the Horatio Alger myth, but without the happy ending. Citizen Kane argues that, contrary to popular belief, great wealth and material success do not always bring happiness. It thus becomes in many ways a melodrama, an attempt to appeal to a large public anxious to see the rich and powerful cut down to size. As Kane lies dying, he utters the cryptic “Rosebud.” The tale that follows may or may not be summed up in Rosebud. As it turns out, Kane longed for simplicity in his life, such as sledding as a child. But wealth has distanced him from these pleasures, proving that one cannot go home again and recapture the past. But Rosebud itself has become an established part of American popular culture; for example, cartoonist


Citizen Kane (Orson Welles) | 175 Charles Schulz (1922–2000) more than once used the term in Peanuts, his widely circulated comic strip. Most people reading the strip do not see it as some arcane reference, but instead make connections between Rosebud and Citizen Kane. The association has become established and no longer requires having seen the movie and knowing the role the term plays in the film. A study in contrasting private life with public life, much of the movie employs the kind of tabloid journalism that Hearst’s papers—the San Francisco Examiner, the New York Journal, the Boston American, the Detroit Times, and numerous others—featured. Very much a newspaper-based motion picture, Citizen Kane utilizes reporters as a method of telling its story, and portions of the dialogue paraphrases statements, real or apocryphal, attributed to Hearst. Kane achieves ever greater wealth during the first third of the 20th century; his inflated sense of self-importance, however, causes him to lose longtime friends and associates. But he also gains a mistress, partially based on Hearst’s lengthy affair with Hollywood actress Marion Davies (1897–1961). In the film, Davies becomes Susan Alexander (played by Dorothy Comingore, 1913–1971), actually a composite of several women plus the imaginations of Mankiewicz and Welles. Portrayed as a mediocre opera singer, several scenes purport to show how Kane builds her a Chicago opera house and just how dismally she sings, none of which applies to the real Marion Davies. Hearst did, however, build San Simeon, a vast castle on the California coast north of Santa Barbara. Construction began in 1919 and continued for many years while he tinkered with details of the structure and poured millions into it. The castle served as a palatial getaway for himself and Davies as well as the site of many lavish social events. Furnished with fine art and antiques acquired by the boatload from Europe and designed by the noted American architect Julia Morgan (1972–1957), it stands as an ostentatious monument to wealth and the absence of taste. But its very exuberance makes San Simeon perfect for a visual medium like motion pictures. In Citizen Kane, San Simeon becomes Xanadu, even more vulgar than the actual San Simeon, and allows cinematographer Toland to utilize unique photographic effects. Already an Academy Award winner for his work in 1939’s Wuthering Heights and a nominee in 1940 for The Long Voyage Home, Toland desired the latitude, promised to him by Welles, to try new techniques. In addition, advances in Kodak film allowed for heightened dark and light contrasts without graininess. He particularly wanted to work with deep focus shots, wherein everything—foreground, middle ground, background—in the frame remains sharply in focus instead of blurring, thus forcing the observer to take in all aspects of a scene instead of concentrating only on certain parts. Shots of Kane and Susan Alexander in the vast rooms of Xanadu achieve a remarkable power thanks to Toland’s dramatic and imaginative photography. Because RKO, in its contract with Welles, allowed him complete artistic freedom on the set, his entire crew, not just Toland, felt confident to try new approaches instead of hewing to studio rules or Hollywood traditions. Welles also brought his considerable experience in radio, an aural medium, and used it to advantage with Citizen Kane. For many old sound pros then working in Hollywood, the radio engineers introduced them to many new techniques. The same holds for composer Bernard Herrmann (1911– 1975), who had previously worked with the Mercury Theatre radio shows. He brought


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an individualistic approach to musical scoring for a film: after reading the script, he would write the music first, and then Welles and his editors faced the task of arranging the images accordingly. The technique obviously worked; Herrmann received an Academy Award nomination for his Citizen Kane score but lost to himself because he had been similarly nominated in that category for his score to The Devil and Daniel Webster (also known as All That Money Can Buy), an unusual occurrence in the annals of the Academy Awards. This utilization of the talents of experienced, skilled personnel, along with Welles’s own inexperience in making a movie, makes Citizen Kane a truly collaborative effort. With the passage of years, Citizen Kane has come to rival, if not overshadow, two other excellent pictures from the 1940s: Casablanca (1942) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Immensely more popular at their release, they represent the best of topical moviemaking and have endured extremely well. But Citizen Kane transcends time; the tumultuous events of the first 40 years of the 20th century certainly provide a background, but they play little role in the telling of Charles Foster Kane’s biography. Along with its technical brilliance, this particular American tragedy speaks to all generations—past, present, and future—by removing the audience from the constraints of a particular era. It allows them to see Kane—and Kane alone, because of his complete dominance of every frame within the motion picture—as a man doomed by his own quest for the unattainable. See also: Drama (Film) Selected Reading Carringer, Robert L. The Making of Citizen Kane. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Gottesman, Ronald, ed. Focus on Citizen Kane. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971. Kael, Pauline. The Citizen Kane Book. New York: Limelight Editions, 1988. Leming, Barbara. Orson Welles: A Biography. New York: Viking Penguin, 1985.

CIVIL DEFENSE The concept of modern civil defense had its birth in World War I, when concern about protecting citizens and property from indiscriminate bombing gave rise to mobilizing means to thwart or minimize the effects of such attacks. By the late 1930s, military and government leaders in the United States realized that technological advances in warfare, especially long-range bombers, removed geographical security the North American continent might have once felt. As the specter of World War II and eventual U.S. involvement loomed, these officials looked to the British for ideas about protecting civilian populations. Although England, especially London, would not experience the horrors of the German Blitz until late 1940 and early 1941, the British had already been working vigorously toward a nationwide approach to civil defense, given their experiences in both World War I and the early days of World War II. American observers took note of how the English prepared for aerial bombardment, and in March 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued an executive order directing the federal government to move


Civil Defense | 177 ahead with the first contingency plans for civilian defense. Shortly thereafter, and in anticipation of enemy attacks, the government created the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) in May of that year. This agency at first functioned as a liaison office and clearinghouse among various national defense agencies. The OEM had within its divisions the Office of Civilian Defense (later the Office of Civil Defense; OCD), created in May 1941, a year following the formation of OEM. It attempted to coordinate the efforts of numerous state and local defense councils, because most had been operating independently with a resultant haphazard patchwork of civil defense policies. A few people realized that soon, rather than later, the United States would be drawn into the growing con- This poster, created in 1941, when the threat flict abroad, and they made attempts to of war and enemy attacks was growing, found organize a civilian cadre of volunteers wide distribution across the country. The cirtrained in first aid and responses to di- cular Civil Defense emblem became familsaster situations, but it took the debacle iar to everyone and the text urges citizens to at Pearl Harbor in December 1941 to join with their neighbors in becoming part of an organized cadre of volunteers. (Library of awaken a sleeping nation. Congress) The colorful mayor of New York City, Fiorello La Guardia (1882–1947), received appointment as the first head of the OCD early in 1941. An enthusiastic and vocal supporter of civil defense, La Guardia found it difficult to balance his roles as New York’s mayor and as a federal administrator. He eventually resigned, and James M. Landis (1899–1964) took over the position from early 1942 until the end of 1943; William N. Haskell (1878–1952) in turn followed Landis and guided the organization until the end of the war. With peace, President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) phased out the agency. Despite the leadership turnovers at the OCD, work continued unabated, particularly during 1940 and 1941, and gradually a framework for actions to be taken in case of attack evolved. For cities and towns, the agency urged a system of volunteer air raid wardens. Following intensive training, they would be placed on duty to assist in any needed ways before, during, and after an enemy raid. Their responsibilities included overseeing the rules for blackouts, particularly the need to extinguish any visible sources of illumination. They also received instruction about dealing with incendiary devices, fire fighting, the proper use of gas masks in the event of chemical warfare, and basic first aid techniques. At the neighborhood level, they could direct people to the nearest air raid


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shelters, sturdy structures usually marked with a yellow S, and they would see to it that those needing assistance received it. Their greatest value, however, lay in their ability to calm a worried public. In the spring of 1942, the OCD christened this first line of defense the United States Civilian Defense Corps, and it eventually enrolled over half a million people, men and women, young and old. Plans for civil defense, however, went beyond wardens fulfilling their duties during blackouts or other war-related events. The Civil Air Patrol (CAP) had come into being in the late 1930s with the realization that neither the Army Air Corps nor the air arms of the U.S. Navy and Marines possessed sufficient aircraft and manpower to patrol the nation’s coastlines in addition to their more purely military missions. Government officials decided to take advantage of the 128,000 certified pilots residing in the United States and the 25,000 light civil aircraft in their possession. The aviation community responded enthusiastically, and, by 1943, membership in the Civil Air Patrol numbered about 75,000 individuals. Flying their own small private planes, CAP pilots daily patrolled the shores along the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico, looking for any suspicious activity. They also flew out to sea, sometimes over 100 miles from land and usually unarmed, looking for enemy submarines. This latter activity proved invaluable, because a submarine, even submerged, is far more visible from the air than from aboard a ship. Their orders were to report any sightings, but a few even engaged the foe by feigning an attack until assistance could arrive. They reportedly drove off a number of submarines using this tactic and eventually received permission to carry bombs; the lightest planes often took a 100-pound bomb aloft, and larger ones could manage one or two depth charges (explosive devices designed to detonate underwater and damage or destroy a submarine). In the course of their patrols, CAP pilots received credit for sinking two German submarines. Over the duration of the war, Civil Air Patrol pilots flew over 86,000 coastal patrol missions, logging countless hours in the air and covering millions of square miles. The group’s activities were not without cost: 65 pilots or observers lost their lives, and over 90 planes were destroyed. By venturing so far offshore, fuel shortages or mechanical problems could occasionally doom the tiny, single-engine aircraft they flew, causing them to go down at sea with the loss of both the crews and their planes. Authorities moved the Civil Air Patrol from the Office of Civil Defense to the War Department in the spring of 1943, and made the organization an auxiliary of the Army Air Corps. This shift did not, however, end CAP’s civil defense responsibilities. Its pilots continued to fly reconnaissance missions, plus they performed search and rescue duties for downed aircraft. They also carried mail, light cargo, and occasional passengers for the military services. The end of the war raised the issue of what to do with CAP, but in light of its exemplary service, no one wanted to disband it. With the creation of the United States Air Force in 1947, the Civil Air Patrol became an official auxiliary of the new service branch. Emphasis was placed on education and maintaining a viable cadet corps, a function it continues to maintain. In addition to air raid wardens and the activities of the Civil Air Patrol, the Ground Observer Corps (GOC) served as a third leg in a growing system designed to alert localities in the event of an attack by air. Overseen by the War Department and the Army Air Force, the GOC put thousands of people on rooftops, in towers, on beaches


Civil Defense | 179 and fields, and anywhere else one could get a reasonably clear view of the sky, rain or shine, day and night. Formed in 1942 and at its peak a year later, some 600,000 aircraft spotters scanned the horizons looking for suspicious aircraft. Armed with a telephone hook-up to their community, identification books, and spotter cards—decks of cards containing silhouettes of many different airplanes, both friend and foe, that allowed for quick identification of anything flying overhead—these civilian observers maintained a continuous vigil throughout the war. The money for the spotters came from local sources, not the government. Towns held bake sale, raffles, and other fundraisers to buy materials necessary for constructing shacks, crude towers, and the like to provide their volunteers a modicum of protection from the elements. At first, overly zealous observers reported both flocks of crows and friendly aircraft, but they soon adapted to the job’s requirements, plus they learned to differentiate Allied from enemy aircraft. The Pearl Harbor attack had demonstrated to an unsuspecting nation that the United States was not impregnable. Hawaii might be far from any land mass, and vast oceans separated the continental United States from much of the rest of the world, but with a world war erupting on two fronts—the Japanese in the Pacific, Germany and Italy threatening from the Atlantic—a rush to organize some kind of home front defense system supplanted complacency. Within days of the bombing, civilians rushed to volunteer for various duties connected with protecting the home front from enemy attack and sabotage. In an unparalleled display of community solidarity, Americans everywhere responded by taking responsibility for their own defense against enemy actions. When, however, the hostilities ended in 1945, people wanted to forget about war and air raids, and civil defense as a part of everyday life languished. The spotters and the block wardens put away their identification books and helmets; the Civil Air Patrol returned to routine, peacetime activities; and President Truman deactivated the Office of Civil Defense. But no one had counted on the Cold War commencing almost as soon as the soldiers laid down their arms. Tensions rose between East (Soviet Union) and West (the United States and its allies) and the saber rattling began anew. With its monopoly on nuclear weapons and industrial base virtually intact, the nation felt relatively secure in the immediate postwar period. The Truman administration supported forming the National Security Resources Board (NSRB) in 1947, an umbrella agency that would oversee, among many things, the implementation of any new civil defense measures, should they be necessary. But times change, as does technology. The Air Force had added the B-36 bomber, a six-engine behemoth capable of delivering atomic bombs anywhere on the planet. The Soviet Union, however, also built up its long-range air capabilities, utilizing designs quite frankly stolen from American models, and could conceivably strike North America within hours of takeoff. An arms race between the two powers had begun—one that would endure for decades. To the shock of the man on the street, on August 29, 1949, newspapers announced that the USSR had successfully detonated an atomic bomb of its own. Thanks to captured German scientists and documents, prolonged espionage in most Allied nations, and its own scientific establishment, the Communist country had completely altered the balance of power between East and West. The announcement also brought about


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a flurry of activity in Washington, and civil defense again became a topic for serious discussion at various levels of government. President Truman quickly activated the Office of Civil Defense Planning, an extension of the old Office of Civil Defense from the war years. As officials discussed ways of coping with the unthinkable—a nuclear attack from Soviet bombers directed at U.S. cities—other experts decreed that a new agency would be necessary to deal with the threat. In December 1950, and after the North Korean invasion of South Korea in June, the Office of Defense Mobilization (ODM) came into being—a new and powerful agency designed to coordinate many levels of national preparedness, including civil defense. Thereafter, with the development of hydrogen bombs on both sides, intercontinental missiles capable of reaching the continental United States cities within minutes, instead of the hours required of conventional bombers, the ODM eventually coalesced into the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization (OCDM) in 1958. In light of new and ever more deadly threats, U.S. civil defense once again had a high priority. See also: Atomic Bomb; Aviation; Political and Propaganda Films; Youth Selected Reading Civil Air Patrol. www.CAP.gov/documents/arch8_history_of_cap.pdf Hoopes, Roy. Americans Remember the Home Front: An Oral Narrative. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1977. Lingeman, Richard. Don’t You Know There’s a War On? The American Home Front, 1941–1945. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1970. Winkler, Allan M. Under a Cloud: American Anxiety about the Atom. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

CLASSICAL MUSIC The New Oxford American Dictionary (2001) offers several definitions for the word “classical,” including “typically a form of art regarded as representing an exemplary standard long-established in form or style.” Well into the 20th century, enthusiasts of classical music used the criterion for determining excellence and concluded that the only good music came from Europe, in blatant disregard for American composers who wanted to incorporate local flavor into their works. Even Walt Disney’s (1901–1966) movie Fantasia, which premiered at New York’s Broadway Theatre on November 13, 1940, to great critical acclaim, acknowledged this infatuation with composers from other countries. In this feature, animators set cartoons to classical compositions, such as The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1897; Paul Dukas, 1865–1935), Nutcracker Suite (1892; Peter Tchaikovsky, 1840–1893), Night on Bald Mountain (1886; Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, 1844–1908), and Rite of Spring (1913; Igor Stravinsky, 1882–1971), all non-Americans. Although typical classic music listeners in the United States purported to prefer the above, along with Bach (1685–1750), Beethoven (1770–1827), and Brahms (1833– 1897), some American composers dared to experiment with writing pieces that came from their experiences in the New World, not their ancestral origins. For example, Charles Ives (1874–1954), born in Connecticut, readily used hymns and popular tunes


Classical Music | 181 rooted in New England life when crafting his sonatas, symphonies, and other concert music written in the early decades of the 20th century. Health conditions prevented him from composing after 1922, but he enjoyed public performances of his works until his death, and saw several composers follow his lead. Aaron Copland (1900–1990), Roy Harris (1898–1979), Virgil Thomson (1896– 1996), William Grant Still (1895–1978), and Morton Gould (1913–1996) all searched for a uniquely American sound and, by 1940, had become significant native composers. Of these five, Copland became the most successful, especially through three well-received ballets: Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942), and Appalachian Spring (1944). Each deals with American themes and incorporates simple musical motifs, such as cowboy and folk tunes, reflective of the country’s culture. Copland’s 1946 Third Symphony continues in this format, with some tunes suggestive of folksongs. He also composed for the movies, with five films from the 1940s to his credit: Our Town (1940), The North Star (1943), The Cummington Story (1945), The Red Pony (1949), and The Heiress (1949). Roy Harris, in his 1940 Folk Song Symphony, embodied traditional folk themes such as “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again,” as well as two other Civil War tunes. For this effort, Harris received a citation from the U.S. Treasury Department in 1941 for distinguished and patriotic services to the country. After the war, he held teaching positions with various colleges and universities and produced a violin concerto in 1949. In the meantime, Virgil Thomson moved from Paris back to New York City in 1940, working as a music critic for the Herald Tribune. His composing included a piece for an Office of War Information (OWI) documentary titled Tuesday in November (1945), an examination of a free and fair presidential election in a country at war. An opera, The Mother of Us All (1946), focuses on the life of suffragette Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) and uses a variety of musical sources ranging from medieval church music to folk hymns and ballads. Thomson also traveled to Hollywood and wrote the score for Louisiana Story (1948), a documentary about changes to life on the bayous when the oil industry arrived. As did Copland, Harris, and Thomson, William Grant Still reflects and pays homage to his cultural background in works such as And They Lynched Him on a Tree (1940) and In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy (1944). Known as the”Dean of African American Composers,” Still provided arrangements for musicians who performed popular music; he also wrote and produced programs for radio networks. During the 1940s, he penned scores for 14 B-grade Hollywood films without credit, such as The Secret Seven (1940), The Missing Juror (1944), The Millerson Case (1947), Phantom Valley (1948), and Rim of the Canyon (1949). A truly versatile composer, he also offered an opera, A Bayou Legend, which premiered in 1941, followed by a suite, Pages from Negro History, in 1943. His Festive Overture (1944) won the Jubilee Prize given by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for the best overture to celebrate its jubilee season that year. Morton Gould (1913–1996), another composer active during the 1940s, frequently featured well-known American themes integrating folk, blues, jazz, gospel, and Western elements as can be heard in Spirituals (1941), Latin American Symphonette (1941),


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Cowboy Rhapsody (1942), and Fall River Legend (1947). He gained recognition across the country through arranging and conducting for network radio, particularly the Columbia Broadcasting System’s Chrysler Hour and Mutual’s The Cresta Blanca Carnival of Music. For Broadway, he created the scores for Billion Dollar Baby in 1945 and Arms and the Girl in 1950. Hollywood credits include the documentary Ring of Steel (1942) and the musical Delightfully Dangerous (1945), in which he appeared leading an orchestra. Other composers writing notable compositions during the 1940s, but making their biggest marks in the decades following, include Samuel Barber (1910–1981), Paul Creston (1906–1985), William Schuman (1910–1992), Norman Dello Joio (1913– 2008), David Diamond (1915–2005), Elliott Carter (b. 1908), and Gian Carlo Menotti (1911–2007). In 1943, Schuman won the inaugural Pulitzer Prize for music with his cantata A Free Song, adapted from Walt Whitman’s (1819–1892) poetry. Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951) gained fame as the first opera written expressly for and performed on television. Mention should also be made of Howard Hansen (1896–1981), Walter Piston (1894– 1976), and Roger Sessions (1896–1985). They worked primarily as educators, conductors, and promoters of other composers. Hansen, as head of the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, presented some 1,500 works by 700 composers. From 1946 to 1962, he was active in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization and composed a piece for its 1949 world conference in Paris. Piston, in his compositions during the World War II era, occasionally incorporated the rhythms of jazz and American country dance music, but none became well known or popular. His Third Symphony, written in 1948, received the Pulitzer Prize in music. He authored three significant music textbooks, two during the 1940s: Harmony (1941) and Counterpoint (1947). Although Roger Sessions wrote many pieces (five during the 1940s), no orchestras at the time regularly performed his compositions. He remains best known for his teaching at institutions such as Princeton University; the University of California, Berkeley; and the Juilliard School; along with being able to count among his former students such eminent composers as David Diamond (1915–2005) and others. Even before the United States’ entry into World War II in December 1941, a patriotic fervor had spread across the country that continued throughout the conflict. Musicians from all genres, including both the famous and the unknown, participated in the war effort in a number of ways. For example, the popular swing clarinetist Benny Goodman (1909–1986) appeared as a soloist in the Mozart (1756–1791) Clarinet Concerto with the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in October 1940, while the Symphony Orchestra of the National Youth Administration (NYA, a New Deal program) for New York City presented free Sunday afternoon concerts in the summer of 1940 with programs that included both European and American classical music. Interested in boosting morale on the home front through radio and recordings, conductor and arranger Andre Kostelanetz (1901–1980) requested submissions of musical portraits of great Americans that could be performed with various orchestras. The four pieces commissioned by him in 1942 included Portrait for Orchestra: Mark Twain by Jerome Kern (1885–1945), Mayor La Guardia Waltzes and Canons for Dorothy


Classical Music | 183 Thompson by Virgil Thomson, and the Lincoln Portrait by Aaron Copland. He penned two additional wartime pieces, Fanfare for the Common Man (1944) and Letter from Home. Fanfare premiered on March 12, 1943, under the baton of Sir Eugene Goossens (1893–1962), resident conductor for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. ABC (American Broadcasting Company) commissioned Letter from Home for its national programming; a short number, it deals with American GIs off fighting the war. Other composers and musicians likewise capitalized on their talents to become involved with the war. In 1939, Nelson Eddy (1901–1967), a classically trained baritone who achieved fame starring in light movie operettas, performed in a concert to benefit Polish war relief. After that, he frequently appeared at the Hollywood Canteen; broadcast for the Armed Forces Radio (AFR); and, in 1943, traveled to South America, Africa, Egypt, and Persia (now Iran) to entertain U.S. troops. Ferde Grofe (1892–1972), best known from his “On the Trail,” a segment of his Grand Canyon Suite (1931) and used in Philip Morris cigarette advertisements, supported the war through radio and the film industry. He served as the maestro for a wide variety of radio shows; collaborated on a number of Hollywood films, including Strike up the Band (1940), Thousands Cheer (1943), and Rhapsody in Blue (1945); participated in USO (United Service Organizations) shows; and, at times, held the baton for military bands. In fact, classical music proved to be so popular with service personnel that the USO in 1942 set up a concert division devoted exclusively to arranging for these kinds of shows. More direct assistance came from composer Marc Blitzstein (1905–1964), who joined the army and served as musical director of the government-run American broadcasting facility in London. While there, he wrote Freedom Morning, a symphonic poem for orchestra, which opened in London in 1943. The United States Air Force commissioned him to produce a choral piece that he titled Airborne Symphony; it had a notable performance in New York City in 1946, with Orson Welles (1915–1985) as narrator and Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) conducting. It received a lukewarm reception, however, because most Americans wanted to put all reminders of the war behind them. Gail Kubik (1914–1984), composer and musical advisor for NBC radio, wrote the score for an OWI film called The World at War. Arturo Toscanini (1867–1957), also affiliated with NBC as the conductor of its symphony orchestra, in 1943, revived Giuseppe Verdi’s (1813–1901) Hymn of the Nations, composed in the early 1860s, for inclusion in an OWI documentary film about Italian Americans aiding the Allies during World War II. Toscanini added a bridge to Verdi’s work to include arrangements of the anthems of the United States and the Soviet Union. Originally produced for European distribution, the movie was released in the United States in April 1946. An increased interest in classical music became just as evident at home. Despite the challenges of wartime rationing, the San Francisco Ballet Company in 1944 produced the first complete U.S. performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, composed in 1890–1891. Uniforms for the toy soldiers had to be made out of old Cort Theater curtains. Support for classical music by some citizens across the country did not abate with an end to fighting. On May 4, 1946, the first of seven weeks of concerts focusing on popular modern composers and performed by members of the New York


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Philharmonic Orchestra, was held at Carnegie Hall in New York City. To promote their 1947 baseball schedule, the New York Yankees sponsored a program of symphonic music every afternoon during the season on a local radio station. At the same time, Chicago offered Grant Park concerts free and brought the finest of classical music to the Windy City. Before, during, and after World War II, radio offered a wide variety of programming, and among classical music professionals, Andre Kostelanetz became one of its most popular personalities. He came to the United States from his native Russia in 1922, and two years later made his radio debut conducting an orchestra. In 1929, he joined CBS and performed until 1946 with symphony orchestras on a number of shows beginning with Andre Kostelanetz Presents. He reached his greatest recognition from his arranging and recording of light classical music pieces intended for mass audiences and recorded by Columbia Records from the 1940s until 1980. Some of Kostelanetz’s success, and that of subsequent radio musical programs and recordings, came from his recommendations concerning microphone placement and sound mixing, a technique that became the standard for both mediums. A significant boost for the selling of classical records occurred in 1948, when Columbia Records introduced the long-play album (33-1/3 revolutions per minute [rpm]) in both 10-inch and 12-inch disks. The company reserved its 12-inch recordings for higher-priced classical compositions, because, with its playing time of 17 minutes to a side (most 78-rpm records could accommodate only 3 to 4 minutes per side), the disks allowed many of these to be played without interruption. Kostelanetz, professionally active in many ways, made numerous recordings over the course of his career, including a series of easy listening instrumental albums on Columbia Records, conducting the New York Philharmonic in pops concerts and recordings. He encouraged the orchestra in 1943 to engage a youthful Leonard Bernstein as conductor, thus, giving him his first big break. On a nonmusical note, Kostelanetz also assisted in the development of technology that enabled Allied ships and submarines during World War II to differentiate their own craft from enemy vessels. Prior to employing Kostelanetz, CBS in 1929 formed an in-house orchestra for a show called The Columbia Symphony Orchestra, which aired irregularly and closed in 1938. Meanwhile, in 1937, NBC (National Broadcasting Company) engaged the most renowned conductor in the world, Arturo Toscanini (1867–1957), to lead its studio orchestra for a weekly program called The NBC Symphony Orchestra, a show that played continuously until 1954. It, along with other classically oriented shows, provided rich offerings for the few who listened. Of the two networks, NBC took the lead in hours and money invested for classical programming and experienced more success with its studio orchestra than did CBS. In Table 26, NBC leads CBS by seven to three programs airing throughout the 1940s. World War II created shortages and cutbacks on a number of fronts, including musical programming for radio. While some shows endured the interruptions of war, others did not fare as well and ceased soon after the United States’ entry into the conflict. In addition, Table 27 reveals that NBC did not cancel as many shows as CBS. Devotees of classical music also had other sources from which to choose. Large metropolitan areas, such as New York, Boston, and Chicago, prided themselves on


Classical Music | 185 TABLE 26.

A Sampling of Classical Music Radio Shows on the Air during the 1940s

Program Title

Dates

The New York Philharmonic Orchestra The Music Appreciation Hour (a groundbreaking educational program for children) The Voice of Firestone (began as The Firestone Hour) The Metropolitan Opera The NBC Symphony Orchestra Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra The Boston Symphony Orchestra The Telephone Hour, also called The Bell Telephone Hour Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra Children’s Concerts Carnegie Hall

Network

1927–1963 1928–1942

CBS NBC

1928–1954 1954–1957 1931–1958 1937–1954 Late 1930s and early 1940s 1932–1956 1940–1958 1945–1948 1948–1950

NBC ABC NBC NBC NBC and CBS NBC and ABC NBC CBS ABC

Source: Adapted from Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

A Sampling of Classical Music Radio Shows That Left the Air during World War II

TABLE 27.

Program Title

Dates

The Cincinnati Conservatory Symphony The Curtis Institute Musicale The Ford Sunday Evening Hour The Radio City Music Hall of the Air The Rochester Civic Orchestra The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra

The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra

1935–1941 1933–1941 1934–1942 1932–1942 1929–1942 1929–1930 1935–1937 1939–1942 1937–1938 1938–1943

Network CBS CBS CBS NBC NBC NBC

Mutual CBS

Source: Adapted from Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

promoting fine music and art. The United States boasted five prominent symphony orchestras: the New York Philharmonic, founded in 1842; the Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1881; the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 1891; the Philadelphia Orchestra, 1900; and the Cleveland Orchestra, 1918. All remained active during World War II; in addition to their annual concert series performed in their respective cities, they regularly broadcast on network radio. The musicians with these symphony orchestras and others across the country tended to be male. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra featured a female harpist in its first


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season of 1892 to 1893, a rare exception, and the Cleveland Orchestra included four women in 1923. Perceptions that they lacked the physical strength required for playing instruments other than the piano or harp, that they did not have the stamina needed for lengthy rehearsals, that they could not rehearse regularly because of their duties at home, and that they might look less than ladylike while performing, coupled with a general resistance for women to work outside the home, barred them from membership in most groups. The rapid growth of American music schools and conservatories in the late 19th century created an excess of capable female players who wanted to work professionally. They secured positions in amateur and semiprofessional orchestras but generally not the major ones. The formation of all-women ensembles became an alternative, particularly during the 1920s and 1930s. During World War II, these musicians stood ready to join the major orchestras as more and more men either enlisted or were drafted into military service, causing a serious need for competent instrumentalists. Despite their eagerness to play, however, few women actually performed. Eighteen joined the Pittsburgh Orchestra in 1942 and 24 more in 1944. But a report prepared for the National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year 1975 noted that, even with this pressure to engage female players for instruments other than the piano or harp, the most renowned American orchestras employed fewer than 10 women in all, with the exception of Pittsburgh. Generally, positions offered to women were understood to be temporary, not employment on a regular contractual basis. Despite widespread efforts during the 1940s to promote an appreciation for classical music through public concerts and programs on national radio networks, this particular genre never gained the popularity experienced by many other kinds of music. World War II caused all aspects of everyday life in the United States to slow down or change, but composers such as Copland, Harris, Thomson, Still, and Gould strove to promote classical music possessing an American sound and gained some moderate success. At the same time, Kostelanetz brought classical music to millions of Americans through radio and recordings. Two large record companies—RCA Victor and Columbia—had classical recordings in their inventory, and, in 1949, Capitol Records joined them, leaving Decca alone of the big four companies producing only popular fare. Toscanini and the NBC Orchestra stayed on the air with sizeable audiences for 17 years, and groups such as the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony began to tour the country, exposing even more people to this genre. See also: Advertising; All-Girl Orchestras; Broadway Shows (Musicals); Canteens; Country Music; Musicals (Film); Newspapers; Rosie the Riveter Selected Reading Ammer, Christine. Unsung: A History of Women in American Music. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980. Cooper, Martin, ed. The New Oxford History of Music: The Modern Age, 1890–1960. London: Oxford University Press, 1974. Horowitz, Joseph. Classical Music in America: A History of Its Rise and Fall. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005. Struble, John Warthen. The History of American Classical Music: MacDowell through Minimalism. New York: Facts on File, 1995.


Cold War, The | 187

COLD WAR, THE The death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), just beginning his fourth term in office in April, thrust Vice President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) into the international spotlight. Relatively inexperienced in foreign affairs, Truman had to deal with the closing months of World War II and an increasingly troublesome relationship with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its difficult leader, Joseph Stalin (1879–1953). Truman and the American public may not have realized it at the time, but before the final peace treaties had been signed, and with the former Axis countries lying in ruins, the opening volleys of a new kind of war—a cold war, as opposed to a “hot” one with bombs and soldiers in combat—had begun. Less than a year after Truman assumed the presidency, during a speech delivered at tiny Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874–1965) invoked the image of an iron curtain descending, separating Eastern and Western Europe. With Truman in attendance, Churchill in his message said that the Soviets wanted to divide East and West into two blocs, Communist and non-Communist, and that the two entities were like enemies in an undeclared war, meaning that those countries falling under the yoke of Communist rule will be isolated from the Free World by an impenetrable military and ideological barrier or “curtain.”

In keeping with the tensions aroused by deteriorating relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, Hollywood released a number of anti-Communist films during the late 1940s. This scene comes from The Iron Curtain and shows Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney in a somber moment. (Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation/Photofest)


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On April 16, 1947, just over a year later, financier and longtime presidential advisor Bernard Baruch (1870–1965) employed the term “cold war” in comments given in South Carolina. (It should be noted that English author George Orwell (1903–1950) probably first used the term in a 1945 essay, but it gained little notice.) Shortly after Baruch’s speech, columnist Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) used the phrase in a series of published articles, giving it a considerably larger audience. Instead of pitched battles between massed armies, a cold conflict involves diplomatic, ideological, political, and economic rivalry—an armed truce—in an attempt to achieve geographic and military dominance. Both “cold war” and “iron curtain” became metaphors that gave Americans a slightly better grasp of the postwar era. This colorful imagery describing deteriorating postwar Soviet-U.S. relations henceforth enjoyed widespread use in popular conversation. The roots that produced the Cold War remain tangled, with many interpretations that attempt to explain the postwar world situation in 1945. In brief, the Big Three— Roosevelt representing the United States, Churchill the United Kingdom, and Stalin the USSR—in July 1945 met at Potsdam, in Russian-occupied Germany, to discuss the map of Europe following the war. The Allies, with the addition of France, took control of the western section of Germany, while the Soviet Union took the eastern part. The victors divided Berlin, the traditional capital that lay well within the eastern sector, into four sections of military control. But much of the remainder of the devastated continent at first leaned neither toward either side, in effect creating a power vacuum. All that shortly changed, however, proving the accuracy of Churchill’s words at Westminster College. An Eastern European bloc of Soviet-controlled satellite states, including Albania, Bulgaria, East Germany, Poland, Romania, and later Czechoslovakia and Hungary, disappeared behind the Iron Curtain. In the midst of these changes, George F. Kennan (1904–2005), serving as deputy chief of the U.S. mission in Moscow under Ambassador W. Averell Harriman (1891– 1986), in spring 1946 sent a lengthy, secret telegram to the Department of State outlining what he saw as the reasons behind the deteriorating relations with the USSR. Using the pseudonym “Mr. X” in the fall 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs, Kennan published “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” an expansion of his earlier correspondence with the State Department, since called “the long telegram.” In both documents, he championed the containment of the Soviet Union, saying that the country should not be allowed to expand its areas of influence beyond what it had already attained. Other officials, searching for a middle ground, supported a theory of convergence that said, in effect, the United States had to recognize the legitimacy of Soviet conquests, and that “spheres of interest” were a realistic response to the geopolitics of the time. Columnist Walter Lippmann served as Kennan’s primary dissenter. In his aforementioned The Cold War (1947), Lippmann argued that both sides—the United States and the Soviet Union—should withdraw their forces from Europe and allow the uncommitted nations to pursue their own destinies. He claimed that containment would prove untenable and so expensive it would drain U.S. resources. Kennan’s approach nevertheless won over many in Washington and motivated the conduct of the nation’s international policies for the remainder of the decade.


Cold War, The | 189 While others debated ways of dealing with the Soviet Union, President Truman, in a speech given in March 1947, articulated to Congress what his approach to foreign affairs would be. He said the country would aid any nation threatened by Communism, and pundits promptly labeled his plans as the Truman Doctrine, a term that stuck. Soon thereafter, the president requested and received $400 million (approximately $3.6 billion in 2008 dollars) in aid to Turkey and Greece, two unaligned countries strategists saw as threatened by Communist forces, both internal and external. Truman’s actions marked the formal entry of the United States into the Cold War. Together, the Truman Doctrine and George F. Kennan’s containment policies had an immediate effect, and probably helped to save Italy, France, Austria, and Greece from Communist takeovers. Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980), the leader of Yugoslavia, played both sides, accepting arms and money but never committing to one or the other. U.S. planners feared the Soviet Union would invade the Balkan nation, and thus gave Yugoslavia considerable aid for many years. Because a sense of urgency drove the Cold War policies of the United States, they went essentially unchallenged and emboldened the country to intervene indiscriminately in the affairs of other nations, always with the excuse that Communism needed to be stopped whenever and wherever it seemed to threaten U.S. security. As 1947, a key year, progressed, a number of other events increased public awareness of the complexities associated with the Cold War. Under the leadership of General George Catlett Marshall, acting in his capacity as secretary of state, the European Recovery Plan took shape. Better known as the Marshall Plan, it consisted of an unprecedented outpouring of aid and funds to war-torn Europe. Marshall and Truman recognized that a reinvigorated Europe would better resist any attempts by Communist groups to seize power; plus, on a more selfish level, the United States was anxious again to have strong European trading partners. The Soviet Union and its satellites, sensing that the Marshall Plan functioned as a cover-up while the United States strove to establish capitalism instead of socialism and increase trade, thereby making economic policies a driving force behind the Marshall Plan, declined to participate. The Soviets called the European Recovery Plan an “imperialist plot,” claiming its implementation would further heighten tensions. In light of the USSR’s rejection of the Marshall Plan, Sewell Avery (1873–1960), the chairman of Montgomery Ward, the huge merchandising firm, proposed shipping millions of mail-order catalogs directly to the USSR, allowing its citizens to see the array of goods available through capitalism. Another individual urged the government to air-drop millions of nylon stockings on the unsuspecting Russian citizens, causing them to look more favorably toward the material wealth of the West. Neither suggestion received any official government sanction. Although it might have been unimpressed with catalogs and nylons, Congress did, however, pass the National Security Act in July 1947. Under its provisions, the Department of Defense replaced the old War Department, and two new agencies, the National Security Council (NSC) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), were born, both of which would eventually play pivotal roles in the Cold War. Additionally, propaganda agencies, such as Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe (RFE), and the United


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States Information Agency (USIA), saw sharp budget increases as the government increasingly utilized this form of psychological warfare, or what some called “perforating the Iron Curtain.” At the same time, the Soviets and their satellites, in a seesaw battle with the West, attempted to purge all evidence of American mass culture within their borders. Soon thereafter, the two sides began arresting alleged spies and hurling threats and accusations back and forth. During the summer of 1948, the first major postwar crisis between East and West occurred when Soviet authorities raised blockades to shut down transportation routes into Berlin, the now-isolated German capital managed by the victorious Four Powers (France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States). Beginning in July, Soviet barriers effectively sealed off from the outside world that portion of Berlin managed by the three Western powers. In an amazing turn of events, Allied pilots daily flew hundreds of flights from Western Europe into the beleaguered city. The Berlin Airlift, as it came to be called, electrified the Free World and saved the city, while the Soviet Union suffered a humiliating propaganda defeat and reopened access to Berlin by land traffic in May 1949. That same month, the United States Great Britain, and France, working with the West German government, created the autonomous Federal Republic of Germany; almost simultaneously, the Soviet Union proclaimed the German Democratic Republic (GDR) for the eastern section of Germany. Overnight, West Germany and East Germany split the old nation in two, and it would be decades before reunification occurred. As tensions rose, and fearful of an overwhelming Soviet attack against Western Europe, military and political officials in the Allied nations lobbied for a military pact that would unite them in defending their territories. These countries clearly looked to the United States, thousands of miles from Europe’s shores, for leadership, aid, and, most importantly, troops and arms. Out of these discussions came NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) in the spring of 1949. Working from the premise that an armed attack against one constitutes an armed attack against all, its participants saw the organization as a military shield with integrated forces from all 12 member nations. It also meant that European affairs had become U.S. affairs—the final end of any pretense of isolationism. Although an overwhelming majority (83 percent) of Americans opposed going to war against the Soviet Union, some 75 percent wanted the nation to beef up its armed forces and thus were generally supportive of NATO, despite the USSR’s distrust of long-range Allied intentions. While the problems in Europe festered and drew considerable attention, the Cold War took a less prominent turn in Asia. In 1946, troops commanded by Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969), a Communist-leaning revolutionary, commenced guerilla warfare against the colonial army in the northern section of French Indochina (or Indochine, the French term for present-day Vietnam). The conflict dragged on, but the French finally met defeat in 1954, an event that paved the way for the later Vietnam War that would eventually involve the United States. At roughly the same time, and after a protracted civil war in China, Mao Zedong (1893–1976), more commonly called Chairman Mao, in 1949 successfully defeated the forces of Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975). Mao declared the


Cold War, The | 191 formation of the People’s Republic of China. An ardent Communist, Mao enjoyed Soviet support, whereas Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang party had the backing of many Western governments. The loss of both Vietnam and China to Communism caused great consternation in U.S. diplomatic circles and led to countless political recriminations against Truman and his advisors. To add to the administration’s woes, that same year the United States lost its coveted nuclear monopoly in late August, when the Soviet Union exploded its own atomic bomb. This event signaled a new balance of terror as far as concerned weaponry, and both sides embarked on extensive testing of nuclear arms. Just three years later, in 1952, the United States announced the development of a much more powerful hydrogen bomb; in August 1953, the Soviets claimed their own hydrogen technology. In no time at all, the arms race between East and West had reached a dangerous new level. On the home front, the public did not at first seem unduly alarmed about the news, but vocal critics of national security claimed the country’s tolerance of Communism and fellow travelers were to blame for the Soviet Union obtaining nuclear weapons. Soviet spies and their confederates, they said, had made the unthinkable possible—and a measure of truth lived in this claim. Revelations about spying, the passing of secrets, and lax security at supposedly secret atomic facilities all came to light. Politicians from both parties angrily demanded immediate investigations into how this could have happened; clearly, Russian spies ran rampant at the highest levels of government, cried the more vociferous critics. The official clamor and dire predictions about Soviet intentions led to rising concern among citizens, concerns that led to a general paranoia about the Soviet Union and the A-bomb. In short order, schools were conducting “duck and cover” drills for children, the prescribed action to take in the event of a Soviet nuclear strike. Civil defense was reborn, and sturdy buildings bore yellow signs designating them as havens during an attack. Many people, convinced World War III could break out at any moment, feverishly excavated their backyards for fallout shelters. Entrepreneurs advertised fallout kits, and do-it-yourself magazines provided plans for various defenses against bombs of all kinds. Public fears continued to grow in the late 1940s, and with good reason. In military circles and among civilian planners, there emerged the theory of mutual assured destruction (MAD). In this scenario, any nuclear attack (a first strike) would lead to an equally deadly response or massive retaliation (a second strike), which could mean the obliteration of both sides in such a conflict. But, these theorists argued as a kind of reassurance, MAD means that neither side would dare launch such an attack, a deterrent posture that leads to a nuclear standoff and the avoidance of a first strike altogether. As Americans learned their leaders entertained these kinds of options in their strategic thinking, small wonder they worried about the likelihood of war. People’s fears found reinforcement in the actions of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (better known and remembered as the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), a standing congressional committee that came into being in 1945, an outgrowth of similar panels dating back to the 1930s. Throughout the latter years of the decade, this committee subpoenaed countless individuals in a quest to root out Communists wherever they might be found. In many ways a rebirth


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of the infamous “red scare” following World War I, it utilized trial by innuendo, and those summoned by HUAC would seldom know the exact accusations nor could they confront their accusers. The federal government had already, in March 1947, required loyalty oaths from government workers to sign, and the procedures of HUAC only added to the worries of ordinary citizens. For example, HUAC demanded that the reading lists used in selected high school and college classes be reviewed in order to purge any questionable titles that might support Communist ideology. Meek administrators, instead of stirring up trouble or arousing suspicion, frequently went along with these requests. The committee’s activities became daily newspaper fodder when, in the summer of 1948, HUAC initiated a series of hearings investigating the alleged infiltration by Communist agents into many quarters of American life. Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961), an admitted Soviet spy during the 1930s and at the time of the hearings an editor with Time magazine, testified that State Department official Alger Hiss (1904–1996) had been a Soviet agent. Chambers charged, Hiss denied, and their confrontation became the show trial of the day. Congressman Richard M. Nixon (1913–1994), a member of HUAC only since 1947, doggedly pressed the issue and finally assisted in getting Hiss accused of perjury. Interested spectators included Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908–1957), who would gain notoriety in the early 1950s for his zealous hunts for Communists at all levels of government. With the hearings attracting attention amid unchecked fears of Communists lurking almost anywhere, enterprising publishers rushed into print a stream of books with titles like American Capitalism vs. Russian Communism, American Communism, Communism and the Conscience of the West, The False Christ of Communism and the Social Gospel, Iron Curtain, The Red Plotters, The Soviet Spies, Why They Behave Like Russians, and such. Given national concerns about the escalating Cold War, most of these books did reasonably well in sales. Magazines and newspapers likewise ran countless articles about the perceived red menace. The congressional purges reached into the film industry, accusing it of placing proCommunist content in many of its releases. The investigation resulted in contempt of Congress charges against ten screenwriters and directors, the so-called “Hollywood Ten.” In response, the studios hurriedly produced and released several anti-Communist movies during the late 1940s, including The Iron Curtain (1948), The Red Menace (1949), and I Married a Communist (1949). They obviously hoped such films would demonstrate the film capital’s opposition to subversive elements, and they continued to crank out many more anti-Communist motion pictures during the early 1950s. In retrospect, 1947 can be seen as an epochal year in the early history of the Cold War. Few political scientists or historians challenged the official U.S. line about the conflict’s origins until well into the 1960s, when a generation of revisionist scholars began to question details. Until then, aggressive Soviet expansionism served as the accepted primary cause. The arguments and differing points of views have continued into the present. Public concerns engendered by the Cold War, however, did not reach their peak until the 1950s, with the Korean War, the McCarthy witch hunts and hearings, the Rosenberg executions, an ever-escalating arms race, and innumerable other high-profile events demonstrated how completely Cold War hysteria had enveloped the


Cole, Nat King | 193 nation. This period in American history did not come to an end until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and even then vestiges of the conflict stubbornly clung to aspects of foreign policy and national defense. The 1940s served but as prelude. See also: Crime and Mystery Films; Drama (Film); Eisenhower, General Dwight David; Political and Propaganda Films; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk; Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 (Selective Service, or Draft); United Nations, The Selected Reading Diggins, John Patrick. The Proud Decades: America in War and Peace, 1941–1960. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988. Graebner, William S. The Age of Doubt: American Thought and Culture in the 1940s. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Hixon, Walter L. Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Rose, Lisle. The Cold War Comes to Main Street. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999.

COLE, NAT KING This popular pianist and vocalist, born Nathaniel Adams Coles in Alabama, will always be remembered as Nat King Cole (1919–1965). The epitome of a smooth, jazzinflected singer, Cole began performing in the 1930s, achieved a modicum of fame during the 1940s, and then became a major entertainer in the 1950s, his star continuously rising until his untimely death in 1965. The Coles family moved to Chicago while Nathaniel was still a child; he learned to play piano and organ and became interested in jazz after hearing many famous instrumentalists play at the clubs that flourished in the Windy City at the time. In the mid-1930s, he formed a small group of his own and used the name Nat Cole. At some point, companions added “King,” probably because of the nursery rhyme about Old King Cole. His older brother, Eddie Coles, who had played bass for several bands, meanwhile decided to organize a small jazz group, Eddie Coles’ Solid Swingers, and invited young Nat to sit in on piano. And, because of Eddie’s prior connections, the Solid Swingers even got to record several sides for Decca in 1936. Nothing ever came of these early recordings, but they pointed Nat toward a career in jazz. During the later 1930s, Cole landed the job of piano accompanist for a road revival version of Eurbie Blake’s (1887–1983) Shuffle Along, a Broadway show originally written in 1921. The production went broke on the West Coast, and Cole decided to remain there. Southern California had an active jazz club scene, so after accepting every playing job he could find, Cole asked guitarist Oscar Moore (1916–1981) and bassist Wesley Prince (1907–1980) to join him in establishing the Nat King Cole Trio. The combination of piano-bass-guitar worked well and would function successfully, both commercially and artistically, throughout the 1940s. Bassist Johnny Miller (1915–1988), replaced Prince in 1942, when the latter got drafted. At first, the trio played mainly instrumental numbers, although Cole would sometimes do a vocal over his own piano playing, and occasionally Moore and Prince would add their voices for a unison effect. Some early Decca tracks, along with some sides


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for small independent labels recorded in 1940 and 1941, show that Cole already had become a modestly talented singer, although his voice had yet to mature into the velvet baritone people came to know in the years ahead. Most of the time, however, the interplay of piano and guitar overshadows any vocalizing and displays the strong roots in contemporary jazz the trio had developed. Bebop (or bop) had begun to make inroads on swing at that time, and many younger black musicians displayed a growing interest in this new jazz format. Cole’s lyrics to tunes like “Gone with the Draft” (1940), “Are You Fer It?” and “Hit That Jive, Jack” (both 1941) come across Nat King Cole’s fame began to rise during the as dated novelty numbers, much in the 1940s. His velvety voice and exemplary piano manner of popular performers like Cab stylings made him both a jazz and pop star, Calloway (1907–1994) and Louis Jorand he enjoyed a number of hits in the post- dan (1908–1975), but they also pay their war years. This publicity photo shows him as a suave entertainer, an image he perpetuated in respects to the jive talk that often went along with the imagery of bebop. the years to come. (Photofest) During this time, Cole also demonstrated considerable facility in composing and arranging. One of his tunes, written in 1943, he called “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” and many consider it his best work. Possibly based on a sermon he heard when young, or completely of his own making, it tells a fable about deceit and power., A person found misbehaving or doing his or her job improperly or with the wrong attitude may be told to “straighten up and fly right.” If nothing else, his lyrics added a colorful phrase to World War II–era language. Movie fans got to hear the tune and see it performed by the trio in a minor 1943 musical called Here Comes Elmer. That same year, Cole signed a contract with fledgling Capitol Records, a Hollywood-based label with which he would remain until his death. Founded in 1942 by composer-lyricist Johnny Mercer (1909–1976), songwriter and producer Buddy DeSylva (1895–1950), and businessman Glenn Wallichs (1910–1971), the new company quickly developed a varied roster of artists, one that included a heavy emphasis on contemporary jazz and vocals. Cole fit right in with Capitol’s plans, and in the 1950s he would emerge as one of the label’s most reliable and successful stars. His piano skills won Cole considerable esteem in jazz circles. Metronome magazine, a well-respected monthly music journal that focused on jazz and swing, in 1939 inaugurated an annual readers’ poll to select the top instrumentalists and vocalists of the day. The magazine continued the custom until 1961, and unlike other polls, Metronome attempted to gather each year’s winners in a studio for a recording session. In 1946, Cole received top Metronome honors for piano. Backed by first-class


Cole, Nat King | 195 sidemen, he recorded “Sweet Lorraine,” a tune he would perform many times in the years ahead but with Frank Sinatra (1915–1998), voted that year’s best male vocalist, singing the lyrics. At that same session (December 1946), Cole sings with June Christy (1925–1990), the winner as best female vocalist, on “Nat Meets June,” a trifle but one that nonetheless displays his smooth vocal manner. Cole repeated in the piano category for 1947 and recorded “Leap Here,” an all-instrumental piece that featured some of the best instrumentalists of the time. He also won similar polls conducted by Down Beat magazine from 1944 until 1947 and the Esquire jazz survey in 1946 and 1947, sure evidence of his high standing among those readers, although he had yet to build the tremendous popular following that would characterize his work after 1950. That hoped-for popular following, however, began to materialize in 1946 when Cole recorded “I Love You (for Sentimental Reasons).” Performed by the trio, jukebox and airplay catapulted it to No. 8 for the year on the Billboard charts. He also enjoyed a lesser hit at that time with “The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You),” a composition destined to become a perennial holiday favorite. Originally penned in 1945 by singer Mel Torme (1925–1999) and songwriter Bob Wells (1922–1998), Cole and his group made their first recording of the tune in 1946. Later in the year, they added a small string section, and Capitol released this new interpretation; it did well during the 1946 holiday season. Over time, “The Christmas Song” became a seasonal standard, and Cole recorded it yet again in 1953 with a large orchestra, and that version eclipsed his earlier interpretations of the tune. It may be Mel Torme’s composition, but most people associate the song with Nat King Cole. A busy performer, Cole’s threesome played jazz concerts and could be heard frequently as guests on top-name radio shows. In 1948, he hit the charts again with “Nature Boy,” a curious song about a “strange, enchanted boy” written by Eden Ahbez (1908–1995), a Brooklyn-born eccentric who chose to live simply in Los Angeles parks and the Hollywood hills. Based on an old Yiddish melody, “Nature Boy” came out in 1947 on the B side of a Capitol single; no one held any great expectations for the tune. But listeners loved it and it became Cole’s biggest hit up to that time, establishing itself as the No. 4 song for 1948. Performed without the trio, but with a large studio orchestra, “Nature Boy” showed company executives that Cole possessed the potential to become a major pop vocalist along the line of Bing Crosby (1903–1977) and Frank Sinatra. The early 1950 release of “Mona Lisa,” another syrupy, romantic ballad that ended up at No. 6 for the year confirmed the company’s hopes and completed the transformation of Cole from innovative jazz pianist and ensemble player to vocal interpreter of contemporary love songs. He had already dissolved his famous trio at the end of the decade and began recording prolifically in front of orchestras and strings. He also appeared in movies (he had done some cameos with the trio in several forgettable musicals during the 1940s) and eventually moved to television. In that new medium, he could be seen as a frequent guest on various programs and graduated to host his own variety show in 1957, one of the first black entertainers to achieve so many levels of success. See also: Broadway Shows (Musicals); Jukeboxes; Magazines; Musicals (Film); Race Relations and Stereotyping


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| Comedies (Film) Selected Reading Epstein, Daniel Mark. Nat King Cole. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1999. Gourse, Leslie. Unforgettable: The Life and Mystique of Nat King Cole. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991.

COMEDIES (FILM) In a period of war, people still need to laugh, just as they would in peacetime. Grim headlines, tense radio broadcasts, separation from loved ones, plus all the other daily reminders of the conflict make this need especially great, and World War II Hollywood rose to the occasion. From silly slapstick to slick, urbane tales of sophisticated characters in amusing situations, the movie comedies of the era offered everything from knowing grins to robust guffaws. When the 1940s opened, the nation wanted very much to stay out of overseas wars. Isolationism sounded appealing to many, and the idea of intervention had few followers. For the most part, the prewar movie comedies took a decidedly neutral path and avoided European and Asian situations or any other hint of topicality. For 1939 to 1941, that gray period before the nation’s entry into World War II, a number of dramas, on the other hand, had already chosen sides. As early as 1939, serious films like Confessions of a Nazi Spy made no efforts to conceal their allegiances, and, as the conflict drew nearer, Escape (1940), Man Hunt (1941), and a number of others continued to show the Axis powers as the enemy. Caught in the Draft (1941), one of the few comedies to hint at the growing drumbeats for war, masked reality through humor. A Bob Hope (1903–2003) feature, he plays a character trying to evade the recently enacted draft. Released in the summer of 1941, Selective Service and the disruptions it brought to civilian life were still fair game for comedy, but that attitude would not last long. As the table below suggests, by and large Hollywood provided lots of laughs on an almost weekly basis, with romantic comedy, cheerful music, and slapstick humor glossing over most reality. In 1942, Jack Benny (1894–1974), whose fame resided primarily in radio, starred in To Be or Not to Be, a mix of Shakespeare and anti-Nazi humor. Supposedly set in Warsaw, the picture tells how an acting troupe (led by Benny, of course) sabotages the Gestapo with wit and sly humor, demolishing, along the way, any lingering ideas about “the Master Race.” Hail the Conquering Hero (1944), a clever satire on celebrity worship, has hometown boy Eddie Bracken (1915–2002) mistaken for a military hero. Not really about the war, it deals more with American attitudes and the gullibility of crowds. The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944), another dark comedy that addresses situations removed from the war, stars Bracken in his second 1944 appearance and Betty Hutton (1921–2007). Since great numbers of soldiers passed through cities and towns while on their way to postings, the occasional civilian pregnancy took place, and that subject, daring for its time, creates the plot. Very much an adult comedy about a potentially unfunny subject, it manages to avoid moralizing and still provides an ending the censors of that day could approve.


Comedies (Film) | 197 TABLE 28. Year

Representative Film Comedies, 1940–1949 Film Titles

Stars

1940

An Angel from Texas Arise, My Love Brother Orchid Christmas in July The Doctor Takes a Wife The Great McGinty His Girl Friday My Favorite Wife The Philadelphia Story The Shop Around the Corner

Jane Wyman, Ronald Reagan Claudette Colbert, Ray Milland Edward G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart Dick Powell, Ellen Drew Ray Milland, Loretta Young William Demarest, Brian Donlevy Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell Irene Dunne, Cary Grant Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan

1941

Ball of Fire Bedtime Story The Bride Came C.O.D. The Devil and Miss Jones Hellzapoppin’ Here Comes Mr. Jordan The Lady Eve Skylark Topper Returns

Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper Fredric March, Loretta Young James Cagney, Bette Davis Jean Arthur, Robert Cummings Olsen, Johnson Robert Montgomery, Claude Rains Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda Claudette Colbert, Ray Milland Joan Blondell, Roland Young

1942

George Washington Slept Here I Married a Witch Larceny, Inc. The Major and the Minor The Male Animal The Man Who Came to Dinner The Palm Beach Story Sullivan’s Travels The Talk of the Town To Be or Not to Be

Jack Benny, Ann Sheridan Fredric March, Veronica Lake Edward G. Robinson, Broderick Crawford Ginger Rogers, Ray Milland Henry Fonda, Olivia de Havilland Monty Woolley, Billie Burke Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake Cary Grant, Jean Arthur Jack Benny, Carole Lombard

1943

Best Foot Forward Crazy House Heaven Can Wait The Human Comedy A Lady Takes a Chance The More the Merrier Mr. Lucky Never a Dull Moment No Time for Love Young and Willing

Lucille Ball, Tommy Dix Olsen, Johnson Don Ameche, Gene Tierney Mickey Rooney, Frank Morgan Jean Arthur, John Wayne Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea Cary Grant, Laraine Day The Ritz Brothers Claudette Colbert, Fred MacMurray William Holden, Eddie Bracken

1944

Arsenic and Old Lace The Canterville Ghost Casanova Brown Hail the Conquering Hero It Happened Tomorrow The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek Mr. Winkle Goes to War Once Upon a Time Rosie the Riveter See Here, Private Hargrove

Cary Grant, Josephine Hull Charles Laughton, Robert Young Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright Eddie Bracken, William Demarest Dick Powell, Linda Darnell Betty Hutton, Eddie Bracken Edward G. Robinson, Robert Mitchum Cary Grant, Janet Blair Jane Frazee, Frank Albertson Robert Walker, Donna Reed


(continued)

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| Comedies (Film) TABLE 28. Year

(continued) Film Titles

Stars

1945

Blithe Spirit Brewster’s Millions Christmas In Connecticut Getting Gertie’s Garter The Kid from Brooklyn Kiss and Tell Murder, He Says Pardon My Past A Thousand and One Nights What Next, Corporal Hargrove?

Rex Harrison, Kay Hammond Dennis O’Keefe, Helen Walker Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan Dennis O’Keefe, Marie McDonald Jack Benny, Alexis Smith Shirley Temple, Robert Benchley Fred MacMurray, Helen Walker Fred MacMurray, Marguerite Chapman Cornel Wilde, Evelyn Keyes Robert Walker, Keenan Wynn

1946

Because of Him The Bride Wore Boots Cluny Brown The Kid from Brooklyn Our Hearts Were Growing Up People Are Funny Rendezvous with Annie So Goes My Love Two Guys from Milwaukee Without Reservations

Deanna Durbin, Charles Laughton Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Cummings Jennifer Jones, Charles Boyer Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo Gail Russell, Diana Lynn Jack Haley, Philip Reed Eddie Albert, Faye Marlowe Myrna Loy, Don Ameche Jack Carson, Dennis Morgan Claudette Colbert, John Wayne

1947

The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer The Bishop’s Wife The Egg and I The Farmer’s Daughter The Ghost and Mrs. Muir The Late George Apley Life with Father Monsieur Verdoux The Perils of Pauline The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Cary Grant, Shirley Temple Cary Grant, Loretta Young Claudette Colbert, Fred MacMurray Loretta Young, Joseph Cotton Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison Ronald Colman, Peggy Cummins William Powell, Irene Dunne Charlie Chaplin, Mady Correll Betty Hutton, Billy De Wolfe Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo

1948

The Bride Goes Wild Every Girl Should Be Married A Foreign Affair The Fuller Brush Man Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House My Dear Secretary One Touch of Venus Romance on the High Seas That Wonderful Urge Unfaithfully Yours

June Allyson, Van Johnson Cary Grant, Franchot Tone Marlene Dietrich, Jean Arthur Red Skelton, Janet Blair Cary Grant, Myrna Loy Laraine Day, Kirk Douglas Ava Gardner, Robert Walker Jack Carson, Doris Day Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney Rex Harrison, Linda Darnel

1949

Adam’s Rib Always Leave Them Laughing The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend Everybody Does It I Was a Male War Bride Inspector General It Happens Every Spring Kind Hearts and Coronets [English] A Kiss for Corliss Ma and Pa Kettle

Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn Milton Berle, Virginia Mayo Betty Grable, Rudy Vallee Paul Douglas, Celeste Holm Cary Grant, Ann Sheridan Danny Kaye, Walter Slezak Ray Milland, Paul Douglas Alec Guinness in nine roles Shirley Temple, David Niven Marjorie Main, Percy Kilbride


Comedies (Film) | 199 Among some of the other noteworthy comedies in the chart above: Edward G. Robinson (1893–1973), who often plays a menacing gangster, in 1944 starred in Mr. Winkle Goes to War, a touching picture about how the draft eventually affected all lives, including Robinson’s character. See Here, Private Hargrove (1944) and What Next, Corporal Hargrove? (1945) humorously relate a series of anecdotes about an army enlisted man. And Cary Grant (1904–1986), whose name appears frequently in any list of films from the 1940s, stars in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), a rollicking tale about the frustrations of moving to and building in the newly fashionable suburbs of the postwar era. Grant also takes the lead in I Was a Male War Bride (1949), a screwball comedy about war brides, women from foreign countries who marry U.S. servicemen and thus gain the privileges of U.S. citizenship. The problem explored in this film revolves around the fact that Cary Grant claims to be the bride and the confusion that results. In addition to the many individual comedy movies produced during the 1940s, a remarkable number of comedy series flourished. For example, the enormously popular Andy Hardy movies had begun in 1937 with A Family Affair; that film stars Mickey Rooney (b. 1920) as Andy and features Lionel Barrymore (1878–1954) as the wise, kindly Judge Hardy. Barrymore, however, would be replaced by Lewis Stone (1879–1953) for all the subsequent pictures, and Stone soon became identified with the role. Since the first outing did well, MGM released seven additional Andy Hardy titles during the last years of the 1930s. The studio’s franchise continued its winning ways into the 1940s, and, between 1940 and 1946, MGM produced seven more motion pictures in the series. The long-running series ostensibly concluded with Love Laughs at Andy Hardy, but MGM gathered much of the original cast yet again for a “family get-together in” 1958, Andy Hardy Comes Home. Between 1937 and 1958, the Andy Hardy movies totaled 16 features, and Mickey Rooney starred in them all. The major radio networks, as well as some syndicating services, often took popular movie series and adapted them for broadcast. Between 1949 and 1953, Rooney and much of the original movie cast could be heard on The Hardy Family, a group of original radio scripts that continued the well-received stories about Andy, his household, and his pals in half-hour segments. Pretty much forgotten today, but popular in the early 1940s, the character of Henry Aldrich provided competition for the better-known Andy Hardy. The series grew out of TABLE 29. Year

The Andy Hardy Movies, 1940–1946 Film Titles

Stars

1940

Andy Hardy Meets Debutante

Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland (1922–1969)

1941

Andy Hardy’s Private Secretary Life Begins for Andy Hardy

Rooney, Kathryn Grayson (b. 1922) Rooney, Garland

1942

The Courtship of Andy Hardy Andy Hardy’s Double Life

Rooney, Donna Reed (1921–1986) Rooney, Esther Williams (b. 1921)

1944

Andy Hardy’s Blonde Trouble

Rooney, Lee and Lyn Wilde (twins, b. 1922)

1946

Love Laughs at Andy Hardy

Rooney, Lina Romay (b. 1922)


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a 1938 Broadway play by Clifford Goldsmith (1899–1971) called What a Life. It deals with the ups and downs of being a teenager. Several entertainment figures saw promise in the production, and soon thereafter Paramount Pictures had secured rights to it. With an eye to offering a choice between the Andy Hardy films, which rival MGM owned, and their own adolescent series, Paramount cast the likeable Jackie Cooper (b. 1922) as Henry. What a Life did well enough that the studio in 1941 ordered a sequel, Life with Henry, again featuring Cooper. Audiences also enjoyed the youthful shenanigans of the main character, even with the direct competition of Mickey Rooney in the ongoing MGM pictures, and thus was born a new series. Nine more Henry Aldrich movies came out between 1941 and 1944, with Jimmy Lydon (b. 1923), who replaced Cooper, playing Henry in all of them. By the last one, Henry Aldrich’s Little Secret, the stories had run out of steam, and Paramount wisely let the series die. Movie producers were not the only ones interested in Goldsmith’s What a Life. The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) also acquired rights to the characters in the play. The network introduced The Aldrich Family in the summer of 1939; it remained with NBC until 1944, when the Columbia Broadcasting System briefly ran the show from 1944 until 1946. In the world of broadcasting, changes occurred frequently, and NBC regained The Aldrich Family later in 1946, keeping the property until 1953, when the networks dropped almost all continuing programming in the face of television. A humorous series, the show witnessed a constantly changing cast, especially during the war years, when many young men were drafted and had to go into service. One constant, however, remained through most of its history: for over a dozen years, Jell-O sponsored the broadcasts. Perhaps the best-remembered part of The Aldrich Family came at the opening, when a stern-sounding woman’s voice cried out, “Hen-ree, Henry Aldrich!” A squeaky adolescent male voice would then reply, “Coming, Mother.” Both the movies and the radio show recalled a simpler, more innocent time in the nation’s history. Cartoonist Murat “Chic” Young (1901–1973) in 1930 created a newspaper comic strip he called Blondie. Within a few years, this domestic comedy about Dagwood and TABLE 30. Year

The Henry Aldrich Movies, 1939–1944 Film Title

Stars

1939

What a Life

Jackie Cooper

1941

Life with Henry Henry Aldrich for President

Jackie Cooper Jimmy Lydon

1942

Henry and Dizzy Henry Aldrich, Editor

Jimmy Lydon Jimmy Lydon

1943

Henry Aldrich Gets Glamour Henry Aldrich Swings It Henry Aldrich Haunts a House

Jimmy Lydon Jimmy Lydon Jimmy Lydon

1944

Henry Aldrich, Boy Scout Henry Aldrich Plays Cupid Henry Aldrich’s Little Secret

Jimmy Lydon Jimmy Lydon Jimmy Lydon


Comedies (Film) | 201 Blondie Bumstead had attracted an immense readership, making it the most popular strip of its day, a position it would hold throughout the 1940s. The couple’s daily adventures have continued into the present, under different writers and artists, in hundreds of newspapers. Surprisingly, it took Hollywood several years to realize the potential inherent in the series. Not until 1938, when Columbia Pictures acquired movie rights to the strip from King Features, did the transition from newspaper page to theater screen at last take place. In a stroke of casting genius, Penny Singleton (1908–2003) received the part of Blondie, while Arthur Lake (1905–1987) played Dagwood. The two fit their roles perfectly, giving birth to one of the longest-lived series in movie history. Beginning with the release of Blondie in 1938, Columbia churned out an additional 27 features, and did TABLE 31.

The Blondie Movies, 1938–1950

Year

Film Titles

1938

Blondie

1939

Blondie Meets the Boss Blondie Takes a Vacation Blondie Brings Up Baby

1940

Blondie on a Budget Blondie Has Servant Trouble Blondie Plays Cupid

1941

Blondie Goes Latin Blondie in Society

1942

Blondie Goes to College Blondie’s Blessed Event Blondie for Victory

1943

It’s a Great Life Footlight Glamour

1945

Leave it to Blondie

1946

Life with Blondie Blondie’s Lucky Day Blondie Knows Best

1947

Blondie’s Big Moment Blondie’s Holiday Blondie in the Dough Blondie’s Anniversary

1948

Blondie’s Reward Blondie’s Secret

1949

Blondie’s Big Deal Blondie Hits the Jackpot

1950

Blondie’s Hero Beware of Blondie


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| Comedies (Film)

not end the cycle until 1950 and the release of the last movie, Beware of Blondie. These numbers average out to just over 2 new releases a year, and 22 of the 28 were produced during the 1940s. Throughout the entire run, Singleton kept her role as Blondie and Lake his as Dagwood, giving each actor over a decade of steady employment but also severely limiting their availability for any other parts. Back in 1930, Young initially created his character Blondie as a featherbrained, Roaring Twenties flapper; with the onset of the Great Depression just a few months later, such a figure seemed dated and out of place, and he wisely changed her into a struggling (but funny) middle-class housewife. Singleton plays her as the latter, but lets her flapper roots show through every so often. Both the comic strip and the many movies portray Dagwood as the stereotypical American husband, earnest and goodhearted, but bumbling and always a bit befuddled. The radio networks, just as they had with Andy Hardy and Henry Aldrich, quickly developed a situation comedy series based on both the movies and the comic strip. Blondie premiered in 1939 on CBS. Although network affiliations shifted about during its run, Blondie remained on the air until 1950. Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake reprised their movie roles, and sound effects substituted for the sight gags on the comic strip and movies. Paramount Pictures in 1940 released a spirited comedy called Road to Singapore. It features two of the studio’s biggest stars, Bing Crosby (1903–1977) and Bob Hope (1903–2003). For insurance, the picture also has the comely Dorothy Lamour (1914– 1996), often clad in a sarong, an outfit that became something of a trademark for the actress. The trio made a winning combination and produced an unexpected box office hit. Paramount wasted no time and in 1941 put the three stars in Road to Zanzibar (1941) and thereby started a series that would have audiences laughing throughout the 1940s and beyond. The following year, 1942, saw Road to Morocco and, after a slight pause, Road to Utopia in 1945. Crosby-Hope-Lamour closed out the decade with 1947’s Road to Rio. But the Road pictures came back in 1952 with Road to Bali and, a decade later, the three, considerably longer in the tooth by then, romped through The Road to Hong Kong (1962), the final entry in this successful venture. In these seven movies, a sensible plot takes a back seat to the steady stream of oneliners, sight gags, slapstick, and songs that characterize the series. Hope and Crosby, out of money and stranded in exotic locales—usually Paramount lots or other sites in Southern California—bicker over the favors of Lamour while at the same time scheming to get some quick cash and outsmarting villains who likewise ogle their lovely costar. Silly, zany stuff, formulaic in the extreme, but good, escapist fun, particularly during the dark war years, the Road pictures offered an effective antidote to the grim headlines of the day. Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour could also be seen in many other pictures at this time. Most were light musical comedies, such as Birth of the Blues (1941), Blue Skies (1946), and Top o’ the Mornin’ (1949) for Crosby, to name just a few. And Crosby could be heard on the radio almost daily, because many of his recordings became hits and received considerable airplay. Although he could not boast top-selling recordings, Hope nevertheless starred in comedic vehicles like Caught in the Draft (1941), Monsieur Beaucaire (1946), and Sorrowful Jones, among many others. Almost as busy as her two costars, Dorothy Lamour had featured roles in movies like Beyond © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Comedies (Film) | 203 the Blue Horizon (1942), Masquerade in Mexico (1945), the Lucky Stiff (1949), and more. The Road pictures, however, marked a high spot in American comedy, and most of the credit for that success goes to the three stars. In addition to the several comedy series that played theaters in the 1930s, an offshoot—the comedy team—also attracted considerable attention. At times, teams and series went together, as with Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour, and the Road pictures. The three actors can be thought of as a team (although each undertook projects in which the other two did not play a part), and the Road format can be a series. Most comedy teams, however, linked two or three players together; the movies they made might have no discernable connection beyond humor. For example, comedians Bud Abbott (1895–1974) and Lou Costello (1906–1959) had both worked in vaudeville and burlesque but did not meet until 1931, when Abbott substituted for another performer in Costello’s vaudeville act. They then teamed up, with Abbott playing the ostensible straight man in their routines and Costello acting the clown. Some success in radio led to a movie contract with Universal Pictures, and the two made their screen debut in 1940 with One Night in the Tropics, a runaway box office hit. Success begets more movies, and the now-hot team of Abbott and Costello began turning out one Universal comedy after another, and the ticket-buying public could not get enough of their jokes, puns, and slapstick antics. The team early on even made a trio of movies honoring the services in their own hilarious way. With Buck Privates (1941; the army), In the Navy (1941; the navy), and Keep ’em Flying (1941; the Army Air Corps), the pair are shown as enlistees in each of these branches. While they do their best to upset military routine, the pictures ultimately salute the armed services and might have seemed reassuring just prior to the outbreak of hostilities. As Table 32 suggests, with 25 feature films during the 1940s, Abbott and Costello must have been as busy as Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake laboring over at neighboring Columbia Pictures with an almost equal number of Blondie comedies. Although several of the titles intimate that the war might play some role in the plotting, for the most part these particular tales simply mean that military subjects have become grist for their comedy mill. In no way do the pictures ever become topical. With the various armed services a part of everyday American life, the comedians utilize them for laughs, not for any serious treatment of wartime hardships. More madcap, more slapstick than even Abbott and Costello were the endless shorts churned out by the Three Stooges. (A short, in movie parlance, usually runs 10 to 25 minutes in length and thus plays for a briefer time than the usual 60- to 90-minute feature film.) A trio of comedians that initially made its mark in the vaudeville circuit during the 1920s, the original Stooges consisted of Moe Howard (1897–1975), his brother Shemp Howard (1895–1955), and Larry Fine (1902–1975). Shemp moved on to other comedic roles elsewhere in the early 1930s, and a third brother, Curly Howard (1903–1952), replaced him. But Curly suffered a stroke in 1947, an occurrence that caused Shemp to rejoin the group for the remainder of the decade. Beset with health problems and the deaths of both Curly and Shemp in the early 1950s, the troupe struggled. Other comedians stepped into the vacant roles, but the Three Stooges came to an end as an active attraction in 1970. During the 1930s, they made over 40 pictures and established their appeal among both young and old. The 1940s saw them working at a furious pace, releasing 76 shorts in a © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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| Comedies (Film) TABLE 32.

Representative Abbott and Costello Movies, 1941–1949

Year

Film Titles

1941

Buck Privates In the Navy Keep ’em Flying Hold That Ghost

1942

Ride ’Em Cowboy Rio Rita Pardon My Sarong Who Done It?

1943

It Ain’t Hay Hit the Ice

1944

In Society Lost in a Harem

1945

Here Come the Co-Eds The Naughty Nineties Abbott and Costello in Hollywood

1946

Little Giant The Time of Their Lives

1947

Buck Privates Come Home The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap

1948

The Noose Hangs High Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (costarring Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr.) Mexican Hayride

1949

Africa Screams Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (costarring Boris Karloff)

brief 10 years. They hardly rested during the 1950s, with 72 additional titles, and finally slowed down only in the 1960s. In all, the Three Stooges made close to 200 films— too numerous to list here—all of them shorts and always with the same studio, Columbia Pictures. The totals also do not include the guest appearances they made in many other movies. The Stooges focused on broad, physical humor—the thumb in the eye, the twisted nose or ear, and gags galore, usually accompanied by their trademark laugh, “Nyuk, nyuk.” During the war, the Stooges actually made a few movies with topical overtones. At the Axis’ expense, titles like You Nazty Spy (1940), I’ll Never Heil Again (1941), They Stooge to Conga (1943), and similar groaning puns pricked the pomposity of Hitler and his cronies. For the most part, however, the team laughed at the world in general and themselves in particular, and the moviegoing world laughed with them. Popular for over 30 years, the Stooges have attained a certain cult status in more recent times. Their many films enjoy renewed life on television and as DVD rentals and purchases. Boxed sets that chronologically track their output have proved particularly popular. Other comedy teams likewise strove to satisfy the public’s seemingly bottomless desire to be amused. The Marx Brothers—Groucho (1890–1977), Harpo (1888–1964),


Comedies (Film) | 205 and Chico (1887–1961—such big hits in the 1930s, soldiered on with Go West (1940), The Big Store (1941), A Night in Casablanca (1946), and Love Happy (1949), but age had caught up with them, at least for physical comedy. Tepid affairs, the manic humor that had characterized their earlier efforts was gone. Similarly, the great team of Stan Laurel (1890–1965) and Oliver Hardy (1892– 1957) tried a few additional films in the 1940s—Great Guns (1941), Air Raid Wardens (1943), Jitterbugs (1943), and others—but few of their efforts measured up to the comedy shorts they had been making for the previous quarter century, both silents and talkies. Like their contemporaries the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy had passed their prime. On the other hand, the East Side Kids, who metamorphosed into the later Bowery Boys, seemed ageless and made dozens of pictures between 1940 and 1958. This group of unruly teens started their movie lives as the Dead End Kids, making their screen debut in 1937 in a film adaptation of the decidedly unfunny 1935 play, Dead End, by Sidney Kingsley (1906–1995). Success led Warner Bros., their parent studio, to produce an additional six pictures, with more and more of their antics played for laughs. At the same time, much of the cast split their talents as Little Tough Guys (12 movies, plus 3 serials), a rival series from Universal, with their last effort coming in 1943. Monogram Pictures, a small studio specializing in cheap Westerns and crime stories, saw opportunity with this format and offered contracts to most of the original players and proceeded in 1940 to create the East Side Kids, an obvious spin-off of all the foregoing material. Audiences apparently enjoyed these movies about youthful street gangs, because Monogram released 22 East Side Kids features. In 1946, the studio dropped the property, only to rush into production a new series with many of the same actors called the Bowery Boys. Far and away the most successful of these youthoriented comedy-dramas, new features with the Bowery Boys played in theaters until 1958, with a total of 48 titles. Through all the name and studio changes, a handful of actors performed in the majority of these movies. Chief among them, and probably the best remembered, would be Leo Gorcey (1917–1969). He devised the idea for the Bowery Boys and starred in 41 features. By 1945, the East Side Kids were no longer kids (most were at least in their mid-twenties), and Gorcey proposed a new series that reflected these changes. The emphasis would be more on comedy, not poverty and youthful disagreements with parents. Huntz Hall (1919–1999) costarred with Gorcey, the two playing Slip and Sach, and they wore suits and hung out at an ice cream parlor, not in tatters on the East River docks as in the earlier series. Billy Halop (1920–1976) and Bernard Punsly (1923–2004), familiar faces from the Dead End and East Side Kids days, did not make the change to the Bowery Boys, but the equally well-known Gabriel Dell (1919–1988) and Bobby Jordan (1923–1965) did, and they became regulars. In all, the Dead End Kids, the Little Tough Guys, the East Side Kids, and the Bowery Boys could claim a combined total of 89 motion pictures. One final comedy team merits brief mention: Martin and Lewis. In the spirit of Abbott and Costello, crooner Dean Martin (1917–1995) teamed up with writer-comedian Jerry Lewis (b. 1926) in the late 1940s. They made their joint film debut in 1949 in


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| Comedies (Film) Representative Titles in the Dead End Kids, Little Tough Guys, East Side Kids, and Bowery Boys Film Series, 1937–1958

TABLE 33.

Year

Movie Title

Studio

Actors

The Dead End Kids 1938

Angels with Dirty Faces

Warner Bros.

1939

The Angels Wash Their Faces

Warner Bros.

Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Billy Halop, Bernard Punsly, Gabriel Dell, Bobby Jordan Gorcey, Hall, Halop, Punsly, Dell, Jordan

The Little Tough Guys 1940 1942

You’re Not So Tough Tough as They Come

Universal Universal

Hall, Halop, Punsly, Jordan Hall, Halop, Punsly

The East Side Kids 1943 1944

Ghosts on the Loose Block Busters

Monogram Monogram

Gorcey, Hall, Jordan Gorcey, Hall, Dell

The Bowery Boys 1946 1949 1953

Bowery Bombshell Angels in Disguise Jalopy

Monogram Monogram Monogram

Gorcey, Hall, Jordan Gorcey, Hall, Dell Gorcey, Hall

My Friend Irma, a less than dazzling picture adapted from the popular radio show of the same name. Billed below Marie Wilson (1916–1972), who also played Irma on radio, their antics—Martin served as the straight man to Lewis’s clown—garnered them enough recognition to do another Irma movie in 1950. After that, 14 more Martin and Lewis comedies followed, and the two took off as one of the hottest new acts in show business. They stayed together until 1956, hardly a lengthy partnership, but their style echoed all the best Hollywood comedy teams of the past. Despite a war and despite the readjustments of the postwar period, Hollywood dispensed a steady stream of comedy films. Seldom topical, these pictures show why some referred to the movie industry as a dream factory. For the 75 or 90 minutes of a feature film, audiences could escape the harsh realities of a war-torn world. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Broadway Shows (Comedy and Drama); Comic Strips; Football; Serial Films; Westerns (Film) Selected Reading Dale, Alan. Comedy Is a Man in Trouble: Slapstick in American Movies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Durgnat, Raymond. The Crazy Mirror: Hollywood Comedy and the American Image. New York: Dell, 1969. Harvey, James. Romantic Comedy in Hollywood. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998.


Comic Books | 207

COMIC BOOKS Scholars and fans alike agree: the 1940s stand as a high point—some go so far as to call the period a golden age—in the evolution of the American comic book. The combined influences of newspaper comic strips, existing comic books, pulp magazines, and Big Little Books in the early 1930s; the popularity of movie and radio serials in mid-decade; along with unparalleled character innovation in the later years brought about the success of this new form of periodical. A brief discussion of this fruitful time will place the rapid rise of the 1940s comic book in context. During the earlier years of the 20th century, attempts had been made to reprint popular newspaper comics in booklet form, but there existed no concerted effort to market and popularize comic books. The 1933 publication of Funnies on Parade, a giveaway featuring several popular cartoon characters then running in daily papers, proved a milestone, but it existed as a one-shot publication. Funnies on Parade did, however, lead other publishers to consider similar collections, but not necessarily for free. These occasional publications tended to be expensive, costing from 25 cents to 75 cents an issue (approximately $3.75 to $11.35 in 2008 dollars), and thus their appeal remained limited. The content they took from the newspapers covered the whole gamut of series, from humorous (The Katzenjammer Kids, Mickey Mouse, Mutt and Jeff, Smitty, many others) to serial (The Gumps, Little Annie Rooney, Little Orphan Annie, Winnie Winkle, others) to adventure (Buck Rogers, Smilin’ Jack, Tarzan, Terry and the Pirates, others). In the meantime, Famous Funnies appeared on newsstands in 1934. The periodical generally accepted as the first modern comic book, Famous Funnies carried a cover price of a dime; not cheap, but a manageable sum (approximately $1.55 in 2008 dollars). It contained 64 pages, mainly reprints from Sunday newspapers, and fared well. Publishers and the public accepted both the price and the length, thus creating standards for comic books that carried into the 1940s. Soon, titles like Ace Comics, The Comics, Comics on Parade, Crackajack Funnies, The Funnies, King Comics, New Comics, Popular Comics, Super Comics, and Tip Top Comics were tempting customers, mainly youngsters with change in their pockets. Most of these newcomers offered a mix of newspaper reprints and new, original material, and they all contained bright, garish color, another quality of this unique popular art form. By 1938, the combined sales of comic books exceeded 2 million yearly copies. To meet this demand, publishers continued to cannibalize the newspaper strips, they raided the files of Big Little Books, and they adapted and illustrated the plots of numerous B Westerns then playing theaters. Wisely, they also hired cartoonists and writers, many of them veterans from the newspaper strips and pulp magazines that then flourished and allowed these staffers to create “All New! All Original!” comic books. The break from reprinting previously published material marked a significant change. For example, the newspaper popularity of Dick Tracy prompted Detective Comics in 1937. Instead of copying runs of the famous policeman’s exploits, the publishers ran completely new stories created by their own staff. Similarly, New Comics, which premiered in 1935, altered its name to New Adventure Comics a year or so later and finally dropped the “New” in 1938 to become Adventure Comics. More and more,


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comic books turned their attention to action and suspense with tales that read like illustrated versions of pulp fiction. Two young men, writer Jerry Siegel (1914–1996) and artist Joe Shuster (1914–1992), could be found on the roster of publishers working within this innovative area. Functioning as a team, their early creations only hinted at where they would eventually go in the industry, but they typified the eager newcomers moving into comic book art. In the early 1930s, Siegel and Shuster had created a character they called Superman, but editors were not ready for such a protagonist; the concept languished and the two cartoonists took on other series to make ends meet. Finally, Action Comics, accurately sensing that readers liked larger-than-life heroes, decided to give Superman a chance in the June 1938 issue. The cover shows him attired in blue tights and a flowing red cape, single-handedly lifting a car over his head, but his name remains conspicuously absent, and the publishers buried the story within the pages of the comic book. The issue sold reasonably well (an original copy has today become a priceless collectible), and in 1939 the first solo Superman comic rolled off the presses. Soon after that pioneering issue of Action Comics, other oddly costumed crime fighters started to appear on the pages of the adventure comics, setting the stage for the 1940s. A comic book called Funny Pages—although some of its stories could hardly be called funny—featured The Arrow in the fall of 1938. Written and drawn by Paul Gustavson (1916–1977), the Arrow turned out to be a skillful archer who went around in a shapeless shroud in order to hide his identity. At about the same time, The Green Hornet, a popular afternoon radio serial that had premiered in 1936 (it would run until 1952), caught the attention of cartoonist Jim Chambers (n.d.). The man called the Green Hornet, loosely based on The Lone Ranger of both radio and later comic fame, has a secret identity, wears a distinctive outfit, and has access to sophisticated weaponry. With that character clearly in mind, Nodell drafted The Crimson Avenger for Detective Comics in 1938. A twin to radio’s Green Hornet, the Avenger wears a mask and a flowing cape. The Avenger might have lacked Superman’s extraordinary physical powers, but he nonetheless resembled the Man of Steel in many ways. Little did these pioneer artists realize they had initiated a new trend in comic books. Reluctant to miss what appeared a sure bet, Wonder Comics introduced Wonder Man in May of 1939, but his comic life proved short. The publishers of Superman claimed copyright infringement and promptly squashed the new hero. But Detective Comics, already the owners of Superman, felt free to introduce The Batman (the publishers soon dropped the article from the title) in early 1939. Created by Bob Kane (1915–1998), this mysterious Batman, also called the Caped Crusader, possesses no superhuman traits but instead relies on superb physical skills and soon emerged a favorite in the 1940s and beyond. The Batman, in reality wealthy playboy Bruce Wayne, prowls Gotham City (at first identified as New York City but dropped in favor of the more generic “Gotham City” in later adventures) at night, the nemesis of any criminals. In 1940, he gains a faithful companion in Robin, the Boy Wonder, who serves as a pint-sized version of Batman himself. More acrobats than superheroes, the two battle some memorable villains, such as Catwoman, the Joker, the Penguin, and the Riddler. In no time, Batman comics had established a niche for yet another larger-than-life character.


Comic Books | 209 Thus, when the new decade opened, a small army of comic book characters granted amazing attributes competed for attention. Marvel Comics, premiered late in 1939 with several characters, such as the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner. Usually associated with action-filled adventures, Marvel promptly entered into competition with DC Comics, the label that had introduced Superman. But by mid-1941, over 100 different titles vied for customer dimes, and the total continued to grow. Blackhawk, Bulletman, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Minute-Man, The Sandman, Spy Smasher, Wonder Woman, along with a much larger number who remain forgotten, constituted this burgeoning branch of the comic book business. Their roots may have been initially planted in the early 1930s and an emphasis on fighting crime, but they soon took on the Axis in the days following the attack on Pearl Harbor. These characters embody most of the dominant themes of action-oriented comic books during the first half of the 1940s. Superman and his force of super cohorts would see to it that the country made it through both World War II and any postwar threats. Given the chaotic nature of the comic book business, accurate dates for a character’s debut or ultimate demise are notoriously hard to come by. In many cases, the dates listed above reflect generalizations based on the comments of scholars and fans or publicity releases from publishers. Many characters seemingly disappear from comic books only to be reincarnated in later editions. In the dates supplied, “present” means these characters reappeared in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century, but significant gaps in chronology have doubtless occurred. It would be incorrect to surmise that Blackhawk, et al., had unbroken publishing runs from the 1940s until now. To maximize their characters’ visibility, publishers would often link superheroes in joint adventures. In addition, their many youthful comrades—Bucky, Domino, Robin, Sandy, Toro, and so on—occasionally enjoyed exploits independent of their more mature counterparts. For example, Young Allies and Boy Commandos, comic titles that sold well on newsstands during World War II, recount the escapades of daring bands of boys, led by the likes of Captain America’s Bucky and the Human Torch’s Toro, as they take on Axis forces. The deeds of all these heroes, young and old, soon seemed pretty tame and repetitious with such a glut of new characters. Despite steadily rising sales for comic books throughout the decade, publishers grew fearful that buyers would weary of too many superheroes. They became hard to differentiate—what unusual gimmick would a new entry have that had not already been attempted in an earlier comic? Plus they lost a convenient enemy when the Axis went down to defeat in 1945—and so the industry searched for new avenues to explore. The conflict nevertheless lingered in many comics as publishers sought to use up a backlog of war-related stories, but changes also became apparent. Pretty girls, usually in distress and in provocative clothing and poses, began to populate postwar comic books, always a sure lure for older male readers. Beautiful women dressed in leopard skins also appeared among the many new titles coming out in the second half of the decade. Sheena, Queen of the Jungle probably stands out as the most successful of this particular approach to cartooning. Clearly, in an attempt to broaden their audience, publishers gave a medium originally intended for children some distinctly adult overtones. Amid mounting criticism from parents and critics, however, the


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| Comic Books TABLE 34.

Name

Some Representative Superheroes of the 1940s

Features

Approximate Dates

Black Cat

The alter ego of fictional screen star and stuntwoman Linda Turner, this fast-paced adventure series debuted in 1941. “The Cat” rides a motorcycle and boasts a black belt in judo. Most of her adventures involve battling spies and saboteurs, but she provided some gender contrast from all the male superheroes then beginning to populate comic books.

1941–1950s

Blackhawk

Created in 1942 as one of many characters in Military Comics (“Stories of the Army and Navy”). A refugee Polish pilot, Blackhawk joins with others that have escaped Axis terror and launches a guerilla war; he and his cohorts fly in exquisitely drawn aircraft (Grumman XF5F Skyrockets) sure to fascinate youthful male readers. Not until the 1950s did he acquire his first jet aircraft. For many years, Blackhawk was accompanied by Chop-Chop, a stereotyped Chinese sidekick.

1942 to present

The Blue Beetle

Wears an invulnerable chain-mail costume, takes Vitamin “2X” for his powers.

1939 to present

Bulletman

Clad in tights and with a bullet-like helmet of his own design, this hero can fly and deflect oncoming bullets. He has a companion, Bulletgirl.

1940 to present

Captain America

One of the more successful superheroes of the decade. This redwhite-and-blue-clad warrior, called Steve Rogers in civilian life, symbolized the patriotic fervor surrounding World War II. Bucky Barnes serves as his fearless boy companion.

1941 to present

Captain Marvel

Nicknamed “The Big Red Cheese” by his arch-foe, Dr. Sivana, this slightly self-satirical character proved to be one of the most popular creations of the decade, even outselling Superman in some years. Drawn by C. C. Beck (1910–1989), the plot reveals that Captain Marvel is in reality a boy named Billy Batson, who, by uttering the magical word “SHAZAM!” becomes a superhero, complete with the requisite tights and cape. Billy’s sister joined the series in late 1942 as Mary Marvel, and there was even a Captain Marvel Junior, another boy about Billy’s age. Captain Marvel’s favorite expression is “Holy moley!”

1940 to present

Captain Midnight

Adapted from a successful radio serial, the comic book version thrusts Midnight into war against the Axis powers. More human than most superheroes, Midnight relies on an array of exotic weapons for his battles. Also a 1942 movie serial.

1941–1948

The Flame

Controls his own body temperature to the point that he bursts into flames and burns through barriers; also able to transport himself anywhere in the form of fire. Not surprisingly, his most dangerous foe is water. He is often accompanied by Flame Girl, a young woman possessing similar powers.

1939–1942

The Flash

Endowed with blinding speed, he wears a small helmet with wings, just like Mercury of mythology.

1940–1949


Comic Books | 211

Name

Features

Approximate Dates

The Green Mask

Despite an unusual costume, the hero relies on guns as much as feats of derring-do. Later in the series, exposure to “Vita Rays” endows him with superpowers. He has a youthful companion, Domino.

1939–1941

The Human Torch

A “synthetic man,” he ignites in the presence of oxygen. Toro, his young assistant, accompanies him. In the 1940s, he often appeared alongside Sub-Mariner.

1939 to present

Plastic Man

An amusing, if not surreal, character, expertly drawn by Jack Cole (1914–1958). Plastic Man can stretch himself to ludicrous shapes and sizes, and his adventures are billed as “Packed with thrills, chills, and laffs!”

1941 to present

The Sandman

The alter ego of Wesley Dodds, the Sandman dispenses justice by spraying criminals with a gas that puts them to sleep. In 1939, he had no costume (he wears a business suit) and no extraordinary powers, but in subsequent reincarnations, he metamorphoses into a superhero.

1939 to present

The Spirit

Created by renowned cartoonist Will Eisner (1917–2005), this figure first appeared in newspaper strips and entered the world of comic books in 1942. A crime fighter dressed in a suit, tie, and fedora, his costume consists of gloves and a tiny mask. His adventures, often against the evil Octopus, tend to be more oriented to adults than children. The Spirit has become one of the most enduring and endearing titles in comics.

1940 to present

SubMariner

An angry hero named Prince Namor from beneath the sea, he wants revenge on humanity for destroying his home. During the World War II, however, he uses his powers, often in tandem with other Marvel characters, to wreak havoc on the Axis powers.

1939 to present

Wonder Woman

One of the few women in the comics with any staying power, Wonder Woman was created by William Moulton Marston (1893– 1947; writing as Charles Moulton), a psychologist who wanted to depict strong women as a counter to the feminine stereotypes of the day. A bizarre series in every sense, from her bullet-deflecting bracelets to her Magic Lasso, Wonder Woman has nevertheless outlasted most of her competitors, male or female.

1941–1990s

“girlie” (a popular term from the 1940s, meaning teasing and alluring) comics began to disappear as the decade drew to a close. Less oriented to pinup art, the countless comics devoted to romance, favorites among adolescent girls, flourished in the years following the war. Growing out of the popularity of radio soap operas, confession magazines, and romantic movies, titles like Life Story, Sweethearts, Young Love, and Young Romance quickly gained huge audiences anxious for something more adult than superheroes and funny animals. The stories followed the tried-and-true soap opera path: love, obstacles, and eventual resolution, but not before even more complications extended the anguish of the lovers. In 1946, a little-heralded comic titled Eerie appeared on newsstands. Network radio had been enjoying considerable success with scary series such as Escape, Inner Sanctum, © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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Lights Out, Suspense, and The Whistler. Most of these radio shows had premiered in the early 1940s and continually boasted healthy ratings, a fact not unnoticed by comics editors. Horror had not been explored much by writers and cartoonists, aside from the predictable violence enacted in the superhero tales, and that tends to be so exaggerated— whack! thud! cra-a-ck! bang!—and relatively bloodless that it offended few readers. Plus the heroes always win, they will vanquish evil until the next issue, when order must again be restored. Eerie and its myriad successors would change all that. The publishers moved warily into this new ground. Eerie existed as a single issue, not to reappear until the 1950s and the heyday of the horror comics. Instead, realistic crime stories made their appearance in the mid-1940s, with gore, murder, and death more graphically displayed than in the past. Crime Does Not Pay led the field, but titles like Crime and Punishment, Crime Case Comics, Crimes by Women, Official True Crime Cases, Real Clue Crime Stories, True Crime Comics, and a host of others with similar titles tempted buyers. A relatively new organization, EC Comics (it had initially meant Educational Comics and then Entertaining Comics), raised the level of realism in crime—and later, horror—comics. Overseen by William M. Gaines (1922–1992), the company released Crime SuspenStories at the end of the decade. Featuring explicit frames of violence, both real and implied, along with drawings of maimed bodies, it set the stage for the onslaught of horror comics that characterized the early 1950s and helped lead to sensational books linking comics with juvenile delinquency and psychological ills, set off congressional investigations, and caused the industry to establish the Comics Code Authority in 1954 to fend off the massive backlash of criticism about the content of these once-innocuous 10-cent periodicals. Despite the rocketing popularity of caped and masked superheroes during the early 1940s and the rise of crime and horror comics after that, many publishers stayed with tradition, at first mixing reprints and original materials and focusing on humor as their primary content. The terms “funnies” and “comics,” used initially to describe newspaper offerings, summed up the thrust of most strips until the 1930s, when detectives like Dick Tracy and Secret Agent X-9, along with adventurers such as Smilin’ Jack and Wash Tubbs, changed the tenor of the funny pages. But gags and humorous characters, plus countless anthropomorphic animals, continued to play a significant role in publishing, generating consistently strong sales throughout the 1940s. For example, the Walt Disney (1901–1966) organization, boosted by a string of popular animated cartoons, branched into comic books in 1935 with Mickey Mouse. Reprints of the company’s newspaper strips soon followed, and by 1943, original adventures with Donald Duck, Mickey and Minnie, Pluto, and the rest of the Disney menagerie vied for sales. During the 1940s, artist Carl Barks (1901–2000) gained renown for his portrayals of Donald Duck. The Warner Bros. film studio, witnessing Disney’s success, entered the publishing field in 1941 with comic book versions of its Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoons. Familiar characters like Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, and the other zanies from the studio enlivened a long-running series of comic books. Similarly, Woody Woodpecker, Mighty Mouse, and Henry Aldrich moved from movie theaters to the pages of comic books. In the later 1940s, in an attempt to attract


Comic Strips | 213 more teenaged readers that might be put off by characters from animal cartoons, publishers also added a number of new titles, like Andy Hardy, Archie Andrews, Buzzy, Candy, and Hi-Jinx, that starred high school adolescents as their main characters. Collectively, all these influences coalesced to create a new national literature. Only a handful of comic book titles existed at the beginning of the 1940s, but by 1949, anywhere from 500 to 650 titles were issued monthly, making them a significant component of American popular culture. Legions of sociologists and critics have commented on the roles of such characters in American lives and fantasies, and much of their learned commentary concerns World War II and its aftermath. In all, comic books appealed to a broad audience, they played on basic American themes, and they proved enormously successful. See also: Westerns (Film), Youth Selected Reading Daniels, Les. Comix: A History of Comic Books in America. New York: Bonanza Books, 1971. Goulart, Ron. Over Fifty Years of American Comic Books. Lincolnwood, IL: Mallard Press, 1991. Jones, Gerard. Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book. New York: Basic Books, 2004. Savage, William W., Jr. Comic Books and America, 1945–1954. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.

COMIC STRIPS The golden age for the American newspaper comic strip took place during the 1930s and continued on into the 1940s. The funnies (as people usually referred to a newspaper’s comic pages at that time) boasted a daily audience that reached into the millions, and even more readers perused the brightly colored Sunday comic supplements. Barely a half-century old in the 1940s, comic strips ranked among readers’ favorite newspaper sections, holding their own against headlines and sports. No one wanted to be in the dark as far as the exploits of their favorite characters were concerned. Although comic books, the younger siblings of the more venerable comic strips, received more publicity and stirred more controversy than did newspaper comics in the 1940s, they could not begin to match the estimated readership for the strips, even though they sold in the millions. By virtue of appearing as a regular part of a typical newspaper, far more people were exposed to comic strips than comic books could ever claim. With close to 1,800 different American newspapers published daily throughout the 1940s, and with collective circulation figures exceeding 50 million issues each and every day (and it must be assumed that many papers had more than one reader), a major proportion of the population received more or less constant exposure to a vast array of strips. For ease of discussion and arrangement, the comics have been divided into three broad categories that have become accepted for the period: (1) humor, (2) family/ continuity, and (3) action/adventure. At the turn of the century, most cartoonists presented humorous characters and situations, thus giving the medium the names funnies and comics. In time, strips with continuing story lines emerged, as did those that depicted both the serious and humorous sides of family life. By the late 1930s, a relatively


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new kind of strip made deep inroads on the others when action and adventure stories featuring strong heroes caught the public fancy. In their formative years, the funnies remained fiercely nontopical, but the Great Depression of the 1930s and the gathering clouds of World War II could not be completely ignored, and artists and writers began to throw off some of their neutrality. When the United States entered the conflict in December 1941, countless comic strips promptly sided with the Allied cause. Cartoonists did what they could to encourage support for the war, and for some that meant being drafted or personally enlisting. For example, Gus Arriola (1917–2008), George Baker (1915–1975), Dave Breger (1908–1970), and Alex Raymond (1909–1956) were among the In 1930, cartoonist Chic Young created Dag- many who served their country. If not wood and Blondie Bumstead as characters in on active duty themselves, they involved a new daily newspaper comic strip. It skyrock- their characters in events, either on the eted to popularity, and movies about the family home front or on distant battlefields. Buz began appearing in 1938, with over 20 produced during the 1940s. This illustration shows a typi- Sawyer, Captain Easy, Skeezix (from cal lobby card advertising one of the Blondie Gasoline Alley), both Snuffy Smith and features. (Columbia Pictures/Photofest) Barney Google, and Terry Lee (of Terry and the Pirates) publicly joined the service in the course of their stories, and Tillie the Toiler became a WAC (Women’s Army Corps), to name just a few. These fictional characters fought enemy forces, engaged spies and saboteurs or, if too young for that sort of thing, worked with scrap drives and hospitals in the war effort. Popeye served as the official “spokescharacter” for the U.S. Navy; beginning in mid-1941; the colorful sailor appeared in newspaper ads urging young men to enlist. Al Capp (1909–1979), creator of Li’l Abner, drew features for the Red Cross and Treasury Department in 1942. Cartoonist Harold Gray (1894–1968) had Little Orphan Annie encouraging thousands of youngsters to join her Junior Commandos and collect scrap, rubber, and discarded newspapers for defense industries. Some strips, however—especially the humorous ones—went their merry way and avoided direct references to ongoing events, but, given the overriding popularity of comics, no one complained. Plus they offered a pleasant respite from the grim realities of the war years. An unintended consequence of related shortages and rationing involved shrinking the published size of a comic strip. With printing ink in limited supply and newsprint on ration lists, papers had to make do with less. That meant dropping less-popular strips and making the survivors smaller in order to take up less space. Large comic © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Comic Strips | 215 strips, so characteristic of the 1920s and 1930s, became a thing of the past. Layout staffs squeezed as many comics as they could onto a single page, a process that did not cease with the resumption of peace. By 1948, the price of newsprint had doubled from its wartime level, and cost-conscious editors cut every corner they could, a practice that has continued to the present. The postwar years witnessed a gradual decline in the action/adventure genre; without a common enemy, many of the swashbuckling heroes had lost their primary reason for being. A number of strips came to an end; others did the best they could in peacetime. Audiences rediscovered humor strips—a gag a day—and many of the old originals kept on, while a host of new, more modern, series came along to fill in any gaps. In retrospect, the comics enjoyed a postwar boom, with over 100 new titles introduced in 1946 alone, and only about 40 being permanently dropped. In many ways, the American comic strip reinvented itself in the years following 1945. Anthropomorphic animals, silly characters in silly situations, and visual jokes made a return and gained immense popularity. A number of classic series carried on from the early days of the genre. George McManus (1884–1954), who had begun drawing Bringing Up Father (known to many as Maggie and Jiggs) in 1913, continued his tales about a family of Irish immigrants in New York City in the early days of the 20th century. Deliberately nostalgic, he did not shatter reader expectations with sudden topicality. In like manner, both The Katzenjammer Kids (debuted in 1897) and The Captain and the Kids (1914) chronicled the endless shenanigans of Hans and Fritz, two boisterous lads forever embroiled in mischief. As the chart suggests with its dates, a number of other, older humorous comic strips also flourished during the 1940s; as long as their gags tickled enough funny bones and caused circulation to remain high, age seemed no drawback. On the other hand, Krazy, Ignatz, and Offissa Pupp, the trio that stars in Krazy Kat and inhabits the delightfully imaginary Coconino County somewhere in the desert Southwest, said good-bye to millions of disappointed readers when cartoonist George Herriman (1880–1944) died. Thanks to syndication, many strips outlive their creators and seemingly go forever, but his genius could not be duplicated, a rarity in the world of comics. Krazy Kat has been preserved in a number of print anthologies, but it ceased appearing in newspapers in the mid-1940s. Despite the loss of Herriman’s work, several new and innovative strips came along that regaled a host of readers. Barnaby, a frankly experimental series by Crockett Johnson (1906–1975), told about a precocious little boy named Barnaby and his fairy godfather, Mr. O’Malley. As is often the case in stories of this type, adults—specifically, Barnaby’s parents—deny the existence of O’Malley, a situation that leads to consternation, child psychology, and a number of other serious themes unusual in a humor strip. It ran for a decade and enjoyed many devoted followers, particularly older readers. Walt Kelly (1913–1973), another poet of the funny pages, created his unique Pogo in 1949. The denizens of the Okefenokee Swamp—Pogo Possum, Albert the Alligator, Howland Owl, Churchy LaFemme, P. T. Bridgeport, and roughly several hundred other characters—serve as either regulars or drop-ins in this often satirical and political strip. Only Li’l Abner came close in the use of sarcasm and lampooning the high and mighty. Kelly had introduced some of his menagerie in comic books during the early 1940s, and he had also drawn editorial cartoons for a time. But Pogo remained a new © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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and different creation and successfully ran for over a quarter of a century, proving that topicality could sell, even in a humor strip. Finally, the comics had early on identified teenagers as a potential audience. As far back as 1912, with the introduction of Cliff Sterrett’s (1883–1964) Polly and Her Pals, the world of adolescents emerged as a popular focus. Merrill Blosser (1892–1983) created Freckles and His Friends in 1915, and 1919 saw the debut of Carl Ed’s (1890– 1959) Harold Teen. With teenagers receiving increasing attention in the late 1930s and early 1940s, strips like Hilda Terry’s (1914–2006) Teena in 1941, Harry Haenigsen’s (1900–1991) Penny in 1943, and Bob Montana’s (1920–1975) Archie in 1946 attested to the growing importance given teens, albeit in the form of humor. The family and continuity strips—that is, stories with continuing characters and plots that usually carry over from day to day—gained increasing popularity in the years following World War I. Much in the spirit of radio soap operas, these tales moved at a sluggish pace, so if readers missed an episode or two, they could catch up in the days following with no real gaps in the storylines. The slow tempo, however, allowed fans to become familiar with the personalities and quirks of the people within the comic strip. It was not at all unusual for irate fans to write letters to editors complaining about the treatment of a figure within a story, or for birthday or holiday gifts to arrive at newspaper offices addressed to Orphan Annie or Blondie Bumstead because of reader identification with particular characters. In 1945, a newspaper delivery strike in New York City prevented people from getting their daily comics. Never averse to a bit of publicity, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (1882–1947) rose to the occasion and read the funnies aloud over a city radio station, focusing especially on the continuity strips. Stations in other parts of the country often had staffers read the comics on Sunday mornings, more evidence of the enthusiastic mass audience these features enjoyed during the 1940s. Among the leaders in continuity strips at this time were Little Orphan Annie and her look-alike, Little Annie Rooney. Orphan Annie has her dog Sandy, and Annie Rooney has Zero. Both are around 12 years in age, always on the move in order to escape cruel or evil adults, but Orphan Annie boasts a healthy right-wing cynicism about those around her, whereas Annie Rooney remains blissfully ignorant about the realities of the world. Of the two, Orphan Annie garnered more readers, and during the war years even dealt with all manner of Axis types. In the postwar era, mealy mouthed liberals and Communist sympathizers incur her not inconsiderable wrath. After debuting in the Depression years as Apple Mary, a doughty older woman selling apples on a street corner, Mary Worth slowly rose in the world and evolved into a tireless solver of the romantic dilemmas of others. Clearly drawn from the immensely popular radio soap operas of the 1940s, Mary Worth found its niche among the funnies and has remained with the formula until the present. In terms of longevity and consistency, few strips have ever come close to Blondie. As much a daily gag series as a family/continuity series, the trial and tribulations of Dagwood Bumstead, its real star, ran in more than 1,200 American newspapers at midcentury, a record. Created by Chic Young (1901–1973) in 1930, Blondie chronicled middle-class American family life during the 1940s as well and as accurately as any comic strip of its day. A long-running series of Blondie motion pictures (1938–1950), 28 movies in all, points to the strip’s remarkable popularity. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Comic Strips | 217 TABLE 35.

Representative American Humorous Comic Strips Published during the 1940s

Title

Artists/Writers during the 1940s

Total Years Published

Archie

Bob Montana (1920–1975)

Barnaby

Crockett, Johnson (b. David Johnson Leisk, 1906–1975) George McManus (1884–1954)

1946 to present (comic book began in 1941) 1942–1952

Bringing Up Father (Maggie & Jiggs) Bugs Bunny

Cap Stubbs and Tippie The Captain and the Kids Debbie Donald Duck

Etta Kett Felix the Cat Gordo Harold Teen Henry

Hubert Just Kids The Katzenjammer Kids Krazy Kat The Little King Little Mary Mixup Male Call Mickey Mouse

Mopsy Mutt and Jeff Nancy Oaky Doaks

Leon Schlesinger (1884–1965) credited, but (Roger Armstrong (1918–2007) ghosted the strip Edwina Dumm (1893–1990) Rudolph Dirks (1877–1968) Cecil Jensen (1902–1976) Walt Disney (1901–1966) credited, but Bob Karp (1911–1975) and Al Taliaferro (1905–1969) ghosted the strip Paul D. Robinson (1898–1974) Otto Messmer (1892–1983) Gus Arriola (1917–2008) Carl Ed (1890–1959) Carl Anderson (1965–1948) until 1942; thereafter, John J. Liney (1913–1982) on dailies, and Don Trachte (1915–2005) on Sundays Dick Wingert (1919–1993) Ad Carter (1895–1957) Harold H. Knerr (1882–1949) George Herriman (1880–1944) Otto Soglow (1900–1975) R. M. Brinkerhoff (1880–1958) Milton Caniff (1907–1988) Walt Disney (1901–1966) credited, but Floyd Gottfredson, (1907–1986) ghosted the strip Gladys Parker (1910–1966) Al Smith (1902–1982) Ernie Bushmiller (1905–1982)

Penny Pete the Tramp Pogo Private Breger

Ralph B. Fuller (1890–1963) and Bill Dyer (n.d.) Harry Haenigsen (1900–1991) Charles D. Russell (1895–1963) Walt Kelly (1913–1973) Lt. Dave Breger (1908–1970)

Reg’lar Fellers

Gene Byrnes (1889–1974)


1913–2000 1942–1993

1918–1966 1914 (initially as Hans und Fritz)–1979 1946 (initially as Elmo)–1961 1934 to present

1925–1974 1923–1967 1941–1985 1919–1959 1934–1995

1945–1994 1923–1957 1897 to present 1913–1944 1934–1975 1917–1957 1942–1946 1930 to present

1939–1965 1907–1982 1933 (initially as Fritzi Ritz) to present 1935–1961 1943–1970 1932–1963 1948–1975 1942–1970 (renamed Mr. Breger in 1945) 1917–1949 (continued)

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(continued)

Title


Total Years Published

Right Around Home

Dudley Fisher (1890–1951)

The Sad Sack Skippy Smitty Smokey Stover Teena

Sgt. George Baker (1915–1975) Percy L. Crosby (1891–1964) Walter Berndt (1899–1979) Bill Holman (1903–1987) Hilda Terry (1914–2006)

Thimble Theatre Starring Popeye

Tom Sims (n.d.) and Bill Zaboly (1910–1985)

1938–1965 (Fisher added Myrtle to the series in 1941) 1942–1958 1919–1945 1922–1974 1935–1973 1941–1964 (initially as It’s a Girl’s Life) 1919 to present

Toonerville Folks

Fontaine Fox (1884–1964)

1915–1955

Note: n.d. = no data available.

Three other women who made names for themselves in the comics were Winnie Winkle, Dixie Dugan, and Tillie Jones. Each personifies a working woman, a fitting topic during World War II, when millions of wives and girlfriends who had not previously been employed, took on defense jobs. But these three characters were pioneers as far as portraying strong, independent women. Winnie Winkle the Breadwinner first appeared in newspapers in 1920; Tillie the Toiler closely followed suit in 1921, whereas Dixie Dugan premiered in 1929. Young men, romance, and families concern them more than their occupations, but the workplace background gives them a particular relevance during the war. A 1926 silent feature, Happy Days, along with a number of shorts during that time, make up the Winnie Winkle filmography. Tillie the Toiler, released in 1941, attracted little notice (she had also been the subject of a 1927 silent film), nor did Dixie Dugan in 1943. Despite their lack of box office success, the mere fact that Hollywood attempted to create movies about these three characters again demonstrates the wide audience that followed their adventures. Li’l Abner, the 1934 creation of cartoonist Al Capp, grew in popularity throughout the 1930s and 1940s. An inventive genius and a master of marketing, Capp carefully controlled anything that alluded to his hillbilly strip. His Sadie Hawkins Day, which first took place in 1937, skyrocketed in popularity during the 1940s, particularly on college campuses. His Shmoo, a lovable creature introduced in 1948, made millions as dolls and other salable paraphernalia. A movie version of the strip played theaters in 1940 and did a respectable business, although a series of cartoon shorts produced in 1944 did not fare as well. Broadcasters even attempted a Li’l Abner radio serial in 1939–1940, but something so visual did not successfully translate to the aural medium. Relative newcomers to the comic pages, action/adventure strips quickly became familiar to millions during the 1930s and 1940s. As indicated in the chart below, a remarkable number of new series came along in the mid-1930s. Led by the likes of Dick Tracy (crime), Flash Gordon (science fiction), The Phantom (fantasy), Terry and the Pirates (adventure), and Secret Agent X-9 (espionage), these newcomers brought realistic drawing to their frames and violence to their stories. Their humorous counterparts


Comic Strips | 219 TABLE 36.

Representative American Family/Serial Continuity Comic Strips Published during

the 1940s Title Alley Oop Barney Google and Snuffy Smith Blondie Bobby Sox Boots and Her Buddies The Bungle Family Clarence Dixie Dugan Ella Cinders Freckles and His Friends Gasoline Alley The Gumps Jane Arden Li’l Abner Little Annie Rooney Little Orphan Annie Mary Worth Mickey Finn Moon Mullins Mr. and Mrs. Polly and Her Pals Tillie the Toiler Tiny Tim Toots and Casper Winnie Winkle

Artists/Writers during the 1940s V. T. Hamlin (1900–1993) Billy DeBeck (1890–1942) until 1942; thereafter Fred Lasswell (1917–2001) Chic Young (1901–1973) Marty Links (b. Martha Arguello, 1917–2008) Edgar Martin (1898–1960) Harry J. Tuthill (1886–1957) Frank Fogarty (1887–1978) and Weare Holbrook (1896–1985) J. P. McEvoy (1929–1966) and John H. Striebel (1891–1962) Fred Fox (1902–1982) and others during the decade Merrill Blosser (1892–1983) Frank King (1883–1969) Gus Edson (1901–1966) Russell Ross (n.d.) and Monte Barrett (n.d.) Al Capp (1909–1979) Brandon Walsh (1883–1955) and Darrell McClure (1903–1987) Harold Gray (1894–1968) Allen Saunders (1899–1986) and Ken Ernst (1918–1985) Lank Leonard (1896–1960) Frank Willard (1893–1958) Clare Briggs (1875–1930) credited, but ghosted by various artists in the 1940s Cliff Sterrett (1883–1964) credited, but ghosted by various artists in the 1940s Russ Westover (1886–1966) Stanley Link (1894–1957) Jimmy Murphy (1892–1965) Martin Branner (1888–1970)

Years Published 1933 to present 1919 to present 1930 to present 1944–1979 1924–1969 1918–1945 1924–1949 1928 (initially as Show Girl)–1966 1925–1961 1915–1971 1918 to present 1917–1959 1928–1968 1934–1977 1929–1966 1924 to present 1934 (initially as Apple Mary) to present 1936–1976 1923–1993 1919–1963 1912–1958 1921–1959 1931–1958 1918–1956 1920–1996


continued to delight readers, but the action/adventure series offered novel-like complexities and a dark, shadowy environment, one that suggested the realities of the worrisome days leading up to World War II. When the conflict embroiled the United States in 1941, these strips leaped into the fray, their heroes going full-blast against the Axis powers. Barney Baxter flew his airplanes in dogfights, Buz Sawyer did likewise for the navy, Flyin’ Jenny became an ace test pilot, and superheroes like Superman and Batman took care of any villains the other characters might have overlooked.


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Representative American Action/Adventure Comic Strips Published during the 1940s

Title Barney Baxter

Batman and Robin Brenda Starr Brick Bradford Broncho Bill Buck Rogers Buz Sawyer Captain Easy

Connie Dick Tracy Dickie Dare Don Winslow of the Navy Flyin’ Jenny

Flash Gordon

Invisible Scarlet O’Neil Joe Palooka Johnny Hazard Jungle Jim

Kerry Drake King of the Royal Mounted Little Joe The Lone Ranger Mandrake the Magician Mark Trail Miss Fury

Artists/Writers during the 1940s Frank Miller (1898–1949) until 1942; Bob Naylor (1910–n.d.), 1942–1946; Frank Miller, 1946–1949 Bob Kane (1916–1998) and Bill Finger (1914–1974) Dale Messick (b. Dalia Messick, 1906–2005) William Ritt (1901–1972) and Clarence Gray (1911–1957) Harry F. O’Neill (n.d.) Dick Calkins (1895–1962) and Rick Yager (1912–1995) Roy Crane (1901–1977) Roy Crane (1901–1977) until 1943; thereafter Leslie Turner (1899–1988) Frank Godwin (1889–1959) Chester Gould (1900–1985) Coulton Waugh (1896–1973) Frank V. Martinek (1895–1971) and Leon A. Beroth (1905–n.d.) Russell Keaton (1910–1945) until 1945; thereafter Marc Swayze (n.d.) and Glenn Chaffin (1897–1978) Alex Raymond (1909–1956) Sundays until 1944; then Austin Briggs (1909–1973) until 1948; then Mac Raboy (1916–1967); Briggs did the dailies 1940–1944 Russell Stamm (1915–1969)

Years Published 1935–1950

1943–1946 1940 to present (Sundays) 1945 to present (dailies) 1933–1987 1928–1950 1929–1967 (dailies) 1930–1967 (Sundays) 1943–1989 1933–1988 (Sundays only; Easy was also a continuing character in Crane’s daily Wash Tubbs) 1927–1944 1931 to present 1933–1957 1934–1955 1939–1952

1934–2003

1940–1956

Ham Fisher (1901–1955) Frank Robbins (1917–1994) Alex Raymond (1909–1956) until 1944; then John Mayo (n.d.) until 1948; Paul Norris (1914–2007) thereafter Alfred Andriola (1912–1983) Jim Gary (1905–n.d.)

1930–1984 1944–1977 1934–1954

Bob Leffingwell (n.d.) Charles Flanders (1907–1973) and Fran Striker (1903–1962) Lee Falk (1912–1999) and Phil Davis (1906–1964) Ed Dodd (1902–1991) Tarpe Mills (b. June Mills, 1915–1988)

1933–1969 1938–1971

1943–1983 1935–1954

1934 to present 1946 to present 1941 (Sundays only)–1952


Comic Strips | 221 Title


Patsy

Charles Raab (n.d.) until 1942; followed by several others, and then Bill Dyer (n.d.) Lee Falk (1912–1999) and Ray Moore (1905–1984); Moore left in 1941, replaced by Wilson McCoy (1902–1961) Hal Foster (1892–1982) Eddie Sullivan (n.d.) and Charlie Schmidt (1917–1958) Fred Harmon (1902–1982) and Russ Winterbotham (1904–1971) Alex Raymond (1909–1956) Frank Robbins (1917–1994) until 1944; various artists followed Mel Graff (1907–1975)

1935–1956

Zack Mosley (1906–1993) Will Eisner (1917–2005) Milton Caniff (1907–1988) Allen Saunders (1899–1986) and Elmer Woggon (1898–1978); also several ghost artists in the 1940s

1933–1973 1941–1944 1947–1988 1936 (initially as Big Chief Wahoo; later Steve Roper and Wahoo, then Steve Roper, and Steve Roper and Mike Nomad)–2004 1939–1966 1929–1972 (dailies), 2000 (Sundays) 1934–1973

The Phantom

Prince Valiant Radio Patrol Red Ryder Rip Kirby Scorchy Smith Secret Agent X-9 Smilin’Jack The Spirit Steve Canyon Steve Roper

Superman Tarzan Terry and the Pirates Tim Tyler’s Luck Wonder Woman

Wayne Boring (1916–1986) Burne Hogarth (1911–1996), Sundays; Rex Maxon (1892–1970), dailies Milton Caniff (1907–1988) until late 1946; George Wunder (1912–1987) thereafter Lyman Young (1893–1984) William Moulton Marston (1893– 1947) and Harry G. Peter (1880–1958)

Years Published

1936 to present

1937 to present (Sundays only) 1933–1950 1938–1964 (Sundays) 1939–1964 (dailies) 1946–1999 1930–1961 1934–1996

1928–1996 1941 (comic book) 1945–1946 (comic strip)


In the meantime, cartoonist Chester Gould (1900–1985) enjoyed a field day creating grotesque adversaries for Dick Tracy to overcome. Many fans maintain the 1940s marked a highpoint for this strip, with evocatively named characters like B. B. Eyes, Flattop, Gargles, Measles, Mumbles, Pruneface, and Wormy doing their worst to get away with all kinds of crimes. Naturally, they never succeed, at least for long. Escapism all the way, yet Gould and Dick Tracy seldom missed an opportunity to inject topicality into the series, whether the subjects be Nazis, bureaucrats, or Communist sympathizers. Police adventures also occupied Kerry Drake, an investigator created in 1943 by Alfred Andriola (1912–1983). But whereas Dick Tracy’s world involves flying bullets and bizarre criminals, Drake’s revolves around methodical detection, coolness under


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pressure, and a realistic drawing style that avoids the exaggerated stylistics favored by Gould. With change in the air, Milton Caniff (1907–1988), who had created, in Terry and the Pirates, a memorable hero with Terry Lee, dropped the series in 1946 and instead introduced Steve Canyon, a suave adventurer for the postwar years. Able to hold his own in any situation and always ready with a quip, Canyon represents a change for action/ adventure comics. With the war behind them, they must adapt to a new world, no less dark and threatening, but without the convenient Axis enemies. Alex Raymond (1909– 1956) followed suit with Rip Kirby, and Allen Saunders (1899–1986) and Elmer Woggon (1898–1978) reinvented Steve Roper, an older series, so that it would more closely fit this new model that relies less on violent action and two-dimensional characters. Because the activities of the action/adventure heroes were presented so visually— fights, airplanes, various weapons, explosions, and so on—many of them moved from the newspapers to radio and film. Dick Tracy appeared in feature movies, plus the hawk-nosed detective had a regular radio serial. Both Brick Bradford and Don Winslow also boasted movie serials. Jungle Jim patrolled the rain forests of Asia, Terry and the Pirates visited exotic locales, King of the Royal Mounted got his man in the Arctic wastes, and listeners could hear them all in long-running radio serials. And who could forget the “Hi-Yo Silver!” of The Lone Ranger, a radio series that began in 1933 and actually predated the comic strip of the same name? It stayed on the air until 1954 and on the comic pages until 1971. American newspaper comic strips provided a national literature to be shared by all, young and old, regardless of race, class, or any other divisions. They could make people laugh, get their fans involved in fictional relationships, thrill them with daring adventures, or simply entertain with their easy story lines and black-and-white drawings. Hundreds of different comics appeared each and every day in papers around the country; some enjoyed huge circulations and audiences, others walked a shaky line between success and failure. Following the tremendous growth the medium experienced in the 1930s, the comic strips of the 1940s showed no signs of slowing down or losing their inventiveness; they continued as a unique expression of popular culture. See also: Fads; Radio Programming: Action, Crime, Police, and Detective Shows; Radio Programming: Children’s Shows, Serials, and Adventure Series; Radio Programming: Comedy Shows; Radio Programming: Soap Operas; Youth Selected Reading Goulart, Ron, ed. The Encyclopedia of American Comics. New York: Facts on File, 1990. Horn, Maurice, ed. 100 Years of American Newspaper Comics. New York: Gramercy Books, 1996. Walker, Brian. The Comics: Before 1945. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2004. ———. The Comics: Since 1945. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002.

COPLAND, AARON A composer of orchestral, choral, and film music, as well as a teacher, conductor, speaker, author, and accomplished pianist, Aaron Copland (1900–1990) wrote his first song for his mother at age 8. When 11, he offered an opera scene of seven bars of music


Copland, Aaron | 223 he called Zenatello. Two years later, he began music lessons and by 15 had decided on a composing career. Instead of going to college as his father desired, Copland went to Paris in 1921 and studied for three years with the renowned composer-conductorteacher Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979). Upon returning to the United States in 1924, he wrote in what can best be described as a symphonic jazz motif, creating pieces that were hard to listen to and play. He gradually recognized a growing distance between this music and the American public and discarded the approach to search for a more accessible style. In the late 1930s, when commissioned by Lincoln Kirstein (1907–1996) to write a ballet, Copland settled on a simplified approach that incorporated folk influences in a piece titled Billy the Kid. It premiered in Chicago on October 16, 1938. Performed by Ballet Caravan, with Eugene Loring (1911–1982) as choreographer, Billy the Kid played to enthusiastic audiences. The story follows the life of the infamous outlaw Billy the Kid (1859–1881) and features cowboys, pioneers, outlaws, and the open prairie of the West with numbers such as “Goodby, Old Paint,” “Great Granddad,” and “Old Chisholm Trail.” All date back to the 19th century, and the last two had been recorded in the early 1930s by Gene Autry (1907–1998), a popular cowboy singer. Billy the Kid went on to its first New York performance on May 24, 1939, at the Martin Beck Theatre. A second ballet, Rodeo, premiered at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House on October 16, 1942, and also drew on cowboy tunes and the spacious landscape of the American prairie. Its well-known theme of “Hoe-Down” comes from an old folk song called “Bonyparte,” or “Bonaparte’s Retreat,” frequently heard at square dances. Like Billy the Kid, Rodeo deals with an outsider, this time a cowgirl who is just one of the boys, but nevertheless yearns for romance. The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, a dance company that had moved to the United States because of war in Europe, performed the episodes choreographed by Agnes de Mille (1905–1998), who played the cowgirl on opening night. In 1943, Copland condensed the score into Four Dance Episodes from “Rodeo.” Both versions experienced more success than Billy the Kid and did much to promote the careers of both Copland and de Mille. Appalachian Spring, a third ballet from the composer, experienced immediate success with both audiences and critics and earned Copland the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for music. It opened at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, on October 30, 1944, and tells a story of celebration about pioneers in the early 1800s, specifically two young newlyweds at their newly built farmhouse, not out West, but on the western Pennsylvania frontier. Created at the request of dancer Martha Graham (1894–1991), who choreographed the piece and played the leading role on opening night, this ballet features square dance rhythms, revivalist hymns, and country fiddle tunes. The last movement includes a well-known Shaker song, “Simple Gifts” (1848; words and music by Elder Joseph Brackett, 1797–1882). In 1945, Copland rearranged Appalachian Spring as an orchestral suite. These three ballets, reflective of American culture, pushed Copland to the forefront of the nation’s composers at the time, a position that he continued to hold throughout the 1940s. The success of these ballets notwithstanding, Copland reached an even larger audience through music written for a number of Hollywood movies. Beginning with the


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Composer, teacher, conductor, speaker, author, and pianist Aaron Copland wrote Rodeo, the second of three successful ballets, in 1942. The story, told through cowboy tunes, highlights the spacious landscape of the American West and benefits from Agnes de Mille’s brilliant choreography. (Photofest)

soundtracks for Of Mice and Men and The City in 1939, he provided the scores for four 1940s features: Our Town (1940), North Star (1943), The Red Pony (1949), and The Heiress (1949), plus a short, The Cummington Story (1945). He wrote Music for the Movies in 1942 as an orchestra concert suite of five movements from the original scores for the films The City (1939), Of Mice and Men (1939), and Our Town. It premiered on February 17, 1943, at Town Hall in New York City. In addition to ballets and scores for movies, Copland penned pieces intended to help rally the nation, to support the call for patriotism by all U.S. citizens during World War II. Lincoln Portrait (1942) composed for narrator and orchestra and also for concert band resulted from a commission by composer-conductor Andre Kostelanetz (1901–1980), who wanted to acquire musical portraits of several great Americans. Copland’s piece, one of the more serious contributions, honored Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865). It includes fragments of Camptown Races (1850) by Stephen Foster (1826–1864) and numbers popular during the American Civil War (1861–1865), along with material from the 16th president’s speeches and letters. Lincoln Portrait premiered on May 14, 1942, with Kostelanetz conducting the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and actor William Adams (1887–1972) narrating. Shortly thereafter, a radio broadcast aired from the Hollywood Bowl with renowned poet Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) in


Copland, Aaron | 225 Adams’s place. The piece continues today as a standard for patriotic holidays such as the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, and President’s Day. Almost one year later, Copland penned Fanfare for the Common Man at the request of the English composer-conductor, Sir Eugene Goossens (1893–1962), resident conductor for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. First performed on March 13, 1943, this piece presents a musical statement of love for the United States and celebrates the labors and sacrifices made by those citizens not on a battlefield. It became an instant American classic, and today Fanfare for the Common Man can be heard at civic and national events, sometimes including presidential inaugurations, and is perhaps Copland’s most often played composition. Another patriotic piece, Letter from Home, written by Copland in 1944, suggests the emotions that might be experienced by a soldier receiving and reading a letter from home. Copland’s simpler pieces composed during the first half of the decade supported a thesis he presented in his book Our New Music (1941). He wrote of a new audience for music that had developed as a result of the popularity of radio and record players and suggested that new compositions should reflect the existence and use of this technology. A year earlier, he had joined the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood as a teacher and chairman of the faculty and held those positions until 1965. He urged his many students, one of the most successful being Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990), to write in a simple, contemporary, American way. Music written by Copland during the 1940s includes orchestral works such as John Henry (1940); Danzon Cubano (1944); the Third Symphony (1946), which incorporates Fanfare for the Common Man; and Preamble for a Solemn Occasion (1949). He also composed Las Agachadas (1942) and In the Beginning (1947) for chorus, along with Violin Sonata (1943) for violin, Midsummer Nocturne (1947) for piano, and Clarinet Concerto (1948) for clarinet and string orchestra with harp. This last work, commissioned by swing clarinetist Benny Goodman (1909–1986), demonstrates his versatility. Between 1940 and 1949, Copland wrote a total of 26 pieces and throughout his career he frequently toured the world to promote his music. Along with composers Virgil Thomson (1898–1996) and Roy Harris (1898–1979), Aaron Copland dominated the public perception of American classical music during the 1930s and 1940s. Clearly a populist composer, his music glorified American culture. He reached the peak of his career in the 1940s, and none of his pieces after that ever made as great an impression with the public as did his three ballets along with Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for the Common Man, all written during the late 1930s and 1940s. Despite his public acceptance, in 1953, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s (1908– 1957) infamous Senate subcommittee investigating the composer’s possible Communist activities during the 1930s called Copland to testify. McCarthy viewed his liberal attitudes as suspect, but many notable individuals rallied to his support and McCarthy failed to implicate him in any way. Copland stands as one of the country’s most successful and prestigious composers, having created a true American style. He retired from composing in 1973 but continued to conduct until memory loss kept him confined to his home. See also: Cold War, The; House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)


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| Costume and Spectacle Films Selected Reading Ballet performances in New York City. New York Times, May 25, 1939; October 17, 1942; November 1, 1944. www.proquest.com Horowitz, Joseph. Classical Music in America: A History of Its Rise and Fall. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005. Struble, John Warthen. The History of American Classical Music: MacDowell Through Minimalism. New York: Facts on File, 1995.

COSTUME AND SPECTACLE FILMS Since the earliest days of commercial film production, the motion picture industry has capitalized on its ability to enthrall audiences with elaborate dress and settings. Nothing can beat the sweep of costume and action-filled sequences on the big screen. From The Birth of a Nation (1915) to the burning of Atlanta in Gone with the Wind (1939) to any of the Star Wars films (1977 and onward) to Avatar (2009), the large-scale movie has long been an identifiable genre in its own right. But such undertakings require huge amounts of money, equipment, and supplies; the studios might have had the money, but the materials could not be not readily obtained in the straitened 1940s. Just weeks after the war began in earnest for the United States, the newly created Office of Price Administration (OPA) commenced creating a list of goods that would be restricted in their availability to the public. In short order, the OPA announced that such items as tires, gasoline, and a long list of foodstuffs would henceforth be rationed. In addition, many commodities not explicitly listed became scarce, and Americans had to manage with less. These federal edicts also affected the movie industry. A showy costume drama could no longer indulge in lovely silken gowns; almost immediately rationed, silk could hardly be found at all, because the manufacture of parachutes demanded great quantities of it. Virtually all synthetics, such as nylon or rayon, also disappeared from the marketplace. In addition, uniform makers required wool and cotton, plus the government considered the dyes used to color clothing as strategic since they went into the production of explosives. Even lowly metal buttons had disappeared from suppliers. Heedlessly expending gasoline, either for spectacular special effects (explosions or fires) or for transportation to exotic locales, became a difficult proposition with its scarcity. Tires were almost irreplaceable, and the construction of elaborate sets presented unexpected difficulties given the shortages of many building materials. Crowd scenes with lots of youthful male players posed a problem, since men, too, were in short supply. In short, Hollywood had to scale back for the duration of the war and employ flimsy sets and less sumptuous costumes, and producers settled for shooting on studio back lots and sound stages. With the return to peace in late 1945, the studios may have begun planning new cinematic extravaganzas, but the immediate postwar years witnessed a continuation of some scarcities while the nation readjusted the channels of supply to civilian needs. Not until the later 1940s did a sense of normality again descend on the movie capital. With 1949, peace and prosperity combined to put Hollywood back on track for expensive, elaborately staged pictures. That year saw The Prince of Foxes and Reign of Terror, both of which consumed endless yards of once-rationed silk in fancy costumes, and sets that © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Costume and Spectacle Films | 227 TABLE 38. Year

Representative Costume and Spectacle Films of the 1940s Film Titles

Stars

1940

Hudson’s Bay The Mark of Zorro Northwest Passage One Million B.C. Pride and Prejudice The Santa Fe Trail The Sea Hawk The Thief of Bagdad Victory

Paul Muni, Gene Tierney Tyrone Power, Basil Rathbone Spencer Tracy, Robert Young Victor Mature, Lon Chaney Jr. Greer Garson, Laurence Olivier Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland Errol Flynn, Claude Rains Sabu, Conrad Veidt Fredric March, Cedric Hardwicke

1941

Blood and Sand The Corsican Brothers The Sea Wolf The Son of Monte Cristo That Hamilton Woman

Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Akim Tamiroff Edward G. Robinson, Ida Lupino Louis Hayward, George Sanders Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh

1942

Arabian Nights The Black Swan The Jungle Book Reap the Wild Wind Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake

Sabu, Jon Hall Tyrone Power, Maureen O’Hara Sabu, Joseph Calleia John Wayne, Ray Milland Tyrone Power, George Sanders

1943

Forever and a Day [English] Jack London Phantom of the Opera

Cedric Hardwicke, Brian Aherne Michael O’Shea, Susan Hayward Claude Rains, Nelson Eddy

1944

The Adventures of Mark Twain Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves Frenchman’s Creek Gypsy Wildcat Jane Eyre Kismet Summer Storm Wilson

Fredric March, Alexis Smith Jon Hall, Maria Montez Joan Fontaine, Basil Rathbone Jon Hall, Maria Montez Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine Ronald Colman, Marlene Dietrich Linda Darnell, George Sanders Alexander Knox, Geraldine Fitzgerald

1945

A Song to Remember The Spanish Main

Cornel Wilde, Paul Muni Paul Henreid, Walter Slezak

1946

Anna and the King of Siam The Bandit of Sherwood Forest Caesar and Cleopatra Devotion Great Expectations [English] Henry V [English]

Irene Dunne, Rex Harrison Cornel Wilde, Edgar Buchanan Janet Leigh, Stewart Granger Ida Lupino, Olivia de Havilland John Mills, Alec Guinness Laurence Olivier, Robert Newton

1947

Captain from Castile Green Dolphin Street The Macomber Affair Sinbad the Sailor Tycoon Unconquered

Tyrone Power, Jean Peters Van Heflin, Lana Turner Gregory Peck, Joan Bennett Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Maureen O’Hara John Wayne, Cedric Hardwicke John Wayne, Paulette Goddard (continued)


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Stars

1948

Adventures of Don Juan Hamlet [English]

Errol Flynn Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons

1948

Joan of Arc Macbeth Saraband Scott of the Antarctic The Swordsman The Three Musketeers Wake of the Red Witch The Woman in White

Ingrid Bergman, Jose Ferrer Orson Welles, Jeanette Nolan Stewart Granger, Joan Greenwood John Mills, Derek Bond Larry Parks, Ellen Drew Gene Kelly, Lana Turner John Wayne, Gail Russell Sidney Greenstreet, Agnes Moorehead

1949

The Blue Lagoon The Heiress Little Women Madame Bovary Might Joe Young Pirates of Capri Prince of Foxes Reign of Terror Samson and Delilah

Jean Simmons, Donald Houston Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift June Allyson, Margaret O’Brien Jennifer Jones, Van Heflin Terry Moore, Ben Johnson Louis Hayward, Binnie Barnes Orson Welles, Tyronne Power Robert Cummings, Arlene Dahl Victor Mature, Hedy Lamarr

bespoke the availability of supplies. The decade culminated with producer-director and master showman Cecil B. DeMille (1881–1959), famed for making one visual spectacle after another in the prewar years (King of Kings [1927], Cleopatra [1934], many others), returning to his old form with Samson and Delilah (1949), a biblical epic that pulled out all the stops and presaged the big-budget blockbusters of the 1950s. From the list above, a few generalizations can be made regarding costume and spectacle films: The average number of motion pictures fitting this category declined during the war years, 1941 to 1946. Of those movies, the majority depend more on costume than they do on scope. Most fit the category of character studies or, in the case of actual figures from history, “biopics” (biographical pictures), a descriptive neologism created shortly after World War II. An unusually large proportion involve swashbucklers, swordsmen displaying their skills on a limited stage. In this way, period dress and simple sets substitute for elaborate crowd scenes and sweeping vistas. Most films utilized traditional black-and-white stock, both cheaper and more readily available than color at the time. Toward the end of the 1940s, however, the number of productions increased, sets became more elaborate, and camera crews favored on-location shooting (i.e., away from Hollywood and studio lots). When feasible, Technicolor replaced black-andwhite photography. But wide-screen projection, such as CinemaScope and Cinerama, along with enhanced sound and other technological advances, did not occur during the 1940s; these changes would have to wait until the 1950s. Theater attendance remained high—60 to 80 million weekly patrons—throughout the war and early postwar years. A slight decline became evident over the decade, but


Country Music | 229 few reckoned with the plunge it would take during the 1950s with the advent of television and its overnight rise in popularity. In 1949, most people continued their weekly visits to a neighborhood theater for the latest movies and special features. And as far as concerns lavish, big-budget motion pictures, the 1940s can be seen as an era of relative calm, with the 1940 to 1949 period a time for restraint. Only in the final years of the decade did the industry return to its more freewheeling ways of the past. See also: Fashion; Rationing; Technology Selected Reading Richards, Jeffrey. Swordsmen of the Screen. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977. Swashbuckling. www.classicalfencing.com/articles/swash.php

COUNTRY MUSIC With themes of love and loss, mothers and sweethearts, and hope and heartbreak, country music advanced in popularity and acceptance as an American musical form during the 1940s. No longer denigrated as backwoods hillbilly music, it covered a wide gamut of styles: traditional country, the string band sound, bluegrass, Western, honky-tonk, and Western Swing. In 1942, Billboard magazine, a music trade journal that reports the top-selling songs for the week, introduced a column on country music. The journal added a folk records chart in 1944 and changed the name to Hillbilly in 1947. It arrived at the final name of Country and Western Chart in 1949, a sure sign that the genre was evolving and holding its own with mainstream music. At this same time, another boost came as popular artists such as Bing Crosby (1903–1977), The Andrews Sisters (Patty [b. 1918], Maxene [1916–1995], LaVerne [1911–1967]), and Margaret Whiting (b. 1924) began to record their own versions of the songs that had risen to the top of the country chart. Other earlier events contributed to country music’s climb to success. Two radio broadcasts, National Barn Dance (1924–1960) and Grand Ole Opry (1927 to present), initially served limited areas of the nation. In 1939, the Opry, a Saturday evening live broadcast of country music from station WSM in Nashville, Tennessee, obtained network status as a 30-minute weekly program on the NBC (National Broadcasting Company) network. Sponsored by Prince Albert Tobacco, it moved to coast-to-coast programming in 1940, and suddenly the show and its stars became known outside its regional boundaries of the southeastern United States. By 1944, more than 600 country music radio shows filled the airwaves, some local or regional and some national. Prior to this time, record companies had come to this Appalachian Mountain area in search of new singers. For example, by the 1940s RCA Victor had established a hillbilly catalog and aggressively publicized their disks; from the late 1940s, Decca Records represented a number of country music artists. Jukeboxes located in ice cream and soda shops and small dance halls served as a prominent recording industry marketing tool because they exposed the public to new releases, especially in the country music field. At the same time, Hollywood featured some country artists in a


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number of Westerns with singing cowboys, thereby bringing country music to even more audiences. World War II probably served as the most significant event of all in the establishment of country music as a national phenomenon and big business. Because of the draft and wartime industries, major population shifts occurred as new soldiers moved to training camps and workers sought defense jobs. For some, their families followed to nearby towns. Those enamored of country music and its songs carried them to places like Los Angeles, Detroit, Cincinnati, Chicago, and Baltimore. The concentration of men in military installations and the mass migration of workers created a new In this early 1940s photograph, a proud Ernest Tubb holds the guitar of his idol, country music market for country and hillbilly music. pioneer Jimmie Rodgers. By 1943, Tubb had People unfamiliar with these formats switched to an electric model, the first country now heard them on local radio stations, artist to do so. It earned a spot for him on the at public gatherings, and at concerts. Grand Ole Opry, where he reigned as one of its During the war, country music stars stars for 39 years. (Photofest) participated in USO (United Service Organizations) Camp Shows both in the United States and Europe, exposing even more people to their music. Likewise, singers and musicians connected with the Opry gained recognition for themselves and their music through the Grand Ole Opry’s Camel Caravan, underwritten by the cigarettes of the same name. This traveling unit of performers entertained troops at military bases in the United States and the Panama Canal region. Other radio barn dance shows such as Chicago’s National Barn Dance, Cincinnati’s Boone County Jamboree, and Kentucky’s Renfro Valley Barn Dance kicked off tours that frequently played before crowds in excess of 5,000 people. Through these various activities and events, anyone previously unacquainted with country music now regularly heard it, and some became new fans. Many of the country music artists who claimed star status during the 1940s had entered the field through the Grand Ole Opry. Roy Acuff (1903–1992), host and solo performer for the show, as well as a composer, publisher, and recording artist, had, by the early 1940s, earned the title of King of Country Music. His success as a recording artist peaked in the 1940s, and he, along with composer Fred Rose (1897–1954), opened a country music publishing business in Nashville. After 1950, his recording career ceased, but until his death he continued to write and perform. With Acuff as a member of the Grand Ole Opry, the show’s emphasis moved from instrumental performances to solo star appearances. Comedy, along with costumes, had always been a part of the barn dance shows, and when, in the fall of 1940, Sarah


Country Music | 231 Ophelia Colley (1912–1996) made her debut on the Grand Ole Opry as comedian Minnie Pearl, another country star was born. By 1942, Minnie Pearl, with her trademark “How-dee-e-e!” and wearing a big hat with the price tag of $1.98 (approximately $29 in 2008 dollars) dangling off the side, had created her enduring stage personality. Audiences never seemed to tire of her portrayal of a small-town spinster preoccupied with chasing men and gossiping about her family and neighbors. Minnie Pearl remained in Nashville until 1991, when she suffered a debilitating stroke. Another rising performer, Eddy Arnold (1918–2008), the “Tennessee Plowboy” with a crooner’s style of singing, joined the Opry in 1940 as the lead vocalist for Pee Wee King’s (1914–2000) band. He obtained solo star status in 1943 and cut his first disk in 1944. Recording for the RCA Victor label, Arnold’s renditions of “That’s How Much I Love You” in 1946, followed by three No. 1 hits in 1947—“It’s a Sin,” “What Is Life Without Love,” and “I’ll Hold You in My Heart (Till I Can Hold You in My Arms)”—pushed him to the top. Success for Arnold and Victor continued with four singles in the top 5 in 1948—“Bouquet of Roses” (No. 1 for 19 weeks), “Anytime,” “Just a Little Lovin’,” and “Texarkana Baby”—and two in 1949—“Don’t Rob Another Man’s Castle” and “I’m Throwing Rice at the Girl I Love.” He had edged out Ernest Tubb (1914–1984), Red Foley (1910–1968), and even Roy Acuff as the nation’s bestknown country singer. National Barn Dance, the other famous country music radio show, also made significant contributions to the genre. Its most popular performers included the husbandwife team of Scotty Wiseman (1909–1981) and Lula Belle (b. 1913), Patsy Montana (1914–1996), and Louise Massey (1902–1983). Gene Autry (1907–1998) appeared on the show from 1932 to 1934 and by 1940 boasted his own radio program, Melody Ranch (1940–1956). Autry and Roy Rogers (born Leonard Slye, 1911–1998) hold the distinction of being the best-known and most successful singing cowboys. National Barn Dance also featured a well-known comedy team, the Hoosier Hot Shots. In addition to providing laughs for the audience, this group appeared in a number of movies— Westerns, musicals, and comedies—including a cinematic version of National Barn Dance, released in 1944. Clyde “Red” Foley, who had joined and left National Barn Dance during the 1930s, returned in 1940 and one year later signed with Decca, where he hit it big with his first recording, “Old Shep,” a song about a dog he owned as a child. As did many country composers and singers, Foley performed before military audiences throughout the war years. In 1944, he held the No. 1 spot on the Billboard folk (country) chart for 13 consecutive weeks with a recording of a patriotic number titled “Smoke on the Water.” One year later, he became the first major country performer to record in Nashville, a city that was rapidly gaining a reputation for being the heart of country music. Foley’s 1946 entry as a regular member on the Prince Albert Tobacco segment of Grand Ole Opry broadened his career to include that of master of ceremonies, hosting both singers and comedians. He ended the decade with a string of hits: “M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I,” “Goodnight Irene,” and “Birmingham Bounce” (all 1949) and went on to issue “Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy” in 1950, a No. 1 hit for 13 weeks and considered by many to be his signature song.


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While these individual performers worked their way to stardom and advanced the popularity of country music, various groups of country musicians likewise added their innovations and contributed to the growing interest. The Monroe Brothers—Bill (1911–1996) and Charlie (1903–1975)—achieved popularity during the 1920s and 1930s as a duet performing songs with a hard-driving beat; they went their separate ways in the late 1930s to form their own bands. Bill Monroe, who played the mandolin, became the more successful of the two, organized the Blue Grass Boys and, in turn, popularized a music style that had originated with string bands of the 1920s. Similar to the Monroe Brothers’ duet style, this group played at a faster tempo than traditional country music; they called it bluegrass after their group’s name. Sometimes the Blue Grass Boys featured vocalists who offered high-pitched singing that emphasized multiple vocal parts. They became one of Grand Ole Opry’s strongest attractions and cut disks for RCA Victor’s Bluebird label during 1940 and 1941. The group did not record again until 1945, when Monroe signed with Columbia Records. The label issued “Kentucky Waltz” (which Monroe had written in 1934) and “Footprints in the Snow.” At this time, the Blue Grass Boys added two new members: Earl Scruggs (b. 1924), a banjo player who employed a distinctive, three-finger style of picking, and rhythm guitarist and singer of heartfelt vocals Lester Flatt (1914–1979). Music historians generally agree that the musical style, talents, and innovativeness offered by Flatt and Scruggs solidified the bluegrass sound. “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” written by Bill Monroe and recorded by the Blue Grass Boys in 1947, became a bluegrass standard and entered the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress in 2002. Monroe’s music clearly defined the bluegrass sound, and many consider him the father of that particular style. Flatt and Scruggs left Monroe in 1948 and formed the Foggy Mountain Boys. They added a dobro, a metal-topped resonator guitar with a slide placed on the strings on the instrument’s neck to produce a sound similar to that of a Hawaiian band sound. In 1949, they recorded “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” for Mercury Records; it featured Scruggs’s unique playing style and gave them their first hit. Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys had clearly joined Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys as major forces in spreading bluegrass music across the United States. In 2004, their “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” joined “Blue Moon of Kentucky” in the National Recording Registry. Along with the development of bluegrass, a style known as Western Swing also gained recognition in the country music field. In the early 1930s, Bob Wills (1905– 1975) and his Texas Playboys along with Milton Brown (1903–1936) and his Musical Brownies, added the amplified steel guitar and other electrified instruments to their string bands and offered traditional country music with a hint of the “swing” and jazz played by big bands in urban ballrooms at the time. In 1940, Wills assembled a band of 18 musicians playing saxophones, trumpets, clarinets, and drums, along with the usual guitars, and recorded “New San Antonio Rose,” a repeat of his 1938 tune, “San Antonio Rose.” Its success enhanced the future of Western Swing and it quickly gained favor with dancers in Texas, Oklahoma, and other western states. “New San Antonio Rose” became known as a Western Swing classic, and, like many other successful country tunes, Bing Crosby recorded it. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Country Music | 233 In 1940 and 1941, Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys appeared in two movies as themselves and 13 more Westerns before the decade ended. Wills enlisted in the army in 1942 and received a medical discharge the following year. He then moved to California and reorganized his band, removing most of the brass and reeds and relying more on fiddles, a decision that allowed him to retain a fairly strong following even after the big bands dipped in popularity. In 1945, Wills and his group recorded “Smoke on the Water,” the same song cut in 1944 by Red Foley (not to be confused with the 1972 hit of the same name by the rock group Deep Purple). Will’s version hit No. 1. Postwar successes for Wills included “New Spanish Two-Step,””Roly-Poly” (both 1946), and “Sugar Moon” (1947). Pee Wee King, songwriter, recording artist, band leader, and television entertainer, along with fellow band member Redd Stewart (1923–2003), penned what some believe to be the song that guaranteed country music’s prosperity, “The Tennessee Waltz.” (1947). Originally recorded in 1948 by King and the Golden West Cowboys, vocalist Patti Page (b. 1927) achieved No. 1 on the pops chart in 1951, and within six months sold 5 million copies with her version. In 1965, the state of Tennessee adopted it as its official song. King and his band had joined Grand Ole Opry in 1937 and immediately set some new standards. They dressed in stylish Western outfits specifically designed for them and introduced an array of new instruments to the program’s stage, including trumpet, drums, and electric guitar. Initially polka and waltz rhythms characterized most of their songs, but they soon produced smoother, danceable sounds and became more of a Western Swing band. In 1947, King and his Golden West Cowboys left the Opry for a weekly radio show on WAVE in Louisville, Kentucky. One year later, they transferred to affiliate WAVE-TV where they had a television show until 1957. New genres of country music during the 1940s did not stop with bluegrass and Western Swing. For a little over a decade, laborers in Texas and Louisiana had gathered at the end of the day in small local taverns, called honky-tonks, a slang term derived from honk-a-tonk, which means a cheap saloon that served alcohol, both legally and illegally. There, they would drink, socialize, listen to music, and dance. Al Dexter (1905–1984), a singer and writer of a 1937 song titled “Honky Tonk Blues,” operated such a bar in Texas and reportedly originated the music called honky-tonk, songs that lament the workers’ good and bad times and epitomize the spirit of drinking and hard living, of loving and losing at love. This music, when played on electric instruments, had a louder sound and a heavier beat than other country styles and offered bold lyrics. In 1944, Dexter’s “Pistol Packin’ Mama” (written 1942), “Rosalita,” “So Long Pal,” and “Too Late to Worry, Too Blue to Cry” all scored No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart. In addition to Dexter, Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters, as well as Frank Sinatra, recorded “Pistol Packin’ Mama.” Three movies of the decade featured the song—Pistol Packin’ Mama (1943), Strange Affair (1944), and Beautiful But Broke (1944)—while another movie, Frontier Fugitives (1945), offered his “Too Late to Worry, Too Blue to Cry” and “I’ll Wait for You Dear.” The years 1945 through 1948 continued to be profitable ones for Dexter. Three recordings hit No. 1: “I’m Losing My Mind over You” (1945), “Guitar Polka,” and “Wine, Women, and Song” (both 1946). “I’ll Wait for You Dear,” the B side of “I’m © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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Losing My Mind Over You,” made it to the No. 2 spot. But his success did not stop there. “Triflin’ Gal” and the B side, “I’m Lost Without You” (1945), along with “It’s Up to You,” “Kokomo Island,” and “Down at the Roadside Inn,” recorded in 1946– 1947, made it to the top five. Finally in 1948, “Rock and Rye Rag” and “Calico Rag” scored in the top 15. In all, Dexter received 12 gold records for million-sellers from 1943 to 1948. Along with Al Dexter’s promotion of honky-tonk music, two southwestern country artists, Floyd Tillman (1914–2003) and Ted Daffan (1912–1996), also contributed significantly to its development. Both versatile artists, Tillman worked as a singer and songwriter and frequently performed his own numbers rather than the compositions of others, and Daffan excelled as a guitarist, band leader, singer, and songwriter. Floyd Tillman’s success began in 1939 with “It Makes No Difference Now,” recorded by Western swing bandleader Cliff Bruner (1915–2000) and also by Bing Crosby in 1940, a number considered by many to be the first classic honky-tonk piece. Tillman served as a radio operator during World War II, and being stationed near Houston enabled him to continue to record. Two 1944 compositions, “Each Night at Nine” and “They Took the Stars Out of Heaven,” gained popularity because they appealed to people separated from loved ones, whatever the reason. After 1945, Tillman wrote some of the best honky-tonk songs of the postwar period, including “I Love You So Much It Hurts” (1948), “Slipping Around” (1949), and a follow-up song to the same melody, “I’ll Never Slip Around Again” (1949). One of the first pieces to address adultery and considered the most recognized country song about cheating, Capitol Records decided to also cut a duet version of “Slipping Around” by pop vocalist Margaret Whiting (b. 1924) and the multitalented Jimmy Wakely (1914–1982). Their rendering ranked No. 4 on the country chart and No. 5 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for 1949. Ted Daffan hit it big in 1940, thanks to the success of Cliff Bruner’s recording of Daffan’s “Truck Driver’s Blues.” Song titles by Daffan such as “Worried Mind” (1940), “Born to Lose,” and “No Letter Today” (both 1943 and written under the pseudonym of Frankie Brown), as well as “Headin’ Down the Wrong Highway” (1945) certainly convey the moods glorified in honky-tonk music. Both “Born to Lose” and “No Letter Today” sold a million copies. Over the years, “Born to Lose” has been recorded by a variety of musicians, including Ray Charles (1930–2004), Dean Martin (1917–1995), and Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996). Hank Williams (1923–1953), frequently referred to as the Father of Contemporary Country Music, wrote most of the songs that he sang and also advanced the honkytonk style. He formed the first version of his band, the Drifting Cowboys, when only 16 years old. By the early 1940s, while still a teenager, he played one-night gigs at clubs across Alabama. A move to Nashville in 1946 put him in contact with Fred Rose, co-owner of Acuff-Rose Publishing, who arranged for Williams to record for Sterling Records. The success of two singles, “Never Again” and “Honky Tonkin’,” garnered the attention of MGM, a newly formed recording subsidiary of the giant Metro-Golden-Mayer film studio. Under contract with MGM, Williams cut “Move It on Over,” in 1947. An immediate hit, it climbed to No. 4 on Billboard’s country singles chart. During 1948, he performed for Louisiana Hayride tours and appeared on its WKWH radio program


Country Music | 235 carried nationally from Shreveport, Louisiana, by the CBS (Columbia Broadcasting Company). In 1949, Williams reorganized his Drifting Cowboys and, at different times during the year, had five songs to rank in the top five of Billboard’s Hot Country Singles: “Wedding Bells,” “Mind Your Own Business,” “You’re Gonna Change (Or I’m Gonna Leave), “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It,” and, the most successful of all, “Lovesick Blues,” a 1922 Tin Pan Alley song that claimed the No. 1 spot. Grand Ole Opry immediately invited him to join the show, and, at his first appearance, the audience insisted on six encores of his yodeled closing line of “Lovesick Blues.” In 2004, the National Recording Registry selected this famous song for its archives. Five more singles made it into the top 15 during the last two years of the decade. His fame soared, and Williams moved from regional success to national stardom. He continued to record hit after hit in the early 1950s and died on January 1, 1953, at the age of 29 in the back seat of his Cadillac while being driven to a concert in Canton, Ohio. The exact cause of his death is debatable, with some attributing it to his serious problems with alcohol, morphine, and painkillers, and others reporting that he had a heart attack. Another honky-tonk performer, Ernest Tubb, became the first country artist to employ an electric guitar at the Opry, where he reigned as one of its major stars for the next 39 years. Perhaps most associated with one of his early compositions and recordings, “Walking the Floor Over You” (1942), a country classic, he frequently appeared on best-selling charts. His hits from the 1940s included “Soldier’s Last Letter” (1944), “Tomorrow Never Comes” and “It’s Been So Long Darling” (both 1945), and “Rainbow at Midnight” and “Filipino Baby” (both 1946). Tubb headlined the first Grand Ole Opry show presented at Carnegie Hall in September 1947 and recorded “I’m Biting My Fingernails and Thinking of You” with the Andrews Sisters in 1949. That same year, he had six other hits, including “Have You Ever Been Lonely.” In addition to his Opry work and recording, he toured the country constantly and appeared in three Hollywood Westerns: Fighting Buckaroo (1943), Jamboree, and Riding West (both 1944). He was one of many country stars playing themselves in Hollywood Barn Dance in 1947, the same year that he opened the Ernest Tubb Record Shop in Nashville, the first major all-country music store, and hosted the Midnight Jamboree, which followed the Opry on WSM. Some country artists of the 1940s did not align themselves with just one popular genre. For example, Merle Travis (1917–1983) came from a traditional background and played music derived from folk music he had heard growing up in Kentucky. In the mid-1930s, he appeared with local bands around Evansville, Indiana, and in 1937 joined the Drifting Pioneers, a group that performed on WLW in Cincinnati until the outbreak World War II. After a brief stint with the Marines and subsequent discharge, Travis settled in California and recorded for Capitol Records. His biggest successes came from singing Western and honky-tonk songs. In 1946, he wrote two numbers that focused on the lives of coal miners, “Sixteen Tons” and “Dark as a Dungeon,” with the former becoming a No. 1 country hit for Tennessee Ernie Ford (1919–1991) in 1955. Other notable compositions included “Divorce Me C.O.D.” (1946), “Three Times Seven,” and “So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed” (both 1947); the last-named climbed to the No. 1


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position on the country charts and gave him national prominence. For his friend Tex Williams (1917–1985), Travis wrote what in 1947 became Capitol’s first million-selling hit: “Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette).” Billboard listed it as No. 5 in a category called the Hot 100 for 1947. But Travis did not limit himself to composing and recording. During the 1940s, he appeared as a singer in three movies, had acting roles in 11, and portrayed himself in a movie short, When the Bloom Is on the Sage (1945). With the success of many country music singers and musicians and the accompanying growth of the country music industry, hot spots for playing and listening to the music appeared throughout the country. In addition to acting and recording opportunities, Hollywood provided live performances at the Los Angeles County Barn Dance at Venice Pier. Eastern Pennsylvania and West Virginia likewise witnessed a lot of activity thanks to the Wheeling Jamboree broadcast over WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia. But no place compared to Nashville, the country music center of the United States, whatever the style. The town clearly contained all elements of the country music industry—performances, recording, publishing, and marketing. The 1940s witnessed a rapid and broad growth in both the development and popularity of various genres of country music. The styles and performances changed as more and more country musicians electronically amplified their guitars and talented vocalists using a microphone stepped out to front the bands. Promoters and booking agents became active in advancing the careers of the aspiring stars and brought country music to a larger audience. In tribute to these efforts, the Smithsonian Institution, in 1981, released The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Country Music. It contains 143 tracks deemed to be significant to the history of country music. Thirty-six, or one-fourth of these tracks, come from the time period 1941 to 1953. An additional 18 represent a separate category of bluegrass tunes. See also: Westerns (Film) Selected Reading Malone, Bill C. Country Music, U.S.A. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968. Peterson, Richard A. Creating Country Music: Fabricating the Authentic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Shestack, Melvin. The Country Music Encyclopedia. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1974. Tyler, Don. American Music through History: Music of the Postwar Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008.

CRIME AND MYSTERY FILMS A well-done mystery movie can also serve as superlative drama, although only a fraction of dramatic motion pictures can be called mysteries. Precise plotting, interesting characters, and evocative sets all contribute to the carefully wrought mystery film. Crime stories, which stand slightly apart from mysteries, usually focus more on the act itself and less on characterization. The line separating the two genres, however, can easily be blurred, as has frequently happened in cinematic history. A strong director, working with a good screenplay, can make even the most mundane tale of crime into a gripping mystery. The reverse, of course, also holds true: a lesser director, a weak


Crime and Mystery Films | 237 screenplay, can make a shambles of a mystery, a product far inferior to many straightahead crime pictures. Any survey of movies from the 1940s will show that studios released a great number of both crime and mystery pictures, which suggests an abundance of fans. An unusual and often overlooked aspect of this genre during the 1940s concerns series films. A particular sleuth—Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan, the Saint, the Falcon, and numerous others—appears in a movie and audiences respond positively—that is, it does well at the box office. This prompts the studio to produce a sequel, and if that draws well, too, a series will often ensue. For the 1940s, a disproportionate number of crime and mystery series flourished, with some continuing for years. At the same time, each and every year of the decade saw many individual (nonseries) crime and mystery films released. These ranged from action-oriented thrillers to intellectual exercises in crime solving. TABLE 39.

Representative Crime and Mystery Films, 1940–1949

Year

Film Titles

Stars

1940

Angel Street [also known as Gaslight] Busman’s Honeymoon The Invisible Man Returns Johnny Apollo The Letter The Man with Nine Lives Raffles Rebecca Stranger on the Third Floor They Drive By Night

Anton Walbrook, Diana Wynyard Robert Montgomery, Robert Newton Cedric Hardwicke, Vincent Price Tyrone Power, Dorothy Lamour Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall Boris Karloff, Roger Pryor David Niven, Olivia de Havilland Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook Jr. George Raft, Humphrey Bogart

1941

The Black Cat Dressed to Kill High Sierra Johnny Eager Lady Scarface Law of the Tropics The Maltese Falcon Out of the Fog Shadows on the Stairs Suspicion

Basil Rathbone, Bela Lugosi Lloyd Nolan, William Demarest Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino Robert Taylor, Van Heflin Judith Anderson, Dennis O’Keefe Constance Bennett, Regis Toomey Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor John Garfield, Ida Lupino Paul Cavanagh, Miles Mander Joan Fontaine, Cary Grant

1942

The Big Shot Crossroads Eyes in the Night Fingers at the Window The Glass Key Grand Central Murder I Live on Danger Kid Glove Killer Lucky Jordan This Gun for Hire

Humphrey Bogart, Irene Manning William Powell, Hedy Lamarr Edward Arnold, Donna Reed Basil Rathbone, Lew Ayres Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake Van Heflin, Tom Conway Chester Morris, Jean Parker Van Heflin, Marsha Hunt Alan Ladd, Marie McDonald Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake (continued)


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Stars

1943

Adventures of Tartu Appointment in Berlin The Black Raven Boss of Big Town Eyes of the Underworld The Ghost Ship Lady of Burlesque The Leopard Man The Seventh Victim Shadow of a Doubt

Robert Donat, Valerie Hobson George Sanders, Gale Sondergaard George Zucco, Wanda McKay John Litel, Florence Rice Richard Dix, Lon Chaney Jr. Richard Dix, Lawrence Tierney Barbara Stanwyck, Michael O’Shea Dennis O’Keefe, Jean Brooks Tom Conway, Kim Hunter Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotton

1944

Dangerous Passage Double Indemnity Gaslight Laura The Lodger The Mask of Dimitrios Ministry of Fear Murder, My Sweet The Phantom Lady Roger Touhy, Gangster

Robert Lowery, Phyllis Brooks Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews Merle Oberon, George Sanders Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet Ray Milland, Dan Duryea Dick Powell, Claire Trevor Franchot Tone, Elisha Cook Jr. Preston Foster, Victor McLaglen

1945

And Then There Were None Crime, Inc Danger Signal Dangerous Partners Dillinger Fallen Angel The House on 92nd Street Johnny Angel Leave Her to Heaven Spellbound

Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston Tom Neal, Leo Carillo Zachary Scott, Faye Emerson James Craig, Signe Hasso Lawrence Tierney, Edmund Lowe Alice Faye, Linda Darnell Lloyd Nolan, Signe Hasso George Raft, Claire Trevor Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman

1946

The Big Sleep The Black Angel The Blue Dahlia Crack-Up Criminal Court The Dark Corner Deadline at Dawn The Killers The Postman Always Rings Twice The Verdict

Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall Dan Duryea, Peter Lorre Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake Pat O’Brien, Claire Trevor Tom Conway, Steve Brodie Lucille Ball, Clifton Webb Susan Hayward, Paul Lukas Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner Lana Turner, John Garfield Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet

1947

The Accused Boomerang! Born to Kill Framed The Gangster

Loretta Young, Robert Cummings Dana Andrews, Jane Wyatt Lawrence Tierney, Claire Trevor Glenn Ford, Barry Sullivan Barry Sullivan, Akim Tamiroff


Crime and Mystery Films | 239 Year

1948

1949

Film Titles

Stars

Kiss of Death Lured Moss Rose The Red House Song of the Thin Man

Victor Mature, Richard Widmark George Sanders, Lucille Ball Victor Mature, Vincent Price Edward G. Robinson, Judith Anderson William Powell, Myrna Loy

The Big Clock Call Northside 777 Cry of the City The Dark Past He Walked by Night Key Largo The Naked City The Night Has a Thousand Eyes The Street with No Name T-Men

Ray Milland, Charles Laughton James Stewart, Lee J. Cobb Victor Mature, Richard Conte Lee J. Cobb, William Holden Richard Basehart, Scott Brady Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson Howard Duff, Barry Fitzgerald Edward G. Robinson, Gail Russell Mark Stevens, Richard Widmark Dennis O’Keefe, Wallace Ford

The Big Steal The Bribe Criss Cross Gun Crazy Johnny Stool Pigeon The Man on the Eiffel Tower Take One False Step Tension Thieves’ Highway White Heat

Robert Mitchum, William Bendix Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner Burt Lancaster, Yvonne DeCarlo Peggy Cummins, John Dall Howard Duff, Shelly Winters Charles Laughton, Franchot Tone William Powell, Shelley Winters Richard Basehart, Audrey Totter Richard Conte, Lee J. Cobb James Cagney, Virginia Mayo

A small sampling of such titles follows and illustrates the broad range they covered. In addition, several of the more popular series also receive discussion (Film noir, a separate category of crime and mystery movies, can be found elsewhere in this encyclopedia).

The Crime Series In addition to the foregoing, a remarkable number of crime and mystery series existed, testifying to their popularity with audiences. They usually featured a sleuth, often accompanied by a humorous sidekick, and they could run for years at a time. Even the most mediocre ones apparently had their fans, although some series lasted only for a few pictures. Probably the best-known and most popular of the several mystery series running during the 1940s based its episodes on the character of Sherlock Holmes. Not that it lacked for challengers: Charlie Chan, Boston Blackie, the Saint, the Falcon, The Lone Wolf, and many others also appeared on movie screens and illustrate the popularity enjoyed by this type of film.


240


The Sherlock Holmes pictures. In 1888, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) published his first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, and it found an immediate, enthusiastic audience. He wrote many more novels and short stories about this detective, penning his last tale in 1927. By that time, the man in the deerstalker cap had long since been adapted to the stage, and the first Holmes movie came along in 1900. Dozens more Holmes motion pictures followed, so that by 1939, Sherlock Holmes existed as a well-established fictional character, known to millions. In that year, Twentieth Century-Fox, a major Hollywood studio, released a new Holmes film, The Hound of the Baskervilles, based on a 1902 novel by Doyle. It stars Basil Rathbone (1892–1967) as the pipe-smoking detective and Nigel Bruce (1895–1953) as the bumbling Dr. Watson for comic relief. The picture did so well that Fox promptly produced a sequel, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, using the same two leads. With the beginning of the 1940s, Universal Pictures obtained the Holmes franchise, and it became a goldmine for them. Retaining both Rathbone and Bruce, the studio released 12 titles between 1942 and 1946 and, in the process, wandered rather far from the Victorian roots of Doyle’s original stories. A number of the pictures have Holmes and Watson battling Nazi spies and saboteurs in contemporary settings, and the films usually end with Rathbone waxing eloquent about the close ties between England and the United States and the need to fight for victory over fascism. Hollywood hokum, but even with the changes to the Doyle canon, the pictures developed a loyal cadre of fans, and Rathbone and Bruce have endured to the present as entertaining embodiments of the fictional pair. In light of their success, NBC (National Broadcasting Company), and later MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System), carried Sherlock Holmes from 1939 until 1946, which means the radio shows were on the air during the same period the films played theaters. With many more broadcasts than movies, scriptwriters had to create countless half-hour cases for the legendary sleuth to solve. Bruce narrated the series in his humorous style, and sound effects experts gave the shows atmosphere.

TABLE 40.

Sherlock Homes Movies from Universal Pictures, 1942–1946

Year

Movie Titles

Stars

1942

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror

Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce

1943

Sherlock Holmes Faces Death Sherlock Holmes in Washington


1944

Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman The Pearl of Death The Scarlet Claw


1945

The House of Fear The Woman in Green Pursuit to Algiers


1946

Terror by Night Dressed to Kill



Crime and Mystery Films | 241 The Boston Blackie pictures. Boston Blackie, a semireformed safecracker turned sleuth, first entertained readers in 1914 in a series of short stories written by Jack Boyle (1881–1928). Adapted to film during the silent era, Blackie returned in a long-running (1941–1949) group of inexpensive sound pictures that enjoyed an enthusiastic following. Columbia Pictures tapped Chester Morris (1901–1970), an actor who had had an up-and-down career in the 1930s, mainly in gangster movies, to play Blackie. He took sole possession of the part for the series’ duration. Morris fit the role of the wisecracking crook-detective well, eventually appearing in 14 features. Formulaic B movies, they start with the commission of a crime; Blackie gets blamed because of his questionable past, and so he must find the perpetrator. Some fisticuffs, a gunshot or two, and then the tale ends with the arrest of the real criminal. In the heyday of the double feature, the Boston Blackie pictures, seldom more than 70 minutes long (and sometimes shorter), fit the lower half of the bill perfectly. As with the Holmes adventures, Boston Blackie made the transition to radio, running from 1944 to 1950, mainly in syndication. Chester Morris did the voice of Blackie at first, but other actors took on the assignment in 1945. The Charlie Chan pictures. Almost as well-known as Sherlock Holmes, at least to moviegoers, Charlie Chan began his fictional career in 1925 in a series of tales written by novelist-playwright Earl Derr Biggers (1884–1933). The first of these, The House Without a Key, introduced readers to his Honolulu detective of Chinese descent, and soon thereafter the author penned five more Chan novels, the last of which, Keeper of the Keys, came out in 1932, shortly before Biggers’s death. The novelty of an Asian detective soon intrigued Hollywood moviemakers, and 1931 saw the first Charlie Chan opus, Charlie Chan Carries On, a product of the Fox Film Corporation (later to become Twentieth Century-Fox). It stars Warner Oland (1879–1938), a Swedish-born actor who, thanks to exaggerated makeup, would play TABLE 41. Year

Boston Blackie Movies from Columbia Pictures, 1941–1949 Movie Titles

Stars

1941

Confessions of Boston Blackie Meet Boston Blackie

Chester Morris

1942

Alias Boston Blackie Boston Blackie Goes Hollywood

Chester Morris

1943

After Midnight with Boston Blackie The Chance of a Lifetime

Chester Morris

1944

One Mysterious Night

Chester Morris

1945

Boston Blackie Booked on Suspicion Boston Blackie’s Rendezvous

Chester Morris

1946

Boston Blackie and the Law A Close Call for Boston Blackie The Phantom Thief

Chester Morris

1948

Trapped by Boston Blackie

Chester Morris

1949

Boston Blackie’s Chinese Venture

Chester Morris


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the Chinese character in 16 low-budget movies until 1937. White actors frequently portrayed Asian characters, a comment on racial attitudes of the time. With the series well established and popular, Fox hired Sidney Toler (1874–1947), another white performer, to portray the detective in Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938). Toler took to the role and played Chan in a total of 22 features that ran until 1947 and The Trap. By this time, Monogram Pictures, a lower-tier studio that specialized in cheap productions, had taken over the long-running franchise and wanted to continue it. The studio brought in yet another non-Asian actor, Roland Winters (1904–1989), as Toler’s replacement. Although it had deteriorated in quality, the series lasted another six movies, finally ending with The Sky Dragon in 1949. In all, the Oland-Toler-Winters movies totaled 44 Charlie Chan features. Of these, 24, or more than half, came out during the 1940s. Purely formulaic B movies, these pictures nonetheless developed a core of devoted fans. Charlie either gets assigned a case or stumbles upon a crime. His sons—usually referred as “Number One Son,” “Number Two Son,” and so on—attempt to assist “Pop,” but they usually get in the way and muddle the clues. But Charlie carries on, quoting supposedly Chinese proverbs as he does so. Humor soon becomes a standard TABLE 42.

Charlie Chan Movies from Fox and Monogram, 1940–1949

Year

Movie Titles

1940

Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum Charlie Chan in Panama Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise Murder Over New York

Sidney Toler

1941

Charlie Chan in Rio Dead Men Tell

Sidney Toler

1942

Castle in the Desert

Sidney Toler

1944

Charlie Chan in Black Magic Charlie Chan in the Secret Service The Chinese Cat

Sidney Toler

1945

The Jade Mask The Red Dragon The Scarlet Clue The Shanghai Cobra

Sidney Toler

1946

Dangerous Money Dark Alibi Shadows Over Chinatown The Trap

Sidney Toler

1947

The Chinese Ring

Roland Winters

1948

Docks of New Orleans The Golden Eye Shanghai Chest The Feathered Serpent

Roland Winters

1949

The Sky Dragon

Roland Winters


Stars

Crime and Mystery Films | 243 offering in the series, and audiences loved it. Eventually, however, the jokes and aphorisms lost their punch, and Charlie Chan seemed a dated figure in a postwar world. At about the same time Charlie Chan Carries On began playing theaters, NBC radio broadcast a serialized version of The Black Camel, a 1929 Chan novel written by Biggers. Other extended works followed, but the shows had an erratic schedule in the 1930s. Finally, in 1944, NBC introduced The Adventures of Charlie Chan, with Ed Begley (1901–1970) playing Charlie. In both the movie and radio versions, the detective speaks with a patois neither Chinese nor English but one that patronizes, in a stereotyped way, any Asian for whom English is a second language. Unfortunately, this kind of characterization becomes especially apparent on radio. The show ran until 1948. Although the series never really competed with the Charlie Chan movies, Monogram Pictures at the close of the 1930s released Mr. Wong, Detective. An obvious attempt to challenge Fox’s Charlie Chan, the plot came from a popular sequence of short stories by Hugh Wiley (1884–1968) that ran in Collier’s magazine. The studio managed to land Boris Karloff (1887–1969), the actor famed for his roles in horror pictures, to play Mr. Wong. Through the magic of makeup, Karloff made a passable Chinese character. Two more Mr. Wong pictures came along in the 1930s, and another pair—The Fatal Hour and Phantom of Chinatown—in 1940, but they never rivaled Charlie Chan. In the final picture, Phantom of Chinatown, an Asian actor named Keye Luke (1904–1991) replaced Karloff and portrayed Mr. Wong, something of a first for American movies. Luke also on occasion played one of Charlie Chan’s sons on screen. The Saint pictures. Author Leslie Charteris (1907–1993) in 1928 created a character unique among the mystery/detective figures of the day. He named him Simon Templar, but readers knew him better as the Saint. A skilled thief, but also an amateur detective, the roguish Simon Templar likes fast cars and beautiful women and lives on the fringes of the law. Frequently blamed for crimes committed by others, he uses his sleuthing skills and underworld contacts to solve cases and preserve his innocence. In time, over 100 novels featuring the Saint were published, although writers other than Charteris wrote the later ones. As with the other series discussed above, commercial radio chronicled a number of Saint movies during the late 1930s and early 1940s. For whatever reasons, these films never achieved any great box office success or critical renown; when actor George Sanders (1906–1972) took on the role in 1939, he TABLE 43. Year

Saint Movies from RKO Radio, 1938–1943 Movie Titles

Stars

1938

The Saint in New York

Louis Hayward

1939

The Saint Strikes Back The Saint in London The Saint Takes Over The Saint’s Double Trouble

George Sanders

1941

The Saint in Palm Springs The Saint’s Vacation

George Sanders Hugh Sinclair

1943

The Saint Meets the Tiger

Hugh Sinclair

George Sanders


244


gave Templar a smooth, sophisticated air, but the movies remained B pictures on the lower half of a double bill. Interestingly, when Sanders agreed to appear in the later Falcon films mentioned below, he changed his screen persona hardly at all; only the most dedicated fan could distinguish Sanders’ Saint from Sanders’ Falcon. In fact, Charteris threatened legal action against RKO on account of the films’ similarity, charging infringement on artistic property. The Saint movies expired in 1943, whereas the Falcon pictures continued until 1949. On radio, Charteris’s creation fared only a little better; NBC ran a show called The Saint in 1945, although CBS quickly acquired it, with broadcasts until 1948. After that, a media merry-go-round kept shifting networks, times, and players, but The Saint could still be heard as late as 1951. Of the numerous actors who played Templar, Vincent Price (1911–1993) probably remains the best known for his portrayals in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The Falcon pictures. Featuring another wealthy, sophisticated character who skirts the law on occasion, the Falcon movies came from the pen of writer Michael Arlen (1895–1956). He created the Falcon expressly for the screen in 1941. RKO Radio Pictures, already the owner of rights to The Saint, bought Arlen’s concept and proceeded to produce The Gay Falcon that same year. Without missing a beat, the studio cast the debonair George Sanders (1906–1972) as Gay Lawrence, or the Falcon (which explains the use of “gay” in the title). Fresh from his role as the Saint, Sanders moved easily into the role of this new character, Sanders’ first appearance as the Falcon received applause from most people who saw it. RKO convinced him to do another, which then led to yet another. In late 1942, however, Sanders tired of the character and wanted to leave the series in order to move on to other parts. In the fourth episode, The Falcon’s Brother, the script has TABLE 44. Year

Falcon Movies from RKO Radio and Falcon Pictures Corp., 1941–1949 Movie Titles

Stars

1941

A Date with the Falcon The Gay Falcon

George Sanders

1942

The Falcon Takes Over The Falcon’s Brother

George Sanders George Sanders, Tom Conway

1943

The Falcon and the Co-Eds The Falcon in Danger The Falcon Strikes Back

Tom Conway

1944

The Falcon in Hollywood The Falcon in Mexico The Falcon Out West

Tom Conway

1945

The Falcon in San Francisco

Tom Conway

1946

The Falcon’s Adventure The Falcon’s Alibi

Tom Conway

1948

Appointment with Murder Devil’s Cargo

John Calvert

1949

Search for Danger

John Calvert


Crime and Mystery Films | 245 Gay Lawrence killed and his place taken by his brother Tom, played by Tom Conway (1904–1967). A device, certainly, but intriguing because Tom Conway was, in real life, George Sanders’s brother. Born Thomas Sanders, he changed his name to avoid confusion with his younger sibling. In The Falcon Strikes Back (1943), Conway assumes the solo lead and carries on the name “the Falcon,” a role he would proceed to play for another nine pictures. In his final appearance, in late 1946 as the suave character in The Falcon’s Adventure, many thought the entertaining series had come to an end. But in 1948, a studio calling itself Falcon Pictures Corporation released Devil’s Cargo. In this low-budget movie, actor John Calvert (b. 1911) plays a man billed as Michael “the Falcon” Waring. Subpar in all respects, the film nevertheless signaled the return of the Falcon. Calvert made two additional appearances in the role, and then the series truly did expire. Naturally, radio executives displayed interest in the successful Falcon series. NBC created the first shows in 1943, then Mutual carried The Falcon from 1945 until 1950, whereupon it reverted to NBC until 1952, and finally back to Mutual for a two-year run. Various actors played the Falcon, but not George Sanders nor Tom Conway, and the airwaves missed their mellifluous voices. The Lone Wolf pictures. Yet another crime-mystery series involving a solitary operator who happens to be an expert jewel thief, independently wealthy with a dapper way about him, the Lone Wolf can outwit both the police and criminals. He bears the name Michael Lanyard, but people appropriately call him the Lone Wolf. The character grew out of a series of novels by Louis Joseph Vance (1879–1933), a prolific American writer. In 1914, he wrote The Lone Wolf; its success led him to write several more featuring Lanyard. By 1917, a silent movie had been made of The Lone Wolf, launching one of the very first detective cycles on film. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s,

TABLE 45. Year

The Lone Wolf Pictures from Columbia, 1939–1949 Movie Titles

Stars

1939

The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt

Warren William

1940

The Lone Wolf Strikes The Lone Wolf Meets a Lady

Warren William

1941

The Lone Wolf Keeps a Date The Lone Wolf Takes a Chance Secrets of the Lone Wolf

Warren William

1942

Counter-Espionage

Warren William

1943

One Dangerous Night Passport to Suez

Warren William

1946

The Notorious Lone Wolf

Gerald Mohr

1947

The Lone Wolf in Mexico The Lone Wolf in London

Gerald Mohr

1949

The Lone Wolf and His Lady

Ron Randell

Note: Films are arranged chronologically. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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additional titles played theaters, but they featured various performers taking the part of Michael Lanyard, and not until 1939 did a well-defined series go into production. Warren William (1894–1948), himself a suave, urbane actor comfortable in many roles, initially portrayed the Lone Wolf for The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt. He reprised the part an additional eight times. Released by Columbia Pictures, the Lone Wolf signaled the arrival of a new series to compete with all the other crime/mystery pictures then attempting to attract audiences. Gerald Mohr (1914–1968) replaced William in 1946, and Ron Randell (1918–2005) came aboard in 1949 for the conclusion to the series. Among the many other crime and detective series that showed in theaters during the 1940s, a few of the other favorites include Crime Doctor, starring Warner Baxter (1889–1951), which ran from 1943 until 1949 and came from a radio show with the same name. Inner Sanctum Mysteries, another radio spin-off, starred Lon Chaney Jr. (1906–1973) and leaned more toward horror than detection. It ran from 1943 until 1945. Bulldog Drummond, a detective created during the 1920s, appeared in a few pictures during the 1940s; a radio show also ran, off and on, from 1941 until 1949. Even Dick Tracy, who had first appeared in a 1931 comic strip by Chester Gould (1900–1985), had his moment in the movies. He served as the main character in a number of serials from the late 1930s and early 1940s; the mid-1940s saw several features with the hawk-nosed detective. All in all, crime and detective movies have proved to be among the most popular and enduring forms of film entertainment for the 1940s. From B movies like the Boston Blackie and Saint series to elegant whodunits like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Clock, the genre displayed great depth and variety. Proof of its popularity can be found among the many radio adaptations of such motion pictures. See also: Best Sellers (Books); Bogart, Humphrey; Comic Strips; Drama (Film); Radio Programming: Action, Crime, Police, and Detective Shows; Radio Programming: Children’s Shows, Serials, and Adventure Series; Serial Films Selected Reading Clarens, Carlos. Crime Movies: From Griffith to the Godfather and Beyond. New York: W. W. Norton, 1980. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. McArthur, Colin. Underworld U.S.A. New York: Viking Press, 1972.

CROSBY, BING A native of Tacoma, Washington, Harry Lillis Crosby (1903–1977) would eventually emerge as arguably the most popular male vocalist of the 20th century. The family moved to Spokane in 1906, and around 1910 a childhood friend nicknamed him Bingo because of his early fondness for a comic strip called The Bingville Bugle, written and illustrated by humorist Newton Newkirk (1870–1936). Friends soon shortened it to Bing, and the name stuck. He enrolled in Spokane’s Gonzaga University and joined a local band, the Musicaladers, led by Al Rinker (b. Alton, 1907–1982). After a handful of paying jobs with the Musicaladers, Crosby found the lure of show business irresistible and dropped out of college in 1924, his senior year, to join forces with Rinker. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Crosby, Bing | 247 During the group’s performances, Crosby would frequently sing through a megaphone, as did numerous vocalists then in order to be heard. His singing nonetheless provided a hint about the direction his career would take. The advent of electronic sound amplification and improved condenser microphones allowed him to discard the megaphone and intimately caress the lyrics. Fans and critics soon dubbed this style “crooning,” meaning to hum or sing softly directly into an electrical microphone, first in a melancholy way, but finally just singing without putting much force behind it, be it sad or happy. Crooners seldom performed at concerts or in dance halls, since these venues Bing Crosby and songwriter Johnny Mercer tended to be too big and too noisy; they (on the left) engaging in some patter, probably at first existed on and for radio and later on Crosby’s radio show, given the NBC initials on the microphone. Over the years, Crosby redominated recordings. corded a significant number of Mercer’s comThe popular bandleader Paul White- positions. (Photofest) man (1890–1967), a man always on the lookout for talent, heard about Crosby and Rinker in 1926; soon the two found themselves part of Whiteman’s extensive organization, a giant step in their careers. Crosby met many individuals who would influence his artistic growth as a vocalist; he also associated with movie and radio stars and built a network of friends that would contribute to his flowering as a show business personality. Later that year, Crosby and Rinker met another young musician, Harry Barris (1905–1962). The three formed an instant rapport, and out of that came a trio they called The Rhythm Boys. Whiteman again took notice and installed the threesome in his orchestra, giving them remarkable freedom; they could record and perform independently when not tied to prior commitments. The bandleader even landed them several recording contracts. The Rhythm Boys moved from Whiteman to work with bandleader Gus Arnheim (1887–1955). They cut a number of recordings, appeared on his radio show, and received featured billing with the aggregation. Crosby’s voice dominates these performances and marks his inevitable emergence as a star in his own right. He parted from The Rhythm Boys in the early 1930s and become a single; he soon achieved acclaim as a crooner and signed with Brunswick Records, a major label. Jack Kapp (1901–1949) led Brunswick, and he encouraged Crosby at every turn, serving as mentor and friend. Many of the early tunes Crosby cut for his new employer quickly became hits, the first of hundreds he would record throughout the upcoming years. In 1934, following a convoluted transaction, a new record label appeared on the U.S. market—Decca, a name previously associated with an English recording company. Crosby moved from Brunswick to Decca and promptly rose to the top of the company’s © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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roster of performers and quickly made Decca a leader in the industry: one-third of all the singles sold during the late 1930s and early 1940s bore the Decca label. Whereas most male vocalists in the popular field at that time tended to be tenors, Crosby possessed a warm baritone, and most of his output focused on the romantic side of life. In later recordings, he lowered his pitch slightly and dropped some of the vibrato, which allowed him to branch out into other genres. He recorded Western songs, blues, and jazz, moving away from straight romantic crooning. He often injected some humor into his inimitable style, usually with light-hearted banter, always a part of his personality. Crosby’s unending flow of recordings—he eventually cut almost 2,000 titles during his career, most of them for Decca—coupled by their widespread acceptance and sales in the hundreds of millions, made him the biggest star in popular music throughout the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to recordings, Crosby moved to radio in 1931, when CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) programmed Fifteen Minutes with Bing Crosby. While there, he helped write “Where the Blue of the Night (Meets the Gold of the Day)” (1931); it quickly became his enduring theme song. For the next 40 years, the tune would be associated with him and few other singers would even attempt it. In 1936, he became the host on NBC’s (National Broadcasting Company) Kraft Music Hall. Already a TABLE 46.

Bing Crosby Feature Films, 1940–1949

Year

Film Titles

Notes

1940

Road to Singapore If I Had My Way Rhythm on the River

with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour with Six Hits and a Miss with Mary Martin

1941

Road to Zanzibar Birth of the Blues

with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour with Mary Martin

1942

Don’t Hook Now Holiday Inn [Academy Award for best song, “White Christmas”] Road to Morocco Star Spangled Rhythm

with Bob Hope with Fred Astaire

1943

Dixie

with Dorothy Lamour

1944

Going My Way [Academy Award for best song, “Swinging on a Star”] Here Comes the Waves

[Academy Award for best actor for Crosby] with Betty Hutton

1945

The Bells of St. Mary’s

with Ingrid Bergman

1946

Road to Utopia Blue Skies

with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour with Fred Astaire

1947

Welcome Stranger Road to Rio

with Barry Fitzgerald with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour

1948

The Emperor Waltz

with Joan Fontaine

1949

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court Top o’ the Morning

with William Bendix

with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour with many popular stars

with Barry Fitzgerald


Crosby, Bing | 249 successful show, it soon became a Thursday night ritual for millions of radio listeners, and Crosby would remain there until 1946. His radio personality came over the airwaves as that of a nice, easygoing guy, someone people would like for their neighbor. The casualness might be studied, but it worked. His continuing radio success allowed him to invite his favorite musicians and vocalists as guests on the show, and that translated as popular standards, along with some good jazz and swing. Although the Kraft Music Hall might seem as relaxed as its host, Crosby demanded high levels of professionalism. A significant part of the show involved comedy, and that meant frequent visits from Bob Hope (1903–2003), his costar in numerous motion pictures that played throughout the 1940s. Of course, the main ingredient remained music, whether performed by Crosby himself or one of the many talented guests. Along with extensive radio exposure, Crosby churned out numerous films that capitalize on his easygoing style. Usually sustained by wafer-thin plots, they provide Crosby ample opportunity to sing, and he eventually appeared in 79 movies, including 20 full-length features during the 1940s. His motion pictures also demonstrated how different media—radio, recording, and film—can interconnect for a major entertainer. If the films mentioned above were not enough, between 1950 and 1974 Crosby would make 17 more features, including two additional Road pictures with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour—Road to Bali (1952) and The Road to Hong Kong (1962). During the war years, Crosby toured overseas, entertaining troops everywhere, and soldiers loved his relaxed shows. He also made film shorts supporting war bonds, plus many personal appearances for bonds, scrap drives, and anything else that might help the war effort on the home front. When all is said and done, however, singing remained Crosby’s primary strength. As Table 47 shows, Bing Crosby visited the hit charts regularly, with 41 songs between 1940 and 1949 (1947 proving the exception). He enjoyed his best year in 1944, with 10 songs listed, almost one-quarter of the total. More remarkable still, out of the top 20 songs for the year, Crosby claimed seven, or roughly one-third of them. Over his lengthy recording career—from 1926 until 1977—he scored more than 300 hits out of the several thousand songs he performed. Crosby also enjoyed a good working relationship with the popular Andrews Sisters, an effervescent trio of siblings with whom he regularly recorded. They appear eight times on Table 47, although that counts only charted songs. He also made other, less commercially successful, recordings with them; not every tune can be a top hit. For his Kraft Music Hall radio show on December 25, 1941, Crosby introduced “White Christmas,” a seasonal tune written by Irving Berlin (1888–1989). It attracted little more than passing attention at the time, and apparently the program failed to be preserved in any way. In the late summer of 1942, Paramount Pictures released Holiday Inn, a cheery musical with Crosby and Fred Astaire (1899–1987). The picture enjoyed immediate box office success and became a Christmas favorite, even though it hit theaters long before the start of the holiday season. Paramount had not marketed Holiday Inn as a Christmas movie, since the picture recognizes a number of other traditional celebrations in the course of its story. But during the film, Crosby sings “White Christmas.” Following the movie’s premiere, Decca put on sale a soundtrack recording of the score, and this time around, “White Christmas” became an overnight hit. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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Top-Rated Songs Performed by Bing Crosby, 1940–1949

Year 1940

Song “Only Forever” “Sierra Sue” “The Singing Hills” “Trade Winds” “Yodelin’ Jive”

1941

“Dolores” “Shepherd Serenade”

1942

“White Christmas” “Deep in the Heart of Texas”

1943

“Sunday, Monday or Always “Pistol Packin’ Mama” “People Will Say We’re in Love” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas (If Only in My Dreams)” “Moonlight Becomes You” “Oh! What a Beautiful Mornin’ ”

1944

1945

1946

“Swinging on a Star “Don’t Fence Me In” “(There’ll Be a) Hot Time in the Town of Berlin (When the Yanks Go Marching In)” “San Fernando Valley” “I Love You” “I’ll Be Seeing You” “Amor” “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t (Ma’ Baby)” “Poinciana (Song of the Tree)” “Too-La-Loo-Ra-Loo-Rai (That’s an Irish Lullaby) “I Can’t Begin to Tell You” “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” “White Christmas” (originally 1942) “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive “On the Navajo Trail” “You Belong to My Heart” “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe “White Christmas” (originally 1942) “South America, Take It Away” “Sioux City Sue” “Symphony”

1947

[no songs charted]

1948

“Now Is the Hour”

1949

“Far Away Places” “Galway Bay” “Some Enchanted Evening” “Mule Train”


Notes

with the Andrews Sisters

with the Andrews Sisters with Trudy Erwin

with Trudy Erwin with the Andrews Sisters with the Andrews Sisters

with the Andrews Sisters

with the Andrews Sisters with the Andrews Sisters

with the Andrews Sisters with the Jesters

Crosley Automobiles | 251 Although accurate figures do not exist, “My Blue Heaven,” as recorded in 1927 by an early crooner name Gene Austin (1900–1972), had gained the reputation of being the best-selling American recording of all time—or at least until Crosby unseated it with his rendition of Berlin’s song. By October, Crosby’s recording had rocketed up the charts, quickly establishing itself as the No. 1 song for 1942, and its good fortune did not end with the start of a new year. It reappears as a hit in 1945 and 1946, an unprecedented occurrence. By the end of the 20th century, “White Christmas” had accumulated sales of over 100 million records, both singles and albums. On the heels of “White Christmas,” Crosby followed that success with 1943’s “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” For many holiday seasons thereafter, this nostalgic offering also attracted substantial sales, and it continues to show up in various Christmas anthologies. Reflecting the sadness felt by many Americans, both those with loved ones in service and those far away longing to be home, the title effectively summarizes the dilemma faced by millions during wartime. In the process of becoming a multimedia star, Crosby and the people around him created a persona—that of the easygoing, likable guy, someone of inherent modesty and enduring optimism. For the Depression years, the World War II period and the postwar era, this image appealed to millions. In reality, an astute businessman who had to practice his air of casualness, few people realized how powerfully Crosby influenced show business and American popular music. See also: Comic Strips; Country Music; Musicals (Film); Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows Selected Reading Crosby, Bing. Bing Crosby: It’s Easy to Remember. 4 CDs. Proper Records, 2001. Giddins, Gary. Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams; The Early Years, 1903–1940. Boston: Little, Brown, 2001. Grudens, Richard. Bing Crosby: Crooner of the Century. Stony Brook, NY: Celebrity Profiles, 2004.

CROSLEY AUTOMOBILES A visionary, Powel Crosley Jr. (1886–1961) dreamed of creating a small, inexpensive automobile available to all. Born into relative affluence in Cincinnati, Ohio, he began the preliminary work on his first car, which he called a Marathon Six, in 1907. Although this first venture failed, he took jobs in Indiana with other modest, automotiveoriented companies and learned more about motorcars. At this time, the auto industry had by no means chosen Detroit as its manufacturing center; dozens of entrepreneurs around the country tinkered in shops large and small, hoping to design and develop cars that would catch the public eye. In 1916, Crosley decided that better fortunes lie with accessories for automobiles. With his brother, Lewis Crosley (1888–1978), as his astute business manager, he developed several successful gadgets for motorists and began to establish the Crosley name for quality products. The rise of the radio receiver business following World War I, coupled with high prices, led him to build a cheap radio of his own. By the


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early 1920s, he and Lewis had formed both the Crosley Broadcasting Corporation and the Crosley Radio Corporation; his cheap Pup radios soon led all competitors. Selling for under $10 in 1925 (about $120 in 2008 dollars), whereas most other company’s models sold in the $100 range (about $1,225 in 2008 dollars), his firm dominated the market for several years. He also demonstrated the first practical car radio in 1930. Success with radio endeavors led the Crosleys to branch out into home appliances, including the best-selling Shelvador refrigerator (the door held shelves, unheard of at the time) in the early 1930s. Powel Crosley even built several airplanes but did not pursue this line. His personal fortune continued to accrue during this period, and investments in yachts, land, and innovative home building techniques—he even acquired the Cincinnati Reds baseball team—occupied his hours, but the early dream of an inexpensive automobile never left his mind. Finally, in 1939, he introduced his first Crosley car, a diminutive vehicle that weighed less than 900 pounds, which he manufactured at plants in Indiana. He first showed it at the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair and the Indianapolis Speedway, and it drew thousands of curious onlookers. In an ingenious scheme, he allowed those department stores that carried his appliances to also market the Crosley automobile. Its list price averaged $250 (or slightly less than $3,900 in 2008 dollars). His appliance experience had taught Crosley about mass production techniques, and so in 1940 he built over 400 Crosleys, available in both convertible coupe and sedan models, most of which sold. The basic car boasted a 12-horsepower Waukesha engine, had an 80-inch wheelbase (or just over six feet long), and measured a narrow 48 inches wide, meaning it could manage the doors of most commercial establishments where it might be displayed. In addition, its tiny motor could nurse 50 miles out of a gallon of gas, far more than the cars manufactured by any other American companies at that time. Many other technological achievements resided in the little automobile, and Crosley held high hopes for his creation. In 1941, he produced almost 2,300 cars before World War II intervened. The last American car manufacturer to cease production in 1942, he managed to turn out an additional 1,000 or so Crosleys, which buyers took because of gas rationing and the vehicle’s good mileage figures. The company had added a pickup truck, a panel truck, and several other models by this time. With the end of the war in 1945, Crosley stood poised to resume production. He changed motors, introducing the CoBra (copper brazed) engine in 1946; it put out 26 horsepower, or more than double that of previous models. He manufactured over 22,500 Crosleys in 1947 and followed with almost 25,000 vehicles in 1948, his best year. But despite those numbers, his venture began to slide sharply in 1949. A redesigned engine, the CIBA (cast iron block assembly), more reliable than its predecessors, did little to help the struggling company. The introduction of still more models, including the Hot Shot Roadster—billed as the first American sports car—and the Super Sport, also could not stop the decline, and in 1952 the company ceased operations. Times had changed; the postwar rush to consume material goods did not include purchasing tiny cars. With newfound prosperity, Americans wanted full-size automobiles, preferably dripping with chrome trim and boasting large, eight-cylinder engines, regardless of low gas mileage. Car sales, overall, soared into the millions, and the paltry 20,000 or so Crosleys that dealers managed to sell each year could not compete;


D

DANCE Dance has always been a part of the American scene, and the 1940s proved to be an active decade for its advancement both as a social outlet and a performing art. In the popular culture arena, Hollywood continued its tradition of producing numerous musical films with lots of dancing, while new stars got a start at the Cotton Club, a Harlem nightclub, and new dances and steps traveled from another Harlem spot, the Savoy Ballroom, to downtown New York and across the United States. In the performing arts, Broadway frequently offered musical plays; in ballet, themes of everyday life occasionally replaced the traditional classic topics. As a previously distinct individual form of dance, ballet sometimes combined with modern and popular dance movements. In the midst of all of this activity, celebrities emerged, and some became giants of dance, such as Fred Astaire (1899–1987), Gene Kelly (1912–1996), Hermes Pan (1909–1990), George Balanchine (1904–1983), Agnes de Mille (1905–1998), Martha Graham (1894–1991), and Jerome Robbins (1918–1998). Group acts, including the Nicholas Brothers, the Berry Brothers, and the Four Step Brothers, also gained popularity and recognition for their talent. Likewise, Broadway musicals, such as Pal Joey (1940), Oklahoma! (1943), and Annie Get Your Gun (1946) featured much dancing and experienced commercial success followed by even more popularity in the 1950s as movies. Two male dancers, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, one already established, the other just starting, surpassed all others. Astaire’s career had begun in 1917 and extended over seven decades. He excelled as a stage and film dancer, choreographer, actor, and singer. Already a Broadway veteran, he made his motion picture debut (as himself ) in 1933’s Dancing Lady. By 1940, he had appeared in 10 more movies, dancing in all but one with Ginger Rogers (1911–1995) and always bringing elegance, grace, originality, and precision to the screen. 253


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In the 1940s, Astaire added 11 more movie musicals to his resume, starting with Broadway Melody of 1940 and Second Chorus, both in 1940, and ending with The Barkleys of Broadway in 1949, his last film performance with Ginger Rogers. His other notable partners during the 1940s included Paulette Goddard (1910–1990) in Second Chorus, Rita Hayworth (1918–1987) in You Were Never Lovelier (1942), Ann Miller (1923–2004) in Easter Parade (1948), and Eleanor Powell (1912–1982) in Broadway Melody of 1940. Gene Kelly, new on the dance scene at the beginning of the 1940s, soon garnered enthusiastic attention from the American public. In addition to dancing, he worked as an actor, singer, and choreographer. His first venture as a professional dancer occurred in 1938 on Broadway in Cole Porter’s (1891–1964) Leave It to Me. One year later, he danced again on Broadway to his own choreography in The Time of Your Life. A leading role in Pal Joey by Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) and Lorenz Hart (1895–1943), propelled Kelly to stardom and offers from Hollywood. Known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, Kelly made his Hollywood debut in For Me and My Gal (1942), directed by Busby Berkeley (1895–1976). Berkeley, a very busy choreographer and director during the 1930s and 1940s, gained much fame for his elaborate musical productions, which often involved large numbers of showgirls dancing in geometric patterns. Kelly, like Astaire, went on to appear in a total of 11 Hollywood musicals during the decade, ending with Take Me Out to the Ball Game and On the Town, both in 1949. Astaire and Kelly partnered in a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) production of Ziegfeld Follies (1946), dancing in a number titled “The Babbitt and the Bromide,” a song and dance routine performed to music and lyrics by the renowned George and Ira Gershwin (1898–1937; 1896–1983). While Astaire and Kelly advanced their careers with relative ease, talented black performers encountered discriminatory practices. Nevertheless, a few black dancers managed to embark upon or maintain careers throughout the 1940s. One, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (1878–1949), famous with years of work as a tap dancer, headed a black cast for the 1939 show The Hot Mikado, a jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1885 operetta, The Mikado. The more modern interpretations appeared first on Broadway and then at the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair. Robinson managed two other performances on Broadway during the 1940s, All in Fun (1940) and Memphis Bound (1945), as well as three movies, Let’s Scuffle and By an Old Southern River, both in 1942, and Stormy Weather (1943), a production featuring an all-black cast. The Nicholas Brothers, Fayard (1914–2006) and Harold (1921–2000), a black dancing duo, had been tap dancing since childhood, and their journey to stardom included performing at Harlem’s Cotton Club, on Broadway, and in Europe. They skillfully incorporated tap, acrobatic, and ballet moves to jazz rhythms. Success clearly came when choreographer George Balanchine invited them in 1943 to dance in the Rodgers and Hart musical Babes in Arms. The brothers also appeared in Stormy Weather. In five other Twentieth Century-Fox musical releases during the decade, they were billed as “specialty dancers” (a standard Hollywood practice, or code, concerning black entertainers in movies giving top billing to white performers). The three Berry Brothers, Ananias “Nyas” (ca. 1913–1951), James (ca. 1915– 1969), and Warren (1922–1996), had danced before audiences as children. Initially © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Dance | 255 taking turns to form a duo, by 1940, they were working as a trio with an acrobatic soft shoe (no taps) and cane-work routine. They frequently executed a step called freeze and melt, whereby they would have a moment of immobility followed by a sudden dance movement. They performed in numerous venues such as the Cotton Club and the Savoy Ballroom, had a dancing competition with the Nicholas Brothers with no clear winner, and performed in several movies from the 1940s—Lady Be Good (1941), Panama Hattie (1942), Boarding House Blues (1948), and You’re My Everything (1949). Another group called themselves the Four Step Brothers, although they were not actually related and the members of the group changed over the years. They played nightclubs and theaters throughout the United States. Starting as three dancers, Maceo Anderson (1909–2001), Al Williams (1909–1981), and Red Walker (active 1920s– 1960s), the trio added, off and on, a number of other talented dancers to form a quartet. Sometimes dubbed the Eight Feet of Rhythm, they excelled in fast tap routines, aerobic leaps, and boogie-woogie jitterbug. The Four Step Brothers received credit as being the first black act to perform at Radio City Music Hall and appeared in four Hollywood pictures during the decade: Hi Buddy, It Ain’t Hay, Rhythm of the Islands (all 1943), and Greenwich Village (1944). They danced on the 1948 television variety show, The Texaco Star Theater, hosted by Milton Berle (1908–2002), as did the Berry Brothers. Of all the black dancers from the 1940s, Sammy Davis Jr. (1925–1990) rose to the greatest fame. He had performed as a child with his father and uncle, billing themselves as the Will Masten Trio. He served in an integrated Special Services entertainment unit with the army during World War II. After the war, he rejoined the trio, which appeared in the movie Sweet and Low (1947). As a solo performer and singer, he cut some albums, and in the 1950s his career soared with the addition of Broadway, television, and casino shows in Las Vegas. In the 1960s, he became a member of the Rat Pack, a group of entertainers led by his friend singer Frank Sinatra (1915–1998). Dancers dance and choreographers create dance movements, but choreographers also direct and stage dance productions. The 1940s witnessed a number of outstanding choreographers on both the East and West Coasts. In Hollywood, dancer Hermes Pan started out in the 1930s as an uncredited assistant dance director and soon became the primary dance director for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Pan won a 1937 Academy Award for his work on A Damsel in Distress and advanced to the position of choreographer and dance director. Much in demand, he provided choreography and direction for 26 musicals during the 1940s. Choreographer George Balanchine arrived in New York City from the Soviet Union in 1933, and immediately founded a ballet school. In 1946, he organized the Ballet Society and two years later took up residency at the New York City Center for Music and Drama, which shortly thereafter became known as the New York City Ballet. In addition to his ballet activities, he served as a choreo-grapher for Broadway productions every year of the decade. He worked with such notable composers as Irving Berlin (1888–1989) on Louisiana Purchase (1940–1941) and Vernon Duke (1903– 1969) on Cabin in the Sky (1940–1941) and The Lady Comes Across (1942). The genius of the choreographer can be linked to the quality of the musical composition. Early in 1940, Aaron Copland (1900–1990) emerged as a notable composer © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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Lee Dixon leads the male members of the 1943 cast of Oklahoma! in a sprightly number choreographed by Agnes de Mille. The musical, the first Broadway production for the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, made dance an integral part of its story. (Photofest)

of ballet and collaborated with two outstanding choreographers, Agnes de Mille on Rodeo (1942) and Martha Graham on Appalachian Spring (1944). Both works celebrate the pioneering spirit of early American settlers and appealed to a broader audience than more traditional classical ballets. The composer-choreographer partnerships for these two productions significantly advanced the careers of Copland, de Mille, and Graham. Agnes de Mille became a charter member of the Ballet Theatre (founded in 1939 and today known as the American Ballet Theatre) in 1940. Two years later, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, an influential company founded in 1933, asked her to create a ballet that resulted in the dances performed to Copland’s score of Rodeo. The ballet’s success influenced the decision by composers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein (1895–1960) to ask de Mille to choreograph Oklahoma! Dance serves as a vital force in this play, which presents a positive view of the American experience and coincided nicely with the upsurge of patriotism occurring across the country because of World War II. Box office lines at the theater extended to the far end of the block for over a year. Other hit Broadway shows (musicals) of the 1940s choreographed by de Mille included Bloomer Girl (1944), Carousel (1945), Brigadoon (1947), Fall River Legend (1948), and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949). Martha Graham, known, like de Mille, as one of the 20th century’s greatest choreographers, became interested in creating dances on the theme of American history in the early 1930s and excelled in her choreography for Copland’s Appalachian Spring. She also danced the lead role in the opening night performance on October 30, 1944. Throughout the 1940s, she produced, choreographed, and performed on Broadway along with her company, the Martha Graham Dance Group, which she had founded


Dance | 257 1929. Her accomplishments during a career as both a dancer and teacher spanned seven decades and focused on interpretations and expression rather than traditional, stiff movements causing some to call her the “mother of modern dance.” Graham and de Mille, however, were not the first to explore interpretative dance movements. Dancers such as Isadora Duncan (1877–1927), Ruth St. Denis (1879– 1968), and Doris Humphrey (1895–1958) had laid a foundation for broader acceptance of modern dance movements. From their work, Helen Tamiris (1905–1966), a major dancer and choreographer, took inspiration. She first appeared in a solo performance of modern dance in 1927 and created a suite of dances called Negro Spirituals (between 1928 and 1941) using jazz and spirituals to explore social themes via dance. The choreography for musical theater that Tamiris created during the 1940s included Showboat (1946), Annie Get Your Gun, and a Tony Award for her work on Touch and Go (1949). She also choreographed Up in Central Park, a 1948 movie. Meanwhile, Balanchine, de Mille, and Graham not only experienced success in their own right but, through their work, influenced others. Jerome Robbins had danced in several Broadway shows by the late 1930s, one being the short run of Keep Off the Grass (1940), choreographed by Balanchine. In 1941, Robbins returned to ballet performances and appeared as a soloist with the American Ballet Theatre. Noting the success of Oklahoma! and intrigued by de Mille’s accomplishments in making dance an integral part of musicals, Robbins conceived his first ballet. In 1944, he choreographed and danced in Fancy Free, a story about sailors on leave in New York, performed at the Metropolitan Opera. It featured a score written by Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) that displayed the influences by jazz and symphonic music, particularly Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) and Copland. Robbins’ storyline for Fancy Free served as the basis for a Broadway production titled On the Town, which ran from December 1944 to February 1946. The show, while introducing popular songs such as “New York, New York,” with music by Bernstein and lyrics by Betty Comden (1917–2006) and Adolph Green (1914–2002), also uses dance as a fundamental part of the storytelling. In 1949, On the Town achieved considerable success as a movie starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. The decade continued to be an active one for Robbins. Other Broadway productions included Billion Dollar Baby (1945); High Button Shoes (1947), which won him a Tony Award for his choreography; and Look, Ma, I’m Dancin’! While working on these shows, Robbins also choreographed new works for the American Ballet Theatre. In 1948, he left this company to join Balanchine’s newly formed New York City Ballet as a dancer and choreographer. Before the decade ended, Robbins collaborated with composer Irving Berlin (1888–1989) and playwrights Robert E. Sherwood (1896–1955) and Moss Hart (1904–1961) on a new musical called Miss Liberty (1949); Robbins’ choreography drew the only favorable reviews. He went on to even greater success in succeeding years, especially for his direction and choreography for West Side Story (1957). Broadway was not the only dance show in New York. The Rockettes, a precision dance company that originated in Missouri in 1925, performed at the opening night of Radio City Music Hall in 1932. Working in a chorus line and executing a basic tap and eye-high kick in perfect unison, they received thunderous accolades and became a


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tradition at Radio City that has continued into the 21st century. They are perhaps best known for their spectacular annual Christmas show. When the United States entered World War II on December 7, 1941, the music played by big bands had for some time entertained Americans, both for listening and dancing. Swing, a blending of jazz and popular music, was king and attracted all ages to the dance floor. Carried over from the 1930s, swing dancing in the 1940s included the lindy hop, the shag, and the jitterbug. The lindy hop, something of an aerobic dance and a precursor to the jitterbug, involved steps that appeared to duplicate the taking off and landing associated with flying and derived its name from Charles “Lindy” Lindbergh (1902–1974) and his famous solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. The better-known jitterbug, a term that could be used to refer to a swing dancer or to various kinds of swing dancing, enjoyed enormous popularity from the mid-1930s until well after the end of World War II. During the 1930s and 1940s, the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem became the hub for all that was happening with the jitterbug. The dance needs a medium or upbeat tempo—the faster the better—and involves many steps and constant motion, so much so that the Savoy had to replace its hardwood floors every three years. World War II facilitated the spread of the jitterbug to Europe. In the 1950s, the dance became the basic framework for couples dancing in the early days of rock ’n’ roll. Cartoons and shorts out of Hollywood reflected the jitterbug craze. Mighty Mouse in Krakatoa (1945) ends with Krakatoa Katy, the hottest dancer of all, leading Mighty Mouse and others in a jive-chanting jitterbug scene. The short, Cavalcade of Dance (1943), features ballroom dancers performing the various dance fads of the 20th century. In the late 1940s, the jitterbug and the shag, the latter a dance with fancy footwork while the upper body and hips hardly move, blended into what has come to be called East Coast swing, a dance with simple steps that can be executed to various jazz tempos. Another form, Western Swing, sometimes called country swing, resembles East Coast swing but adds variations from other country music dances, primarily the country or Texas two-step. With growing interest in social dancing, many young people and adults desired instruction. Dance teacher and businessman Arthur Murray (1885–1991), along with his wife and partner Kathryn (1907–1999), had opened a dance school in the mid-1920s offering personal dance instruction. By the 1940s, this simple operation expanded into group lessons taught at hotels and finally to a highly successful enterprise with Arthur Murray School of Dancing franchises across the country. At each school, trained instructors provided lessons in the latest dancing fad, along with proven dances such as the fox trot and waltz, as well as what was popular in that locality. Starting in 1950, the Murrays hosted a television show known as The Arthur Murray Party (first aired as Arthur Murray Party Time). Over its 10-year run, it appeared on all four television networks—NBC, CBS, ABC, and DuMont. Each week the couple demonstrated a mystery dance, and the viewer who correctly identified it qualified for two free lessons at a local Arthur Murray studio. In the closing years of the 1940s, television emerged as a major entertainment venue and adopted a proven radio format—the weekly variety show—providing employment


D-Day | 259 opportunities for performers and contributing to the selling of thousands of television sets. The first such show, the pioneering Hour Glass, seen on NBC in limited markets from May 1946 to February 1947, laid many of the foundations for television variety. The Texaco Star Theater hosted by Milton Berle in June 1948, held true to the standard formula of dancers, singers, and comics, with the addition of a well-known star as host. Dancers moved more to the forefront of the variety show when choreographer June Taylor (1917–2004) and her troupe, known as the June Taylor Dancers, made their debut in 1948 on The Toast of the Town starring Ed Sullivan (1901–1974). Two years later, they joined Jackie Gleason’s (1916–1987) Cavalcade of Stars and continued with him on The Jackie Gleason Show (1952–1970), which employed an opening shot from an overhead camera of the June Taylor Dancers making geometric patterns reminiscent of Busby Berkeley’s choreography. Others appearing in early TV variety shows included the accomplished Marge and Gower Champion (b. 1919; 1921–1980), a husband-wife team that also had successful movie careers with MGM during the 1940s and 1950s. Great musicians inspire great dancers, and vice versa. The 1940s experienced a wide range of both talented musicians and dancers, who entertained and inspired a country, first at war and then in postwar prosperity. In the performing arts, ballet made inroads where it had never traveled before. Movies, with dancers such as Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, inspired many young people to take tap dancing lessons, while adults rushed to the Arthur Murray studio for social dancing lessons. As television sets arrived in more and more homes, even more Americans were exposed to the art of dance. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Musicals (Film); Race Relations and Stereotyping; Youth Selected Reading Frank, Rusty E. Tap! The Greatest Tap Dance Stars and Their Stories, 1900–1955. New York: Da Capo Press, 1994. Long, Robert Emmet. Broadway, the Golden Years: Jerome Robbins and the Great ChoreographerDirectors, 1940 to the Present. New York: Continuum, 2001. Reynolds, Nancy, and Malcolm McCormick. No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. Stearns, Marshall, and Jean Stearns. Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance. New York: Macmillan, 1992.

D-DAY During the spring of 1944, Allied forces, under the overall command of General Dwight David Eisenhower (1890–1969), assembled the greatest land-sea-air armada the world has ever seen. Stationed throughout southern England, soldiers, sailors, and airmen, plus countless tons of equipment, gathered in ever-increasing numbers to wait out the weeks, days, hours, and minutes before they received the signal that Operation Overlord, the invasion of Europe, would commence. After developing plans for over two years prior to the actual invasion, strategists for General Eisenhower had


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determined to launch the strike in May, but incomplete preparations and an unseasonable spring and unpredictable weather kept postponing the final date. With the onset of June, no one knew exactly when forces could move from England, cross the Channel, and storm the beaches of Normandy, France. Weather ships stationed in the Atlantic gave grim predictions for conditions on the continent in early June, except for a brief break from winds and storms around the fifth and sixth of the month, but even these dates utilized estimates, not firm promises. To confuse the German defenders along the Normandy coast, elaborate acts of subterfuge had been practiced, trying to keep them guessing. The Germans knew an invasion was in the offing, but where would they land? Calais? Farther north in Holland? As distant as Norway? Uncertain, the Germans had to disperse their formidable forces, trying to avoid having weak, undefended areas, but not overprotecting sites, either. But the longer the Allies postponed the landings, the more likely the enemy would learn where they planned to invade. In standard military parlance, orders from headquarters identify the date, or day (D), and the time in hours (H) and minutes (M) for an operation. For Overlord, this approach meant that on D-Day, at H-Hours and M-Minutes, the operation would begin. Eisenhower, realizing that he might soon lose any weather advantage for some time, decreed that Tuesday, June, 6, 1944, would be the date. With that decision, and in the

This picture, with its mass of men and machines, suggests why historians call the Normandy invasion of 1944 the largest single military undertaking in the history of warfare. (Columbia Pictures/Photofest)


Design | 261 predawn darkness, some 5,000 ships, carrying over 160,000 troops, set sail for the nearby French coastline. Overhead, thousands of Allied aircraft began endless sorties, pummeling German shore defenses. The much-anticipated Operation Overlord had begun. Soon thereafter, the initial reports of the ongoing battle went out to newspapers and radio stations around the world. Reporters and writers at first naturally referred to this momentous event as Overlord, its official name. But within a short time they adopted traditional military usage, dubbing the invasion D-Day. A minority view, now discarded, had the letter D signifying deliverance, or Deliverance Day, but it never attracted much of a following. In strict grammatical terms, D-Day without a specific date means the redundant “Day-Day,” a meaningless construction, but one that quickly took on a meaning of its own. Since then, there have been other D-Days in other wars, but once launched, none have been called that; in historical and symbolic terms, D-Day in the popular mind signifies but one thing, the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. See also: Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk; War Films Selected Reading Ambrose, Stephen E. D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climatic Battle of World War II. New York: Pocket Books, 2002. Ryan, Cornelius. The Longest Day: June 6, 1944. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959.

DESIGN The 1920s and 1930s witnessed an emphasis on machine-based design, a modernistic approach that subordinated organic, or living, forms for smooth, hard-edged shapes, items that suggested efficiency, mass production, and ease of replication. From 1939 to 1940, the New York World’s Fair, a last bubble of optimism as World War II was breaking out in Europe and Asia, presented the work of a pantheon of leading designers, decorators, and architects of the late 1930s that championed modernism, or streamlining, as the preferred style for the new decade. The two memorable symbols of the fair, the tall (700 feet), angular Trylon and the round (200 feet in diameter) Perisphere, the work of the architectural firm of Harrison & Fouilhoux (Wallace Harrison and Jacques-Andre Fouilhoux, 1895–1981 and 1879–1945, respectively), greeted visitors at the entrance to the grounds at Flushing Meadows, outside New York City. Inside the Perisphere, designer Henry Dreyfuss (1904–1972) had created Democracity, a model of a planned, streamlined metropolis of tomorrow; rotating balconies took viewers on a tour, while a score by composer William Grant Still (1895–1978) accompanied them. Designer Norman Bel Geddes (1893–1958) and architect Albert Kahn (1869–1942) created the General Motors Pavilion, a sinuous complex of stark white buildings, virtually windowless, the interiors of which showed Futurama, a popular view of a circa 1960 city with automated superhighways and no traffic problems. Walter Dorwin Teague (1883–1960) took credit for the Ford Motor Company Exposition, wherein visitors could tour its displays in sample Ford cars. The Chrysler Corporation countered with two soaring, winglike


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pylons and a film about a rocketport that would effortlessly transport passengers to London. Numerous other distinguished designers and architects also contributed to the sweeping streamlined modernity that characterized the vast exposition. A few isolated hints at changing design concepts nonetheless appeared at the fair, such as the Finnish Pavilion, the work of Alvar Aalto (1898–1976). The building presented a rather boxlike exterior, but the interior consisted of curving slatted wood walls and warm, natural finishes. This approach, one that stressed a flowing simplicity of line, would later become known as Scandinavian modern (also called Danish modern and Swedish modern) in the postwar era and enjoy considerable popularity. By 1940 and the close of the fair, however, World War II had put a virtual stop to innovative design—at least for the consumer market—and not until 1946 and thereafter did the creation of new styles again receive emphasis. Changes, some subtle, some obvious, had by that time occurred in American design, and streamlining, so fresh in the late 1930s, had been supplanted by a new and evolving postwar aesthetic. During the conflict, the government recruited many top designers to work on various products related to the war effort. For example, the husband-wife team of Charles and Ray Eames (1907–1978; 1912–1988) developed a molded plywood leg splint for wounded military personnel. Widely used because of its strength and light weight, it demonstrated the versatility of plywood; following the war, laminated furniture, particularly that designed by the Eameses, gained wide acceptance with both designers and consumers. Henry Dreyfuss created the situation room for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, including a huge globe for them to follow changing events, while Norman Bel Geddes worked extensively with military models and photography, and Walter Dorwin Teague found employment with the Bendix Corporation in the area of missiles and rocketry. A number of designers experimented with improving camouflage patterns; their efforts usually involved organic patterns that imitated nature and would be difficult to discern from any distance. These same patterns would later be reflected in consumer products like wallpaper, textiles, and countertops. The reasons behind this shift came from different sources. In the arts, the work of Jean (Hans) Arp (1886–1966), a French-German surrealist /dadaist painter-sculptor had been admired by critics. Surrealism and expressionism had grown in importance in Europe prior to the war, and these influences then percolated into the American mainstream during the 1940s. Arp’s creations emphasized organically shaped free forms, and their soft and flowing lines were reflected in designs at this time. In 1932, the Cranbrook Academy of Art was founded in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a Detroit suburb. Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen (1873–1950), already famous in the arts and crafts movement, served as its first director. Cranbrook attempted to supplant the mechanical functionalism its faculty saw in much contemporary design, stressing instead a more expressive, natural approach. Saarinen’s son Eero (1910–1961) joined the institution in 1936 and added his own organic motifs to the curriculum. Together, the Saarinens introduced a variety of furniture designs that reinforced the Scandinavian modern concepts then beginning to attract considerable attention. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City mounted a 1941 show, Organic Design in Home Furnishings, that featured Eero Saarinen and others, but the onset of World War II blocked any substantial commercialization of its themes for several years.


Design | 263 When victory finally came within sight, retailers wanted to have modern, innovative products ready for war’s end. They foresaw a vast new consumer market that would move beyond mere utility with the arrival of peace in 1945. With cash in their pockets and deprived of many goods during the war, Americans were eager to spend money on housing, appliances, furnishings, fashion, automobiles, and just about anything else that struck their fancy. And manufacturers, along with the design community, stood ready to fulfill those postponed wants. In the area of housing alone, new home starts leaped from 200,000 in 1945 to over 1 million in 1950. New car sales similarly climbed, from just over 2 million in 1946 (the first year following the war that new vehicles came off assembly lines in any quantity) to over 6.5 million in 1950. Consumers wanted designs featuring softly curving contours and forms that evoked a sense of humanity and supplanted the more aggressive machinelike angles and hard-edged shapes that had previously dominated. In some respects, they were responding to the horrors of World War II and what people wanted in a post-Holocaust, post-Hiroshima/Nagasaki age. As a result, American design in general became warmer, more fluid and undulating, providing a contrast to the colder rationalism of machine design. In the area of architectural styles, the West Coast, especially in trendsetting Southern California, began to see what came to be called “Googie” architecture in the late 1940s. For a brief while, these designs also went by the terms doo-wop, coffee-shop modern, populuxe, jet age, space age, and atomic age. Architect John Lautner (1911– 1994), a pioneer in this area, had designed a Hollywood coffee shop in 1949 that bore the name Googie’s. Lautner and others had already built a number of commercial establishments in the Los Angeles area, but the name Googie shortly encompassed any buildings that incorporated upswept roofs for maximum window exposure, cantilevered extensions, and unusual organic shapes, such as advertising signs formed like boomerangs, amoebae (also called woggles and wigglies in popular parlance), starbursts, and atomic nuclei—the last usually a spherical nucleus surrounded by smaller exploding atoms. Not missing a beat, motels began to feature kidney-shaped swimming pools as early as 1948. These design trends did not remain exclusively in California. Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), well known as an artist and sculptor, designed a free-form ceiling in St. Louis for the American Stove Company in 1947–1948 that included hidden lighting. Architect Morris Lapidus (1902–2001) did a Bond Store in Cincinnati with an elaborate kidney-shaped ceiling motif in 1949, the first of many progressive designs that he created, mainly in the 1950s. Alexander H. Girard (1907–1994), a prominent architect and interior designer of the period, likewise employed this approach in a number of modern restaurant layouts. Sizable commercial office buildings and most government construction rejected organic themes. Large corporations, conservative by nature, favored the crisp, unadorned lines of the International Style. It therefore held sway for the majority of tall structures well into the 1950s, since most architectural firms strove to please their clients. Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959), never one to sit idly by in the midst of change, had commenced working on the Jacobs Solar Hemicycle House in Middleton, Wisconsin, in 1943. It reached completion in 1948. Built in a large curving shape, sided with


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rusticated stone, and set into a hillside, it showed a new side to Wright’s endless imagination and fit in well with the growing emphasis on organic shapes in architecture and design. His interest in curves would culminate with the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, a project he began planning in the 1940s, but one that did not reach completion until 1959, several months after the architect’s death. But Wright’s architectural colleagues often viewed him as a vestige of the past, the architect-artist who curried no corporate favor, and few individuals rose to take his mantle. By the same token, and despite the interest shown in organic forms, most residential buildings of the immediate postwar era remained resolutely traditional. As the suburbs grew and large subdivisions took shape outside cities, conventional Cape Cods and rectangular ranches led the way. In keeping with the popularity of anything that echoed the nation’s past, stock Colonial homes (but fully equipped with modern conveniences) continued to attract numerous buyers. The movie industry, alert to all trends, in 1948 released Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, a comedy with Cary Grant (1904–1986) about the pitfalls that accompany a move to the suburbs. Incidentally, Mr. Blandings chooses a New England Colonial instead of anything the least bit contemporary. Only in the layout of these suburban tracts did organic design manifest itself. Many of the developments featured gently curving streets—a break from the rigid grid patterns of the past—and many of them ended in cul-de-sacs. In blueprints and from the air, these street plans revealed a strong curvilinear layout, and designers frequently referred to this approach as organic planning. Similarly, the cloverleaf intersections of primary highways, many of which transported suburbanites to their new homes, have a distinctive, organic look, especially when seen from above. The interiors of many homes showed a greater willingness to experiment with modern design than did the exteriors. A Colonial house might well have molded plywood or fiberglass furniture, and Scandinavian designs caught on toward the end of the 1940s. The Herman Miller Company, a furniture manufacturing firm based in Zeeland, Michigan, took the lead in introducing modernism into American homes. Founded in 1923 to make reproductions, the company began to change under the leadership of designer Gilbert Rohde (1894–1944). He joined the organization in 1930 and moved to introduce a more modern line of products. He added clean-lined wooden cabinets for clocks and radios, storage units, and recessed lighting. In 1946, George Nelson (1907–1986) took over from Rohde and led the Miller organization until 1970. Dissatisfied with what he saw as antiquated methods of production and marketing in the furniture industry, he attempted to make it more up to date. Along with Henry Wright (1910–1986), he published Tomorrow’s House in 1946, a book that accurately predicted a number of postwar design trends. Kidney-shaped coffee tables, soft boomerang and amoebalike shapes that broke with angular geometric design in wallpaper and textiles received coverage in this influential publication. Many of the patterns that Wright and Nelson showed would become commonplace during the 1950s, the heyday for organic designs. Nelson created several notable products. The rise of the family room in many homes, along with unparalleled abundance, caused him to introduce the concept of a storage wall and other built-ins in the late 1940s. He also created the Ball Wall Clock in 1947;


Design | 265 it suggested the atomic age, complete with a center nucleus and atoms representing the hours. It has since become a classic of 1940s design. During his tenure, Nelson also acquainted countless Americans with the best in modern design. He hired Isamu Noguchi to create glass and wood tables in various organic shapes as well as design paper lantern lighting. Charles and Ray Eames came on board in 1946 with a dining chair constructed of molded plywood that could be inexpensively mass produced. The couple followed that with a popular folding plywood screen in 1947. They also devised a molded plastic armchair in 1949 that sold well. Using their own 1949 house in Pacific Palisades as a laboratory, they showed that many of its details were off the rack from hardware and building supply stores, a demonstration of economy and ease in modern building. The success of the Herman Miller Company naturally attracted the attention of other furniture makers. Hans Knoll (1914–1955) in 1938 founded a firm under his own name in New York City. Architect-designer Florence Schust Knoll (b. 1917) joined the group in 1943; she and Hans Knoll married in 1946, and the company became Knoll Associates. Their partnership formed a rival to Herman Miller in the area of contemporary design, and they hired several top names, such as Eero Saarinen and Harry Bertoia (1946–1948). Saarinen contributed his popular Womb chair in 1948, a design that featured a cushioned fabric over a reinforced fiberglass shell. It has remained available ever since its introduction. Bertoia became noted for his Diamond chair, which came out around 1949 to 1950. Made of welded steel wire arranged in a latticework pattern, it too gained a wide following. The Knolls in 1947 also acquired rights to manufacture Jorge Ferrari-Hardoy’s (1914–1977) Butterfly chair (also known as a Hardoy chair), a design that the Argentinian-born architect created in 1938. A simple steel frame of plain metal rods supports fabric that has been slung over it; it contains no upholstery, no padding, and no cushions but retains considerable comfort. Florence Schust Knoll, as an architect, designed minimalist cabinetry, often blending woods, metal, and glass. She received numerous commissions for her work, usually in the area of the International Style during the 1940s. To accompany these new lines of furniture, various companies introduced complementary textiles, wallpapers, and floor and counter coverings. Formica laminates pioneered in patterns that emphasized organic elements; colorful amoebalike forms on a neutral background proved particularly influential. Textiles often were made with hand weaving that employed unusual color combinations that caught the eye. Because of wartime shortages of certain materials such as silk, natural materials like burlap and jute provided cruder, rougher surfaces. For example, sisal carpeting became stylish, as did later shag carpets. Glassware, table settings, and ceramics likewise reflected the latest design trends. Russel Wright (1904–1976) created the American Modern line of dinnerware that enjoyed phenomenal popularity and also earned the praise of china connoisseurs. Introduced in 1939, it sold over 80 million pieces before being discontinued in 1959 and attracted a middle-class clientele with its reasonable prices and organic forms. Wright also designed stainless flatware with plastic handles. His Iroquois casual china, which appeared in 1946, remained available until the late 1950s, but his later Russel


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Wright line of bowls and such that came out in the late 1940s proved too modern for many tastes and did not do well. At roughly the same time, Eva Zeisel (b. 1906) created Town and Country dinnerware for Minnesota-based Red Wing Pottery. Its amusing humanoid shapes resembled the Shmoo, a wildly popular comic strip creation by cartoonist Al Capp (1909–1979) that first appeared in his Li’l Abner series in 1948. Some items in these and other competing lines demonstrated a crossover between art and popular culture. Architect Alvar Aalto in 1936 designed a series of organically styled glass vases he called the Savoy series; in continuous production ever since, they did well on the U.S. market during the later 1940s. Similarly, Peter Schlumbohm (1896–1962) created the classic glass Chemex coffeemaker in 1941. Its simple design, involving two cones meeting at their points, used a more free-form motif than in the past for such a utilitarian device. Finally, Majilis (Maija) Grotell (1899–1973), who worked and taught at the Cranbrook Academy of Arts, emerged as one of the most influential ceramicists working in postwar era. Her vessels—bowls, cups, pitchers—usually relate to nature, and the decorative glazes she applied to them involve organic shapes and earthen colors. The attention given to designers in the 1940s resulted in the formation of the American Craftsmen’s Cooperative Council in 1942, followed by the Society of Industrial Designers two years later and renamed the Industrial Designers Institute in 1949. The Detroit Institute of Arts put on a show called For Modern Living in 1949 that sought to recognize the contributions of designers in contemporary American culture. In it, Charles and Ray Eames, Alexander Girard, Florence Schust Knoll, George Nelson, Isamu Noguchi, Eero Saarinen, and others displayed their latest creations, giving the postwar trends in interior decoration prominent billing. It took Detroit automakers longer to recover from the effects of the war and respond to new trends in American design. Their factories, which had turned out tanks, trucks, and other motorized military vehicles, had not produced any civilian automobiles for the duration of the conflict. They thus had to completely revamp their assembly lines beginning in 1946, which meant that the best they could initially do, in terms of design, would be to slightly alter prewar models. The Studebaker Corporation, a smaller company based in South Bend, Indiana, got the jump on Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors—the Big Three—by introducing the 1947 Studebaker Champion Starlight Coupe (“First by Far with a Post-war Car”). The result came from designs overseen by Virgil Exner (1909–1973), not the better-known Raymond Loewy (1893–1986) as commonly thought. Studebaker, recognizing good publicity, did little to dissuade the public about this error. The Starlight Coupe featured a curving rear window that in some ways resembled a front windshield, prompting the joke that “you can’t tell if it’s coming or going.” A radical departure in automotive design, it spurred Detroit automakers to rush into production several models ahead of schedule, although they offered nothing quite as daring as Studebaker’s coupe. In 1948, Cadillac, once the top-of-the-line leader among General Motors cars, displayed nascent fins on its rear fenders. They did not grow much until the 1950s and then sprouted significantly throughout the decade, culminating in the 1959 models. The concept of fins, such a hallmark of the 1950s, evolved from the vision of chief


Desserts, Candy, and Ice Cream | 267 designer Harley Earl (1893–1969). He had seen a sleek Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter at an airfield, and he particularly admired the tail assembly. Earl would emerge as an important figure in the world of automotive design later in the 1950s. Aircraft also had an influence on other aspects of the automobile industry. Dreamers envisioned postwar cars that could fly, and the idea of a combination car and airplane blossomed, although it basically remained a dream. Henry Dreyfuss convinced the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation to invest in his 1947 ConvAIRCAR. An ungainly machine, it actually flew in tests but never reached the production stage. In the meantime, the car companies decided to begin referring to their designers as stylists, perhaps with the idea that the term sounded more sophisticated. With the exception of Studebaker, however, most 1940s American cars remained rather stodgy, and it would not be until the early 1950s that the designers/stylists unveiled truly new and modern vehicles. In all, the postwar era witnessed a flood of new consumer items, many of which sported modern lines. The challenge facing producers involved creating good designs that simultaneously possessed broad consumer appeal. Should a product possess warm, embracing shapes (womblike, feminine), or should it possess sharp, geometric lines (aggressive, masculine)? Should it encourage meditation or display? Should a design be simple or complex? Although aestheticians created elaborate theories about the relationship between organic design and the higher purposes of art (form determined by function, from functionalism to style, geometric forms versus forms from nature, etc.), manufacturers quickly translated their ideas into popular consumer goods that bore no discernable connections to art. The postwar consumer society was on a buying binge, and such questions mattered little. See also: Abstract Expressionism; Aviation; Baby Boom; Classical Music; Comic Strips; Fads; Levittown and Suburbanization; Magazines; Newspapers; Sculpture Selected Reading Meikle, Jeffrey L. Design in the USA. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pulos, Arthur J. The American Design Adventure, 1940–1975. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988. Rapaport, Brooke Kamin, and Kevin L. Stayton. Vital Forms: American Art and Design in the Atomic Age, 1940–1960. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001. Smith, C. Ray. Interior Design in 20th-Century America: A History. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.

DESSERTS, CANDY, AND ICE CREAM A sweet taste at the end of a meal, such as a dessert, candy, or ice cream, has long appealed to Americans. Sugar, a key ingredient of such treats, flowed as a cheap and abundant commodity during the Great Depression, but the events of World War II created a different story. Even before the December 7, 1941, attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, rumors of impending rationing sent some people scurrying to stores to buy and hoard sugar. By early 1942, imports from the Philippines had ceased, and this event, coupled with a shortage of ships for transporting Cuban or Puerto Rican crops to the States, did indeed mean a limited supply of the sweetener.


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Making desserts, as well as jams, jellies, and other items that cry for sugar, became a challenge. For five years (1942 to 1947), sugar appeared on the Office of Price Administration’s (OPA) ration list, with each citizen initially receiving 8 ounces per week, a small amount when you realize the incidental daily use plus recipes such as the popular Depression cakes from the 1930s call for anywhere from 1-1/2 to 2 cups of it. Eventually the rationed portion rose to 12 ounces a week, still not enough to completely lessen the challenge. The food editor at the New York Times calculated that each person’s weekly share in 1942 equaled about seven teaspoons a day. The article suggested amounts that could be a prudent distribution over three daily meals, along with possible substitutions, so as to enable the household to still have enough sugar for weekly desserts of at least one pie and one cake. Most citizens responded positively to living with reduced amounts of sugar. Cooks baked less and altered recipes to use molasses, maple syrup, corn syrup, or honey. Butter, another key dessert ingredient, also made it to the ration lists, while eggs, milk, and shortening frequently proved hard to find. Food writer M. F. K. Fisher (Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher Parrish, 1908–1992), in her 1942 How to Cook a Wolf, offers two special cakes—War Cake and Tomato Soup Cake. Although they require a little sugar, these cakes do not call for eggs, milk, or butter. Shortening provides the needed fat and, if it should be unavailable, she advises using bacon grease because the heavy proportion of spices called for will hide its taste. General Mills’ Betty Crocker’s in Your Share: How to Prepare Appetizing, Helpful Meals with Foods Available Today (1943), also offers a war cake recipe, but the book proposes that the cook continue to use traditional ingredients, just make smaller cakes, half or less of a recipe. Many people, in order to stretch their sugar supply, purchased desserts requiring the ingredient from their neighborhood baker, who, because it constituted a business necessity, received extra allotments. For home-baked dishes, housewives frequently attempted to add extra flavor by using a sugarless boiled frosting made from egg whites, light corn syrup, salt, and vanilla or, when chocolate was available, a no-sugar icing of marshmallows, unsweetened chocolate, and evaporated milk. Bisquick, a General Mills product dating from 1931, and originally promoted as an easy way to make biscuits, now found use in shortcakes, fruit rolls, and cobblers. Nothing is more American than apple pie. Along with other kinds of pies, this old standard suffered in a number of ways. Scarce supplies of shortening, a basic ingredient for pie crust, caused cooks to forego two crusts and be satisfied with a one-crust pie or pursue a different route entirely with a graham cracker crust. Fruit pies without sugar can be sour and offered another challenge. But tapioca added to apples or other fruits helps to cut the tartness. The lack of sugar, and an occasional scarcity of eggs, reduced the frequency of homemade cream pies. Jell-O pudding could have served as a quick and easy way to prepare a quasi-cream pie, but in 1942, the sugar shortage restricted Jell-O production, so much so that the company stopped sponsoring The Jell-O Program on NBC (National Broadcasting Company) radio, a show that starred Jack Benny (1894–1974). After the war, American housewives quickly resumed making their favorite Jell-O dishes, and for a


Desserts, Candy, and Ice Cream | 269 slightly different treat, in 1948, Jell-O tapioca pudding appeared in grocery stores and supermarkets in three flavors: vanilla, chocolate, and orange-coconut. Around 1940, two companies, Dromedary of New Jersey and Pillsbury in Minneapolis, in hopes of providing rations to U.S. troops, submitted rudimentary cake mixes to the military for consideration. An inadequate shelf life prevented commercial sales. Research continued, however, resulting in a much improved product. Dromedary introduced a gingerbread mix in 1947, and the following year Pillsbury advertised two mixes: a white cake and a chocolate fudge cake. General Mills, not to be outdone, offered two ready-mix grocery items in 1948: Betty Crocker ginger cake mix and Betty Crocker pie crust mix. Dromedary responded with a devil’s food cake mix in 1949, and Charles Lubin (1904–1988), founder of the Kitchens of Sara Lee, introduced Sara Lee cheese cake. Commercial cake mixes, like many convenience foods, in the postwar years, hit markets in quantity following the scarcities brought about by the war. For easy cakes, there must be an easy topping, and in 1946 Aaron S. Lapin (1914– 1999) developed Reddi-Wip in an aerosol can. He founded the Reddi-Wip company, and in 1948, milkmen in Lapin’s hometown of St. Louis delivered this new product door to door. Just one year later, this mixture of pasteurized cream, flavored and sweetened with vanilla, could be found in retail stores. Desserts received a lot of publicity when Pillsbury, hoping for a good marketing tool, played host on December 13, 1949, to its first Bake-Off at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. General Electric had installed 100 stoves for the 100 finalists— 97 women and 3 men—in this national recipe contest. The rules allowed the cooks to prepare their dish as many times as they wished, just as long as they submitted their final efforts to the panel of judges by 5:00 p.m. Nine prizes ranged from $500 to $50,000 (around $4,400 and $436,000 respectively in 2008 money). First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) presented Mrs. Theodora Smafield (active 1940s) with a check for her first-place winner, No-Knead Water-Rising Twists, at a luncheon the next day. Realizing its expected public relations coup, Pillsbury decided to hold the BakeOff again in 1950 and added a junior division. The competition continues today as a biannual event awarding $1 million to the winner. Candy, another popular sweet and easily carried in a pocket, can be eaten on its own as a treat or snack and provides an immediate sweet taste and sugar boost. During World War II, candy bars and blocks of chocolate did just that for U.S. troops, and a number of companies landed contracts with the government to supply the armed forces with their specialties. These items appeared as a part of mess hall meals as well as in the different rations that the troops carried on them: C rations (balanced meals during combat), D rations (quick energy survival packs), and K rations (emergency balanced meals). Government contracts meant priority sugar allotments, and several well-established candy manufacturers directed either all or most of their production to military distribution. This meant many U.S. candy items went missing on store shelves for purchase by citizens on the home front. The Brown & Haley Candy Company of Tacoma, Washington, sent its Almond ROCA Buttercrunch Toffee in tin packages to military personnel stationed overseas, and the Hershey Corporation likewise had a deal to provide chocolate for the troops. In March 1941, Forrest E. Mars Sr. (1904–1999) of Mars, Incorporated, and Bruce Murrie


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(active 1940s) at Hershey formed a partnership and patented Mars’ design for a candycoated milk chocolate drop. They called this new candy M&Ms for the first initials of their last names and jointly started production using a cardboard tube for packaging. It proved to be an instant hit with soldiers. In 1945, Mars bought out Murrie to take sole ownership of the M&Ms brand, and it became available to the general public. The Sweets Company of America supplied Tootsie Rolls, another popular treat dating back to 1896, especially because of the candy’s ability to withstand severe weather conditions, plus it provided a quick energy lift. The Williamson Candy Company manufactured Oh Henry! candy bars, a high-selling sweet that has rolled off production lines since the mid-1920s. Despite sugar rationing, this product set a sales record in 1943, but more than half the bars went to military personnel. The Heath Candy Company’s Heath Bar, with its long shelf life, provided a tasty contribution to soldiers’ rations. The Wrigley Company assembled the final ration packs for the military; they included a stick of gum, along with essential food items, sugar tablets, caramels, a chocolate bar, hard candies, and candy-coated peanuts or raisins sent by other manufacturers. To meet the military’s chewing gum demand, Wrigley removed its Spearmint, Doublemint, and Juicy Fruit flavors from the civilian market early in the war. A successful regional operation in York, Pennsylvania, called the York Cone Company, manufactured ice cream cones and waffles, along with some confectionary items. In 1940, it introduced a new product, the York Peppermint Patty, and managed to continue to distribute the patty to its customers in its home state as well as Ohio, Indiana, and New England throughout the war. After many years of satisfying regional customers, the Peppermint Patty became available nationwide in 1975. For several candy makers, candy bars and chewing gum became bigger businesses than ever during the postwar years. Military personnel returned home somewhat hooked on chocolate and other candies and spread the word about their favorites. As a result, Brown & Haley, with its Almond ROCA Buttercrunch, advanced from a strong Northwest reputation to one that embraced the entire country. M&Ms grew in popularity and, in 1948, came in improved brown plastic pouches similar to those provided today. Tootsie Rolls saw production increases and immediately surpassed prewar levels. Wrigley brought its products back on the market, first Spearmint and Juicy Fruit in 1946 and Doublemint in 1947. In 1940, the Just Born Company, operating out of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, had manufactured its first fruit-flavored, chewy sweets called Mike and Ike, named for twins in a newspaper comic strip, Mike and Ike (They Look Alike), created in 1907 by cartoonist Rube Goldberg (1883–1970). The candy came in two flavors, root beer and licorice. In 1950, Just Born added a cinnamon flavor called Hot Tamales and has continued to increase its product line, all available today nationally. Snickers candy bars, a 1929 creation of Mars, Inc., and hand-wrapped until 1944, did not appear in military rations despite growing popularity. This sweet made a big leap with sponsorship of one of the first television programs for children, The Howdy Doody Show from 1949 until 1952; Snickers soon became known as one of the bestselling chocolate bars of all times, a position it strives to maintain today. The Connecticut-based Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company has experienced continuous success with its Mounds Bar, first put on the market in 1922. During the


Desserts, Candy, and Ice Cream | 271 war, the firm dropped most of its other offerings to concentrate on this hit. In 1946, it returned to prewar production and added the Almond Joy, which quickly produced high sales on its own. The last new candy to appear during the 1940s was James O. Welch Company’s Junior Mints, making its debut in 1949. Industry lore reports that the name derives from Sally Benson (1897–1972) stories that first appeared in New Yorker magazine and then were adapted into a theatrical play titled Junior Miss (1941–1943). Supposedly, the play ranked as one of the favorites of Mr. Welch (1906–1985), the originator of the candy and, thus, the pun, Junior Mints. A soft-mint center drenched in dark chocolate, Junior Mints soon became a popular candy at movie concession stands, leading the manufacturer to produce a three-ounce box marketed as the Junior Mint Theater Size Concession Candy. Perhaps more so than desserts or candy, ice cream is considered by many as an essential part of American life, dating back to the second half of the 19th century, when nearly everyone could purchase and enjoy it. Before that, only the wealthy indulged. Technological advancements of the first half of the 20th century raised ice cream to a thriving business. Some acknowledge it to be an adequate dessert, and certainly a special snack, while others demand that a scoop always accompany a piece of cake or a slice of pie. Somewhere along the way, it became a strong American symbol, right alongside apple pie. In 1941, as the U.S. government faced the eventuality of war and began preparing to impose rationing, it declared ice cream a nonessential food. But intense lobbying by the International Association of Ice Cream Manufacturers and the National Dairy Council caused a reversal of the ruling as well as placement of ice cream on the Basic Seven Foods Chart, a government effort to show the nutritional value of different foods. Even with this inclusion of ice cream, most of the wartime production went to the military. This, coupled with the rationing of sugar and the occasional scarcity of milk, created ice cream shortages back home. The armed forces, however, wherever their location, had ice cream to soothe both the palate and nerves. Doctors even prescribed it for cases of combat fatigue, and many praised ice cream as a “morale food.” The military considered it so important that the navy, in 1945, commissioned the world’s first floating ice cream parlor, a concrete barge with the sole responsibility of producing ice cream for U.S. sailors serving in the Western Pacific. As a high-status product for the troops, ice cream kept some businesses afloat. For example, Howard Johnson’s, which served 3 flavors from 1 ice cream stand in 1925, grew to 107 sites dispensing 28 choices in 1939, had dropped to only 12 businesses by 1944. Food and gas rationing had taken its toll. Contracts, however, to provide commissary food including ice cream to military installations, defense plants, and schools allowed Howard Johnson’s to stay in operation. By 1947, the company had reopened most of its closed restaurants, built 200 new ones, and continued to specialize in ice cream, as well as other food. Desperate to stay in business during the war, ice cream sellers without government contracts looked for ways to get around the scarcity of necessary ingredients. Some pushed sherbet, which contains less butterfat, as a healthy alternative, while others


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offered half-and-half sundaes made with one scoop of sherbet and one of ice cream. A successful nationwide marketing campaign promoted Victory Sundaes. Vendors added a dime ($1.20 in 2008 dollars) to the cost of each ice cream treat and the buyer received a savings bond stamp. The sundaes themselves varied from shop to shop. Even before the United States became involved in the war, creative entrepreneurs were experimenting with new ways to serve ice cream. The father-son team of J. F. and Alex McCullough (both active 1930s and 1940s) owned a dairy shop in Davenport, Iowa, and found that they preferred semisolid ice cream, that state before it goes through a hardening process. They spent several years attempting to create a machine that would produce a semifrozen, thick ice cream that was soft but not runny. By 1938, they felt they had a good product and conducted two trial runs offering soft ice cream in seven Illinois shops. At both events, and with rave reviews, they depleted their supply quickly. Encouraged, they continued to perfect their continuous freeze process, and the first Dairy Queen opened in 1940 in Joliet, Illinois, under a franchise agreement with Sherb Noble (1908–1991). With the establishment of this franchise, the McCulloughs planned for expansion, but wartime rationing and shortages created difficulties, and finally their growth stopped completely when materials for the manufacture of their freezers had to be redirected to defense plants. After the war, public interest in soft ice cream enabled Dairy Queen expansion to begin again in earnest. The McCulloughs developed standards to ensure uniformity of the ice cream and added new products such as malts and shakes to the menus. Today, as it successfully continues, Dairy Queen offers a wide range of products and facilities. Although Dairy Queen amassed the largest number of franchised outlets following World War II—17 by 1946 and 2,600 by 1955—other roadside ice cream operations also boomed in the postwar era. Thomas Carvel (1906–1990), founder of Carvel Ice Cream Company (1934), also invented an electric freezer that produced soft ice cream; by 1939, he operated three ice cream stores. During World War II, he remained successful by placing his freezers in PXs (post exchanges), government-run stores found on military bases. After the war, Carvel decided to develop his business as retail stores instead of ice cream stands and became the first to franchise such an operation for ice cream. In 1949, in an attempt to improve the profitability of his franchises, he inaugurated the Carvel College of Ice Cream Knowledge, an 18-day intensive training institute referred to by its attendees as “Sundae School.” While soft-serve ice cream, which includes frozen custard and iced milk, created a large market in postwar United States, premium ice cream also successfully moved into the picture. A notable 1940s beginning came under the directorship of brothersin-law Burton Baskin (1913–1967) and Irvine Robbins (1917–2008). Both settled in California after discharge from the military, each opening an ice cream shop—Baskin in Pasadena and Robbins in Glendale. They soon owned six stores between them and began to sell franchises, reaching a total of 40 by 1949. In 1953, they merged their businesses to form Baskin-Robbins and advertised 31 flavors, outnumbering Howard Johnson’s offerings as well as having a different flavor for each day of the month. Desserts, candy, and ice cream hold a special place in American cuisine as an important part of festive occasions as well as being a comfort food in times of stress.


Disney, Walt | 273 Shortages and rationing during World War II made these previously common treats scarce luxuries for those on the home front, while for the military they became symbols of support essential for maintaining troop morale. After the war, appetites for anything and everything—including sweets—seemed unstoppable. Pudding cake, chiffon cake, chiffon pie, and chocolate chip cookies ranked among the favorites. Candy became a bigger business than ever with strong national brands such as Snickers, Hershey’s, and M&Ms dominating. Soft serve, big news for ice cream lovers, became a booming business, as did some premium brands. See also: Baseball; Comic Strips; Fast Food; Magazines; Newspapers; War Bonds Selected Reading Broekel, Ray. The Great American Candy Bar Book. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982. Funderburg, Anne Cooper. Chocolate, Strawberry, and Vanilla: A History of American Ice Cream. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Press, 1995. Ice Cream for the Troops. New York Times, November 21, 1943, December 16, 1943, April 9, 1945. www.proquest.com Lovegren, Sylvia. Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads. New York: Macmillan, 1995.

DISNEY, WALT Born in Chicago, Walter Elias Disney (1901–1966) will be remembered by millions simply as Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey Mouse and an accompanying cast of cartoon characters. He moved to the West Coast in 1923, along with his brother Roy (1893–1971), and there they founded The Walt Disney Company. Initially the business operated in a tiny space in Hollywood and utilized a small group of creative artists. They produced their first sound short, Steamboat Willie, featuring Mickey Mouse, in 1928. Mickey’s popularity soared and the studio was on its way to success. Experimenting with ways to expand the business, Disney in 1937 took a calculated risk and produced the first of several full-length cartoon feature films. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, made with sound and shot in color, proved an enormous success. It even won an honorary 1939 Academy Award for its innovation—one full-size statuette and seven miniature ones. By 1940, Disney’s business had completed construction of a first-rate facility in Burbank with a staff of more than 1,000 artists, animators, technicians, and other necessary personnel. Walt Disney himself had also become a public figure known for his creation of cartoon personalities. Generally referred to as Disney Productions, or just Disney, the growing enterprise turned out three more full-length films before the United States officially entered World War II. They included Pinocchio and Fantasia (both 1940) and Dumbo (1941). Fantasia features animation set to classical music with no dialogue and presents live-action segments of conductor Leopold Stokowski (1882–1977) leading the Philadelphia Orchestra. Their symphonic concert contains eight sequences, including Peter Tchaikovsky’s (1840–1893) “The Nutcracker Suite,” Amilcare Ponchielli’s (1834–1886) “Dance of the Hours,” and Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky’s (1839–1881) “Night on Bald Mountain.” Disney’s staff even devised a stereo system they called Fantasound,


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A photograph of Walt Disney sitting at his desk with figures representing characters from his cartoon features. Starting with Mickey Mouse, Disney created an entertainment empire during the 1930s and 1940s. (Disney Pictures/Photofest)

which required movie theaters to install special sound equipment. Because of this expense, Fantasia initially opened in only 14 theaters equipped to show it. In 1941, RKO Radio Pictures took over distribution of Fantasia with a monophonic sound track so that more theaters could offer it to their patrons. RKO next cut the film to 81 minutes (it originally ran over two hours) and released it yet again in early 1942. It did not do well at the box office, however, and disappeared from public view that same year, leaving Disney in a straitened financial condition. The movie was rereleased in 1946, did better, and eventually became one of the most highly regarded creations of Disney Productions, a reputation it continues to hold into the present. Reeling from the financial losses incurred by Fantasia, Disney rushed into production The Reluctant Dragon in 1941. A curious mix of live action and animation, it purports to tell about the studio and how the staff creates cartoons. The title piece, based on a story by Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932), author of Wind in the Willows, a children’s classic published in 1908, receives the full Disney animation treatment, but most of the remainder of the film possesses a dated quality. Dumbo, on the other hand, presents a sweet story of a flying elephant that charms most audiences. Often overlooked when assessing Disney’s animated features, this short movie—just over an hour in length—presents circus lore, clowns, and dancing pink elephants; Disney himself claimed it as his particular favorite.


Disney, Walt | 275 Immediately after the United States entered World War II on December 7, 1941, most U.S. industry converted to defense production, and the Disney Company proved no exception. It devoted over 90 percent of its facilities to special government work, primarily the making of training films for the armed services, morale-boosting shorts such as the classic Donald Duck cartoon called Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943; originally titled Donald Duck in Nutzi Land), and a noncartoon feature called Victory Through Air Power (1943). Der Fuehrer’s Face, an anti-Nazi propaganda piece, stars Donald Duck as an assembly line worker in a Nazi-controlled factory screwing caps onto artillery shells. Mixed in with the shells are portraits of the Fuehrer’s face; each time his picture appears, Donald must do a mandatory “Heil Hitler” salute. Tension mounts, and Donald suffers a nervous breakdown; the story ends with him awakening in his own bed and realizing it had all been a nightmare. The animation concludes with a caricature of an angry-faced Hitler. Before the film opened, the popular Spike Jones (1911–1965) and His City Slickers band released, to much acclaim, their version of the film’s theme song, “Der Fuehrer’s Face,” admittedly in a more humorously offensive version. Victory Through Air Power, a propaganda film shown at the height of World War II, attempts to convince the American public of the practicality of long-range strategic bombing. It provides humorous animation that gives the story of the development of air warfare and includes U.S. Major Alexander de Seversky (1894–1974), a strong proponent of military air power, illustrating how precision bombing could win the war for the Allies. Although the film, a departure for the Disney organization, did not do well at the box office, it nonetheless made the public more aware of the destructive potential of aerial bombardment. Bambi, a film with no references to the ongoing war, premiered in London in August 1942. It tells the story of a fawn that grows up with friends Thumper, a rabbit, and Flower, a skunk. A coming-of-age story, Bambi suffers the death of his mother, falls in love, and barely escapes a spectacular forest fire before becoming the Great Prince of the Forest. Work on this feature-length film started in 1937, shortly before the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and took the studio in a new direction with an all-animal cast, great attention to detail and realism, and a serious story leavened with humor. The project’s complexity delayed its release for five years while Disney artists heard lectures from animal experts, studied live animals at the Los Angeles Zoo, watched nature films shot in the woods of Maine, and observed the movements of two fawns given to the studio. Release of Bambi came at a difficult time, with the United States well into World War II. It lost money during its initial theatrical run, but recouped costs in a 1947 re-release, and profited thereafter. The story has endured and been shown in theaters seven separate times: 1942, 1947, 1957, 1966, 1975, 1982, and 1988. Undeniably one of Walt Disney’s most charming pictures, it came out on video in 1989 and on DVD in 2005. When not working on government projects, Disney employees engaged in producing comedy cartoons, a total of 89 for the years 1940 through 1945. Moving from wartime government contracts to postwar commercial work required Disney Productions to concentrate on reorganizing so as to regain its prewar status. During this time,


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they also made Saludos Amigos (premiered in Rio de Janeiro in 1942, followed by its U.S. release in 1943) and The Three Caballeros (1944). Known as package films, both consisted of several short pieces that, when combined, result in a feature-length compilation. Each film urges close relations with South America and Mexico. Once back in full operation after World War II, Disney Productions between 1945 and 1949 produced 94 cartoons and 4 packaged features: Make Mine Music (1946), Fun and Fancy Free (1947), Melody Time (1948), and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). Make Mine Music offers a contemporary version of Fantasia that utilizes popular music instead of the classics. Melody Time likewise consists of several sequences set to popular and folk music. Singers Frances Langford (1913–2005), the Andrews Sisters (Patty [b. 1918], Maxene [1916–1995], LaVerne [1911–1967]), Fred Waring (1900–1984) and the Pennsylvanians, and cowboy and movie star Roy Rogers (born Leonard Slye, 1911–1998) with his horse Trigger enliven the proceedings. Dennis Day (1916–1988), radio’s popular tenor on The Jack Benny Program, serves as the picture’s narrator and also sings. Fun and Fancy Free consists of two tales, Bongo and Mickey and the Beanstalk. Jiminy Cricket (voiced by singer Cliff Edwards, 1895–1971) hosts the stories, and Walt Disney provides Mickey’s voice. The final package, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad presents two animated stories. The Adventures of Ichabod retells the Washington Irving (1783–1859) classic, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820), and receives narration by the popular actor Basil Rathbone (1892–1967). Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908) provides the basis for Mr. Toad, and none other than Bing Crosby (1903–1977) does the reading. These four package movies, collections of various bits and pieces from the Disney studios created during the difficult war years or shortly thereafter, along with Song of the South, were uneven productions. Some of the episodes stand among his finest work, while others can be classified, generously at best, lackluster. They collectively rank as commercial disappointments, but they provided the studio some time to work on new productions that everyone hoped would do better at the box office and again put the Disney organization back on a firm financial footing. The company in 1946 also ventured into a full-length dramatic film that mixed live action and animated scenes. Song of the South (1946), based on the Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris (1848–1908) is seldom seen today in its entirety because of uncomfortable racial stereotyping. Two years later, the studio returned to the live action–animation mix with So Dear to My Heart. More or less forgotten in subsequent years, and never re-released until 1986, the story revolves around a boy’s quest to have a champion lamb shown at the county fair. The film’s musical theme, Lavender Blue, an English folk song dating to the 17th century, received an Academy Award nomination for best song. It, however, lost to Baby, It’s Cold Outside, a tune from Neptune’s Daughter, a competing musical. By 1948, the company decided to move in yet another new direction and offered a series of live-action nature documentaries titled True-Life Adventures. They began with the release of On Seal Island. In 30 minutes, this piece captures the saga of life on Seal Island, a tiny dot in the Bering Sea. It gained the Oscar for best short subject, two-reel, in 1949.


Disney, Walt | 277 While its live-action documentaries began to gain audiences, the studio’s animation shorts had dipped in popularity. Warner Bros., with its raucous cartoon star Bugs Bunny, rose as the company’s main competitor. Mickey Mouse’s days of stardom faded, and Disney turned to Donald Duck as a box office draw. Donald’s fiery temper appealed to movie audiences and made him a competitor to Bugs Bunny; by 1949, he had become the studio’s top star, surpassing Mickey Mouse in the number of cartoons reaching theaters across the country. In the meantime, the new postwar emphases and direction achieved renewed financial stability for Disney Productions, allowing them to return to producing full-length features, a line of the business that had been put on hold because of the war and its aftermath. Cinderella came out in 1950, followed by Alice in Wonderland (1951), Peter Pan (1953), and a host of other features in succeeding years. In 1932, early in his career, Walt Disney won the first of many Oscars in the category best short subject, cartoons, from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (founded in 1927). That year, the Academy also gave him an honorary award for the creation of Mickey Mouse. He did not receive any nominations in 1933, but for each year from 1934 through 1940 and then again in 1942 and 1943, he picked up Oscars in the best short subject, cartoons, category that included Ugly Duckling (1939), Lend a Paw (1941) and Der Fuehrer’s Face (1942). He also received a special Academy Award for Fantasia in 1940. He won for best song in 1947 for the Song of the South theme, Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah, music by Allie Wrudel (1905–1973) and lyrics by Ray Gilbert (1912–1976). The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, founded in 1944 by conservative Hollywood personalities to protect the industry from Communist infiltration, included Disney as one of its prominent members. In 1947, during the early years of the Cold War, he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), identifying some former animators as members of the Communist party. His actions caused controversy in the Hollywood community. Both Walt Disney and Disney Productions exerted monumental influence on the entertainment industry. Soon after the arrival of sound for movies in the late 1920s, he had begun experimenting with ways to coordinate both sound and music with moving images. His cartoon shorts, first with Mickey Mouse, and later with Donald Duck, along with full-length features, proved highly successful and established a firm base for growth after World War II. An entrepreneur, Disney constantly looked for ways to expand his business. At the time of his death, the company, in addition to cartoon shorts and animated features, had produced live-action movies, nature documentaries, television programs, big-budget screen musicals, and operated two successful theme parks. See also: Autry, Gene, and Roy Rogers; Aviation; Country Music; Musicals (Film); Race Relations and Stereotyping; Technology Selected Reading Disney Archives. www.disney.go.com/vault/archives/today.html Finch, Christopher. The Art of Walt Disney: From Mickey Mouse to the Magic Kingdoms. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1975. Schickel, Richard. The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney. New York: Avon, 1968.


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DRAMA (FILM) One of the most all-encompassing areas of film, drama can include elements of comedy, pathos or tragedy, realism or fantasy, politics or history, or almost any other category of storytelling. A rootin’ tootin’ Western almost certainly contains dramatic components, as does the most imaginative adventure in outer space. The stories that connect the songs in musicals, the revelation of the monster in horror films, the plotting behind a crime in mysteries—all of these examples reinforce the idea that drama, in its broadest sense, can be found in virtually any type of motion picture. For ease of classification, however, drama has long been considered a separate film genre, even though other recognized genres employ dramatic formats in their narrative construction. Those movies generally considered to fit the category of drama better than anywhere else tend to focus on emotional involvement and strong characterization while avoiding an emphasis on physical action and special effects. They usually eschew sweeping vistas, elaborate sets, and showy costumes in favor of the story itself. Love and romance of all kinds, character studies, and biographies (both fictional and real) tended to predominate in the 1940s.

All the King’s Men, one of the outstanding films of 1949, dramatized the 1947 Pulitzer Prize– winning novel by Robert Penn Warren. Actor Broderick Crawford, shown here, deservedly won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Willie Stark, a thinly veiled character based on Louisiana politician Huey Long. (Photofest)


Drama (Film) | 279 World War II and its effects on the lives of diverse characters naturally received considerable cinematic play during the period 1940 to 1945, but a surprising number of motion pictures ignored the conflict entirely, thereby offering audiences a respite from headlines and news broadcasts. The postwar era for the most part increased this avoidance; most studios turned to nontopical dramatic films, although the Cold War between the Communist bloc and the Western alliances that commenced at the end of decade brought forth a smattering of anti-Communist movies such as I Married a Communist, The Red Danube, and The Red Menace (all 1949). For the most part, however, Hollywood refrained from messages or propaganda in its dramatic offerings.

TABLE 48. Year

Representative Dramatic Films, 1940–1949 Film Titles

Stars

1940

Abe Lincoln in Illinois All This, and Heaven Too Boomtown Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet The Grapes of Wrath Kitty Foyle The Long Voyage Home Our Town Rebecca Waterloo Bridge

Raymond Massey, Ruth Gordon Bette Davis, Charles Boyer Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy Edward G. Robinson, Ruth Gordon Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell Ginger Rogers, Dennis Morgan John Wayne, Thomas Mitchell William Holden, Frank Craven Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine Vivien Leigh, Robert Taylor

1941

Citizen Kane The Devil and Daniel Webster Hold Back the Dawn The Little Foxes Manpower Meet John Doe One Foot in Heaven Penny Serenade Shepherd of the Hills Tobacco Road

Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton Edward Arnold, Walter Huston Charles Boyer, Olivia de Havilland Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall Marlene Dietrich, Edward G. Robinson Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck Fredric March, Martha Scott Cary Grant, Irene Dunne John Wayne, Ward Bond Charley Grapewin, Gene Tierney

1942

Across the Pacific Casablanca I Wake Up Screaming In This Our Life Johnny Eager Kings Row The Magnificent Ambersons Now, Voyager Random Harvest Tortilla Flat

Humphrey Bogart, Sidney Greenstreet Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman Betty Grable, Victor Mature Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland Robert Taylor, Lana Turner Ann Sheridan, Ronald Reagan Joseph Cotton, Agnes Moorehead Bette Davis, Paul Henreid Ronald Colman, Greer Garson Spencer Tracy, Frank Morgan

1943

The Constant Nymph Flesh and Fantasy Forever and a Day Happy Land

Joan Fontaine, Charles Boyer Charles Boyer, Edward G. Robinson Ray Milland, Claude Rains Don Ameche, Frances Dee (continued)


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(continued ) Film Titles

Stars

The Man in Grey The Moon and Sixpence Old Acquaintance Shadow of a Doubt The Song of Bernadette Watch on the Rhine

James Mason, Helen Hayes George Sanders, Herbert Marshall Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins Joseph Cotton, Teresa Wright Jennifer Jones, Charles Bickford Paul Lukas, Bette Davis

1944

The Adventures of Mark Twain The Bridge of San Luis Rey Gaslight Guest in the House The Hairy Ape Keys of the Kingdom None but the Lonely Heart Summer Storm Wilson When the Lights Go on Again

Fredric March, Alexis Smith Louis Calhern, Lynn Bari Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman Ralph Bellamy, Anne Baxter William Bendix, Susan Hayward Gregory Peck, Thomas Mitchell Cary Grant, Ethel Barrymore Linda Darnell, George Sanders Alexander Knox, Geraldine Fitzgerald Jimmy Lydon, Regis Toomey

1945

A Bell for Adano Brief Encounter The Clock The Corn Is Green Leave Her to Heaven The Lost Weekend Mildred Pierce The Picture of Dorian Gray The Southerner A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

John Hodiak, Gene Tierney Trevor Howard, Celia Johnson Judy Garland, Robert Walker Bette Davis, John Dall Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde Ray Milland, Jane Wyman Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth George Sanders, Hurd Hatfield Zachary Scott, J. Carrol Naish Dorothy McGuire, Peggy Ann Garner

1946

The Best Years of Our Lives Humoresque It’s a Wonderful Life A Matter of Life and Death Of Human Bondage The Postman Always Rings Twice The Razor’s Edge The Stranger Three Strangers To Each His Own

Fredric March, Myrna Loy Joan Crawford, John Garfield James Stewart, Donna Reed David Niven, Kim Hunter Paul Henreid, Eleanor Parker John Garfield, Lana Turner Tyrone Power, Anne Baxter Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre Olivia de Havilland, Mary Anderson

1947

Black Narcissus Body and Soul Crossfire A Double Life The Farmer’s Daughter Forever Amber The Fugitive The Gangster Gentleman’s Agreement The Hucksters

Deborah Kerr, Jean Simmons John Garfield, Lilli Palmer Robert Young, Robert Ryan Ronald Coleman, Shelly Winters Loretta Young, Joseph Cotton Cornel Wilde, Linda Darnell Henry Fonda, Ward Bond Barry Sullivan, John Ireland Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire Clark Gable, Deborah Kerr


Drama (Film) | 281 Year

Film Titles

Stars

1948

All My Sons Another Part of the Forest Apartment for Peggy The Boy with Green Hair Enchantment I Remember Mama Johnny Belinda Portrait of Jennie Rope The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Edward G. Robinson, Burt Lancaster Fredric March, Edmund O’Brien Jeanne Crain, William Holden Pat O’Brien, Dean Stockwell David Niven, Teresa Wright Irene Dunne, Barbara Bel Geddes Jane Wyman, Lew Ayres Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotton James Stewart, Farley Granger Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston

1949

All the King’s Men

Broderick Crawford, Mercedes McCambridge James Mason, Barbara Bel Geddes Kirk Douglas, Arthur Kennedy Loretta Young, Celeste Holm Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift Claude Jarman Jr., David Brian Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern Jennifer Jones, Van Heflin Jeanne Crain, Ethel Barrymore James Mason, Joan Bennett

Caught Champion Come to the Stable The Heiress Intruder in the Dust A Letter to Three Wives Madame Bovary Pinky The Reckless Moment

Three exceptional dramatic movies from the mid-1940s illustrate the depths American filmmaking could reach in this genre. In 1946, RKO Radio Pictures released The Best Years of Our Lives, a poignant study about veterans returning from World War II. Superior in every way, it won multiple Academy Awards, including best picture, and gave the studio a box-office success. Everyone identified with the stresses and dislocations brought about by the war, and it foretold the adjustments ahead for both civilians and soldiers in the postwar era. The following year, 1947, Hollywood tackled prejudice in U.S. society, a topic swept under the rug during the war and one censors looked at carefully. That summer saw the release of RKO Radio’s Crossfire, an explosive examination of anti-Semitism in the armed forces. A hate crime against a young Jewish soldier propels the plot, and the dark, film noir photography adds to the mood of this benchmark picture. At the end of 1947, another potentially controversial film, Gentleman’s Agreement, came to theaters. More cerebral than Crossfire, it also deals with anti-Semitism, but focuses on the subtler aspects of bigotry. Together, Crossfire and Gentleman’s Agreement caused the moviegoing public to reassess its attitudes. The 1940s overall proved a rich decade for dramatic movies and often pointed to a growing maturity in the industry. The war, of course, affected the content of many pictures—soap-opera plotting plagued more than one romantic offering, and cheap melodramatics took away from others—but, by and large, the 1940–1949 period gave moviegoers a varied menu of movies that fit the drama designation.


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Alcoholism, something of a taboo topic for Hollywood films of the 1940s, received a grim portrayal in The Lost Weekend. Ray Milland, on the left, received critical acclaim and an Academy Award for his role as a man battling his addiction. (Paramount Pictures/Photofest) See also: Broadway Shows (Comedy and Drama); Horror and Thriller Films; Musicals (Film) Selected Reading Higham, Charles, and Joel Greenberg. Hollywood in the Forties. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1968. Muller, Jurgen. Movies of the 40s. Cologne, Germany: Taschen, 2005. Thomas, Tony. The Films of the Forties. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1975.

DRIVE-INS: MOVIE THEATERS, RESTAURANTS, AND BANKS Soon after the first automobile rolled out of a factory, Americans declared it their preferred means for travel. Even in the depths of the Great Depression, many individuals claimed ownership of a car to be more important than a home, telephone, electrical lighting, or indoor plumbing. Entrepreneurs, always ready for new opportunities, began to look for ways to capitalize on this romance with automobiles and early on developed drive-in theaters, fast food eateries, and drive-in banking. A listing for contemporary times, of course, contains more kinds of drive-ins. Drive-in theaters. Movies, at their inception, grabbed the attention of just about everyone and quickly became one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the United States. In 1933, Richard Hollingshead Jr. (1900–1975), of Camden, New Jersey,


Drive-Ins: Movie Theaters, Restaurants, and Banks | 283 who receives credit as an inventor and manufacturer of chemicals, was involved with the family auto products business. He sometimes worked outdoors at his home, searching for a means to watch movies from the comfort of the family car. Descriptions of his activities indicate an experimental approach: to test for achieving the best image, he took a projector he had placed on the hood of his automobile and aimed it at his garage as well as at a sheet stretched across adjoining trees. To test whether the sound seemed to come from the picture and could be clearly heard, he put a radio behind the sheets and checked what happened with car windows up and car windows down. He supposedly even used a lawn sprinkler to simulate rain. Satisfied with the results, Hollingshead and his cousin, W. Warren Smith (active 1930s), opened the first drive-in theater, the Automobile Movie Theater, in Camden on June 7, 1933, locating it in an area that would accommodate 400 cars on eight terraced rows facing a 30-by-40-foot screen. Sound came from speakers hung at the screen. The following year, other enterprising individuals in Orefield, Pennsylvania, and Galveston, Texas, followed suit. During the early days of drive-in movies, most people who lived in urban areas had homes or apartments within walking distance of businesses and movie theaters,

A photo of a Los Angeles drive-in theater taken in the early 1940s. Instead of individual speakers for each car, rows of synchronized speakers in front of the parked vehicles blasted out the movie’s sound and drivers had to roll down their windows in order to hear dialogue clearly. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection /CORBIS)


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causing the early drive-in theaters to grow slowly. Technical problems involving both the quality of the sound system and some distortions of the picture also contributed to the initially poor public reception. Some additional outdoor theater construction did occur in the states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, New York, California, Florida, Ohio, and Michigan. Chicago, in 1941, welcomed its first drive-in movie theater, sited in an area large enough to accommodate 1,160 cars. But the nation’s December 7, 1941, entry into World War II brought a halt to most building projects not related to the country’s defense. Approximately 100 drive-ins in 27 states showed movies before World War II; by 1945, however, the number had declined to about 25. When the war ended and soldiers returned home, Americans eagerly sought ways to enjoy the return to peace. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) signed the GI Bill (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944) into law on June 13, 1945; it provided eligible military personnel the means for obtaining, among other things, loans for the construction or buying of homes. Soon thereafter, middle-class Americans moved in record numbers to the suburbs, and at their new homes, a car adorned each driveway. Drive-in theaters appeared in nearby farmers’ fields at a phenomenal rate—some 800 by 1948, reaching totals of 2,200 in 1950 and 4,000 in 1958. Improvements in the sound systems at drive-in theaters came in 1946, when RCA offered the first in-car speakers, cast-metal boxes that hung on the car window and directed the dialogue to the passengers. A prototype unit had been ready for production in 1941, but its use was delayed because of resources being diverted to the war effort. Given the tiny speakers enclosed in the boxes, the audio portion of the movie continued to be scratchy. But the ease and casualness of taking the family to a drive-in theater apparently outweighed an inferior sound system. People seemed to love the convenience of not dressing up, not even combing their hair, and having the children already in their pajamas. An evening of fun without the hassle of finding or paying a babysitter could be had for a small admission charged in a variety of ways—a flat fee that included everyone in the car, a small amount for the car and an additional charge for each passenger, or a graduated price by age, such as these 1946 figures: 50 cents for adults, 35 cents for high school students, and 20 cents for children (approximately $5.50, $3.90, and $2.20, respectively, in 2008 dollars). As the number of drive-in theaters grew and competition for the business increased, owners offered additional attractions: playgrounds, baby bottle warmers, horseshoes, merry-go-rounds, picnic areas, and elaborate concession stands that sold hamburgers, soft drinks, popcorn, candy, hot dogs, and many other refreshments. Some even had laundry services. Along with families, dating teenagers found drive-in theaters enticing, especially for the privacy and safety offered each couple in their car, giving rise to outdoor theaters being known as “passion pits.” A former navy pilot, Edward Brown Jr. (active 1930s–1950s), offered perhaps the most unusual drive-in. He opened the Fly-In Drive-In Theater on June 3, 1948, in Asbury Park, New Jersey. In addition to room for 500 cars, this facility offered space for 25 airplanes, which could land at an airfield next to the drive-in and then taxi to the last row of slots large enough to accommodate them. When ready to leave, a Jeep towed the planes back to the airfield.


Drive-Ins: Movie Theaters, Restaurants, and Banks | 285 Eventually, the nuisance of foggy windows, cold, and distorted sound, coupled with increasing numbers of homes with television sets, reduced the number of drive-in theater attendees. By the 1960s, the original facilities needed capital improvements, and many owners chose not to invest, especially since rising land values offered them more profitable ventures. During the 1970s and 1980s, audience figures continued to decline, and drive-in theaters proved unprofitable as families stayed home and watched movies on cable television, VCRs and DVD units, or played video or computer games. But not all closed, and in 2007, some 400 survivors continued to regularly show movies. In addition, a handful of new drive-ins had been built. Drive-in restaurants. The first fast-food businesses of the 20th century offered simple menus for a walk-in trade and could be found in the downtown sections of a city. They consisted of taverns, coffee shops, tea rooms, diners, sandwich shops, automats, soda fountains, luncheonettes, and food carts and stands. As cars became more affordable and popular, the owners of many of these ventures transplanted their eateries to the side of heavily traveled roads. Recognizing the value of catering to automobile travelers, proprietors of some of these fast-food establishments offered curb service provided by young men and women dressed in uniforms and known as carhops. In 1940, two brothers, Maurice (1902– 1971) and Richard McDonald (1909–1998) converted their walk-in food stand business in San Bernardino, California, to McDonald’s Barbeque Restaurant with drive-in service provided by 20 carhops. In 1948, they dismissed their carhops, closed their restaurant for two months, and reopened with speedy service at a counter. By the mid1950s, their efficient fast-food procedure plus drive-in capability attracted the attention of Ray Kroc (1902–1984) who first assisted the brothers with selling franchises. He eventually bought them out and created the first McDonald’s, expanding it in time to include locations across the United States and around the world. The same year—1948—that the McDonald brothers changed from carhops to counter service, Harry and Esther Snyder (1913–1976; 1920–2006), in Baldwin Park, California, opened their In-N-Out Burger. They provided a speaker box similar to those that had become available for drive-in theaters, enabling customers to remain in their cars and place their orders directly to attendants in the building. Some other fast-food businesses, instead of having an attendant bring the order to the car, created the drivethru (this informal spelling of “through” became popular at this time), with purchasers moving to a window for pickup after giving their orders over a speaker. The development of fast-food businesses utilizing curb and drive-thru services occurred primarily after World War II and experienced sporadic success. Their accomplishments were sufficient, however, to lay a strong foundation for their phenomenal growth in the 1950s and following decades. Drive-in banking. Led by the City National Bank of South Bend, Indiana, the financial industry had its first bank curb service in 1936 for customers wishing to makes deposits or withdrawls. City National Bank offered a teller at an exterior window to utilize its otherwise useless alleyway. The practice, however, did not spread to other banks until after World War II. The First National City Bank of New York (the name changed to Citibank in the mid1970s) experimented with a mechanical cash dispenser in 1939 but removed it after


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six months because of a lack of use. The Exchange National Bank of Chicago opened drive-through tellers’ windows protected by bullet-proof glass and sliding drawers for conducting business in 1946 and almost doubled its deposits during its first two years of operation. Its traffic flow grew from 50 cars daily to more than 600 by late 1948. At the same time, drive-in banking had spread to approximately 250 banks in 18 states. At some institutions, services had expanded to include loan payments, foreign exchange, bond purchases, and the like. The successful automated teller machine (ATM), which could be found worldwide at the beginning of the 21st century, was invented in 1971. The automobile may have entered American society primarily as a means of transportation, but it quickly evolved to offer the family a pleasurable Sunday afternoon drive. The romance grew and, as it did, clearly encouraged the creation of a variety of car-related business opportunities. In the 1940s, the owners of theaters, fast-food restaurants, and banks found ways to increase their bottom line by interacting with customers who remained in their cars. The technique evolved over the following decades to include other businesses, such as libraries, dry cleaners, and movie rental operations. The possibilities proved endless. See also: Architecture; Beverages; Desserts, Candy, and Ice Cream; Leisure and Recreation; Levittown and Suburbanization; Restaurants. Selected Reading Drive-in Theater Statistics. www.drive-ins.com Hoffman, Frank W., and William G. Bailey. Fashion Merchandising and Fads. New York: Haworth Press, 1994. ———. Sports & Recreation Fads. New York: Haworth Press, 1991. Segrave, Kerry. Drive-in Theaters: A History from Their Inception in 1933. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1992.

DUMONT NETWORK Most individuals, when considering television networks in the days before cable, probably think of three: ABC (American Broadcasting System), CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), and NBC (National Broadcasting Company). But a fourth network tried to make a go of it against such formidable opposition: the DuMont Network. Allen B. DuMont (1901–1965; several variations in the spelling of his surname exist, including Dumont and Du Mont), the founder of that enterprise, was an American engineer, inventor, and visionary business entrepreneur. He created DuMont Laboratories in 1931 to explore opportunities in the new field of television after being employed for a time with the Westinghouse Corporation and the De Forest Radio Company. Working out of his garage, DuMont’s labs constructed cathode ray tubes of his design that functioned and sold well, thereby providing working capital for his other projects. To finance a dream of owning and operating the first television network, DuMont in the mid-1930s raised additional funds in an agreement with Paramount Pictures. He had also designed a home receiver that he hoped to sell and keep his network plans afloat. The first DuMont set, the Model-180, rolled off assembly lines in 1938, ahead


DuMont Network | 287 of those manufactured by other competing firms. A quality component—most experts rank the Model-180 above anything then coming onto the market—it carried a hefty price tag of $395 (slightly over $6,000 in 2008 dollars). Housed in several available wood cabinets, this early DuMont product boasted an 8-by10-inch picture, large for its time. Informative brochures, along with newspaper and magazine advertising, touted DuMont television sets, but their large initial cost, coupled with the limited availability of programming—and that only in selected metropolitan areas with TV broadcast facilities—sharply limited sales. When World War II intervened and halted the fledgling television industry until 1946, Allen DuMont A pioneer television network, the DuMont orgacontinued to plan for his network. In nization attempted to compete with giants CBS 1942, he had acquired license rights to and NBC during the late 1940s. With the beginW2XWV, an experimental television ning of commercial television broadcasting, it premiered a variety series called Cavalcade of station in New York City. Shortly there- Stars, which in turn introduced audiences to the after, its call letters became WABD, comedic talents of Jackie Gleason (1916–1987). DuMont’s initials. By 1945, he owned He can be seen here in a typical segment. (PhoW3XWT in Washington, DC, later tofest/DuMont Television Network) calling it WTTG. With the addition of WDTV in Pittsburgh, plus lining up a number of affiliates, he had the makings of a bona fide operation. In August 1946, the DuMont Network commenced broadcasting, arguably the first postwar American commercial television network. While DuMont moved ahead, NBC and CBS (and later ABC), fat with revenues from their radio operations, worked to activate television networks of their own. Realizing that if he were to compete against NBC and CBS, DuMont strove to cobble together a reasonable schedule of shows that would cover the broadcast day. But with no radio stars he could transfer to his new television network and lacking deep cash reserves, he found he could not afford expensive, top-ranked talent that would draw audiences and attract sponsors. He tried to expand and offer additional programming, but other stations, realizing DuMont’s dilemma, were reluctant to sign on with him. The network thus had difficulty growing, whereas NBC and CBS gathered new stations with relative ease, given their advantages in programming. During the later 1940s, the DuMont Network nevertheless carried several shows that won considerable acclaim. In 1949, it advertised Cavalcade of Stars, a variety show that introduced viewers to the comedic talents of Jackie Gleason (1916–1987). During his tenure on the program, Gleason created the first episodes of The Honeymooners, a series within the series that later became a major part of The Jackie Gleason


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Show (CBS, 1952–1957) and an important entry in any history of American television comedy. Unfortunately for DuMont, Cavalcade of Stars ran only until the fall of 1952, whereupon CBS, offering more money and greater exposure, took over the show. Life Is Worth Living, featuring the telegenic Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979), a Catholic bishop, served as another star in DuMont’s somewhat skimpy crown. Sheen, who had risen to fame by hosting The Catholic Hour on NBC radio from 1930 to 1950, dispensed easy-to-swallow religious advice on his program, and he attracted a large, devoted audience. The DuMont Network carried Life Is Worth Living from 1952 to 1955, when Sheen moved to ABC. Captain Video premiered on the network in 1949. A space serial, it featured the Captain (Richard Coogan, b. 1914; replaced in 1950 by Al Hodge, 1912–1979) and his Video Rangers, a group of youthful agents set on saving humanity from extraterrestrial villains. The Captain’s endless array of novel gadgets made their efforts possible. One of DuMont’s longest-running offerings, it stayed with the network until 1955. The Original Amateur Hour joined DuMont in 1948. Hosted by the genial Ted Mack (1904–1976), this talent show had its origins with Major Bowes Amateur Hour, a radio program that began in 1934 with Edward Bowes (1974–1946). The premise of both the radio and television productions involved bringing previously unknown amateur entertainers on stage to display their talents, or lack thereof. The level of the acts ranged from very good to truly awful, and audiences for many years enjoyed this wide variety. Mack, who had been Bowes’s talent coordinator, took over in 1946, immediately following Bowes’s death. The Original Amateur Hour continued on radio until 1952 and on television until 1970. Mack guided the show onto television in 1948, with the DuMont Network picking it up; DuMont, however, had it only until 1949, when NBC took it away. Later CBS, and then ABC, carried the production, by that time known as Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour, until its demise in 1970. In one switch from ongoing patterns, DuMont actually gained a show from a rival network. In 1950, ABC premiered The Arthur Murray Party. Murray (1895–1991) had gained fame as a popular instructor and owner of an extensive dance school franchise. His program consisted of ballroom dancing and a bit of humor. ABC initially put it on its schedule as a summer replacement show in 1950; with the fall season, DuMont ran it for a year and it gained additional viewers. Its renown caused ABC, in a game of musical chairs, to try The Arthur Murray Party a second time for 1951–1952; CBS then took it for the summer 1952 season, and DuMont regained the show for 1952–1953, its last appearance on that network. NBC and CBS, however, decided to continue the confusion until 1960, when The Arthur Murray Party was cancelled once and for all. Aside from those four headliners, the DuMont Network had few memorable series to offer the public, although it did pioneer some genres of drama. A show like Mary Kay and Johnny (1947–1948) has been called the first TV sitcom, but little else is known about it. Faraway Hill (October to December 1946), one of the network’s earliest series, has been referred to as the first TV soap opera, but again, its brief run and lack of any surviving episodes make reliable information difficult to locate. Finally, Rocky King, Inside Detective ran for four years, 1950 to 1954. It starred Roscoe Karns (1891–1970), a busy actor and familiar face who had appeared in dozens of B movies


DuMont Network | 289 in the 1930s and 1940s as a fast-talking private eye. But, like Mary Kay and Johnny and Faraway Hill, it never generated much of a following and disappeared as did most of DuMont’s offerings. At its peak in 1954, the DuMont Network could claim only six primary stations. In contrast, NBC and CBS by that time boasted over 40 each. DuMont had some 200 affiliates, but they had the freedom to pick and choose what they ran, including shows from rival networks. Ironically, beginning in 1951, Allen DuMont had been forced to cut back production of his TV sets—a major source of income for continuing his network—because of a lack of buyers. With revenues down, seemingly unable to expand the network, and faced with a stockholder rebellion, DuMont had to throw in the towel. In 1955, the DuMont Network went off the air. See also: Religion; Technology Selected Reading Television History. www.MZTV/mz.asp Weinstein, David. The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004.


E

EDGAR BERGEN/CHARLIE MCCARTHY SHOW, THE On December 17, 1936, an unusual duo made their radio debut as guests on the NBC (National Broadcasting Company) network’s Royal Gelatin Hour. The pair consisted of Edgar Bergen (1903–1978), a ventriloquist, and his dummy, Charlie McCarthy (created ca. 1916). It might seem strange that such an act, depending as it does on the visual illusion that a ventriloquist does not move his lips when the dummy talks, would attempt any routines on the aural medium of radio. But Bergen and McCarthy soon erased any doubts with their quips and rapid-fire repartee. Both the studio audience and the many unseen radio listeners loved them. Crooner Rudy Vallee (1901–1986), the host and star of the Royal Gelatin Hour, promptly invited them back for a 13-week stint on the program. Bergen, no newcomer to show business, had labored in vaudeville and performed on nightclub circuits but could never become a national headliner. Most booking agents— and most of the public as well—looked on ventriloquism as a novelty act and little more. But Vallee, himself a major radio and recording star, saw them perform at a club and took the chance with his hugely popular radio show. The gamble paid off. NBC promptly signed Bergen to a contract that gave him his own show, The Chase and Sanborn Hour, a comedy-variety program that premiered in the spring of 1937. In 1939, recognizing their popularity, the network changed the name to The Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show. In the early 1940s, it became The Charlie McCarthy Show, a title it would carry throughout the decade. It left the air in 1956 after a remarkable 19-year run, successful to the end. During that time, merchandisers took advantage of the show’s popularity. Charlie McCarthy dolls became a hot item in department stores, despite their price tag of $9.98 (roughly $150 in 2008 dollars). Hollywood likewise wanted the two for movies, such as The Goldwyn Follies (1938), Charlie McCarthy, Detective (1939), and 291


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The two stars of The Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show, ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy, Charlie McCarthy (initially made around 1916), traded quips over the air from the 1930s to 1956. They are shown here in Pilgrim get-up, presumably for a Thanksgiving broadcast, although only the studio audience could see their costumes. (NBC / Photofest)

You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939), with comedian W. C. Fields (1880–1946). A frequent guest on their radio show; Fields and McCarthy had an on-air feud that consisted mainly of hilarious ad libs between the two. In the 1940s, Charlie and Bergen appeared with other radio stars in Look Who’s Laughing (1941), Here We Go Again (1942) and Stage Door Canteen (1943), a film designed to pump up spirits and sell war bonds. Fun and Fancy Free (1947), an animated film from Walt Disney (1901–1966), features Bergen/McCarthy as they comment on and link two cartoon stories. Since radio listeners could not see him, it would seem that it mattered little whether Bergen moved his lips or not, nor how Charlie appeared for his broadcasts. But Bergen, a clever showman, cultivated Charlie’s persona. He dressed him in top hat, white tie, and tails, and even added a monocle as the finishing touch. In their conversations, Bergen played the straight man, asking Charlie questions and discussing various topics with him. Charlie, the consummate wise guy, answered in clipped, sarcastic comebacks. He usually referred to the ventriloquist as simply Bergen and ceaselessly made fun of his appearance, even lampooning him when his lips moved. Audiences quickly forgot that anything Charlie might say originated with Edgar Bergen.


Education | 293 In time, Bergen created several other dummies. Mortimer Snerd remains the best remembered, a slow-talking oaf that Charlie teased unmercifully. Effie Klinker, a stereotypical old maid, came along in 1944, but Bergen used her infrequently. Charlie reveled in being the undisputed star, and he often reminded Bergen of the fact. In addition, English bandleader Ray Noble (1903–1978) provided the music and frequently joined in the banter, his accent a target for Charlie’s jibes. At the start of World War II, in an attempt to spur enlistments, Charlie joined the Army Air Corps in 1942, shortly after Pearl Harbor. He then tried to sign up with the U.S. Marines, an act that brought forth a court-martial skit broadcast from a California army base. Leading actor Jimmy Stewart (1908–1997), who then served in the U.S. Air Force as a lieutenant, made an appearance as a military defense lawyer for Charlie. All good fun, the series reflected how the entertainment industry threw itself into the war effort. An adequate ventriloquist, but never an outstanding one (he did not perform stunts like drinking a glass of water while Charlie spoke, whistling while talking, and the like), Bergen relied on his writing skills and ability to interact with Charlie. His quick wit and ability to ad lib more than made up for any deficiencies in skills as a ventriloquist. After the decline of network radio, Bergen made little attempt to appear on television. He briefly hosted Do You Trust Your Wife? in the mid-1950s but, aside from guest appearances on other shows, seldom appeared on the small screen. Married to radio, he overcame any disadvantages the medium might offer an essentially visual comedian. For most of the 1940s, The Charlie McCarthy Show ranked as one of the most consistently popular programs on the air. In his will, Edgar Bergen gave Charlie McCarthy to the Smithsonian Institution, where the pine and hickory celebrity now rests, resplendent in his dress clothes. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Comedies (Film); Radio Programming: Comedy Shows; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows Selected Reading Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Grams, Martin, Jr. The Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show: An Episode Guide and Brief History. http://www.old-time.com/otrlogs2/charlie_mg.html

EDUCATION The 1940s proved to be a significant decade in the history of American education. Enrollment in high schools, colleges, and universities declined during the war years but eventually increased once peace and veterans returned to the United States. Teacher shortages became a major home-front problem both during the war and postwar years. The process of recruiting millions of citizens to fight in World War II brought high illiteracy figures, especially for minority groups, to public attention and resulted in discussions by armed forces personnel on how best to address the issue. Before the decade ended, both blacks and women gained educational opportunities lacking in past


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decades, a situation that opened new doors for them. Efforts to promote international understanding widened, indicating a change in Americans’ willingness to be more informed about the rest of the world. Finally, these trends grew from questions raised about the role of the federal government in the education of its citizenry. The establishment of schools accompanied the founding of the United States. By 1918, every state in the union had passed laws requiring children to attend elementary school to study at least reading, writing, and arithmetic. Compulsory attendance ages varied among the states with most opting for ages 6 through 14. Facilities also differed in size and amenities. Many small communities and rural areas with limited resources could provide only one- or two-room schools, not always the best of conditions, and the problem continued into the 1940s. Towns and large cities usually had separate buildings for the elementary and high school grades, and enrollments at some secondary schools included young people coming from nearby areas with only elementary schools. Despite limitations, 10.6 percent of 14- to 17-year-olds enrolled in high school in 1900, a statistic that gradually increased to 51.1 percent in 1930, 71.3 percent in 1940, and 85 percent in the early 1950s. Graduation rates for this same age group, however, lagged behind, although they rose from 6.3 percent in 1900 to 28.8 percent in 1930, 49 percent in 1940, and 52.4 percent in 1950. After the country’s entry into World War II, educational institutions at all levels faced challenges. Even with decreases in high school enrollments at the beginning of the war, both elementary and high schools experienced an immediate shortage of teachers when the draft took those who were younger. As early as January 1942, newspapers across the country reported an additional nationwide educational crisis caused by teachers leaving for higher-paying wages in defense industries. A survey conducted in December 1942 by the New York Times indicated an immediate need across the country for 75,000 instructors. In an attempt to fill the gap, many school systems initiated a campaign to lure those who had left the profession to return. Also, temporary teaching certificates were awarded to individuals, many of whom lacked the necessary training, putting less than satisfactory teachers in classrooms. Decreases in college and university enrollments occurred as men, and some women, turned from educational pursuits to either enlist or be drafted into the armed forces. Businesses and industries likewise faced serious manpower shortages. Thus, women and adolescents were urged to go to work, and many teenagers quit school, causing a decrease in high school enrollments—a situation that continued throughout the war years and concerned educators. The U.S. Office of Education attempted to address this situation with a National Go-to-School Drive for the 1944–1945 academic year. A return to higher enrollments and increased high school completion rates did not occur, however, until 1947. Slogans such as “Study, Sacrifice, Save, and Serve” appeared in high school classrooms to remind those still enrolled that they had responsibilities for preserving democracy. Some schools allowed older students to accelerate their studies by going to summer school and graduating in three years, an effort that would enable them to receive a high school diploma before, instead of after, they reached draft age. High school courses varied widely from rigorously academic to fundamentally commercial


Education | 295 or vocational, as well as variations in between. Boys now received hard training in physical education in order to be in good condition for becoming a soldier. Subjects suitable for those who would eventually join a branch of the armed forces could also be taken—navigation, military math, physics, preflight aeronautics, and military drill, for example. In many communities, schools also served as sites for distributing ration books, selling war bonds and stamps, and receiving donations from scrap drives. These activities, along with routine air raid drills, provided reminders of the hardships that had to be assumed by all those on the home front. School publications expanded beyond the usual curriculum information, sports updates, and school gossip to include articles about the war effort, especially on regulations contained in the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 (Selective Service, or Draft). Guidance departments broadened their programs to help students learn about local war service and industrial opportunities as well as clarifying draft requirements. Some also offered assistance to those experiencing emotional strain through counseling and helped to increase social activities available after school and on weekends. Students were urged to be active and take a part in a school play, participate in school sports, attend school-sponsored dances, or join activities within the community offered by various youth organizations and community centers. But these conditions existed primarily in segregated white schools. Before World War II, the level of education offered most minorities living in the United States ended with elementary school. When the nation entered the war, three-quarters of the black population resided in the South, where segregated school systems provided few high schools for minorities. Thus, many blacks—twice as many as whites—who registered under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 failed to meet the minimum educational requirements of reading and writing at the fourth-grade level. The U.S. Army, uncertain about whether to draft educationally nonqualifying applicants, initially waffled and accepted between 5 and 10 percent in this group. In November 1942, in order to be more definitive about induction decisions, the United States Armed Forces Institute asked the American Council on Education to develop a battery of tests that would measure high school–level knowledge and skills. Known today as the GED (General Equivalency Diploma), its introduction clarified educational questions and gave those soldiers and sailors returning home from war the academic credentials they needed to pursue a college education or get civilian jobs. Also in 1942, the Department of War and the Office of Education attempted to address the illiteracy problem another way and collaborated on offering a preinduction training program for selective service registrants who had their draft deferred because of educational deficiencies. Any interested high school and college students under draft age could also attend. It was hoped that this would qualify more minorities for service as well as decrease military training time for both whites and blacks once in the military. The army soon realized, despite efforts being made to strengthen registrants educationally, that rejection rates were jeopardizing attainment of draft quotas needed for the armed forces and on June 1, 1943, lifted the restrictions. It also established Service Training Units (STUs), organized as efficient school systems, to assist those who


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needed to improve their basic educational skills. For these classes, the army developed a four-part program featuring Private Pete, while the navy employed Sailor Sam. Over 400,000 men—black, white, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American—moved from these units to regular army service. In addition to addressing illiteracy through the STUs, the federal government and the Department of War underwrote extensive instructional programs where soldiers learned, among other things, foreign languages and how to become radio men, engineers, mechanics, airplane pilots, and medics. After the war, thousands of soldiers returned home with knowledge and skills that allowed for a variety of educational and vocational choices. Almost 8 million decided to take advantage of the college scholarships that constituted a part of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, commonly known as the GI Bill, signed into law in June 1944 and offered to all who received an honorable discharge. By 1947, veterans accounted for almost half of the nation’s college students, while many others enrolled in technical and vocational training programs. Together, these educational experiences allowed veterans to move beyond the limits of their prewar lives. World War II also opened up many new possibilities for women in the areas of a college education or a job with better pay than the stereotypical teacher, secretary, or nurse. From the first years of the 20th century, increasing numbers of girls had attended high school and in 1940 represented more than half of that population. Women also enrolled in colleges and universities in record numbers and represented a little less than one-half of all college enrollments by 1920, a figure that rose slightly during the 1930s. During the first half of the 1940s, because of war-depleted male enrollments, female students constituted a majority of the student body and accounted for 40 percent of the graduates. To the benefit of women, various all-male institutions looked to them for survival. Male-only Harvard University, for example, entered into an agreement in 1943 with neighboring women-only Radcliffe College to allow its students to attend classes at Harvard for the first time, an event that eventually led to the 1977 merger of these two esteemed centers of learning. After the war, women experienced increased competition for college acceptance from men benefiting from the GI Bill. Between 1947 and 1950, the proportion of women enrolled relative to men declined, but at the same time their numbers as degree recipients grew at all levels—bachelor’s, master’s, doctorates, and professional— enabling them to pursue careers previously closed to them. Along with the challenges presented by decreasing wartime enrollments of men at most colleges and universities, World War II also provided some unique opportunities for these institutions. To meet the wartime demand for technically trained individuals, higher-education curricula underwent rapid revisions that placed a greater emphasis on technological courses and allowed students to receive college degrees in less than the traditional four years. This led to many discussions about the value of a liberal arts education versus practical courses, a debate that continues today. Whatever the emphases of the institution’s curriculum, the postwar years brought growth. On March 20, 1950, the New York Times reported that 150 colleges and universities had been added to the U.S. Office of Education’s list, giving a total of 1,808 recognized institutions of higher learning for the academic year 1948–1949, an increase


Education | 297 greater than any comparable period in the nation’s history. Two-year junior and community colleges, fairly new kids on the block, accounted for approximately 50 percent of this expansion. In addition to heightened interest in higher education in the United States, the postwar years saw educational ventures taking place internationally. The independent, nonprofit Institute of International Education, founded in 1919, both then and today provides experiences in international education and training for undergraduates, graduate students, college faculty, professionals, teachers, and technical trainees. In 1949, more than 2,000 foreign and American recipients, representing a 42 percent increase over the previous year, received fellowships and scholarships for their studies. The federal government became an active player in international exchanges when Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright (1905–1995) introduced legislation to initiate and finance certain international educational programs. Signed into law on August 1, 1946, it became known as the Fulbright Act. The program, in 1946–1947, provided for the exchange of 74 teachers from the United States and Great Britain. Funding for these individuals came from the sale of surplus U.S. war property. By 1949, agreements had been reached with seven countries for the exchange of graduate students, college and university professors, and researchers, with a total of 648 Fulbright scholarships available. In 1961, the revised Fulbright-Hays Act broadened the program and sources of funding and today it carries the honor of being the largest U.S. exchange program. Problems in education, along with many other domestic issues, had been put on a partial hold during the war years but returned to the forefront of national attention during the second half of the 1940s. Population shifts brought about by the concentration of defense plants and military bases in certain parts of the country, coupled with the predicted 5 million baby boom children destined to enter elementary school between 1947 and 1957, caused many to regard new classroom construction and recruitment and retention of quality teachers as urgent needs. Local communities faced uncertainty in how to finance school building programs along with hiring the necessary staff for increased enrollments. In 1946, Ohio Senator Robert Taft (1889–1953) saw mass education as essential to the country’s economic welfare and the only defense for liberty against totalitarianism; he introduced a bill for federal aid to education as a possible solution. Released from committee in 1947, it passed in the Senate in 1948 but stalled in the House of Representatives that year as well as the next. The principal point involved religious issues relating to the inclusion or exclusion of private and parochial schools receiving federal funds. It would not be until the 1960s that federal aid for education became a reality. Education has always been viewed by Americans as the cornerstone of democracy— a concept strengthened during the 1940s as secondary education gained ground as a universal right for all, while at the same time the country saw a sharp rise in the numbers attending college. Since 1921, the week before Thanksgiving has been celebrated as American Education Week. Originally sponsored by the NEA (National Education Association) and the American Legion, it sought to raise public awareness of the importance of this right. Themes during the 1940s reflected the perceived role of education during challenging times. They included “Education for a Strong America” (1941), “Education in a Democracy at War” (1943), “Education for the Atomic Age”


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(1946), “Strengthening the Foundation of Our Freedom” (1948), and “Making Democracy Work” (1949). See also: Civil Defense; Juvenile Delinquency; Rationing; Religion; Roosevelt, Eleanor Selected Reading “Education.” New York Times, November 5, 1940; November 9, 1941; August 23, 1942; July 18, 1943; November 5, 1943; July 30, 1944; March 20, 1950. www.proquest.com Fass, Paula S. Outside In, Minorities and the Transformation of American Education. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Knight, Edgar W. Education in the United States. Rev. ed. New York: Ginn, 1951. “Teacher Shortages.” New York Times, January 25, 1942; December 13, 1942; June 29, 1946; February 27, 1949. www.proquest.com

EISENHOWER, GENERAL DWIGHT DAVID Born David Dwight Eisenhower (1890–1969) in Denison, Texas, and raised in Abilene, Kansas, he changed the order of his given names when entering West Point in 1911. While there, Eisenhower received the nickname Ike. After graduating in 1915, he married Mamie Geneva Doud (1896–1979) the following year; they had two sons, Doud Dwight Eisenhower (1917–1921) and John Sheldon Doud Eisenhower (b. 1922). In the years following World War I, he never saw combat. He instead carried out a series of low-key assignments, one of which included writing a guidebook to American battlefields in France and another serving as an aide to General Douglas MacArthur during the 1932 Bonus Army incident in Washington, DC. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Colonel Eisenhower had 25 years of service with the U.S. Army. This attack took the United States into a war already raging in Europe and Asia and signaled the beginning of a remarkable climb in the military for Eisenhower. After Pearl Harbor, Army Chief of Staff General George Catlett Marshall (1880–1959), recognizing strong organizational and administrative abilities in Eisenhower, called him to Washington, DC, to head General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Pacific and Far Eastern Section of walking away from an airplane, with Lt. Genthe War Department’s War Plans Di- eral Lucius Clay, architect of the later Berlin vision. Eisenhower, now a brigadier Airlift. (Library of Congress)


Eisenhower, General Dwight David | 299 general, quickly distinguished himself with his skills related to planning and followthrough: thoroughness of analyses, sound rationales behind decisions, and clarity in reports. In June 1942, Marshall selected Eisenhower, recently made a major general, over 366 other senior officers to command all U.S. forces in the European theater. This preferment became the first of many, each leading to new roles that allowed him to add strong leadership and diplomacy skills to his other abilities. Promoted to lieutenant general soon thereafter, Eisenhower advanced from commanding general of the European Theater of Operations, to supreme commander, Allied forces, North African Theater of Operations. Next he moved to commander not only of the North African Theater, but across the entire Mediterranean basin, which included the British Eighth Army. With this position, Eisenhower advanced a plan that successfully cleared North Africa of Axis forces; he then oversaw the invasion of southern Italy. As a leader, Eisenhower demonstrated brilliance in developing successful military strategies. At the same time, he acknowledged soldiers’ needs and the importance of instilling an atmosphere of positive morale. A case in point: In 1943, in an attempt to address the dryness of the North African heat and his men’s accompanying thirst as well as their constant longing for reminders of home, he requested the building of 10 Coca-Cola bottling plants supplied with enough syrup to provide his troops 6 million bottles a month. General Marshall immediately gave Eisenhower, and all other theater and area commanders, authority to set up soft-drink bottling operations and to request personnel to operate the facilities. In record time, Coca-Cola arrived at the battlefield. Hollywood reported that General Eisenhower supposedly said that next to guns and ammunition, what “the boys need most is movies and more movies.” Right after Pearl Harbor, Hollywood filmmakers agreed to produce 16-millimeter prints of their motion pictures and make them available to military services without charge. The Army Overseas Motion Picture Service estimated that, by 1945, some 2,400 films were shown nightly in the European and Mediterranean areas alone. In December 1943, Eisenhower’s responsibilities increased when he became supreme Allied commander in Europe, as well as supreme Allied commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force. He also took charge of all U.S. forces on the Western front north of the Alps and he supervised the detailed planning that led to the muchanticipated Allied assault on Normandy known as Operation Overlord, in June 1944. He followed that with the subsequent invasion of Germany and liberation of Western Europe. In recognition of his senior position and outstanding accomplishments, Eisenhower, on December 20, 1944, received a fifth star as general of the army, the highest attainable rank. He returned to the United States in November 1945 as a hero and assumed the position of chief of staff, U.S. Army, a rank he held until 1948. As such, he took charge of the postwar demobilization of U.S. soldiers. Probably unaware of it at the time, Eisenhower’s distinctive short uniform jacket—appropriately named after him—became popular with both soldiers and civilians. It had first became available to troops in 1943. After the war, women borrowed the basic design as a fashion accessory; variations on the Eisenhower jacket began appearing in department stores in 1946, and retailers advertised it as “short and snappy.”


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In 1947, with the passage of the National Security Act, Eisenhower became the army’s first commanding officer to participate in the newly formed Joint Chiefs of Staff. The following year, he retired from service and published his highly acclaimed memoir, Crusade in Europe. From the military he moved to academia, becoming president of New York City’s Columbia University in 1948. Immensely popular with U.S. troops during World War II, Eisenhower instilled confidence in them and, in turn, with those back home. Always ready with his famous grin, Ike epitomized the effective leader and found that he could not disappear from the public stage. As postwar Europe struggled with recovering from the ravages of World War II, it faced possible economic collapse. Realizing the dangers, the United States, Canada, and 10 European and Scandinavian countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4, 1949. This pact, created with the onset of the Cold War, formed a military alliance known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a response to the threat posed by Russian forces in Eastern Europe. President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) recalled Eisenhower at the end of 1950, asking him to assume the role of Supreme Allied Commander for NATO troops. Taking a leave of absence from Columbia, Eisenhower accepted and again demonstrated strong leadership as he successfully promoted a sense of partnership among the NATO membership nations while creating a multinational force able to shield Western Europe from Communist aggression. In 1952, he retired from active service a second time and returned to Columbia University. Still a popular individual, many viewed Dwight Eisenhower as a man ideally suited for the White House. “Draft Eisenhower” movements started as early as 1948 among both Democrats and Republicans, since he had never announced any party affiliation. The Republican Party finally persuaded him to run for president in 1952. “I like Ike” became an irresistible slogan propelling Eisenhower to a sweeping victory against Adlai Stevenson (1900–1963) as the 34th president of the United States. Four years later, he was reelected for a second term. Following his retirement from the presidency in 1960, he and Mamie moved to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and a quieter life. He died in 1969. See also: Beverages; D-Day; Roosevelt, President Franklin Delano; Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 (Selective Service, or Draft); United Nations Selected Reading Doherty, Thomas. Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Eisenhower, Dwight David. www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/DwightDEisenhower/ Kennedy, David M. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

ELLINGTON, DUKE Nicknamed Duke in childhood by friends who noticed his innate savoir faire and dapper way of dressing, Edward Kennedy Ellington (1899–1974) was born in Washington, DC. Raised in a musical home, he became an accomplished piano player at an early


Ellington, Duke | 301 age. He studied art in high school, but a growing love for music and performance determined him to move in that direction. He had formed his first small group by 1917, playing mainly for private social functions in the Washington region. In the early 1920s, Ellington moved to Harlem, anxious to participate in the active jazz scene found there. Several long-term engagements at local clubs allowed him to concentrate on developing a distinctive style while he gathered some outstanding musicians around him. He made a number of recordings on various labels during this period and received an important booking at Harlem’s famous Cotton Club in 1927, one that included remote broadcasts for radio. His fame spread throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s; when not performing, he could be found composing, creating a remarkable legacy of American music (Ellington disdained labels like “jazz” or “popular”) that remains one of the glories of 20th-century songwriting, regardless of category. As swing became the dominant format in pop music during the 1930s, Ellington and his orchestra stood at the forefront. One enduring hit after another flowed from his pen during this time, such as “Mood Indigo” (1931), “Sophisticated Lady” (1933), “Solitude” (1934), “Stompy Jones” (1934), “In a Sentimental Mood” (1935), “Azure” (1937), “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart” (1938), and others too numerous

By the time the 1940s rolled around, Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington had long since established his fame as a composer, pianist, and orchestra leader. The passage of time, however, did not slow him down, and he fronted some of his best aggregations and wrote some of his finest music throughout the decade. This picture shows him in a familiar role, at the grand piano, enjoying the playing of his sidemen. (Photofest)


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to mention, assuring Ellington a secure place among the era’s favorite composers and performers. At the same time, his orchestra became an extension of his genius, and his flair for texture and tonality placed him on a unique plane; no one else duplicated the Ellington band’s sound, making his music instantly recognizable. Constant traveling, including tours to Europe, club dates, concerts, broadcasts, and a steady stream of recordings, kept Ellington and his sidemen in front of audiences and further broadened his appeal. At the end of the 1930s, well-established and reasonably prosperous despite the competition of dozens of other bands, he hired a young pianistarranger named Billy Strayhorn (1915–1967). The 1940s may have marked the decline of the Swing Era, but the decade also witnessed the unique collaboration between Ellington and Strayhorn, establishing a new era of creativity for the orchestra. Strayhorn alone during the 1940s contributed the classics “Day Dream” in 1940, “Passion Flower” and “Chelsea Bridge” in 1941, “A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing” in 1946, and “Lush Life” in 1949 (probably composed in the mid-1930s), among many others. Ellington’s writing, no doubt spurred on by Strayhorn, took on a complexity seldom seen or heard in popular music, and yet the band swung with the best of them, and dancers continued to take to the floor when he played his new, innovative arrangements. In a burst of inspiration in 1940, Ellington penned “Jack the Bear,” “Ko-Ko,” “Cottontail,” “In a Mellotone,” “Harlem Airshaft,” along with several other standards, all of which immediately became part of the orchestra’s book. The following year, 1941, Strayhorn composed “Take the ‘A’-Train,” a piece that virtually overnight became the band’s theme; Ellington contributed “I Got It Bad (and That Ain’t Good)” and “Subtle Slough” (better known as “Just Squeeze Me” in its vocal version). As an orchestra leader, Ellington demanded the best of anyone who played for him. Some refer to his orchestras of the late 1930s and the World War II period as a golden era for the leader, since so many memorable numbers and performances are associated with that time. Even during the war years, despite some inevitable personnel shifts, the band’s lineup remained remarkably stable. One thing remained unchanged: the Ellington bands included some of the best instrumentalists of the day, sidemen capable of reading a complex chart for one number and improvising brilliantly on another. The 1940s were also a period when Duke Ellington began to reach out and try some new directions in his music, especially in terms of extended-length compositions. The 78-rpm record, the standard recording and playback medium until the 1948 advent of the long-playing record, normally had a playing time of only 3 to 4 minutes per side on a regular 10-inch disk. As a result, almost all American jazz and popular music of the day had to fit within those confines. Occasionally, a songwriter would create a longer piece that required two or more consecutive sides, but such compositions, outside of classical music, were rare. Ellington, for example, in 1931 recorded “Creole Rhapsody” on two sides, and “Reminiscing in Tempo” (1935) consisted of four parts for a total of more than 12 minutes of playing time; it required four sides, or two disks. Undeterred, Ellington in 1942 composed Black, Brown and Beige, a three-part concert work that, in its entirety takes about 45 minutes. It premiered in January 1943 at New York’s prestigious Carnegie Hall. Because of the recording ban then in effect, no one recorded the concert commercially, and it was assumed lost. Over the years,


Ellington, Duke | 303 TABLE 49.

The Duke Ellington Orchestra, Early 1940s (an Approximation)

Instrument

Musician

Reeds

Johnny Hodges (1906–1970) alto saxophone Otto Hardwicke (1904–1970) alto saxophone Ben Webster (1909–1973) tenor saxophone Barney Bigard (1906–1980) tenor saxophone, clarinet Harry Carney (1910–1974) baritone saxophone

Trumpets

Rex Stewart (1907–1967) Ray Nance (1913–1976; also violin) Wallace Jones (1906–1983)

Trombones

“Tricky” Sam Nanton (1904–1946) Lawrence Brown (1907–1988) Juan Tizol (1900–1984)

Rhythm Section

Ellington or Strayhorn piano Jimmy Blanton (1918–1942) bass Fred Guy (1897–1971) guitar (also banjo) Sonny Greer (1895–1982) drums

Vocals

Ivie Anderson (1905–1949) Kay Davis (b. 1920) Al Hibbler (1915–2001)

Ellington released new arrangements of sections from Black, Brown and Beige on record, especially “Come Sunday” and “The Blues,” but in 1977, staff members at Carnegie Hall discovered a complete version of the performance on acetate disks and restored them. That same year, the entire original event finally became available on record. In many ways, the inspiration for Black, Brown and Beige came from a stage musical Ellington created in 1941 called Jump for Joy. An unabashed paean to black life in the United States, it featured an all-black cast and some splendid Ellington music. It ran from July into September in Los Angeles, but theater owners in New York saw it as too progressive, too concerned with civil rights and a history of racial wrongs, to risk a Broadway production. The onset of World War II also overshadowed Jump for Joy and it languished, lost amid the many other Ellington tunes then being written. The popularity of the 1943 concert caused Carnegie Hall to schedule annual appearances by Ellington and his orchestra, which allowed him to introduce extended works. For 1944, he premiered The Perfume Suite. He had a banner year in 1947, giving both The Liberian Suite and The Deep South Suite their debuts. Maintaining his compositional pace, he brought forth The Tattooed Bride in 1948. While he worked on his longer pieces, Ellington did not neglect the more traditional three-minute works that had brought him to fame. “I’m Beginning to See the Light,” a popular hit, came out in 1944, as did “Main Stem.” “I’m Just a Lucky So-and-So” arrived in 1945, “Esquire Swank” and “Pretty Woman” the next year, and “Love You Madly,” Duke’s phrase for his audiences, closed out the decade.


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No stranger to film, Ellington and his orchestra also appeared in a number of movies. Hollywood displayed his talents in over a half-dozen motion pictures during the 1930s, and the 1940s showed no letup. Two 1942 musical shorts, Flamingo and Jam Session, feature Ellington and the band. Singer Herb Jeffries (b. 1913; a sometime vocalist with the orchestra) also had a role in Flamingo. The documentary Upbeat in Music, an episode of The March of Time series, displayed the talents of many musicians, as did Reveille with Beverly (both 1943). The latter, however, received distribution as a full-length commercial musical, with a plot and a cast of Hollywood stars. Ellington also plays a significant role in Cabin in the Sky (1943), a much-ballyhooed version of the 1940 hit Broadway musical of the same name. With an all-black cast but aimed at general audiences, it gave the band, performing an Ellington number called “Going Up,” a chance to be seen by a wide public. In a more unusual light, Date with Duke, a 1947 animated short, has pianist Ellington playing and leading a group of stopmotion figures in a performance of his Perfume Suite. Even with concerts and movies, the later 1940s proved a difficult time for Ellington and his orchestra, just as they did for almost all American big bands, at least those that remained active. Changing musical tastes, especially a sharp decline in the popularity of swing, and the rise of small groups and vocalists caused straitened economic circumstances. A number of his long-time musicians sought greener pastures, and people like Johnny Hodges (alto sax; 1906–1970), Lawrence Brown (trombone; 1907–1988), and Sonny Greer (drums; 1895–1982) departed. He primarily relied on club dates and occasional other appearances to see him through, along with recording royalties. Music veteran that he was, Ellington survived this dark period, and by the mid1950s, fortune came around again, particularly in the form of the Newport Jazz Festival of 1956. He electrified the crowds, and a best-selling recording of the event resurrected his stagnating career. For the next 20 years, the songs and the extended compositions poured forth, and the rediscovery of his earlier work by a new generation of fans made Duke Ellington once more a mainstay of American music. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Broadway Shows (Musicals); Musicals (Film) Selected Reading Dance, Stanley. The World of Duke Ellington. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970. Jewell, Derek. Duke: A Portrait of Duke Ellington. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977. Tucker, Mark, ed. The Duke Ellington Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.


F

FADS This term refers to an all-abiding public interest that becomes quickly popular for a brief period and then generally fades into obscurity. Often called crazes, manias, rages, fashions, trends, obsessions, and vogues, fads occasionally establish themselves as a lasting part of the culture. Each decade of U.S. history has witnessed many fads, and the 1940s fits this pattern well. Jitterbug dancing, wearing bobby socks (“sox”) or a zoot suit, collecting Shmoo and Kigmy paraphernalia, doodling “Kilroy was here,” admiring a pinup girl, competing in blowing bubbles with bubble gum, using slang and World War II lingo —all enjoyed their moment at some point between 1940 and 1949. In addition, some facets of fashion, food, and music of the decade could be classified as fads. Jitterbug dancing. Popular during the Swing Era (1935–1945) and on into the 1950s, the jitterbug, although based on dance routines from the 1920s such as the Charleston and the lindy hop, achieved its own distinctive style with various breakaway moves, jumps, lifts, and air steps. First identified with swing music in the 1930s, the jitterbug dispensed with formal rules and allowed for individual expression, a revolutionary feeling that appealed to youth. World War II and the widespread drafting and enlistment of men into the armed forces interrupted the Swing Era, but the jitterbug, which could be danced alone and— particularly for women, given the shortage of men—even with a person of the same gender, survived as a dance favorite throughout the war and immediate postwar years. If unable to attend a dance, women jitterbugged at home to records or radio broadcasts, and GIs tripped the light fantastic with hostesses and movie stars at canteens in both the United States and abroad. And what better way to celebrate the end of the war and the beginnings of prosperity than by dancing the jitterbug?

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Bobby-soxers. Coined in the 1940s, this term describes adolescent girls in general, especially those who sported loafers or two-tone saddle shoes and socks (sox) rolled down to ankle level, thus “bobbing” or cutting short this particular item of footwear. It also applied to the overly zealous, screaming fans of popular crooners, such as those who followed Frank Sinatra (1915–1998). They would line up for hours to obtain a ticket for a concert by this rising star. Shirley Temple (b. 1928), who had started her career as a child star, graduated into adolescence costarring with the considerably older actors Cary Grant (1904–1986) and Rudy Vallee (1901– 1986) in a silly comedy, The Bachelor Fashionable apparel, especially for some young and the Bobby-Soxer (1947). Holly- men living on the West Coast, involved the flamwood’s portrayal of this stereotypical va- boyant zoot suit. The style can be seen in this riety of teenager helped to extend the shot taken of bandleader Cab Calloway for the 1943 movie, Stormy Weather. (20th Century fad’s popularity. Zoot suits. If girls could wear bobby Fox/Jagarts/Photofest) sox, young men could distinguish themselves with a long, fitted jacket that featured outsize lapels, rakishly padded shoulders, and multibutton sleeves. The accompanying trousers boasted a high waist and legs cut full in the thigh and pegged to ankle-hugging tightness. The zoot suit first appeared in the early 1940s among West Coast minority populations—especially blacks, Filipinos, and Mexican Americans. The ultimate finishing touch for the ensemble occurred when a zoot-suiter donned a wide-brimmed hat or one that came to be called the porkpie style. Zoot suits, gaining more headlines than wearers, never attained the universal appeal of bobby sox. The attire still had enough of a following to signify adolescent rebellion, which made it a subject of concern for many. Whatever the origin and reason for wearing them, the baggy, pegged pants made the suit perfect for dancing a rousing jitterbug. Popular entertainers helped spread the image of the zoot suit nationally. When orchestra leader Duke Ellington (1899–1974) performed a number called “Jump for Joy” at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles in 1941, he and all his sidemen sported the flashy outfits. Band leader Cab Calloway (1907–1994) likewise donned a similar costume for his appearance in the 1943 film, Stormy Weather. Preachers decried the outfit and government officials condemned it. In 1943, U.S. sailors on leave and carousing through the streets of Los Angeles assaulted any man wearing this fashion to the end that service personnel lost visiting privileges in the city. But the final demise of zoot suits happened when the War Production Board (WPB) restricted the amount of material that could be used in men’s clothing; big, oversized suits had to go, and this unique style of dress never made a comeback.


Fads | 307 Shmoos and the Kigmy. Cartoonist Al Capp (1909–1979) created the Shmoo for Li’l Abner, his popular newspaper comic strip, in August 1948. A cuddly, roly-poly, mustachioed white blob with a perpetual smile, Shmoos resembled a bowling pin that easily tipped over. They reproduced spontaneously, loved everyone, provided everything a person needed to survive, and would happily roll over and die for you. Among a wide range of abilities, they could lay eggs and produce milk, cheese, and butter. Further, Shmoos turned into a tasty steak when broiled or an equally delicious chicken when fried; the hide, sliced thin, served as fine leather, and when cut thick and dried, it made high-quality lumber. Moreover, the Shmoos’s whiskers supplied everyone with splendid toothpicks, and the eyes made excellent buttons. In addition to satisfying all of the world’s needs, the Shmoos also provided entertainment and companionship. Almost immediately after the introduction of Shmoos, an array of licensed Shmoo merchandise became available for the millions of Li’l Abner readers and interested others. Dolls, toys, glasses, wallpaper, belts, books, jewelry, balloons, clocks, ashtrays, canisters, salt and pepper shakers, banks, belts, ear muffs, and even an official Shmoo fishing lure could be purchased. Capitalizing on its popularity, Capp’s publishers put together an anthology of his comic strips, The Life and Times of the Shmoo (1948). By 1950, the book had sold 700,000 copies, and sales of Shmoo memorabilia had grossed $25 million (about $225 million in 2008 dollars). On November 6, 1948, artist Capp, along with his characters Abner, Daisy Mae, and two Shmoos, appeared on the cover of Time magazine. The Shmoo existed as a metaphor for American abundance, but it also represented a utopia that could not stand. Ironically, the lovable and selfless Shmoos ultimately brought misery to humankind because people with a limitless supply of self-sacrificing Shmoos stopped working and society broke down. Eventually, piggish Dogpatch resident J. Roaringham Fatback had them eliminated in 1948 (but a pair escaped, just in case); and with their symbolic extinction the craze died. In 1949, Capp followed the demise of the Shmoo with the short-lived Kigmy, a strange, dark, big-nosed creature that loved to be kicked. While the Kigmy did not enjoy the commercial success of the Shmoo, merchandisers soon created inflatables and other Kigmy goods, allowing humans to take out their frustrations on this hapless critter. “Kilroy was here.” A number of stories exist concerning the origin of this popular piece of graffiti, an icon of World War II. Much of the credit probably belongs to James J. Kilroy, a government employee at a naval shipyard. His job involved inspecting the welds and rivets in the bulkheads of vessels under construction. At the end of the day, he would mark the extent of his inspection with a chalked “Kilroy was here.” Legend has it that workers would sneak in after Kilroy had left and erase his signature, replacing it with a facsimile in another location, thus misleading supervisors and lightening the workload of those coming in for the next shift. Whatever the truth of this, servicemen sailing aboard these ships would see the cryptic “Kilroy was here” above their bunks and adapted it to their own uses. In various theaters of combat, the phrase began to appear on walls, vehicles, cartons, and anything else where U.S. troops had passed. The slogan also gained a visual representation, a simple line cartoon featuring the head of a wide-eyed, bald,


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A familiar piece of graffiti throughout the war, Kilroy—as pictured here—appeared everywhere, from shipping cartons to vehicles to the sides of buildings. Stonecutters at the World War II memorial in Washington, DC, have commemorated the long-nosed figure in out-of-the-way places, so tourists often overlook him. (KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images)

droopy-nosed man peering over a wall, with the three immortal words beneath him. This aspect of Kilroy had originated in the British Isles before the war as “Mr. Chad.” Many attribute Mr. Chad to English cartoonist George Edward Chatterton (n.d.). The words “Wot, no . . .?” normally accompany the drawings, and the phrase means, variously, “What, no petrol?” “What, no sweets?” “What, no meat,” and anything else then in short supply. Mr. Chad may have been seen by U.S. troops based in England and given the name Kilroy. Their version, however, did not refer to shortages, but just the fact that U.S. soldiers had been in a particular place. Whatever the true origins of the Kilroy graffiti, it quickly emerged as an internationally known phenomenon during the decade. It lives on at the massive World War II memorial that now commands one section of the National Mall in Washington, DC. This imposing structure, which opened in 2004, surprises sharp-eyed visitors with a bit of impish humor. There, among all the formal stonework, Kilroy peeks out, a reminder of the enduring humor found among soldiers even in the midst of a bloody conflict. Pinup girls. Art work depicting beautiful women dates back to antiquity. The 1940s equivalents display carefully airbrushed celebrities and starlets flashing brilliant smiles and striking sexy poses. Often dubbed “cheesecake” (an early 20th-century term for similarly unclothed women; the etymological roots are hazy, but the term does suggest pretty, sweet, and so on), the practice of featuring feminine pulchritude has a long history, especially in magazines and newspapers. Esquire magazine, in the early 1930s,


Fads | 309 began running the work of illustrator George Petty (1894–1975), whose specialty included this kind of art. Time magazine even offered such a rendering of movie star Rita Hayworth on its November 10, 1941 cover. When the United States became involved in World War II, pictures of attractive, bathing-suit and lingerie-clad women were pinned up, taped, and pasted throughout the military communities—barracks’ lockers, inside helmets, even on airplanes and bombs. Yank, the army’s weekly newspaper, coined the term “pinup girl” in its April 30, 1943, issue, and the Petty Girls, as well as the Vargas Girls produced by another Esquire artist, Alberto Vargas (1896–1982), became staples and contributed to the war effort as morale boosters. Pinups were also called Forties Girls, and the most famous photographs of this wartime industry came from the ever-alert Hollywood studios. One of the best-known of these, taken in 1943, shows movie star Betty Grable (1916–1973) dressed in a bathing suit and looking over her right shoulder at the camera. Seen as an all-American girl radiating come-hither innocence and optimism, this classic pose gave servicemen a vision of what they were fighting for; coupled with her movie income, Betty Grable earned $300,000 (about $3.5 million in 2008 dollars) in that one year. Many other Hollywood stars posed for pinup pictures as well as participated in war bond and USO (United Service Organizations) tours. Lana Turner (1921–1995), Ava Gardner (1922–1990), Hedy Lamarr (1914–2000), Jane Russell (b. 1921), and Rita Hayworth (1918–1987) offered Grable the most competition. Hollywood furthered its involvement with this craze when, in 1944, it produced two films. In Columbia Pictures’ Pin Up Girl, Betty Grable works as a canteen hostess and becomes engaged to almost all the fellows who obtain her autographed photo; Twentieth-Century Fox gave movie audiences Cover Girl, starring Rita Hayworth as a beautiful showgirl who becomes a magazine’s front-page subject. The story has it that air force personnel affixed her photo to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Along with Esquire, men’s magazines such as True and Argosy often managed to decorate their pages with similar illustrations. Both during the war and postwar years, most photographs and drawings of pinup girls featured a slight exaggeration of the model’s long, attractive legs and could be found on calendars, advertisements, and billboards. A fad that started with soldiers became a national phenomenon. Bubble gum. The bane of school administrators and a continuing delight for kids, bubble gum has been around since the first third of the 20th century. The Fleer Chewing Gum Company of Philadelphia most likely invented the chewy substance, and in 1938 one of its employees, Walter Diemer (1904–1998), brought it to its present form. He even made the product in its characteristic pink; he found some pink coloring agent in his limited work area, and it quickly became the standard for Fleer’s and its competitors. Called Dubble Bubble from the outset, Fleer’s soon developed a sizable market; kids liked the elasticity of the gum and the huge bubbles it made. To entice its youthful clientele further, the company wrapped individual pieces in tissue imprinted with comics. Dub & Bub led the way, replaced by the more familiar Pud in the 1940s. During World War II, Fleer’s even put bubble gum squares in the ration kits issued to GIs so they would not lose the taste of home. For civilians, however, bubble gum proved hard to come by in the war years; with the scarcity of sugar, only limited amounts of gum could be manufactured.


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When the conflict ended in 1945, a rival company, Topps, attempted to gain a portion of this growing lucrative market. They called their gum Bazooka, and the name came either from the famous antitank weapon or the humorous musical instrument Bob “The Arkansas Traveler” Burns (1890–1956) featured in his stage act. Regardless of which story people believe, Topp’s Bazooka bubble gum quickly rivaled Fleer’s Dubble Bubble. Topps likewise offered tiny comics with Bazooka, and Bazooka Joe made his debut in 1947. In the immediate postwar period, with sugar, gum, and candy again plentiful, children went on a mini-binge with bubble gum. Sales soared, bubble-blowing contests, both informal and sponsored, were the rage in the late 1940s. That aspect fizzled out after a short time, but the consumption of bubble gum has remained substantial. The addition of trading cards, often of sports figures, resumed in the late 1940s with the lifting of restrictions on paper consumption. Slang and World War II influences. Slang generally refers to words and figures of speech that are deliberately used in place of standard terms and may include jargon, colloquialisms, neologisms, and vulgar words. Traditionally popular with youth, but employed by all levels of society, slang proves one’s membership in a certain group, that a person belongs and knows the various linguistic codes. A small sampling of the slang used during the 1940s follows. Some examples did not necessarily originate during this decade but continued in common usage from earlier times; others stand as unique for the period. The desire of all teenagers was (and is) to be “cool”–that is, clever, fashionable, really “with it.” An “able Grable” or a “ready Hedy” referred to the popular movie stars Betty Grable and Hedy Lamarr and meant a girl possessed sex appeal, while “whistle bait,” “angel cake,” or “slick chick” signified any pretty girl. A boy thought attractive by girls would be known as a “mellow man,” “a hunk of heart break,” or a “glad lad,” and pictures of such males received the label “beefcake” to complement “cheesecake.” On the other hand, “puss” and “phiz” meant an ugly face. And no young woman wanted to date a “drip,” “jerk,” “square,” or “geek.” When life did include a date, girls might “put on the dog” and dress up in fancy clothes. To save money, a couple might attend a “rent party,” a gathering where guests chipped in cash to help pay for the refreshments and the host’s apartment. “Hi-de-ho” served as a greeting of hello, thanks to bandleader and trendsetter Cab Calloway. If a person’s comments or demeanor appeared silly or boring, “corny” functioned as an all-purpose putdown. Enthusiastic volunteers earned the title “eager beaver,” while those who shrugged their responsibilities “passed the buck.” A despicable person became a “creep,” a condition perhaps worse than being a “fuddy-duddy,” or old-fashioned. Slang also incorporates phrases, and many people looked for “pennies from heaven,” that easy money that would help them “keep up with the Joneses” and enjoy a lifestyle or socioeconomic status comparable to the people next door. “Grandstanding” meant showing off, but when times got difficult and “the chips were down,” many rendered the advice, “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”; after all, some things are not “the end of the world.” Events and people can cause the creation of new slang. With World War II clearly the biggest event of the decade, a number of words that dealt with the war and military personnel appeared as slang and then permanently entered the language. “Bazooka”


Fads | 311 immediately entered vocabularies as the name for the military’s new five-foot-long antitank rocket gun, which resembled an improvised musical instrument of that name created by comedian Bob Burns. The term may possess some arcane Dutch roots, or it could refer to the sounds emitted from Burns’ horn when he played it (“bazo-o-oom”). In any case, bazookas of the explosive variety soon became a staple with the infantry. A “burp gun” came to mean any submachine gun; it received the name from the belchlike sound emitted by several varieties of German machine gun then in service. A similar weapon, the American M3 submachine gun, was dubbed a “grease gun” because of its resemblance to a device used to lubricate cars. Those unfortunate enough to die in action “bought the farm,” a term referring to the automatic insurance policies issued by the government. Beneficiaries received $10,000 (about $120,000 in 2008 dollars), or enough to pay off the mortgage on a small farm. Sometimes, a soldier did not suffer a wound but instead endured the “creeping crud,” another term for “jungle rot,” unpleasant skin conditions (rashes, itching, etc.) experienced by troops serving in tropical climates. A lucky soldier might endure a “million-dollar wound,” a non–life threatening injury but severe enough to send him back to the United States; said to be worth a million dollars. The Eisenhower jacket, a fitted, belted, waist-length military coat introduced by General Dwight David Eisenhower (1890–1969), caught on as a popular design for a woman’s article of clothing immediately following the war. “Geronimo!” was the exuberant shout of U.S. paratroopers as they “hit the silk” (actually, parachutes could be made of either nylon or silk) by leaping from an airplane; today it connotes surprise. “Gobbledygook” means nonsensical bureaucratic jargon; it originated from a reference to official language in a Congressional committee report issued in 1944 and indicates the gobbling utterances of turkeys. “Mae West,” a canvas inflatable rubber life vest issued to airmen, derived its name from the Hollywood star of the same name whose chest measurements made her look as if she were wearing an inflated vest. If a soldier got sick or wounded in the field, he received the ministrations of a “bedpan commando,” or platoon medic. And if the services did not meet his satisfaction, he could always “bellyache,” or complain, to someone. And if the wound or symptoms were truly severe, the “Holy Joe,” or chaplain, might be called. Some slang depicted conditions specific to the war. Ersatz, a German word meaning replacement or artificial, became a word for English-speaking people that signified any item that replaced a natural one because of wartime shortages. Cooks created ersatz coffee from chicory and ersatz bread from potato peels. Since the war, it simply denotes anything fake and inferior. And the list could go on—java and joe (both mean coffee, as in “a cuppa joe,” and soldiers christened really strong coffee “battery acid”), Kraut (a German), Nip (a Japanese), walkie-talkie (a portable two-way radio), squawk box (electronic speaker), SOS (in slang, not a distress signal but a GI term for poor food, s— on a shingle), Flying Fortress (an American heavy bomber), and wolf pack (groups of German submarines traveling together in search of enemy vessels)—to name but a few. Acronyms such as POW for prisoner of war, radar (or radio detecting and ranging, a military device for locating aircraft aloft), sonar (or sound navigation and ranging, a military device for detecting submarines beneath the sea), WAAC (Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, and usually shortened to WAC for Women’s Army Corps), and WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service) came into popular


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usage in the forties. Sometimes women in the armed forces gained the complementary title of GI Jane. “G.I.” (with periods) originally meant government issue and could be found stamped on many military supplies. Soldiers, with their dark humor, considered themselves a type of government issue, and the initials spread and entered everyday speech. As is always the case with slang, the meanings for GI expanded and the periods disappeared, as more and more troops swelled the armed forces. If a soldier complained of stomach discomfort, it meant he had the “GIs,” or a gastrointestinal illness. To “GI a place” meant cleaning up a site, probably under supervision. A “GI haircut” meant short on the sides and back of the head. “Joe,” meaning an average sort of guy, dates to the 19th century; “Joe College” and “regular Joe” probably emerged in the 1930s; in 1942, “GI Joe,” referring to any regular enlisted man, made its debut in cartoons drawn by Dave Breger (1908–1970) for Yank, the Army Weekly. Hollywood picked up on the term and offered A Guy Named Joe in 1943, and Joe can be any of the soldiers depicted on screen. The popular war correspondent Ernie Pyle (1900–1945) immortalized foot-slogging infantrymen in his dispatches, and the film The Story of G.I. Joe (1945) recaptures much of Pyle’s reporting. Cartoonist Bill Mauldin (1921–2003) also contributed to the image of the U.S. soldier with his cartoons depicting Willie and Joe, two tired, wise-cracking enlisted men. His book, Up Front (1945), a collection of cartoons about Willie and Joe, made the best-seller lists. Along with the development and use of slang during the war, the postwar years offered even more. As in all decades, various popular culture venues—movies, radio, music, even cars—inspired new slang terms. By 1949, music had contributed bop, bebop, and rebop, while a retooling of old cars provided the nation with hot rods. Whatever the source, the words and phrases of slang, both past and present, enrich the language, some momentarily, while others remain in the mainstream of American English. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Best Sellers (Books); Desserts, Candy, and Ice Cream; Games; Illustrators; Leisure and Recreation; Photography; Toys Selected Reading Panati, Charles. Panati’s Parade of Fads, Follies, and Manias. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Rottman, Gordon L. Fubar: Soldier Slang of World War II. London: Osprey, 2007. Sickels, Robert. American Popular Culture through History: The 1940s. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. Wallechinsky, David. David Wallechinsky’s Twentieth Century, History with the Boring Parts Left Out. Boston: Little, Brown, 1995 [Previously published as The People’s Almanac Presents the Twentieth Century].

FASHION The announcement on January 5, 1941, that New York City had received the title of Fashion Center of the World caused considerable excitement. This coup came, however, at a time of tragedy and sacrifice in Europe. Paris, long the mecca of clothing design, had fallen under the thumb of Nazi Germany in 1940, thus abdicating its influence in


Fashion | 313 the world of fashion. New York, already recognized as the leader in the manufacture of clothing, now also hosted the majority of both established and new designers. To acknowledge this turn of events, the posh Hotel Astor played host on January 8 to the first of two showings of “Fashion Futures.” Prior to this event, Hollywood, through its screen imagery, had for many years played a role in setting fashion trends for Americans. Gilbert Adrian (1903–1959), a premier costume designer for the movies, introduced fashion to millions of American women by dressing such stylish stars as Greta Garbo (1905–1990) and Joan Crawford (1904–1977) during the 1930s. Square-shouldered clothes for Crawford became his trademark, and in 1941 he established his own line of women’s clothes under Adrian, Ltd. to offer fashionable ready-to-wear and custom-designed clothes. But war and material shortages soon curtailed the glory of the United States as a fashion leader and its fashion future. In December 1941, the country entered World War II, and on January 16, 1942, by executive order, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) established the War Production Board (WPB). This group’s activities touched fashion, along with nearly every other aspect of the American consumer economy; it set regulations on the allocation of crucial materials and issued directives to production and consumption to accommodate war needs. Limiting Order L-85, one of many from the WPB issued in 1943, placed restrictions on the kind and amount of fabrics that could be used for clothing and guaranteed that changes would not occur in fashion manufacturing equipment, techniques, or labor—an important consideration for a country needing to focus all its retooling on defense work. WPB orders also limited the use of wool in civilian clothing. Expensive or showy dressing soon became taboo, which contributed to a somewhat universal dressing down across the country. The degree of influence caused by L-85 varied in reference to women’s and men’s clothing. Women merely retained the popular silhouette style, but men experienced a significant change in what they wore because suits underwent modifications. Americans willingly made the necessary sacrifices in both clothing and other facets of life in order to win the war, but once it ended they welcomed new fashion styles. Women eagerly filled their dresser drawers with nylon stockings and applauded the “New Look” introduced by Christian Dior (1905–1957), while clothing for teenagers emerged as distinctive to that age group. For after work hours, men appreciated more casual attires. Men and women in uniform. When designing military uniforms, fabric durability, drying qualities, and the climate conditions where an outfit could be worn receive primary consideration. During World War II, a U.S. infantryman in Europe during inclement weather typically dressed in an olive drab wool service shirt and trousers and a greenish water-repellant M43 field jacket, along with an overcoat when needed. By 1943, a short Eisenhower jacket, named for General Dwight David Eisenhower (1890–1969), became available and military restrictions said that it could only be worn outside the continental United States or by those returning stateside from overseas duty. Originally intended for combat wear, soldiers soon elected to use it for dress-up occasions. In addition to the outward articles of clothing, the soldier’s wardrobe included pile liners and woolen sweaters for extra warmth in inclement weather. Knitted woolen stocking caps covered the head beneath the helmet, and high-laced combat boots with


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a buckled ankle flap protected the feet. For summer fighting and battles in the Pacific, soldiers dressed in lightweight khaki shirts and trousers made of twill, along with a light garrison cap and boots. Naval officers wore either navy blue or white lapel coats with epaulettes, trousers, white shirts, and hats. For sailors below the grade of chief petty officer, the basic garment consisted of a loose-fitting shirt known as a jumper adorned with a black silk neckerchief rolled and draped around the neck under a square collar and tied below the neck opening. For summer dress, officers donned white, short-sleeved shirts and white trousers. Khaki uniforms served as working outfits for navy personnel. Capitalizing on one navy outfit, composer Moe Jaffe (1901–1972) in 1944 wrote “Bell Bottom Trousers,” a tune that some claim to be a cleaned-up version of an old sea chantey. Jaffe’s words refer to the flared trousers worn by enlisted men. In essence, his rendition offers lyrics suitable for public performances and it became an instant hit. Five music studios released recordings performed by well-known groups, and all five made it to Billboard’s best-seller chart: Guy Lombardo (1902–1977) Orchestra on Decca Records, April 20, 1945; Tony Pastor (1907–1969) Orchestra on RCA Victor Records, May 10, 1945; Kay Kyser (1905–1985) Orchestra on Columbia Records, June 7, 1945; Louis Prima (1910–1978) Orchestra on Majestic Records, June 7, 1945; and Jerry Colonna (1904–1986) on Capitol Records, July 26, 1945. More than 350,000 women served in the U.S. armed forces and most worked as typists, clerks, mail sorters, drivers, and nurses. They had their own branches, including, for the army, the Women’s Auxiliary Corps (WAC; originally the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps). The Women Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) worked with the Army Air Corps, and the Women Accepted for Volunteer Military Services (WAVES) served with the U.S. Navy. Women also joined the Marines Corps Reserves, while those affiliated with the Coast Guard became known as SPARS, an acronym taken from that division’s motto Semper Paratus, “Always Ready.” Soon after women became actively involved in the war, Fiorello LaGuardia (1882– 1947), the colorful mayor of New York City, appointed a committee of New York designers to submit ideas for uniforms suitable for women serving in the various military branches. They contributed ideas for the designs, with the famous Mainbocher (born Main Rousseau Bocher, 1891–1976), an American designer recently back home from Paris, greatly influencing the final outfits. Colors for the uniforms consisted of dark or olive drab for winter; khaki dominated outfits for summer wear, except for women in the navy, who wore that service’s navy blue or white coats. In addition to a jacket and skirt, women were issued a heavy topcoat, hooded raincoat, tan oxfords, tennis shoes, galoshes, and bedroom slippers. They also followed regulations requiring neat, abovethe-collar hairstyles. Women’s civilian clothing. Early in the war, the WPB’s Limiting Order L-85 dictated the maximum amounts of fabric that could be utilized in making different civilian garments, with no more than three-fourths of a yard serving as the allowance for a dress. Other WPB orders restricted metals available for zippers and buttons, silk for stockings, and leather for shoes. Clothing styles, by necessity, featured straight cuts and simple lines without ruffles or pleats. Manufacturers limited most daywear to conservative colors or the classic navy or black. Evening dress usually featured a long,


Fashion | 315 flowing sheath of soft shades. Dresses, suits, and jackets still included shoulder pads, giving the wearer a wide look that tapered to a tailored waist over a narrow skirt. Dresses and skirts fell just below the knees and could have a circumference of no more than 72 inches. Evening wear allowed longer lengths. For hems, the WPB set the maximum at two inches. The length of jackets had to stop at 25 inches, and blouses became plain with no turned-back cuffs, double yokes, sashes, scarves, or hoods. Some women spent the war years dressed in tailored gabardine shirtwaist dresses considered to be a “town and country” look, while others opted for the peasant look featuring dress tops and blouses using a drawstring neckline, small puffed sleeves, and a gathered narrow skirt. For most, simplicity and modesty became patriotic guidelines, and accessories consisted mainly of gloves, plain jewelry, and small head covers such as turbans, snoods, scarves, and berets that could remain in place without elastic. Ribbons, bows, braids, and pigtails served as hair adornments. Women applied mascara only on their top lashes, groomed their eyebrows to follow the natural arch, and used rouge that matched and blended with their complexion. Brilliant shades of lipstick and nail polish gave brightness to an otherwise dull presentation. Fashion dictated shoulder-length hair; slightly longer hair could be curled or rolled and pulled back. During the war, side reverse rolls worn to cascade up the head and end closely together on the top created a V shape called “victory rolls.” A wavy look accomplished by pin curls made in rows and brushed through also proved to be popular. A few, however, dared to follow the example of movie star Veronica Lake (1922– 1973), who appeared in I Wanted Wings (Paramount Pictures, 1941) with long blonde hair that swept across her forehead and daringly covered an eye. Alternately called the strip-tease style, the peek-a-boo style, the sheep-dog style, and the bad-girl style, it prompted hair discussions across the United States about the relationship between hair fashions and morals. Arranging one’s hair proved fairly simple; dealing with the lack of stockings presented a more difficult problem. Even before the formation of the WPB, escalating prices set in the late 1930s by Japan, the largest producer of silk in the world, had made silk stockings a scarce item. In 1938, DuPont introduced nylon fiber, a synthetic that could replace silk in hosiery and other products. Sears sold nylon stockings in its 1940 catalog; they also appeared for the first time in New York stores in May 1940. An instant success, women purchased 64 million pairs the first year, and nylons immediately became the generic name for silklike hosiery products. Their availability changed in December 1941, when the U.S. government commandeered nylon for war production, particularly for use in parachutes, airplane tires, netting, and tents. In a state of desperation about not having this necessary article of clothing for proper dress, many women resorted to applying makeup to their legs and then taking a pen and drawing a line down the back of the calf so it appeared as if they were wearing seamed stockings. An impractical solution, ankle socks emerged as a substitute. To the relief of many, nylon stockings became readily available soon after the war ended. The WPB placed rigid restrictions on the use of leather for civilian footwear, forcing shoe manufacturers to search for alternatives. A variety of materials such as reptile skins and molded mesh became successful substitutes. Cork, rope, and plastic served


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as materials for the soles of cold-weather shoes, and a wooden wedge heel became popular for summer wear. Most Americans, however, had to make do with the shoes they already owned because the purchase of a new pair required a government certificate showing need. For shoes manufactured during the war, trims and embellishments had to be held to a minimum, causing some women to use household items such as cellophane and pipe cleaners to create a festive shoe decoration. Fabrics substituted for leather whenever possible in pocketbooks and belts. As the war progressed and shortages of clothing increased, Vogue magazine and other fashion publications suggested a “Make Do and Mend” campaign. Fashion periodicals had long kept American women informed on the newest trends and now offered suggestions on how to creatively recycle existing garments. For example, one could make a bra out of an old tablecloth and outfits out of feed and flour sacks or curtains. McCall’s magazine produced patterns that showed how to cut men’s suits into ladies’ suits and women’s dresses into children’s clothing. Designers introduced the concept of separates, which, if kept to a color scheme, allowed for coordination of these pieces to create the illusion of more outfits than one actually had. Even the U.S. Department of Agriculture got into the act with Fitting Dresses, a pamphlet describing the importance of making or buying clothes that fit and hints on how to be sure that the article under consideration could be worn. It lists 20 common faults of dresses that do not fit along with a remedy for each. Eventually more than 16 million men fought in World War II, creating a labor shortage in the United States. Businesses and industry turned to those men, women, and teenagers left at home; before the war ended, more than 6 million women went to work for the first time. Some held traditional women’s positions as clerks, teachers, and health care workers, while many took jobs in war-related industries such as aircraft factories, shipyards, and armaments industries. Some working women readily adopted the clothes worn by their male counterparts—sturdy overalls, thick-soled shoes, and hard hats. But many, concerned about maintaining their femininity, resisted. Their skirts and dresses, however, quickly became workplace hazards, with parts of the outfits getting caught in heavy machinery. Muriel King (1900–1977), a Hollywood costume designer during the 1930s and 1940s, created four work uniform designs, each displaying a wing motif, for women employees at Boeing Aircraft. These “Flying Fortress” fashions pleased everyone. The company immediately saw a decrease in accidents because the outfits lacked the large sleeves and cuffs to catch in equipment. The women applauded the cuts, which featured slimming waistlines, flattering high-cut bosom lines, and trim slacks. King also included a simple shirtdress for office workers. By 1943, Life magazine described this clothing as a new West Coast fad, with many appreciating that slacks did not require the wearing of expensive or unavailable stockings. Nevertheless, most working women, after punching their factory time cards at the end of the day, returned home to dress in a more traditional way. Perhaps the fad status of the King design had been helped by a 1942 poster by an American graphic artist named J. Howard Miller (ca. 1915–1990) titled “We Can Do It!” The painting features an attractive woman dressed in a Boeing-type outfit with her hair pulled back in a scarf and sporting bright lipstick and pink-painted fingernails.


Fashion | 317 Frequently used as an image of a working woman, this depiction has been mistakenly called Rosie the Riveter, the title given to a painting by Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) that appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943. Both presentations became national cultural icons and helped in the recruitment of women into traditional men’s jobs. Both renderings of a working woman show a hairstyle that can easily be tucked into a scarf, snood, turban, or bandanna. Loose hair, like some articles of clothing, could easily be caught in industrial machinery and cause serious accidents. By this time, Hollywood had Veronica Lake styling her famous peek-a-boo long hair by pulling it back from her face in two films, So Proudly We Hail (1943) and The Hour Before the Dawn (1944). With the end of the war and the lifting of government controls and restrictions, the availability of fabrics returned to prewar levels, and designers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean began experimenting with more frivolous and feminine fashions. Many women scanned the first ideal-weight charts published by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in the early 1940s to determine what they should aim for in order to look best in the postwar clothing styles. Department stores advertised clothing under the banner of the “American Look,” an attempt to promote American designers. One of these, Claire McCardell (1905–1958), became a leading force in ready-to-wear fashions, simple, functional, mass-produced pieces that retained a sense of style. One highly controversial piece of recreational clothing came in 1946 from French fashion designer Louis Reard (1897–1984). He created a bathing suit made from two miniscule pieces of fabric that left little to the imagination. During the war, the scarcity of cloth had eliminated bathing suits with the billowing skirts of the 1930s and produced slightly more revealing wear in both one-and two-piece styles, but they did not begin to be as scandalous as this new item called the bikini. Some suggested that the name of this startling piece of clothing came from the tiny Pacific atoll where the United States conducted nuclear testing that same year, suggesting a “split” of a previously more modest one-piece swimwear into something as small as atoms. An explosive furor surrounded the introduction of the bikini. Only the most daring donned the tiny bathing suit at public beaches. Churches condemned both bikinis and their wearers, fashion magazines wagged an editorial finger at the style (while running pictures that boosted circulation), and cultural critics on both sides of the issue made much of the commotion. Many places explicitly banned bikinis, while officials at other locations told patrons to dress in more modest attire. A combination of enthusiasm and protest also accompanied Christian Dior’s 1947 introduction of the New Look, an attempt to turn away from the angular silhouette style of World War II. Shoulder pads disappeared, giving way to a more fitted appearance with soft, full collars and sleeves; a padded bust; tight waist; and rounded hipline. Girdles became essential accessories for pinching the waist and obtaining the required curves. Longer and fuller skirts swept to between 8 and 10 inches from the floor, and tailors cut coats containing much more cloth. High price tags placed Dior originals outside the reach of many consumers, but mass clothing vendors such as Sears offered the long look at cheaper prices. As the New Look swept across the country, outcries against it matched the excitement for it. Some women with attractive legs, and not eager to hide them in longer


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dresses, joined men voicing disappointment about being deprived of the pleasurable sight and bombarded the press with letters of opposition. Some said it may have been right for Fifth Avenue but not Main Street. A Texas housewife who felt strongly about keeping the shorter clothes founded the Little Below the Knee Club and recruited fellow protestors across the Lone Star State and soon boasted members in all 48 states. But most of America was ready for a change, and the New Look, despite this brief objection, grew in popularity. American designers, such as Ceil Chapman (d. late 1970s) and Anne Fogarty (b. 1919), followed Dior’s lead in their designs for Hollywood starlets and teenagers. Accessories also took on a new, feminine look. The squared, plain, comfortable lowheeled shoes of the first half of the decade changed to pointed toes and narrow high heels. Hairstyles became more casual, sometimes curled high on the head in front and worn to the shoulders in the back, or short with modest curls, and, for some, bangs. Hats, dressy and decorated, both large and small, continued as a necessary accessory, as did gloves. Longer dresses drew the eye to the ankles, and shoe manufacturers offered daring styles showing a lot of the foot with straps in a variety of designs, including a broad T-strap, two straps circling the ankle, or a narrow diagonal strap. Nylon, now released from its previous use in defense production, significantly influenced postwar fashion. In addition to displacing silk in stockings, the DuPont synthetic appeared in lingerie, negligees, blouses, scarves, gloves, sweaters, and even toothbrushes. It could be blended with other fibers, resulting in material that washed easily and required little, if any, ironing. Initially, manufacturers of luxury clothing considered nylon of inferior quality for high fashion, but soon its ease of care and ability to retain shape won over most of the public. Immediately following the end of World War II, products such as nylon stockings, handbags, and lingerie continued to have limited availability, sometimes creating problems in finding the perfect gift for mothers, sisters, wives, and sweethearts. As fast as possible, cosmetic companies produced a plethora of new beauty and toilet products that offered fathers, brothers, husbands, and boyfriends alternative gift ideas. Artificial eyelashes had long been used in Hollywood but now became available commercially, along with eyeliner, eye shadow, and waterproof mascara. Eyelash curlers helped those who did not want to use artificial lashes. The application of beauty spots returned to many faces, and burnt orange shades of lipstick joined the reds and pinks. Toward the end of 1948, the New York Times reported estimated sales of beauty and toiletry aids for the year to be at least $800 million (approximately $7 billion in 2008 dollars). Men’s civilian clothing. In order to save millions of pounds of wool a year during World War II, the WPA ordered the elimination of vests, patch pockets, cuffs, and an extra pair of trousers in men’s suits. Thus masculine dress changed from generous three-piece, double-breasted suits featuring pants with multiple pleats and cuffs to fabric-conserving outfits with single-breasted jackets and trousers with no pleats or cuffs for the duration of the war. Fancy jackets displaying a long pleat down the back and gathered slightly at the waist, an item that had been popularized by actor Clark Gable (1901–1960), and double-breasted dinner suits could no longer be purchased. But, just as American women desired a new look following the war, so did men. Male service personnel, weary of uniforms, rushed to stores for new civilian garb only


Fashion | 319 to find the shelves bare. By late 1946, supply finally caught up with demand and included new designs. Men quickly appreciated the loose-fitting clothes made from lots of material and returned to broad-shouldered jackets, long coats, full-cut trousers with generous pleats, deep patch pockets, and cuffs. Double-breasted suit jackets designed with center vents and peaked lapels, along with hand-painted ties decorated in festive patterns and colors showing skyscrapers, exotic foliage, and sunsets, returned a sense of fun and luxury to men’s clothing. One of the most daring wardrobe additions following the war involved the introduction of a casual shirt called the aloha shirt. Claiming a Hawaiian ancestry and first seen at California and Florida beaches, this item displayed patterns of ocean flora, hula dancers, island flowers, or flames. Even President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972), who always wore a business suit when seen in public, became enamored with openly wearing tropical sport shirts when he went on working vacations at the Little White House in Key West, Florida. Across the country, an attitude of casualness about dress spread to sports coats and slacks. In 1949, Sears, Roebuck advertised a leisure coat for men to be worn during those “carefree hours . . . designed for complete ease of action with the tailoring you expect in suits.” Before the decade ended, men not wearing jackets and hats could sometimes be seen on the streets of New York. Informality also appeared in the form of blue jeans. Denim had originally been used for men’s work wear, but Western movies during the 1930s shifted the association of denim pants or jeans from laborers to cowboys, such as Hollywood stars John Wayne (1907–1979) and Gary Cooper (1901–1961). Some soldiers took jeans with them to war for off-duty wear and, once back home, often preferred denim for leisure activities. But just as veterans found time to be casual and play, they quickly became serious about their work and role as breadwinner of the family. By 1949, contrary to the growing acceptance of casualness, many had adopted a somber work uniform, usually a gray flannel suit or a dark blue alternate. The outfit consisted of a three-button, single-breasted jacket with narrow shoulders, small lapels, flaps on the pockets and accompanying pants without pleats. Simple, crisp white cotton shirts with slim, striped ties, plus shiny shoes and a conservative fedora (a style of felt hat), completed the ensemble. In 1955, author Sloan Wilson (1920–2003) lamented America’s sartorial sameness in a world dominated by business with a best-selling novel, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Children’s and youth clothing. The material restrictions assigned to adult clothing contained exceptions for infants’ and children’s wear for those up to four years of age. Nevertheless, new clothes for babies and young children tended to be scarce during the war, and stores did not regain an adequate inventory until 1946. Thus, outfits for children tended to be their older siblings’ hand-me-downs or pieces restyled from adult clothes. By 1943, junior military styles became available for both sexes. Boys could dress representing various ranks—army officer, naval commander, aviator, marine, and sailor—while girls could deck themselves out in a facsimile of either a WAC or WAVES uniform. When new clothes could be found, they looked similar to those of the 1930s. For boys, knickers, pants that ended just below the knee and tucked into high argyle socks,


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remained popular. In 1940, before rationing, the Sears, Roebuck catalog advertised suits with either one or two pairs of knickers, each with the addition of a long pair of pants. Boys often wore scaled-down versions of their fathers’ suits, although with short pants. Jackets also resembled those of adults, and long pants with attached suspenders were worn for school and play. Just as men’s clothing took on a more casual air after the war, so did boys’. Dress-up, two-piece suits continued to be popular as did sports outfits for the “little fellow.” Again, the styles mimicked those for men, offering broad-shouldered jackets with wide lapels and slacks with pleats and cuffs. Gabardine and blue denim pants cut in a Western style, including wide, rolled-up cuffs were popular. Just as men donned Hawaiian shirts, boys appeared at the beach or pool in swimwear consisting of matching trunks and shirts in bright colors and patterns advertised as “styled in the California manner.” Little girls, as in previous decades, dressed like children. They wore dresses with natural waistlines, full skirts, and puffed sleeves, sometimes decorated with embroidery trimming. Favorite materials included gabardine, cotton, flannel, wool, chambray, or corduroy. Pinafores, sun suits, and playsuits held great appeal, as did occasional matching mother-and-daughter dresses made in the same style from the same fabric. A popular money-saving gimmick after the war involved dressing all the children in a family alike. Toward the end of the decade, playsuits for children under school age featured Walt Disney cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Playwear for young girls came in one-piece and two- piece outfits of both gay and plain prints. Some had short skirts, others fell just to the knee, and some consisted of shorts with a cover dress. Casual pants had lengths that ranged from that of shorts, to just below the knee, to a couple of inches above the ankle, to the floor. For both boys and girls alike, T-shirts gained popularity. Clothing for youth underwent more drastic changes. Two prominent fads originated in the 1940s. Adolescent girls called bobby-soxers and known as enthusiastic fans of crooner Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) sported loafers or two-tone saddle shoes and socks rolled down to ankle level. At the same time, a handful of teenage boys and young men made news wearing zoot suits—a long, fitted jacket with padded shoulders and multibutton sleeves worn with trousers with a high waist and legs cut full in the thigh and pegged at the ankle. The restrictions surrounding materials and the manufacture of clothing helped to bring this last fad to an end because it used too much cloth. Condemnations from preachers and government officials also hastened its demise. The zoot suit did, however, influence the cut and fullness of men’s coats produced after the war. During the later 1940s, many felt that the dress of adolescent boys conformed to a pattern of sloppiness. A typical classroom uniform consisted of a flannel shirt with tail flapping and opened enough to show the white T-shirt worn underneath, blue jeans with rolled cuffs, white socks, and loafers. For Saturdays, the outfit would change a little with a tailless sport shirt over a regular shirt and saddle shoes. Attire for a date consisted of a V-necked sweater over a shirt or a jacket and tie, a hat, and oxford shoes. Whatever the outfit, standard equipment included a comb in the back pocket for keeping a wavy pompadour in place.


Fast Food | 321 Adolescent girls became their own entity in the world of fashion; advertising built a case that they were neither children nor women and needed their own appropriate sizes and styles. Department stores began to cater to this age group with clothing sections devoted to them. In 1944, a new periodical titled Seventeen appeared on newsstands and successfully advanced the concept of an identifiable teenage market, especially for girls. Sweater sets worn over narrow skirts that flared at the knee and influenced by the appearance of Lana Turner (1921–1995) in films in the late 1930s, particularly Love Finds Andy Hardy (MGM, 1938), became a necessity for young women. Turner would later be seen as alluring and provocative, dressed in tight-fitting sweaters, and quickly became known as the “Sweater Girl” and sweater sets rose in popularity and retained that status into the 1950s. College-bound women showed partiality to clothes provided by the B. H. Wragge Company (1920–1971), manufacturers of a collection of separates—jackets, skirts, vests, blouses, jumpers, shirtwaist dresses, and coats—which allowed for a lot of mixing and matching, an important feature of the growing American ready-to-wear fashions and the college student desiring to be well dressed. Fashions during the 1940s experienced a number of changes. In 1941, the manufacturing of war goods took center stage as the U.S. government directed most of its resources toward winning the war. Thus, every yard of cloth, every button, and every silk and nylon stocking became crucial to victory. After restrictions and willing sacrifices during the war, Americans eagerly embraced new designs, and the fashion world responded with clothes just as exciting as their new homes, new cars, and prosperous way of life. See also: Atomic Bomb, The; Leisure and Recreation; Magazines; Rationing; Westerns (Films); Women in the Military: WACs, WASPs, WAVES, SPARS, and Others. Selected Reading Clothing Regulations and Availability: New York Times, January 5, 1941; April 9, 1942; October 18, 1942; August 1, 1942; February 2, 1945; November 25, 1946. www.proquest.com Mulvey, Kate, and Melissa Richards. Decades of Beauty: The Changing Image of Women, 1890s– 1990s. New York: Checkmark Books, 1998. Olian, JoAnne, ed. Everyday Fashions of the Forties: As Pictured in Sears Catalogs. New York: Dover, 1992. Wartime and postwar fashions: Life magazine. “Flying Fortress Fashions,” May 17, 1943; “Teen-Age Boys,” June 11, 1945; “Life Presents a Review of Fall Fashions,” May 22, 1947.

FAST FOOD Sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s, the words “fast food” entered everyday American speech. The term refers to food that can be prepared easily and served quickly. An industry built around fast food developed throughout the 20th century, beginning with simple-menu, quick-eating establishments—taverns, coffee shops, tea rooms, diners, automats, sandwich shops, soda fountains, luncheonettes, and food carts and stands. Before the automobile became the primary source of transportation


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for Americans, these eateries tended to be in the downtown sections of a city or other areas where large numbers of people congregated, such as industrial sites. With the growing use of cars, fast food businesses began appearing on highway shoulders or set back on lots adjacent to the road. White Castle, a pioneer hamburger stand and the first major fast-food chain, opened its earliest walk-in site in 1921. Located in Wichita, Kansas, and close to factories, it easily accommodated those who had arrived in the area by trolley, bus, or foot. Its immediate success prompted founders Edgar W. Ingram (Billy, 1880–1966) and Walter L. Anderson (1880–1963) to expand, and soon other White Castles dotted the city and nearby communities. The chain offered a limited menu that emphasized hamburgers and inexpensive, good-tasting food with consistent quality. Operating 24 hours a day, these stands employed distinctive, bright, white architectural motifs that reflected their name; they soon became a model for other urban food stands. White Tower (1926), Krystal (1932), Steak ’n Shake (1934), Rockybilt (1936), Bob’s Big Boy (1936), and Royal Castle (1938) all trace their lineage back to the original White Castles. With the increased affordability and popularization of automobiles, establishments such as roadside diners, restaurants, and food stands could easily be patronized by growing numbers of people. From 1930 to 1940, motor vehicle miles driven in the United States jumped from 206 billion to 302 billion annually. As the miles grew, so did the demand for road food. Both the war and postwar years witnessed a strong emergence of food stands in three varieties: walk-ins, drive-ins, and drive-throughs. Initially, they all served primarily hamburgers and/or hot dogs. Food and labor shortages during World War II, along with rationing, caused hardships for businesses, and many of the smaller food stands closed their doors. On the other hand, the war and good fortune coincided when Carl and Margaret Karcher (1917–2008 and 1915–2006) purchased a hot dog stand across from a Goodyear Factory in Los Angeles, five months before the United States entered the conflict in December 1941. Employment at the plant soared, and the Karchers did a booming business; soon one cart became five. In 1944, they opened a family restaurant and, in 1956, moved into another level of the fast-food industry with Carl’s Jr., a hamburger chain that still operates on the West Coast. Understanding the wisdom of catering to automobile travelers, many fast-food establishments during the late 1930s and early 1940s operated as drive-ins and offered curb service provided by young men or women dressed in uniforms. Called carhops, they brought the food to the customers who had remained seated in their cars, the ultimate in convenience at the time. Two brothers, Maurice and Richard McDonald (1902–1971; 1909–1998), moved to California from New Hampshire in 1920. In 1937, they entered the walk-in food stand business with the Airdrome in Arcadia, California, a place where they sold hot dogs, orange juice, coffee, and tea. The McDonald brothers soon realized the value of running the business as a drive-in and, in 1939, moved their operation to a location in San Bernardino that would accommodate this approach. In 1940, they held a grand opening for McDonald’s Barbeque Restaurant. It featured a 25-item menu that included barbeque ribs and beef and pork sandwiches served by 20 carhops to customers waiting in their cars.


Fast Food | 323 The McDonalds struggled during the war but managed to stay open. Their expenses grew, caused primarily by employee wages, and the output of the carhops dissatisfied them. As a result, the McDonalds studied ways to improve business. After some research, they settled on what they saw as two essential components— hamburgers and young families. They discovered that 80 percent of their sales came from a single ground beef patty served on a bun, and they foresaw that growing numbers of postwar households would constitute a significant market. The baby boom had begun, and young families would be looking for efficient, economical, and easy ways to eat. Moving forward on their findings, the McDonalds closed their barbeque restaurant in 1948 and two months later reopened as a self-service facility. They used the concepts of speed, lower prices, and volume to formulate a new approach to food preparation and service. The newly named McDonald’s featured a “Speedee Service System” selling hamburgers at a bargain 15 cents apiece ($1.29 in 2008 dollars; the competitive price was then 30 cents [$2.58]), cheeseburgers, three soft drink flavors, milk, coffee, potato chips, and pie. Soon French fries for 10 cents (86 cents in 2008 money) and milkshakes could also be purchased. The McDonald brothers changed from the use of carhops to counter service and reengineered the stainless steel kitchen for mass production, using efficient assembly-line procedures. The fast-food industry, as it is known today, was born. The McDonald brothers did not see an immediate and significant growth with their redesigned San Bernardino site, but by the mid-1950s, they had achieved close to double the volume of their previous drive-in business, coupled with a corresponding increase in annual revenues. They had also expanded to nine franchises. Because they quickly filled orders, the McDonalds attracted the attention of salesman Ray Kroc (1902–1984), a man who envisioned an eatery that mass produced many more items than hamburgers and milkshakes. He convinced the brothers he should be their franchising agent and, by the late 1950s, had purchased the entire chain, along with their name, a business deal that ultimately resulted in McDonald’s in locations all across the United States and throughout the world. Franchising had been practiced since the early 1900s, mainly by automobile manufacturers, gasoline companies, and soft drink producers. The system grants independently owned businesses the right to sell the manufacturer’s products. This method provided entrepreneurs such as Howard Johnson (1896–1972) in the 1930s and the McDonald brothers, Ray Kroc, and William Rosenberg (1916–2002) of Dunkin Donuts in the 1940s a way to expand retail operations without expending too much precious capital. It also allowed people in communities around the country to start their own business without risking everything on a new, and possibly unknown, venture. For the consumer, fast food franchise networks guaranteed three features: a recognized trademark, a uniform product, and fast service. Additional entrepreneurs entered the fast-food industry during the 1940s, but they did not achieve enduring stability until the 1950s. Harry and Esther Snyder (1913– 1976; 1920–2006) greeted their first customers at In-N-Out Burger in Baldwin Park, California, in 1948 with the unique feature of ordering over an intercom system. This gave customers a means to speak directly to an attendant in the building. Others soon


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created the drive-through, whereby after ordering over a speaker, the driver moved to a window for pick-up. The Snyders’ menu of hamburgers, cheeseburgers, French fries, sodas, and milkshakes elicited a good response, and in 1951 they opened a second site. By 1976, In-N-Out Burger had grown to 18 locations, a low number in the fast-growing fastfood industry, because the Snyders’ decided not to franchise their additional sites. Harmon Dobson (d. 1967) founded a similar chain, Whataburger, in 1950 in Corpus Christi, Texas. One of the few fast-food restaurants to initially open outside California, Whataburger continues today to operate franchises primarily in the South and Midwest. Following the success of the McDonald brothers, much of the early fast-food industry grew up in southern California. But it quickly spread eastward, and as it did so, the food selection broadened beyond hot dogs, hamburgers, and cheeseburgers. In 1940, Harland Sanders (1890–1980), better known as Colonel Sanders (an honorary rank bestowed on him in 1935 by the governor of Kentucky) had perfected his Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe, something he first sold in a restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky, throughout the 1930s. He moved into the chain business when, in 1952, a Salt Lake City businessman opened the first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. Today, Kentucky Fried Chicken (or KFC) can be bought both nationally and internationally and offers a variety of chicken items as well as other kinds of food. The success stories in American fast food are many. William Rosenberg founded Industrial Luncheon Services in 1946 in suburban Boston. He sold sandwiches, coffee, and baked goods from trucks. By 1948, his enterprise had grown to 140 trucks, and he discovered that doughnuts were a consistent seller. To better concentrate on this commodity, Rosenberg opened a small shop called The Open Kettle in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1948. Two years later and with five stores, he changed the name to Dunkin’ Donuts and sold his first franchise in 1955. Like many other providers of fast food, this chain can be found throughout the United States and around the world. Similarly, Winchell’s Donut House, owned and operated by Verne Winchell (1915– 2002), first opened in Temple City, California, in 1948. It continues today as a successful West Coast chain with a few international sites. Known as the home of the Warm ’n Fresh Donut, Winchell’s serves over 70 varieties of doughnuts and bakery products and earned for its founder the nickname, “the Donut King.” J. F. McCullough and his son Alex (both active 1930s and 1940s) owned a dairy shop in Davenport, Iowa, where they made a soft ice cream. Based on their successful 1938 introductory sale of this soft frozen product, they continued to perfect their continuous freeze process and, in 1940, Sherwood (Sherb) Noble (1908–1991) opened a Dairy Queen franchise in Joliet, Illinois. World War II defense industries needed the materials used in manufacturing the machines for producing soft ice cream and caused a wartime halt to expansion. After the war, Dairy Queen made a quick comeback and boasted 17 franchises by 1946. Two years later, the business expanded to include malts and milkshakes. Banana splits joined the menu in 1953, and, by 1955, Dairy Queen boasted 2,600 sites. Today it offers a variety of venues ranging from seasonal roadside ice cream stands to walk-ins, drive-ins, drive-throughs, and sit-down dining for a multitude of soft serve items, as well as hamburgers, hot dogs, and fries.


Film Noir | 325 Irvine Robbins (1917–2008), newly out of the military in 1945, opened the Snowbird Ice Cream Shop in Glendale, California. Just one year later, his brother-in-law, Burton Baskin (1913–1967), founded Burton’s Ice Cream Shop in Pasadena, California. By 1948, the two owned six stores between them and, in 1953, decided to consolidate and form Baskin-Robbins. They offered complimentary taste spoons for customers to sample their 31 flavors, enough kinds of ice cream to outnumber Howard Johnson’s famous 28, and provided ice cream connoisseurs with a different taste each day of the month. Like Dairy Queen, this chain can be found worldwide. The advancement of the fast-food industry during the 1940s perhaps marks the most far- reaching development in food and dining for the decade. It laid a firm foundation for phenomenal growth in the 1950s. Of the many entrepreneurs who at the time ventured into this new business, several immediately expanded their operations. Those who imitated White Castle’s simplicity and consistency and McDonald’s speed and efficiency usually realized sustained success. Hot dogs and hamburgers, along with fried chicken, ice cream, and doughnuts, established a basic menu that proved popular. Later, pizza, fish, ethnic foods, and submarine sandwiches joined in leading to a contemporary array that also includes tacos, prepackaged salads and sandwiches, and even espresso. See also: Beverages; Desserts, Candy, and Ice Cream; Travel Selected Reading Jakle, John A., and Keith A. Sculle. Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Smith, Andrew F. Encyclopedia of Junk Food and Fast Food. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. Witzel, Michael Karl, and Tom Steil. Classic Roadside Americana. New York: MBI, 2006.

FILM NOIR One particular style, or genre, of motion picture always associated with the 1940s carries a French name, film noir, which roughly translates as “black movie.” The “black/noir” refers to the darkness, both psychological and visual, that permeates such productions. The films that fall into this category overrode all the gangster, detective, police procedural, and whodunit movies of the day in both audience appeal and critical acclaim. Although the film noir movement lasted only about a dozen years—approximately 1940 until the early 1950s—the pictures falling under its umbrella have come to be among the top-rated ones of the decade, especially in the area of crime and mystery films. A typical film noir scene can be described in a few words: nighttime in an urban setting, with flickering neon signs haloed in misty rain; a figure wearing a trench coat, water dripping off a battered fedora, stands beneath a dim streetlight. Shadows and smoke curling from a cigarette mask his face, but passing headlights create sharp contrasts with the surrounding darkness. He doubtless waits for a woman, a femme fatale, who will in the end do him no good.


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By the end of the film noir cycle, such scenes had become virtual clichés, as did the battered hero (or antihero, in many cases). A distinct style in terms of cinema aesthetics, film noir grew out of the gothic romanticism of the 19th century, early 20th-century European expressionism, the pulp magazines and mystery stories of the 1920s, and the dark horror pictures so popular in the 1930s. Almost always shot in black and white, the genre presents a threatening, uncertain world, a milieu in which characters experience at best limited success, and the differences between good and evil can be as murky as the stylistics. The possibilities of capturing the ambiguities of crime appealed to a number of directors, some of whom emerged as box Tough guys, sultry dames, guns, and exaggerated shadowing are among the characteristics office draws in their own right. Many of of film noir, a motion picture genre that gained them had come to the United States from its greatest fame in the 1940s. This publicity Europe prior to World War II and, given shot for 1942’s The Glass Key shows Alan Ladd events in their homelands, perhaps brought and Veronica Lake providing just such dramatic with them a darker, gloomier view of interest. (Sunset Boulevard/Corbis) human nature than that espoused by their cheerier U.S. counterparts. For example, the celebrated directors listed in Table 50, all European emigrants and all contemporaries, at one time or another in their careers worked in the film noir genre, creating some of the major achievements within the category. Carol Reed (1906–1976), another outstanding director from abroad, was born in London and did not move to the United States. Although he remained in England, his films were widely seen in the States and significantly influenced the development of the genre, most notably Odd Man Out (1947) and The Third Man (1949). Numerous American directors working in film noir also significantly influenced the genre; Table 51 identifies some of the leaders in the field. As far as concerns the films themselves, the following titles merit attention. It can be seen in Table 52 that the movement begins slowly in the first years of the decade but, by the mid-1940s, has gathered considerable momentum, maintaining a full-blown production schedule through 1949, and would continue that pace into the early 1950s. Following the widespread use of color instead of black-and-white photography, plus such innovations as wider screens and more special effects, the dark, almost claustrophobic imagery of film noir fell out of favor, and it ceased to be a significant component of Hollywood productions in the later 1950s. A number of the titles listed below can also be found in the Crime and Mystery Films, Drama (Film), and Horror and Thriller Films entries elsewhere in this encyclopedia. Many film noir pictures focus on either crimes or mysteries, and virtually all of them involve tense, dramatic situations.


Film Noir | 327 TABLE 50.

Notable Foreign-Born Directors Working in American Film Noir

Director

Place of Birth

Selected Films

Michael Curtiz (1886–1962)

Budapest, Hungary

Casablanca, 1942 Mildred Pierce, 1945 The Unsuspected, 1947 Flamingo Road, 1949

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980)

London, England

Suspicion, 1941 Shadow of a Doubt, 1943 Notorious, 1946 Rope, 1948

Boris Ingster (1903–1978)

Riga, Latvia

Stranger on the Third Floor, 1940

Fritz Lang (1890–1976)

Vienna, Austria

Ministry of Fear, 1944 The Woman in the Window, 1944 Scarlet Street, 1945 Secret Beyond the Door, 1948

Anatole Litvak (1902–1974)

Kiev, Russia

The Long Night, 1947 The Snake Pit, 1948 Sorry, Wrong Number,1948

Rudolph Mate (1898–1964)

Cracow, Poland

The Dark Past, 1948 D.O.A., 1950

Lewis Milestone (1895–1980)

Kishinew, Russia

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, 1946

Otto Preminger (1906–1986)

Vienna, Austria

Laura, 1944 Fallen Angel, 1945

Robert Siodmak (1900–1973)

Dresden, Germany

Phantom Lady, 1944 Christmas Holiday, 1944 The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, 1945 The Spiral Staircase, 1946 The Killers, 1946

Josef von Sternberg (1894–1969)

Vienna, Austria

The Shanghai Gesture, 1942

Jacques Tourneur (1904–1977)

Paris, France

The Leopard Man, 1943 Out of the Past, 1947 Berlin Express, 1948

Edgar G. Ulmer (1904–1972)

Olmutz, Austria

Detour, 1945 The Strange Woman, 1946 Ruthless, 1949

Billy Wilder (1906–2002)

Sucha, Austria

Double Indemnity, 1944


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| Film Noir TABLE 51.

Notable American-Born Directors Working in Film Noir

Director

Selected Films

George Cukor (1899–1983)

Gaslight, 1944

Edward Dmytryk (1908–1999; born in Canada)

Murder My Sweet, 1944 [also known as Farewell My Lovely in the United Kingdom] Cornered, 1945 Crossfire, 1947

Howard Hawks (1896–1977)

To Have and Have Not, 1944 The Big Sleep, 1946

John Huston (1906–1987)

The Maltese Falcon, 1941 Key Largo, 1948

Nicholas Ray (1911–1979)

They Live by Night, 1948 Knock on Any Door, 1949 A Woman’s Secret, 1949

Frank Tuttle (1892–1963)

The Glass Key,1935 [remade in 1942 with director Stuart Heisler (1896–1979); see below] This Gun for Hire, 1942

Orson Welles (1915–1985)

Citizen Kane, 1941 The Stranger, 1946 The Lady from Shanghai, 1948

TABLE 52.

Representative Film Noir Movies, 1940 –1949

Year

Film Titles

Stars

1940

Rebecca Stranger on the Third Floor They Drive by Night

Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook Jr. Humphrey Bogart, George Raft

1941

Among the Living Citizen Kane High Sierra I Wake Up Screaming The Maltese Falcon Suspicion

Albert Dekker, Susan Hayward Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino Betty Grable, Victor Mature Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine

1942

Casablanca The Glass Key* Johnny Eager The Shanghai Gesture This Gun for Hire

Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake Robert Taylor, Lana Turner Gene Tierney, Victor Mature Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake

1943

Journey Into Fear The Leopard Man Shadow of a Doubt

Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton Dennis O’Keefe, Margo Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotton


Film Noir | 329 Year 1944

Film Titles Christmas Holiday Double Indemnity Gaslight Laura Ministry of Fear Murder My Sweet [also known as Farewell My Lovely in the United Kingdom] Phantom Lady To Have and Have Not The Woman in the Window

1945

Cornered Detour Fallen Angel Lady on a Train Leave Her to Heaven Mildred Pierce The Red House Scarlet Street

1946

The Big Sleep The Dark Corner Decoy Gilda The Killers Notorious Somewhere in the Night The Spiral Staircase The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry The Strange Love of Martha Ivers The Stranger Undercurrent

1947

Born to Kill Brute Force Calcutta Crossfire Fear in the Night Lady in the Lake The Long Night Nightmare Alley Out of the Past They Won’t Believe Me T-Men The Unsuspected

Stars Deanna Durbin, Gene Kelly Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews Ray Milland, Dan Duryea Dick Powell, Claire Trevor Franchot Tone, Elisha Cook Jr. Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett Dick Powell, Walter Slezak Tom Neal, Ann Savage Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell Deanna Durbin, Ralph Bellamy Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott Edward G. Robinson, Judith Anderson Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall Lucille Ball, Clifton Webb Jean Gillie, Robert Armstrong Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman John Hodiak, Lloyd Nolan Dorothy McGuire, Ethel Barrymore George Sanders, Geraldine Fitzgerald Barbara Stanwyck, Kirk Douglas Orson Welles, Edward G. Robinson Katharine Hepburn, Robert Mitchum Lawrence Tierney, Claire Trevor Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn Alan Ladd, William Bendix Robert Young, Robert Ryan Paul Kelly, DeForest Kelley Robert Montgomery, Audrey Totter Henry Fonda, Vincent Price Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas Robert Young, Susan Hayward Dennis O’Keefe, Wallace Ford Claude Rains, Joan Caulfield (continued )


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| FM Radio TABLE 52.

(continued)

Year 1948

Film Titles

Stars

Act of Violence Berlin Express The Dark Past Force of Evil Key Largo

Robert Ryan, Van Heflin Robert Ryan, Merle Oberon William Holden, Lee J. Cobb John Garfield, Marie Windsor Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth Dane Clark, Gail Russell Howard Duff, Barry Fitzgerald Dennis O’Keefe, Claire Trevor Zachary Scott, Louis Hayward Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster Farley Granger, Cathy O’Donnell

The Lady from Shanghai Moonrise The Naked City Raw Deal Ruthless Sorry, Wrong Number They Live by Night 1949

C-Man Criss Cross Flamingo Road Knock on Any Door Manhandled Thieves’ Highway The Third Man Tokyo Joe

Dean Jagger, John Carradine Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott Humphrey Bogart, John Derek Dorothy Lamour, Sterling Hayden Lee J. Cobb, Richard Conte Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton Humphrey; Bogart, Alexander Knox James Cagney, Virginia Mayo Bobby Driscoll, Paul Stewart Maureen O’Hara, Melvyn Douglas

White Heat The Window A Woman’s Secret

* This version, directed by Stuart Heisler (1896–1979), came after Frank Tuttle’s (1892–1963) production of 1935; many consider the Tuttle interpretation a pioneering example of film noir.

A brief moment in movie history, and one primarily limited to the 1940s, film noir has exerted a lasting influence on motion pictures. Visually, the dark, expressionistic frames of a classic film noir tale can still be found in many productions, particularly mysteries. The pessimistic, often amoral stories have likewise carried over into many postnoir films, perhaps reflecting the continuing anxieties of the present. See also: Best Sellers (Books); Fashion Selected Reading Naremore, James. More than Night: Film Noir and Its Contexts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Robson, Eddie. Film Noir. London: Virgin Books, 2005. Silver, Alain, and Elizabeth Ward. Film Noir: An Encyclopedia of the American Style. Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 1992.

FM RADIO Although most developments in the 20th-century history of radio broadcasting came about because of numerous group efforts, the rise of FM (frequency modulation) can © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

FM Radio | 331 be attributed primarily to one man, Edwin H. Armstrong (1890–1954). A brilliant engineer with several radio-related inventions to his credit, Armstrong became wealthy through his improvements in radio circuitry, and it allowed him to work independently. The concept of modulating frequency had been understood since the 1900s, but most engineers of the day thought FM would introduce distortion into a signal and eventually dropped the idea. They instead believed that ever-stronger AM (amplitude modulation) signals could overpower distortion, and so they looked to boosting the strength of existing stations. In the late 1920s, Armstrong came to the realization that the standard channel for an AM signal, which measured 10 kilohertz (kHz, a measurement for defining the number of cycles per second), proved too narrow to eliminate static from radio broadcasts. He widened the channel to 200 kHz and found that static and interference from adjacent channels disappeared. He also discovered that FM, contrary to then-common belief, can faithfully reproduce a wide range of accurate sound while using relatively low power. He quickly applied for patents on his findings and how he achieved them in 1930; he received patent protection in 1933. He then convinced the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) of the feasibility inherent in FM signals, despite RCA’s dominance in traditional AM broadcasting. At first, RCA seemed receptive to his ideas but eventually began to view any improvements in Armstrong’s inventions as threatening to its extensive network of AM stations. As a significant stockholder in the corporation, he had often utilized RCA facilities for his research, until the corporate giant in 1935 denied him further access to company technology and equipment. On his own and confident, Armstrong went ahead with plans for FM broadcasting, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1935 authorized 13 experimental channels for tests. He built a prototype station in Alpine, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York City, constructing a transmission tower from which he sent FM signals to associates with receivers capable of picking them up. These tests proved successful, and soon over 20 other test stations were on the air, and the future of FM looked bright. By this time, the Yankee Network, a loose confederation of AM stations in New England, considered emergent FM in a favorable light and, using Armstrong’s technology, opened its first FM station in 1939. A number of others also commenced operation later that year and into 1940, leading several electronics firms to begin manufacturing FM receivers. With such encouraging results, Armstrong persuaded the FCC to approve the broadcasting of commercial FM signals at the beginning of 1941. RCA, wanting to squash this potential threat to its networks, offered to buy out Armstrong’s FM patents, but he refused. At the end of 1941, World War II engaged the energies of the United States and brought most nondefense radio experimentation and expansion to a halt. Despite the war, the FCC approved FM as the sound medium for television broadcasting and allocated new, wider bandwidths (the markings on a radio dial represent these channels) for this purpose in 1944. In making this allocation, the FCC specified bandwidths different from those that had been utilized in the later 1930s. The commission’s move effectively rendered obsolete any older transmitters, along with some 400,000 receivers built prior to the war. When the final cessation of hostilities occurred in the autumn of 1945, Armstrong challenged the FCC decisions, which resulted in a long, drawn-out legal battle that lasted until 1948. RCA, waiting in the wings, jumped at this © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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opportunity and claimed to have developed its own FM circuitry independent of Armstrong; the company began to utilize its FM components in the sound receivers found in its postwar TV sets. Armstrong again went to court, this time against RCA. Legal fees and the lack of royalties from his previous patents for his earlier FM inventions worked to destroy Armstrong’s health. The inventor of modern-day FM committed suicide in 1954. Ironically, the courts in 1967 eventually decided the lawsuits in his favor. While all the legal wrangling went on, various entrepreneurs applied for FM licenses in the postwar years. These applicants foresaw a booming market for FM in the later 1940s, but most would be disappointed. The FCC doled out over 80 percent of its broadcast licenses to those parties already associated with AM broadcasting. These owners convinced officials that any start-up risks involved were lessened by those actively engaged in broadcasting, plus they could immediately duplicate the programming already found on their AM stations until their FM colleagues were up and running on their own. To rein in expenses, many applicants initially continued to broadcast regular network AM shows over FM and then slowly substituted “good music” (primarily classical) on their FM franchises. Few, however, attempted to produce any original programming for FM outside of recordings, a factor that discouraged potential sponsors. They knew full well that the postwar FM audience, generally older listeners interested in serious music, constituted a demographic that caused them to withhold their advertising dollars, spending them instead on a more youthful mass AM market. Despite what appears to be prodigious growth in FM stations, 1949 marked the high-water mark for postwar FM start-ups. In subsequent years, the number would fall off sharply as existing stations folded and no new ones came along to replace them. In 1958, as a point of reference, the number of FM stations grew to 548, the first increase since 1949 but well behind that year’s figure. Given the limited menu available on FM in the late 1940s along with the high cost of new, compatible FM receivers, few listeners wanted to make the investment. The enthusiasm found among the first flurry of station applicants also died down, while AM radio and television outlets continued to grow rapidly. The revival of FM would not occur until the later 1950s and early 1960s, a time when the FCC sanctioned FM stereo signals and forbade the duplication of AM programming on the FM band. A radio medium attracting a distinct niche audience, FM struggled during this difficult postwar period, whereas AM and TV became the reigning electronic media.

TABLE 53.

The Postwar Growth of AM and FM Radio Stations, 1945–1950

Year

AM Stations on the Air

FM Stations on the Air

1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950

931 (24 additional authorized) 961 (254 additional authorized) 1,298 (497 additional authorized) 1,693 (331 additional authorized) 2,006 (173 additional authorized) 2,144 (159 additional authorized)

46 (19 additional authorized) 55 (401 additional authorized) 238 (680 additional authorized) 587 (433 additional authorized) 737 (128 additional authorized) 691 (61 additional authorized)


Folk Music | 333 See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Classical Music; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows Selected Reading Barnouw, Erik. A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Vol. 1, A Tower in Babel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966. ———. A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Vol. 2, The Golden Web. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Sterling, Christopher H., and John M. Kitross. Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1990.

FOLK MUSIC In 1940, RCA Victor Records issued Dust Bowl Ballads, a collection of songs written and performed by rural folk singer Woody Guthrie (1912–1967), telling about his life during the Great Depression. Many numbers in the collection, such as “Dust Bowl Blues” and “I Ain’t Got No Home in This World Anymore” (both ca. 1935–1938), “The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd” (1939), and “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh (Dusty Old Dust)” (1940) rank among his best and contributed to the growing popularity of folk music during the 1940s. This musical genre originated through the oral transmission of a story of some importance or a lesson about everyday life. For the United States, much folk music can be traced to the Appalachian Mountains of the Southeast during the early colonial period. By the 1920s, when radio and recordings enabled songs to be widely disseminated, some individuals saw commercial value in folk tunes and ventured into the southern Appalachian mountains to record folk musicians. From these efforts, interests in songs about economic hardship, such as the ones by Guthrie, and protest numbers about labor injustices in Kentucky and West Virginia enjoyed a following. Performers like Sarah Ogan Gunning (1910–1983) and Florence Reese (1900–1986) also attracted attention and demonstrated the increased popularity of this musical tradition. Guthrie, in addition to cutting Dust Bowl Ballads, recorded four hours of songs and stories for folklorist Alan Lomax (1915–2002) and his Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Song project at around the same time. Two years later, the first record album from Lomax’s work became available for purchase. While collaborating with Lomax, Guthrie also wrote what may be his best-known piece, “This Land Is Your Land” (1940, originally titled “God Blessed America for Me”), in reaction to Tin Pan Alley composer Irving Berlin’s (1888–1989) “God Bless America” (1938), which Guthrie considered unrealistic. A prolific composer, Guthrie in 1941 gained a commission from the U.S. Department of the Interior to write numbers for a public information film promoting the building of the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. From this collection of 26 songs, came such well-known pieces as “Roll On Columbia,” “Hard Traveling,” and “Pastures of Plenty.” After moving to New York City in 1940, Guthrie actively participated in a folk music reawakening occurring there, which led to his joining the Almanac Singers, a folk trio formed by Pete Seeger (b. 1919), Lee Hays (1914–1981), and Millard Lampell


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(1919–1997). Throughout the trio’s brief history, other singers floated in and out of the group, many of them active in left-wing politics and/or the Communist Party. The Almanac Singers held their first major public appearance in May 1941 at Madison Square Garden for the striking Transport Workers’ Union. Highly successful, they next recorded four albums—one of antiwar songs (released before the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor), one of union songs, and two of traditional folk songs. They also embarked upon a road trip singing at colleges, union meetings, migrant camps, antifascist rallies, and on street corners. Once back home from their travels, the Almanac Singers established the Almanac House, a co-op apartment in Greenwich Village, where they lived and held weekly hootenannies, an old word revived in Seattle and brought to New York by Guthrie and Seeger. It describes lively evenings of music. For these gatherings, the music also often contained political commentary. But when the United States officially entered World War II, the focus of their music changed from labor and political protest to support of the country’s war efforts. To validate their seriousness, Seeger joined the army, where he entertained troops, and Guthrie enlisted in the Merchant Marine. After World War II, Seeger returned to New York City and helped form People’s Songs, Inc., a union of folksingers and songwriters. He worked as the national director and oversaw the publication of People’s Song, the first magazine devoted exclusively to folk music. In 1949, People’s Song went bankrupt; Seeger had been a member of the Communist Party since 1942, and in the emerging Cold War atmosphere between the United States and the Soviet Union, organized labor turned against radicalism and anyone seemingly involved with the USSR. A folk magazine may have gone out of business, but folk music did not die. Seeger and Lee Hays cowrote “If I Had a Hammer” (1949), and Seeger formed a musical quartet, this time composed of himself, Hays from the defunct Almanac Singers, Fred Hellerman (b. 1927), and Ronnie Gilbert (b. 1926). The foursome called themselves The Weavers, the title of an 1892 tragedy by German playwright Gerhart (Johann Robert) Hauptmann (1862–1946), first performed in 1893. Their songs’ lyrics were clearly folk oriented, while their arrangements leaned more to pop, thus bringing an entirely new audience to folk music. The Weavers soon landed a six-month contract at the Village Vanguard, a popular New York City nightclub that featured music, usually jazz. They had a hit with their own Kisses Sweeter Than Wine in 1951, and throughout the 1950s their popularized versions of traditional folk songs, such as “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh (Dusty Old Dust)” and “On Top of Old Smoky,” gave them several best-selling recordings. Moses (Moe) Asch (1905–1986), founder in 1948 of the Folkways record label, made a major contribution toward strengthening the place of folk music in the American musical mainstream. Early on, Asch recorded Guthrie, Seeger, and others considered at the time to be at the center of a folk music revival. In 1952, Folkway Records released a six-LP Anthology of American Folk Music, and today the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, administered by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, holds all of Asch’s Folkways recordings and business files. Burl Ives (1909–1995), another performer active in New York City in the early 1940s, also contributed to the growth of folk music at that time. Interested in acting and


Food | 335 singing, Ives contracted with both NBC (National Broadcasting Company) and CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) radio networks for weekly shows. Airing on various days in many time slots, he used several different program names—Back Where I Came From, The Burl Ives Coffee Club, God’s Country, and the title he used most often, The Wayfaring Stranger. During these programs, Ives sang and told stories from his extensive travels across the United States during the 1930s. He popularized several traditional folk songs such as “Lavender Blue,” “Foggy Foggy Dew,” and “The Erie Canal.” During the postwar years, Ives published an autobiography, The Wayfaring Stranger, in 1948; he made his film debut as a singing cowboy in Smoky (1946), and appeared in several Broadway shows (musicals) and additional movies. From its origins, folk music has focused on important issues of a given time. With the Great Depression, the genre experienced a resurgence in the 1930s because of how it reflected the difficulties of that decade. Unsatisfactory labor conditions gave rise to protest songs, setting the stage for Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger to be among the leading promoters of the style during the 1940s. The formation of the Almanac Singers offered the first group of trained musicians who got together for the purpose of singing folk music in a commercial context. Next came the Weavers and the first folk-pop singers who made an effort to divorce themselves from politics. The Weavers enjoyed considerable popularity and became one of the most influential groups in folk music history. Others followed in the 1950s and 1960s, carrying folk music forward. Over these decades, individuals such as Alan Lomax and Moe Asch recorded this rich musical history, preserving it for generations to come. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Best Sellers (Books); BoogieWoogie; Country Music; Labor Unrest; Magazines; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows Selected Reading Denisoff, R. Serge, and Richard A. Peterson, eds. The Sounds of Social Change. New York: Rand McNally, 1972. Ewen, David. All the Years of American Popular Music. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1977. Santelli, Robert, Holly George-Warren, and Jim Brown, eds. American Roots Music. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001.

FOOD Most Americans had recovered from the hardships of the Great Depression by the end of the 1930s, and they expected a growing economy to offer a more promising future. The entry of the United States into World War II, however, changed life drastically. In particular, food and diets during the first half of the 1940s contrasted sharply with both the pre- and postwar years. During the conflict, people on the home front experienced some shortages, although no one went hungry. Rationing, victory gardens, canning and preserving, nutrition, the Basic Seven, and recommended daily allowances (RDAs) served as ways of coping. With a resurgent economy and flourishing consumer culture, the postwar years


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brought about unparalleled abundance. This included huge jumps in the variety of processed, convenience, frozen, and fast foods. New appliances in new kitchens, including backyard barbecue equipment, allowed homemakers a variety of ways to prepare this outpouring of products. Finally, over the decade, prewar regional differences in food consumption gradually shifted to somewhat homogeneous eating patterns across the country. After the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, in an effort to energize public opinion, governmental publications and commercial advertising presented a common theme of women playing a crucial role in winning the war. Slogans such as “There’s a War Job in Every Kitchen” A massive educational program attempted to underscored the idea that cooking nutri- improve the health of all Americans. It was one tious food from victory gardens and the of the first tasks for the Office of Health Defense and Welfare created in 1941 by President wise use of rationing quotas served as Franklin Roosevelt. By 1943, posters such as an attractive way to sustain good health this one could be found displayed in a wide vaand moral strength, necessary elements riety of establishments across the United States. for carrying out daily tasks that would (Library of Congress) lead the country to victory. Wartime messages to women focused on their getting a job outside of the home. From one-quarter of the workforce, 13 million women, at the war’s beginning, their numbers rose to 18 million, or one-third, in 1945. Many more served as volunteers for the Red Cross and similar organizations. This movement to employment, however, did not lessen women’s responsibilities at home, and, for some, their duties became more difficult because domestic workers left many households for more lucrative jobs in defense plants. Early in the decade, a series of events brought the nation’s attention to the wellbeing of its citizens. It began in September with the call of the first 1 million men for induction into military service under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. Some 40 percent of those conscripted, or about 400,000 men, were rejected for service. Much to the alarm of federal officials, nutritional deficiencies of one form or another caused 132,000 men, or one-third of those rejected, to fail their physical examinations. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), after reading a report on this matter, concluded that unhealthy eating habits left the country with men who lacked the necessary stamina for battle and also hindered defense workers and housewives from adequately performing important jobs on the home front. He took immediate action and directed Paul V. McNutt (1891–1955), then head of the newly formed Federal


Food | 337 Security Agency (FSA; it included the Board of Social Security, Public Health Service, Food and Drug Administration, Office of Education, and a number of other agencies), to improve the nutritional well-being of all U.S. citizens. McNutt in turn established study committees to develop a remedial plan as fast as possible. A research group under McNutt, headed by Lydia J. Roberts (1879–1965), a prominent home economist with the University of Chicago, reviewed the number of calories and amounts of protein and other nutrients needed by people of different ages. From this data they developed a table of recommended daily allowances of basic nutrients and suggested that a healthy eating program could come from following this information. The president accepted this approach and, on September 3, 1941, announced the creation of the Office of Health Defense and Welfare to be directed by McNutt, who, when interviewed by the New York Times, stated that his appointment amounted to “a reorganization so as to use the RDA table for ‘putting more teeth’ in health, welfare, educational, nutritional and recreational activities.” But many women, the primary cooks in most American households, reported confusion when trying to determine which foods had which nutrients and how to guarantee all meals to be healthy. To clarify the information and ease their frustration, the Food and Nutrition Board (FNB), operating under the Office of Health Defense and Welfare, organized the material into a table with eight food rules. By 1943, these rules had been pared down to seven numbered and named groups, with all items in each category containing the same nutrients. Illustrated in a circle as slices of pie, this diagram became known as the Basic Seven, and it encouraged users to strive to eat something from each group every day: (1) leafy, green, and yellow vegetables; (2) citrus fruit, tomatoes, raw cabbage; (3) potatoes and other vegetables and fruits; (4) milk, cheese, ice cream; (5) meat, poultry, fish, eggs, dried peas, beans; (6) bread, flour, cereals—whole grain, enriched, or restored; and (7) butter and fortified margarine. The Office of Health Defense and Welfare officially launched a national nutrition campaign with the release of a poster offering the slogan “America Needs You Strong” and a list of the Basic Seven. With the hope of encouraging participation by defense workers, nonworking women, and children, posters and pamphlets became a primary educational tool. Artists with the Works Projects Administration (a New Deal agency that operated until 1943) at local and state levels quickly developed additional posters that outlined what to eat every day, along with menus. Schools displayed posters that promoted good eating habits for children, and Lydia Roberts published a well-received booklet titled The Road to Good Nutrition (May 1942). It sold for 15 cents (approximately $2 in 2008 dollars) and describes the meals children should eat from earliest infancy to maturity. In 1946, Congress passed the National School Lunch Act that requires school-provided meals to be nutritionally balanced with minimum amounts from the seven food groups. In addition to posters and printed materials, McNutt and his staff, through conferences, letters, and announcements, contacted health professionals such as physicians and nutritionists, as well as executives in the food industry, for assistance. In many


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communities, nutritionists responded by offering classes and materials for both housewives and industrial workers that promoted foods that guaranteed nutritious meals and snacks. They also provided specific menus that came from the Basic Seven. An example for a “dinner pail meal” (meals taken by defense workers in a lunch box to their jobs) included milk or creamed soup made of vegetables, coleslaw, potato salad, sandwiches made of whole wheat bread and sliced meatloaf, peanut butter and crackers, a piece of fruit, and oatmeal cookies. The FNB asked industries to be mindful of the nutrition level of the food served in their cafeterias and encouraged those processing food to use the government’s system that would show endorsements on those particular items that met nutritious standards. A logo similar to Good Housekeeping’s Seal of Approval shows Uncle Sam holding a forkful of food to his mouth with the slogan, “U.S. Needs US Strong, Eat Nutritional Food”; it could be displayed on products that measured up to government standards. The War Activities Committee of the Motion Picture Industry produced brief films as educational tools. Food and Magic (1943), America’s Hidden Weapon (1944), and Something You Didn’t Eat (1945) deal with food conservation and healthy eating. Metropolitan Life Insurance, in cooperation with the U.S. Public Health Service, made a short color motion picture titled Proof of the Pudding, another attempt to educate the public about the importance of regularly eating from the Basic Seven. The agency encouraged community groups and movie theaters to show these films. Recipes in cookbooks, pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers promoted food for fitness and greatly affected what appeared on American tables. Articles illustrated and explained the Basic Seven alongside menu ideas that included at least one food from each of the groups for each day of the week. Illustrative pieces in the New York Times food column included “Grocers Being Taught How to Help Housewife Make Purchases” (March 24, 1941), “Budgeting Our Seven Basic Foods” (October 3, 1943), and “Well-Balanced Diet Makes Use Each Day of One Item from Each of 7 Basic Groups” (February 5, 1944). Likewise, ads for various foods indicated their placement in the Basic Seven and the value of their consumption. Along with the nutrition campaign, governmental officials, health professionals, and leaders in the food industry debated the merits of injecting vitamins into commercial foods and offered a new slogan: “Vitamins Vital for Victory.” Popular possibilities included vitamin A added to margarine, lard, vegetable oils, and butter and vitamin D added to milk. Conversations about and interest in the importance of vitamins had occurred during the 1930s, when a laboratory synthesis of vitamins permitted their incorporation in pills sold on the shelves of grocery stores and supermarkets. In late 1942, the American Medical Association (AMA), a major opponent of injecting vitamins into foods, agreed to an infusion in flour and milk but no other foods, and a government mandate in January 1943 resulted in about 75 percent of the nation’s bread being made with enriched flour, which meant the addition of calcium, iron, niacin, riboflavin, and thiamin. As a sidelight, this mandate also included a ban on the selling of sliced bread, because defense industries needed the metal used in manufacturing the slicing machines. Some authorities insisted that a whole loaf of bread lasted longer than a sliced one and cut down on waste, an important practice during the war and another reason for the regulation. But housewives voiced loud dissatisfaction


Food | 339 when they discovered that poor slicing techniques caused increased waste. This, along with numerous complaints from bakers and restaurant owners, influenced Secretary of Agriculture Claude R. Wickard (1893–1967) to rescind the ban on March 8, 1943, just two months after its inception. The various approaches tried during the early 1940s to improve eating habits and the health of Americans had only a small impact on the diet of those on the home front. A different story existed in the military. In 1941, the army developed a master list of menus of nutritious meals to be served to all soldiers no matter where in the world they were stationed, and in fact U.S. soldiers did eat well. Dehydration and freezing facilities in the United States produced dried vegetables, fruits, juices, milk, powdered eggs, and meat for the armed forces’ K rations. These consisted of ready-to-eat, balanced meals for a day that could fit in a soldier’s pocket and received their name from physiologist Ancel Benjamin Keys (1904–2004), the person responsible for developing them. The army also created D (for dry) rations for emergencies and C (for combat) rations. Such products became available back home only after the conclusion of the war. The military’s adherence to the Basic Seven and the specially preserved foods, along with supplies available because of rationing on the home front, enabled the U.S. military to have the best-fed soldiers in the war. Once the United States officially entered World War II, the country faced runaway prices and shortages of a variety of products. Some food scarcity, however, occurred before the attack on Pearl Harbor, when, in the spring of 1941, spices such as sage from Greece and Yugoslavia, thyme from France, paprika from Hungary and Spain, and saffron from Spain nearly vanished from grocers’ shelves. As the war progressed, more serious items disappeared from markets, causing Americans to decrease their consumption of sugar, coffee, butter, cheese, canned goods, and meat. These conditions changed the specific foods Americans ate far more than the information about the Basic Seven and vitamins but did not significantly alter the three-meals-a-day pattern. Similar to meals in the previous decade, breakfast tended to be juice, cereal, and toast, but now with enriched bread and no eggs and bacon. An alternate possibility consisted of fruit such as applesauce and pancakes or waffles with syrup. For lunch, most Americans consumed soup and/or salad, a sandwich, or just bread, and fruit; they ended the day with a dinner of a meal-in-one-dish such as meatball stew or tuna casserole with bread and pudding for dessert. A carryover from the 1930s included a meat (not a choice cut) and vegetables from their victory gardens or, in winter, vegetables that had been canned during the peak of summer growth. These meals concluded with a sugarless dessert or something that had been sweetened with honey, molasses, or maple or corn syrup. The government instituted a wartime system of price controls and rationing of consumer goods in January 1942. April saw sugar as the first table item to be placed on the ration list, followed by coffee in November; meat from the butcher, as well as canned products—meat, fish, milk, fruit, vegetables, jams, and jellies—in 1943. With the scarcity of canned foods, the frozen food industry, led by Birds Eye, boomed. During the first year of canned goods rationing, 140 companies provided households with 60 kinds of frozen food.


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Shortages of many nonrationed foods also periodically occurred, often caused by a lack of transportation or storage problems. In 1942, a shopper could find lots of apples but no citrus fruit. The next year saw a brief decrease in the egg supply followed in the winter with no onions. By spring 1944, an oversupply of eggs had home economists searching for new ways to use them, and the only way to get string beans, a scarcity item at the time, was to also load up on onions, a product now readily available. Hearty meat dishes had ranked high among the favorite foods for many Americans before the war. This commodity became one of the most heavily rationed foods during the conflict but still allowed roughly 5-1/2 ounces for each person per day, an adequate amount. The sacrifice came not with giving up red meats but doing without expensive choice cuts. At the time, less desirable ground beef required fewer ration stamps than steaks and roasts and frequently appeared on plates as hamburgers, meat loaf, pinwheel meat rolls, baked meat loaf potatoes, or beef casserole or stew. Those desiring to appear more sophisticated served stuffed meat loaf featuring a line of hard-boiled eggs baked in the middle of the loaf, or meat loaf covered with mashed potatoes, or an emergency steak—ground beef shaped to resemble a steak with a cooked carrot inserted to represent the bone. Despite having food on the table every day, a fear of scarcity caused some anxious citizens to hoard and others to resort to buying from the black market, operations largely confined to beef partly because of Americans’ love for this product and a willingness to pay whatever the price, even in an activity viewed as unpatriotic. Those who decided to remain legal with their shopping had many sources of help in solving food challenges they might be facing. First, various publications offered specific recommendations, such as weekly menus should be prepared alongside a list of the Basic Seven chart, the family’s available points, and food budget. Information also covered how to conserve, not waste, and recipes emphasized how to use leftovers effectively and stretch both rationed and nonrationed foods to their maximum. A cook could easily find a number of articles with creative ways to make do with less—sugarless cookies, eggless cakes, and meatless meals. Wartime menus intentionally included recipes for foods that required the smallest number of ration stamps and highlighted items not on the ration lists such as oatmeal, unbuttered sweet rolls bought at the bakery, vegetable soup with cottage cheese and tomato sandwiches, chicken giblets and mushroom gravy, brown rice, and maple custard. Hints on how to stretch various items included adding honey to butter when used as a spread, whipping together equal amounts of butter and margarine, and preparing one-dish meals with a lot of macaroni, potatoes, or rice and a little beef added to vegetables and other ingredients as a flavoring, Cookbooks likewise emphasized the centrality of the kitchen and food to both the home and winning the war. The vegetable sections of popular cookbooks increased in size while some publishers quickly offered specialty volumes and pamphlets on salads and vegetables. Betty Crocker’s wartime publication by General Mills, Your Share: How to Prepare Appetizing, Healthful Meals with Foods Available Today (1943), along with a wartime pamphlet from the National Livestock and Meat Board, provided helpful recipes, including some that dealt with the preparation of less appealing cuts of meat, such as French Fried Liver, Creole Kidney, and Jellied Tongue.


Food | 341 In a similar vein, a January 11, 1943, article in Life magazine on “How to Prepare Variety Meats” offered suggestions for attractive ways to serve pigs’ feet and ears, oxtails, and beef hearts, along with graphic pictures, so no one would mistake these cuts in the butcher’s showcase. For some, frankfurters, stretched with fillers of soybeans, potatoes, or cracker meal, were preferable to horse meat, muskrat, rabbit, hog jowls, lamb necks, sweetbreads (the pancreas, usually of a young calf or lamb), and tripe (the lining of a cow’s stomach). Spam, a Hormel Food Corporation product named for its combination of “spicy ham,” first appeared on grocery shelves in 1937. During the war, as a nonrationed, easily transportable meat product high in fat and salt, and boasting an indefinite shelf life, Spam gained popularity, both on the home front and abroad with the U.S. military and its Allies. Creativity abounded in different ways to serve Spam, ranging from a simple sandwich to an entrée with spaghetti. After the war, the company established the Hormel Girls, a troupe of 12 musically talented women who came from all branches of the armed forces. They traveled across the country from 1946 to 1953, serving as door-to-door salespeople and as a performing musical group along the way. With their growing popularity, the organization expanded into a 60-piece aggregation, and network radio broadcast a weekly “Hormel Girls’ Band and Chorus” during those years. Spam continued as a best-selling meat product into the postwar years, a position it retains today. A cheap white-colored fat called margarine had appeared on the market as an import from France at the end of the 19th century. Considered by the dairy industry as too much of a competitor for butter, margarine had been heavily taxed and prohibited from having the characteristic yellow appearance of real butter. With the rationing of butter, margarine gained in popularity, and some states repealed the tax. Manufacturers even provided a separate packet of yellow dye that consumers kneaded into margarine once purchased—an important 1940s chore for children. Shortly after the war, the courts relaxed restrictions on yellow margarine, which meant consumers could purchase it already colored. An anticipated return to a peacetime lifestyle without shortages and rationing did not immediately occur. Black markets continued to flourish as sugar, butter, and the better cuts of meat remained on ration lists. Severe shortages of food in Europe and other parts of the world grew at the same time as Americans cried for a cessation of rationing, especially on meat. Life without restrictions was on the upswing in the United States, and people generally did not give much thought about conditions in the rest of the world. In November 1945, the U.S. government acknowledged pressure from all fronts at home and relented by removing all ration mandates except for sugar, followed by a lifting of meat price controls in July 1946. This action put more meat in grocery stores, but demand continued to increase from a large number of citizens who had money to spend; the average cost of meats rose by some 70 percent in just two months. Thus, a reinstatement of price controls on this item occurred on September 1, 1946. A meat-crazed market protested vehemently, and, by October 14, the controls were lifted again. At the same time, in order to send much-needed wheat overseas, Americans were urged to make the small sacrifice of voluntarily forgoing three slices of bread and one tablespoon of fat per day.


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The situation abroad remained serious, and, in hopes of sending more aid, President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) requested that no meat be eaten on Tuesdays and no poultry and eggs on Thursday, that everyone decrease daily bread consumption by at least one additional slice, and that restaurants serve bread and butter only on request. Many reported compliance to these various steps, but statistics indicated otherwise. Continued demand for meat brought about another price increase in 1948, and many people had to return to eating cheaper cuts. This created a new meat fad for Swiss steak, easily cooked on Reynolds Wrap, a new aluminum foil product from Reynolds Metal Company. Ads proposed preparation as a meal-in-one—just cook the steak along with frozen vegetables and potatoes on foil in a pan in the oven or on the grill. Then for after-serving ease of cleanup, just throw the foil away. As the country changed from wartime production to a more balanced state of supply and demand, Americans moved into an environment of technological advancement and sustained economic growth. Prosperity appeared in many ways, offering an American dream of a new home in the suburbs with new appliances and a new car in the carport. Pantries and attics now held the unused canning jars and pressure cookers as housewives returned to the grocery store and supermarkets for food shopping and happily purchased the convenience products that soon became available. The final lifting of the rationing of meat and a stabilization of costs ended with an almost manic rush to purchase and devour meat, especially beef roasts and thick T-bone and porterhouse steaks. Hamburgers and hot dogs reigned as popular economical meals and the preferred fare at the growing number of fast-food eateries. Meat at home, whatever the cut, often seemed to demand outdoor cooking. Outside the house, victory gardens became lawns, while flower beds adorned the outdoor patio, the latter frequently outfitted with a fireplace or a grill. Barbecues had gained some popularity in the late 1930s and then boomed in the postwar era. Kingsford charcoal had provided the necessary fuel since the 1920s, and James Beard (1903–1985), a rising chef and food writer, stimulated interest with his 1941 publication of Cook It Outdoors. Ads for portable grills and special grills with spits appeared in newspapers before the April 1943 rationing of meat, and products such as Coca-Cola and various beers were linked to the enjoyment of outdoor cooking and dining. The kinds of grills available after the war broadened, as seen in a June 1947 ad for Macy’s department store in New York City; it contains descriptions of five kinds of grills ranging in price from $2.29 to $55.75 (approximately $22 to $538 in 2008 dollars) as well as other items—stainless steel cutlery, hot dog salt and pepper sets, ice cream freezers, wire popcorn poppers, plastic plates with nested cups—all designed to add to the festivities. During the war and after, a number of innovations assisted cooks. Many recipes called for the use of herbs and spices instead of butter as flavoring. Spice Islands, a distributor of seasonings, in 1941 introduced a line of herbs, spices, and wine vinegars much needed for wartime cooking. With periodic shortages of eggs, new breakfast foods such as Cheerios (introduced in 1941 as Cheerioats; the name changed in 1946) and Kellogg’s Raisin Bran became available. Other new products included Dannon yogurt, Sunbeam bread, and Maytag blue cheese.


Food | 343 Much of the research that preceded production of these new food items occurred in an attempt to enhance the quality and supply of food sent to fighting troops abroad. In late 1945, filled with a yen for good living, American shoppers found an array of new products, particularly convenience foods, on the market: frozen concentrated orange and grapefruit juice, instant mashed potatoes, Ragu spaghetti sauce, Kraft single slices of cheese, Pace Foods picante sauce, Mrs. Paul’s frozen deviled crabs, Pet-Ritz foods, self-rising cornmeal, Nesquik chocolate flavoring for milk, V8 vegetable juice, Maxwell House instant coffee, and easy-to-prepare breads and desserts, to name but a few. A Maxwell House advertisement that reads, “For People Who Like Good Things The Easy Way,” indicates postwar attitudes. Other breakthroughs addressed packaging issues and the preparation of food. In 1940, the A&P Grocery chain sold cellophane-wrapped meat, which introduced prewrapped cuts available from a self-service case. Roy J. Plunkett (1910–1994) received a patent for Teflon in 1941, the same year that saw the introduction of garbage disposers. Earl Tupper (1907–1983) started working on Tupperware objects in the early days of the decade, and, in 1947, House Beautiful featured these clever, airtight kitchen containers obtainable by mail order. Just before the decade ended, electric dishwashers became widely available for purchase. Throughout the 1940s, entertaining around food remained an important part of American life. Cocktail parties, popular before the country entered the hostilities, continued during the conflict and afterward. James Beard’s first book, Hors d’Oeuvres and Canapés (1940), offered recipes for strongly flavored finger food and classic drinks, including America’s favorite at the time, the martini. Once at war, the media offered strategies for working within the rationing and shortages limitations. A progressive dinner party allowed each household to serve one course and not strain its ration books too much. Magazines such as Good Housekeeping published articles that emphasized that, even with rationing and loved ones away at war, holiday meals could be joyful and nutritious. Families frequently invited soldiers or sailors from neighboring camps or on leave to join them for the festivities, and they packed nonperishable items, such as Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Marshmallow Treats, first advertised in 1940, to send to family members not able to attend. Wartime weddings also meant a time for celebration and at least light refreshments. Victory certainly called for a party; in fact, many parties were held from the time of Germany’s surrender in May 1945 until the Japanese capitulation in August 1945. Postwar prosperity and the excitement of building a new home gave rise to barbecue parties that celebrated groundbreaking at the building site. Guests brought their own meat, and the hosts offered the grill, along with side dishes, iced tea, and coffee. When the veterans came home, they brought with them the experience of eating not individualized regional or ethnic foods but a standard, basic, well-balanced menu. Busy wives of returning servicemen had learned to cook quick and easy dishes from magazines and newspapers and now preferred time-saving products instead of recreating their mothers’ favorite recipes from scratch. A country that had held on to regional eating preferences now saw many moving to a national American style. But servicemen and -women also brought back to the United States an exposure to the foods of the countries where they had been stationed. An interest in gourmet


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dining, which meant foreign dishes, had been developing among some since the 1930s, especially with the New York World’s Fair in 1939–1940 offering visitors samplings of the foods of the world. Gourmet magazine, first published in 1941, presented enticing articles and recipes for those interested in this kind of eating. James Beard published The Fireside Cook Book in 1949; it offered recipes with a gourmet slant. Other avenues of popular culture also made references to food. CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) radio in 1945 offered print copies of The Cookbook of the Stars; it featured many recipes, such as Edward R. Murrow’s Oatmeal Scones and George Burns and Gracie Allen’s Lamb Terrapin. In addition, the networks and their affiliates broadcast numerous programs that included cooking and household hints, and most enjoyed long radio lives. For example Betty Crocker ran from 1924 to 1953, Women’s Exchange from 1928 to 1942, John MacPherson’s (1877–1962) The Mystery Chef from 1930 to 1948, The Mary Lee Taylor Program from 1933 to 1954, and Neighbor Nell from 1934 to 1943. Biologist Alfred C. Kinsey (1894–1956) published Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America in 1943, although he undoubtedly became better known for his 1948 publication, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. United Fruit Company created a long-running hit, “Chiquita Banana,” both as a song and advertising jingle in 1944. Sylvester the Cat first tried to have Tweety Bird for lunch in a 1947 Warner Bros. cartoon. Singer Kate Smith (1907–1986) aired two network shows on radio during the 1940s. One, Kate Smith Speaks (1939–1951), could be heard weekdays at noon. The show featured a news and commentary format and was considered to be a big morale booster for women on the home front. They seemed to especially enjoy her talking about favorite recipes for a variety of cakes, particularly the rich chocolate ones given in the second half of the decade when everyone rushed to indulge in everything that had been missing during the war. The 1940s served as a bridge between the 1930s and 1950s. Consumer buying power was virtually nonexistent during the Great Depression and severely curtailed throughout World War II. With victory and the lifting of rationing and price controls, the story changed. Americans embarked on a spending spree. In reference to the food they ate, 22 percent of their cash income went for food in 1941; by the early 1950s, it had jumped to 26 percent. For comparison, in 2005, it had fallen to roughly 13 percent (does not include dining out). During World War II, a large number of Americans grew their own fruits and vegetables; some even raised livestock or owned or co-owned a cow. They canned, preserved, and conserved, using everything in some way. The table did not always contain choice cuts and the eaters’ preferences, but no one went hungry. The postwar years contrasted sharply by serving abundant amounts of good food, frequently with built-in convenience and new dishes, a trend that has continued ever since. See also: Beverages; Desserts, Candy, and Ice Cream; Frozen Foods; Health and Medicine; Leisure and Recreation; Radio Programming: Educational Shows; Technology Selected Reading Hayes, Joanne Lamb. Grandma’s Wartime Kitchen. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. Hooker, Richard J. Food and Drink in America: A History. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1981. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Football | 345 Levenstein, Harvey. Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. National Nutrition Campaign. New York Times, March 24, 1941; September 4, 1941; December 8, 1941; April 5, 1942; May 25, 1942; January 11, 1943; October 3, 1943; November 19, 1943; February 5, 1944; October 6, 1944; May 13, 1945; June 1, 1947; August 20, 1947. www.proquest.com.

FOOTBALL With the onset of World War II and discussions of how life would change because of the conflict, debate about the merits of football took on new significance, especially its role at the college level, the most popular version of the sport. Articles in the New York Times in 1941 and 1942 expressed a commonly held belief that a combative sport such as football served as excellent preparation for fighting. Many writers stated that football places a premium on personal contact, aggressiveness, and quick thinking, and it therefore provides qualities needed by men serving in the armed forces; the game should occupy an important place in educational institutions and community recreational programs. Colleges responded by emphasizing the sport, although by 1944, many could no longer field full teams because of the large numbers of college age men fighting in the war. The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, and the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, were exceptions. Providing both a college education and training for soldiers and sailors, they easily attracted talented athletes and during the war stood out as strong football institutions. Each year, the nation eagerly awaited the two schools’ annual post-Thanksgiving football contest. Nevertheless, throughout the 1940s, football as a popular spectator sport lagged behind baseball. The collegiate version of the game, which can be traced to 1869, drew larger crowds than the slightly younger professional format, which began in 1892. The payment of money to a player in a contest between the Allegheny Athletic Association and the Pittsburgh Athletic Club constituted the first professional football game. Collegiate football. Throughout the 1940s, Americans true to their alma mater, along with those who simply liked watching football, flocked to college games. Fans unable to cheer on their favorites in person could sometimes listen to a game in the comfort of their homes thanks to radio remote capabilities. Whether shivering in the stadium on a fall afternoon or at home in their favorite easy chair listening to a broadcast of the play-by-play, they applauded their favorite school on to victory hoping for enough wins to allow the team to play in one of five annual college bowl games—Orange, Sugar, Rose, Sun, or Cotton. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. Army, citing security concerns, canceled all large gatherings, especially on the West Coast. This action caused the oldest college championship game, the Rose Bowl, to be moved out of Pasadena, California, for the only time in its history. The two teams scheduled for this January 1, 1942, contest, Duke University and Oregon State, agreed to meet in Durham, North Carolina, where the undefeated Duke Blue Devils lost 20–16 to Oregon’s Beavers. Likewise, a December 1941 professional football game between the Chicago Bears and a National Football League All-Stars team switched from Los Angeles to the Polo Grounds in New York. By 1943, the army had relented on these kinds of restrictions, and the Rose Bowl returned to Pasadena. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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In addition to striving to play in a bowl game, college teams and fans hoped that one of their team members would be selected to receive the Heisman Memorial Trophy, an annual presentation to the nation’s outstanding college football player. Established by the Downtown Athletic Club of New York City in 1935, a poll of sportswriters and sportscasters made the determination. In 1936, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)—founded in 1906 to set rules to govern the game so as to be safer— added a second distinction, an award to what they called the national college champion as determined by press association polls of writers and coaches. Based on the winners of these two awards, 10 players and 7 collegiate teams, as shown in the tables below, stand out as the best during the 1940s. Notre Dame dominated by being recognized as the national football champion for four years of the decade, while three of its players received the Heisman Trophy. Army and Minnesota followed close behind. In 1944 and 1945, the army won the title of national football champion, while members of its team took home the Heisman. Players from Michigan, Georgia, Ohio State, and Southern Methodist received the Heisman trophy, and Minnesota, Ohio State, and Michigan completed the ranks on being named the national champion. TABLE 54.

Heisman Trophy Winners, 1940 –1949

Year

Heisman Trophy Recipient

Team

1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949

Tom Harmon (1919–1990) Bruce Smith (1920–1967) Frank Sinkwich (1920–1990) Angelo Bertelli (1921–1999) Les Horvath (1921–1995) Doc Blanchard (b. 1924) Glenn Davis (1924–2005) John Lujack (b. 1925) Doak Walker (1927–1998) Leon Hart (1928–2002)

Michigan Minnesota Georgia Notre Dame Ohio State Army Army Notre Dame Southern Methodist Notre Dame

Source: www.heisman.com/winners/hsmn-winners.html

Teams Declared National College Football Champions, 1940–1949

TABLE 55. Year

Team

1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949

Minnesota Minnesota Ohio State Notre Dame Army Army Notre Dame Notre Dame Michigan Notre Dame

Source: www.infoplease.com/ipsa/A0908943.html


Football | 347 During the first half of the 1940s, all of the players winning the Heisman Trophy went on from college to serve in a branch of the armed forces. For the decade as a whole, with the exception of 1945 winner Doc Blanchard (1924–2009), 9 played professional football and all 10 eventually won election to the College Football Hall of Fame. Established in 1951, in South Bend, Indiana, it honors outstanding college players. In the late 1930s, fledging television stations tested various broadcast venues; the first televised college football game took place on September 30, 1939, a contest between Fordham University and Waynesburg College. NBC (National Broadcasting Company) transmitted the game to a limited audience within a 50-mile radius of New York City. Coaches and college administrators for some time voiced concern that any sport activities transmitted by a mass medium would lower attendance and thus approached televised games with caution. By the 1940 season, however, television had moved from an experimental phase to a commercial entity, and Philco, a manufacturer of both radios and televisions, on October 5, 1940, sponsored the first college game under this new status, a contest between the University of Maryland Terrapins and the University of Pennsylvania Quakers. The postwar years saw both college and professional teams becoming more and more receptive to being televised, especially as they realized any financial gains that might accrue from the airing of games. In 1948, the first Rose Bowl was telecast in Los Angeles, and, by 1950, a small number of the more prominent colleges that offered football had entered into contracts with networks to show their games. Professional football. Following the historic Pittsburgh and Allegheny game of 1892 in Pennsylvania, football contests featuring paid players spread to small towns and eventually to large cities, primarily in the Midwest. The professional version of the sport tended to be a game with no player protection, so severe injuries such as broken bones and even death were always a possibility. In addition, underhanded deals and straight out stealing of other teams’ players emerged as a problem. In an attempt to bring structure and order to professional football, interested businessmen and promoters organized the American Professional Football Association in 1920 with an initial membership of seven teams—Canton, Cleveland, Akron, and Dayton, Ohio; Buffalo and Rochester, New York; and New York City. The group soon thereafter changed its name to the American Professional Football League and, by 1922, had acquired its current name, the National Football League (NFL). In 1933, the NFL divided its teams into two groups—the Eastern and Western Divisions—nomenclature that remained in place until 1949. They then changed to the American and National Conferences. The NFL, also in 1933, initiated the recognition of an annual champion from a postseason playoff that pitted the top team from each division. In 1936, the first NFL annual draft of college players took place, bringing a new pool of players to pro football. Six teams won the NFL championship during the 1940s. As seen in Table 56, the Chicago Bears dominated with five appearances, including four straight times for 1940 to 1943. The Washington Redskins played four years but won only once, while the Philadelphia Eagles made it to the championship game three times and achieved two victories. The Chicago Cardinals and the Cleveland Rams managed one win out of two


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| Football TABLE 56. Season 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949

NFL Championships, 1940–1949 Winning Team

Losing Team

Chicago Bears Chicago Bears Washington Redskins Chicago Bears Green Bay Packers Cleveland Rams Chicago Bears Chicago Cardinals Philadelphia Eagles Philadelphia Eagles

Washington Redskins New York Giants Chicago Bears Washington Redskins New York Giants Washington Redskins New York Giants Philadelphia Eagles Chicago Cardinals Los Angeles Rams

Source: www.4nflpicks.com/NFL%20Championship%20Games.html

appearances, and the Green Bay Packers won the only time they played. The only team always to be in the losing column, the New York Giants nonetheless made the playoffs in three tries. National radio had set the stage for the airing of a championship game back in 1934, when it broadcast a professional football game between the Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears on Thanksgiving Day. Ninety-four stations across the country had signed up for the game, creating a financial success. The radio industry took note and began to expand its coverage so that, by 1940, most NFL teams had their own radio outlet. MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System) broadcast the Chicago Bears’ 73–0 victory over the Washington Redskins on December 8, 1940, an event that enhanced the popularity of the sport and interest in the annual championship game. A quiet media event on October 22, 1939, eventually had an even greater impact on the success of the NFL. On that day, a small crowd of about 13,000 fans had gathered for a game between the now defunct Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Eagles, while an estimated 1,000 TV sets in New York City enabled an untold number of viewers to watch the first televised broadcast of a professional football game by NBC. Eventually, it would be the power of television that would push professional football to the status it holds today. Before it enjoyed success, however, pro football had to weather the storm created by World War II. Attendance initially dropped in 1942 as Americans living on rationed gas stayed close to home for leisure and recreation. The next year, fans seeking distraction from the war turned out in larger numbers. The draft and voluntary enlistments, however, drained the rosters of both players and team staffs, causing the Cleveland Rams to suspend operations for the 1943 season, while teams in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh merged. Some other one-year adjustments occurred during the war, but the league held on, offering some games every year of the war, as well as continuing its championship game. With the end of the war and the return of servicemen again desirous to play pro football, recruitment improved. The requirement of wearing helmets increased safety.


Frozen Foods | 349 Rule changes and innovations such as the T formation meant a faster-paced, higherscoring game, conditions that appealed to many spectators; attendance at games began to rival that at college games. In 1946, the NFL faced a new problem, the formation of the All-America Football Conference (AAFC). The existence of two pro football leagues created fierce competition for the best players, a situation that necessitated higher salaries and a more costly sport. The AAFC, like the NFL, divided itself into two divisions, Eastern and Western, and offered an annual championship game. As a newcomer, the conference faced more difficulties than its well-established rival and, by 1949, had folded. But competition and media coverage can be good for business, and soon pro football began to rival the college game for both attendance and fan enthusiasm. A 1945 NFL decision to expand beyond its original Eastern and Midwestern regions resulted in the Cleveland Rams locating in Los Angeles as the first big-league franchise on the West Coast, a move that exposed more Americans to the pro version of the game. In 1950, the NFL accepted three teams from the defunct AAFC, bringing the total to 13 clubs and more games in more cities. Both collegiate and professional football had its ups and downs throughout the 1940s. One measurement of the popularity of any facet of American life is its inclusion, or lack thereof, in Hollywood motion pictures. Although football received a reasonable amount of exposure during the 1930s, it fell off as a subject during the 1940s. An animated short by Walt Disney Productions titled How to Play Football (1944), a Pete Smith (1892–1979) Football Thrills of 1944 (1945), another animated short by Terrytoons, Peace Time Football (1946), and a full-length movie, Father Was a Fullback (1949) starring Fred MacMurray (1908–1991) and Maureen O’Hara (b. 1920) comprise a short list of football fare both during World War II and the postwar years. During most of the decade, television waited in the wings, hoping its moment would come. By the late 1940s, more people had acquired more receivers, and the networks and independent stations increased their telecasts of games. Football, especially pro football, slowly earned its place as a major sport during the 1950s. See also: Movies; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk Selected Reading Football. New York Times, December 31, 1941; July 28, 1942. www.proquest.com Peterson, Robert. Pigskin, the Early Years of Pro Football. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Rader, Benjamin G. American Sports, From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Spectators. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1983.

FROZEN FOODS In the early 1920s, Clarence Birdseye (1886–1956) received a patent for a method to flash-freeze food. He then founded the General Seafoods Company and worked with the DuPont Chemical Company to develop wrapping that allowed foods to be


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frozen quickly. He also desired packaging that did not disintegrate as the food thawed. DuPont’s moisture-proof cellophane fit both needs. General Seafoods became a part of the General Foods Corporation in 1929, and the following year, under the brand name of Birds Eye, 27 kinds of frozen products including fruits, vegetables, fish, and meats appeared in a test market of 18 stores in Springfield, Massachusetts. Birds Eye frozen foods soon became available in other areas of the country, but sales during most of the 1930s remained low for two reasons: first, consumers showed only moderate interest in a product that was often tasteless and soggy; second, home refrigerators and ice boxes did not contain a space with temperatures low enough to keep a package frozen. The food had to be eaten the day of purchase. General Foods nevertheless predicted eventual success for its Birds Eye division and engaged in a wide range and variety of advertising and marketing approaches, culminating with its hosting the only frozen food exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The entrance of the United States into World War II immediately changed the focus of American manufacturing facilities from turning out products for consumers at home to assembling supplies for the troops. For example, two days after the attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, meatpackers in Chicago boned and froze 1 million pounds of meat to be shipped to military facilities. By 1943, the amount had reached 70 million pounds. Supplies needed by the troops and scarcities at home steadily increased, putting frozen and canned fruits and vegetables on rationing lists in March 1943. Frozen food manufacturers immediately protested their inclusion and successfully convinced the government that their products qualified as essential to the war effort. Rationing boards removed this commodity from their lists, enabling some 140 companies such as Birds Eye, Honor Brand, Stokely-Van Camp, and Pratt to continue to provide both the military and the home market with their 60 varieties of frozen foods. For those at home, this meant the availability of products otherwise missing because of the rationing of canned goods. Suddenly, food shortages in some commodities made the purchase of frozen items both necessary and patriotic. A major contribution toward the popularity and growth of the frozen food industry came from the wartime and postwar work of the National Research Center. Throughout the war, this organization experimented with ways to provide the military with easily transported foods. For example, in 1945, the center organized Florida Foods Corporation to find a way to produce a powder for making orange juice. But the war ended just as this work commenced, and the corporation’s research immediately shifted to the commercial market with a focus not on a powder but on a frozen orange juice concentrate. They soon met with success and introduced Minute Maid frozen orange juice on April 15, 1946. Extensive advertising made this frozen product a top-selling item by the end of the decade. With victory in hand and soldiers coming back home, the number of Americans with some familiarity with frozen food had increased. At the same time, improved refrigerator technology—including a specific space with the necessary low temperature for frozen foods—along with a drop in the price of this appliance put appropriate home storage units in more homes. The stage was set for the arrival of the frozen TV dinner.


Frozen Foods | 351 Some report that this phenomenon started in 1944, a time before the wide popularity of television, with Maxson Food Systems, Inc., a company that manufactured the first complete frozen meal. It consisted of three parts: meat, vegetable, and potato, each nestled in its own special compartment. These frozen dinners, first called Sky Plates and later Strato Plates, were taken aboard airplanes, heated, and served to military and civilian passengers. Because of a lack of funding and the death of the founder of the company shortly after introducing this new line, the concept never hit larger retail markets. A couple of years later, two other businesses attempted similar dinners. Jack Fisher’s Fridgi-Dinners appeared in bars and taverns in a small geographic area, while Albert and Meyer Bernstein’s (both active 1940s) Frozen Dinners first sold in a limited Pennsylvania area but eventually expanded to other eastern localities. The two brands reached limited markets, a factor that prevented national recognition and renown as the first official frozen dinner. That honor goes to C. A. Swanson and Sons, a subsidiary of the Campbell Soup Company. In 1951, Swanson sold frozen turkey pot pies nationally and three years later enlarged the line to include turkey dinners in stamped aluminum trays divided into sections that held the meat with dressing, potatoes, and buttered peas, soon to be followed by roast beef, fried chicken, and ham glazed with raisin sauce. To reinforce the idea that the meal had been created to be eaten while watching television, Swanson designed the container to resemble a TV screen and coined the phrase “TV dinner.” A massive advertising campaign, including leaflets with the government’s 1943 Basic Seven nutritional chart, tied this product to healthy eating. These events secured success for both the product and the company, transforming frozen meals and other food items into standard fare in freezer containers in grocery stores and supermarkets. The technological foundation of the frozen food industry had been laid in the 1930s and early 1940s. The postwar drive for prosperity produced rapid expansion and growth in many businesses. The success experienced by frozen foods, especially Swanson TV dinners, accompanied two growing postwar trends: fascination with the new medium of television and the lure of time-saving food products and modern appliances. See also: Fast Food; Health and Medicine Selected Reading Bernstein, Leilan. “Birth of a Frozen Food Nation,” Los Angeles Times, January 24, 2001. www. articles.latimes.com/2001/jan/24/food/fo-16097 Panati, Charles. Panati’s Parade of Fads, Follies, and Manias. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. TV Dinners. www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/tvdinner.html


G

GAMES Available leisure time increased during the 1930s, enabling many Americans to engage in a variety of nonwork activities, interests that continued in some fash throughout the 1940s. All ages played a variety of games; children especially enjoyed hide-and-seek, jacks, hopscotch, jump rope, tiddlywinks, and marbles. Following the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, people welcomed entertainment of just about any kind as a brief respite from worries and concerns about the war. With victory, Americans played games for the pure pleasure they offered. National surveys showed card playing to be the favorite pastime during the war years. Hobbies magazine in 1942 reported that someone in the household played cards in over 87 percent of American homes and that, in 83 percent of those dwellings, the entire family gathered around a table to play card games. Among all the possible choices, bridge ranked as the most popular in the 1942 survey. Charles H. Goren (1901–1991) had emerged from the 1930s as the nation’s ultimate expert on the game. His 1936 book, Winning Bridge Made Easy, initiated a long list of his publications that sold well during the 1940s and beyond. The Goren titles covered a wide range of topics: Better Bridge for Better Players: The Play of the Cards (1942), Contract Bridge Complete (1942; revised editions in 1944 and 1947), Standard Book of Play (1942), Standard Book of Bidding (1944; revised in 1947), Contract Bridge in a Nutshell (1946; revised in 1947), and Bridge Quiz Book (1949). All these books, along with his long-running newspaper column, “Goren on Bridge,” appealed to players at every level of expertise. Bridge continued to hold first place among card players until 1947, when a completely unanticipated change took place. A poll by the American Institute of Public Opinion (more familiarly known as the Gallup Poll) in that year reported that only 56 percent of a national sample either regularly or occasionally played bridge—a huge, virtually 353


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overnight, drop. Canasta, an imported, rummylike card game for two or four players, had brought about this upheaval. The name canasta comes from the Spanish word for basket and refers to a tray or basket used to hold both unused cards and discards. Developed in Uruguay and popularized in Argentina, canasta had a remarkable start and quickly became a fad. As interest in the game grew, newspapers, which already regularly carried columns about bridge, began to devote space to canasta. Reporting highlighted the publication of three nonfiction best sellers for 1949, Oswald Jacoby’s (1902–1984) How to Win at Canasta, Ottilie Reilly’s (1898–n.d.) Canasta: The Argentine Rummy Game, and Josefina Artayeta de Viel’s (active 1940s) and Ralph Michael’s (active 1940s) The Official Rules and Play of Canasta. Newspapers also kept the American public informed about celebrity players. On August 28, 1949, the New York Times, in a lengthy update on the game, announced that former President Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) “when recently traveling east from California spent a five-hour stop-over in Chicago playing and winning canasta games with friends at the Drake Hotel.” Easy to learn, canasta required only two regulation decks of cards plus jokers. Canasta clubs and canasta parties soon became commonplace. Plastic holders (the canasta basket itself), “official canasta mugs,” as well as ashtrays and other canasta paraphernalia flooded the market. A peak in playing card sales, over 80 million decks, occurred at the end of the 1940s. The initial excitement over the game held well into the 1950s but, like all fads, died out by the 1960s. Millions continue to play canasta, but newer games have since come along and now outshine this humble South American import. Along with their strong preference for cards, Americans also played time-tested board games such as chess, checkers, Monopoly, and Parcheesi. In 1940, Milton Bradley, a major manufacturer of a variety of games, released several new titles, including the Horse Racing Game, The Merry Game of Fibber McGee, and The Adventures of Superman. These games capitalized on current interests such as the Kentucky Derby, popular radio celebrities, and comic book figures. On a more educational level, the company’s 1940 Game of the States focused on the country’s products and resources and at the time served as an educational tool for teaching children about the states and their industries. Parker Brothers, one of Milton Bradley’s strongest competitors, in 1940 brought out innocuous games such as Citadel, a game of blocks called Hi-Lo, and reissued Pollyanna, a popular board game dating back to 1915. The company’s hugely successful Monopoly continued to be a big seller. A little-known firm, Northwestern Products, sold Tactics: A Game of World Strategy, which allowed the players to suggest ways for addressing international problems. Jaymar chose a lighter approach with Snuffy Smith’s Hootin’ Holler Bug Derby board game, based on the daily comic strip then running in newspapers. With the outbreak of World War II, producers of games attempted to stockpile materials they could use for future production and managed to continue to offer some of the old favorites, as well as introduce a very small number of new ones. Manufacturers of board games that required metal, rubber, or petroleum products had to search for other materials and frequently utilized wood and cardboard as substitutes. The best that the game industry could do during the war years was hope that its limited output would satisfy most demand. But these struggles did not prevent a show of patriotism; many


Games | 355 placed a facsimile of a Victory stamp or the slogan “buy war bonds” on their game boxes to encourage purchasers to participate in efforts toward victory. Thinking that timely themes would sell, Northwestern Products in 1943 issued a game called Victory Rummy. Employing a pack of 63 cards, players tried to obtain sequences of five cards consisting of three dots, a dash, and a V (. . .—V) all in one color, or five Axis cards. Five hundred points won the game. (The three dots and a dash make up V, or Victor, in Morse code and became a familiar theme for the Allies during the war; the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, composed in 1808, make this same progression and were widely used to symbolize victory.) Jayline Manufacturing Company used a somewhat similar approach with its Ration Board Game (1943), which allowed children to play the role of the local board and ration items on the home front. The firm employed the slogan, “Fun You Can Hoard!” for a not particularly funny subject. Milton Bradley countered with an adaptation of its 1931 Battleship game, calling it Broadsides, The Game of Naval Strategy. It also manufactured Milton Bradley’s Game Kit for Soldiers, a much-revised version of a product it first produced during the Civil War. It proved to be Milton Bradley’s biggest wartime success, although its adaptation of Snakes and Ladders, a game that had originated in ancient India and deals with good versus evil, has successfully survived into the present. Renamed Chutes and Ladders, it focuses on good deeds and rewards, along with bad behavior and its consequences, teaching children right from wrong and good from bad. Jigsaw puzzles experienced a golden age during the 1920s and early 1930s, waned slightly by 1940, and returned to a craze level during World War II. Because they were cut from cardboard or wood, manufacturers did not suffer from any shortages of materials. Offering images of military might along with more traditional imagery, jigsaw puzzles complemented the tremendous support for the war felt by Americans. They provided inexpensive home entertainment for many age groups during anxious times. The Upson Company, with its beautiful Tuco puzzles, offered vivid battle scenes as well as patriotic images of Uncle Sam, the American flag, the Statue of Liberty, and Washington, DC, landmarks. Jaymar puzzles went the Immensely popular during the 1930s and 1940s, extra step with some of the pieces cut jigsaw puzzles provided inexpensive entertaininto war-related shapes such as bombs, ment for everyone. This scene from Citizen jeeps, flags, and guns. Map puzzles that Kane (1941), depicts a bemused Kane (Orson Welles) observing his bored wife (played by featured information about the progress Dorothy Comingore) assembling the pieces in of U.S. armed forces abroad appealed to Xanadu, their California castle. (RKO Radio a large number of people back home. Pictures Inc./Photofest)


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Jigsaw puzzles also benefited the troops. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, volunteer groups distributed jigsaw puzzles, books, and magazines to soldiers on trains as well as gave them to USO (United Service Organizations) clubs. Submariners even took puzzles on their missions. After 1945 and peace, puzzle makers continued carrying war-related themes, but they became general military ones instead of battles specific to World War II. After World War II, popular wood jigsaw puzzles went into a decline since sharply rising wages made their time-consuming production costly. At the same time, improvements in lithography and die cutting allowed cardboard puzzles to be more attractive and cheaper to produce and buy. By 1948, American life had regained some semblance of normality, and the Production & Marketing Company issued what would become one of the most popular board games of the 20th century, Scrabble. The game, first invented in 1931 by Alfred Mosher Butts (1899–1993), experienced little initial success. In 1947, James Brunot (1902–1984) gave Butts a small royalty for the game and obtained legal rights in 1948, when he changed its name from its original Lexico (also called Lexiko, and later CrissCross Words), to a name that he felt served as a description of the activity of the game, players “scrabbling” to fit words onto the board. Scrabble can be played by two to four participants and utilizes single-letter wooden tiles to form words. The letters carry varying point values, and the player accumulating the highest number of points for words spelled wins. The game experienced only limited success throughout the later 1940s. Macy’s Department Store in New York City placed Scrabble on its shelves in the early 1950s, and the firm of Selchow and Righter gained the license to market and distribute it in the United States and Canada. From then on, Scrabble enjoyed unprecedented success across the country and became a standard board game, just like Monopoly. Minnesotan William Herbert Schaper (active 1940s) whittled an odd shape out of some scrap wood in 1948 and thus gave birth to the first Cootie, a combination toy and game. The word, originally from the Malay kutu, denoting a biting body louse, around World War I evolved into British naval slang meaning any parasitic, biting insect. From there the term passed into general usage and carried a similar meaning. Herb Schaper’s design consisted of a body, a head, six legs, two eyes, two antennae, and a slender feeding organ. Together, these parts formed an insect; Schaper’s game included enough body parts to construct four such creatures. A dice roll determines which part a player can acquire in an attempt to be the first to build a complete Cootie. Originally all carved by hand, the need for mass production made that approach impractical. In 1949, the inventor formed W. H. Schaper Game Company, based in Minneapolis, and the firm did so well that Milton Bradley acquired it in 1978. Candy Land premiered in the late 1940s, gained popularity rapidly during the 1950s, and, along with Scrabble, went on to be identified in a list of most popular games of the last 100 years published by Forbes magazine in December 2005. Candy Land, designed in 1946 for young children by Eleanor Abbott (active 1940s) while recuperating from polio, utilizes a board with a winding, linear track made of 134 spaces of rainbow colors. Abbott submitted Candy Land to Milton Bradley Company, which manufactured and distributed it starting in 1949.


GI Bill (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944) | 357 Clue, invented in 1944 as Cluedo by Anthony E. Pratt (1904–1994), first appeared in stores in England in 1948 under the aegis of Waddington’s Games. Parker Brothers purchased the rights to distribute this whodunit board game in the United States. They changed Cluedo to Clue, and it made its American debut in 1949. Initially marketed as “the Great New Sherlock Holmes Game,” the object of the play is to identify who did it—Colonel Mustard, Miss Scarlet, Professor Plum, Mrs. Peacock, Mrs. White, or Mr. Green—with which weapon—rope, lead pipe, knife, wrench, candlestick, or revolver—and in which part of a nine-room Victorian mansion. The game immediately became a best seller and has since remained one of America’s favorites. In 1985, Hollywood produced Clue, a mystery-comedy based on this popular board game, featuring an all-star cast. Games have always provided a means of play and entertainment for children and adults. During the 1930s and 1940s, with the recognition of childhood and adolescence as specific developmental experiences, parents began to look to leisure activities as a way to teach values and critical thinking, and game and toy manufacturers responded accordingly. Although World War II caused a declined in the production of both old favorites and new games, Monopoly remained popular during the conflict, and the postwar years saw the introduction of Scrabble, a highly successful word game. See also: Comic Books; Comic Strips; Hobbies; Leisure and Recreation; Movies; Rationing; Toys Selected Reading Hoffmann, Leah, “Most Popular Toys of the Last 100 Years.” Forbes, December 2, 2005. Irving Crespi. “Card Playing as Mass Culture.” In Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America, eds. Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White, 418–422. New York: Free Press, 1957. Walsh, Tim. Timeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them. Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2005. Williams, Anne D. The Jigsaw Puzzle: Piecing Together a History. New York: Berkley Books, 2004.

GI BILL (SERVICEMEN’S READJUSTMENT ACT OF 1944) The National Resources Planning Board (NRPB) had been operating out of the executive office of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) since 1939, performing special duties related to national defense. Anticipating that the war would come to a successful end soon, the NRPB, in June 1943, recommended a series of programs for honorably discharged military personnel. It based its suggestions on three concerns: (1) the inability of the U.S. economy to quickly absorb large numbers of returning veterans into the workforce, (2) the accompanying possibility of lower wages, and (3) the resulting gap between large inventories of products for sale and citizens without the money to buy them. President Roosevelt, in a radio address to the nation in 1943, presented the NRPB’s proposal for a bill of veteran benefits that would educate and prepare members of the armed forces for a successful return to civilian life. The American Legion, a veterans’ organization, immediately endorsed the idea and became a major participant in deciding the bill’s wording. Officially known as the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, a


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strong publicity campaign carried out by the American Legion coined what became the colloquial title, the GI Bill, and helped to bring about a speedy passage. On January 10, 1944, the two ranking Democratic and Republican members of the House of Representatives Veteran Affairs committee, Congressman John Rankin (1882– 1960) of Mississippi and Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers (1881–1960) of Massachusetts, introduced the legislation. The next day, Democratic Senator Joel Bennett Clark (1933–1945) of Missouri, the chairman of the Senate Veterans Subcommittee, took the bill to the Senate floor, where it passed in a 50–0 vote on March 24, 1944. The bill got stuck in a House Committee, which delayed passage there until May 18, 1944, with a vote nonetheless of 387–0. As is true with most pieces of legislation, the bill that passed the Senate and House had picked up modifications and amendments in each chamber. A committee composed of senators and congressmen worked on resolving these issues, and the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act received its final approval from the House on June 13, 1944, and from the Senate on June 14, 1944. President Roosevelt signed it into law that same day. The bill assigned the Veterans Administration (VA)the responsibility to carry out the law’s key provisions, including (1) loans for buying small businesses or farms and constructing or buying homes; (2) scholarships for education or technical training, including refresher and retraining courses, along with a monthly living allowance while pursuing studies; and (3) weekly unemployment payments up to a maximum period of one year for those unable to find jobs. The bill also authorized construction of necessary hospital facilities for the sick and wounded and established a mechanism for effective job counseling. On May 7, 1945, Germany signed a document of surrender, followed by Japan in early September, and thus brought World War II to an official end. Throughout the war, numerous veterans with honorable discharges had returned home, and in October 1945, the final process moved ahead in order to reach completion by June 1946. In the end, about 15.5 million surviving veterans found themselves living in a country eager to celebrate their victory and reward their efforts. Before World War II, a college education and homeownership were unreachable dreams for many Americans. At the end of almost four years of conflict, the GI Bill allowed millions of veterans who would have flooded the job market to instead take steps toward realizing those dreams. Many opted for education and in 1947 accounted for almost 50 percent of college admissions. From 1944 to 1952, the VA backed nearly 2.4 million home loans for these honorably discharged service personnel. Because a majority of the veterans accepted the education and home loan benefits, less than 20 percent of the funds set aside for unemployment pay were used. The concern about soldiers flooding the workforce and causing high unemployment figures had been abated. This legislation, which ran until 1956, benefited 7.8 million veterans, mostly men, since women made up less than 3 percent of those in the armed forces. But the bill did not assist all who came home. Draftees who, after special educational help, still could not meet the minimum educational requirements received dishonorable discharges and thus could not enjoy the benefits outlined in the bill. For minorities who qualified for assistance, housing, job, and educational discrimination barred many of


Godfrey, Arthur | 359 them from realizing what the bill had intended. Nevertheless, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act contained some of the most sweeping social reforms in the nation’s history and it contributed immeasurably to the prosperity of the postwar era. See also: Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 (Selective Service, or Draft); Truman, President Harry S.; V-E and V-J Day Selected Reading GI Bill Statistics. www.gibill.va.gov/GI_Bill_Info/history.htm Kaledin, Eugenia. Daily Life in the United States, 1940–1959: Shifting Worlds. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. National Resources Planning Board. www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/187.html

GODFREY, ARTHUR Nicknamed “the Ol’ Redhead” for his shock of red hair, Arthur Godfrey (1903–1983) emerged as one of the major radio personalities of the 1940s. Born in New York City, his family fell on hard times, and the young Godfrey left home and eventually ended up in the U.S. Navy at age 17 by lying about his age. While in the service—with both the navy and the coast guard—Godfrey received radio training that turned him toward pursuing a career in the medium. Upon his discharge from the Coast Guard in 1930, Godfrey obtained a job as an announcer for a Baltimore station. He moved on to Washington, DC, announcing and doing a morning talk program, Arthur Godfrey’s Sundial Show, on which he occasionally sang or strummed a ukulele, an instrument he enjoyed playing. His casual, folksy manner while on the air contrasted with the more formal delivery favored by most of his counterparts, and his program attracted listeners. The late 1930s found him modestly successful in New York City where he briefly served as announcer for Fred Allen’s (1894–1956) radio version of Texaco Star Theater, but he soon thereafter returned to Washington. In 1945, Godfrey finally attracted a large national audience. At the time, he served as morning host for the local CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) affiliate, and he covered President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (1882–1945) funeral cortege then proceeding through the capital. Unlike other reporters, Godfrey created a moving, personal account of events, and the network picked up the feed and broadcast it across the nation. His emotions caught up with him, and be began to weep while talking. Listeners appreciated his warmth and subjective approach to an ongoing news event so much that CBS promptly offered him a show of his own. Thus, in 1945, Arthur Godfrey Time took to the airwaves. An overnight success for the network, Arthur Godfrey Time, a five-days-a-week production usually heard in the late morning, ran from 1945 until 1972 (an evening version made its debut in 1950; it also appeared on television schedules beginning in 1952). Informal, with Godfrey chatting about almost anything, sometimes with guests, other times in extended, impromptu monologues, the show mixed music and talk in an atmosphere that appealed to the public. Carmen Lombardo (1903–1971), a brother of the famous bandleader Guy Lombardo (1902–1977), in 1945 composed a theme song


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for the show called “Seems Like Old Times.” It soon became well-known in its own right, and today many people consider the tune a standard. Godfrey’s growing popularity led CBS to offer him an evening program in 1946. Instead of relying just on talk, producers came up with Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, a series that introduced new entertainers to the public, and Godfrey served as its genial host. It premiered on radio in 1946 and lasted until 1956. Spurred by success, CBS created a television version in 1948; its final telecast took place in January 1958. Participants, amateurs all, were chosen by people who knew them and had some acquaintance with their particular talents. During a broadcast, an audiometer in the studio recorded levels of applause for each performer; the winner received a professional booking in a club. Over the years, among the hundreds of entertainers heard or seen on the program, singers Tony Bennett (b. 1926) and Rosemary Clooney (1928–2002), along with comedians Don Knotts (1924–2006) and Jonathan Winters (b. 1925), graced the Talent Scouts stage. As if the foregoing shows were not enough, Godfrey also undertook a separate television broadcast of Arthur Godfrey and His Friends in 1949. A musical variety series that showcased countless acts over its life, the “friends” could be Godfrey regulars from other shows or celebrity guests invited to appear. It stayed on the air until 1957. He also found time to make a few recordings. One novelty number, “The Too Fat Polka (She’s Too Fat for Me),” which he recorded in 1947, made its way up the charts and became a minor hit. By the end of the 1940s, Arthur Godfrey sat astride a small radio-television empire that he would continue to expand during the early 1950s. Sponsors, many of which he gently ribbed over the air, lined up to advertise their products on his various shows. Lipton Tea, in particular, boasted a long relationship with the entertainer. A series of unfortunate decisions on his part, however, gradually destroyed much of that empire in ensuing years. Despite his easygoing exterior, Arthur Godfrey possessed a mercurial temperament and a large ego. He would not be overshadowed by staffers or guests, and he could, in the blink of an eye, fire associates of long standing. As the public learned of this dark side to his personality, audiences began to fall away. He lost his last remaining show, Arthur Godfrey Time, when it went off the air in 1972. See also: Advertising; ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Beverages; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk Selected Reading Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Singer, Arthur J. Arthur Godfrey: The Adventures of an American Broadcaster. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999.

GOLF First played in 1754 at St. Andrews, Scotland, golf since the late 1800s has enjoyed a rich history in the United States. It thrived during the 1920s, especially as a sport for


Golf | 361 the wealthy people who played at private country clubs. With the Great Depression, only a few could continue to pay club membership dues, and the number of golfers momentarily declined. But to the benefit of nonclub members, private clubs, anxious to continue in existence, opened their links to public play. In addition, the Works Projects Administration (WPA) built many city-owned municipal courses. Suddenly golf became available to the average citizen. On August 5, 1940, a Time magazine article reported that 6,500 public golf courses (out of a total of 9,900 in the United States), allowed more people to play golf than had 10 years earlier. At the same time that average citizens took up golf for recreation, professional golf grew as a news item and as a spectator sport. Four men’s tournaments, often referred to as “the majors,” provided the most prestigious annual competitions: (1) the British Open Championship, established in 1860 and frequently called The Open outside the United Kingdom; (2) the United States Open Championship, 1895, and commonly known as the U.S. Open; (3) the PGA (Professional Golfers’ Association) Championship, 1916; and (4) the Masters Tournament, 1934. Reputations grow from winning various invitation-only matches that occur each season, and the declaration of the best player for the year rests on the number of championship victories accumulated from these four events. For example, in 1941, Craig Wood (1901–1968), who would retire in 1946, made a final splash after an outstanding two-decade career, when he ended a string of runner-up finishes in major events by winning the Masters and the U.S. Open. But World War II caused cancellation of the British Open in1940, and it would not resume until 1946; the other three tournaments soon followed suit. Officials placed the U.S. Open on hold from 1942 to 1945, and the Masters from 1943 to 1945; the PGA Championship fared better, missing only the 1943 event. Other changes occurred because of the war. The Augusta National Golf Club, founded by golfer Bobby Jones (1902– 1971) in 1933 and the home of the Masters Tournament, became a turkey farm to ease wartime food shortages. Both amateur and professional golfers as well as many caddies and groundskeepers either enlisted or were drafted for military service. Among the outstanding players of the 1940s, Sam Snead (1912–2002) Crooner Bing Crosby loved the game of golf joined the navy in 1942, followed by and frequently lent his name to its promotion. Ben Hogan’s (1912–1997) enlistment in The first Crosby National Pro-Amateur PGA tournament took place in Rancho Sante Fe, Calthe Army Air Corps in 1943. ifornia, in 1937. Suspended in 1942 because of The United States government halted the war, Crosby and the PGA revived it in 1947 the manufacture of golf balls and equip- on three courses at Pebble Beach, California. ment, a move that greatly affected the (Photofest)


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play for both the pros and the average citizen, and even led to draining golf course lakes to retrieve lost balls. Some country club courses were ploughed under to be victory gardens for their members. Where golf courses still existed, players raised millions of dollars for the war effort—sometimes in unique ways, such as paying a fine every time a ball landed in a sand trap. Along with the majors, the Ryder Cup matches, first played in 1926 but suspended by the war from 1939 to 1945, register as another important event for professional golfers. Held every two years, alternating between a golf course in the United States and one in England, and founded on prestige, not prize money, this competition originally pitted a team of players from the United States against a team from Britain and Ireland; this changed in 1979 to include players from continental Europe. During the war, the United States retained the trophy it had won in 1937, and U.S. professional golfers continued the spirit of the Ryder Cup by organizing teams to participate in events to raise funds for the American Red Cross and other war-related efforts. With resumption of the Ryder Cup matches in 1947, the U.S. team remained victorious until 1957. After the war, American professional golfers Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, and Byron Nelson (1912–2006), born within six months of one another, easily established themselves as the “big three,” gaining nationwide recognition by dominating both minor and major tournaments. The table below shows these players, along with Craig Wood, as the winners of the majors and members on the Ryder Cup teams during the 1940s. In addition to these accomplishments, Nelson ended his career in 1945 with a recordbreaking win of 18 tournaments, 11 in a row. Hogan added 10 victorious tournaments in one year to his fame in 1948, and Snead maintained recognition as a top player in the world for almost four decades. Snead and Hogan continued playing during the 1950s, with Snead adding three more majors to his record, but never the U.S. Open. He also had two documentaries highlighting his career—Sport Thrills: Saving Strokes with Sam Snead (1940) and Slammin’ Sammy Snead (1951). Hogan, generally considered one of the greatest golfers of all time, won six more majors in the early 1950s, a miraculous feat considering that an automobile accident in 1949 left him unable to walk and play that season. Winning the 1953 British Open made him the second player to win all four of the TABLE 57. Year

U. S. Men’s Professional Golf Champions during the 1940s Sam Snead

Ben Hogan

1940 1941

Byron Nelson

Craig Wood

PGA The Masters U.S. Open

1942 1945 1946 1947 1948

PGA

1949

PGA The Masters Ryder Cup Team

British Open Ryder Cup Team

The Masters PGA PGA Ryder Cup Team PGA U.S. Open

Ryder Cup Team


Golf | 363 majors. The biographical Hollywood film, Follow the Sun (1951), starring Glenn Ford (1916–2006) as Hogan, depicted his life. Individual playing was not limited to the major tournaments, because golf associations across the country regularly staged professional events with large purses as well as amateur matches offering a trophy to the winner. The United States Golf Association (USGA), in addition to the U.S. Open, has sponsored the U.S. Men’s and Women’s Amateur tournaments since 1895, the U. S Women’s Open, 1946, and the U.S. Senior’s Open, 1980. The Western Golf Association has offered the Western Open since 1899. These tournaments, however, are not considered a part of the majors. Two celebrities, crooner Bing Crosby (1903–1977) and former heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis (1914–1981), loved the game of golf and lent their names and influence to its promotion. In 1937, the first Crosby National Pro-Amateur, a PGA tournament, took place in Rancho Sante Fe, California. Suspended in 1942 because of the war, Crosby revived it in 1947 on three courses at Pebble Beach, California, where it continues as an annual event. Crosby also teamed with comedian Bob Hope (1903–2003) and professional golfer Byron Nelson, who had been classified as 4-F (not qualified for military service) because of slow-clotting blood, in exhibition games designed to raise money for war-related causes. Louis played golf with celebrities such as Crosby, Hope, and singer Frank Sinatra (1915–1998), but supposedly preferred games with close friends and the top black golfers of the day. In 1928, a group of black professional players had formed the United Golf Association (UGA) for the purpose of holding tournaments for blacks during the era of racial segregation when the PGA’s by-laws contained a whites-only clause. Louis became a major supporter of the UGA and, in 1941, sponsored the first of eight Joe Louis Open Tournaments at Detroit’s Rackham Municipal Golf Course. Women, as well as men, participated in amateur matches as early as 1895 but did not gain a professional tournament of their own until 1930, with the forming of the Western Open for Women. The PGA added a U.S. Open for Women to its roster of events in 1946, but throughout the decade tournaments were few and far between, with just two qualifying as major events. In 1950, leading women golfers, including Babe Didrikson Zaharias (1911–1956), Patty Berg (1918–2006), Betty Jameson (1919–2009), and Louise Suggs (b. 1923), established the Ladies Professional Golf Association as an organization to govern women’s professional golf. Throughout the 1940s, Zaharias attracted as much public attention as her male counterparts. She easily drew crowds to watch her play and in the process helped to popularize women’s golf. Before taking up the game, she had gained recognition as an outstanding athlete in other areas with an all-American status in basketball and the recipient of two gold medals and one silver in track and field events from the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games. By 1950, Zaharias had won five major tournaments, giving her every golf title available to women and a winning total of 82 when combining amateur and professional tournaments. Berg accumulated 15 major title wins over three decades of playing. She also served in World War II as a lieutenant with the Marines. Jameson won three major tournaments and a total of 13 professional titles. Suggs, who first played golf at age 10, quickly developed into a strong competitor with a high degree of accuracy and a © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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| Grocery Stores and Supermarkets TABLE 58.

Year 1940

U. S. Women’s Professional Golf Champions during the 1940s

Babe Didrikson Zaharias

Patty Berg

Women’s Western Open

1942


1943

1945

Women’s Western Open Women’s Western Open Women’s Western Open

1946 1947 1948

Louise Suggs


1941

1944

Betty Jameson

U.S. Women’s Open U.S. Women’s Open U.S. Women’s Open

Women’s Western Open Women’s Western Open


1949

U.S. Women’s Open, Women’s Western Open

consistent swing, traits that helped her easily accumulate a career record of 58 professional victories; 11 of those tournaments qualified as majors. Scotland may be considered the traditional home of golf, but since the conclusion of World War II, the United States has become the dominant nation. Over golf’s history, several American players have achieved star status for their ability to raise the standards and excitement of the game. During the 1940s, three professional male players—Bryon Nelson, Ben Hogan, and Sam Snead—and four women—Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Patty Berg, Betty Jameson, and Louise Suggs—stand out as establishing a foundation from which the sport grew in popularity during the next two decades. See also: Race Relations and Stereotyping; Rationing Selected Reading Dawkins, Marvin P., and Graham Charles Kinloch. African American Golfers during the Jim Crow Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000. Grimsley, Will. Golf: Its History, People, and Events. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1966. Strege, John. When War Played Through: Golf during World War II. New York: Gotham Books, 2005.

GROCERY STORES AND SUPERMARKETS The 1940s proved to be a period of both challenges and opportunities for the food industry. Throughout the previous decade, chain grocery stores, such as A&P (Great


Grocery Stores and Supermarkets | 365 Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co.), Kroger, Safeway, Giant Food Store, and Piggly Wiggly, to name a few, had opened across the country in America’s first, but rough, version of a supermarket. By 1940, some chains had started to consolidate smaller operations into more spacious buildings, both remodeled and new, in efforts to remove a warehouse look that dominated during the 1930s and to add conveniences such as self-service and parking lots. These larger stores proved at the time to be cost effective and resulted in lower grocery prices, more shoppers, and larger profits. A number of innovations to aid the cook and put new stock on grocery shelves also took place. In 1937, A&P had created its own publishing company to print Woman’s Day magazine. Originally free, the content focused on recipes and menu planning. By 1940, it had expanded to feature articles on food and cooking, nutrition, crafts, home decoration, health, needlework, and child care. Available exclusively in A&P stores, it sold for two cents (approximately 30 cents in 2008 money) and had achieved a circulation of 3 million by 1940. The next year, the Spice Islands Company introduced a line of herbs, spices, and vinegars that could add zest to otherwise bland dishes. Other new products in this year included Cheerioats (the name changed in 1946 to Cheerios), and M&M Plain Chocolate Candies. The December 7, 1941, attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, however, changed all aspects of life in the United States. For grocery stores, shortages of both food and

During the postwar years, the American housewife readily turned away from the family’s wartime victory garden to shop at a new supermarket that offered an abundance of choices and low prices. (Library of Congress)


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manpower, along with rationing, adversely affected the nature of selling and buying. Grocery store owners and customers had to contend with limited supplies, hoarding by some citizens, and black market operators functioning outside the law to supply items otherwise scarce or unavailable. On the positive side, during the 1930s, self-service, which required a smaller labor force and made for easier shopping, had been available in some stores in dry and canned groceries as well as dairy departments. By 1942, this approach had expanded to include fruits and vegetables. For women, employment opportunities increased and, as opposed to many defense factories, continued after the war. The exodus of male employees to military service saw women in grocery stores and supermarkets working at all levels—checkers, butchers, bakers, warehouse workers, as well as department heads and managers. With the entry of the United States into World War II, the food industry, like the rest of the nation, did all it could to convert to a wartime economy. In this undertaking, grocery stores collected ration stamps, sold war bonds, promoted scrap drives, and created and posted menus that used readily available foods requiring a minimum of ration points to purchase. Stores also kept patrons advised about items no longer needing stamps, such as coffee after July 1943 and canned goods in the summer of 1944. Many merchants used their advertising space in the store and ran newspaper ads to support the war effort by explaining rationing or offering nutritional tips. Also, in response to a wartime paper scarcity, grocers conducted campaigns reminding shoppers to supply their own bags. As the war continued, many grocery stores and supermarkets lost money. A series of governmental anti-inflation measures, introduced in 1942, included rent ceilings and wage and price freezes. For some grocers, frozen prices occurred when they were selling certain items at loss-leader margins—that is, a product priced lower than actual cost as an enticement to get customers into the store. At the same time, operating expenses steadily increased because of more clerical work required for rationing reports and other government regulations. For those stores not located in population centers, gas rationing caused a decrease in the number of shoppers. Most larger stores struggled to stay open, while many small family-owned operations closed their doors. With the end of World War II and a return to peace, the grocery industry continued to cope with supply uncertainties and contrasts. For example, there would be periods of widespread shortages of several items, especially meat, followed by an unexpected abundance of the commodities. Governmental controls alternated—first in place, briefly lifted, then reinstated, and finally, removed completely. By 1948, business returned to some normalcy, and merchants felt more confident as Americans arrived at their doors ready to buy not only food necessities but luxury items as well. Along with the uncertainties, some conditions boded well for grocery stores and supermarkets. The average annual percent change in the U.S. population growth almost doubled from 1945 to 1950, going from 1.10 percent to 2.05 percent. This expansion meant a greater need for food and more business for food vendors. At the same time, many families took advantage of the mobility offered by automobiles and improved highway systems and moved to the suburbs. The leading grocery chains continued to close smaller stores and replaced them with modern-day supermarkets, many located


Grocery Stores and Supermarkets | 367 in new suburban shopping malls. These larger markets offered a wider selection of popular merchandise but continued competitive pricing. In marketing efforts to move consumers away from mom-and-pop establishments to chain supermarkets, companies diverted considerable funds to advertising and other promotional ploys. Between 1945 and 1950, money spent on supermarket advertising rose from $3 billion to $6 billion. Special sales, giveaway contests, in-store advertising with posters, and expanded available merchandise drew customers to stores with many new features: (1) more self-service than ever before, making shopping faster and easier; (2) cellophane prepackaging of a wider variety of items including meat, poultry, and cheese; (3) frozen foods in redesigned display cases allowing for larger displays and convenient selection; (4) health and beauty-aid products, heretofore limited to drugstore shelves; (5) books and magazines; and (6) housewares, including small appliances. With a massive expansion of available products, store features such as space, convenience, and efficiency became important considerations. This caused a ripple effect that created business for others. Various equipment manufacturers responded with adjustable shelving, streamlined refrigerated display cases and coolers, price-computing scales, packaging machines, and belt-driven checkout counters. At the beginning of the 1940s, the American supermarket found itself in a position to become the nation’s primary source for groceries. Involvement in World War II and a shift to a wartime economy slowed that growth but led to a new understanding of methods to improve the business, such as self-service, large inventories, and plenty of free parking. After the war, gradual consumer acceptance of this format, coupled with a desire for convenience and affordability, paved the way for the supermarket boom that occurred between 1950 and 1965. See also: Architecture; Desserts, Candy, and Ice Cream; Labor Unrest; Levittown and Suburbanization; Newspapers Selected Reading Gwynn, David. Grocery Stores and Supermarkets. www.groceteria.com/about/host.html “History of Supermarkets.” Progressive Grocer 66 (12) (December 1987): 53. Mathews, Ryan. “1926–1946: The Mass Market Comes of Age: How the Great Depression, the Rise of Mass Media and World War II Helped Create a Mass Consumer Market.” Progressive Grocer 75 (12) (December 1996): 47. Population Statistics. www.npg.org/facts/us_historical_pops.htm


H

HEALTH AND MEDICINE In 1941, a group of physicians, working with Harper Brothers Publishing, issued a series of little books on five diseases collectively titled Help Your Doctor to Help You. Each volume sold for 95 cents (approximately $14 in 2008 dollars) and could be purchased in book stores and at newsstands, drugstores, and railroad stations. The resultant popularity of these publications underlined a growing interest among Americans in maintaining good health, a concern that, in 1946, the New York Times reported ranking as one of 12 basic human interests along with items such as achievement, faith, and recreation, From 1900 to 1930, average life expectancy at birth for U.S. citizens increased from 47.3 to 59.7 years because of improved public health services and a reduction in death rates from infectious diseases. Increased awareness of the importance of cleanliness also came into play; after all, Procter & Gamble had been successfully selling soap for over 100 years. By 1950, average life expectancy had climbed to 68.2 years, largely as a result of better nutrition, a growing interest in physical fitness, World War II and postwar medical innovations and breakthroughs, and continuing attention to improved personal hygiene and sanitation practices. Healthier food had emerged as a popular cause during the 1930s, contributing to the 1938 passage of a revised and expanded Pure Food and Drug Act. It called for, among other things, more extensive labeling and testing of food products that would ensure safer and better eating. That same year, the laboratory synthesis of vitamins permitted their incorporation into pill form. By 1940, vitamins could easily be purchased over the counter at pharmacies and grocery stores and supermarkets and used as nutritional supplements to one’s diet. Despite increased information about healthy eating, many Americans apparently continued to engage in unhealthy practices as revealed in 1941, when the military 369


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services rejected a high percentage of conscripted men because of nutritional deficiencies. A concerned government embarked on ways to improve the health of all of its citizens. Public health authorities, building on a growing wave of patriotism, used periodicals such as Parents’ Magazine to inform everyone that “it is patriotic to stay healthy” and suggested that effective steps included eating well-balanced meals, practicing sanitary personal hygiene, and having regular physical examinations and dental checkups. The Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) in 1943, operating under the Office of Health Defense and Welfare, focused just on healthy eating and, through various media outlets, distributed a table of seven basic food groups to choose from each day. As with most federal government promotions at the time, the FNB emphasized a link to the war, that cooking and eating nutritious food bought at grocery stores or grown in victory gardens better enabled those on the home front to do their part in bringing a quick and victorious end to the conflict. Just how much civilians improved their eating habits depended on personal initiative and probably proved minimal. A different story existed in the army, where soldiers eating in the mess halls and on the battlefields were served from menus that adhered to the new governmental guidelines. After the war, most of these men and women wanted to continue their healthy habits, and, indeed, the postwar years saw an increase in the serving of nutritious food. In the United States, calisthenics, play, sports, or exercise periods had been a part of most school days since the early 1800s and, by the 1920s, some states had even passed legislation requiring physical education. Along with World War I, and again with World War II, the emphases of physical education curricula switched from games and sports to physical conditioning, necessitated by clear evidence that many of those drafted or enlisted were not fit for combat. Important contributions to improve fitness came during the 1940s, specifically from “the father of physical fitness,” Thomas K Cureton (1901–1992), professor, researcher, and director of the Physical Fitness Research Laboratory, founded in 1944 at the University of Illinois. Under his leadership, researchers developed methods to test motor fitness and to appraise human physique, cardiovascular fitness, and aquatic performance. Cureton also established programs for teaching adults, children, and youth the importance of exercise, along with correct techniques—information that became the basis for exercise programs put in place in schools, colleges, and universities across the country. In 1947, recognizing the value of Cureton’s work, Olympic athletes from throughout the Midwest participated in a series of tests at the laboratory. Despite increased emphasis on good eating and regular and appropriate exercise, people still got sick, and, because of a short supply of physicians, hospitals, and nurses, those on the home front had to cope as best they could. Forty percent of the country’s physicians would soon serve in the military, and many nurses would join their ranks, resulting in many communities lacking properly staffed clinics and hospitals. Even medical research would now concentrate on military-related projects. Most of the doctors who remained at home engaged in solo general practices and frequently made house calls as opposed to seeing everyone in their office. In small towns, some opened clinics or hospitals with limited services in an attempt to be more


Health and Medicine | 371 efficient in the delivery of their medical skills. Most large communities boasted at least one hospital, often founded by a religious group, which offered operating rooms, X-ray equipment, diagnostic laboratories, and nurses to care for patients. After the war, the number of hospitals across the country greatly increased thanks to the Hill-Burton Act of 1946, which, through funds and planning assistance, expanded the Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals for the millions of returning soldiers who would need medical attention and also provided aid to the nation’s community hospitals. During World War II, higher-paying defense jobs usurped the normal pool of practicing and prospective practitioners. In hopes of countering any shortage of nurses, the U.S. government enacted the Nurse Training Act of 1943, which established the Cadet Nurse Corps within the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and allowed for the granting of scholarships and stipends to educate qualified applicants in exchange for their providing military or essential civilian nursing services for the duration of the war. An active publicity campaign to help achieve a yearly quota of 65,000 nurse recruits included advertisements in newspapers and magazines, discussions about the corps on radio programs, and displays of film stars posing with cadets in ads and posters in a variety of stores and facilities across the country. In 1944, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer distributed a U.S. Office of War Information documentary titled Reward Unlimited; it stars Dorothy McGuire (1916–2001) as Cadet Nurse Peggy Adams, along with James Brown (1920–1992), Aline MacMahon (1899–1991), and Spring Byington (1886– 1971). Scenes of actresses donning cadet nurse uniforms can be observed in other features such as Shirley Temple’s (b. 1928) Kiss and Tell (1945). The corps continued until 1948 and graduated a total of 124,000 nurses. The demands of being at war brought about increased financing and coordination between the U.S. government and medical research, which resulted in many significant changes in the practice of American medicine. While military doctors and nurses focused on efficient delivery of life-saving procedures, scientists perfected miracle drugs such as sulfonamides and penicillin, the insecticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), and invented new medical technologies based on the use of radioactive isotopes produced from the atomic pile at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Experiments with Prontosil, the first sulfa drug, had begun in 1932 with hundreds of manufacturers producing large amounts of sulfa in various forms. The death of at least 100 people caused by a toxic derivative served as a major factor in the passage of the Food and Drug Act of 1938, which established guidelines for testing and approval of new drugs before their distribution to the public. Despite the temporary setback with sulfa drugs, at the beginning of World War II, sulfa became the first antibiotic available to military physicians and their patients, and soldiers’ first aid kits contained sulfa powder to be immediately sprinkled on any open wound. But a more effective antibiotic stood in the wings ready to make its appearance before the war ended. Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming (1881–1951) had discovered penicillin in 1928. Eleven years later in England, Australian Howard Florey (1898– 1968) and German-born Ernst Chain (1906–1979) isolated its active ingredient so that it could be produced in a powdery form. By 1943, the required clinical trials had been completed and production on a large scale began, allowing the use of penicillin for


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treating Allied soldiers wounded on D-Day, the June 6, 1944, invasion of Europe by Allied forces. Considered a miracle drug at the time, the three men responsible for its discovery and development shared the honor of receiving the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945. At that same time, the perfection of oral penicillin had been achieved and made available to the American public. Other antibiotics produced during the 1940s included streptomycin (1944), chloramphenicol (1947), aureomycin (1948), and neomycin (1949). In 1939, Swiss chemist Paul Muller (1899–1965) discovered insecticidal powers in DDT, first synthesized in 1874 from chlorine, alcohol, and sulfuric acid. DDT stopped a typhus epidemic in Naples, Italy, in 1944, by killing lice, the carrier of the disease. It also proved effective in controlling malaria and yellow fever. The army and DDT manufacturers announced other amazing qualities such as clearing areas of fleas, bedbugs, mosquitoes, moths, roaches, termites, and flies—all of this in addition to various varmints that could do major damage to agricultural crops. Muller received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 for his contribution, and Americans looked at DDT as a great scientific gift. The fascination changed to a sense of horror when biologist Rachel Carson’s (1907–1964) study, Silent Spring (1962), revealed its devastating effects on the natural environment. Authorities banned its use in the United States in 1973. Drugs obviously helped medical personnel carry out their priority of immediate care for battlefield injuries in an attempt to return as many soldiers as possible to duty quickly. The availability of safe blood transfusions also contributed to quick recovery of the wounded. In 1940, physician Charles Drew (1904–1950) devised a way to separate plasma from the rest of human blood, which allowed for safe preservation, storage, and shipment for longer periods of time. Shortly after his discovery, Drew became the medical director of the first Red Cross blood bank. He resigned this post in 1942, after the United States War Department issued a directive that blood taken from white donors should be separated from that of black donors. Drew left the Red Cross to head the Department of Surgery at Howard University, a segregated college for blacks, as well as to serve as the chief of surgery at nearby Freedman’s Hospital. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) awarded him its prestigious Spingarn Medal in 1944 for his pioneering work on blood plasma. The European theater of the war allowed quick and complete treatment of wounded military personnel more easily than did the Pacific. Army medics rendered first aid at the battle site before transporting the casualties to a battalion aid station. Division hospitals received those needing additional stabilization or surgery. In the Pacific theater, however, long distances from the area of fighting to a hospital posed a challenge. To this end, the army, navy, and War department operated a total of 39 hospital ships staffed by military medical personnel who offered modified treatment while speeding to a full-service military hospital. Anticipating heavy casualties in the D-Day invasion, the navy converted a number of LSTs (landing ship tanks)—vessels originally created to support amphibious operations by carrying vehicles, cargo, and troops directly onto shore—to serve as small hospitals. Loss of life on the battlefield clearly posed a major threat to those fighting the war. Back home, citizens viewed sexually transmitted diseases (venereal) and polio


Health and Medicine | 373 (infantile paralysis) as the most frightening health challenges. Two forms of venereal disease—gonorrhea and syphilis—created a serious adult public health problem. Gonorrhea, less damaging than syphilis, impairs the well-being of the victim, whereas untreated syphilis can lead to insanity and severe damage to the cardiovascular and nervous systems. By 1940, many physicians viewed venereal diseases as both a health and social problem needing government intervention. The U.S. military took action through the development of an antidisease protocol involving education, control of prostitution, and medical treatment. For both military personnel and civilians, the use of antibiotics developed during the decade—sulfa for gonorrhea and penicillin for syphilis—led to a dramatic drop in disease rates. In the area of polio, a British doctor, Michael Underwood (1737–1820), had provided the first clinical description of the disease in 1789, and the United States reported its first major epidemic in 1894. Incidents of polio and related concerns grew over the decades. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), who had contracted the disease in 1921, announced the creation of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in 1937, and entertainer Eddie Cantor (1892–1964) used the phrase “March of Dimes” to urge radio listeners to march—that is, send their spare change to the White House for the foundation to use in its fight against polio. The term stuck for future fundraisers. The foundation in 1939 commenced mass distribution of tank respirators, usually referred to as iron lungs, to assist polio victims who experienced difficulty with breathing. Epidemics, always in the summer, had occurred in different states before the 1940s but now came with more regularity. For example, Texas, California, Washington, Kansas, and New York reported enough cases in 1943 to warrant epidemic status, and New York, North Carolina, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Virginia experienced the same in 1944. The U.S. Public Health Service declared in August 1946 that the nation had the worst infantile paralysis outbreak since 1916. Many communities during these years operated in a state bordering on panic; they closed schools and swimming pools, while parents kept their children at home in hopes of preventing further spread of the disease. In 1947, physician and medical researcher Jonas Salk (1914–1995) accepted a position at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and one year later, thanks to four research grants, devoted himself to developing a vaccine against polio. A nationwide epidemic in 1949 that claimed over 30,000 victims, and the worst up to that time, added pressure to Salk’s work. The early 1950s saw the greatest number of polio cases ever reported in the United States, with more deaths than from any other communicable disease. Jubilation followed the announcement on April 12, 1955, of the discovery of an effective vaccine. Equally exciting, in June 1946, Major General Leslie R. Groves (1896–1970), the primary military leader for the Manhattan Project, stated that radioactive isotopes would be available for medical and biological research giving birth to what some called atomic medicine. The medical community now had materials that would greatly expand their ability to study the human body and develop revolutionary diagnostic procedures and new ways to treat diseases, especially cancer. Psychiatric medicine also made advances. The successful treatment of large numbers of soldiers hospitalized for psychiatric disorders during World War II persuaded


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Congress to pass the National Mental Health Act in 1946, with funds available for the education of thousands of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and nurses. Three years later, the government created the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), founded in 1887 to conduct and support medical research. The rising costs of medical services, both before and after World War II, could not be afforded by all Americans. The first group health insurance plan went into effect in 1929, when a contract for teachers in Dallas, Texas, called for Baylor Hospital to provide room, board, and medical services for a fee. By the 1930s, several large insurance companies entered the field, as did nonprofit groups called Blue Cross, or Blue Shield, organizations that negotiated discounted contracts with doctors and hospitals. Looking for a way to include all citizens under a comprehensive plan, President Franklin Roosevelt, in 1939, asked Congress for a national health care program; the request did not pass, and Roosevelt promised to try again after the conclusion of the war. By November 1945, when his successor, Harry S. Truman (1884–1972), sent a similar bill to Congress, the American Medical Association had organized to prevent what physicians saw as a government attempt to regiment medicine and control their freedom of practice and fee schedules. Despite some favorable reaction across the nation, many voters and members of Congress believed the plan an attempt to introduce socialized medicine into the country, and again a call for national health insurance met defeat. The 1940s laid a groundwork for many changes in the practice and benefits of medicine, including an expansion of knowledge among both practitioners and their patients, increased availability of blood and plasma for transfusions, effective new drugs, improvement of equipment and diagnostic procedures, the building of hospitals, many of which became centers providing specialized medicine, and an enhanced public image of psychiatry, to name only a few. Existing and new federal agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC; 1946) and the National Heart Institute (NHI; 1948) provided increased expertise in the prevention and treatment of diseases. Building on the accomplishments of the 1940s, advances continue, resulting in a projected probability of life expectancy for those born in 2010 to be 75.7 years for men and 80.8 for women, or a combined average of 78.3 years. See also: Advertising; Movies; Race Relations and Stereotyping; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk; Technology Selected Reading Cadet Nurse Corps. www.lhncbc.nlm.nih.gov/apdb/phshistory/resources/cadetnurse/nurse.html Health, Medicine, Physical Fitness. www.oxfordreference.com; www.ahs.uiuc.edu/history/cureton. htm Kaledin, Eugenia. Daily Life in the United States, 1940–1959 : Shifting Worlds. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. Life Expectancy. www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/births_deaths_marriages_divorces/life_ expectancy.html


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HOBBIES Americans in 1940 pursued their interest in hobbies—specific nonwork, pleasurable activities—at the same level of popularity as they did during the Great Depression. The full employment brought on by World War II quickly put free time at a premium and reduced the necessity of having a hobby, unlike the 1930s, when people had idle hours they needed to occupy. Despite the pressures of the war years, the value of an enjoyable activity outside of work continued to be a relevant aspect of American life. Statistical records kept during the 1940s did not include the numbers of children and adults with a hobby. Documentation of community hobby shows indicates an interest in leisure pursuits. The New York Stock Exchange sponsored its first such show in 1941, an event that continued annually until 1954. Groups such as the Union League Club, the New York Real Estate Board, and the New York Medical College followed suit. The Hobby Guild of America and the American Hobby Federation, as well as schools, recreation groups and centers, and community associations across the country also underwrote such exhibitions. Attention paid by the media can be another indicator of popularity and relevance. Hobby Lobby, a radio program on the CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) network, started in 1937 with Dave Elman (1900– 1967) as host; he interviewed people who pursued unusual interests. The show had an uninterrupted run until 1943, the height of World War II. It resumed for the 1945–1946 season, then went off the air again, and made its last regular season appearance in 1949, finally finishing with a summer series in 1950 on NBC (National Broadcasting Company). Its disappearance from scheduled programming did not indicate a lessening interest in hobbies but more the reduced scale of radio broadcasting in the face of growing competition from television. In the area of print, Hobbies magazine debuted in 1931; throughout the 1940s, it served as “the magazine for collectors.” It typically contained stories about potential hobby sources, such as glass and china items, gems, miniatures, postcards, firearms, coins, stamps, and Model airplanes could be built by almost anyone; they ranged from simple kits to detailed so on. It also carried a range of adver- assemblies that required special tools. Casual tisements directed at enthusiasts. surveys conducted during the 1940s indicate In 1941, Popular Science magazine model making to be one of the period’s favorite identified photography, stamp collecting, hobbies. (Library of Congress)


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music, model making, and home workshops as the five most popular hobbies for Americans but offered no definitions or statistical documentation. Likewise, a 1948 book titled Guide to Popular Hobbies, by Geoffrey Mott-Smith (1902–1960), provided basic information on photography, magic, collecting stamps, coins, buttons, model airplanes, ships, and the like. Just one year earlier, Dave Elman had declared to a New York Times reporter that the collecting of autographs ranked as the most popular American hobby, with photography a close second, which suggests some changes from the beginning of the decade. Whether first or second in popularity, photography could, by 1940, be enjoyed by many individuals, regardless of their skill levels. The Eastman Kodak Company had manufactured a simple, easily operated Brownie camera to commemorate the 1939– 1940 New York World’s Fair, and a price of $1.25 (about $19 in 2008 dollars) made it generally affordable. With experience and more sophisticated cameras, the amateur photographer could take quality pictures and might even earn some extra money from a variety of potential markets. The advent of World War II disrupted the normal patterns of American life, and photography became a way for families to stay connected. Snapshots kept everyone visually informed about important personal activities—births, weddings, family gatherings—and other everyday events. Recognizing this value and the growing interest in photography, Kodak produced three versions of the Brownie during the war years followed by four more in the postwar era. In 1948, however, another company, the Polaroid Corporation, made a significant contribution to popular photography and challenged Kodak’s traditional dominance in the field. The company had been founded in1937 by Edwin Land (1909–1991), a scientist and inventor. Land developed a new concept for still photography and publicly marketed a device he labeled a Polaroid camera (“Polaroid” has no real meaning; it merges the word “polarize” and the suffix “-oid” to create a trademarked word). Land’s design allowed a person to take a picture and then in no time have a partially developed print emerge from the camera. A dab of polymer fixative preserved the image, and the photographer experienced instant gratification with a finished picture. For the remainder of the decade, Polaroid instant photography fascinated consumers who bought the cameras as quickly as the company could manufacture them. The basic model retailed for the relatively high cost of $89.75 (or roughly $775 in 2008 dollars), but the price seemed not to deter public enthusiasm at all. While advancements in technology enabled some hobbyists to snap pictures, other pursuits acknowledged a natural inclination to collect objects, which in turn becomes the basis for a hobby. By the 1940s, the collecting of coins and stamps had long served as a source of pleasure and an identifiable pursuit for many. For collectors, an important milestone occurred in 1892, when the United States Mint issued its first commemorative coin and the postal service released a series of commemorative stamps to mark the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) in the Americas. Since then, many other nations have likewise minted coins and printed stamps specifically for the purpose of being saved, a practice that continues into the 21st century. Both during and after World War II, basic coin collecting required little in the way of supplies and cost. Keeping some special denominations such as one-cent pieces of


Hobbies | 377 all possible years of issue from the loose change that passed through one’s hands each day served as an initiation into the hobby. From this simple beginning, an enthusiastic numismatist could next acquire knowledge about coin values and conditions and increase the size and value of the collection by making purchases from a dealer. In 1940, Richard S. Yeoman (1904–1988), a commercial artist and coin collector working for the Whitman Publishing Company, made the life of a novice coin collector easier with an inexpensive cardboard coin holder that continues to be available. Yeoman’s version features fold-out panels and an assortment of titles—pennies, nickels, dimes, etc.—that allows for a wider variety of denominations to be stored. He also compiled two authoritative coin price guides: the Handbook of United States Coins (1942; known as the Blue Book) and A Guide Book of United States Coins (1946; known as the Red Book). Both receive regular updating. Stamp collecting was another popular hobby, especially after the many favorable endorsements made by the era’s best-known philatelist, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945). While collectors on the home front continued their involvement with the hobby, the USO (United Service Organizations) encouraged them to donate stamps, albums, catalogs, and accessories for a program called Stamps for Servicemen. This activity let those in the armed forces either to continue an already established hobby or acquire a new one. Soon after the entry of the United States into the war, the U.S. Department of the Treasury urged citizens of all ages to support the effort by buying federal savings stamps that ranged in cost from a dime to five dollars per stamp, although most schoolchildren bought either 10-cent or 25-cent denominations. These stamps differed from those used for postage in that they earned interest and could be pasted in bond books designed for that purpose. A full book, which contained $18.75 in stamps (or approximately $225 in 2008 dollars) could be turned in for a $25 Series E savings bond. The Scott’s Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, the foremost authority on philately, in the fall of 1942 requested that collectors purchase as many savings stamps as they could for “victory, duty, protection and recreation,” an appeal that worked, although some hobbyists doubtless added a savings stamp or two as permanent additions to their collections. Collecting as a hobby during the 1940s hardly limited itself to coins and stamps. For those with the curiosity and interest, other items—buttons, small animal figurines, dolls, autographs, documents, salt and pepper shakers, objects of art or nature— received attention as potential hobbies. Whatever the focus, they all involved acquiring a knowledge base, collecting, housing, cataloguing, and preserving. For many, in addition to collecting, the word “hobby” means handicraft pursuits that require an assortment of tools and defined skills. During the 1940s, along with interests in photography and collecting, these pursuits occupied the leisure time of many. At home they could be as simple as sewing articles of clothing that included decorative touches done by hand. Knitting, crocheting, and quilting also flourished. Decoratively painting household objects such as waste baskets, wall trim, and serving trays brought out the artist in many. With a steady increase in middle-class home ownership, workshops located in the garages or the basements of houses grew in popularity as more and more men gained confidence to take on do-it-yourself tasks. The term had first appeared in a


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Suburban Life magazine article back in October 1912, and its application grew in the intervening years. By the 1930s, Sears, Roebuck and Company had created a building materials catalog offering everything needed to construct, remodel, modernize, or repair a house, activities that most people then viewed as a man’s hobby and domain. During the 1930s, for those who did not live in a house or could not afford a workshop, schools and recreational centers opened their shop doors to would-be woodworkers. The onset of war and the deployment of soldiers to foreign shores did not change the theory that home maintenance and building projects were a man’s responsibility. But the absence of men forced many women to use their husband’s or brother’s or father’s tools. Once women began to practice these skills, the number of do-it-yourselfers grew significantly. During the war, however, these efforts by women frequently came more from the necessity of making home repairs than as a hobby. Anyone unsure about woodworking as a leisure pursuit during the 1940s could easily turn to magazines and books for help. Both Popular Mechanics and Popular Science regularly published articles about tools and projects for casual woodworkers and also assembled these articles into books such as Forty Power Tools You Can Make (1941, 1943, 1944, 1948; articles excerpted from Popular Mechanics) and How to Get the Most Out of Your Home Workshop with Hand and Power Tools (1946; articles taken from Popular Science). Woodworking for Everybody (1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1970), by John Gerald Shea (1906–1980) and Paul Nolt Wenger (active 1940s), provided useful information and served as hands-on manuals. The postwar phenomenon of many Americans moving to the suburbs and the accompanying building boom further promoted the acquisition of practical skills and set the stage for the do-it-yourself craze that blossomed in the 1950s. Both during and after the war, many psychologists encouraged involvement with handicrafts for office workers and professional people as an effective means of relieving stress. In early 1943, the American Red Cross Hospital Recreation Corps assisted with instruction for wounded servicemen in various forms of art, woodworking, leather craft, metal craft, basket weaving, ceramics, weaving, and macramé. This approach to occupational therapy significantly contributed to the formation of hobbies for wounded soldiers on the mend. Acknowledging the success of this program, the army and navy decided to launch similar campaigns to encourage hobbies among its active members in hopes of forestalling unwanted attitudes and behaviors. Military facilities created craft centers, and the army held an exhibition of GI crafts at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1945. Many a soldier established a postwar career based on craft skills acquired while in the service. Model making as a handicraft certainly had a place in the hierarchy of popular leisure activities both during and after the war, thanks to the availability of prefabricated materials and the ease of participating in this hobby, whatever one’s degree of expertise. At the simplest level, some kits could be purchased that only required assembling the object. At the other end of the spectrum, basic materials could be purchased that called for the hobbyist to have both the tools and skills needed to follow a plan to form parts, bring those parts together as a whole, and paint or otherwise finish the model. This acquisition of necessary tools and skills allowed for a wide range of ages to


Hockey | 379 enjoy making models of every description. Because of the lack of metal and plastic for anything other than the war effort, paper modeling saw some popularity during World War II. Many other leisure activities of the 1940s could also be considered hobbies. During the war, the cultivation of victory gardens became a necessity to combat the scarcity and rationing of certain foods. It also served as an introduction to a new hobby for many. Likewise, the building of homes and accompanying lawns and gardens established lawn care as an ongoing activity and a hobby for some. A fad involving tinkering with automobiles to alter their appearance, as well as increase speed, created a subculture of hot rods and yet another postwar hobby. Finally, old-time favorites like reading, crossword puzzles, model railroading, ceramics, drawing, and painting should also be mentioned. And in good American consumer style, by the end of the 1940s, hobbies had taken on a new dimension. Shops that supplied kits and materials became successful businesses achieving new profit records, and hobbyists, for the first time, felt increasingly comfortable making money from their new avocations. See also: Aviation; Best Sellers (Books); Fads; Lawns, Lawnmowers, and Fertilizers; Leisure and Recreation; Levittown and Suburbanization; Newspapers; Toys; War Bonds Selected Reading Gelber, Steven M. Hobbies and the Culture of Work in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Mott-Smith, Geoffrey. Guide to Popular Hobbies. Chicago: J. G. Ferguson, 1948. Photography. New York Times, February 22, 1942. www.proquest.com

HOCKEY In contrast to the grace and precision of figure skating, the sport of ice hockey offers a fast-paced test of skill, endurance, and teamwork. Brought to the New World by European settlers, the history of ice hockey primarily dates back to the 18th and 19th centuries in Canada. An outdoor game originally limited to those localities sufficiently cold for consistent ice coverage, the advent of indoor ice rinks advanced hockey to a year-round activity in many major metropolitan areas. Numerous variations on ice hockey have developed over time, and street and field hockey, played on paved or other hard-surfaced areas, enjoy considerable popularity. Because they do not rely on cold weather and ice, street and field hockey can be played in any season; some enthusiasts even play the game wearing roller skates. Many schools and colleges boast organized field hockey teams, whereas street hockey has always been played as a more impromptu sport. Whatever the variation, the object of the game remains the same: to place a puck, or hard disk—a ball in field hockey—in a goal. The term “hockey” usually applies to the game played on ice. Given its more northern setting and climate, Canada became the home of most ice hockey during the 19th century. Rules were agreed upon and teams organized. The first amateur hockey league formed in Ontario in 1885 but succeeded in gaining only


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a small following. Frederick Arthur Stanley (1841–1908), known as Lord Stanley of Preston, and a governor general of Canada, in 1893 donated a competitive trophy cup to the Montreal Hockey Club, which he called the Dominion Challenge Cup, for the teams then actively participating in the game. In time, his gift became known as the Stanley Cup and emerged as the top prize in professional hockey league play. These humble beginnings generated interest in the sport; during the 1890s, U.S. skaters began playing hockey at several New England colleges as well as other wintry sites. The National Hockey Association emerged in 1909 but suspended operations in 1917 after most of the qualified players had been drafted for fighting in World War I. The National Hockey League (NHL) came into being in 1917, and the organization now dominates the professional side of the sport. Ice hockey became a part of the Olympic Games in 1920. By 1942, World War II had severely impacted the NHL because a majority of the players served in the military. Some league officials suggested suspending operations for the war’s duration, but government and military leaders considered the continuation of professional sports good for public morale and urged the NHL to function as best as it could. Membership declined to six teams, called “the original six,” and remained that way throughout the 1940s. Four, the Boston Bruins, Chicago Black Hawks, Detroit Red Wings, and New York Rangers, came from the United States; the other two, the Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs, from Canada. Despite the majority of teams being from the United States, most players claimed Canada as their home. In addition, the two Canadian teams won more Stanley Cups than their U.S. counterparts during the 1940s, with the Toronto Maple Leafs dominating the series. Leaders in the NHL decided in 1943 to establish an ice hockey hall of fame in Kingston, Ontario, the site of North America’s first hockey league. Problems and disagreements developed about location and cost, which resulted in the completion of a building in 1961, not in Kingston but in Toronto, using a refurbished bank. Since 1943, six U.S. players have been inducted. One, Frank Brimsek (1913–1998), played from 1938 to 1950 for the Boston Bruins and in 1941 made significant contributions to his TABLE 59. Year 1939–1940 1940–1941 1941–1942 1942–1943 1943–1944 1944–1945 1945–1946 1946–1947 1947–1948 1948–1949 1949–1950

NHL Teams and Stanley Cup Winners, 1940–1950 Team New York Rangers Boston Bruins Toronto Maple Leafs Detroit Red Wings Montreal Canadiens Toronto Maple Leafs Montreal Canadiens Toronto Maple Leafs Toronto Maple Leafs Toronto Maple Leafs Detroit Red Wings


Hope, Bob | 381 team’s winning of the Stanley Cup. In 1973, a similar U.S. museum opened its doors in Eveleth, Minnesota, Brimsek’s hometown. Hollywood made a comical contribution to ice hockey in 1945 with the release of a Walt Disney cartoon, Hockey Homicide, that featured Goofy on skates. With the widespread availability of television in the 1950s, hockey found a new audience. People in warmer climates, who perhaps had never been on ice, finally experienced the excitement and continuous action that characterize ice hockey. Since then, new franchises have been developed, new rinks constructed, and “the fastest game on ice” has steadily risen in popularity. See also: Cartoons (Film); Skating (Figure); Skating (Roller) Selected Reading McFarlane, Brian. Brian McFarlane’s History of Hockey. Champaign, IL: Sagamore, 1997. Stewart, Mark. Hockey: A History of the Fastest Game on Ice. New York: Franklin Watts, 1998.

HOPE, BOB Born of British parents in Eltham, England (a part of greater London), Leslie Townes Hope (1903–2003), or Les to his friends, moved with his family to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1908. He discovered a gift for humor at an early age and parlayed those talents into vaudeville as a song and dance man while still in his teens. During the 1920s, Les Hope enjoyed modest success on the various vaudeville circuits then crisscrossing the United States. At some point around 1928, he decided on Bob as a more stage-friendly name, and it endured for the remainder of his long life. With the advent of World War II, Bob Hope became one of the most popular and beloved entertainers of the decade. With his new name and some improved routines, the early 1930s found Hope playing New York City’s Palace Theatre, the pinnacle of success for vaudevillians. He also landed a role in the ensemble casting of Smiles, a 1930 Broadway musical. It served as a steppingstone; after Smiles, he appeared in Ballyhoo of 1932, a short-lived revue, and then took an important part in Jerome Kern’s (1885–1945) production of Roberta in 1933. The once-anonymous member of the chorus successfully moved to the important character of Huckleberry Haines, a bandleader, and he got to sing “You’re Devastating,” as well as participate in several other numbers. Critics generally liked Hope’s performance, and Roberta would lead to significant work in other entertainment areas, as well as a continuing presence on Broadway. In 1936, he shared star billing with Ethel Merman (1908–1984) and Jimmy Durante (1893–1980) in Cole Porter’s (1891–1964) Red, Hot and Blue, another musical comedy. Along with his acting chores, he sang Porter’s inimitable “It’s Delovely.” The mid-1930s also found Hope performing on network radio, mainly doing revuestyle programs. But audiences enjoyed his comedic routines, and he eventually landed his own series, The Pepsodent Show, Starring Bob Hope. It premiered in 1938 with the new fall season on Tuesday nights over NBC (National Broadcasting Company); the program would remain there, along with Pepsodent toothpaste as its sponsor, until 1948. During those years, The Pepsodent Show became a listening ritual for millions


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With a varied show business career already behind him, Bob Hope, accompanied by Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, embarked on a series of comedies ostensibly set in exotic locales. This illustration shows a still from Road to Singapore, the first of the so-called Road pictures, with the trio clowning for the camera. (Paramount Pictures/Photofest)

of fans. Swan Soap took over sponsorship from late 1948 through the spring of 1950, when various other sponsors underwrote the broadcasts until 1955, a time when television had all but vanquished network radio programming. But Hope had anticipated the rise of television; in 1953, The Bob Hope Show made its NBC-TV debut, running until 1956. After that, he could be found as a guest on countless programs, plus he hosted his own comedy specials for many years thereafter. Hope made his final television appearance in 1996. While becoming established on stage and in radio, Hope also emerged as a prominent comedian in the movies. He began his film career in the mid-1930s with a number of forgettable musical shorts, such as Going Spanish (1934), Calling All Tars (1935), and Watch the Birdie (1935). He made his full-length feature debut with The Big Broadcast of 1938. With a cast mainly made up of popular radio personalities, Hope acquits himself well. He sings “Thanks for the Memory” (1937) in a duet with Shirley Ross (1913–1975); the tune went on to win the 1938 Academy Award for best song. In light of that, “Thanks for the Memory” became Hope’s theme song: he used it on both his radio shows and later television appearances. Given the commercial success of The Big Broadcast of 1938, Paramount Pictures reunited the two in Thanks for the Memory, a lesser film from that same year designed to capitalize on the popularity of © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Hope, Bob | 383 the previous movie. Despite its title, Hope and Ross instead sing “Two Sleepy People,” another excellent melody but probably not the anticipated song. At this point, however, Hope had established himself as both a radio and movie star. Among his wide circle of friends, Hope counted Bing Crosby (1903–1977) as one of his closest and best. The two would make a number of comedies during the 1940s and after, and moviegoers took to their brand of humor. Crosby’s easygoing demeanor proved the perfect foil to Hope’s machine-gun delivery of jokes and wisecracks. With the opening of the decade, Hope’s first film for 1940 bore the title Road to Singapore. It also served as his first pairing with Crosby. In addition to the five Road pictures noted below, Hope, Crosby, and Lamour would also collaborate on Road to Bali in 1952 and The Road to Hong Kong in 1962, for a total of seven comedies using a road to somewhere as their collective theme. These motion pictures created a category all their own. Uneven at times, and going from hilarity to boring stretches, they present the threesome at their cinematic best. Hope’s movie career clearly moved along in high gear during the 1940s, with 19 releases in 10 years. Most of them, in retrospect, have not aged well. Quickly made and generally mediocre, they provide some chuckles but tend to lack any memorable routines that would elevate them to the realm of classic comedies. A handful of the 19 films, however, provide a look at just how good Hope really was, both in terms of his own skills and those of strong costars, gifted directors, and sharp screenwriters.

TABLE 60. Year

Bob Hope Feature Films, 1940–1949 Title

Notes

1940

Road to Singapore The Ghost Breakers

with Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour (the first Road picture) with Paulette Goddard

1941

Road to Zanzibar Caught in the Draft Nothing But the Truth Louisiana Purchase

with Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour (the second Road picture) with Dorothy Lamour with Paulette Goddard with Victor Moore

1942

My Favorite Blonde Road to Morocco

with Madeleine Carroll with Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour (the third Road picture)

1943

They Got Me Covered Let’s Face It

with Dorothy Lamour with Betty Hutton

1944

The Princess and the Pirate

with Virginia Mayo, Bing Crosby (cameo)

1946

Road to Utopia Monsieur Beaucaire

with Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour (the fourth Road picture) with Joan Caulfield

1947

My Favorite Brunette Where There’s Life Road to Rio

with Dorothy Lamour with Signe Hasso, William Bendix with Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour (the fifth Road picture)

1948

The Paleface

with Jane Russell

1949

Sorrowful Jones The Great Lover

with Lucille Ball with Rhonda Fleming © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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For example, in 1948’s The Paleface, he portrays a patented Hope character, in this case “Painless” Peter Potter, a timid dentist in the Wild West. The picture plays as a straight Western, except that Hope and Jane Russell (b. 1921) spoof the genre’s conventions, often self-consciously, but to good effect. In addition, Hope gets to sing “Buttons and Bows,” a cute tune—itself something of a spoof—penned by Ray Evans (1915–2007) and Jay Livingston (1915–2001) for the movie. It earned an Academy Award for best movie song of 1948. In like manner, The Ghost Breakers (1940) takes the horror picture genre and gives the audience some genuine chills. But Hope’s string of quips and the able support of Paulette Goddard (1910–1990) also allow for strong comedy elements. Willie Best (1913–1962), an underappreciated black actor of the period, provides additional humor, albeit some of it fitting racial stereotypes, but he nonetheless assumes a major role in the picture. The Ghost Breakers followed close on the heels of 1939’s The Cat and the Canary, another mix of comedy and horror that had done well at the box office. Movies, radio programs, and stage appearances aside, the reason Americans held Bob Hope in such high esteem can be attributed to his ceaseless humanitarian efforts, especially for U.S. military personnel. Even before the first shots had been fired against the Axis powers, Hope and his staff began planning for ways the entertainer could take his shows to the troops. By the spring of 1941, he had performed for the USO (United Service Organizations) at California bases. Once war had been declared in December 1941, he and his entourage were off and running to places around the globe—wherever U.S. troops could be found. He traveled to remote islands in the Pacific, war zones in Europe and North Africa, stateside bases, and isolated posts in Alaska, always with good cheer, a supply of wisecracks about military life, and several attractive Hollywood starlets for soldiers a long way from home. Since the war usually found them far from the NBC studios in California, The Pepsodent Show, Starring Bob Hope usually broadcast from wherever Hope and his crew might be. Despite the technical problems such programs might face, audiences appreciated the fact that these entertainers voluntarily chose to be on the front lines instead of in a secure network studio. The recipient of virtually every award a grateful nation could bestow, Hope returned to the front line for the Korean War in the 1950s, Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, and even to the Middle East for the first Gulf War in 1990–1991 at the age of 87. He also campaigned for the Hollywood Canteen in the 1940s, helped raise money for war bonds, and visited military hospitals whenever and wherever he could. The Academy Award for best actor proved to be the one honor that eluded Bob Hope, and it became the source of a continuing series of gags. Hope hosted the Academy Award ceremonies a record 18 times between 1939 and 1977 (during the 1940s, the network broadcast them from Hollywood). Despite his popularity as a comedian, his movies seldom forced him to do any serious acting of a caliber that might make him an eligible recipient, and he, of course, realized that. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) was also aware of this situation because of his countless contributions to the industry; to rectify the situation, he received formal recognition on four separate occasions from this prestigious group. In 1940, he was given a medal for his achievements in film; in 1944, AMPAS granted him honorary life membership in © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Horror and Thriller Films | 385 the organization. In 1952, he finally received an Academy statuette, or Oscar, not for acting, but for his contributions to the industry, and in 1965 another gold medal came his way. These recognitions were in addition to the many professional accolades he earned from other organizations. Bob Hope lived to be 100. Although he had become something of a national icon in his later years because of his endless good works, he probably gained his greatest popularity as an entertainer during the 1940s and 1950s, thanks primarily to his movie and radio endeavors. See also: Advertising; Broadway Shows (Comedy and Drama); Broadway Shows (Musicals); Canteens; Comedies (Film); Horror and Thriller Films; Race Relations and Stereotyping; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Westerns (Film) Selected Reading Faith, William Robert. Bob Hope: A Life in Comedy. New York: DaCapo Press, 2003. Grudens, Richard. The Spirit of Bob Hope: One Hundred Years, One Million Laughs. Stony Brook, NY: Celebrity Profiles, 2004.

HORROR AND THRILLER FILMS These two movie genres have much in common: they are meant to get audiences on the edge of their seats, arouse excitement, and create a collective feeling of suspense— what will occur next, and how will it happen? Although virtually all horror films can be seen as a subcategory of the thriller, few thrillers, by themselves, qualify as traditional horror movies. The reason for this seeming paradox arises from the content of the two types. Horror pictures feature bizarre characters or once-human figures such as mummies or zombies that create fear or loathing on the part of the beholder. Often these movies introduce alien life forms, such as mutated animals or weird creatures not of this world, but always the emphasis in the presentation rests in creating a sense of terror or dread. Directors bring this about through special effects and plotting that minimize story and characterization and instead generate a creepy setting designed to frighten the audience. A ghoul slogging through a murky bog in pursuit of some hapless, screaming victim just ahead should arouse even the most lethargic viewers who can neither warn nor assist the intended prey. A well-wrought thriller, on the other hand, seldom introduces strange, grotesque people or things, nor does it rely on special effects to any great degree. Instead, the thriller presents a story in which tension grows and audience anxiety rises, reactions that result from stories that place realistic people in realistic situations. A werewolf or a vampire can frighten viewers, but so can a psychotic killer or a ticking time bomb; one achieves its effect from a blend of fantasy and a willing suspension of disbelief, whereas the other creates an actuality that fits within the audience’s realm of possibilities. A car careening down a hillside, out of control, while the driver, hands bound, works furiously to untie the knots in time to grab the steering wheel may be imaginative cinematically but hardly the stuff of horror movies. And yet the situation will grip the viewer who once again helplessly watches, unable to do anything as the © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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scene unfolds. The emotional effects achieved by horror and thriller films have much in common. The 1930s marked the heyday of the American horror film, with classics like Dracula (1931) Frankenstein (1931), and King Kong (1933), but the 1940s nevertheless managed to produce a respectable number of pictures. Originality and shock value, however, qualities so much in abundance in the preceding decade, were frequently replaced by repetitiveness and an overreliance on cheap special effects during the war years and immediately thereafter. The studios also placed great faith in the box office appeal of a handful of actors, such as Boris Karloff (1887–1969), Bela Lugosi (1882– 1956), Lon Chaney Jr. (1906–1973), and John Carradine (1906–1988), placing them in one mediocre tale after another, an effort that probably diluted their already-limited popularity instead of enhancing it. The opening years of the decade actually saw a number of fairly effective releases in the genre; pictures like Black Friday (1940), The Wolf Man (1941), Cat People (1942), and Son of Dracula (1943) contain the same terror-inducing elements their illustrious predecessors boasted just a short time earlier. But tastes change, especially in the midst of inferior efforts in a category, and thrillers moved up as horror films dipped in popularity around mid-decade. An occasional horror standout still came along—Isle of the Dead (1945), for example—but most must be seen as mere shadows of past glories. Perhaps the best evidence of their decline came about with the 1948 release of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein. The two slapstick comedians (Abbott, 1895–1974; Costello, 1906–1959) make a mockery of iconic horror characters and conventions. In addition to Frankenstein, they also encounter Dracula and the Wolf Man and gleefully reduce what once induced fear to parody. The new generation of thrillers that began around mid-decade to replace horror films on theater marquees demonstrated considerable box office appeal, always the primary measure of success for Hollywood. Led by a host of suspenseful mysteries and a new style, film noir, they quickly filled the gap left by the fading horror genre. With the Second World War looming and on everyone’s minds, tense, topical motion The horror and thriller genre of movies atpictures like Foreign Correspondent and tracted audiences throughout the decade. This Night Train to Munich (both 1940) drew still from The Beast with Five Fingers (1946) audiences as their heroes strove to keep shows Andrea King discovering a disembodied human hand in a wall cabinet. Thanks to out the clutches of Nazi villains. After special effects, audiences were treated to the Pearl Harbor, the industry settled into requisite thrills and chills. (Warner Bros./ more traditional fare, such as The Glass Photofest)


Horror and Thriller Films | 387 Key (1942) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943), movies that kept audiences guessing and anxious. By the middle 1940s, film noir, with its use of eerie black-and-white photography and rumpled, tired heroes, began to make inroads into traditional thriller territory. Films like Dark Waters and Double Indemnity (both 1944), Cornered and Detour (both 1945), and The Blue Dahlia and The Postman Always Rings Twice (both 1946) paved the way to a veritable deluge of film noir/thriller offerings. Most of the 1947 to 1949 entries in the table below fall under this combined category. Horror films, on the other hand, are notable by their absence after 1946. This imbalance would persist on into the 1950s, at which time film noir would lose its previous novelty and dominance, replaced by brighter, less gloomy thrillers that utilized Technicolor, wide screens, and more positive characterizations. The dark, nailbiting stories of the later 1940s and early 1950s mark a brief moment in film history— one that continues to be loved by aficionados, but a moment nonetheless. TABLE 61. Year

Representative Motion Pictures in the Horror-Terror Genres, 1940–1949 Film Titles

Stars

1940

The Ape Before I Hang Black Friday Dark Eyes of London The Door with Seven Locks Foreign Correspondent The Mummy’s Hand Night Train to Munich Rebecca Stranger on the Third Floor

Boris Karloff, Maris Wrixon Boris Karloff, Evelyn Keyes Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi Bela Lugosi, Hugh Williams Lilli Palmer, Leslie Banks Joel McCrea, Laraine Day Dick Foran, Wallace Ford Rex Harrison, Paul Henreid Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier Peter Lorre, Elisha Cook Jr.

1941

Among the Living The Black Cat The Devil Commands Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde High Sierra I Wake Up Screaming The Invisible Ghost King of the Zombies Suspicion The Wolf Man

Albert Dekker, Susan Hayward Basil Rathbone, Bela Lugosi Boris Karloff, Amanda Duff Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino Betty Grable, Victor Mature Bela Lugosi, Polly Ann Young Dick Purcell, Mantan Moreland Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Rains

1942

The Boogie Man Will Get You Bowery at Midnight Cat People The Corpse Vanishes The Glass Key The Ghost of Frankenstein I Wake Up Screaming The Man with Two Lives Nightmare Night Monster

Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre Bela Lugosi, Tom Neal Simone Simon, Kent Smith Bela Lugosi, Luana Walters Alan Ladd, Brian Donlevy Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi Betty Grable, Victor Mature Edward Norris, Frederick Burton Diana Barrymore, Brian Donlevy Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill (continued)


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Stars

1943

The Black Raven Dead Men Walk Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man The Ghost Ship I Walked with a Zombie The Leopard Man Phantom of the Opera The Seventh Victim Shadow of a Doubt Son of Dracula

George Zucco, Robert Livingston George Zucco, Dwight Frye Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi Richard Dix, Russell Wade Frances Dee, Tom Conway Dennis O’Keefe, Jean Brooks Claude Rains, Nelson Eddy Tom Conway, Kim Hunter Joseph Cotton, Teresa Wright Lon Chaney Jr., Robert Paige

1944

Bluebeard The Climax The Curse of the Cat People Dangerous Passage Dark Waters Double Indemnity House of Frankenstein Jungle Woman The Lady and the Monster The Uninvited

John Carradine, Jean Parker Boris Karloff, Susannah Foster Simone Simon, Kent Smith Robert Lowery, Phyllis Brooks Merle Oberon, Franchot Tone Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine J. Acquanetta, Carrol Naish Erich von Stroheim, Richard Arlen Ray Milland, Gail Russell

1945

And Then There Were None The Body Snatcher Cornered Dead of Night Detour Fallen Angel House of Dracula Isle of the Dead A Place of One’s Own Spellbound

Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi Dick Powell, Walter Slezak Mervyn Johns, Roland Culver Tom Neal, Ann Savage Alice Faye, Linda Darnell Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew James Mason, Margaret Lockwood Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman

1946

The Beast with Five Fingers Bedlam The Blue Dahlia Dragonwyck The Face of Marble A Game of Death The Postman Always Rings Twice Shock The Spiral Staircase The Verdict

Robert Alda, Peter Lorre Boris Karloff, Anna Lee Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake Gene Tierney, Walter Huston, Vincent Price John Carradine, Claudia Drake John Loder, Audrey Long John Garfield, Lana Turner Vincent Price, Lynn Bari Dorothy McGuire, Ethel Barrymore Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre

1947

Fear in the Night Framed The Long Night Lured Odd Man Out

Paul Kelly, DeForest Kelley Glenn Ford, Barry Sullivan Henry Fonda, Vincent Price George Sanders, Lucille Ball James Mason, Robert Newton


Horse Racing | 389 Year

Film Titles

Stars

Out of the Past The Red House Riffraff Scared to Death They Won’t Believe Me

Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas Edward G. Robinson, Judith Anderson Pat O’Brien, Walter Slezak Bela Lugosi, George Zucco Robert Young, Susan Hayward

1948

Caged Fury The Lady from Shanghai Moonrise Night Has a Thousand Eyes Raw Deal Road House Ruthless Secret Beyond the Door Sorry, Wrong Number Unknown Island

Richard Denning, Buster Crabbe Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth Dane Clark, Gail Russell Edward G. Robinson, Gail Russell Dennis O’Keefe, Claire Trevor Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde Zachary Scott, Louis Hayward Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster Virginia Grey, Phillip Reed

1949

Black Magic C-Man The Man on the Eiffel Tower Manhandled Obsession Take One False Step Thieves’ Highway The Third Man White Heat The Window

Orson Welles, Akim Tamiroff Dean Jagger, John Carradine Charles Laughton, Franchot Tone Dorothy Lamour, Sterling Hayden Robert Newton, Sally Gray William Powell, Shelly Winters Lee J. Cobb, Richard Conte Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton James Cagney, Virginia Mayo Bobby Driscoll, Paul Stewart

See also: Crime and Mystery Films; Drama (Film); Radio Programming: Action, Crime, Police, and Detective Shows; Radio Programming: Drama and Anthology Shows; Serial Films Selected Reading Clarens, Carlos. An Illustrated History of the Horror Film. New York: Capricorn Books, 1967. Huss, Roy, and T. J. Huss. Focus on the Horror Film. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972. Naremore, James. More Than Night: Film Noir and Its Contexts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Robson, Eddie. Film Noir. London: Virgin Books, 2005.

HORSE RACING Winning is a crucial goal in any sport. For horse owners, trainers, and jockeys, monetary stakes accompany the satisfaction and adrenalin flow of a win; for spectators, in addition to the excitement, gambling on a possible winner puts money in the pockets of some and takes it out of others. These elements have supported the growth of horse racing as a sport since the first crude track on Long Island, New York, in 1665. The presence of criminal activities during horse racing’s early development as a national sport came close to curtailing its success, but the formation of the American Jockey Club in 1894, and its subsequent assumption of responsibility for pedigree


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registration in The American Stud Book, brought rules and oversight that eliminated much of the corruption at over 300 racetracks across the country. By the early 1900s, however, strong antigambling sentiment reigned, and the number of active race tracks had dwindled to 25. In 1908, the Kentucky legislature, in an attempt to turn around this serious decline in the popularity of horse racing, sanctioned pari-mutuel betting on the Kentucky Derby, perhaps the most famous of all American races. This system has all bettors wagering among themselves, not against the house, and the track then takes a percentage of money out of the pool to cover expenses before awarding the payoffs. This form of gambling turned out to be a crowd pleaser, and soon other state legislatures agreed to allow pari-mutuel betting in exchange for a cut of the money wagered. Horse racing once again flourished as a popular spectator sport and even drew good crowds during the dark days of the Great Depression (1929–1933). During the late 1930s, Seabiscuit (1933–1947), a winning horse popular to the level of celebrity and named American Horse of the Year in 1938, furthered his place in the history books in 1940. A leg injury had kept him out of racing in 1939, but sufficient recovery encouraged his owner, Charles S. Howard (1877–1950), to register him in the La Jolla (California) Handicap on February 9, 1940. Although Seabiscuit only placed third, it was enough for him to continue racing, and a month later jockey Red Pollard (1909–1981) rode him to victory over his training partner, Kayak II (1935–n.d.), before a cheering crowd of 78,000 at California’s Santa Anita Handicap. Seabiscuit officially retired on April 10, 1940, as horse racing’s all-time leading money winner at the time, with $437,740 (approximately $6.75 million in 2008 dollars). The United States’ entry into World War II on December 7, 1941, changed life on the home front in many ways, eventually including horse racing. During the first full year of the war, the sport continued with business as usual and set records in paid taxes, attendance, and purses. But a lack of jockeys and other track workers because of military service or work in defense plants, along with rationing and a curtailment of public transportation, took their toll. Races became subject to approval by local War Manpower Commissions. Saratoga Springs Race Track in upstate New York, a premier thoroughbred site since 1863, closed after the 1942 season and remained dark until 1946, when it hosted a record opening-day crowd. Many other tracks, however, managed to continue operations. They often designated Army-Navy Days for fundraising and, even with reduced attendance, collectively made major contributions to war relief—a little over $3 million in 1942 followed by more than $4 million in 1943 (approximately $42 million and $50 million in 2008 dollars, respectively). The first full season following the war broke all gross revenue records, and racing income continued to rise through 1948. During the development and growth of American thoroughbred horse racing, sometimes referred to as the “sport of kings,” three events always drew significant attention: the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, in Louisville, Kentucky (opened 1875), the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland (1870), and the Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York (1905). In 1919, a horse named Sir Barton (1916–1937) won all three events in a single season, creating a new racing tradition and making him the first Triple Crown winner. A five-week schedule beginning with the first Saturday in May with the Kentucky Derby and ending in early June © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Horse Racing | 391 with the Belmont Stakes, along with each race covering a different distance, offers a tremendous challenge for a horse. Over the course of Triple Crown racing history, 11 horses have held the title, 4 of them in the 1940s. There have been no winners since 1978. Before the country entered World War II, Whirlaway (1938–1953) ridden by Eddie Arcaro (1916–1997) earned the honor in 1941. Two years later, Johnny Longden (1907–2003), atop Count Fleet (1940–1973), achieved the feat. Next came Assault (1943–1971) in 1946, with the reins held by Warren Mehrtens (1920–1997). In 1947, Citation (1945–1970) gave the Triple Crown spot for a second time to Arcaro, who remains the only jockey to be in the saddle for two Triple Crowns. The term “Triple Crown” also appears in baseball; it means a hitter who leads in the league in three areas: home runs, batting average, and runs batted in and a pitcher who leads in earned run average, wins, and strikeouts during a single major league baseball season. All of the above-mentioned horses—Whirlaway, Count Fleet, Assault, and Citation—received the American Horse of the Year award the years they won the Crown. Whirlaway, always a crowd favorite, also gained the title again in 1942. The award, the highest honor given in American thoroughbred racing to a horse, irrespective of age, recognizes the performance deemed the best during the season. Whirlaway continued to race to age five and won 32 out of 60 contests. Over his career, he earned $561,161 (approximately $7 million in 2008 dollars). Count Fleet, with 16 victories out of 21 races and purses totaling $250,300 (approximately $3 million in 2008 money), stopped racing at age three because of an injury. Both Whirlaway and Count Fleet spent many years as studs producing other winning thoroughbreds. Assault retired at age four, but unable to sire a foal, returned to the sport until age seven. He had a record of 18 wins out of 42 races and amassed $675,470 (approximately $6.5 million in 2008 dollars) for his owners. Citation became a high-profile stallion during his career. As a two-year-old, he won eight of nine events and was named the champion two-year-old. By the end of his third year, he had 27 victories and two second places, as well as a 15-race winning streak. He did not compete in 1949, but won his first comeback contest in 1950, giving him 16 victories in a row. His owner retired him at age six, having reached a goal of earnings that exceeded $1 million—$1,085,760 (approximately $16.75 million in 2008 dollars). In addition to highly publicized thoroughbred racing, other forms of the sport exist in the United States. Harness racing, where standard-bred horses, sometimes called trotters, run in a specified gait and pull a two-wheel cart, dates back to ancient times and earned considerable popularity in the United States in the days before automobiles. Known as the “sport of the people,” it frequently served as a major attraction at local and state fairs. Interest dropped as cars replaced horses and the country became more urbanized. Harness racing regained a significant following in 1940, when Roosevelt Raceway in New York moved the event to the evening, under lights, with pari-mutuel betting. This enabled harness racing to attract larger crowds and, like thoroughbred racing, soon had an impressive following across the country. Since 1955, harness racing has offered a Triple Crown to three-year-old trotters that in the same year win the Hambletonian, held at Meadowlands, New Jersey; the Yonkers Trot, at Yonkers, New York; and the Kentucky Futurity at Lexington, Kentucky. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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The steeplechase, a race over a two- or four-mile course that features obstacles such as brush fences, stone walls, timber rails, and water jumps, gained recognition in the United States in the late 1800s and since then has experienced shifts in popularity and uneven media coverage. The Iroquois Steeplechase, held for the first time in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1941, has been an annual event at Percy Warner Park, with the exception of one year off during World War II. In the late 1940s, the Broad Hollow Steeplechase Handicap, held on Long Island, New York, the Brook National Steeplechase Handicap and the Grand National, both at Belmont Park, served as the Triple Crown events for steeplechase racing with American Way (n.d.) winning in 1948 and Trough Hill (n.d.) in 1949. Frank David “Dooley” Adams (1927–2004) started his career as a steeplechase jockey in 1941 and went on to set records in a number of races won within a year. The sports sections of larger newspapers provided betting odds and detailed statistics on thoroughbred racing. On the funny pages, a few comic strips featured horse racing as part of their storyline, but they constituted a distinct minority. Cartoonist Kenneth Kling (1895–1970) wrote and drew Joe and Asbestos, a series focusing on characters that spent most of their time around tracks. It circulated only in major metropolitan dailies where racing had its biggest following, but within those limitations enjoyed success. It ran from 1926 to 1966. A more humorous take appeared with Billy De Beck’s (1890–1942) Barney Google, which premiered in 1919. The misshapen Google owns a bumbling horse he calls Spark Plug, a creature that never wins a race. Their misadventures color the strip through several decades, although Google’s hillbilly pal, Snuffy Smith, comes to dominate the tales in the 1940s. It continues to run, but with new artists and under the name Snuffy Smith. Regarding radio coverage, Clem McCarthy (1882–1962), an NBC (National Broadcasting Company) sportscaster and public address announcer, gained fame for his commentaries on horse races and prizefights. Known for his gravelly voice and dramatic style, McCarthy described most of the Kentucky Derby races until 1950. In announcing for the Preakness Stakes in 1947, he mistakenly identified the winner when a crowd standing on a platform blocked his view just as two horses switched places. Despite the embarrassment, he readily acknowledged his error. Television also viewed horse racing as a broadcasting opportunity; in 1948, CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) televised the Preakness Stakes for the first time. The following year, the Kentucky Derby received similar coverage on a limited basis by a local station. Hollywood probably embraced horse racing the most enthusiastically, cranking out a number of B movies during the 1940s. Two, Black Gold (1947) starring Anthony Quinn (1915–2001) and The Story of Seabiscuit (1949) starring Shirley Temple (b. 1928), feature McCarthy as a track announcer. National Velvet (1944), an A picture with Mickey Rooney (b. 1920), Elizabeth Taylor (b. 1932), and Anne Revere (1903– 1990), details a simple story of a boy, a girl, and a horse. It won two Academy Awards, Anne Revere for best actress in a supporting role, and Robert Kern (1885–1972) for best film editing. The Winner’s Circle (1948), presented in somewhat of a documentary format with a narrator, tells the life story of a famous race horse, in all likelihood a fictionalized Seabiscuit, with Johnny Longden playing himself. It includes film footage of many champion horses, including Whirlaway, Assault, Sir Barton, and even some frames with Seabiscuit.


Hot Rods and Drag Racing | 393 Many elements go into making a horse a winner and champion, all with a goal of speed. Owners, champion jockeys, and expert trainers come and go, but their speedy champion thoroughbreds such as Seabiscuit, Whirlaway, and Citation, stay with us as a part of America’s culture and heritage. See also: Best Sellers (Books); Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk Selected Reading Horse Racing and World War II. New York Times, December 22, 1940; May, 25, 1942; January 1, 1943; December 26, 1943; August 6, 1946. www.proquest.com Robertson, William H. P. The History of Thoroughbred Racing in America. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1964. Simon, Mary. Racing through the Century: The Story of Thoroughbred Racing in America. Irvine, CA: Bowtie Press, 2002.

HOT RODS AND DRAG RACING The hot rod, a seemingly ordinary, but older, automobile possessed of a powerful engine and stripped of all unnecessary items, fascinated many Americans almost from its first appearance some time in the 1930s, although no name other than “fast car,” “race car,” “modified car,” “roadster,” and so on existed then to identify these vehicles. The etymology of “hot rod” remains vague at best; certainly “hot” suggests speed, but “rod” has never been a synonym for an automobile, but the term began appearing in the early 1940s and quickly caught on, first with automotive and racing fans and then with the general public, and has long since entered the language. As car ownership became widespread following World War I, tinkering with an automobile evolved as a rite of passage for many young men, turning into a hobby for some and even a passion for a few. A long-lived comic strip, Gasoline Alley (1918 to present), celebrated this interest in its early years, and doubtless many readers identified with its mechanically inclined characters. Both in fiction and real life, significant numbers of males, young and old, souped up their vehicles and took them out to quiet back roads to test their capabilities, to see what they could do. Hot rods in all their manifestations gained a particularly strong following in Southern California during the late 1930s and early 1940s, where a type of competition called drag racing caught on. A drag race, in its simplest form, consists of several cars, usually two at a time, that accelerate from a standing start over a quarter-mile track. The track might actually be a straight stretch of deserted highway, and the driver who reaches the finish line first can claim to be the winner. Naturally, law enforcement officials took a dim view of these activities, so in an attempt to sanction what many saw as an illegal sport, the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA), which had been founded in 1937, developed sophisticated timing devices. The group offered driving classes and promoted safe racing, urging would-be racers to speed in sanctioned events on the flat, hard surfaces that abounded in the dry lakebeds of the Mojave Desert. The SCTA attempted in this way to discourage racing on the residential streets of California towns and cities, particularly in the greater Los


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Angeles area. In 1941, the SCTA introduced a monthly publication called Throttle Magazine. It intended to track racing results, run features on some of the better cars, and report on new safety and speed concerns. The attack on Pearl Harbor in December of that year, however, caused Throttle to fold shortly thereafter; gas-guzzling cars suddenly lost favor in the midst of fuel shortages and rationing. World War II may have closed down the pioneering magazine, but the fascination and mystique of hot rods kept drag racing alive, if only in memory. The route for servicemen headed to the war in the Pacific often took them through California. While on leave, they occasionally witnessed modified cars careening through the city streets. Throughout the conflict, GIs native to the West Coast told exciting stories and showed pictures about these activities to any other soldiers wiling to listen. As a result, many servicemen became intrigued with the possibility of owning a hot rod and eventually experiencing the thrill of racing for themselves. When these youthful veterans returned to the States, they often had gained the mechanical skills, along with sufficient money, needed for creating such a vehicle. Their overseas dreams could become a reality. But these same young men, when behind the wheel of a hot rod, often found themselves stereotyped as unsavory hoodlums, not war-weary veterans. Disregard for laws, especially speeding, along with a demeanor that some judged to be outlaw behavior, created reams of negative publicity that soon snowballed into national coverage. In

A 1950 Hollywood production called Hot Rod highlighted a growing fad among teenagers and young men. They drove customized fast cars, the ultimate status symbol for that group. (Monogram Pictures/Photofest)


Hot Rods and Drag Racing | 395 January 1948, in an attempt to counter this kind of image, the SCTA sponsored its first Annual Automotive Equipment Display and Hot Rod Exposition at the National Guard Armory in Los Angeles. For this event, Robert E. “Pete” Petersen (1926–2007), a youthful car enthusiast, published the first issue of Hot Rod magazine, a periodical that recognized hot-rodding as more than a fad or questionable hobby, but as a legitimate endeavor. The premier issue of Hot Rod had an initial print run of 5,000 copies; by 1950, Peterson was producing 200,000 copies each month. Recognizing early on that hot-rodding reflected not just fast cars, but a growing interest in automobiles generally, Petersen in 1949 inaugurated Motor Trend, a magazine that appealed to a much broader range of drivers. Both publications have long since established enthusiastic readerships that have continued into the 21st century. By the end of the 1940s, hot rods and drag racing had advanced from the days of back roads and street racing. No longer limited to older cars, the sport saw a wide variety of models, particularly Fords, Mercuries, Studebakers, Chevrolets, Oldsmobiles, and Cadillacs. Some of the better drivers could push their deceptive vintage cars to speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour in the space of a quarter-mile. To meet the demands of a growing number of hot rod and racing fans, a second group, the Russeta Timing Association (RTA), organized in 1948. Working with the SCTA, the two organizations held classes and speed events at the desert lakebeds. In addition, many small military airports had been constructed throughout the United States during the war, and their long, straight runways often became available when peace returned. Some drag racing fans yearned for even faster events, and, in 1949, they saw their wishes granted; southern Utah hosted the first National Speed Trials. A gathering designed specifically for hot rods, the trials utilized the vast surfaces found at the Bonneville Salt Flats. This venue offered longer runs that virtually guaranteed faster times. While the RTA and SCTA had given structure to the events at the dry lakes and airfields, a new group, the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) came along in 1951. It, too, monitored and promoted drag racing with an emphasis on getting racing off the streets and onto designated tracks. Headed by Wally Parks (1913–2007), one of the original founders of the SCTA and editor of Hot Rod, NHRA finally brought respectability to a sport that had been viewed as dangerous and also vindicated its participants, who many saw as rebellious. NHRA sent hot-rodders across the country to speak at clubs and law enforcement gatherings about the merits of legal drag racing and sanctioned events, and they usually enjoyed success in spreading their message. While the hot rod hobby was gaining legitimacy and respect on the West Coast, a group of automobile enthusiasts worked to achieve similar ends on the East Coast. In 1947, after a decade or more of pursuing their passion on small dirt tracks scattered throughout the Southeast, the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing took shape at Daytona Beach, Florida. Most people know this organization as NASCAR, today the largest automotive racing group in the United States. Stock cars, unlike heavily modified hot rods, attempted to be true to their name, particularly in the formative years of NASCAR. Regular factory models of standard Detroit brands—Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors—competed in small races before


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small crowds. Drivers sometimes drove their own vehicles to these events, raced them, and, if still operable, drove them home. That would all change in the 1950s and later, of course, but in the 1940s, stock car racing had to define itself. Hot rods or stock cars and sensing profits to be made, publishers, recording companies, and the movies looked for opportunities to connect with these growing sports. Success for the entertainment industry would come in the early 1950s, when the hot rod and stock car phenomenon had become more acceptable elements of American popular culture. Author Henry Gregor Felsen (1916–1995), who had written detective stories before joining the Marine Corps, proved pivotal in this regard. During the war, he contributed articles for Leatherneck magazine, but once back home in Iowa, he wrote Hot Rod (1951), a novel about the sport and the people associated with it. Designed for adolescent readers, Hot Rod struck a nerve, although not all school libraries would place the book on their shelves, deeming it inappropriate for their audience. Nevertheless, the book climbed on lists of best-selling literature for teenagers and remained a strong favorite for nearly 30 years. On the music side of things, many songs have been recorded with the words “hot rod” in the lyrics, but they too were late in coming. One of the first, “Hot Rod Race” (ca. 1950), spawned a number of imitations, so pinpointing details about them poses problems. Several individuals have, from time to time, taken credit for “Hot Rod Race,” but Arkie Shibley (1914–1975) and/or George Wilson (n.d.; the name may be a pseudonym for Shibley) receive the most mention as composers, although the correct answer remains in doubt. Regardless, the tune tells the story of a race between two cars, a Ford and a Mercury (variants employ other makes). A 1950 recording by Shibley and His Mountain Dew Boys reached the No. 5 spot on Billboard’s Country Charts in 1951. Other songs about hot rods date mainly from the 1950s and beyond. “Hot Rod Lincoln” (1955) retells the action of “Hot Rod Race” and has become much better known. In this later song, a Lincoln and a Cadillac replace the previous cars. Like the recording business, Hollywood slowly capitalized on the widespread interest shown in hot rods, drag racing, and stock cars. Monogram Pictures Corporation, a small studio, released a motion picture titled Hot Rod in 1950, but its cast of unknowns failed to stir much interest. By the mid-1950s, however, the industry had realized the potential of such pictures, and produced a spate of films, such as Dragstrip Girl (1957), Hot Rod Girl (1956), and Joy Ride (1958), which they marketed directly at teenagers. As the titles suggest, virtually all of these cheaply-made pictures unfortunately reinforce the worst stereotypes about the sport. In the postwar years, adolescents and young adults discovered a new freedom and self-importance when driving a unique automobile. To be seen at the local drive-in restaurant or on downtown streets in a customized hot rod epitomized “cool” in the 1940s slang of the younger generation. See also: Best Sellers (Books); Drive-Ins: Movie Theaters, Restaurants, and Banks; Fads; Hobbies; Leisure and Recreation; Magazines; Technology; Youth Selected Reading Felsen, Henry Gregor. www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/MSC/ToMsC650/MsC601/felsen.html Hot Rods. www.hotrod.com/index.html


House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) | 397 Moorhouse, H. F. “The ‘Work’ Ethic and ‘Leisure’ Activity: The Hot Rod in Post-War America,” in Glickman, Lawrence B., ed. Consumer Society in American History: A Reader, pp. 277–297. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. NHRA. www.nhra.com/aboutnhr/history.html

HOUSE UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES COMMITTEE (HUAC) When the war ended in 1945, the reality of the Cold War soon squashed any hopes for an extended period of peace and tranquility. Two former Allies, the United States and the Soviet Union, now found themselves as adversaries and at loggerheads over politics, military might, and the general conduct of affairs in postwar Europe. This tension between the two powers soon manifested itself in a number of ways, especially the fear that Communism might gain a foothold in the Western Hemisphere. Such apprehension about alien influence in American life has marked several periods in the 20th century: following World War I, a “Big Red Scare” galvanized many to oppose anyone harboring leftist, liberal, or what came to be called Bolshevist beliefs; between 1919 and the early 1920s, the U.S. Constitution frequently hung in tatters as civil liberties were frequently overrun by courts, politicians, and other zealous supporters of nativist policies. The advent of the Great Depression in the 1930s, coupled with concerns about the growing threat of another world war, brought a resurgence of xenophobia, and it often focused on perceived Communist infiltration of American institutions. In response, Congress in 1934 formed the Special Committee on Un-American Activities. It originally investigated Communist, fascist, and Nazi-leaning organizations. Also called the McCormack-Dickstein Committee (John McCormack, 1891–1980; Samuel Dickstein, 1885–1954), it evolved into the House Committee Investigating Un-American Activities in 1938. Still considered a special committee, Martin Dies Jr. (1900–1972), a conservative Democratic congressman from Texas, chaired this group, often called the Dies Committee, from 1937 until 1944. Under his leadership, the membership continued to look into the operations of any parties deemed inimical to the interests of the United States, with special attention paid to possible Communist links. The Dies Committee generated considerable controversy with its heavy-handed attempts to find evidence of infiltration or subversive activities within the country. During World War II, the exigencies of the war itself tended to overshadow many of the committee’s activities. But old attitudes die hard, and with the return of peace and the simultaneous growth of the Cold War, a new Red Scare was poised to make a reappearance. When Dies resigned his chairmanship, the status and name of the group changed, becoming the House Committee on Un-American Activities, or HUAC, in 1945. (Although HCUA would be technically more correct, HUAC, for House Un-American Activities Committee, has long been the more popular abbreviation.) It moved from a special committee to a permanent, or standing, one, and it gained the power to carry on probes for years at a time, which, for the postwar era, meant that HUAC would grow in influence.


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Following the 1946 elections, Republicans took control of the 80th Congress, and the chairmanship of the House Un-American Activities Committee passed in early 1947 to New Jersey’s J. Parnell Thomas (1895–1970), an avowed anti-Communist. Under his leadership, HUAC led numerous colorful, and frequently contentious, investigations. Thomas had to relinquish his post in 1948 after being convicted of taking kickbacks from his staff. Despite this complication, the work of the committee went forward for the remainder of the decade and on into the 1950s. With reports of Russian spies operating brazenly within the United States and the specter of an Iron Curtain snuffing out freedom in Eastern Europe, many felt the times cried out for strong opposition to anything remotely suggesting sympathy for Communist ideology. Chairman Thomas, convinced that the Communist Party of the United States and other left-wing conspiracies had successfully infiltrated organized labor, the federal government, and the film industry, ordered the committee to examine the content of American movies. The probe even went back to the war itself, when the Soviet Union appeared to be a staunch U.S. ally, and found fault with a number of pro-Soviet pictures, including Mission to Moscow (1943), The North Star (1943), Days of Glory (1944), Song of Russia (1944), and Counter-Attack (1945). The committee accused the filmmakers of sneaking in dialogue that supports Marxism, socialism, and collectivism; that these films reflect the wartime alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union seemed immaterial in their quest to weed out anything that, in their estimation, might be construed as harmful or anti-American. Thomas traveled to Hollywood in 1947 to meet with studio executives and discuss the topic. Upon his return to Washington, Thomas and his committee in September subpoenaed 41 individuals then working in the film industry to answer questions about their political affiliations. Of that number, 19 said they would be “unfriendly witnesses”—that is, they would refuse to testify on the subject. Their protests notwithstanding, the committee called 11 of the 19 to testify. One of them, the noted playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), briefly spoke before the House members and the next day left the country. The remaining 10 carried out their vow, and Thomas’s group held them all in contempt of Congress. In time, they would become known as the Hollywood Ten and would pay heavily for their collective defiance. Over the space of two years, the 10 individuals refused to testify about their political leanings and would not divulge the names of others who might or might not TABLE 62.

The Members of the Hollywood Ten

Producer-Director Herbert Biberman (1900–1971) Director Edward Dmytryk (1908–1999) Producer-Screenwriter Adrian Scott (1912–1973) Screenwriter Alvah Bessie (1904–1985) Screenwriter Lester Cole (1904–1985) Screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. (1915–2000) Screenwriter John Howard Lawson (1894–1977) Screenwriter Albert Maltz (1908–1985) Screenwriter Samuel Ornitz (1890–1957) Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)


House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) | 399 have Communist connections. Eight of the 10 received $1,000 fines (approximately $9,300 in 2008 dollars) and one-year prison sentences. Two (Biberman and Dmytryk) received $500 fines (approximately $4,600 in 2008 dollars) and six-month sentences. The discrepancy in punishment has never been adequately explained. The Ten had violated no written laws but were nonetheless convicted of wrong thinking, of siding with a political ideology that many at the time thought threatened the United States. The Ten appealed, but the courts, including the Supreme Court, rejected their arguments. In the anxious postwar years, national security and the perceived Communist threat often overrode logic and law. During the span of the hearings, several noteworthy events occurred: First, two future U.S. presidents, Richard Nixon (1913–1994; president, 1969–1974) and Ronald Reagan (1911–2004; president, 1981–1989) participated in the 1947 investigation. Nixon served as a member of HUAC, and Reagan, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, testified about the dangers of Communism. Second, President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972; president, 1945–1952), in order not to be seen as “soft on Communism,” and with the 1948 elections looming, instituted loyalty checks for potential government employees. Anyone found with Communist affiliations would be denied federal jobs, not unlike the studio blacklisting practices. Third, Hollywood, which had not, up until the time of the hearings, released any feature films with blatantly anti-Communist themes, rushed into production several titles during the late 1940s: The Iron Curtain (1948), The Red Menace (1949), and I Married a Communist (1949). The studios clearly hoped that such features would demonstrate the film capital’s resistance to subversive elements. Many more such motion pictures followed in the early 1950s. The hearings would drag on until 1958 and then quietly disappeared with no real evidence that any motion pictures ever knowingly served as a vehicle of political propaganda and attempted to seduce the population with disinformation and lies. They did, however, bring about the unfortunate practice of blacklisting (identifying persons who should not be hired or otherwise accepted) in the film industry. The studios fired more than 300 people and effectively ruined countless careers or forced individuals to seek work under assumed names. Not until much later—the 1970s and 1980s— were the Ten returned to the good graces of Hollywood, and many grudges and bitter memories on both sides have remained and festered. Amid growing dissatisfaction with the committee and its methods, and with its prestige dimmed, Congress eventually disbanded HUAC in 1975. See also: Copland, Aaron; Drama (Film); Political and Propaganda Films; War Films Selected Reading Ceplair, Larry, and Steven Englund. The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics and the Film Community, 1930–1960. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003. Cogley, John. Report on Blacklisting I: The Movies. New York: Fund for the Republic, 1956. ———. Report on Blacklisting II: Radio-Television. New York: Fund for the Republic, 1956. Dick, Bernard F. Radical Innocence: A Critical Study of the Hollywood Ten. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989. Kanfer, Stefan. A Journal of the Plague Years: A Devastating Chronicle of the Era of the Blacklist. New York: Atheneum, 1973.


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HOWDY DOODY SHOW, THE One of the first television shows to attract a significant audience came on the air at 5:30 in the afternoon and featured a puppet, a clown, and a cowboy. These unlikely elements nevertheless charmed millions of children while introducing them to Howdy Doody, Clarabell, and Buffalo Bob. The Howdy Doody Show made its debut at the end of 1947 and bore the name Puppet Playhouse Theater. It initially ran for an hour on Saturdays, but so few households had access to television at the time that no one remembers those early telecasts or the show’s original title. In August 1948, it moved to a daily schedule and shortly thereafter appeared on screens as The Howdy Doody Show in a half-hour format, 5:30–6:00 p.m., Mondays through Fridays, on the NBC (National Broadcasting Company) network. An immediate success, the late afternoon program ran, with a few time changes, until 1960. In 1976, it reappeared in a syndicated version but failed to generate the enthusiasm enjoyed by the original and disappeared that same year. Bob Smith (1917–1998; ne Robert Emil Schmidt) came to the show after hosting a children’s program, The Triple B Ranch, on NBC radio. He greeted his listeners with an enthusiastic “howdy doody.” With an eye to the future, Smith convinced network executives that a similar production, but featuring puppets, would do well on television, given its visual qualities. NBC-TV, in need of programming to fill its broadcast hours, agreed. Smith and his staffers set the show in Doodyville, supposedly a circus town. They then created a cast of characters, with Howdy, Smith himself as Buffalo Bob, the great white leader of the Sigafoose tribe, and Clarabell Hornblow, a mute clown that “spoke” with horns and seltzer water, as the lead players. Other citizens of Doodyville included Chief Thunderthud of the Ooragnak tribe (Kanagaroo spelled backward), an Indian chief noted for his exclamations of “Cowabunga!” Princess Summerfall Winterspring, a lovely Tinka Tonka Indian; Oil Well Willie; Cornelius Cobb, a storekeeper; Dilly Dally, a local carpenter; Phineas T. Bluster, Doodyville’s cantankerous mayor; plus a host of other characters that evolved with the show. Some appeared as puppets, while costumed humans took the remaining roles. For example, in the first years of the program, Bob Keeshan (1927–2004) took the role of Clarabell, unrecognizable in a clown costume. He would later go on to considerable fame as the title character in the long-running (1955–1984) children’s show called Captain Kangaroo. He clearly learned how to interact with youngsters during his years on The Howdy Doody Show. Howdy himself, something of a country bumpkin marionette with a perpetually smiling, freckled face, usually resided on Buffalo Bob’s lap. Although it would be impossible to tell, given the usually fuzzy picture that then came over viewers’ TV sets, Howdy’s face possessed 48 carefully painted freckles, one for each of the thencontinental United States (Alaska and Hawaii had not been granted statehood at the time). He also had a sister, Heidi Doody, and a twin brother, Double Doody, but the producers wisely limited their appearances, allowing Howdy center stage. In time, commercials and product tie-ins became an important aspect of The Howdy Doody Show. Sponsors were initially leery of a program involving puppets, clowns, and a middle-aged cowboy. But success quickly dispelled those misgivings, and agents


Howdy Doody Show, The | 401

This picture shows most of the important cast members of the pioneering children’s television program, The Howdy Doody Show. From the left, Buffalo Bob Smith (also the amiable host), Howdy himself, Mr. Bluster (a minor character), and Clarabell (played by Bob Keeshan, later to gain fame as Captain Kangaroo in the 1950s). (Photofest)

representing a variety of products soon appeared at NBC’s offices looking for available time slots. In addition, companies strove to get licensing rights to market records, clothing, toys, and other items bearing Howdy’s name and countenance. The Howdy Doody Show served as one of television’s first series to demonstrate the advertising potential of the new medium. Because everything seen on TV in its early days came to audiences live and unedited, mistakes of course occurred, but no one minded. Part of the audience in the studio consisted of children; they sat on bleachers and were dubbed the “Peanut Gallery”; their unrehearsed enthusiasm and antics, frequently caught on camera, endeared them to viewers and helped immeasurably to make The Howdy Doody Show a major television hit. See also: Children’s Films; Radio Programming: Children’s Shows, Serials, and Adventure Series Selected Reading Davis, Stephen. Say Kids! What Time Is It? Notes from the Peanut Gallery. Boston: Little, Brown, 1981. Rautiolla-Williams Suzanne. “The Howdy Doody Show.” www.museum.tv/archives/etv/H/htmlH/ howdydoodys/howdydoodys.htm


I

ILLUSTRATORS Americans may have been only dimly aware of the many artists active during the 1940s, but that does not mean the public lacked exposure to significant paintings and drawings. Illustrators displayed an array of work in magazines, books, posters, calendars, and advertising, thus sustaining a tradition begun in the 19th century and creating a contemporary body of work that merits attention. Over the course of the decade, they turned out thousands of pictures that ranged from the frankly amateurish to compositions that could stand beside anything produced by their more “serious” counterparts. In any assessment of American illustrators active during the 1940s, one name overshadows the rest: Norman Rockwell (1894–1978). From his warm, realistic, narrative-style paintings appearing as covers on the Saturday Evening Post, to his distinctive, elegantly lettered signature that usually appeared in the lower right corner of each work, Rockwell set a standard of excellence that the public came to love. He knew how to stop action at just the right moment, revealing just enough of an ongoing story that viewers find it easy to make sense of the composition. Born in New York City, he studied at the Chase School of Fine and Applied Art, the National Academy of Design, and the Art Students League. While still in his teens, Rockwell worked at Boys’ Life, the magazine published by the Boy Scouts of America, which led to numerous other magazines and freelance advertising assignments (over 150 commercial firms eventually sought his services), and finally to Curtis Publishing and the Saturday Evening Post; at the age of 22, Rockwell completed his first cover for the venerable magazine, one of the most popular and widely circulated periodicals in the country. He would eventually paint 322 covers for the Post—71 in the 1940s alone—between 1916 and 1963, whereupon he moved to Look magazine and continued painting until his death in 1978. Because of the Post’s high circulation, each 403


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cover was seen, on average, by 4 million people, giving him the largest cumulative audience ever enjoyed by an artist. During the war years, Rockwell created Willie Gillis, a boyish-looking young man entering the U.S. Army in October 1941; the artist proceeded to track his character for 11 Post covers, with KP (kitchen police) duty; in church; his happy return home in May 1945; and, finally, a studious Gillis in college, his framed discharge papers hanging on a wall in his dormitory room (October 1946). Rockwell wisely chose not to show Gillis in combat—the public had enough of that with daily newspaper headlines and the gold and blue service flags hanging in neighborhood windows An anonymous airman painted this picture (a gold star meant a family member lost of pinup favorite Betty Grable, called here while serving the country, blue signified “Blonde Bomber,” on the forward section of a military airplane. This custom, called nose art, a family member in active service). The closest Rockwell came to depict- became common during the war, and images of every kind abounded. (Photofest) ing actual fighting appeared in a poster he executed for the army, “Let’s Give Him Enough and On Time” (n.d.). In darkness, a GI huddles over his machine gun, firing away at an unseen enemy. Empty shell casings litter the ground, and the weapon spits a yellow flame. A powerful illustration, it ranks among the best in World War II military art. He also painted for the May 29, 1943, Post a classic portrait of Rosie the Riveter, the iconic defense plant worker, in all her glory, her feet resting on Mein Kampf and munching a sandwich. On January 6, 1941, just 11 months before the attack on Pearl Harbor and the active entry of the country into World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) delivered a somber State of the Union address to Congress that has come to be known as the “Four Freedoms Speech.” In it, he enumerated (1) freedom of speech, (2) freedom of worship, (3) freedom from want, and (4) freedom from fear— beliefs that have long defined the United States. He further said that, as the clouds of war grew ever darker, it might become necessary to defend these beliefs, a duty for all men of good will. His words struck a chord with Rockwell, too old for service himself, and he decided to create a quartet of paintings depicting the Four Freedoms as he perceived them. Upon their completion, he offered them to the government, but bureaucratic wrangling canceled any expressions of official interest. Rockwell then turned to his friends at the Curtis Publishing Company and they readily accepted an offer to run the pictures. The covers of four consecutive issues of the Saturday Evening Post—February 20, 1943 (speech), February 27, 1943 (worship), March 6, 1943 (want), and March 13, 1943 (fear)—carried his paintings, and to loud acclaim. At this point, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Office of War Information (OWI) belatedly decided to © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Illustrators | 405 participate, with the result that “The Four Freedoms War Bond Show” went on the road in April, traveling to 16 cities. Well over a million spectators saw Rockwell’s work, and the tour raised over $130 million (roughly $1.6 billion in 2008 dollars) for war bonds, making his set of four illustrations one of the most successful vehicles for patriotic fundraising of the entire war. In addition, countless reproductions and postcards found eager buyers at the time and for years afterward. The postwar years saw no slowdown in the prolific artist’s output. The Saturday Evening Post covers continued to appear with regularity, although references to the war had been replaced with a lighter, nostalgic touch about the passing American scene reminiscent of his earlier paintings of the 1920s and 1930s. Rockwell returned to the small towns and their citizens that he enjoyed painting, filling his canvases with anecdotal details. About his closest brush with topicality occurs in the fall of 1949, as he depicts a hapless homeowner risking life and limb as he wrestles with an early television antenna atop his roof. During these sometimes anxious years following World War II, he provided pictorial reassurances, suggesting that social and political rituals such as family vacations, senior proms, and voting had meaning, as did all the traditional holidays. Over time, a consensus has arisen that Rockwell, a superb technician and stylist, produced his best and most memorable works during the 1930s and 1940s. Certainly he set high standards for illustration for over 60 years, yet throughout much of the 20th century, academic critics have shunted aside most American illustrators, maintaining that their work, too narrative or too commercial, lacks a high seriousness of purpose. But this kind of derisive attitude has been the bane of all popular culture; it often seems difficult for elitist critics to accept work aimed at a mass audience. For whatever reasons, the problem worsens if the work achieves great success and has a large, receptive audience. If so many people like it, can it possibly be worthwhile? Similar arguments surface with best sellers, hit movies, Broadway blockbusters, top-rated TV shows, and the like. Table 63 presents a cross-section of artists, all of whom worked in a manner similar to that employed by Rockwell (i.e., realistic, usually with a narrative element that suggests a story or an ongoing event), since that dominated the field of illustration throughout the 1940s. Their pictures appeared in books, magazines, as well as a variety of advertising formats. Because of the large number of illustrators at work during the decade, the list should be thought introductory, but hardly conclusive. Lest it be thought that all American illustrators imitated Norman Rockwell at one time or another, mention should be made of Boris Artzybasheff (1899–1965) and Constantin Alajalov (1900–1987). Each worked in a boldly stylized and personalized manner that rendered their work instantly recognizable. Artzybasheff concentrated on creating machines that resembled humans (or humans that resembled machines), often choosing famous individuals and assigning them mechanical qualities that fit their personalities. His covers for Time magazine remain classics for this unique approach. The Russian-born Alajalov, on the other hand, utilized the trademark geometrics used in cubism and sometimes found in modern abstraction. He also imported techniques taken from comic strips, especially the element of caricature when depicting real persons. Despite its predilection for traditional art, the Saturday Evening Post, along with several other large-circulation magazines, did not hesitate to run his paintings for covers. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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| Illustrators TABLE 63.

Some Representative American Illustrators Active during the 1940s

Name and Dates

Comments

Ernest Hamlin Baker (1889–1975)

During a lengthy career, Baker painted almost 400 cover portraits for Time magazine, including virtually all the wartime political and military leaders.

McClelland Barclay (1891–1943)

Created many posters and illustrations on behalf of the U.S. Navy during the war and lost his life while in action in the Pacific.

Dean Cornwell (1892–1960)

Throughout World War II, Dean Cornwell, nicknamed “the Dean of Illustrators” by his peers, painted countless illustrations for advertisers depicting both a product and U.S. armed forces in action. He also won commissions from most of the major magazines of the day and became a noted muralist in addition to all his other commercial activities.

Douglass Crockwell (1904–1968)

Like Rockwell, Crockwell contributed covers for the Saturday Evening Post, and their styles could easily be confused. He often signed his paintings “Douglass,” given the similarity of their names and techniques.

Floyd MacMillan Davis (1896–1966)

Davis served as a correspondent-artist for the War Department, visiting various combat zones. Life magazine ran a number of his paintings during the war.

Steven Donahos (1907–1994)

After working with the Federal Arts Project during the 1930s, Donahos moved to commercial art and found success in many areas. A prolific painter, he even executed the designs for dozens of U.S. postage stamps and Christmas Seals.

John Falter (1910–1982)

The covers of more than 200 issues of the Saturday Evening Post were created by Falter, all in a style reminiscent of Norman Rockwell’s work, with small towns and folksy humor being major themes. He also boasted extensive advertising contacts, and Reader’s Digest commissioned him to illustrate a number of its condensed books.

Fred Freeman (1906–1988)

After serving as a lieutenant commander in the Navy during the war, Freeman took his maritime expertise and created the illustrations for an official history of U.S. submarine operations.

Hamilton Greene (1904–1966)

Although he initially worked with pulp and men’s magazines in the 1930s, Greene became an artistcorrespondent for the American Legion’s magazine in World War II. On the front lines in order to cover combat operations in Europe, he was shot but survived the wound. With the outbreak of the Korean conflict in 1950, he again returned to drawing battles up close, and his on-the-spot sketches from both wars have become highly prized.

Peter Helck (1893–1988)

A skilled technician, Helck specialized in automotive art and attracted an enthusiastic following.


Illustrators | 407 Name and Dates

Comments

Frances Tipton Hunter (1896–1957)

Among the few women active in the field of illustration, Tipton displayed a talent for painting children; in addition to popular advertisements, she also created numerous covers for the Saturday Evening Post.

Tom Lovell (1909–1997)

An exacting craftsman, Lovell received commissions from most of the major magazines published in the 1940s. He also created an illustrated wartime history of the Marine Corps war that has become part of that branch’s permanent collection.

Ronald McLeod (1897–1977)

The Saturday Evening Post was not alone in publishing covers by good illustrators; Collier’s, a competing weekly, ran many McLeod covers for more than 20 years.

Al Parker (1906–1985)

Noted for a long series of “mother-daughter” covers he executed for the Ladies’ Home Journal in the 1940s, Parker possessed the unique ability to work in a variety of styles, from traditional to modern—a trait that endeared him to magazine publishers and advertising agencies. He remains best remembered for his stylish women, immaculately coiffed and always clad in the latest fashions.

Martha Sawyers (1902–1988)

At the onset of World War II, Collier’s magazine dispatched Sawyers to the Far East to chronicle life and events there, with the result that her illustrations and posters about Asia proved popular with the U.S. public, which did not know much about that part of the world.

Mead Schaeffer (1898–1980)

A personal friend of Norman Rockwell, Scheaffer painted in a similar, realistic way. During the war, he created a series of covers for the Saturday Evening Post that depict the different branches of the U.S. armed forces; in this effort, he received the full cooperation of the War Department and access to ships, planes, vehicles, and uniforms in order that all details be accurate and correct.

Jon Whitcomb (1906–1988)

Like his colleague Al Parker, Whitcomb had a gift for portraying glamorous, attractive women. He gained a modicum of fame in the 1940s for an ongoing series entitled “Home for Keeps.” It depicts wives and sweethearts welcoming back husbands and boyfriends returning from active service. His own military experiences involved naval duty in the Pacific as a combat artist assigned to record several island engagements.

In addition, George Petty (1894–1975) and Alberto Vargas (1896–1982) carved out a distinctive niche for themselves by creating curvaceous pinup girls for the delectation of males around the globe. Although beautiful women have been the subject of artists since time immemorial, Petty and Vargas mass-produced hundreds of images, mainly watercolors that have been carefully air-brushed to depict a kind of idealized


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femininity—voluptuous, but all in good taste. They became extremely popular during the 1940s, especially for servicemen. Bomber crews frequently decorated their aircraft with Petty and Vargas look-alikes—called “nose art”—that injected a bit of humor into their deadly business. Petty began his career with Esquire, a sophisticated men’s magazine. It regularly carried one of his pinups, or “Petty Girls,” throughout the later 1930s. After a falling-out, the magazine lost no time and soon ran Vargas pinups during the 1940s, called “Vargas Girls,” within its pages long before the days of Playboy (although Vargas also drew—albeit more explicitly—for that magazine in the 1960s). Petty, in the meantime, went with True, another men’s periodical, until the 1950s. Hollywood paid tribute to the pinup’s popularity with a 1950 musical called The Petty Girl. Actor Robert Cummings (1910–1990) portrays Petty as a painter noted for his cheesecake art. A decorous affair, it boasts a soundtrack by the renowned composer Harold Arlen (1905–1986) and lyricist Johnny Mercer (1909–1976). The two even wrote a song called “The Petty Girl,” and the studio correctly assumed people would know to what it referred. As the foregoing list would suggest, the names of most of the illustrators who practiced their craft in Norman Rockwell’s time—the 1920s until the 1960s—have largely been forgotten. People may continue to admire their work when encountering it in dusty magazines, crumbling advertisements, or an old calendar, but their signatures will not be familiar (if any appear at all, since many commercial illustrators labored in relative anonymity and did not sign their work). Rockwell and his art have been remarkably enduring, successfully blurring the line between high and low culture by appealing to a large, diverse mass of people; his public acceptance has ensconced him as the most popular American artist of all time. The 1940s were a rich decade for illustration, and it is unfortunate that too many skilled practitioners of the craft have been forgotten or remain anonymous. Much of their output contributed to raising the public consciousness about art in general, and certainly they achieved a level of sophistication in illustration that anyone can admire. As a gesture of acknowledgement for the contributions American illustrators have made over the years, the United States Postal Service in 2001 issued a set of 20 commemorative stamps, each honoring a different artist. Of the 20 individuals chosen, 14 were active illustrators during the 1940s, suggesting the increasing role illustration took in visual culture as the decade progressed. See also: Abstract Expressionism; Automobiles and the U.S. Automotive Industry; Aviation; Cold War, The; Fads; Fashion; GI Bill (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944); Hobbies; Musicals (Film); Newspapers; Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 (Selective Service, or Draft); Seventeen; Songwriters and Lyricists Selected Reading Buechner, Thomas S. Norman Rockwell: Artist and Illustrator. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1970. Hennessey, Maureen Hart, and Anne Knutson. Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999. Reed, Walt, and Roger Reed. The Illustrator in America, 1880–1980. New York: Society of Illustrators, 1984. Stoltz, Donald Robert, Marshall Louis Stoltz, and William B. Earle. The Advertising World of Norman Rockwell. New York: Madison Square Press, 1985. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Internment Camps (Relocation Centers) | 409

INTERNMENT CAMPS (RELOCATION CENTERS) Aircraft from the Japanese Imperial Navy attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The next day, the United States Congress declared that a state of war existed between the government of Japan and the government and people of the United States. Newspapers soon printed stories of spies and sabotage activity along the West Coast, causing widespread hysterical fears of more Japanese attacks. These reports turned out to be false rumors. Hollywood’s Twentieth Century-Fox nevertheless contributed to the paranoia of the hour with the release of Little Tokyo, U.S.A. in July 1942. The film presents the Japanese American community as a vast army of volunteer spies and ardent admirers of Japan’s emperor. With the nation at war, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) signed several executive orders to establish boards and mechanisms for managing the conflict. Executive order 9066, presented as a military necessity to protect the country from internal attacks of espionage and sabotage, authorized Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson (1867–1950) and appropriate military commanders to identify military areas within the United States from which any or all persons, regardless of their citizenship, could be excluded.

The War Relocation Authority, established in March 1942, oversaw the confinement of over 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. This picture, taken in September 1942 at the Tanforan Assembly Center, shows the first step in the relocation process. From the civilian assembly centers, individuals went to 1 of 10 internment camps, sometimes called relocation centers, and remained there until the end of the war. (CORBIS) © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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The War Relocation Authority (WRA), established on March 18, 1942, and headed by Milton S. Eisenhower (1899–1985), brother of General Dwight David Eisenhower (1890–1969), had the responsibility to oversee any such actions. Vaguely worded, the order could have been applied to any group or nationality, but with just a few exceptions, the only ones subjected to this directive were Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. In November 1942, Paramount Pictures and the Office of War Information (OWI) produced Japanese Relocation, a documentary short written by Milton Eisenhower that attempted to present reasons for interning Japanese American citizens, a film clearly seen in modern times to be blatant propaganda in support of the government. By the time the studio released the movie, the relocation of between 110,000 and 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry had been completed. Officials first sent them to temporary facilities called civilian assembly centers. Most of these individuals possessed U.S. citizenship or qualified as legal permanent resident aliens; children accounted for half of the population. Beginning on March 21, 1942, and continuing into early October, 10 bleak and remote camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards opened in five states to house these citizens, most for four years. In some cases, family members found themselves separated and in different facilities. As the relocation took place, short notice became the rule. For example, the first group to be ousted from their homes lived on Terminal Island near Los Angeles Harbor and had 48 hours to prepare. This practice resulted in heavy financial losses as homes, farms, and businesses had to be liquidated or quickly entrusted to a neighbor or acquaintance. Homes and personal property left unprotected fell to vandalism and theft despite government promises of protection. Once at a camp, residents had to endure unacceptable and unhealthy conditions. Living space consisted of shoddy wooden barracks covered by tar paper and mostly divided into one-room apartments, originally intended for four, but usually housing more. In the desert and swamp camps, temperature extremes and poisonous snakes and wildlife created discomfort and danger. At some camps, people arrived before sewer TABLE 64.

The Internment Camps for Japanese Americans, 1942–1946 (Listed Chronologically by Opening Date)

Camp Locations Manzanar, California Poston (Colorado River), Arizona Tule Lake, California Gila River, Arizona Minidoka, Idaho Heart Mountain, Wyoming Amache (Granada), Colorado Topaz (Central Utah), Utah Rohwer, Arkansas Jerome, Arkansas

Opened

Closed

Peak Population

March 21, 1942 May 8, 1942 May 27, 1942 July 20, 1942 August 10, 1942 August 12, 1942 August 24, 1942 September 11, 1942 September 18, 1942 October 6, 1942

November 21, 1945 November 28, 1945 March 20, 1946 November 10, 1945 October 28, 1945 November 10, 1945 October 15, 1945 October 31, 1945 November 30, 1945 June 30, 1944

10,046 17,814 18,789 13,348 9,397 10,767 7,318 8,130 8,475 8,497

Source: PBS. Children of the Camps: Internment History. 1999. www.pbs.org/childofcamp/history/ camps.html


Internment Camps (Relocation Centers) | 411 systems had been built. Women giving birth usually had little or no professional help. Guards tended to shoot and ask questions later, conditions that resulted in unjustified woundings and deaths. Some of those incarcerated died in the camps because of inadequate medical care and emotional stress. In addition to confinement, other injustices occurred. Within 48 hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor, over 1,000 men identified as leaders in their Japanese American communities had been arrested by local authorities and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Most spent the war years in confinement. The FBI arrested another 2,000 Japanese Americans for a variety of reasons and kept them in Department of Justice detention camps. Only one, whose offense involved forgetting to register as a business agent of a Japanese importing firm, received a conviction, that of imprisonment. Despite the inhuman aspect of the rounding up and internment of Japanese Americans by the War Relocation Authority, the agency in the summer of 1942 organized the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council. Public officials, civic organizations, and other groups worked with colleges and universities as the council relocated Japanese American college students to institutions of higher learning away from the West Coast in hopes of keeping them out of camps and enrolled in colleges. Participating schools had to be approved by the army and navy. Those attending high school and planning to enroll in college were included in the approximately 3,000 students assisted by this effort. To document the relocation program, Milton Eisenhower had retained photojournalist Dorothea Lange (1895–1965), known for her Depression-era pictures taken for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Because of restrictions placed upon Lange, most of her internment photographs cover Manzanar, the first camp to open. Even here, she could not photograph the wire fences, watchtowers with search lights, or the armed guards. Ironically, her earliest pictures chronicle children of Japanese ancestry obediently pledging allegiance to the U.S. flag at Raphael Weill Public School in San Francisco, California. The rest of her almost 800 shots show the injustice of people being uprooted and forced to live in deplorable conditions, an honest pictorial story disturbing enough that, by early 1943, the U.S. Army had confiscated both her photographs and negatives. With the word “impounded” stamped on many of Lange’s pictures, her work continued to be suppressed for the duration of World War II. Soon thereafter, the government quietly gave the pictures to the National Archives. One year after Lange’s visits to Manzanar, another famous photographer, Ansel Adams (1902–1984), went there at his own expense. Between October 1943 and July 1944, Adams made four trips to interview and photograph detainees in activities that emphasized their pro-American beliefs. As his last visit approached, announcements about the possible closing of camps had been made. Adams published his pictures in an inexpensive book ironically titled Born Free and Equal (1944) in hopes that his portraits would enable ordinary Americans to be more tolerant of the return of the Japanese Americans to their homes and communities. The book sold well in San Francisco but had poor distribution to other parts of the country. Despite his efforts, California officials recorded 59 acts of violence against returning Japanese Americans. In 1968, Adams gave his pictures to the Library of Congress.


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Even with ongoing internment programs, a little over 17,500 Japanese Americans served in the U.S. Army. In mid-1942, those in Hawaii were put into a segregated unit named the 100th Infantry Battalion. The group saw bloody and heavy fighting in Europe, and members earned over 900 Purple Hearts, giving it the nickname the Purple Heart Battalion. In the summer of 1944, the 100th Battalion became attached to the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, home for Japanese American mainlanders since 1943. Because of its previous honors, it continued to be called the 100th Battalion. In 1944, working together, these two groups gained world recognition for rescuing another U.S. unit trapped behind enemy lines for eight days, at the heavy cost of losing nearly half, over 800, of its men. In 1946, President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) received the 442nd Regimental Combat Team on the White House lawn. He stated, “You fought not only the enemy but you fought prejudice—and you have won.” Hollywood joined in giving accolades by telling the story of the Japanese American soldiers of World War II in the movie Go for Broke (1951). In contrast to these honors, back in the internment camps, 106 young men were arrested in 1944 for refusal to participate in combat training as a protest about treatment of their impounded families. Twenty-one received convictions and served prison time before being paroled in 1946. Some Japanese Americans were allowed to leave their camps and return home before the war officially ended. The Relocation Center at Jerome, Arkansas, closed in June 1944, and in December, authorities declared all the camps would be closed. A slow process, it took until March 1946 before the last detainees left. This final operating site, Tule Lake, had housed the largest number of people, leaving some 5,000 individuals to move during its last month of operation. Many were elderly, impoverished, or ill, which caused difficulties in completing the relocation process, and some had no place to go. Returning home involved continued difficulties. Rude receptions including homes being shot into and signs reading “No Japs Allowed” greeted a few. As a group, they had suffered around $400 million in income and property losses (approximately $4.8 billion in 2008 money). Cries for justice increased as more and more U.S. citizens became aware of the unwarranted internment and atrocious living conditions inflicted on fellow citizens during World War II. On July 2, 1948, President Truman signed the Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act, a measure to compensate individuals for economic losses attributable to their forced internment. This act, however, contained limitations. The bill required a lengthy and costly process to prove a claim, which became costly to the government. Also, evidence of economic losses frequently no longer existed. Personal papers had been lost; even the Internal Revenue Service had destroyed tax returns for the years 1939 to 1942. These problems would not be rectified until 1988, when President Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) signed into law a bill that provided individual payments of $20,000 (a little over $36,000 in 2008 money) to each surviving person who spent time in an internment camp. The bill also established a $1.25 billion education fund (approximately $2.3 billion in 2008 money). The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II stands as one of the worst violations of civil liberties in wartime America and a huge embarrassment to a


It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra) | 413 nation devoted to individual rights and freedom. The experience created financial difficulties and psychological trauma for many of the detainees, much of it permanent. See also: Atomic Bomb, The; Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose; Movies; Photography; Race Relations and Stereotyping Selected Reading Gordon, Linda, and Gary Y. Okihiro. Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Kashima, Tetsuden, and the United States Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996. Lingeman, Richard. Don’t You Know There’s a War On? The American Home Front, 1941–1945. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1970. O’Brien, Kenneth Paul, and Lynn Hudson Parsons, eds. The Home-Front War: World War II and American Society. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995.

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (FRANK CAPRA) This film, released in 1946, remains one of the most popular Christmas movies ever produced, although its renowned director, Frank Capra (1897–1954), did not intend it as merely a holiday motion picture. He and several studio writers had adapted “The Greatest Gift,” a 1939 short story by Philip Van Doren Stern (1900– 1984), into a screenplay. An all-star cast headed by Jimmy Stewart (1908–1997), Donna Reed (1921–1986), and Lionel Barrymore (1878–1954), manages to explore a gamut of emotions, from pathos to humor, with the script. Although it did not do particularly well at the box office in its first year, the picture slowly attracted a growing audience and a reputation as good, family-oriented entertainment. In time, It’s a Wonderful Life evolved into a perennial favorite, especially with repeated television showings, videotapes, and DVDs, and audiences began returning to it season after season. In the story, banker George Bailey (Stewart), after living a good and sensible life, feels his accomplishments amount to little, especially when a financial crisis threatens the very existence of his tiny savings and loan company. A dastardly competitor, played to the hilt by Barrymore, leads him to consider suicide, but a helpful guardian angel intercedes and gives him a little commonsensical heavenly advice. He also shows him the influence he has had over his friends and town, Bedford Corners, New York, and then presents him a nightmarish vision of what life for others would have been like without Bailey in the picture. This what-might-have-been revelation changes Bailey’s mind, he returns to his home, and all ends well. Although this extended concluding sequence properly belongs in the realm of fantasy, the details of the larger story are firmly grounded in economic reality, especially in light of bank failures in the recent Great Depression of the 1930s. Capra’s recurring theme of the lonely individual against the crowd becomes apparent when townspeople at first turn against Bailey after it appears his firm will fail. But Capra can also turn the tables, by showing those same neighbors supporting Bailey by raising cash to keep the savings and loan solvent and


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| It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra)

out of the hands of Barrymore’s character. In this way, Capra balances American idealism with the actual postwar world. At its release, a number of critics dismissed It’s a Wonderful Life as too sentimental, too saccharine, but they tended to overlook a decidedly darker side it harbors until its sunny conclusion. Visually, much of the film takes place in wintry gloom, reinforcing the grim thoughts in Bailey’s mind. This device works especially well in black and white, Capra’s preferred métier (a colorized version also exists, but loses some of the dark, shadowy drama of the original). And, despite opening at Christmas time, usually a profitable season for new movies, its solemn subject matter caused it to show only mediocre box office returns. Its reputation as a cinema classic would take several years to establish. Capra came to It’s a Wonderful Life with an enviable track record. He had delighted audiences prior to World War II with such classics as It Happened One Night (1934), You Can’t Take It with You (1938; Jimmy Stewart’s debut motion picture with the director), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939; Stewart again teamed with Capra), and Meet John Doe (1941). A veteran of World War I, Capra found himself back in uniform when the U.S. Army Signal Corps commissioned him as a major and gave him the job of creating a series of films about American goals in World War II. Between 1942 and 1945, he created seven documentaries that received the collective title of Why We Fight: Prelude to War (1942), The Nazis Strike (1943), Divide and Conquer (1943), The Battle of Britain (1943), The Battle of Russia (1944), The Battle of China (1944), and War Comes to America (1945). In addition, Capra also directed The Negro Soldier in 1944, a demonstration of the worthiness of black troops in an era of military segregation. The overall experience exhausted and saddened him, and it challenged the idealism he had exhibited in the 1930s. When he returned to commercial filmmaking with It’s a Wonderful Life, his attitudes about human experience became tinged with anxiety and gave his subsequent movies a heightened maturity. At times, some critics have cynically referred to the director’s innate populism and belief in the honorable side of humanity as “Capra-corn,” a clever pun, perhaps, but one that relies on a shallow reading of his work. Just prior to the 1946 release of It’s a Wonderful Life, Capra, along with fellow directors George Stevens (1904–1975) and William Wyler (1902–1981) and Columbia Pictures executive Samuel J. Briskin (1896–1968), formed Liberty Films as a production company. The three directors, all veterans of World War II, expressed reluctance to return to the then-existing Hollywood studio system; they agreed to grant RKO Radio Pictures distribution rights for any films Liberty produced. Because of chronic financial problems, however, the fledgling studio released only two films under its banner, It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and State of the Union (1948), and then broke up. In an ironic twist, William Wyler, despite his ongoing association with Liberty, directed The Best Years of Our Lives in 1946 for the Samuel Goldwyn Company. When the Academy Awards for 1946 were announced, It’s a Wonderful Life received nominations for best picture and best director, as did The Best Years of Our Lives. Unfortunately for Capra and Liberty Studios, The Best Years of Our Lives won in both categories. For his part, although he would go on making movies until the early


It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra) | 415 1960s, Frank Capra never regained the prominence he had achieved in the 1930s and 1940s. See also: Comedies (Film); Drama (Film); Louis, Joe; Political and Propaganda Films; Race Relations and Stereotyping; War Films Selected Reading Capra, Frank. The Name above the Title. New York: Macmillan, 1971. McBride, Joseph. Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success. New York: Touchstone Books, 1992.


J

JACK BENNY PROGRAM, THE One of the most popular radio shows of the 1940s, its host and star first entered show business as a teenager in 1908, playing violin with some local Waukegan, Illinois, dance bands. At this time, he still used his real name, Benjamin Kubelsky (1894–1974). Three years later, Kubelsky had moved to performing in vaudeville theaters, although his parents forbade him to go on the road. A brief stint in the navy during World War I caused him to discover a talent for comedy and also brought about a change in names to the better-known Jack Benny. Benny slowly established a good reputation as a comedian and worked his way up the vaudeville ladder, and he went to Broadway to perform in revues. He also appeared in a number of lackluster movies in the early 1930s. Good fortune came his way when he landed a spot on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1932, a network radio variety program with gossip columnist Ed Sullivan (1901–1974) as master of ceremonies; a large audience heard Benny on the air. Shortly thereafter, NBC (National Broadcasting Company) offered him a contract for a show of his own. The first broadcasts of The Jack Benny Show occurred in 1932; the program would remain a radio staple until 1955. Benny stayed with NBC until 1948 and then with CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) until 1955. Reruns, called The Best of Benny, kept the show on the air until 1958. During all of those 23 years on radio, The Jack Benny Program usually ranked among the top shows in popularity. In 1950, Benny also moved to CBS television, another radio star making the transition to the new medium. For five years, he successfully straddled both radio and TV. With his burgeoning popularity on the air, Hollywood rediscovered Jack Benny; he appeared in eight additional motion pictures during the mid- and later 1930s, and the 1940s saw him in another seven. He opened the decade with Buck Bunny Rides Again, a silly romp with much of the cast from the radio show. Love Thy Neighbor (1940) 417


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merely carries on the fun, and Charley’s Aunt (1941) has him taking on the classic 1892 Victorian farce with considerable flair. With the war raging, To Be or Not to Be (filmed in 1941 but released in 1942) served as a strong anti-Axis comedy, with Benny and Carole Lombard (1908–1942) matching wits with both the Nazis and Shakespeare. George Washington Slept Here (1942) and The Meanest Man in the World (1943) stand as lesser efforts for Benny, but The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945), a film he delighted in panning on his radio show, redeemed his film career, although the comedian thereafter bowed out of moviemaking, except for occasional guest appearances. Even with his active motion picture schedule, Benny devoted most of his creative efforts to his radio show. He and his writers created a handful of long-running characters, such as Rochester, Benny’s put-upon black valet played by Eddie Anderson (1905–1977), and Mr. Kitzel, a recurring figure played by Artie Auerbach (1903– 1957). Anderson’s Rochester might raise an eyebrow in later years for racial stereotyping, but seldom did he kowtow to anyone, especially Benny. Auerbach’s Kitzel spoke in a heavy Jewish accent but insulted no one’s ethnicity. Since his role involved selling hot dogs, his classic “pe-e-ekle in the me-e-edle with the mustard on top” convulsed audiences, and the phrase quickly entered the language. By the 1940s, such familiar names as tenor Dennis Day (ne Owen Patrick McNulty, 1916–1988), bandleader Phil Harris (1904–1995), vocal effects master Mel Blanc (1908–1989), and announcer Don Wilson (1900–1982) had all become regulars. Dennis Day played a featherbrained naïf, whose “Gee, Mr. Benny,” always got a laugh. Phil Harris, on the other hand, took on the role of a hip, hard-drinking musician who mangled the language. He dubbed Benny “Jackson” and greeted him on the air with a “Hi’ya, Jackson.” Even Don Wilson, ostensibly the announcer, became a comic personality during airtime. A large man, the cast made endless jokes about his girth, and he continually pleaded with Benny to allow the Sportsmen Quartet, another musical staple on the show, to sing the jingles for commercial products. Both made-up characters and real-life performers gave the program a strong sense of continuity. As the cast of the show became established in radio, Benny worked to find a formula that would give the production a distinctive identity. Almost from the beginning, his real-life wife Sadye Marks (1906–1983) played Mary Livingstone throughout its run, first in a role as a fan and then as his wisecracking secretary; she became so wellknown that she eventually changed her name legally. Contrary to popular belief, she did not play Benny’s wife; his stage reputation as a notorious miser would not have allowed a spouse. The writers connected with The Jack Benny Program also worked tirelessly to preserve the persona of its star. In time, they established several traits for Benny that endured into his days on television. He seemingly became the butt of his own jokes, and his mastery of timing enhanced the effect. His pauses, as he deliberated what had been said, were legendary. A miser in all things, his fictitious home contained a basement vault guarded by a ferocious polar bear (“He ate the gas man”) named Carmichael, voiced by Mel Blanc. Given this cheap side to his evolving personality, he treasured his wheezy automobile, a vintage Maxwell, and Blanc, through his vocal antics, gave it life. Vain, he remained 39 forever, a running joke that never grew stale. Of course, the Jack Benny his writers created did not resemble the real man at all, and audiences


Jazz | 419 knew this. But the fact that he would make fun of himself in a long, continuing series only added to the fun; it made the audience a part of the joke. Given its radio popularity, The Jack Benny Program naturally attracted sponsors. From 1934 until 1942, Jell-O underwrote the program, followed by Grape Nuts cereals (1942–1944); Lucky Strike cigarettes served in this coveted capacity for the longest period, 1944 to 1955, and gave the production an alternate title, The Lucky Strike Program. But for millions of fans, it would always remain The Jack Benny Program. See also: Advertising; Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry; Comedies (Film); Musicals (Film); Political and Propaganda Films; Race Relations and Stereotyping; Radio Programming: Comedy Shows; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Toast of the Town (Ed Sullivan) Selected Reading Benny, Jack, and Joan Benny. Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story. New York: Warner Books, 1990. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

JAZZ In the days just prior to the entry of the United States into World War II, the big bands, the most popular musical force in the land, could do no wrong in the eyes of the mass audience. They exemplified swing, a melodic, danceable melding of jazz and popular music that had arisen during the early 1930s. Overwhelmed by the dominance of swing, much contemporary jazz went unheard by the listening audience, since the large record companies wanted top-selling artists like Tommy Dorsey (1905–1956), Duke Ellington (1899–1974), Benny Goodman (1909–1986), Harry James (1916–1983), and Glenn Miller (1904–1944). For example, clarinetist Artie Shaw’s (1910–2004) hit swing version of “Begin the Beguine,” a romantic tune written in 1935 by Cole Porter (1891–1964) and recorded by Shaw in 1938, remained a big seller well into the 1940s. The same held true for night clubs, dance halls, and concerts. Owners, managers, and producers wanted customers, and those customers wanted, or so many assumed, the leading names in swing. These attitudes toward both recorded and live performances carried with them racial implications, because the successful (i.e., profitable) orchestras tended to be white, which meant, given the times, that their fans consisted of a preponderance of white patrons. In many ways, however, the foundations of swing, especially its propulsive beat and emphasis on instrumentalists, had come from jazz, which predated swing by several decades. Ironically, jazz existed in the background during swing’s heyday, and many fine jazz artists and groups, mainly black, struggled for survival during the 1930s and early 1940s, muffled by the loud applause given their boisterous stepchild. During this time, swing and jazz often seemed synonymous terms, and the dividing line between the two formats often appeared fuzzy. When Count Basie (1904–1984) and his band performed “One O’Clock Jump” (1937; reached its greatest popularity in the early 1940s) or Benny Goodman and


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vocalist Peggy Lee (1920–2002) collaborated on “Why Don’t You Do Right?” (recorded 1942), the renditions delighted jazz and swing fans alike, and any discussions about jazz and swing differences carried the hallmarks of academic nitpicking more than anything else. Perhaps the greatest exemplar of popularly oriented swing was bandleader Glenn Miller. From the late 1920s, when he first appeared on the musical scene, he traced a career that steadily rose in public appeal. At the time of his death in 1944 while with the Army Air Force, the Glenn Miller Orchestra (both his civilian and later service bands) ranked No. 1 with most fans. Diehard jazz aficionados might be dismissive—mere swing tunes—about Miller’s “In the Mood” (1939) or “A String of Pearls” (1941), two of his biggest instrumental hits from the early 1940s, whereas those on the other side of the argument might be ecstatic, proclaiming them great dance numbers. Whatever one’s leanings, however, most could agree that swing and jazz enjoyed a close kinship, at least into the 1940s. But nothing lasts forever. When the public’s adulation toward the highly structured and tightly arranged music featured by the leading swing orchestras slowly drew to a close in the waning days of World War II, jazz innovators started carving out new paths that distanced them from a style that had seemed, just a few short years earlier, destined to rule American music for the foreseeable future. The demise of many big bands simultaneously brought about the rise of countless small jazz groups in the 1940s, although the war and simple economics served to conceal much of this ferment from potential audiences until later in the decade and the return to peace. The 1940s also served as a breeding ground for new musical expressions, ranging from a revival of traditional New Orleans styles to the most avant-garde experiments, especially in the area of modern (as opposed to traditional) jazz. For many musicians, the period represented a time of unparalleled opportunity, and these changes—some gradual, some almost overnight—occurred at the expense of the once-mighty big bands. They were reduced, if active at all, to playing a kind of diluted version of swing, mainly in the form of bland pop tunes and usually behind a name vocalist. Another event, in this case a single 1939 recording, also deeply influenced the development of jazz. Tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins (1904–1969), a renowned veteran of the swing orchestra led by Fletcher Henderson (1897–1952) and countless small groups, in 1939 made a studio recording of “Body and Soul,” a revival of a 1930 song composed by Johnny Green (1908–1989) that announced to the music world that momentous changes awaited contemporary music. After touching on the familiar melody, Hawkins launches into a long (two choruses, plus the coda) rhythmic improvisation that examines the harmonics of the song. Remarkably, given the abstract qualities and absence of a recognizable melody in his performance, “Body and Soul” became a hit. A master instrumentalist, Hawkins presaged the bebop revolution and its emphasis on chord structure and, in so doing, helped open the boundaries of jazz to a new generation of artists. At the same time Coleman Hawkins was dissecting “Body and Soul,” a young guitarist named Charlie Christian (1916–1942) joined the Benny Goodman orchestra. He quickly became a regular in the Goodman Sextet, an extension of the leader’s former quintet. Backed by Goodman, clarinet; Lionel Hampton (1908–2002), vibraphone; Johnny Guarnieri (1917–1985), piano; Artie Bernstein (1909–1964), bass; and Nick


Jazz | 421 Fatool (1915–2000), drums, Christian’s long, linear lines of improvisation, played over the more traditional 4/4 swing of the group, established new ways of listening to solo instruments, not unlike what Hawkins had achieved. On another front, drummer Gene Krupa (1909–1973), formerly a star with Goodman in the 1930s, formed his own band in 1941 that spotlighted trumpeter Roy “Little Jazz” Eldridge (1911–1989) and vocalist Anita O’Day (1919–2006) and opened new vistas for contemporary popular music. They enjoyed a hit with a 1941 effort, “Let Me Off Uptown.” Eldridge’s piercing horn and O’Day’s sassy singing would prove strong influences on a new generation of players and singers and indicated changes ahead. The close interplay between O’Day and Eldridge presented an additional facet to the evolving face of jazz in the 1940s, because she was white and he was black. More and more bands and groups became racially integrated, quietly and without fuss for the most part, and this long-overdue progress would continue throughout the decade. While numerous others experimented with new approaches to jazz in small group settings, three adventuresome orchestras attempted to assimilate some of the innovations in modern music for big bands. Woody Herman (1913–1987) had been active in big band circles from the late 1920s onward, spending most of that time laboring as a reed-playing sideman. In 1936, he took over the leadership of the popular Isham Jones (1894–1956) orchestra and immediately faced the dilemma of whether to continue performing as a new Jones ensemble or to branch out into then-untried fields. Herman’s ensemble chose the latter course and agreed to call the group The Band that Plays the Blues. With a carryover Decca recording contract giving them some financial security, the orchestra began to put on disks—appropriately enough, a number of blues-oriented compositions. In 1939, The Band that Plays the Blues attracted considerable attention with the release of “Woodchopper’s Ball.” An up-tempo piece, it effectively captured the energy of the aggregation and established Woody Herman as a major new force in jazz and swing circles. In addition, he played clarinet on this tune, and the strength of his performance immediately put him into the charmed circle of clarinetists then dominated by Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. Up to this time, the group’s theme had been an older tune, “Blue Prelude” (1933). A new theme, “Blue Flame” (1941), thought to better represent the orchestra, replaced “Blue Prelude.” A haunting number, its distinctive mood provided an impressive opener for the band. Numerous club dates and more recordings followed, and by 1943 the renamed Woody Herman Orchestra boasted a loyal cadre of fans. The following year, a number of significant personnel changes took place, and Herman left Decca and signed a new contract with Columbia Records. For some time, the aggregation had been attempting increasingly modern compositions, and people took to calling this latest incarnation of the orchestra the First Herd. In time, the Second Herd would replace the First, the Third Herd the Second, and so on. Herman’s First Herd broke upon the scene with several dizzying numbers unlike anything previously heard. “Apple Honey” (1945), “Northwest Passage” (1945), “Bijou” (1945), and “Wild Root” (1945) serve as tantalizing samples of what the band could do. For the next several years, Woody Herman’s orchestra would electrify listeners with its disciplined hysteria. Arrangers Ralph Burns (1922–2001) and Neal Hefti


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(1922–2008) deserve much credit, as do soloists Bill Harris (1916–1973; trombone), Pete Candoli (1923–2008; trumpet), Flip Phillips (1915–2001; tenor saxophone), and the inimitable leader himself on clarinet. The experimentation, the sharp movement away from traditional swing arrangements as the band focused more on modern jazz, would continue into the postwar period, and Herman’s Herds became ensconced as one of America’s favorite orchestras. By eschewing traditional swing, Herman avoided the collapse then occurring among many bands that clung to the past. Another newcomer, Stan Kenton (1911–1979) and His Artistry in Rhythm Orchestra, entered the turbulent jazz field in 1941. An early member of the growing roster of musicians signed with fledgling Capitol Records, pianist Kenton achieved modest success with cuts like “Artistry in Rhythm,” “Artistry Jumps,” and “Eager Beaver” (all 1943; all compositions by Kenton). In addition, from the beginning, he hired the best musicians and arrangers, including Pete Rugolo (b. 1915) at this time, and featured top vocalists such as Anita O’Day and June Christy (1925–1990) during the mid-1940s. Not satisfied with the status quo, Kenton sought out new avenues of expression and dubbed his efforts “progressive jazz,” not swing or bebop. In the postwar years, Kenton continued to move forward and try new things and became known as an orchestral innovator of the first rank, one that commanded a devoted following. On the heels of Stan Kenton came Boyd Raeburn (1913–1966). Another leader in the progressive jazz vein, Raeburn had led groups in the Midwest during the 1930s, and came to New York City in 1942 expecting to play some extended club engagements. Until this time, he had performed pretty much as the leader of a straight swing orchestra, but he made the risky choice of experimentation when a fire destroyed his existing book and he had little to lose. With modernist arrangers Johnny Richards (1911–1968) and George Handy (1920–1997) providing provocative charts, Raeburn took the plunge into new musical territory, a move that attracted others from the jazz community, including famed bebop trumpeter John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie (1917– 1993) in the 1944 edition of the band. Hardly a traditional dance orchestra any more, the Raeburn organization immediately gained critical kudos but little commercial success. Raeburn finally had to break up the group in 1948 for economic reasons; he had been too far ahead of his time. Raeburn went back to a traditional swing and dance ensemble in the 1950s. While a number of artists moved into the fields of modern and progressive jazz, others looked fondly to the preswing past. Trumpeter Louis Armstrong (1901–1971), whose career paralleled the rise of jazz, successfully straddled both the old and the new, leading a series of small groups that could play anything from the music of the 1920s to the swing hits of the 1930s to the pop songs of the 1940s. No matter what he performed, his innate sense of rhythmic swing gave his numbers a jazz feel and introduced untold legions of people to the music. In addition to Armstrong, a series of books by music historians that began appearing in the late 1930s; particularly, Ramsey and Smith’s Jazzmen (1939) stirred interest in the performers and early days of jazz. These scholarly studies and anecdotal remembrances, coupled with a handful of record companies that reissued some classic sides by old-time musicians, led to a postwar revival of this form of jazz. A number of instrumentalists—mainly black, largely overlooked, and seemingly in the autumn of


Jazz | 423 their careers, such as Sidney Bechet (1897–1959), George Brunies (1902–1974), Pops Foster (1892–1969), Bunk Johnson (1879–1949), George Lewis (1900–1968), and Kid Ory (1886–1973)—were rediscovered. At the same time, a group of mainly white, tradition-favoring musicians such as Wild Bill Davison (1906–1989), Bud Freeman (1906–1991), Art Hodes (1904–1993), Pee Wee Russell (1906–1969), and Muggsy Spanier (1906–1967) joined with these veteran players. Veteran guitarist Eddie Condon (1905–1973), owner of a popular New York club, served as an unofficial raconteur for the East Coast factions of the revival and led his own group of spirited jazzmen. As the 1940s progressed, the movement spawned a small but enthusiastic following, and interest in the roots of jazz grew throughout the 1940s. While Condon and his followers held forth in New York, trumpeter Lu Watters (1911–1989) and His Yerba Buena Jazz Band, a California outfit that featured trombonist Turk Murphy (1915–1987) and pianist Wally Rose (1913–1997), led a similar revival on the West Coast during this period. Watters’s group brought, they claimed, a kind of historical purity to their music. Other musicians joined in, including Bob Scobey (1916–1963) and his band, which featured the singing of Clancy Hayes (1908– 1972). Regardless of location, these musicians tried to stay reasonably true to the authentic music of New Orleans in its early-20th-century heyday. Many listeners, East and West Coast, lumped these efforts under the generic title Dixieland, and the music cultivated a core of dedicated fans during the later 1940s that has endured into the present. In 1949, a group of young musicians, after playing under several names in New Orleans, reorganized as The Dukes of Dixieland. What they perhaps lacked in the historical purity of their music, they made up for with enthusiasm. And for countless fans receptive to this kind of music, the band epitomized Dixieland and the New Orleans tradition as attested to by strong record sales. For many, the traditional revival signaled a desire to return to the beginnings of jazz, and the popularity espoused for New Orleans, Dixieland, or any of their variants amounted to a rejection both of big band swing and the many experiments taking place in the realm of more modern—and often less accessible—jazz styles. Hollywood acknowledged this revival with a 1947 film, New Orleans. Musically, it stars Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday (1915–1959), and Woody Herman, along with a number of fine sidemen, but, as several critics noted, the insipid story gets in the way of the music. Even Armstrong saw his career rise to new, successful heights when he played a concert at New York’s Town Hall in 1947. From this event grew the Louis Armstrong All Stars, a well-named troupe of veteran musicians capable of playing in all mainstream styles. Armstrong’s ensemble, which included trombonist Jack Teagarden (1905–1964) and drummer Sid Catlett (1910–1951), among others, delight club and concert audiences with their straight-ahead presentation and recorded extensively, continuing successfully on all counts into the 1950s. Jazz is a music that constantly mutates and evolves. The newer postwar embodiments of jazz grew in clubs, jam sessions, in hotel rooms and buses on the road, drawing from all that went before it—the blues, stride piano, swing, from Louis Armstrong’s amazing trumpet constructions to Benny Goodman’s fluid clarinet stylings. It often took time to develop new expressions and find an appreciative audience, and so many modernists had to struggle, both creatively and economically.


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| Jones, Spike See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Boogie-Woogie; Crosby, Bing; Classical Music; Country Music; Race Relations and Stereotyping; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows Selected Reading Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. McClellan, Lawrence, Jr. The Later Swing Era, 1942 to 1955. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. Ward, Geoffrey C., and Ken Burns. Jazz: A History of America’s Music. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. Young, William H., and Nancy K. Young. American Music through History: The World War II Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005.

JONES, SPIKE In the grim, early days of World War II, a bandleader came along who injected a welcome dose of humor into his performances. He went by the name Spike Jones (1911–1965), and he called his group the City Slickers, a play on the hillbilly music then receiving increased exposure that often employed gags and costumes for effect. In actuality, he was born in urban Southern California as Lindley Armstrong Jones. On stage, and usually attired in suits sporting outlandish patterns and colors, Jones and his City Slickers achieved fame—or notoriety—for comic renditions of both original materials and adapted old favorites. As an adolescent, Jones played drums in bands he organized with his pals. In addition, he displayed dexterity in playing pots and pans or anything else handy that could be used to percussive effect. He graduated to more legitimate orchestras in the 1930s, experience that exposed him to radio shows and theater performances, all of which led to employment as a drummer in various name bands, including John Scott Trotter’s (1908–1975) orchestra from 1937 to 1942. Trotter’s aggregation, which long backed vocalist Bing Crosby (1903–1977) on his Kraft Music Hall radio program and on his Decca recordings, mainly played smooth, conventional pop music. Occasionally, however, Trotter’s music veered off into raucousness. The cause for this transition rested with comedian Bob Burns (1890–1956), a frequent guest on Crosby’s show. Burns had crafted a unique musical instrument made from stove pipes and tubing that he referred to as a bazooka. When he blew into this ungainly contraption, it produced a hoarse, unharmonic ba-zoom. Trotter and his musicians would follow suit on their traditional instruments, and the audience loved it. U.S. soldiers in World War II also christened a handheld tubular antitank weapon a bazooka because of its resemblance to Burns’s creation. This combination of sounds and popular response caught Jones’s ear and triggered his imagination. He foresaw leading a band that featured comic music and offbeat instruments. While still working for Trotter, Jones put together a pick-up band in order to do a little freelance work. The as-yet unnamed group showed promise, and RCA Victor signed Jones to a recording contract in 1941. The term “City Slickers” had perhaps been informally discussed, but it appeared on the label of their first Victor release, making it more or less official. Their first commercial success occurred with “Clink,


Jones, Spike | 425 Clink, Another Drink,” recorded early in 1942 and featuring the voice of Mel Blanc (1908–1989), “the man of a thousand voices” and most famous for creating the voices of most of the cartoon menagerie—Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, and others—seen in Warner Bros. animated features. The band’s road to fame continued in 1942 with a song to be featured in war-related animated cartoon. Donald Duck in Nutzi Land, which had been produced by the Walt Disney studios, employs a song called “Der Fuehrer’s Face” (1942) throughout its roughly eight-minute running time. Shortly before the film’s January 1943 release, the number had already been heard on radio and recordings cut just prior to the recording ban that went into effect in August 1942, a situation that lasted until November 1944. The song became especially popular in a version arranged for Spike Jones and the City Slickers. This satire about “Der Fuehrer” (the Leader), as German dictator Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) was known, elicited an immediate and favorable response from the American public and promptly became the first charted hit for the band. The Disney organization, aware of the song’s runaway success, renamed the cartoon utilizing the song’s title. The soundtrack, however, plays another arrangement. Jones’s recorded version, and the one most people knew at the time, uses some rather rude sound effects each time the word “heil” (“hail,” as in hail to the chief) occurs, and it occurs numerous times. An improvised instrument called a birdophone announces, loud and clear, the band’s opinion of Hitler immediately after each heil. The cartoon’s version substitutes a more modest low note from a trombone, although anyone familiar with the City Slickers would know what had been omitted. The success of “Der Fuehrer’s Face” cast Jones and his musicians as hot properties in the music business. Their unique instrumentation, such as the birdophone, along with the anvilaphone (a dressed-up anvil) and the latrinophone (a toilet seat with strings), plus the sounds of gunshots (Jones frequently came on stage brandishing a six-gun), klaxons, car horns, foghorns, cowbells, pots and pans, washboards, and squeeze bulbs delighted listeners, as did the band’s unique skills in creating Bronx cheers, raspberries, burps, belches, gurgles, and other impolite sounds. Carl Grayson (active 1940s) did the vocal honors on “Der Fuehrer’s Face,” although the talented Red Engle (1906–1965) usually performed the vocals during the early 1940s because he possessed many humorous voices. Winstead “Doodles” Weaver (1911–1983) kept the audience in stitches with his horse race routines, especially “Feetlebaum” (1947). Del Porter (1902–1977) wrote many of the band’s early arrangements; Joe “Country” Washburne (1904–1974) followed him and expanded the City Slickers’ wacky repertoire. Many of the City Slickers’ biggest hits were performed on radio during the recording ban. Fortunately for fans of Spike Jones’s music, engineers preserved them on transcription disks, something those enforcing the ban permitted, provided they were not sold commercially. After 1944, these radio recordings could be transferred to regular records and purchased by the general public. Songs like “Little Bo-Peep Has Lost Her Jeep” (1942), “Siam” (1942), and “Hotcha Cornia” (1943; parody adaptation of a traditional 1800 Russian folk melody called “Otshi Tshornye” or “Dark Eyes”) soon became available in stores. Shortly thereafter, the group claimed three successful hits with “Cocktails for Two” (1944; a parody of a 1934 tune of the same name), “You


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Always Hurt the One You Love” (1944; a parody of a pop hit from that year), and “Chloe” (1945; a parody of a 1927 tune bearing the same name). Even the irrepressible Jones and his zanies had a song for the anticipated return of the troops in 1945: “Leave the Dishes in the Sink, Ma,” a tune for which renowned comedian Milton Berle (1908–2002) received partial credit for the lyrics. In the mid-1940s, Spike Jones strove to gain some musical legitimacy among his critics. All of his sidemen were accomplished musicians; if they had not been so, they could not have so skillfully distorted songs in the myriad ways that became their trademark. In 1945, he formed Spike Jones and His Other Orchestra. It played reasonably straight dance music, with few shenanigans. But the effort ended up costing him money out of his own pockets, because disappointed audiences continued to demand the City Slickers. In response, Jones gave up and returned to his old ways, forming The Musical Depreciation Revue in 1946, a touring show featuring the City Slickers once again. He hit his stride with 1948’s hit, “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth,” a novelty holiday tune featuring a nasal, childlike vocal by trumpeter George Rock (active 1940s and 1950s), in reality an extremely large man. But rhythm ’n’ blues, rock ’n’ roll, and a changed musical climate made Jones and his crew obsolete for new generations of listeners in the years ahead. He ventured into movies—Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943), Breakfast in Hollywood (1946), Ladies’ Man (1947), Variety Girl (1947), and several years later, his only starring role and his final film, Fireman Save My Child (1954)—but he usually had minor walk-on parts or maybe a featured number with the City Slickers. Radio, which had served Jones well in the early 1940s by carrying his music, landed the bandleader his own program, The Spike Jones Show in 1945 as a summer replacement on NBC (National Broadcasting Company). He then moved to MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System) in 1946 for several months, and then to CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) in 1947 to 1948 for the Spotlight Revue, where he shared the microphone with Dorothy Shay (1921–1978), the “Park Avenue hillbillie,” a popular comedy vocalist of the day. Shay departed in 1949, and the series’ title became The Spike Jones Show for the remainder of the season. Neither his movie nor his radio career, however, equaled the success Jones found in recordings and personal appearances. Spike Jones and His City Slickers, will be remembered as a wacky aggregation that delighted in parodying—some would say wrecking or destroying—music of any and all kinds. Just as his impudent “Der Fueher’s Face” had amused millions in 1942, the band’s many take-offs of more serious music kept listeners laughing and probably made it impossible for anyone to listen to a song in its original format without thinking of the shambles the City Slickers made of it. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Cartoons (Film); Country Music; Radio Programming: Comedy Shows; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows. Selected Reading Mirtle, Jack. Thank You, Music Lovers: A Bio-Discography of Spike Jones, 1941–1965. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986. Young, Jordan R. Spike Jones Off the Record: The Man Who Murdered Music. Albany, NY: Bearmanor Media, 2004.


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JUKEBOXES Historians trace the origin of the term jukebox back to the days of slavery in the American South. In West Africa, “juke” meant disorder, wickedness, or a house of prostitution. With the transport of black Africans to the United States, the term took on new meaning: a cheap, rowdy dance hall, usually located on rural roads in the South. Even the dances became jukes. Sometimes the use of an alternative spelling “jook” allowed the place to be called a jook joint. In the late 1920s, coin-operated machines began to replace live music at many of these establishments; by the mid-1930s, the term “juke” had shifted from the dance halls and bars to the record machines found in them, and thereafter entered the language. The development of the jukebox can be attributed to Thomas Edison (1846–1931) and his invention of the phonograph. His models played cylindrical recordings. The introduction of the more familiar flat disks offered Edison some competition and finally became the standard in the recording industry. A significant step forward occurred in 1916, when the John Gabel Manufacturing Company of Chicago, initially a manufacturer of player pianos, produced a coin-operated machine that handled 24 disks in sequence. Even with the ability to hold more than one recording, problems existed. For example, only one side of a disk could be played, and the lack of a means to adequately amplify acoustic sound made the players impractical in the crowded public places where they were most likely to be found, such as bars and taverns. In addition, a coin chute that could detect false coins and, in turn, reject them had not yet been invented. Over the years, corrections to these faults finally enabled the Automatic Musical Instrument Company (AMI; founded in 1927) in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to introduce the first coin-operated, electrically amplified, 20-selection phonograph with a mechanical 10-record system that played disks on both sides. The modern jukebox had arrived By 1940, jukebox manufacturers were making a considerable profit from their By 1940, jukebox manufacturing had become a machines. The technology had improved, profitable business, and three major companies called upon their engineers and industrial deand problems of amplification had been signers to create the most up-to-date machines resolved. In addition to the Gabel Com- housed in creative and elaborate cabinets. This pany and AMI, three other major manu- model is just one of many on the market at the facturers entered the industry within a time. (Photofest)


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few years of each other—the J. P. Seeburg Corporation (Seeburg, 1928), the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company (Wurlitzer, 1933), and the Rock-Ola Manufacturing Corporation (Rock-Ola, 1935). Rock-Ola went on to purchase the Gabel Company in 1949, and Rowe machines acquired AMI in 1959 to become known as Rowe/AMI. A number of much smaller firms also attempted to attract buyers but enjoyed little success. In order to compete, all five major manufacturers worked closely with engineers and industrial designers in hopes of offering the most up-to-date machines housed in attractive cabinets. Clifford Brooks Stevens (1911–1995), perhaps best known for his design projects for Studebaker automobiles and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, worked with the Gabel Company in the late 1930s and early 1940s to create eyecatching cabinets. Paul M. Fuller (1897–1951), another well-known designer, worked for Wurlitzer and receives credit for giving the company an edge on the market prior to World War II in both large floor models and a special small version that could be placed in cramped quarters such as diners, restaurants, and taverns. From 1942 until early 1946, the U.S. government halted jukebox production, along with many other luxuries, to free labor for defense jobs and materials for the war effort. Both the Seeburg Company and Wurlitzer converted their facilities to wartime efforts and each received three Army-Navy E (for excellence) Awards. Seeburg manufactured electrical equipment for the armed forces, while Wurlitzer provided interphone communication systems for aircraft. Its factories also supplied ramps, floors, doors, and miscellaneous wooden accessories. Rock-Ola became 1 of 10 civilian companies contracted to manufacture the M1 carbine, the most widely produced small arm of World War II. But the war only served to bolster the popularity of jukeboxes. People wanted music for listening and for dancing, and in public places like bars and taverns these electronic marvels provided it for just a few cents a song. The orchestra led by Glenn Miller (1904–1944), a favorite of millions, even paid homage to AMI, Seeburg, and others with “Juke Box Saturday Night,” a hit recording penned by Al Stillman (1906–1979) and Paul McGrane (active 1940s). The band plays imitations of then-current tunes being widely played on jukeboxes everywhere; the song also enjoyed featured billing in the Broadway musical Stars on Ice, a show that ran from 1942 to 1944. A rarely seen movie, Juke-Box Jenny, played movie theaters in 1942. A mediocre B picture, it nonetheless features some good swing musicians and the song, “Fifty Million Nickels Can’t Be Wrong,” along with a ludicrous glimpse of the jukebox business. Once victory had been declared, the troops began returning home, jukebox components once again became available, and the country stood ready to celebrate. To take advantage of peacetime demand, all top five companies resumed manufacturing coin-operated machines. Almost half a million jukeboxes had played music in the United States in 1939; by the late 1940s, over 2 million of them took patrons’ nickels (about 45 cents in 2008 money). New models sported names like Night Club, Peacock, Singing Tower, Streamliner, and Throne of Music. Insatiable, jukeboxes in the 1940s consumed over 13 million disks a year, or almost 15 percent of the total output of the nation’s record companies. In their quest for distinctive cabinets to house all the electronics inside a modern jukebox, Wurlitzer rejected the more traditional gothic and cathedral models, opting


Jukeboxes | 429 instead for a jazzy art deco look. The company’s 1015 jukebox, referred to as the Bubbler and designed in 1946 by Paul Fuller, achieved a futuristic light and music show effect with colored bubble tubes that started at the bottom of the cabinet, rose vertically, and then arched over the top of the unit. Wurlitzer sold 56,000 of Bubblers in less than two years, a record that pushed the firm to a leadership position in the industry. Billboard magazine, a widely read trade journal, began posting a weekly chart it called “Most Played in Juke Boxes,” a listing of those individual songs available for coin-operated play. This coverage of the business underscored the importance given to jukeboxes; when people heard a song on a jukebox, they frequently bought the recording. Thanks to their heavy use, jukeboxes exerted a strong influence on the acceptance and sales of individual songs. With the introduction of 45-rpm records in 1949 by RCA Victor, jukeboxes everywhere had to be significantly altered or new ones manufactured to make the switch from the traditional 10-inch 78-rpm disks to Victor’s 7-inch 45s. In 1950, Seeburg introduced the M100B, the first jukebox to play 45-rpm records, creating tight competition between Seeburg and Wurlitzer. In 1954, Wurlitzer countered with a conversion kit that enabled the Bubbler and other company models to play the new records. The Bubbler continued to be in high demand throughout the decade; as a final statement about its iconic status, Wurlitzer celebrated the 40th anniversary of this remarkable machine by manufacturing it again in 1986 and dubbing it One More Time. On the outside it retained its classic design, but inside the new Bubbler held the latest technology. Competing firms followed Wurlitzer’s design example by opting for more colors, more bubbles, and more garish, eye-catching decorations; the gaudier the jukebox, the better people seemed to like it. Soon after the 1946 appearance of the Bubbler, RockOla introduced its Magic Glow machine, which also employed an arch design and illuminated bright colors that did indeed have a magic glow. By 1948, the company had three models in this series. American-made jukeboxes became synonymous with outlandish design, regardless of what company built them, and the illuminated arch established itself as a standard decoration. Seeburg’s 3W-1 wallbox, or Wall-O-Matic, which made its debut in 1948, proved an exception; it nonetheless stands equal to the Bubbler as one of the most recognizable jukeboxes ever made. With its simple beige-colored cabinet, the 3W-1 could be hung on the wall of diner and restaurant booths or grace the establishments’ counters. Small units and wall mounts were not new, but the 3W-1’s 100 selections, 20 visible at a time, and a single coin chute for nickels, dimes, or quarters surpassed the usual 24- or 40-selection machines. It also featured Selectomatic, which added to the ease with which customers could pick and play their favorite songs. Businesses, of course, also enjoyed the increased number of times money dropped into the coin slots. The makers of jukeboxes, like all manufacturers, regularly advertised their products in brochures and in trade journals such as the Automatic Age Coin Machine Magazine. Seeburg issued its own Seeburg Illuminator giving all of the latest news about its players. Wurlitzer distinguished itself in the industry by advertising in mass media publications. During World War II, company ads appeared in mainstream periodicals such as Better Homes and Gardens (founded 1922) and emphasized support for the war;


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for example, from May to December of 1943, Wurlitzer published seven ads under the theme “For Victory, Invest in War Bonds.” Starting in 1946, Wurlitzer expanded its advertising to include the widely distributed Saturday Evening Post (founded 1821), American Weekly (founded 1896), Collier’s (1888), True Confessions (1922), Liberty (1924), Life (1936), and Look (1937). The advertisements all featured colored artwork by noted illustrators. Along with its extensive ad campaigns mounted in the 1940s, Wurlitzer began using a new company logo. Officially known as “The Sign of the Musical Note,” it features a trumpet-playing musical note wearing a top hat and standing in front of a spinning record. Widely seen on billboards and promotional giveaways as well as in magazine ads, the logo, referred to as “Johnny-One-Note,” became immediately recognizable as representative of Wurlitzer. A 1937 Broadway musical, Babes in Arms, featured a song titled “Johnny One Note,” with music by Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) and lyrics by Lorenz Hart (1895–1943), but any direct connection between the two remains uncertain. Prior to the mid-1930s, Americans had fallen in love with technological advances; they expressed a growing demand for coin-operated music machines in public places and businesses that offered this form of musical entertainment. Five companies emerged in the early 1940s as the major players in what is referred to as the golden age of jukeboxes (1936–1950). Many hard-working industrial designers secured a number of design patents in a relatively short period of time, and postwar models appeared in large numbers, followed by effective marketing. Jukeboxes peaked in the 1950s, and then a decline in demand for newer models set in during the 1970s. Eventually Seeburg stopped operations in the United States and Wurlitzer went out of business. AMI continued to function as Rowe International, and Rock-Ola sold its business in the 1990s to Glenn Streeter (active late 20th century) who, maintaining the Rock-Ola name, manufactures both commercial and home jukeboxes. See also: Art (Painting); ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Aviation; Broadway Shows (Musicals); Cole, Nat King; Country Music; Crosby, Bing; Leisure and Recreation; Magazines; Sinatra, Frank Selected Reading DeCillis, Tom. Toms Zone: The inComplete Jukebox. www.tomszone.com Jukebox History. www.nationaljukebox.com/history.html; www.radiomuseum.org/forum/jukebox_ history_of_coin-operated_phonographs.html Lynch, Vincent, and Bill Henkin. Jukebox: The Golden Age. Berkeley, CA: Lancaster-Miller, 1981.

JUVENILE DELINQUENCY Adolescence can be a confusing age even in times of peace. The first years of World War II proved especially baffling for America’s youth, since those under the legal draft age of 18 had no clear role to play in the national effort to win the war. They could participate when activities such as rationing, scrap drives, and civil defense programs


Juvenile Delinquency | 431 got underway, but even this involvement did not lessen feelings of fear, anxiety, and being left out. When the United States began drafting millions of young men into military service, industries actively recruited young people (as well as countless adults) to work in defense facilities that operated around the clock. Some teenagers saw this as an opportunity for freedom, money, and a sense of direction, and they quit school to obtain jobs. Suddenly members of the typical American family found themselves going in myriad directions: fathers off to war; mothers working; and teenagers either in school, working, or both. Without supervision and with money in their pockets, these youthful workers, along with others still in school, began to spend more time away from home. The expectation among adolescent males of eventually having to fight, along with a general desire for an adventure, led some to acts of misconduct—primarily petty larceny, burglary, running away from home, car thefts, disorderly behavior, and malicious mischief—in numbers greater than prior to the war. Others, not involved in any wrongdoings and not counted in the data but caught up in current fads such as hot-rodding or wearing zoot suits, were mistakenly viewed by various adults as delinquents. The rise in statistics about real juvenile delinquency also occurred among girls. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported a 64 percent increase in the number of females under 21 arrested during the first six months of 1943 over the same time period of 1942. There had also been a significant jump in 1942 over 1941. Many adolescents of both sexes felt disoriented because of the war and likewise resorted to unlawful behavior involving petty larceny, incorrigibility, truancy, disorderly conduct, running away from home, and sex offenses. A particular concern for adults involved the practice of some young women to offer companionship, and often sex, to servicemen, all under the guise of patriotism. The National Recreation Association published a pamphlet in 1943 called Teen Trouble, which describes this activity as an effective “get-your-man plan” used by girls around 14 and 15 years old. Known as V girls (victory girls), khaki-wackies, goodtime Charlottes, and free girls, some even traveled to various military bases and port areas seeking intimate encounters. Venereal disease and pregnancy emerged as serious consequences for some. Judges in large metropolitan areas across the country voiced concern about the increase in juvenile delinquency as measured by a sharp rise in the number of teenagers brought into court. Records of these cases indicated three wartime conditions as contributing factors: (1) parents absent from home because of fathers in the service and mothers with defense jobs; (2) rapid increases in teenage employment (much of it illegal in light of child labor laws); and (3) high wages paid to young people. The FBI reported that youthful offenders, however, stated lack of adequate recreational facilities as the primary cause of their misconduct. In 1944, Dorothy Gordon (1889–1970), a radio journalist, interviewed a broad sample of adolescents between the ages of 15 and 17 enrolled in public, private, and parochial schools about their views on juvenile delinquency. These respondents, perhaps differing in experiences from youths with arrest records, seem unconcerned


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about inadequate numbers of recreation facilities. Instead, they suggested lack of sex education and gangster-oriented movies and literature as the major influences. Many of these respondents probably had seen such films, because Hollywood had regularly produced gangster and crime motion pictures throughout the 1930s. These movies, like Little Caesar (1931), glamorize criminals and outline in great detail their encounters with law enforcement officials. Samuel Goldwyn’s Dead End (1937) introduces six young actors called the Dead End Kids who portray unruly and incorrigible delinquents in a half-dozen productions made between 1937 and 1939. A seventh feature, The Angels Wash Their Faces (1939), brings a positive slant to a Dead End Kids picture when reform school successfully influences one of the kids to return home and help clean up corrupt businessmen. By 1940, the motion picture industry became consumed by the war in Europe and greatly reduced the output of crime movies, although it did occasionally acknowledge the growing concerns about juvenile delinquency. For the most part, however, it concentrated on making films with patriotic themes. Pictures with juvenile characters and their stories seldom dealt with the real issues, but instead focused on how antisocial youth could be brought into mainstream society and help with the war effort. For example, Sea Raiders (1941), the last picture to feature the Dead End Kids (they became the East Side Kids in 1940 and the Bowery Boys in 1946), and Universal Pictures’ Junior G-Men of the Air (1942) linked delinquency and the war by showing a group of boys in heroic acts helping to capture saboteurs and foreign agents. Three others, The Penalty (1941), Johnny Holiday (1949), and Kid from Cleveland (1949), focus on the results of sending delinquents to either reform schools or rehabilitative farms, steps guaranteed to produce model patriotic citizens. Twentieth-Century Fox took a different slant in 1943 with a documentary titled Youth in Crisis. This production specifically links rising juvenile delinquency statistics to fathers in the military, mothers working, and employed teenagers earning money. The film also suggests answers: kids selling war bonds and joining 4-H clubs. RKO Radio Pictures followed with a similar movie in 1944, Youth Runs Wild, which seriously addresses the absence of parents in wartime and what appears to be an accompanying wave of juvenile delinquency. On another front, Fredric Wertham (1895–1981), a respected New York psychiatrist, published Dark Legend in 1941. He based his book on the true story of a 17-yearold patient and murderer that Wertham described as a youngster with a sinister fantasy life based on popular culture outlets like movies, radio shows, and comic books. Writing in the later 1940s, Wertham published interviews and articles in such periodicals as Collier’s, the Saturday Review of Literature, and the American Journal of Psychotherapy. In each, he pursued a common theme—that comic books posed a negative, possibly dangerous, influence on youth. The comic book industry attempted to respond. A few publishers formed the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers and announced a Publishers Code with six standards as guides to self-regulate decency in their publications. Many of the larger comic book houses, however, declined membership and enforcement of the code failed. Wertham continued with his campaign and in 1954 wrote Seduction of the Innocent, a


Juvenile Delinquency | 433 sensational book that led to a U.S. Senate hearing on the potential dangers caused by mass media. The publishers organized again and created the Comics Magazine Association of America and a new 12-point Comics Code Authority (CCA). Although the CCA succeeded in toning down the content of some comics, Wertham continued to rail against comic books for years thereafter. Whatever the causes of juvenile delinquency during the 1940s, many commentators addressed the issue. At the end of 1943, Life magazine ran an article bearing the title, “Our Kids Are in Trouble.” Alarmed communities across the country sought to find solutions. In the spring of 1944, Look magazine profiled a youth center in Moline, Illinois, and in October, Continental Pictures released Youth Aflame, which tells the story of the good Katie trying to help her wayward sister and other juveniles by opening the Jive Club. Soon Teen Canteens appeared across the country. Usually neighborhood based and located at facilities such as the YMCA, a church, community center, or empty building, these centers offered ping-pong tables, jukeboxes, dance floors, and Coke machines; they enforced age restrictions, usually 13 to 19, and opened Friday and Saturday evenings as well as several weeknights. Recognizing a marketing potential, the Coca-Cola Company had quickly distributed pamphlets on start-up procedures. As places for the teenage crowd to go, Teen Canteens carried a variety of distinctive names that reflected the youth culture of the day: the Jive Hive, the Swing Haven, Rhythm Rocker, or Boogie, to name a few. Despite these valiant efforts, a steady increase in juvenile delinquency statistics continued throughout the war years, causing President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) in December 1945 to acknowledge it as the most alarming problem for the country since the war. Early the next year, the Magazine Bureau of the Office of War Information (OWI) distributed “Magazine War Guide” to hundreds of magazine editors, urging them to educate the public about the situation by including articles about juvenile delinquency instead of continuing discussions about child care centers, a wartime issue. By February 1946, Attorney General Tom Clark (1899–1977) had declared war on juvenile delinquency by appointing a 30-member national advisory panel to study the increase and make recommendations. Suggestions included a national conference to be attended by leading authorities on the subject; schools and agencies across the country organizing classes to help parents cope; prevention programs to be carried out by schools and social agencies; more traditional youth activities already provided by the scouts, YMCA, and YWCA, and churches increasing their activities with teenagers. Juvenile delinquency—its statistics, possible causes—gained considerable media coverage, much of it sensational, during the later 1940s. According to the United States Children’s Bureau, rates increased markedly during World War II and by 1947 had declined somewhat, especially in large cities such as Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New York. During the 1950s, cases of juvenile delinquency again increased annually despite all the good efforts made during the 1940s. See also: Best Sellers; Beverages; Comedies (Film); Crime and Mystery Films; Hot Rods and Drag Racing; Leisure and Recreation; Magazines; Political and Propaganda Films; Religion


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| Juvenile Delinquency Selected Reading Devlin, Rachel. “Female Juvenile Delinquency and the Problem of Sexual Authority in America, 1945–1965.” In Delinquents and Debutantes, Twentieth-Century Girls’ Cultures, ed. Sherrie A. Inness, pp. 83–106. New York: New York University Press, 1998. Juvenile Delinquency. New York Times, September 22, 1942; December 28, 1942; May 21, 1943; July 18, 1943, September 22, 1943; September 25, 1943; August 6, 1944; December 12, 1945, February 10, 1946; April 28, 1947; July 20, 1947; April 24, 1949. www.proquest.com Savage, Jon. Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture. New York: Viking, 2007.


K

KINSEY, ALFRED C. Two controversial books, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), made Alfred C. Kinsey (1894–1956), formerly an obscure researcher, famous outside his regular academic circles. Both books became best sellers, and profits from them went to finance the Institute of Sex Research at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Founded in 1947 by Kinsey, in affiliation with Indiana University, it evolved into The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction in 1982. It continues to actively promote interdisciplinary research on human sexuality in all its forms. The institute also houses an archive of more than 48,000 inventoried photographs. The bulk of this collection documents artistic and popular representations of the human body and various sexual behaviors. In the 1948 and 1953 publications, Kinsey and his coworkers, Clyde Martin (b. 1918), Wardell Pomeroy (1913–2001), and Paul Gebhard (b. 1917), dared to challenge a prevailing silence that surrounded human sexuality in American society. Under the direction of Kinsey, the researchers set out to explore suspected contrasts between how people presented themselves to others as against the realities of their sexual behavior. The first book emerged from 5,300 personal interviews with white men, each encompassing over 300 questions, contained in 12,000 sets of data. When Kinsey commenced this research in the early 1940s, he had already become established as a teacher, author, and researcher. After receiving a doctorate in sciences from Harvard University in 1920, he had joined Indiana University as an assistant professor of zoology. He quickly gained the rank of full professor; between 1922 and 1936, he published high school biology books and numerous papers on a small insect called the gall wasp. Within the scientific community, he had been named an outstanding scientist in American Men of Science in 1937.

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One year later, Kinsey coordinated a course given by several instructors at Indiana University on marriage. Lecturing on the biological aspects of married life, Kinsey became frustrated when trying to answer students’ questions about sex with no adequate facts for giving answers. In an attempt to fill this gap in knowledge about a basic human activity, Kinsey decided to conduct research into the sex patterns of men and women. He received enthusiastic support from the university president, Herman B. Wells (1902–2000), and funding from two sources—the National Research Council (founded in 1916) and the Rockefeller Foundation (founded in 1913). After almost eight years of research and writing, the W. B. Saunders Company of Philadelphia published Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, 804 pages long and at the steep price of $6.50 ($58 in 2008 dollars). One day before the official release date, the New York Times carried a thorough and glowing review written by Howard A. Rusk (1901–1989), its medical book reviewer. Time magazine ran a long article about Kinsey and his findings on the day the publication appeared in book stores. The book sold over 200,000 copies during the first two months of its release and soon became available in six translations. In hopes of boosting sales, Saunders immediately increased its advertising budget and placed ads in both scientific journals and metropolitan newspapers. As to the research, Kinsey and his associates had found that sex behavior for men differed across groups as defined by completed education and economic status. He reported that those who had attended college had kissed many women but had had intercourse with none, while males of lower educational levels engaged in more intercourse and less petting. For the sample, 85 percent had had premarital intercourse; nearly 70 percent had had relations with prostitutes; between 30 percent and 45 percent had experienced extramarital intercourse; and 37 percent had engaged in a homosexual experience between adolescence and old age. From the initial success of the book, Kinsey concluded that people wanted information of this kind. Long-term reactions to such detailed data on human sexual behavior, however, also met with condemnation. Many of his fellow researchers found his methodology, his failure to use random sampling, and the fact that he interviewed only white men to be major flaws. Most were unwilling to support his work and even publicly denounced him and his research. Many in the general public expressed outrage that Kinsey refused to make moral judgments and only presented pure statistics. Undaunted by criticism and disapproval, Kinsey and his colleagues continued their research with the intent of publishing a second volume on the sexual behavior of women. With over 18,000 personal interviews in their data bank, they utilized almost 6,000 that had been conducted with white women for their second publication. Scheduled to be available at book stores across the country on September 14, 1953, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female received advance publicity from Time magazine when it featured Kinsey as the subject of its August 24, 1953, cover story and picture. Another lengthy and costly publication, 842 pages and $8 (almost $65 in 2008 dollars), the report on women, as with men, found a wide gap between the expected sexual conduct and actual behavior. The data showed that 62 percent of the women masturbated; 90 percent had petted; nearly 50 percent had experienced premarital intercourse; 26 percent had participated in extramarital intercourse; and 13 percent had


Kraft Television Theatre | 437 engaged in at least one homosexual contact. Most often referred to as the Kinsey Reports, both books concluded that American men and women engage in sex before marriage and extramarital sex more often than anyone wanted to admit. The book received an expected flood of mixed reviews. While some expressed horror and disgust that such intimate information would be asked of and reported on women, others thanked Kinsey for his openness and helpfulness of understanding sexual human behavior in the United States. By September 27, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female appeared in the No. 3 spot on the general list of best sellers. This, however, did not lessen the distress experienced by Kinsey because of letters of protest and belittling public statements made by noted figures such as Karl Menninger (1893–1990) of the famed Menninger Clinic and the up-and-coming evangelist Billy Graham (b. 1918). Problems for Kinsey escalated when the Rockefeller Foundation did not grant additional funding. Some people suggested that the United States Postal Service (USPS) ban the mailing of the newest book, and the U.S. Army refused to stock the book about women in military libraries in Europe. Kinsey’s personal sexual life had been in turmoil from childhood. The effects of being a married adult and also involved in homosexual relationships, along with the criticisms of his research, took their toil. In 1956, on the defensive more than ever, Kinsey, who had been in poor health for some time, began to experience a serious decline. Until his death, he nonetheless continued to actively attempt to raise money and conducted interviews and appeared in a taped interview on NBC (National Broadcasting Company) television on March 20, 1956, just a few months before his death in August. Debate about the value of Kinsey’s work continued long after his death. Some applauded him for his critique of Victorian morality and serving as the father of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, along with championing sex education and gay liberation. Others denounced him as a scientist and lamented the damage brought about by his reports on what they saw as the already deteriorating morals of the United States. In some circles, the debate continues into the 21st century. The books, however, remain available in libraries and from booksellers some 60 years later. See also: Magazines; Photography; Religion Selected Reading Jones, James H. Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. Kinsey Book Reviews. Time, January 5, 1948; April 12, 1948; August 24, 1953. www.time.com/ time/magazine/article; New York Times, January 4, 1948; August 30, 1953; September 24, 1953. www.proquest.com Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. www.kinseyinstitute.org/

KRAFT TELEVISION THEATRE As American television attempted to define itself and find what appealed to viewers in the late 1940s, writers, producers, and directors experimented with a variety of dramatic formats, attempting to discover approaches that worked best in the new medium.


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One such approach emerging out of these efforts gained the name “anthology dramas,” a unique concept that received much critical praise but never achieved the popular success enjoyed by competing comedy and variety shows. Instead of presenting a group of familiar characters—lawyers, doctors, police, and others—in continuing adventures, as has become the norm for much contemporary network programming, the anthology drama attempted to create an original, unrelated production for each weekly episode of a series. No characters would recur, no plot lines would carry over week to week, and no set formulas would dominate. These shows, such as The Ford Television Theater (CBS [Columbia Broadcasting System], others, 1948–1957), Philco Playhouse (NBC [National Broadcasting Company], 1948–1955), and Studio One (CBS, 1948–1958), presented both adapted and original scripts, usually an hour in length. They utilized the talents of the best writers and playwrights of the day and featured both unknown and star performers. In the late 1940s, the three major networks launched virtually all their television productions from studios located in New York City. ABC (American Broadcasting Company), CBS, and NBC were headquartered there, which meant the people involved usually came from radio and Broadway backgrounds, not Hollywood. Given the limitations of cameras and equipment at the time, most shows of any kind had to adapt to these environs. Most writers therefore created plays that might easily have been written for the stage. Dialogue and intimacy preempted any emphases on action or elaborate sets, and seldom did a playwright attempt to present events occurring outside these confines. Kraft Television Theatre (NBC, 1947–1958), a true pioneer among the anthology dramas, first appeared on home screens in the spring of 1947. The Kraft Foods Company, a major processor of cheeses and other dairy products, already possessed considerable experience in radio. The Kraft Music Hall, which premiered in 1933 on NBC radio with orchestra leader Paul Whiteman (1890–1967), soon became one of the biggest successes of the day, especially when Bing Crosby (1903–1977) hosted it from 1935 until 1946. Kraft had decided on this medium to promote its line of goods, and when sales took off following on-air advertisements, especially for Miracle Whip, a salad dressing and sandwich spread, the company soon sponsored a number of other shows. J. Walter Thompson, Kraft’s advertising agency, foresaw great potential with television and convinced the company to underwrite the largely (for the time) experimental Kraft Television Theatre. To give an idea of how new and untested television seemed to advertisers, Kraft in 1947 allocated about $3,000 a week to the TV show (about $29,000 in 2008 dollars) for time and talent, a piddling sum by modern entertainment standards. At that same period, Kraft paid up to $30,000 (approximately $290,000 in 2008 dollars) a week for time and talent on the radio version of Kraft Music Hall. Much higher fees soon replaced those early television costs as more and more people acquired TV sets and radio usage began to fall off. In 1947, the beginning of the television boom and the debut of the Kraft Television Theatre, U.S. companies managed to manufacture only 180,000 sets for the year. Because broadcasters restricted most programming to the metropolitan New York City area, the small number of receivers caused no real hardship in the rest of the country. By 1948, however, true mass production commenced, and by mid-1949 over 2 million


Kraft Television Theatre | 439 homes boasted sets. A year later, the numbers had more than doubled, to over 5 million sets. Kraft realized what this seismic change meant when sales of its products shown on the Kraft Television Theatre rose rapidly. The connections between advertising and television exposure were impossible to ignore. Announcer Ed Herlihy (1909–1999), blessed with a mellifluous voice and a quiet, authoritative manner, did Kraft’s commercials, both on radio and television, for 40 years. He introduced the Kraft Television Theatre each week, imploring listeners and viewers, in a dignified way, to try Kraft products and offering recipes that would show off the sponsor’s line of goods. For television, the accompanying image showed hands preparing a dish while Herlihy, unseen, described the details involved. The “Kraft Hands” commercials have since become advertising classics. Most sponsors saw the many anthology dramas as prestigious venues on which to sell their products. The association between the two, they hoped, would make a brand more appealing. These dramatic shows did not always earn the highest ratings, but consumers might nevertheless be impressed by who sponsored them and go out and buy the brand. It has been estimated that more people witnessed a live dramatic production of just one episode of the Kraft Television Theatre than the total attendance for the entire 1948 Broadway season. Media historians, looking back over the early days of commercial TV, have dubbed the era of the anthology dramas, roughly 1949 to 1958, as a Golden Age of Television. The shows, new and fresh and featuring some of the best writing talents of the day, also enjoyed the freedom to be innovative, because producers were not as beholden during that brief period to the tyranny of ratings. Since no one had any previous television models on which to base these pioneering productions, actors, directors, and crews worked in the enviable environment of establishing their own standards. In many instances, they introduced a level of excellence that continues to impress anyone fortunate enough to view them today—often on a grainy kinescope recording, since few of these dramas from the late 1940s have survived—and realize what promise the young medium held. See also: Broadway Shows (Comedy and Drama); Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows Selected Reading Hawes, William. American Television Drama: The Experimental Years. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1986. Sturcken, Frank. Live Television: The Golden Age of 1946–1958 in New York. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001.


L

LABOR UNREST American labor unions displayed unparalleled might during the 1940s. They achieved this through close ties with the Democratic Party, which had been in power since 1932, plus the labor shortages caused by World War II swelled union membership from roughly 10 million workers in 1940 to almost 15 million in 1945. Prior to the nation’s entry into the conflict, labor disputes frequently dominated newspaper headlines. Thanks to the formation of the government’s National War Labor Board (NWLB, 1942), union leaders agreed to a nonbinding no-strike pledge for the duration of the struggle. This did not, however, stop strikes or heavy media coverage during or after the hostilities. In 1947, Congress passed a controversial bill known as the Taft-Hartley Act; it placed restrictions on unions and their growing numbers in a response to public demands for action. Tempers ran high, with many believing that post-wartime strikes had damaged the U.S. economy and a prosperous postwar lifestyle that everyone desired; enough was enough. In the world’s preindustrial days, craftsmen in different trades formed guilds to maintain high-quality production standards. Early in the history of the United States, certain laborers continued the guild tradition while others organized as unions, which focused more on protecting common interests and improving working conditions. Shortly after the Civil War (1861–1865), the first national federation of unions formed the National Labor Union. Over the years, organizational changes occurred that resulted in the creation of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886; it functioned as the parent association for smaller unions, made up primarily of those engaged in skilled trades. William Green (1873–1952) held the position of president of the AFL from 1924 until his death. In 1938, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was founded to give mass production workers, especially those in automobile and steel manufacturing, union representation. John L. Lewis (1880–1969) served as its president for the years 441


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1935–1940; Philip Murray (1886–1952) followed Lewis, holding the position until his death in 1952; the same year as Green. Labor unions addressed issues critical to their members and families, which frequently caused them to go without income during a strike, plus suffering the disdain of those who deplored unions. If strikes proved successful and income levels rose, many families benefited because that meant they moved economically from a laborer’s status into the middle class. During strikes, consumers dependent upon products from laborers’ work found that they had to do without, since labor stoppages halted production and drained inventories. In addition, meeting union pay demands could result in higher prices for consumers and possible reduction in their spending power. When strikes took place in the 1930s and 1940s, folk singers, known for protest songs, frequently included labor numbers in their repertoires. The Almanac Singers, a folk trio composed of Pete Seeger (b. 1919), Lee Hays (1914–1981), and Millard Lampell (1919–1997), and frequently joined by Woody Guthrie (1912–1967), serve as an example. They held their first major New York City public appearance at Madison Square Garden in 1941 for the local striking Transport Workers’ Union. From the success of this event, the group recorded four albums, including one of union songs. A year later, the Almanac Singers performed a new song they had written about the TABLE 65.

Major Labor Unions Active during the 1940s

Union

Founded President, Dates of Office

Comments

Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers

1863

Alvanley Johnston (1875–1951); 1940s

United Mine Workers of America

1890

John L. Lewis, 1920–1960 Solicited Dubinsky and Hillman’s assistance in forming a Committee of Industrial Organizations in 1935; it became the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

International Ladies Garment Workers Union

1900

David Dubinsky (1892–1982), 1932–1966

Founding member of CIO

Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America

1914

Sidney Hillman (1887–1946), 1914–1946; Jacob Potofsky (1892–1979), 1946–1976

Founding member of CIO

United Automobile Workers of America (UAW)

1935

Francis Dillon (active 1930s and 1940s), 1934–1946; Walter Reuther, (1907–1970), 1946–1970

Completed goal of representing all automobile manufacturers in 1941, when Henry Ford (1863–1947) finally recognized UAW

Steel Workers Organizing Committee; became United Steel Workers

1936 1942

Philip Murray, 1942–1952

Created after six years of divisive struggles to form a union


First union formed among railroad workers

Labor Unrest | 443

Despite a wartime no-strike commitment made by the leaders of America’s major labor unions, laborers continued to protest their working conditions throughout World War II. In this photograph, policemen keep a watchful eye for possible trouble as American Federation of Labor (AFL) electricians defy the ban and picket the Consolidated Edison Company’s building in New York City. (Library of Congress)

United Automobile Workers of America (UAW) titled “UAW-CIO.” A patriotic song, the lyrics tell of the UAW members’ pride in being Americans and union members. It also came at a time when the Ford Motor Company, the last holdout among automobile manufacturers, allowed for unionization and membership in the UAW. In 1942, Frontier Films released Native Land. Narrated by actor and singer Paul Robeson (1898–1976), the film celebrates patriotism and democracy. It also chronicles abuses suffered by farmers and laborers brought about by union-busting corporations and their spies. The 1930s trend of Hollywood movies and Broadway plays dealing with labor issues did not, however, continue into the 1940s because of the war and the need for solidarity. Prior to the country’s participation in World War II, government and industrial leaders had embarked on steps to ready the nation for a transition from consumer to war-defense production. Industries already committed to military contracts stepped up their work, while other manufacturers began to retool for wartime needs. In September 1940, Congress passed, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882– 1945) signed, the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, a bill that established


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mandatory military conscription for men identified as eligible. This resulted in labor shortages throughout the nation for all kinds of work and introduced large numbers of teenagers, blacks, women, Dust Bowl refugees, and other rural migrants to their first industrial jobs—a situation that changed the work environment and the experiences of these new workers. During the 1940s, organized labor’s strikes affected the lives of many citizens and threatened to weaken national security. For example, workers, including coal miners and employees of the New York City Transit company, staged strikes in 1941. Both proved particularly troublesome for the federal government. Coal drove 95 percent of the locomotives and furnished 62 percent of the nation’s electric power. Without coal and transportation systems, the country could come to a virtual standstill. A walkout by employees of the Allis-Chalmers plant in Milwaukee occurred just as the firm had started to fulfill a contract to build turbines for the navy and created a major issue in defense readiness. A strike at the North American Aviation plant in California proved equally bothersome. At this time, as the nation prepared for war, resources became scarce, hoarding of food and other products used on a daily basis took place, and Americans began to experience a rise in the cost of living—conditions that would continue until 1943. Responding to this multifaceted situation, the NWLB established the “Little Steel Formula,” a 15 percent wage increase over January 1941 levels. Government acknowledged the need for more pay but at the same time placed controls on how much. The unusual name for this formula came about because authorities first applied it in a case involving four small companies—Republic Steel Company, Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, Jones & Laughlin, and Inland Steel—collectively called Little Steel. Its implementation helped keep inflation in check in many area of U.S. industry. “Big Steel,” on the other hand, consisted of large companies such as U.S. Steel, Bethlehem Steel, National Steel, and Armco Steel. They, too, endured stormy labor relations during the 1940s. In 1943, almost half a million coal miners, unhappy with how the formula restricted their pay, staged four strikes. John L. Lewis (1880–1969), president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW), authorized the walkouts, which ranged from 48 hours to six days, despite the no-strike rule. At that time, a coal strike created the potential for a state of emergency, especially if it stopped trains from running, because they served as the main transport of soldiers across the country to ports of embarkation, as well as carrying civilian passengers and freight. The U.S. government immediately took over the mines. Operation reverted to the owners, and the miners returned to work with a settlement of a pay raise of roughly $1.50 (almost $19 in 2008 dollars) per day, along with increased opportunities for overtime work. Tensions nevertheless rose in other sectors of the work world, and over 3,700 strikes involving almost 2 million workers occurred in 1943 and continued at a comparable level into 1945. New problems developed after World War II. During the years of the conflict, many workers had benefited from full employment, wages that kept up with inflation, and overtime pay. As soldiers returned home as fast as possible, they reentered civilian life under laws that provided, among many benefits, job reinstatement and seniority rights. Government officials and private-sector management faced the


Labor Unrest | 445 challenge of moving these veterans into the workforce while converting to consumer production. Rapidly rising demand and limited supplies of both raw materials and finished products created inflationary pressures that once again required price controls. Labor wanted an immediate end to regulations in 1946, making it one of the most severe years of unrest in U.S. labor history. Hoarding and black market activity, similar to that which occurred in the early years of the war, reappeared. Strikes broke out in almost every industry as steel, automobile, electrical, lumber, shipping, and railroad workers walked off their jobs. They demanded higher wages, better working conditions, independence on the job, and increased fellowship with coworkers. Before it ended, over 4.5 million workers associated with nearly 5,000 labor disputes accounted for a loss of 116 million days of employment and production. But three conflicts at this time also damaged labor solidarity and began to lessen union power. In 1946, two groups—coal miners in March and railroad workers in May—yet again threatened strikes that could have created drastic economic problems for the country; the importance of coal and trains had not diminished. Fortunately both the miners’ and the railroad employees’ grievances were accommodated and strikes averted but not without much agitation within the federal government, including a threat to take over the railroads. A few months after settlements with both groups, John Lewis, who commanded total dedication from his UMW members, decided he wanted to change the settlement. To this end, in November he threatened to call out 400,000 miners. President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) intervened by obtaining a court order to stop the proposed strike. Lewis ignored the order, and the miners walked out. Legal wheels turned immediately, with Lewis being cited for contempt of court and personally fined $10,000 (a little over $110,000 in 2008 dollars), along with a penalty for the union of $3.5 million (about $39 million in 2008 dollars). Even these steps did not immediately stop Lewis, and the strike continued for more than two weeks. Finally, on December 7, 1946, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, Lewis summoned his men back to the mines, giving the federal government a victory over labor. A strained relationship between labor and government ensued. Amid much publicity, both the general public and political leaders condemned organized labor’s attempts to free itself from governmental restraints and ruin the economy. Congress responded in 1947 with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which intended to discourage strikes by placing a number of restrictions on unions. Among the law’s many regulations, it outlawed the hiring of union members only (closed shops), and required that new employees have sufficient time to decide whether to join a union. Heated debate surrounded the bill, sponsored by Ohio Republican Senator Robert Taft (1889–1953) and New Jersey Republican Representative Fred Hartley 1902–1969). Union leaders strongly opposed its passage, to no avail. President Truman sided with the unions and issued a veto, describing it as a “slave-labor bill.” The strongly Republican Congress, however, used its authority to override the veto and did so, a setback for Truman. The third struggle that damaged labor’s solidarity developed around the appropriateness of allowing members of the Communist Party to serve as union leaders. Shortly after the end of World War II, a number of unions—mostly those within the


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CIO—either had leaders that belonged to the Communist Party or adhered to that party’s positions on political and economic issues. In 1947 and 1948, Philip Murray and Walter Reuther continually voiced concern that Communists who followed the party line did not reflect the political views of most of the workers they represented. In 1949, Murray and Reuther encouraged the executive board of the CIO to squelch the Communist influence, which resulted in the expulsion of 11 unions numbering 900,000 members, action that corresponded to the rising national concern over the developing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. The 1940s began with unprecedented power for organized labor in the United States. The creation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations broadened union membership to include mass production industries, and the labor movement grew rapidly. Membership rolls further increased because the federal government pressured employers to recognize unions. Workers gained paid vacation time that before had been available to only a few, as well as health and retirement benefits; wage gaps between highly- and less-skilled individuals therefore narrowed. Turbulent relations between organized labor and President Truman during his administration brought about unrest at a level never before seen and resulted in legislation that placed new and tighter restrictions on unions. The decade ended with Reuther leading a CIO delegation to a London conference that established the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in opposition to the Communist-dominated World Federation of Trade Unions. He became president of the CIO in 1952 and soon joined forces with George Meany (1894–1980) to bring about a merger of the AFL and CIO in 1955. Under Meany’s leadership as the elected president of the new AFL-CIO, membership grew again, and organized labor celebrated a rebound from postwar political setbacks, gaining new security and increased influence in the political system. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry; Aviation; Broadway Shows (Comedy and Drama); Folk Music; House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC); Levittown and Suburbanization; Newspapers; Rationing; Rosie the Riveter Selected Reading Diggins, John Patrick. The Proud Decades: America in War and Peace, 1941–1960. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989. Patterson, James T. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Zieger, Robert H. John L. Lewis: Labor Leader. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. Zieger, Robert H., and Gilbert J. Gall. American Workers, American Unions. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.

LAWNS, LAWNMOWERS, AND FERTILIZERS Home lawns—for most, barely more than a plot of dirt with weeds and a little grass during the years up to and including World War II—went through a transformation with the return of peace. No longer just a small green patch, this outdoor space developed into carefully planned areas of lush grass and often included picturesque arrangements


Lawns, Lawnmowers, and Fertilizers | 447 of trees, shrubs, and flower beds. Lawns flourished as a status symbol that represented the joys of postwar prosperity evidenced by home ownership. The yard, front and back, because of the regular use of the best seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides available, now required meticulous upkeep. By the late 1940s, a new American pastime had been born. Prior to the war, a number of homeowners aspired to have and maintain attractive lawns, but the onset of the conflict and the unavailability of items such as grass seed, mowers, gasoline, and rubber for hoses made both the maintenance of established lawns and the creation of new ones a challenge. In fact, by 1945, most lawns had fallen into disrepair, much to the chagrin of the lawn care industry. One well-established company, O. M. Scott and Sons, which had been founded in 1868 as a local hardware and seed store, stands out among those firms that strove to keep this trade alive during the war. Scott and Sons entered the 1940s strictly as a seed business, although it did have a small mail-order component. Scott advertised its readiness to provide seeds, lawn mowers, fertilizers, and irrigation equipment for the home lawn. A company newsletter, Lawn Care, which dated back to 1928, attempted to educate the public on the value of a planted yard for the home. The firm found, to its surprise, that its customers included not only homeowners but also a number of military bases. In fact, the federal government had been setting good landscaping examples for some time. New Deal projects of the Works Progress [after 1939, Projects] Administration (WPA; 1935–1943) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC; 1933–1942) contributed to the attractiveness of public parks and playgrounds. With the war, the government continued as a good role model, carefully planting grass to keep down the dust around military bases, munitions factories, and federal housing projects. The end of the war, however, changed everything. A rapid return to civilian-oriented production, along with U.S. assistance to both wartime allies and former enemies, helped create unprecedented postwar prosperity for the nation. As servicemen came home, the country witnessed an increase in marriages and births, a boom that shaped a common dream of home ownership, kids, pets, and a white picket fence surrounding a green lawn. Suburban developers attempted to fulfill this dream with large planned communities across the country that offered added lawn space. For example, in Levittown, New York, one answer to the postwar demand for individual family homes, the builders utilized grass as a fast and cheap way to hide the scars of construction and then required the homeowners to keep their lawns healthy and trimmed. In turn, landscaped yards immediately became a part of the postwar suburbia, with peer pressure assuring that they stay well-kept, at least the yard fronting the street. Mowing soon became an activity or chore, depending on one’s point of view, that sometimes supplanted the weekend softball, tennis, or golf game. Before World War II, the care of a lawn befell mostly men; women tended the flower beds. During the war, those women, by necessity, moved from flower gardening to handling all lawn maintenance, and magazine articles and advertising reflected this change in roles. After the war, such information reverted to a focus on men but retained a balance in recognizing the involvement of both adult members of the household.


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A key to achieving an impressive lawn rests on feeding it with the best nutrients possible; European inventions in the early part of the 20th century guaranteed highquality fertilizer for American lawns. Fritz Haber (1868–1934), a German chemist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918, is perhaps best-known for his work with poison gas, but he also developed a method for synthesizing ammonia, a step necessary for the manufacture of fertilizers. Carl Bosch (1874–1940), a fellow German chemist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1931, mastered the mysteries of large-scale production, giving the world the Haber-Bosch process that assured an abundant supply of nitrogen for making fertilizers. With the sudden postwar interest in yards, the lawn care industry became a lucrative one, employing thousands of workers. It eagerly assisted in the development of better lawns by selling imported and hybrid grasses, power mowers, fertilizers, weed killers, herbicides, and an array of related necessities. The first gasoline-powered mower had appeared in 1919, but before World War II most neighborhoods relied on manually pushed models. Following the war, however, as men returned home and resumed their maintenance chores (or acquired them for the first time), the lawn mower industry initiated a heavy advertising campaign celebrating the superiority of power mowers over push ones. In 1947, the Australian Victa Company introduced its first rotary models, and the ease of lawn maintenance moved up a notch. In a short time, the traditional reel-type mower became obsolete. From 1945 until mid-1948, yard equipment sold as fast as it could be produced. Sales jumped from $5 million in 1941 (about $71 million in 2008 dollars) to $100 million (about $860 million in 2008 dollars) in 1950. The gardening industry also benefited from increasing rates of home ownership and the resulting rise in neatly kept lawns and gardens. Guidelines and tips appeared in magazine articles, gardening books, and advertisements. One such expert, Charles B. Mills (active 1940s.) of O. M. Scott and Sons, regularly contributed pieces to magazines such as House Beautiful, Better Homes and Gardens, and House and Garden. They all presented the lawn as nurturing, welcoming, beautiful, and safe; what more could a young couple just starting out want? In 1949, House and Garden estimated that 19 million people in the United States claimed to be active gardeners. Neighbors saw their lawns as a means of imitating and outdoing each other, and standards for lawn appearance quickly evolved in the postwar years—grass of the right color, at the correct height, and with the absence of weeds. A flood of advertising and horticultural advice in popular magazines reinforced the importance of these standards. Thanks to the suburban home owners of the late 1940s, the care of the yard has become the weekend pursuit of millions of Americans. See also: Baby Boom; Hobbies; Leisure and Recreation; Levittown and Suburbanization; Technology Selected Reading Jenkins, Virginia Scott. The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994. Nobel Prize Winners. www.nobelprize.org/


Leisure and Recreation | 449

LEISURE AND RECREATION Leisure, a period of rest, pleasure, and freedom from work and other time-consuming responsibilities, played an essential role in the everyday life of Americans throughout the 1940s, both in war and peace. Armed with experiences gained from the Great Depression, people knew how to fill nonwork hours with amusements. Material shortages during World War II did not deter children or adults from searching for ways to engage in individual, participatory, and spectator activities. They responded to their inability to buy new games and recreation equipment by creating homemade ones. They also read voraciously, listened to the radio, went to the movies, played cards (especially bridge), worked crossword puzzles, and participated in activities and sports at schools, community centers, and neighborhood playgrounds. Old Monopoly sets and jigsaw puzzles, as worn as they may have been, continued to be favorite pastimes. During the first half of the decade, everyone welcomed any diversion from the realities of the war; with the arrival of peace and prosperity, the nation’s involvement with leisure and recreational opportunities exceeded prewar levels and laid the groundwork for even more playtime activities in the 1950s. Tables 66 and 67 illustrate the number of people participating in selected nonwork activities, the money spent on selected leisure pursuits, and the number of recreational areas in the United States during the 1940s. These statistics reveal both decreases and increases for 1943 to 1945, the most intense years of World War II. With millions of soldiers serving overseas, some numbers drop. The return of military personnel after the victory of the Axis powers created stresses and strains on all aspects of life but also contributed to steady postwar growth. In Table 66, “Participation in Selected Recreational Activities,” the game of bowling shows the kind of fluctuations that occurred during the war years. With countless

TABLE 66.

Participation in Selected Recreational Activities, 1939–1949

Year

Number of Bowlers (in thousands)

Hunting Licenses (in thousands)

Fishing Licenses (in thousands)

Motion Picture Average Weekly Attendance (in millions)

1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949

535 684 874 1,059 895 910 1,048 1,060 1,415 1,635 1,821

7,511 7,646 7,913 8,521 8,081 7,491 8,191 9,854 12,067 11,392 12,759

7,858 7,931 8,004 8,423 8,029 7,830 8,280 11,069 12,620 14,078 15,479

85 80 85 85 85 85 85 90 90 90 70



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men serving in the armed forces, bowling experienced a decline in the number of participants for 1942 to 1943. By 1945, however, it had returned to its 1942 standing. Originally, a sport that primarily owed its popularity to America’s males working class, women increasingly joined bowling’s ranks in the 1920s and thereafter, so that by the later 1940s its image had changed. Women entered the industrial workforce in unprecedented numbers as men left their jobs for military service. These new employees frequently played on teams put together by factories, and bowling soon became a recreation for all, regardless of gender. Hunting and fishing, two other popular recreational endeavors, had traditionally attracted mainly men. As more and more troops departed for the European and Pacific theaters, however, the number of issued licenses decreased from 1942 through 1944. And, unlike bowling, few women chose to take up these sports. Applications moved ahead slightly in 1945 and jumped dramatically in 1946, with peace and increasing numbers of servicemen returning home. On the other hand, average weekly attendance at the movies, which now included both indoor and drive-in theaters, held steady from 1941 through 1945. Entertaining and cheap, this relaxing medium offered a chance for a brief respite from the tensions of war. Enough men remained stateside and regularly attended the movies—along with millions of women, adolescents, and children—that the absence of servicemen had little impact. In addition, first-run movies were also regularly shown at overseas bases. Many of the films produced during the war years reinforced the values and ideas that U.S. citizens proclaimed as important and validated the sacrifices they were willing to make. People felt good after attending a movie. In the immediate postwar years, audiences continued to increase, but attendance showed a significant drop in 1949; the impacts of television were just beginning to be felt.

TABLE 67.

Municipal and County Park and Recreation Areas, 1939–1949

Year

Baseball Diamonds

1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949

3,846 3,904 3,951 3,645 n.d. n.d. n.d. 4,323 n.d. 4,576 n.d.

Softball Tennis Bathing Swimming Diamonds Courts Beaches Pools 8,995 10,042 10,061 9,207 n.d. n.d. n.d. 10,034 n.d. 11,143 n.d.

11,617 12,075 12,262 11,516 n.d. n.d. n.d. 11,847 n.d. 11,964 n.d.

548 572 583 529 n.d. 564 n.d. 618 n.d. 638 n.d.

1,181 1,200 1,278 1,190 n.d. 1,447 n.d. 1,449 n.d. 1,395 n.d.

Golf Courses

Playgrounds under Leadership

358 387 366 380 n.d. 409 n.d. 340 n.d. 355 n.d.

9,749 9,921 9,646 8,739 10,022 n.d. 11,559 n.d. 13,520 n.d.

Note: n.d. = no data available. Source: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. Washington, DC: Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975.


Leisure and Recreation | 451 Recreational sports and physical activity at parks and playgrounds provide healthy outlets in both stressful and peaceful times. During the early years of the Depression, many recreational areas closed and few new ones were built. With the rise of the New Deal in the mid-1930s, this situation changed as various programs recognized the importance of such establishments. Lawmakers saw to it that new places were developed and provided the necessary personnel to supervise and coordinate activities. Table 67 shows how this movement continued through 1942 and the advent of World War II. Concrete data for 1943 to 1945, 1947, and 1949, unfortunately, remain spotty, although existing evidence suggests many towns and cities established new recreational sites and initiated programs that offered a variety of activities for relieving anxieties during these years. Wartime gas rationing also necessitated limiting activities geographically. Teen centers, neighborhood adult programs, and industrial recreation opportunities flourished close to the participants’ homes and neighborhoods. After the war ended, returning soldiers added to local demand, and national and community leaders immediately acknowledged both the preventive and therapeutic value of recreational activities. Congress formed the Federal Interagency Committee in 1946 and charged it to oversee efforts to initiate and coordinate recreation at the federal level. Locally, communities across the country continued to increase the number of recreational parks and facilities, thus setting the stage for the 1950s, a decade when Americans experienced a significant increase in both disposable income and leisure time. In addition to the numbers of people engaged in leisure activities and utilizing recreational sites, a review of money spent, as shown in Table 68, further demonstrates how Americans used their leisure time during the 1940s. The war, costly in all ways, nevertheless stimulated economic growth. On the down side, inflation rose 29 percent from 1939 to 1945, and the production of consumer goods was uneven. Americans TABLE 68.

Year 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949

Personal Consumption Expenditures, 1939–1949 (in millions of dollars)

Radio and Wheel Goods, Durable Books, Maps, Television Receivers, Toys, Sports Equipment, Magazines, Recordings, and Nondurable Toys, Including Boats and Newspapers, Musical Instruments Sport Supplies Pleasure Aircraft and Sheet Music $420 $494 $607 $634 $403 $311 $344 $1,116 $1,398 $1,450 $1,675

$285 $306 $362 $404 $393 $459 $533 $840 $907 $1,076 $1,170

$228 $254 $314 $306 $271 $323 $400 $793 $955 $965 $836

$780 $823 $891 $994 $1,204 $1,330 $1,485 $1,688 $1,774 $1,958 $2,081



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nevertheless positively responded to governmental drives to buy savings bonds and stamps, and they still found money for fun times. The decline in dollars spent during the war years, as noted in columns two, three, and four, came more from the unavailability of many products than lack of interest or money. Columns two and five show the dollars spent and suggest that highly popular leisure diversions involved reading and keeping up with the latest songs through sheet music and recordings. Book clubs proliferated during the decade; at their height, membership totaled 3 million. Estimates show that, by the end of the war, at least 49 million people (approximately one-third of the population) read at least one book a month. USO (United Service Organizations) clubs, always well stocked with books, fulfilled the purpose of serving the leisure needs of servicemen and industrial workers. Incorporated in 1941, USO branches flourished in many community settings. The soldiers who passed their free time at them contributed to the large number of readers and helped to promote book clubs as a successful 1940s fad. Many other activities not mentioned in these tables helped Americans fill their idle time both during and after the war with pleasurable pursuits such as dancing, dating, picnicking, outdoor sports, and camping. Large numbers of people also followed both college and professional sports. The Sunday afternoon drive remained popular, but the rationing of gas caused many citizens to curb their use of automobiles. As always, children played hide-and-seek, jacks, hopscotch, jump rope, marbles, and a variety of other games. Golf and tennis, both popular during the 1930s, waned during the 1940s. The suspension of all major professional golf and tennis tournaments between 1942 and 1945 affected these two sports and influenced this decrease, as did gas rationing. Material needed for the manufacture of golf balls was in short supply, and government campaigns encouraged golfers to recycle their metal clubs. The closing of over 25 percent of the nation’s golf courses freed land for use as victory gardens, a wartime phenomenon that flourished throughout the war years. Two new games, one outdoor and one indoor, appeared in the later 1940s to fill idle hours: Frisbee and Scrabble. In 1947, a pair of Californians constructed a flying disk from plastic and the Wham-O Manufacturing Company obtained the patent. Tossing a Frisbee got off to a slow start but gradually grew in popularity. Specialized Frisbee games developed after the 1940s have made the simple plastic disk an American institution. A board game invented in 1933 by Alfred Butt and later to be called Scrabble, combined luck, skill, and a good vocabulary. Originally available only to the inventor’s family, friends, and occasional purchasers, entrepreneur James Brunot in 1948 gave the game its famous name and manufactured and distributed it. Initially, his efforts lost money, but in 1952 sales finally soared. Scrabble, like Frisbee, went on to be a significant part of American popular culture. Some nonwork ventures occupied people’s free time, not necessarily for pleasure but to contribute directly to the war effort. Governmental officials encouraged everyone to collect anything that could be recycled into needed wartime materials. Youthoriented agencies such as the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, and 4-H clubs, always on the lookout for new activities, spent many leisure hours gathering scrap


Levittown and Suburbanization | 453 metal, paper, and cooking grease; selling war bonds and stamps; and making supplies for USO centers. While those back home during the war years entertained themselves as best they could, soldiers away from home also found their spirits lifted in a number of ways. In addition to attending traveling USO shows, listening to the Armed Forces Radio (AFR), watching movies, and reading, many soldiers collected and posted pinup girls on locker doors, walls of Quonset huts, and even inside their helmets. Quickly reaching the status of a fad, Hollywood stars like Betty Grable (1916–1973), Lana Turner (1921–1995), Ava Gardner (1922–1990), and Rita Hayworth (1918–1987) became favorite pinups, and soon their pictures, along with photos of many other attractive women, appeared on submarines, airplanes, and tanks. It has even been reported that someone painted a likeness of Rita Hayworth on the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Although wartime rationing and restrictions had affected how both soldiers and civilians spent their leisure time during the first half of the 1940s, the lifting of wartime limitations and the reshaping of life in the immediate postwar years created new challenges. During this period, unlike during the Depression years and World War II, Americans had both time and money to pursue leisure and recreation as well as a surplus of pent-up demand and resources. The transition from a wartime economy to a peacetime one took several years, however, and leisure and recreational activities did not fully blossom until the 1950s. See also: Architecture; Baseball; Drive-Ins: Movie Theaters, Restaurants, and Banks; Fads; Hot Rods and Drag Racing; Softball; Youth Selected Reading Giordano, Ralph G. Fun and Games in Twentieth-Century America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003. Kirdendall, Richard S. The United States, 1929–1945: Years of Crisis and Change. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974. Panati, Charles. Panati’s Parade of Fads, Follies, and Manias. New York: Harper & Row, 1991.

LEVITTOWN AND SUBURBANIZATION The concept of a suburban development comprised of many houses laid out in a semblance of order, which many people associate with the years following World War II, had its beginnings long before the 1940s and 1950s. Since the early days of the republic, Americans have observed a love-hate relationship with their cities. As settlements along the East Coast grew into urban centers, the residents were already looking to the West, wanting to escape the crowded conditions they had created in their once-small towns. By the later 19th century, satellite towns ringed most larger communities, and people looked longingly at the open spaces beyond population centers. Although the word “suburb” had long been a part of the language, referring to a residential area outside a city or town, the term “suburbanite” did not enter common usage until the 1890s. It identified those who chose to live in these gray areas—the marginal spaces just outside the city or, at the extremes, a borderland. At about the same time, the word “suburbia” also came into use, meaning not really within the confines of the


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traditional city, but not the rural countryside either. While language attempted to adapt, the cities and towns maintained their inexorable growth, pushing their boundaries ever outward, along with their peripheral areas, creating further pressures for expansion and broadening the linguistic interpretations of suburb. Caught within this cycle, the imagery of the endless frontier lingered. Land developers promoted the concept of a cozy home situated on a plot of green away from the bustle of the crowded city, perhaps in a picturesque village. A man’s job might be in town, but he and his family resided in an idyllic semirural setting. Endless illustrations in women’s magazines advanced the idea of a picturesque “country” (suburban) house, and in the pre-automobile era, streetcar lines conveniently extended their tracks ever outward, giving birth to the commuter and the name “streetcar suburbs.” With the rise of the motorcar, ribbons of concrete replaced rutted, dusty dirt roads, new homes in more spacious settings sprang up along the highways, necessitating additional road construction, and thus did the patterns of suburban growth become part of the American landscape. By the late 1930s, suburbs surrounded every population center and had developed many of the amenities once associated with cities. Small clusters of commercial establishments provided at least minimal shopping, although a trip to the city or downtown offered greater selection and lower prices as a rule. Most suburbs, however, were predicated on access to an automobile to get anywhere, although commuter trains, streetcars, and extended bus lines continued to compete with the cars parked at virtually every suburban home. Despite the Great Depression and its economic turmoil, those who could continued to move to the beckoning suburbs. But then, as it did to so many aspects of American life, World War II stalled the construction of new highways, streets, and homes, while it momentarily altered modes of transportation with gasoline rationing and related travel restrictions. The end of the war found most citizens with cash in their wallets and an urge to make up for lost time. As the soldiers and sailors flooded back to the States and resumed their civilian lives armed not with rifles but with the benefits of the GI Bill, a housing boom unlike any other had its beginnings in the immediate postwar years. Housing shortages abounded around the country as eager builders and real estate agents strove to meet the wants of all the ex-servicemen and their families. While smiling developers unveiled plans for new housing tracts, Detroit announced its postwar lines of shiny new cars, and merchants across the land restocked their shelves with a vast array of goods they hoped consumers would find irresistible. The postwar years also announced the accelerated growth of suburbs fueled by government encouragement in the form of improved highways built with federal subsidies. In addition, the GI Bill offered returning veterans attractive terms for mortgages, and the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) favored offering loans to buyers wishing to buy in the suburbs. These two agencies allocated a disproportionate amount of money to suburban developments, about half of all their home financing, a practice that persisted from the 1940s until the late 1960s. Throughout the war years, Ladies’ Home Journal ran a monthly architect-designed “dream house” feature accompanied by drawings that usually showed it in a suburban setting with a spacious yard and space between the dwelling and its neighbors.


Levittown and Suburbanization | 455 Immediately after the war, Look magazine carried a similar feature, helping to define buyer aspirations when they went home-shopping. And, although they were not rolling off the assembly lines yet, manufacturers ran ads touting fancy postwar appliances for those dream homes. These temptations, coupled with the baby boom and a housing shortage that dated back to the Great Depression, set the stage for unprecedented demands for new homes. During the immediate postwar years and with money available, developers devoted about two-thirds of their new construction to residences located in suburban settings. And although big builders with numerous crews and all manner of equipment accounted for only 10 percent of all construction firms, these large operations erected fully 70 percent of new houses in the late 1940s, capitalizing on the economies of scale. An enterprising father and his two sons—Abraham Levitt (1880–1962) and sons William (1907–1994) and Alfred (1912–1966)—envisioned in the still-rustic potato fields of west central Long Island, near Hempstead, an opportunity to create the definitive postwar subdivision. In the 21st century, disbelievers might find it hard to realize that much of the middle and eastern reaches of Long Island not that long ago housed little more than villages and productive farms. The famed American genre painter William Sidney Mount (1807–1868) often depicted these areas in his work—a land of tilled fields, sturdy barns, and livestock. Although the New York boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens might have occupied the western part of the island, their dense populations and the bucolic simplicity of Long Island’s eastern sections were worlds apart. But proximity to the city, coupled with extended rail and streetcar lines, soon changed that. A number of towns grew rapidly in the central portions of the island during the latter half of the 19th century, including Garden City, an early planned community. In 1906, construction began on the pioneering Long Island Motor Parkway (now defunct), its use restricted to automobiles, a prescient nod to the future. But much open agricultural land also existed until the dawn of World War II. In 1939, construction of the Long Island Expressway (or the L.I.E., as locals called it; the word “expressway” itself did not become a part of everyday speech until the late 1940s), which did not reach completion until the early 1950s, hastened commuters and travelers along much of the length of the island. The addition of other bridges and connectors changed the once rural land for all time, and increasingly easy access to New York City and environs would make the Levitts’ vision the most famous of all postwar suburbs—and it lay only 29 miles from Manhattan. Abraham Levitt, a real estate lawyer by profession, founded Levitt and Sons in 1929. The young company specialized in building substantial, upper-middle-class custom homes on Long Island in the years prior to World War II. From the start, Abraham took on few responsibilities aside from land acquisition, and turned over the day-today operation of the firm to son William. The father did engage in landscape design, insisting on allocating to each front yard in Levittown exactly two saplings, positioning them precisely like the ones on the neighbors’ adjoining lawns. Alfred Levitt, the younger son, quickly took a dominant hand in planning and designing the company’s houses. He became knowledgeable in more efficient means of home building and eventually worked on the overall layout of Levittown, including the


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curving lanes (they were never called streets) that characterized the community. Alfred left the family firm in 1954 to pursue other construction projects. William Levitt proved to be the most innovative of the three. When he assumed the presidency of Levitt and Sons in 1929 at age 22, he soon had landed a number of attractive contracts for the business. In 1941, with the industry booming in the United States as factories geared up for military production, William agreed to provide over 2,000 units to house defense workers in Norfolk, Virginia. Several similar commissions followed, and by war’s end the company ranked among the nation’s largest building firms. William also served with the navy’s Seabees (the construction arm of the service) during the war, where he learned still more about mass-production techniques that he shared with Alfred. With the end of the war, Levitt and Sons in July 1947 began breaking ground on some 4,000 acres of farmland Abe had acquired near Hempstead, Long Island. Using all the tricks of the trade, such as individual workers specializing in just a few tasks for optimum efficiency, the firm could build up to 30 houses a day by mid-1948, using a total of 27 prescribed steps in their construction. One crew might install bathtubs, another caulk windows, another paint trim, and so on. Working with a formula that approximated Speed + Efficiency = Cost Effectiveness, the Levitts built on concrete slabs; they saw no need to dig a basement. William and Alfred stressed the need for interchangeable parts that can be utilized in various configurations. At first, the basic house in Levittown resembled a small Cape Cod cottage: 750 square feet on a 60-by-100-foot lot. It contained a kitchen, bath, living room–dining area, and two bedrooms; it did not include a garage or carport. An unfinished attic, however, could be expanded into one or two bedrooms with minimal remodeling. The Cape Cod, in 1948, cost $7,990 (about $71,350 in 2008 dollars). In 1949, they expanded their line of homes, offering a simple ranch-style house that measured 800 square feet and carried a price of $9,500 (about $85,900 in 2008 dollars). The company threw in for free a Bendix automatic washing machine and a small, 8-inch Admiral television set with the home. A carport also became available in 1950, an admission of the importance assigned automobiles by those who dwelled in the suburbs. For comparison, in 2008, the size of a new home in the United States averaged 2,500 square feet, or over three times larger than the original Levitt houses, and prices averaged $293,000, also a considerable jump, even when adjusting for inflation. At first the Levitts built their homes for lease, but once they had the Veterans Administration for GI loans and the FHA for conventional financing on board in 1949, they changed to marketing houses for purchase at bargain prices. The company signed agreements with buyers that stipulated strict landscaping restrictions (no fences, no drying clothes outdoors except on racks supplied by Levitt, regular lawn mowing, etc.) along with the usual covenants about the care and upkeep of the house. These agreements also included a whites-only clause. Not until 1954 did the company allow racial integration of any kind, and Levittown for much of its early history remained primarily white. Also, through a gentleman’s agreement then prevalent, the company did not sell to Jews, despite the religious heritage of the Levitts themselves. In time, they quietly dropped that unspoken restriction, but it nevertheless reflected some of the prejudices found in housing and real estate in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s.


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No postwar suburban development better exemplified the movement of people out of cities than did Levittown, New York. The first of over 17,000 cheaply-priced houses went up in the summer of 1947. This early aerial view suggests the enormity of Levittown, as well as the barrenness of the site and the close proximity of one dwelling to another. (Photofest)

By the time painters sprayed the last panel and carpenters hammered home the last nail, Levittown, Long Island, comprised 17,410 houses, the largest suburban tract ever attempted in the United States. In 1951, a similar Levittown went up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, with 17,311 homes. A Levittown in Willingboro, New Jersey, followed in 1958 with another 11,000 houses, and yet another in Puerto Rico, close to San Juan, in 1963, with 11,200. In all, the company erected almost 57,000 homes in those four Levittowns, and that does not include a number of other projects the firm undertook during the 1950s and 1960s. While Levitt and Sons were busy on Long Island during the 1940s, other developers in places like greater Boston and Chicago, as well as Cleveland, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Portland (Oregon) initiated subdivisions of their own, and they employed many of the cost-cutting methods the Levitts had pioneered. The rush to the suburbs had but begun in the later 1940s; the wave would crest in the years following Long Island’s Levittown, but the lure of living beyond the immediate city continues to attract American families. As a result, a higher proportion of Americans currently reside in suburbs than live in rural areas and large cities combined. Most planned communities, even those with contracts about lifestyles, did not plan for neighborhood stores. Developers simply overlooked this basic need, so focused


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were they on building houses. For Levittown, nearby Roosevelt Field, an airfield near Garden City, provided the perfect location for shopping. Open and flat, crews transformed the land into a vast collection of stores, the Roosevelt Field shopping mall. The airfield closed in 1951 and the new mall welcomed its first shoppers in 1956. Prior to its opening, Levittown residents had to decide which village or town—Hempstead, Garden City, or Hicksville—to visit for groceries, clothing, and almost everything else they might require. Many suburban builders initially displayed in their planning—or lack thereof—an apparent antipathy toward pedestrian needs. They seemed more concerned with a need for unimpeded vehicular traffic flow, and the large shopping centers and malls with their acres of free parking catered to the automobile, not to anyone on foot. These retail outlets, however, lagged behind home construction and did not become commonplace until the 1950s and thereafter. Once they were up and running, such complexes nonetheless delivered the knockout blow to traditional downtown department-store shopping, and only those merchants that built suburban branches in the growing malls managed to survive. In addition to the absence of retail facilities, early suburban subdivisions also brought about architectural monotony and bland neighborhoods, devoid of personality. “Cookie-cutter” designs and “ticky-tacky houses” became terms of disdain in the late 1950s and early 1960s for these tracts, but the critics came late; by that time, sprawling suburbs were a fact of American life, havens for young middle-class families striving to rise in the world. Although these new neighborhoods might possess economic and ethnic/racial homogeneity, most of them also became enclaves, excluding by restrictions and zoning those of lesser means and relegating them to decaying urban centers. The decline of America’s central cities only exacerbated urban flight by those who could afford to do so. Thus the suburbs prospered and the cities suffered economic neglect, with a resultant polarization between urban and suburban residents. Financial institutions gave no real thought to those below certain economic rankings; banks and savings institutions saw those in the lower social echelons as undesirable, probably unable to afford the money needed to purchase a starter house. And so they were ignored, left to the central city. Thanks to generous tax advantages and easy credit, the countless rising middle-class families were perceived as good risks, and developers welcomed them to the burgeoning suburban developments. See also: Architecture; Grocery Stores and Supermarkets; Juvenile Delinquency; Lawns, Lawnmowers, and Fertilizers; Race Relations and Stereotyping Selected Reading Baxandall, Rosalyn, and Elizabeth Ewen. Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened. New York: Basic Books, 2000. Duany, Andres, Elizabeth Plater Zyberk, and Jeff Speck. Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. New York: North Point Press, 2000. Hayden, Delores. Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820–2000. New York: Vintage Books, 2004. Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.


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LONE RANGER, THE In the early 1930s, George W. Trendle (1884–1972), the co-owner and manager of Detroit’s station WXYZ (“the last word in radio”), had an idea for an adventure series he wanted to develop. He envisioned a mysterious cowboy who wandered the old West, punishing outlaws and securing quick justice for those in need. Working with veteran writer Fran Striker (1903–1962), the concept grew into The Lone Ranger, one of the most successful programs in the history of radio; the series would ultimately run for almost 3,000 episodes from 1933 until 1954. When the show first came on the air in January 1933, it broadcast locally over WXYZ and regionally to a small group of Michigan stations. Audiences responded enthusiastically, and, when MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System) came into being in 1934 with WXYZ as a charter member, The Lone Ranger served as one of the most popular offerings of the new network. In time, MBS lost possession of the series when NBC (National Broadcasting Company) bought the rights to the show in 1942. The new ownership proved short-lived, however; a court-ordered breakup of a portion of NBC resulted in the creation of ABC (American Broadcasting Company) the following year, and in 1944 ABC commenced airing The Lone Ranger. The network carried the radio program until 1954 and the series’ demise.

The Lone Ranger could be heard first on radio in 1933; the series would continue over the air until 1954. This publicity shot depicts Brace Beemer astride Silver. Beemer would continue to portray the Lone Ranger until the show’s end. (Photofest)


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Actor Brace Beemer (1903–1965) played the masked Ranger on radio throughout the 1940s, and he had as trusty companions his fabulous white stallion Silver (“Hi-Yo, Silver, away!”) and a faithful Indian named Tonto, whose horse went by Scout (“Get ’em up, Scout!”). During this period, John Todd (1877–1957) took the role of Tonto. A recurring image in each episode involves the mysterious Ranger giving a silver bullet to those he has assisted. As he and Tonto ride away, Silver’s and Scout’s galloping hoofs in the background, the puzzled recipients study the silver bullet and ask, “Who was that masked man?” But, throughout the series, his real identity remains hidden. Excitement, not mystery, however, dominated the broadcasts. Utilizing the exciting finale from Rossini’s 1829 William Tell Overture as the opening theme for each show, listeners knew from the first bars that another episode was about to begin. Anyone who has ever listened to The Lone Ranger on radio cannot hear Rossini’s composition without remembering the series, a perfect illustration of how popular culture freely borrows from the other arts. The use of classical music on many radio shows also illustrates how stations saved money; most music from the 19th century and earlier lacked copyright protection—that is, it could be played on the air for free. Trendle, well aware of such legal loopholes and notorious for his tight-fisted management at WXYZ, utilized the older classics whenever he could. He later introduced another successful adventure series, The Green Hornet (1938–1953), on Mutual and freely used Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Flight of the Bumble Bee (composed 1899–1900) as the show’s memorable theme. He also persuaded Fran Striker to do much of the scripting for this new addition to the network’s catalog. Striker, who came from the world of pulp publishing, had previously created a number of radio shows, so he should not be thought a novice when Trendle initially offered him The Lone Ranger. Always with an eye to making money, however, Trendle pressured Striker into signing a contract that gave the station owner all rights to the character, and the hardworking scriptwriter merely received a salary. Thereafter, Trendle always claimed he created and owned The Lone Ranger (as he did also with The Green Hornet and under similar contractual terms). Such shady business arrangements aside, Striker turned out to be a fast and prolific writer, and the challenge of coming up with three new stories a week seemed not to daunt him. If each plot were analyzed critically, a discerning listener would soon realize that each episode more or less replicates the others; by changing a name or a place, a clever author could sustain a character indefinitely. Nevertheless, The Lone Ranger achieved such a high level of popularity that Trendle and Striker spun the series off into the comic strips in 1938; hundreds of newspapers carried the masked man’s adventures throughout the 1940s, and cartoonist Charles Flanders (1907–1973) illustrated the stories during that time. The strip ran both daily and in Sunday editions until 1971. Despite this hectic schedule, Striker somehow found time to write 18 Lone Ranger novels, with seven of them appearing in book stores between 1940 and 1949. Other media also took advantage of the series’ success. Despite erratic publishing schedules, several comic books appeared on newsstands in the 1940s. Republic Pictures released two Lone Ranger serials: The Lone Ranger (1938; 15 episodes) and The Lone Ranger Rides Again (1939; 15 episodes). In 1940, the studio took the older


Lone Ranger, The | 461 serial and patched together a feature film called Hi Yo Silver. In deference to the times and changing tastes, a television version of the long-running radio program premiered in 1949 on home screens; a success in its own right, it remained on the air until the fall of 1957. A pioneer in the early days of television, The Lone Ranger remained in the hands of ABC throughout its eight-year run. Once again, Trendle dictated many of the details concerning the show. He contracted actors Clayton Moore (1914– 1999) and Jay Silverheels (1912–1980) to play the Lone Ranger and Tonto, insisting that Moore make his voice sound as close to Brace Beemer’s distinctive voice as possible. He wanted viewers to consider the television series as a con- A televised version of The Lone Ranger came to home screens in 1949; it lasted until 1957. tinuation of the radio version. The show Clayton Moore, seen in this 1949 photomade Moore and Silverheels early telegraph—along with Jay Silverheels as Tonto, vision celebrities, and The Lone Ranger plus Silver—played the masked man in most became ABC’s first big hit. Over the of the episodes, and his voice matched rayears, it went into syndication and can dio’s Brace Beemer reasonably well. (ABC/ still occasionally be found in local Photofest) broadcasting schedules. To maintain audience interest in the radio show, advertisers on The Lone Ranger followed a common practice of the day by offering on-air premiums to listeners. In return for proofs of purchase (box tops, wrappers, etc.) of sponsors’ products, a fan might receive “silver” bullets—usually cheap plastic or metal stampings—six-shooter rings, badges, and, in a reflection of the postwar era, a Lone Ranger Atomic Bomb Ring. All have become collectors’ items. One of the most successful and popular Westerns in the history of both radio and television, The Lone Ranger presented a mythic American West. The masked man’s creed, jointly developed by Trendle and Striker and often invoked in the series—that all men are equal, one must sometimes fight for what is right, truth is the measure of all things, and similar homilies—gave the show something of an unusual tone. It supported their view that The Lone Ranger should do more than merely entertain; they wanted it to instruct and inspire children while appealing to an adult audience. For generations of listeners and viewers, at the first strains of the William Tell Overture, they knew they were in for another thrilling episode with one of their favorite American heroes. See also: Advertising; Cold War, The; Leisure and Recreation; Radio Programming: Children’s Show, Serials, and Adventure Series; Serial Films; Westerns (Film)


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| Louis, Joe Selected Reading Barnouw, Erik. A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Vol. 2, The Golden Web. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Lackman, Ron. The Encyclopedia of American Radio. New York: Checkmark Books, 2000.

LOUIS, JOE Frequently at the center of both boxing and racial issues, Joe Louis (1914–1981), known as the “Brown Bomber,” held the world heavyweight championship (175 pounds or more) for 12 years (1937–1949) and defended it more times than any other boxer in history. Probably as well-known as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) during the 1930s and 1940s, people regarded Louis as an exemplary man. He adhered to strong moral principles, living and fighting clean, with no fixed fights and no gloating over a fallen opponent. In the ring, he demonstrated an ability to be powerful and quick with both hands and delivered deadly punches with a crushing left jab and hook. Louis turned professional on July 4, 1934, when he knocked out Norwegian boxer Jack Kracken (active 1930s) in the first round; he did not lose another match until June 19, 1936. In a contest at Yankee Stadium with German boxer Max Schmeling (1905–2005), Louis suffered a sound beating that culminated in a knockout in the 12th round. He nevertheless continued to fight, and his next eight contests led to capturing the heavyweight title from James J. Braddock (1905–1974) on June 22, 1937, with a knockout in the 8th round. Exactly one year later, Louis and Schmeling met for a second time amid heavy publicity that dubbed the event “the fight of the century.” Increased awareness by the American public of German activities in Europe, along with the growing concern that the United States could be drawn into the conflict, added an element of patriotic intensity Heavyweight boxer Joe Louis immediately to the Louis-Schmeling bout. The press supported the entry of the United States into easily characterized the boxers as the World War II and enlisted in the army in June 1942. Shown here in his military uniform, Louis “good” Louis versus the “bad” Schmel- worked in Special Services with the title of ing, and more than half the radio own- physical education instructor, a more prestiers in the United States listened to a gious position than those held by most blacks in fight that took on the symbolism of the armed forces. (Photofest)


Louis, Joe | 463 democracy versus fascism. Louis delivered a sensational knockout just two minutes into the fight. He had quickly and soundly dispensed with a highly touted representative of Nazi Germany, and his victory comforted the nation and created a new hero who stood for America’s best. Following this event, Louis fought 17 additional matches, all of them wins. The United States entered World War II on December 7, 1941, and Louis immediately supported the effort. He donated his entire purse from a January 1942 fight with Buddy Baer (1915–1986) to the Navy Relief Fund and gave his earnings from a bout against Abe Simon (1913–1969) to the Army Emergency Relief Organization. When Louis enlisted in the army on June 5, 1942, he had been publicly recognized by Under Secretary of War Robert Patterson (1891–1952) and others for his acts of unselfishness and patriotism, adding to his status as a hero. After completing basic training in the same segregated unit as Jackie Robinson (1919–1972), the first black to later play major league baseball, and fellow fighter Sugar Ray Robinson (1921–1989), the army assigned him to special services with the position of physical education instructor. He remained in the service until October 1, 1945. Instead of engaging in combat, he participated in 96 boxing exhibitions staged before more than two million troops. Seeing the possibility of using this American icon to rally black citizens in support of the war, the government secured his assistance in a number of ways. In 1942, the War Department issued a poster that shows Louis in an army uniform carrying a rifle with a bayonet along with the slogan “We’re going to do our part . . . and we’ll win because we’re on God’s side.” He could frequently be seen as a soldier in wartime newsreels, and, in 1943, he appeared in a cameo as himself, Sgt. Joe Louis, in a Warner Bros. Pictures production of Irving Berlin’s (1888–1989) musical This Is the Army. These efforts achieved some black support for the war but not to the degree desired. In 1944, Louis served as a consultant for the making of a propaganda documentary produced by the War Department titled The Negro Soldier. A clip from the second Louis-Schmeling fight appears early in the feature as a black preacher makes World War II an extension of that contest and suggests to the congregation that, if they love and support Joe Louis, then they must love and support America. The Negro Soldier experienced wide distribution to some 3,500 commercial theaters across the country, and the army chief of staff required all soldiers to see it. Reviews were mixed. Many raved about it, while others correctly felt that the film exaggerated and glorified the role of blacks in the war and described a compatibility between black and white soldiers that did not exist. Louis and others had hoped that the film would have a positive effect with regard to race relations, an end it did not fully achieve. When Louis came out of the army, he signed a contract to defend his title against Billy Conn (1917–1993), the “Pittsburgh Kid.” Interest in this match ran high, because the two had met in 1942 in what many call the greatest fight of all time. In that first bout, the spectators had watched in amazement as Conn outboxed Louis through 12 rounds, only to lose from a knockout in the 13th round. Louis repeated his feat, winning the 1945 contest with a knockout in the 8th round.


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Before retiring on March 1, 1949, the champion defended his title three more times following the Conn fight. He defeated Tami Mauriello (1923–1999) in 1946 and Jersey Joe Walcott (1914 –1994) twice, in 1947 and 1948. Then in late 1950, because of pressing financial problems including large debts and an assessment from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for $1 million (almost $9 million in 2008 money) in back taxes and penalties, Louis opted for a comeback. He lost the world heavyweight championship title to Ezzard Charles (1921–1975), who outpointed him in 15 rounds. Nevertheless, Louis continued to fight throughout 1951. In a match on October 26, Rocky Marciano (1923–1969) knocked him out in the 8th round, bringing Louis’s career to a second and final end. Still needing money to settle with the IRS and to live on, he worked in Las Vegas as a casino host, wrestled professionally, and appeared on quiz shows. He died of a heart attack in 1981, at the age of 67. Joe Louis ended his remarkable17-year career with 68 wins and three losses, with 27 of those matches being championship bouts, a record. He won 54 of his fights by knockouts, including five in the first round. In 1941, he received the Edward J. Neil Trophy, awarded annually by the Boxing Writers Association of America to the boxer voted by membership to have been the best in that year. The Ring magazine, established in 1922, annually names a boxer as fighter of the year. It awarded that honor to Joe Louis four times—in 1936, 1938, 1939, and 1941. He narrowly lost to civil rights leader A. Phillip Randolph (1889–1979) in 1942, for the Spingarn Medal, bestowed for outstanding contributions to civil rights. The army, in 1945, awarded him the Legion of Merit for exceptional meritorious service and sacrifice, and in 1953 Hollywood released The Joe Louis Story starring boxer Coley Wallace (1927–2005) as the Brown Bomber. The accolades have been many, but perhaps the most meaningful tribute to Joe Louis occurred when President Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) waived technical requirements for burial at Arlington Cemetery to allow Louis, one of the greatest fighters of all time, to be interred there. During a service with full military honors, hundreds of people came to pay their respects; in 1993, he became the first boxer honored on a United States postage stamp. See also: Broadway Shows (Musicals); Musicals (Film); Race Relations and Stereotyping Selected Reading Bak, Richard. Joe Louis: The Great Black Hope. New York: De Capo Press, 1998. Joe Louis fights. Joe Louis vs. Billy Conn; Ringside Remembers; Joe Louis vs. Abe Simon II; Joe Louis vs. Jersey Joe Walcott Fight 2KO (Round 11); The Negro Soldier (1944); Joe Louis vs. Sky High Lee. www.youtube.com Sammons, Jeffrey T. Sammons. Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988.


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MACARTHUR, GENERAL DOUGLAS Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, into a distinguished military family, Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) spent his entire professional life in the U.S. Army. In 1903, he graduated first in his class at the United States Military Academy at West Point and served in the army from 1903 to 1952. His first assignment out of West Point involved working with the Corps of Engineers in the Philippines, creating a lasting connection for him with the islands and with the corps. MacArthur went from the Philippines to Washington, DC, in 1916, to be the army’s first public relations officer. When the United States entered World War I, he transferred to France as chief of staff for the 42nd Division, often called the “Rainbow Division” because of its wide geographical spread; historians attribute the nickname to MacArthur. His heroic service during World War I earned him the distinction of being among the most decorated U.S. officers of that war. MacArthur returned home with an appointment to West Point as superintendent for the years 1919 to 1922. He married twice; first, in 1922 to Louise Cromwell Brooks (ca. 1890–1965) and then in 1937 to Jean Marie Faircloth (1898–2000). The couple had one child, Arthur, born in Manila in 1938. After numerous promotions and various positions, including command posts in the Philippines, Major General MacArthur served as army chief of staff under President Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) and then military adviser to the government of the Philippines in 1935. The first of seven appearances on the cover of Time magazine occurred at this time. During his career, he associated with many talented officers, including General George Catlett Marshall (1880–1959) and General Dwight David Eisenhower (1890–1969). He retired from active service in December 1937 and accepted the appointment of field marshal of the Philippine Army, given by President Manuel Quezon (1878–1944). MacArthur became the only U.S. officer to hold this rank in any country. 465


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With the onset of World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) recalled MacArthur to active duty in July 1941. The president assigned him to serve as commander of the U.S. Army Forces Command in the Far East with the rank of lieutenant general, soon promoted to general. His initial efforts in the Philippines against an invasion by a superior Japanese force proved indecisive and ultimately disastrous. The Japanese easily destroyed most of the army’s airplanes on the ground and tightened their grip on the islands. By January 1942, battered U.S. forces had retreated to the Bataan peninsula. Roosevelt, wanting to prevent America’s most famous officer from falling prisoner to the In this 1945 photo, General Douglas Mac- enemy, ordered MacArthur to relocate Arthur, his famous corncob pipe (“barnyard to Australia as commander-in-chief of meerschaum”) firmly in place, can be seen in the Southeast Pacific area, specifically the recently liberated Philippines against the in charge of all land operations in Ausbackdrop of Manila. (Bettmann/CORBIS) tralia, the Philippines, New Guinea, and Papua. MacArthur left the Philippines at night aboard a B-17 bomber, devastated that deserting his men ran counter to an officer’s duty; upon arrival in Adelaide, he said, “I shall return,” a statement that captured the public’s imagination and became the most famous words spoken during the war in the Pacific. Between 1942 and 1944, MacArthur led Allied forces in the southwestern Pacific, pushing back the Japanese toward the Philippines. Finally, on October 20, 1944, MacArthur fulfilled his word. To the delight of photographers, he waded ashore at Leyte, complete with his recognizable crushed hat, open-collared shirt, aviator sunglasses, and corncob pipe, saying, “I have returned.” The troops under his command quickly liberated the rest of the islands from enemy control. His next assignment involved overseeing a proposed land invasion of the Japanese home islands, tentatively scheduled for November 1945. When that became unnecessary because of two atomic bombs dropped in August—first on Hiroshima and, days later, on Nagasaki—MacArthur instead presided over the official surrender of the Japanese aboard the battleship USS Missouri on September 2, 1945. The ceremony marked the end of World War II. By then one of the most decorated men in the army, MacArthur emerged as a famous military personality, admired and well-known to the American public. In 1944, he received the rank of General of the Army and a fifth star, along with three other generals—Marshall, Eisenhower, and Henry H. Arnold (1886–1950). Omar N. Bradley (1893–1981) became a five-star general in 1950. MacArthur remained in Japan from 1945 to 1950, serving as the de facto ruler of that nation, since U.S. troops occupied it. In this capacity, he initiated a broad range


MacArthur, General Douglas | 467 of policies that dealt with disarmament, education reform, political stability, and economic recovery. To preserve national unity, MacArthur refrained from deposing Emperor Hirohito (1901–1989), but he reduced his authority to that of a figurehead. He also ordered that a new constitution be written, one that called for the election of a prime minister and the institution of a civilian government. In June 1950, with the invasion of South Korea by North Korean troops, MacArthur was designated the commander of United Nations forces in the Far East. In the early months of the war, he brilliantly reversed a dire military situation with an assault behind enemy lines at Inchon and proceeded to drive the North Koreans back to the Yalu River along the China-Korea border. He wanted to continue into China, but orders prevented him from doing so. A retaliatory move by Chinese Communist soldiers in November 1950 swept over defending South Korean divisions, and a flanking move against UN forces led to the defeat of the U.S. Eighth Army and the longest retreat of any U.S. military unit in history. Still wishing to strike a retaliatory blow against China, one that possibly included the use of nuclear weapons, MacArthur found himself in sharp disagreement with President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972), his commanderin-chief, over military policy in Asia. In April 1951, and amid great controversy, Truman relieved MacArthur of his command because of insubordination. Upon his return to the United States as one of the great generals of World War II and as the ousted commander in the Korean War, MacArthur delivered a farewell speech on April 19, 1951, before a joint meeting of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Millions who listened and watched over radio and television heard an emotional closing when MacArthur quoted from a 19th-century barracks ballad that said, “old soldiers never die; they just fade away.” He went on to say, “I now close my military career and just fade away” to tumultuous applause accompanied by tears in many eyes and a standing ovation. MacArthur left the chambers to march in a parade in his honor on Pennsylvania Avenue. He appeared on the cover of Time magazine on April 30, and on May 1, the Veterans of Foreign Wars recognized him as he, along with Francis Joseph Cardinal Spellman (1889–1967), the Catholic archbishop of New York, stood in a place of honor viewing New York City’s Fourth Annual Loyalty Day Parade, an event initiated in 1948 to demonstrate patriotism in opposition to other May 1 parades held by Communists and their followers. He continued to make speeches, leading many to anticipate his candidacy for president in the 1952 election, but General Eisenhower, his one-time aide, received the nod instead. The excitement did not last, and, as he had predicted, he faded from the public eye. General and Mrs. MacArthur lived quietly in New York until his death in 1964. See also: Atomic Bomb, The; Cold War, The Selected Reading Manchester, William. American Caesar, Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964. Boston: Little, Brown, 1978. Perret, Geoffrey. Old Soldiers Never Die: The Life of Douglas MacArthur. Holbrook, MA: Adams Media, 1996. “Truman.” American Experience: The Presidents. PBS. www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/video/ truman_27_qt.html#v184


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MAGAZINES From the early 19th century onward, magazines have occupied an important place in the cultural life of America. By the beginning of the 1940s, over 5,000 different periodicals circulated throughout the nation; at the end of the decade, despite a world war and the adjustments that came with peace, that figure had grown to over 7,000 titles circulating billions of annual copies. The general public knows little about the vast majority of these publications, because countless small-circulation periodicals (also known as “little magazines”), such as The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists of Chicago, The Butcher Workman, Tropical Fish Hobbyist, The Wooden Barrel, and so on, cater to individual professions, businesses, and activities. Only a handful—perhaps 50 to 100 at the most—can be called general interest magazines, the high-circulation, quickly recognizable titles seen on drugstore, supermarket, and newsstand racks. The technology that permitted the fast production and widespread circulation of general interest magazines had become well established by 1940. Linotype machines and web presses could print thousands of copies in almost no time, folding machines could put the final product together for distribution, and an efficient postal system could deliver mail virtually anywhere. With the onset of the 1940s, the total circulation of magazines with large, diverse readerships had grown close to 100 million. Just as important, advertising revenues, the lifeblood of any mass magazine, had begun rebounding from the doldrums of the Great Depression, despite suffering sharp declines in the early 1930s, the worst years of the crisis. Although still not as high as the precrash figures from 1929, revenues nevertheless had recouped sufficiently that the future looked bright. Of the titles that went under during the 1930s, enough new publications had come on the marketplace to offset those losses. Those that failed lacked both adequate circulation and advertising revenue, and sentiment alone could not sustain them. The small percentage of popular, general interest magazines published tens of millions of copies with each issue—more than the output of all the little magazines combined—sending them to subscribers and selling them in high-traffic public venues. The more specialized periodicals, on the other hand, claimed select niche audiences instead of broad, general ones and therefore commanded far fewer readers per title. Any discussion of American mass magazines must therefore focus on limited samples of large-circulation publications, not the wider world of specialty periodicals. Just a few titles—about 25 in all—led the way into the 1940s. Older, well-known journals, such as the American (founded 1911; ceased publication in 1956), Better Homes and Gardens (founded 1922), Collier’s (1888; ceased publication in 1957), Cosmopolitan (founded 1886), Good Housekeeping (founded 1885), House Beautiful (founded 1896), Ladies’ Home Journal (founded 1883), Liberty (1924; ceased publication in 1951), McCall’s (founded 1897), Reader’s Digest (1922), Redbook (1903), Saturday Evening Post (1821; ceased publication in 1969), and Vogue (1892) remained firmly ensconced in the magazine marketplace throughout the decade. Of all the weekly general interest magazines, only four could boast a steady circulation of over 1 million or more copies per issue: Collier’s, Liberty, Life (founded 1936), and the Saturday Evening Post. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Magazines | 469 First appearing on newsstands in 1924, the now-forgotten Liberty initially appeared as the shared child of two metropolitan newspapers, the Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News. It featured some of the tabloid sensationalism of its parent Daily News but never could develop a solid advertising base. It consistently lost money— even as it built a large circulation—and Bernarr Macfadden (1868–1955), a colorful multimillionaire made rich from other publishing ventures that had a combined monthly circulation of 7 million copies, finally bought the struggling weekly in 1931. Under Macfadden’s hand, Liberty gained readers, but it bore the reputation of being directed at the working class, not the more affluent middle class. Advertisers, rightly or wrongly, stayed away, placing their precious ad dollars in other publications they saw as potentially more profitable to them. Despite circulating a million or more copies each week, Liberty remained starved for advertising revenues. After a lingering decline throughout the 1940s, it finally expired in 1951. With its demise, the nation lost one of its most popular and unusual magazines, one that made no pretensions about being elitist or intellectual. Periodicals such as the news magazine Time (founded 1923), the business-focused Fortune (founded 1930), and the general interest pictorial Life (founded 1936) magazine, all from the highly successful publisher Henry Luce (1898–1967), maintained their readership and advertising base throughout the 1940s. So did Look magazine (markedly similar to Life), which appeared on the scene in 1937 under the guidance of Cowles Publications in Des Moines, Iowa. It achieved success by following a relatively new approach for soliciting advertising: target marketing. Esquire, a sophisticated men’s magazine that premiered in 1932—the darkest year of the Great Depression—found the road to survival and ultimate success lay in knowing who read the periodical and then finding advertisers anxious to make appeals to that profile. Its editors designed the journal for a defined audience, men of some means and education. The sales staff then marketed Esquire to specific advertisers that carried products presumably attractive to this demographic. Whereas the big-circulation magazines appealed to a diverse market and carried a wide mix of ads, those periodicals that claimed (or targeted) a narrower socioeconomic readership could assure their advertisers a more receptive audience for specific products. The approach worked well; Esquire flourished, and target marketing has long since become commonplace in the publishing industry. Fortune followed Esquire’s lead and shortly became one of the most advertisingheavy monthly magazines in the country. Fortune’s sister publication, Time, followed suit, especially in light of the challenges laid down by two new 1933 news-oriented entries, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. In 1936, Life, a pictorial journal of the week’s events, entered the marketplace and provides the best example of target marketing. Its immediate acceptance by middle-class readers and resultant huge circulation convinced advertisers that Life held a key to reaching large, but specific, audiences. By 1939, and just three years old, Life could charge more for ad space than any of its competitors and had no lack of takers. In addition to marketing their magazines to target groups, publishers also worked long and hard on the physical appearance of their publications. Throughout most of the first half of the 20th century, most magazine covers consisted of full-color reproductions of original works—oils, watercolors, pastels, drawings, cartoons, woodcuts, and so on. Although photographs and striking typography occasionally made up a © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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cover, their use did not dominate the industry until well after World War II, when the economies of time and reproduction costs gave them a significant edge over the more expensive, hand-done alternatives. Covers serve as a reader’s introduction to a magazine, and so publishers lavished considerable expense on that aspect of their periodicals; an unattractive cover might deter a possible sale. But the subjects and their depiction also perform an additional task: they offer a quick, visual essay on styles, manners, and mores—any survey of magazine covers from the 1940s would reveal a wealth of information on countless aspects of ongoing American culture. Many such covers did not relate directly to the inside content of the magazine; they instead reflected the season (Christmas, Easter, etc.) or evoked moods—happy, humorous, nostalgic, sad, youthful—and often presented self-explanatory vignettes that stood on their own merits. On the inside, mass-circulation magazines filled their pages with a blend of fiction and factual articles, accompanying the mix with an array of entertaining features such as puzzles, jokes and cartoons, interviews, photo essays, reviews, and the like. Their huge readership suggests they offered a form of journalistic escapism and that they succeeded in this role, but mainly they functioned as carriers of advertising. All those journals published for the first time during the 1940s held true to the trend of more specialized than general interest magazines. Of the 28 publications listed in the table below, all from the period 1940 onward fashion themselves toward certain interests or groups of people and cover a wide range of interests, from sports to good eating, from history to hot rods, from organic farming to the world of teenagers. As would be expected because of the scarcity of paper during the years of World War II, only nine new titles appeared on newsstands between 1941 and 1945, with eight additional titles debuting between 1946 and 1949. They all had to face the specter of rising production costs in the postwar era: between 1944 and 1947, labor and materials, when taken together, rose on average 72 percent, a situation that would eventually put many already-borderline publications out of business. The general lack of new magazines during the 1940s can be further explained by the continuing success of their predecessors. Collier’s, Life, Look, Reader’s Digest, and the Saturday Evening Post dominated the general market. In the face of strong showings by Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report, another newsmagazine would be a risky gamble. The women’s market—with Better Homes and Gardens, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, House Beautiful, Ladies’ Home Journal, McCall’s, Redbook, and Vogue—offered little room for newcomers. As a result, most publishers looked to the more promising area of niche magazines, an ongoing attempt, not always successful, to find titles that would appeal to a specialized group of readers. World War II signaled total involvement by the press, especially magazines. Until that time, no conflict had ever received such thorough coverage. In issue after issue, publishers filled the pages of their magazines with news, articles, and pictures, thus documenting the nation’s part in the war. Discussion pieces, longer and more detailed than anything attempted by newspapers or radio, characterized much of this coverage. The postwar years, colored by anxiety about the future, saw a continuation of these analyses, and magazines in particular discussed in some depth the likelihood of World War III, especially atomic warfare.


Magazines | 471 TABLE 69.

Representative American Magazines Founded in or around the 1940s

Date Founded

Magazine

Comments

1936

Life (ceased regular publication in 1972)

Although Life predated the 1940s, it came to be an important magazine during the decade. In particular, it provided unparalleled photographic coverage of World War II.

1937

Look (ceased publication in 1971)

Look, which followed Life by just a year, also provided readers excellent photography, although it never equaled Life’s popularity or circulation numbers. Similar to Popular Photography [immediately below], but with only about half the circulation, Modern Photography’s introduction suggests rising public interest in photography, especially with Life and Look available on newsstands. Since its introduction in 1937, Popular Photography has dominated the field, with many how-to articles. Introduced as a giveaway in A&P Food Stores to spur sales, this leading women’s magazine went to 2 cents (about 30 cents in 2008 money) in 1937. During the war, because of its many practical recipes, circulation jumped to 4 million and has remained strong ever since.

Modern Photography

Popular Photography Woman’s Day

1938

U. S. Camera

A competitor to Modern Photography and Popular Photography, its introduction so soon after the others further reflected rising interest among readers about this hobby.

1939

Glamour

Aimed at young, fashionable working women, Glamour’s pages held more advertising than content, but its growing readership did not object, and heavy advertising became a hallmark of most women’s fashion periodicals.

1940

View

An art and literature periodical, best remembered for advancing avant-garde topics to U.S. audiences, particularly surrealism. It ceased publication in 1947.

1941

Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

This monthly magazine contains short mysteries. Frederic Dannay (b. Daniel Nathan, 1905–1982) served as its first editor from 1941 until 1982. He, along with Manfred Lee (b. Manford Lepofsky, 1905–1971), created the fictional Ellery Queen as a pseudonym for writing detective stories of their own. A monthly periodical with articles on good food and good wine, along with recipes. Earle R. MacAusland (1891–1980), one of its founders, served as editor-in-chief, 1941–1980. Gourmet ceased publication in 2009.

Gourmet, the Magazine of Good Living

1942

Negro Digest

Similar to Reader’s Digest in format, this black-oriented monthly offered condensed articles, books, and so on. A product of Johnson Publishing [see Ebony, below], it ceased publication in 1951, was revived in 1961, and was renamed Black World in the late 1960s.


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(continued)

Date Founded

1944

Magazine

Comments

Organic Farming and Gardening

Published by Rodale Press, it promoted organic horticulture; the magazine early on called attention to the harmful effects of DDT and other pesticides. Its name changed to Organic Gardening in 1990.

Popular Crosswords

This magazine capitalized on the American fondness for games and exemplifies many similar periodicals. Directed toward high school and college women, this popular monthly contains fashion news, beauty tips, and helpful information about growing up and getting along with others.

Seventeen

1945

Commentary

Congressional Quarterly

Ebony

1946

Highlights for Children (popularly known as Highlights) Holiday

Sport (ceased publication in 2000)

1947

The Kiplinger Magazine

Golf World

Road & Track (often abbreviated R&T)

Published monthly, Commentary originally contained a preponderance of articles on Jewish affairs while strongly opposing Communism. Provides nonpartisan, in-depth coverage and analysis of U.S. congressional legislation, including floor votes. Widely read by politicians, government and business leaders, and educators. A monthly pictorial news magazine for blacks modeled after Life magazine, the premiere issue sold 25,000 copies and served as a new vehicle for national advertisers to reach black consumers. Created by John H. Johnson (1918–2005), owner of Johnson Publishing, a leader in minority publications. A magazine designed specifically for children by psychologist Garry Cleveland Myers (1884–1971), who also served as editor-in-chief. One the first important postwar publications designed for a large audience, the glossy Holiday described itself as “the magazine of creative leisure” and would capitalize on the growing prosperity of the later 1940s. It published numerous works by noted authors about their travels. Later renamed Travel-Holiday in the early 1980s. A new mainstream American sports magazine, this monthly periodical covered all sports and pioneered the use of color photography, offering full-page portraits of the stars of the day. It predated Sports Illustrated by eight years. The first national magazine to deal with personal finances; during the 1950s, the official name changed to Changing Times. The journal received its name from Austin H. Kiplinger (b. 1918), its founder. A major golf publication that quickly became the leader in its field, its appearance in 1947 reflected the increased leisure time available to postwar golfers and the growing interest shown in this sport. Initially published only six times between 1947 and 1949, and struggling, this now-monthly magazine for automobile enthusiasts focused on both production and race cars;


Magazines | 473 Date Founded

Magazine

Comments professional drivers frequently contributed material. Its eventual success augured the postwar obsession with all aspects of motoring.

1948

Hot Rod

Created by Robert Peterson (1927–2007) on $400 and a belief in the postwar expansion of all automotive interests; the oldest magazine devoted to hot rods; this monthly publication supports the hobby as a legitimate endeavor and provides enthusiasts both a forum and a source of information.

1949

American Heritage

A quarterly periodical dedicated to covering the history of the United States; it evolved from American Heritage: A Journal of Community History, which ran from 1947 to 1949. By providing articles on many areas of American life, it had, by 1958, acquired a loyal readership of 300,000. Later (1954) expanded to six issues a year. A monthly story anthology, edited by Anthony Bouher (1911–1968) and Francis McComas (1910–1978). It attracted fans of both fantasy and science fiction.

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, usually referred to as F&SF (first titled The Magazine of Fantasy, but only for one issue) Modern Bride (ceased publication in 2009) Motor Trend

A specialty magazine that served as a monthly source of information for brides-to-be and a place for advertisers to tout many different products. Another automotive publication from Hot Rod’s Robert Peterson, who made a fortune by responding to the unparalleled growth of the automobile industry. Motor Trend appealed to the general car owner or buyer, extolling the virtues of all the latest models.

As an example, novelist John Hersey (1914–1993) in 1946 wrote a 31,000-word article about the dropping of an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945 and its effects on six survivors. The New Yorker, a lively magazine about urban life and styles, chose to run Hiroshima, devoting the entire August 31, 1946, issue to Hersey’s work. An immediate sensation, it sold out, newspapers excerpted it, radio stations carried readings from it, and a slim book soon followed. It took a leading magazine, however, to elicit this response. In many ways, with their wide distribution and readership, magazines serve as national newspapers. Most papers, on the other hand, function on a more local or regional level and seldom, if ever, provide the space necessary for such extended pieces. Thus, the magazine falls into a unique middle ground between books and newspapers and fulfills a need for a mass medium that can be both timely and thorough. See also: Advertising; Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry; Food; Hobbies; Hot Rods and Drag Racing; Leisure and Recreation; Motorsports; Movies; Youth


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| Marshall, General George Catlett Selected Reading Heller, Steven, and Louise Fili. Cover Story: The Art o f American Magazine Covers, 1900–1950. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1996. Janello, Amy, and Brennon Jones, The American Magazine. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991. Peterson, Theodore. Magazines in the Twentieth Century. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1964. Wood, James Playsted. Magazines in the United States. New York: Ronald Press, 1956.

MARSHALL, GENERAL GEORGE CATLETT Born into a Pennsylvania family that owned a prosperous coal business, George C. Marshall (1880–1959) graduated from Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in 1901 and went on to achieve a distinguished career in the military and diplomatic corps. Although he never led troops into combat during his 1901–1945 military service, Marshall, as an excellent organizer and motivator, held a variety of posts. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) appointed him army chief of staff with the rank of four-star general in 1939. In this position, Marshall held the final responsibility for building, supplying, and deploying over 8 million soldiers fighting in World War II and played a leading role in planning military operations on a global scale. He also served on a top policy committee appointed by Roosevelt in 1942 that supervised studies of atomic energy undertaken by U.S. and British scientists. This research would result in the atomic bomb, the most fearsome weapon of World War II. In December 1944, with the war grinding down and the Allies looking toward victory, Congress created a five-star rank called General of the Army. Marshall became the first recipient, followed within days by three other officers—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964), Dwight David Eisenhower (1890–1969), and Henry H. Arnold (1886–1950). Omar N. Bradley (1893–1981) became a five-star general in 1950. Once retired from the army, Marshall turned to a diplomatic career. While army chief of staff, he had participated in a number of conferences dealing with diplomatic issues, such as top-level discussions at Casablanca (1943), Cairo-Teheran (1943), Yalta (1945), and Potsdam (1945). In late 1945 and early 1946, shortly after the death of Roosevelt, he represented President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) on a special mission to China, then torn by civil war. Marshall went to this position with prior experience, having served in Asia from 1924 to 1927. Marshall became secretary of state in 1947 and, in a speech given at Harvard University on June 5 of that year, outlined a plan of economic and military aid to Western European nations. He carefully emphasized the humanitarian aspects of the plan— policies that would address hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. But there was more to the intent; political motives lay behind the rhetoric. First, strengthening the European economies would, in turn, allow the citizens of those nations to buy American products. Second, money provided by the United States could be directed in ways acceptable to U.S. political interests, specifically, lessen the threat of Europeans turning to Communism. France had Communists in its cabinet, as did Italy, and the countries seemed susceptible to a Communist takeover, a condition that created great concern among government officials in Washington, DC.


MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System) | 475 Following Marshall’s Harvard speech, the proposed plan underwent lengthy debate. Opponents questioned the necessity of such massive assistance, while those exhausted by two years of the Cold War voiced increasing alarm about Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) and his recent infiltration into Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Finally, in April 1948, Congress approved a 15-month appropriation of $6.8 billion ($60.7 billion in 2008 money). This unprecedented program became known as the Marshall Plan because of George Marshall’s strong advocacy. Between 1948 and 1951, European countries received more than $13 billion ($117.5 billion in 2008 money) of economic, agricultural, and technical assistance from the United States. In addition to enabling battered European countries to regain stability, the Marshall Plan also served as an impetus to the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. After serving as secretary of state for two years, Marshall resigned and became the president of the American National Red Cross in 1949. In the early months of the Korean War (1950–1953), President Truman fired Defense Secretary Louis A. Johnson (1891–1966) and named Marshall as his replacement. Marshall served in that role for less than one year, retiring from public service in 1951. He represented the United States at the 1953 coronation of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II (b. 1926). For his world leadership, George C. Marshall received the Nobel Peace Prize that same year. He died in 1959. See also: Berlin Airlift, The; D-Day; Political and Propaganda Films; Roosevelt, Eleanor; United Nation, The Selected Reading Kennedy, David M. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Patterson, James T. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

MBS (MUTUAL BROADCASTING SYSTEM) Organized in 1934 as a radio network, MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System) initially consisted of four stations: WOR in Newark, New Jersey (in 1941, WOR officially became a New York City–based station), WGN in Chicago, WXYZ in Detroit, and WLW in Cincinnati. Its founders hoped to compete with NBC (National Broadcasting Company) and CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) networks. Although it never achieved the prominence or success of its considerably larger and better financed counterparts, MBS (often referred to as simply Mutual) nonetheless made its mark in American radio history during the 1930s and 1940s. For a number of reasons, WXYZ left the fledgling network in the fall of 1935; a year later, WLW also departed. Although they were missed, Mutual rebounded and displayed rapid growth. By 1938, it counted 104 affiliates; shortly before that, the network added a regional group of stations in New England and had also reached the West Coast by adding several linked California stations. The end of World War II saw Mutual with 384 affiliates, and by 1950 it had achieved a remarkable 543 participants in its


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collaborative system, a number of which also associated with NBC and CBS. Despite Mutual’s impressive totals, it should be noted that NBC and CBS, although they had fewer linked stations, could always claim much larger audiences throughout the 1940s. They carried most of the prominent radio stars of the day, plus MBS counted many lowpower affiliates in small markets. Because of its somewhat informal structure and practice of sharing resources among its affiliates, Mutual, unlike NBC and CBS, had no central network studios and operated with a minimal staff. Each station remained an independent entity and could take advantage of opportunities unobtainable to A mustachioed Bud Collyer behind the MBS those stations connected with NBC and microphone. Mutual carried The Adventures CBS. For example, a Mutual affiliate of Superman during the 1940s, and Collyer played both Clark Kent and the Man of Steel might also offer selected NBC or CBS programming if it became available in throughout the decade. (Photofest) certain regions. Occasionally, a show might be rejected by a local NBC or CBS station, in which case a Mutual affiliate could then broadcast it. As a result, Mutual and its partners practiced considerable flexibility in creating their broadcast schedules. The MBS network itself, however, also offered a number of attractive programs to its associates. Among the most popular were The Lone Ranger, The Adventures of Superman, The Shadow, several colorful news commentators, audience participation quiz shows, and broadcasts of major sports events. Before the creation of MBS, Detroit’s WXYZ (which used the slogan, “the last word in radio”) had in 1933 premiered a continuing Western series called The Lone Ranger. The tale of a mysterious masked man, a former Texas Ranger, the hero rides the plains doing good deeds, battling evil, and ensuring justice in the Old West. Almost from the inception of MBS in 1934, the various affiliates ran The Lone Ranger, and audiences estimated in the millions responded enthusiastically, making it a profitable network staple. Additional information about the series can be found elsewhere in this encyclopedia. The Lone Ranger may have been Mutual’s most successful offering, but The Adventures of Superman, which premiered on MBS in 1940, also boasted legions of devoted followers. Mutual carried the superhero’s exploits throughout the 1940s; in 1950, ABC (American Broadcasting Company) obtained the broadcasting rights and ran the show until 1952. The Adventures of Superman consisted of 15-minute episodes broadcast around 5:00 in the afternoon, the preferred time for serials aimed at a youthful audience. Based on the comic book character created by Jerry Siegel (1914–1996) and Joe Shuster (1914–1992) in 1938, Superman in all its formats receives a more © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System) | 477 thorough discussion elsewhere in this encyclopedia; suffice it to say that the show proved a popular and enduring entry in the MBS lineup. The Shadow, another audience favorite, had first been broadcast on radio in 1930, and it seemingly alternated between CBS and NBC in its early days. Initially, the “Shadow” title referred to a mysterious host for the show, but public curiosity caused producers to invent an actual character of that name. Walter B. Gibson (1897–1985, usually writing as Maxwell Grant), a prolific writer of pulp magazine fiction, in 1931 created the mysterious Lamont Cranston, also known as the Shadow, a man with the unique ability to “cloud men’s minds” and thus render himself invisible. Gibson/Grant would continue to write the adventures at a remarkable rate, eventually churning out almost 300 novels for The Shadow magazine. For the radio productions, scriptwriters reduced Gibson’s plots to workable 30-minute formats. In September 1937, The Shadow moved to MBS and began a successful 17-year stay with the network. Orson Welles (1915–1985), still relatively unknown in 1937, played Cranston, and Agnes Moorehead (1900–1974) briefly portrayed Margo Lane, Cranston’s lovely companion. By 1938, other actors had taken on the roles, but Welles and Moorehead had created the definitive characterizations, and subsequent players had to model themselves after the pair. Although Welles cannot take credit for the lines, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha . . . the Shadow knows!” his inimitable delivery made them unforgettable, and before long every listener knew them by heart and they became part of radio lore. Although The Shadow magazine ceased publication in 1949, the Mutual series carried on a bit longer, but the impacts of television eventually doomed most radio drama, and The Shadow left the air in 1954. It did not enjoy a television sequel. Columbia Pictures, however, released a 15-episode serial of that name in 1940, but it more closely resembles the pulp magazine character than Mutual’s radio version. Later in the decade and cashing in on the ongoing success of the MBS show, Monogram Pictures in 1946 produced three movies involving the Shadow: The Shadow Returns, Behind the Mask, and The Missing Lady. Each feature stars Kane Richmond (1906–1973) as Lamont Cranston, and they stand as typical B films of the era. Finally, in 1994, Hollywood made a big-budget, effects-filled picture bearing The Shadow name, but it bears little resemblance to either the pulp or radio versions. Pure escapism, The Lone Ranger, The Adventures of Superman, and The Shadow demonstrated radio’s unique ability to take outlandish plots and characters and make them believable in the imaginations of audiences. Times, however, change. The Lone Ranger left Mutual in 1942, when ABC offered better contractual terms for the Western. It eventually made its way to ABC television in 1949. The Adventures of Superman lasted until 1951 with MBS, but then likewise shifted to television and a long-running (1951–1957) series on ABC. In addition to its popular dramatic series, MBS also boasted the talents of several colorful news commentators. Gabriel Heatter (1890–1972) became one of the most popular voices on the network, despite an unusually somber voice and delivery. He commenced a 30-year broadcasting career in 1932 on New York’s WOR, one that spanned the Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean conflict. In an attempt to give his shows human interest, he developed a trademark opening line, “Ah, there’s good news tonight!” What followed tended to be optimistic and uplifting, and audiences loved it. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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He hosted programs such as A Brighter Tomorrow (1946–1947) and Behind the Front Page (1947–1948), shows built on stories taken from the news that had happy endings. His upbeat approach and curious style kept him ensconced at MBS until 1965. If Gabriel Heatter gave the bright side of the news, Fulton Lewis Jr. (1903–1966) functioned as his opposite. A former newspaper reporter and an outspoken conservative, he opposed the New Deal, the Democratic Party, and anything else he thought of as liberal. In 1935, Lewis signed on with Washington, DC’s WOL, by then a Mutual affiliate. As a strong isolationist on the eve of World War II, he opposed the country’s participation in the conflict. Following the war, he aligned himself with anti-Communist groups and railed against what he perceived as left-wing subversion in the nation’s affairs. Audiences either loved or loathed him, but they kept tuning in. His strident attacks finally caused MBS to drop him from its roster in 1961. Mutual had yet another commentator of some note in Raymond Gram Swing (1887– 1968), one of the most respected radio journalists in the nation. He had covered World War I for several Midwestern newspapers and broke into radio reporting sometime in the 1930s. He worked at WOR until 1939, at which time Mutual added him to its slate of news analysts. His extensive experience in foreign affairs served him well, and Swing quickly developed a devoted following. Unfortunately for the network, ABC contracted him and his expertise in 1942, and he would remain there for most of the decade. A latecomer to Mutual’s news offerings, Meet the Press may have been new to radio programming, but evolved as the archetype of all subsequent panel news shows. It premiered in 1945 and ran for five years. In 1952 NBC acquired broadcast rights and carried it until 1986, although by then Meet the Press had become far better known as a vehicle for television. In its original MBS format, Martha Rountree (1911–1999) served as moderator, and Lawrence Spivak (1900–1994) appeared as a permanent panelist. Rountree and Spivak coproduced it, and they can take credit for designing a format that has been imitated ever since. The world of sports also received the Mutual network’s attention. Starting in 1935, MBS provided the play-by-play for the World Series and baseball’s All-Star game. Each year until 1957, the network had exclusive rights to these major-league events. MBS also carried college football from Notre Dame, another association that would endure for many years. With the decline of radio networks in the 1950s, the fortunes at the Mutual Broadcasting System fell on hard times. During the ensuing years, MBS went through a dizzying series of acquisitions, financial downturns, and format changes. By April 1999, the glory days of American radio had long since disappeared, and the newest set of owners formally retired the brand name Mutual. See also: Comic Books; Magazines; Radio Programming: Action, Crime, Police, and Detective Shows; Radio Programming: Children’s Shows, Serials, and Adventure Series; Radio Programming: Drama and Anthology Shows; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk; Serial Films; Westerns (Film) Selected Reading Barnouw, Erik. A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Vol. 1, A Tower in Babel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966.


Miller, Glenn | 479 ———. A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Vol. 2, The Golden Web. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Lackman, Ron. The Encyclopedia of American Radio. New York: Checkmark Books, 2000.

MILLER, GLENN Born in the small Iowa town of Clarinda, future orchestra leader (Alton) Glenn Miller (1904–1944) started off his musical career as a modestly talented trombonist. He played in a number of regional Midwestern bands that toured for dancing in the mid- to late 1920s. Realizing his instrumental limitations early on, Miller began arranging for such leaders as Ben Pollack (1903–1971), Red Nichols (1905–1965), the Dorsey Brothers (Tommy, 1905–1956; Jimmy, 1904–1957), and Benny Goodman (1909–1986) in the first years of the Swing Era. These experiences led to a position with the Ray Noble (1903–1978) orchestra in 1935, and this steady employment allowed Miller to polish his skills as an arranger. Two years later, he left Noble and organized a band of his own. In a decade crowded with different aggregations, Miller quickly realized that success demanded a distinctive sound that people would recognize and like. He experimented with various instrumental voicings, including riffs and fadeouts, techniques that would later serve as signatures of his band. He also discovered that a clarinet playing the melody an octave over the other reeds created a light, danceable sound. Commercial success, however, did not immediately fall on the heels of his discovery. Miller’s 1937 attempt at leading a band, although it hinted at things to come, went nowhere and he had to break it up. He continued to write arrangements and formed a second orchestra in 1938. This time around, Miller hired top sidemen and had the good fortune to land Ray Eberle (1919–1979), Marion Hutton (1919–1987), and the Modernaires (vocal group active 1930s and 1940s) as his vocalists. This new Glenn Miller orchestra at- One of the most popular bandleaders in the tracted some favorable attention and United States during the early 1940s, Glenn cut a number of recordings for several Miller tragically lost his life while serving in the Army Air Force. This 1940 picture depicts labels. These early efforts did not sell him in civilian dress, holding a cigarette, probparticularly well, nor did they produce ably a Chesterfield, his radio sponsor at the quite the sound Miller had been looking time. (Photofest)


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for, but they nonetheless demonstrated that the new aggregation possessed the ability to play outstanding dance music. At the same time, Miller had developed a personable, easygoing stage manner that listeners and dancers enjoyed. RCA Victor, a leader in the recording field, offered Miller a contract with its popular Bluebird label in the fall of 1938. For the first time, phonograph records captured the inimitable Miller sound, and, in the early months of 1939, the group enjoyed several hits. The band’s engaging theme, “Moonlight Serenade” (composed and arranged that year by Miller), listeners found especially captivating, and people soon associated it with the band. A companion piece, “Sunrise Serenade,” likewise had its admirers. Soon, other popular favorites like “Little Brown Jug,” “Pennsylvania 6-5000,” and “Tuxedo Junction” (all 1939) came out in quick succession on Bluebird disks and could be heard everywhere through jukeboxes and on the air; people crowded record shops trying to obtain copies. Network radio, which could not seem to get enough swing orchestras on the air to satisfy fans, discovered Miller at this time; CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) radio in 1939 inaugurated Moonlight Serenade (also called Music That Satisfies, a nod to the sponsor, Chesterfield cigarettes), a 15-minute music show that broadcast three nights a week. It would run until 1942. With the beginning of the 1940s, Glenn Miller had skyrocketed to success in the hotly competitive field of big band music and had displaced Benny Goodman, the former King of Swing, by topping every popularity poll. No letup appeared in sight; he played casinos, hotels, and ballrooms, packing in the audiences wherever he appeared. In a long stint at the Glen Island Casino, a lovely combination restaurant and ballroom overlooking New York’s Long Island Sound, Miller continued to do radio programs by using a remote setup that allowed him to broadcast directly from his location. In early 1940, the band recorded one of its biggest hits, the up-tempo “In the Mood.” Over the years, this recording would establish itself as one of the top-selling songs of the Swing Era and has remained a favorite of dancers. Given his unprecedented popularity, Miller and his band performed in two film musicals released by Twentieth Century-Fox: Sun Valley Serenade (1941) and Orchestra Wives (1942). Lightweight, frothy entertainment characterizes both movies, but the band gets to perform some of its big hits of the day, such as “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” “In the Mood,” and “Moonlight Serenade” in Sun Valley Serenade and “At Last,” “Kalamazoo,” and “Serenade in Blue” in Orchestra Wives. The outbreak of World War II in December of 1941 marked a turning point in both Miller’s career and the music business in general. Some of the most prominent bandleaders of the day soon enlisted; for example, Tiny Bradshaw (1905–1958), Bob Crosby (1913–1993), Eddie Duchin (1909–1951), Wayne King (1901–1985), Clyde McCoy (1903–1990), and Artie Shaw (1910–2004), among others, switched their tuxedos for uniforms. Despite being at the height of his popularity in the states, Miller in 1942 tried to join the navy. Officials, however, would not allow him to enlist because of his age, 38 at the time. The army, however, yielded, and Glenn Miller donned an Army Air Corps uniform along with the rank of captain. These maneuvers thus gave birth to the most successful service ensemble of them all, a huge organization consisting of a 42-piece marching unit, a jazz combo, string accompaniment, and most famously, his 19-piece Army Air Force dance orchestra.


Miranda, Carmen | 481 First stationed in the United States, Miller received an assignment to Great Britain shortly after the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France. Here he assembled an overseas band and gave hundreds of performances for U.S. forces. By now a major, Miller continued to record while in England, and his popularity showed no signs of slowing. But success would prove fleeting; a military plane carrying Miller from England to France disappeared in a storm over the English Channel in December 1944; authorities found no remains. Theories about the nature of his death have since abounded—accidental crash, weather, enemy action, a conspiracy of some sort, and so on—but no evidence supporting them has ever surfaced. His various Air Force groups carried on under the leadership of sideman Ray McKinley (1910–1995) until they finally disbanded with the return of peace. Miller’s civilian sidekick, vocalist and saxophonist Tex Beneke (1914–2000), had led a navy band in landlocked Oklahoma during the war. In 1946, after his discharge, and with the consent of the Miller estate, Beneke took over the leadership of the remains of the old Glenn Miller orchestra and so the dynasty nevertheless continued. In time, Beneke formed his own band and parted ways with the Miller estate. Other leaders, notably McKinley again, tried to carry on the tradition in the 1950s. Without their popular leader, however, the subsequent Glenn Miller bands have always seemed but shadows of the original. During its brief heyday, the Miller aggregation epitomized versatility. Essentially a sweet band, it could play the slow, syrupy ballads, often accompanied by singers or vocal groups that made no attempt to “swing” the lyrics. But the orchestra could also perform jazz-tinged arrangements of up-tempo tunes that any swing band could envy. Miller successfully straddled both camps, a rare accomplishment. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Musicals (Film); Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Songwriters and Lyricists Selected Reading Grudens, Richard. Chattanooga Choo Choo: The Life and Times of the World Famous Glenn Miller Orchestra. Stony Brook, NY: Celebrity Profiles, 2004. Simon, George T. Glenn Miller and His Orchestra. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1974. Yanow, Scott. Swing: Great Musicians, Influential Groups. San Francisco: Miller Freeman, 2000.

MIRANDA, CARMEN Born in a rural town in Portugal but raised in urban Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Carmen Miranda (1909–1955) opened a small hat shop while still a teenager. She frequently sang on the job, and that exposure brought her some club dates, which in turn caused a local radio station to invite the budding vocalist to perform on the air. Miranda soon enjoyed considerable fame as a samba singer, and RCA Victor Records, hearing about her success, signed her to a recording contract. Her success with music then led to roles in six Brazilian movies, and producers in the United States took notice of her considerable talents. They invited the 30-year-old rising star north and, in 1939, Miranda, along with her musical group, Bando da Lua, appeared in Streets of Paris, a Broadway revue. On stage, she sang “South American Way,” a Latin-tinged number composed by


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the popular American songwriting team of Jimmy McHugh (1894–1969) and Al Dubin (1891–1945), and her performance would lead her to Hollywood. She inked a contract with Twentieth Century-Fox the following year and appeared in Down Argentine Way (1940), her North American movie debut. A small role, but it allows her to perform several Brazilian numbers with her band, including “South American Way” again. Audiences immediately liked Miranda’s infectious energy and asked for more, a request that the studio hurried to honor. In 1941, she again appeared on American screens with That Night in Rio, a sequel of sorts to Down Argentine Way. Both films star Don Ameche (1908– 1993), a popular leading man of the day, along with two stylish actresses, Betty Grable (1916–1973) in Down Argentine Way and Alice Faye (1915–1998) in That Night in Rio. Big-name celebrities daunted Miranda little, and her exuberance while on camera immediately put This studio still (probably Twentieth Century- her in league with her costars. As proof, Fox) shows the “Brazilian bombshell,” Carmen Twentieth Century-Fox quickly released a Miranda, in one of her trademark tutti-frutti hats. Concoctions of tropical fruits and green- third 1941 picture, Week-End in Havana, ery, such millinery defied gravity and delighted teaming her once more with Alice Faye, her many fans. (AP Photo) with whom she now shared top billing. These three films, pleasant trifles all, made Miranda a guaranteed box office draw, provided—in the eyes of her studio—she continue to play the fiery Latin stereotype. Now billed as the “Brazilian Bombshell,” she next appeared in Springtime in the Rockies (1942), along with Betty Grable again, but as costar this time around. Another Technicolor Fox musical, it perhaps remains most notable for the music of Harry James (1916–1983) and his orchestra, one of the most well-received big bands of the later Swing Era. The film also has Miranda singing “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” a No. 1 hit from Glenn Miller (1904–1944) produced in the early 1940s, not in English but in her native Portuguese. Fox teamed Alice Faye and Carmen Miranda for a third time in The Gang’s All Here (1943), a frothy wartime picture. Busby Berkeley (1895–1976), the esteemed choreographer from many movies made during the 1930s, gives Miranda a standout dance number in “The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat.” The tune, penned by Harry Warren (1893–1981) and Leo Robin (1900–1984), acknowledges the outrageous headwear worn by Miranda, usually huge arrangements of exotic fruit—especially bananas— piled high atop her head that had quickly become her trademark. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Miranda, Carmen | 483 Greenwich Village came along in 1944. An exercise in nostalgia, it supposedly takes place in New York’s famed artist and writers’ neighborhood during the 1920s, which allows for such old chestnuts as “I’m Just Wild about Harry” (1921), “Swingin’ Down the Lane” (1923), and “Whispering” (1920). But the producers also introduced “Give Me a Band and a Bandana,” a decidedly upbeat 1944 tune scored for Miranda and her equally upbeat Latin dancing featuring typical Berkeley choreography. With each successive film, however, she also became more and more a caricature of herself. The hats grew bigger, the costumes more flamboyant, and her characterizations more shallow. But audiences continued to flock to her motion pictures and they made money. Something for the Boys (1944), adapts Cole Porter’s (1891–1964) Broadway musical of 1943 for the screen, and Miranda takes the role originally played by Paula Laurence (1916–2005). Bowing to Miranda’s unique abilities, tunes like Batuca Nega and Samba Boogie replace some of the more traditional numbers from Porter’s original score, and she gives them her expected zest and energy. The next year, 1945, saw no new releases featuring Miranda, and yet she had the distinction of reputedly being the highest paid woman in the United States, quite an accomplishment for someone who had come to the country just six years earlier. Two so-so movies, Doll Face and If I’m Lucky, graced marquees in 1946. The first, about the days of burlesque, stars Vivian Blaine (1921–1995), and Miranda’s name gets buried in the credits, although she performs another of her hits, “Chico Chico.” If I’m Lucky, a vehicle for Blaine, also stars up-and-coming vocalist Perry Como (1912– 2001), and Miranda again receives second billing, singing only a couple of forgettable numbers. Despite its tantalizing title, 1947’s Copacabana unfortunately comes across as a limp musical comedy. Unfortunate, because it headlines two talented entertainers, Carmen Miranda and the renowned Groucho Marx (1880–1977). They try their best, but an uninspired script coupled with inept direction does not allow them to rise above mediocrity. The picture also suggests that Miranda’s once-bright star might be waning—Copacabana marks her first feature not produced by her long-time studio, Twentieth Century-Fox. Beacon Productions, a small operation that used United Artists for distribution, released the picture. Additionally, the movie was one of the last for Marx; except for an occasional feature and some cameos, he would shortly move on to new heights in radio and later television. The slow downhill slide of Miranda’s once-blazing career continued with A Date with Judy (1948). Based on the long-running (1941–1950) radio show of that name, the picture mainly revolves around teenage shenanigans instead of music or dancing. Miranda and Latin bandleader Xavier Cugat (1900–1990) show up more as window dressing than essential players, although “Cuenta la Gusta” adds some zest to events. The picture came with Miranda’s move to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), one of Hollywood’s largest studios, but executives and producers there showed little imagination with their new acquisition. Her last two films, Nancy Goes to Rio (1950) and Scared Stiff (1953), put Miranda in the unaccustomed role of bit player. She mugs a bit and sings but hardly in the manner of her big production numbers from the past. She even has to play against the comedy team of Dean Martin (1917–1995) and Jerry Lewis (b. 1926) in Scared Stiff. The picture allows Lewis to do a spoof of her Latin character, a reflection of her faded career. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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Miranda continued performing, making the rounds of night clubs and occasional television appearances. An unhappy personal life, poor health, and disappointments influenced her final years, and she died in 1955, just 46 years old, after suffering a heart attack during a television taping. A figure of the 1940s, Carmen Miranda helped introduce Latin music and dance to the United States and enjoyed a meteoric Hollywood career. She also influenced fashion; her elaborate turbans and thick platform shoes were soon adapted—in toned-down versions, of course—as essentials for the well-dressed woman of that era. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Broadway Shows (Musicals); Songwriters and Lyricists; Musicals (Film) Selected Reading Gil-Montero, Martha. Brazilian Bombshell: The Biography of Carmen Miranda. New York: Dutton, 1989. Tompkins, Cynthia M., and David W. Foster. Notable Twentieth-Century Latin American Women. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001.

MOTORSPORTS The sport of automobile racing, an attempt to get from point A to point B faster than anyone else, experienced significant growth and untold possibilities with the development of safe, practical internal combustion engines in the late 19th century. By the early 1900s, races had begun to occur that involved automobiles, along with occasional contests with motorcycles. Speedboats also got into the picture at times, as did primitive airplanes, all vying to be faster than their competition. Air races, however, seldom get grouped under the motorsport rubric; most enthusiasts reserve the term for motorized land vehicles. Auto races had become a popular American spectator sport by the 1940s, and a number of annual events were eagerly awaited each season. In 1940, for example, two notable accomplishments occurred in the field of motorsports. First, at the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race held during the May Memorial Day weekend, Wilbur Shaw (1902–1954), already a well-established driver, raced an Italian Maserati and became the first man in the race’s history to win the Indy 500 twice in succession, an achievement that cemented his status as a celebrity and brought considerable attention to the sport. A couple of months later, David Abbott “Ab” Jenkins (1883–1956), another professional driver and also the mayor of Salt Lake City, along with his relief driver, Cliff Bergere (1896–1980), completed 3,858 miles in 24 hours in Jenkins’ Mormon Meteor III on Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats. Their performance, an average speed in excess of 160 miles per hour, broke a previous record set by Jenkins in 1937, and the new accomplishment endured until 1990. The December 1941 entry of the United States into World War II brought a temporary halt to many sporting events. Gasoline rationing curtailed all motorsports and put countless drivers and mechanics out of work. But not for long, because many proved invaluable for defense work in aviation factories and allied industries. Racing resumed


Motorsports | 485 in 1946 with both old and new venues, along with increased safety precautions in an attempt to decrease the inherent dangers of the sport—a car spinning, flipping, or rolling could quickly cause an accident that might kill the driver or others, even spectators unlucky enough to be in its path. The following list presents a brief overview of the major automobile, motorcycle, and power boat competitions enjoyed by participants and spectators alike during the decade. AAA Championship Trail Races. Introduced in 1905 by the American Automobile Association (AAA), these races involved cars on dirt or unimproved tracks of a mile or more. The trails probably derived from the early days of auto touring, when many roads, such as they were, followed trails that had been first marked out years before the advent of the horseless carriage. As they grew in popularity, the AAA approved other locations and the tracks became much improved, but the name remained unchanged. Both before and after World War II—virtually no racing of any kind occurred between 1942 and 1945—many of the Championship Trail drivers also participated in midget car races and events scheduled for larger cars, entering one kind of race during the week and another on weekends. Consistent winners included Wilbur Shaw, who captured the Championship Trail wins in 1937 and 1939 and finished first at the Indy 500 in 1937, 1939, and 1940, and Mauri Rose (1906–1981), who took the Championship Trail title in 1936 and won the Indy 500 in 1941, 1947, and 1948. Henry Banks (1913–1994), another outstanding driver, emerged victorious in the American Racing Drivers Club’s midget car competitions in 1941 and took the AAA Championship Trails in 1950. Indianapolis 500-Mile Road Race. Shortened to the Indianapolis 500, Indy 500, or The 500, this race has for many decades attracted both American and foreign drivers and cars. It reigns as one of the oldest motorsports events and a world-class auto race. It also holds the record for the highest number of deaths. The speedway, initially built in 1906 as a testing ground for road cars, consists of a–two-and-a-half-mile oval track. In 1909, 3 million paving bricks replaced the earlier, more dangerous surface of compacted stone, giving the track its nickname “The Brickyard,” a term that still sticks despite its subsequent asphalt covering. Races have been held annually since 1911, with the exception of World War I, 1917–1918, and World War II, 1942–1945. The 500 features a monetary prize divided between the owner of the car and the driver. In 1940, the purse equaled $30,000 (a little over $460,000 in 2008 dollars); by the end of the decade, it had risen to $65,855 (almost $596,000 in 2008 dollars). Usually, the driver receives additional prizes. For example, in 1940, Wilbur Shaw took home an electric refrigerator, a town car, a statue, a year’s meal ticket at an Indianapolis restaurant, and the checkered flag that signaled his victory. Following an Indianapolis 500 tradition in place since 1936, his name and likeness was added to the Borg-Warner trophy, named for the U.S. automotive parts supplier. The speedway’s Hall of Fame Museum permanently houses the trophy. Cars that entered The 500 during the 1930s and 1940s usually had U.S.-built Offenhauser racing engines as their source of power. A strong, reliable motor that could stand the abuse of running at top speed for long periods of time, the “Offy” dominated race events throughout the decade. In 1949, WFBM-TV, an Indianapolis station (later WRTV), televised The 500 live, thereby exposing a wider range of people to the event.


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Twelve cars finished the grueling test of man and machine, with Bill Holland (1907– 1984) winning in a car powered by an Offenhauser engine. His victory set a record at the time of 121 miles per hour, and breaking speed records has continued to be a drawing feature for the race. Offenhauser motors, however, lost their dominance to other manufacturers in the 1960s but remained strong competitors until the 1970s. As is frequently the case with successful sporting events, the Indy 500 provided more than the main attraction; even midget car races could be enjoyed. The 142,000 fans at the 1940 race and the 160,000 who attended in 1942 could also amuse themselves at a number of tent shows, ride Ferris wheels, or test their skills at roller skating rinks and shooting galleries. After the war, the Indy 500 continued to offer a variety of forms of entertainment in addition to the main event. Among the drivers of the 1940s racing at Indianapolis were Rex Mays (1913–1949) and Ted Horn (1910–1948). Mays had taken the AAA championship in 1940 and 1941. He also competed in the Indy those two years, but a trophy and a speed record eluded him. Like Mays, Ted Horn never crossed The 500 finish line first but, after his rookie year, always placed second, third, or fourth. He went on to claim the AAA crown for three consecutive years, 1946 to 1948. Watkins Glen Grand Prix. In 1948, road racing arrived in Watkins Glen, a small community in upstate New York. Cameron Argetsinger (1921–2008), a law student at Cornell University in nearby Ithaca, a sports car enthusiast and one of the first members of the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA, a 1944 renaming of the Automobile Racing Club), obtained permission from the Watkins Glen Chamber of Commerce and sanction from the SCCA to organize a road race in the area. He established a six-and-a-halfmile course using mostly paved roads that wound through the town and its environs, including a short dirt and gravel stretch at the site. After an unfortunate 1952 accident in downtown Watkins Glen, officials moved the race to a less congested area. Fifteen cars started the 15-lap contest on October 2, 1948. In front of an estimated 10,000 viewers and with 11 cars completing the competition, Frank Griswold Jr. averaged 63 miles per hour in his Alfa Romeo and placed first. Briggs Cunningham (1907– 2003), entering a race for the first time, came in second. Cunningham, another early member of SCCA, soon formed B. S. Cunningham, Inc., and between 1951 and 1955 built The Cunningham, an American sports car. For his cumulative motorsport accomplishments, Cunningham appeared on the cover of Time magazine in April 1954, and, during 1948 and 1949, membership in SCCA nearly doubled each year. Stock car racing. Today, stock car racing ranks as one of the nation’s most popular spectator sports. During Prohibition days, stock automobiles rolled off the production lines of Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors. A few of these cars that arrived in the mountainous parts of the Southeast underwent significant modifications. Carefully adjusted suspensions and shock absorbers enabled haulers of illegal moonshine to safely speed along windy mountain roads. Such alterations became something of a craft, and informal backroad racing offered a way of comparing equipment and driving skills. From the 1900s to the 1930s, Daytona Beach, Florida, became known as a place to try to break land speed records, with numerous world records being established there. In 1935, however, these speed tests were moved to Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats, an area with a more consistent surface and less congestion. Daytona Beach officials,


Motorsports | 487 concerned about the loss of tourist trade, asked Sig Haugdahl (1891–1970), a local racer, to organize and promote a race for street-legal sedans on the hard-packed sand course. On March 8, 1936, drivers took the wheels of cars similar to those that carried moonshine, and the event receives credit as the first stock car race. William “Bill” France (1909–1992), a mechanic and racing driver, placed fifth at Daytona and in 1938 assumed management of the beach races. Fourteen more such races were held before the United States entered World War II. After the war, France decided to concentrate on promoting racing instead of driving and, on February 21, 1948, formed a family-owned and operated business to be called the National Association for Stock Car Automobile Racing (NASCAR). The organization, still active and successful today, set out to schedule, sanction, and govern qualifying and championship auto racing events, a focus that has remained with NASCAR ever since. NASCAR’s first official season ran from February through November 1948 and consisted of 52 modified races. Fords, enhanced for racing, held first place positions in all of these events, and three drivers emerged as the top contenders, winning more than half of the events—Truman Fontell “Fonty” Flock (1921–1972) captured 15 of the races, Robert “Red” Byron (1915–1960) won 11, and Curtis Turner (1924–1970) collected 7 victories. For NASCAR’s second season, France arranged eight races using cars that the general public actually drove every day. Called the Strictly Stock Race—today known as the Sprint Cup Series—the inaugural event took place on June 19, 1949, in Charlotte, North Carolina, before a crowd of 13,000, and included one female driver, Sara Christian (1918–1980), among the first women to compete professionally in racing. At one point in the race, Christian let Bob Flock (1918–1964) finish in her car when his engine quit. In a July 1949 race, Louise Smith (1916–2000) and Ethel Mobley (1920–1984), joined Christian. She placed 18th, Mobley came in 11th, and Smith rolled her car. In addition to having winners for each race, France devised a point system for determining a season’s champion. In 1949, and until 1967, prize money and finishes determined the points won. A graduated system awarded 10 points for first place, 9 for second, and so on; he then multiplied scores by a percentage of the race purse. On this basis, for the 1949 season, Red Byron became the champion with 842 points. His earnings for the season hit a total of $5,800 (almost $52,500 in 2008 dollars). Midget auto racing. Midget cars first appeared as racers in 1932. Smaller than the big racing models seen at major fairgrounds and the Indy 500, they were often homebuilt machines. Because of their size, they could be raced at small facilities such as the Bronx Coliseum in New York City, baseball diamonds, football fields, or playgrounds across the country. These neighborhood events introduced automobile racing to a larger public. Early in the history of midget auto racing in the United States, four groups organized—the Badger Midget Auto Racing Association (1936), the American Racing Drivers Club (1939), the Rocky Mountain Midget Racing Association (1940), and the Bay Cities Racing Association (1942). These associations represented drivers and car owners when dealing with tracks and promoters.


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Midget auto contests, considered a good starting point for those wanting to participate in stock car racing, offered a place to test and strengthen driving skills. Some drivers eventually abandoned midget racing for big-car events, while others participated in more than one motorsport. For example, Bill Schindler (1909–1952), known as Bronco Bill, began racing in 1931 in a sprint car, a high-powered vehicle designed primarily for running on a short oval or circular dirt or paved track. He moved from a sprint car to midgets, frequently racing daily at tracks up and down the East Coast. Over the course of his career, he won more midget races than any competitor and held the ARDC Midget-Car Season Championship for four years: 1940, 1945, 1946, and 1948. Motorcycle races. The Hendee Manufacturing Company in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, today known as the Indian Motorcycle Company, produced its first bike in 1902, followed by Harley-Davidson in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1903. The HarleyDavidson bike, built to be a racer, won its first race in Chicago in 1905. By 1949, riders on Harley-Davidsons won 19 of 24 national championship events, clearly differentiating the brand from its competitors. The Federation of American Motorcyclists, formed in 1903, sanctioned early races and kept event records. The group folded in 1919 to be replaced by the American Motorcycle Association in 1923. A few of the events and their winners quickly gained prominence in the sporting world. Motorcycle sales had increased during the Great Depression, a time when many could not afford a car, and this provided decent-sized audiences for motorcycle racers and racing spectators during the 1940s. The Daytona 200, launched in 1937 as the country’s first major motorcycle road race, shared a 3.2-mile stretch of beach with stock car races and attracted drivers from both the United States and Canada. Americans won each year, except for Billy Mathews (1912–1980),a Canadian riding a British Norton motorcycle in 1941, the last year for the race because of World War II. When the Daytona 200 returned in 1947, Bill France, in addition to his stock car racing responsibilities, managed and promoted this race. The event drew 184 racers. John Spiegelhoff (active 1930s and 1940s) won that first year, and Floyd Emde (1919– 1994) took the honors in 1948, both on Indian bikes. Dick Klamfoth (b. 1928), riding a Norton, took the honors in 1949. By then, the track had been expanded to stretch for 4.1 miles. In addition to the Daytona races, other categories of motorcycle competitions were created in the 1940s. The Langhorne (Pennsylvania) 100 Mile National offers a speedway event that takes place on a flat oval dirt track. The Pacific Coast TT race uses a time trial format on an oval track with a single jump followed by a right hand turn. Motocross events, the equivalent of road racing, run on a closed-circuit surface such as sand, mud, or grass. All of these variations have proved popular over the years, and both local and national events have grown in numbers. Speedboat racing (also motorboat, powerboat, or hydroplane racing). Competition among the pilots (few use the term “driver” for boats) of motor-powered vessels dates back to the early 1900s. The events can consist of contests among two or more pilots and their boats or solo runs to challenge established speed records. Participants in motorboat racing tend to favor operating their powerful machines at high speeds. Many also take pleasure in building, maintaining, and improving engines and other equipment.


Motorsports | 489 The sport can also be enjoyed by onlookers, and, during the 1940s, yachts frequently formed a substantial spectator fleet. Representatives of yacht clubs in the Northeast region of the United States formed the American Power Boat Association (APBA) in 1903 to serve as a racing organization for enthusiasts. It held its first challenge cup race, known as the Gold Cup, in 1904 on the Hudson River in New York. In the following years, this annual event was held in other localities, and each year’s winners could defend their victories on home waters. By 1940, APBA also sponsored a number of races leading to the Gold Cup. Various yacht clubs offered regattas and heats featuring speedboat and hydroplane racing, giving potential Gold Cup entrants practice events. Even though the United States was not officially at war in the summer of 1941, only one boat entered, My Sin, piloted by owner Zalmon “Guy” Simmons Jr. (active 1920s to 1940s). Officials awarded Simmons the trophy after he ran one solitary heat. No events were held for the years 1942 through 1945. In the postwar period, a record number of regattas and races drew entries and spectators that exceeded prewar statistics. Detroit hosted the 1946 Gold Cup, the first major motorboat event following the war, with a record 22 boats entering. The 1941 winner, My Sin, reappeared. But by then, popular bandleader Guy Lombardo (1902–1977) owned and piloted it, and he renamed it Tempo VI. Lombardo came in first, winning the race with a speed of 70.890 miles per hour, which bettered a 26-year-old record of 70.412 miles per hour held by motorboat builder and racer Garfield “Gar” Wood (1880–1971). Lombardo, a speedboat aficionado and well-known in racing circles, won a number of official and unofficial events until 1953 and his retirement. He featured prominently in another popular competition, the President’s Cup, held annually on the Potomac River in Washington, DC. In 1946, with President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) watching from the deck of a navy day cruiser, 28-year-old Dan Foster (b. 1916), who perfected his racing skills as the pilot of a Lockheed P-38 fighter plane during World War II, took the event in Miss Great Lakes with Lombardo coming in second. Foster also won the Gold Cup piloting the same boat in 1948. Speedboat racing in its early days could only be afforded by the wealthy, with many of the names of boat owners found in the Social Register; some served as the pilot in races, others hired experienced hands to operate the boat. In June 1948, a motorboat race running from Albany, New York, to a point near where 72nd Street in New York City comes close to the Hudson River, boasted a record fleet of around 200, with participants from as far away as California. A number of enthusiastic male owners entered, but the event also included a grandmother and a 15-year-old, both from Ohio. Six months later at the National Motor Boat Show held in New York, 238 exhibits attracted record crowds and rang up more than $5 million in sales (over $45 million in contemporary dollars), with some powerboats selling for as low as $3,000 (approximately $27,000 in 2008 dollars). A speedboat devotee no longer needed to be wealthy to own a powerful boat and participate in racing. Motorsports as a recreational and competitive activity gained prominence during the 1940s, especially after World War II. NASCAR races and the Watkins Glen Grand Prix attracted drivers from all over the United States as well as other countries. Many


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drivers entered automobile racing of one form or another as midget car drivers before moving on to stock car racing and the bigger races, such as the Indianapolis 500. Records were broken only to be broken again, although a few held for several years. After World War II, more and more tracks appeared coast to coast, paving the way for expanded automobile racing opportunities such as drag racing, cross-country, hill climbs, and vintage sport cars. Powerboat events likewise grew in numbers and popularity. Advancements in technology and design constantly increased speed possibilities and influenced all motorsports—cars, motorcycles, and boats—well after the 1940s. See also: Design; Hot Rods and Drag Racing; Leisure and Recreation; Skating (Roller); Television Selected Reading Golenbock, Peter. American Zoom: Stock Car Racing—from the Dirt Tracks to Daytona. New York: Macmillan, 1993. Libby, Bill. Great American Race Drivers. New York: Cowles Book Company, 1970. Motorsports. New York Times, January 12, 1941; August 16, 1941; December 21, 1941; May 9, 1942; July 4, 1942; August 18, 1946; June 29, 1947; June 13, 1948; October 3, 1948; January 9, 1949; September 18, 1949. www.proquest.com

MOVIES Fighting in Europe and Asia may have embroiled other nations in war, but the United States basked in a false peace in 1940. The Great Depression had come and mostly gone, industry boomed (although defense-related manufactures accounted for much of that prosperity), and the spectacular New York World’s Fair promised “The World of Tomorrow.” Hollywood, the nation’s grand purveyor of dreams, turned out hundreds of films that entertained, relaxed, thrilled, created a chuckle or two, widened the eyes, or brought a tear and generally gave 1940 a feel, a look, of normalcy—or what the studios that created the films deemed normalcy. Hollywood moved into the 1940s a company town—a locale where large production studios dictated what movie would be made, what crews would work, what directors would direct, what performers would star, what wages would be paid, and a myriad of other “whats” that ultimately determined what the public would see. The “Big Five” studios dominated the business, consisting of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (usually known as MGM), Paramount, RKO (never known as Radio-Keith-Orpheum, its original organizers), Twentieth Century-Fox, and Warner Bros. The “Little Three” followed— Columbia, Universal, and United Artists—and stood just below the Big Five in power, wealth, and importance. Finally, a host of smaller studios—such as Colony, Lippert Pictures, Metropolitan Pictures, Monogram (and its subsidiary Allied Artists), Producers Distributing Corporation (succeeded by the similarly named Producers Releasing Corporation, or PRC), Republic Pictures, Screen Guild, Victory, and many others—also released commercial films, but they lacked the size and clout exercised by their larger counterparts. These studios carried the nickname “Poverty Row”; they seldom produced the highly publicized


Movies | 491 first-run hits, or A pictures, but instead filled out a double bill with cheaper, less important B movies. They nonetheless exercised control over their employees and productions, although not as rigidly as the larger operations. The large studios additionally practiced what economists call vertical integration, whereby they not only owned their films, they also owned the distributors of the movies, and, in many cases, the theaters where they were shown. This explains the many glittering Paramounts, Warners, Foxes, and so on that could be found in major cities across the nation, the property of those studios whose names they bore in neon. Eventually, vertical integration would be challenged in the courts, with lawyers arguing that controlling all aspects of production, right down to owning the theaters, violated antitrust statutes. The arguments carried to the Supreme Court, which in 1948 ruled that vertical integration constituted a monopoly and must be ended, a decision that changed Hollywood profoundly and led to many upheavals in the movie business during the 1950s and beyond. For the 1940s, however, the old practices more or less remained in place until the end of the decade. Statistics show that the movie capital’s major studios released over 350 commercial, feature-length films in 1940; that number had dropped to some 230 in 1945, but the decrease came about because of the war and general belt tightening throughout the entertainment industry. By 1950, output had risen again, but just slightly, to approximately 265 pictures annually. Attendance, one indicator of the medium’s health, remained strong throughout the period. The Great Depression had wreaked havoc on ticket buyers, so that in the mid1930s only about 40 percent of the population, or 49 million people, went to the movies with any regularity. By 1940 and improved economic times, the numbers had risen sharply, with some 61 million people going to theaters weekly, or almost half the population of 132 million. It has also been estimated that, on any given night during the conflict, over half a million servicemen were watching a movie somewhere. At the end of hostilities in 1945, in excess of 85 million moviegoers— or 62 percent of all Americans—were purchasing tickets each and every week. When the veterans began to return home in the months following the war, the total reached an all-time high in 1946; estimates suggest that 87 million people a week saw the latest Hollywood offerings. But that year also marked a turning point; thereafter, attendance began a slow but steady decline. By the end of the decade, about 59 million people, or approximately 39 percent of a population of some 151 million, attended the movies weekly, certainly a substantial total but a deceptive one. Movie attendance dropped not just in numbers but, more importantly, as a percentage of the population. After 1950, the postwar baby boom caused the population to rise sharply, but the figures showing how many people went to the movies continued to drop, especially with the competition brought about by television. For the reminder of the 20th century, the decline would continue, never again approaching the figures achieved in the period 1940 to 1949. The postwar years were not kind to the industry. Labor troubles struck the studios in 1946, and antitrust action by the courts, inflationary pay raises, and heavy overseas taxation took their economic toll. To cut expenses, most of the studios pared their bloated payrolls, an action that put thousands out of work. Several of the smaller studios still could not make ends meet and folded, and others merged with their former competitors.


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Toward the end of the decade, amid mounting anti-Communist hysteria, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), a committee within the U.S. House of Representatives, held investigative hearings on the movie industry. In the charged political atmosphere of the time, members sought to find evidence of Communist infiltration of the film industry, both among employees working for studios and in the content of commercial films. Out of these hearings came the practice of blacklisting suspected Communists and the creation of a list of scapegoats, the so-called Hollywood Ten. In later years, most of the blacklisted individuals cleared their names but at great personal and professional expense. For some who died, the reprieves came too late, and many others never resumed their careers in filmmaking. But with hundreds of productions and millions of people attending them throughout the 1940s, most leaders in the film industry tended to disregard any warning signs that things might change. Instead, Hollywood saw to it that its audience could choose from a wide variety of features. Naturally, from 1942 until 1945, the war preoccupied everyone, and the studios created many pictures devoted to the conflict. But movies also provide escapism, and so when people scanned the “what’s showing” section of their newspapers or surveyed the marquees of neighborhood theaters, they could likely find something that offered a respite from the headlines of the day. Other factors also enter into any discussion of motion pictures and the 1940s. An influx of talented European directors influenced both the content and techniques of the era’s movies, frequently giving them a darker, more mature tone, especially in the realm of those dealing with criminals. Following World War I, a number began immigrating to the United States, driven from their home countries by repression and turmoil. The 1930s saw men like Fritz Lang (Vienna, 1890–1976), Otto Preminger (Vienna, 1906–1986), and Billy Wilder (Sucha, Austria, 1906–2002) establish themselves in Hollywood and begin to leave their mark on a succession of distinguished films. Lang directed pictures like Western Union (1941), Ministry of Fear (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944), and Scarlet Street (1945), whereas Preminger claimed Laura (1944), Fallen Angel (1945), Forever Amber (1947), and The Fan (1949). Wilder took credit for the classic Double Indemnity (1944) along with The Lost Weekend (1945), A Foreign Affair (1948), and many others. The decade also welcomed a bevy of fresh stars making their debuts, both during and after the war. New names and faces like Alan Ladd (1913–1964), Veronica Lake (1919–1973), Robert Mitchum (1917–1997), Jane Russell (b. 1921), Robert Walker (1918–1951), Esther Williams (b. 1921), and countless others brightened screens around the country. They may not have entirely displaced the established stars from the 1930s—leading ladies and men like Bette Davis (1908–1989), Clark Gable (1901– 1960), Cary Grant (1904–1986), and Myrna Loy (1905–1993)—who still enjoyed countless good roles throughout the 1940s and possessed undeniable box office appeal, but they announced the arrival of a new generation of movie actors ready to challenge any and all for the audience’s favor. After 1945 and the return of peace, no one wanted cinematic reminders of the recent conflict, so movies about the war and combat virtually disappeared. In their place came a spate of pictures dealing with the supposed evils of Communism and the growing tensions associated with a new threat to democracy, the Cold War. But these motion


Murphy, Audie | 493 pictures filled a narrow niche, and more traditional categories, such as love and romance or cowboys and Indians, overshadowed them. Audiences wanted entertainment, and the industry complied. Few science fiction films, traditional standbys on the Hollywood menu, received production during the 1940s. A handful—One Million B.C. (1940), Doctor Cyclops (1940), The Invisible Woman (1940), The Invisible Man Returns (1940), Beginning or the End (1947, dealing with the development of the atomic bomb)—constitute the best-known titles, a far cry from either the 1930s or the 1950s; perhaps the many movies that depicted the horrors of World War II, along with all the advanced technology that emerged from the conflict, served as adequate substitutes for the category. For ease in reading, the broad topic area of movies has been broken into the period’s principal film genres, and each receives separate treatment. The following 13 categories can be found alphabetically within the pages of this encyclopedia: 1.

Cartoons (Film)

2.

Children’s Films

3.

Comedies (Film)

4.

Costume and Spectacle Films

5.

Crime and Mystery Films

6.

Drama (Film)

7.

Film Noir

8.

Horror and Thriller Films

9.

Musicals (Film)

10.

Political and Propaganda Films

11.

Serial Films

12.

War Films

13.

Westerns (Film)

See also: Best Years of Our Lives, The (William Wyler); Casablanca (Michael Curtiz); Citizen Kane (Orson Welles); It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra) Selected Reading Doherty, Thomas. Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. McLaughlin, Robert L., and Sally E. Perry. We’ll Always Have the Movies: American Cinema during World War II. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006. Muller, Jurgen. Movies of the 40s. Cologne, Germany: Taschen, 2005. Thomas, Tony. The Films of the Forties. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1975.

MURPHY, AUDIE The most decorated U.S. soldier of World War II, Audie Murphy (1924–1971), hardly seemed the type to become a bona fide combat hero. Born into a poor Texas farming


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family, he became a rifle sharpshooter, killing small game for his impoverished family. Following the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, he soon tried to enlist, but the military had to reject him on the basis of age. In June 1942, after altering his birth certificate so as to appear 18, he tried again, first with the U.S. Marines, and then with U.S. Army parachute forces. They both turned him down for physical reasons. Shy, small (five feet, five inches), slight of build (approximately 110 pounds), and babyfaced, no one foresaw his eventual ferocity on the battlefield. The infantry branch of the army, not quite as selective as some others at the time, accepted his enlistment. He went through basic and advanced infantry training and in early 1943 received assignment to North Africa with the Third Infantry Division. His unit participated in the liberation of Sicily in the summer of 1943, where he received his initiation into combat. He demonstrated his marksmanship by killing two escaping Italian officers mounted on horseback. Following the Sicilian campaign, Murphy’s division went on to mainland Italy, starting at Salerno. Various encounters with German forces earned him promotion to sergeant as well as commendations. From Italy, Murphy and his troops participated in the invasion of southern France, where he again encountered the foe numerous times. In one engagement, Murphy single-handedly took out a machine gun nest and even turned the weapon on the Germans. For this, he received the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest medal awarded by the U.S. military. More fighting won him more medals, plus a battlefield commission to second lieutenant. A sniper’s bullet put Murphy in a field hospital for several weeks in the winter of 1944, but he returned to active duty in January 1945. His company, reduced to just a fraction of its original strength, encountered German resistance at Holtzwihr, a small village in eastern France near the Swiss border. Murphy ordered his soldiers to pull back in the face of superior forces, and he then proceeded to hold off the Germans, first with rifle fire, and then by operating the machine gun atop an abandoned tank. During this time, he was wounded in the leg but kept up his murderous fire. Out of ammunition, he rejoined his troops and rallied them in a counter attack that resulted in driving off the larger German force. For this heroic action, the army awarded Murphy the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military honor. He also received a promotion to first lieutenant and removal from the front lines. In all, Audie Murphy participated in campaigns in Sicily, Italy, France, and Germany. Records credit him with killing more than 225 Germans. He received over 30 medals from the United States plus several from France and Belgium. He earned every decoration the nation could offer—in addition to the aforementioned medals, he wore the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, the Oak Leaf Cluster, and three Purple Hearts for his combat wounds. He achieved all this before he had turned 21. Murphy returned to the States in the summer of 1945 and received his service discharge in August. All of his honors got him on the cover of Life magazine in July 1945, an event that would influence his subsequent career path. Famed movie actor James Cagney (1899–1986) noted the Life cover with the youthful-looking Murphy on it and invited him to Hollywood for a screen test. Although the results did not look promising, Murphy stayed on and eventually gained a small role in Beyond Glory, a 1948 court-martial drama starring Alan Ladd (1913–1963). An inauspicious start, but


Musicals (Film) | 495 it earned him a contract with Universal Pictures and another role in Texas, Brooklyn and Heaven, a 1948 comedy in which he plays a copy boy. The following year proved a breakthrough for the young actor. The studio cast him in the lead for Bad Boy (1949; also known as The Story of Danny Lester). A film about a young man who gets into trouble, Murphy depicts a juvenile delinquent well, presaging a rash of such movies in the years following. Along with a string of B Westerns, 33 in all, his professional career peaked in the early 1950s with an adaptation of Stephen Crane’s (1871–1900) novel The Red Badge of Courage (written in 1895; adapted for film in 1951) and a movie version of his 1949 autobiography, To Hell and Back, which had done well, spending 14 weeks on best seller lists. The latter picture, a rousing story, drew large audiences following its 1955 release and grossed several million dollars for the studio. Together, book and movie acquainted many people who did not know about Murphy’s superlative war record. He eventually appeared in a total of 44 feature films. The iconic American fighting man of World War II, Audie Murphy honored all soldiers with his bravery under fire. His distinguished service, however, came at considerable personal cost. A victim of what officials then called battle fatigue—a term more recently replaced by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—Murphy campaigned vigorously for adequate medical and psychological coverage for veterans throughout the postwar era. See also: Best Sellers (Books); Juvenile Delinquency; War Films; Westerns (Film) Selected Reading Gossett, Sue. The Films and Career of Audie Murphy. Madison, NC: Empire, 1996. Murphy, Audie. To Hell and Back. New York: Viking, 1949.

MUSICALS (FILM) The development of sound movies in the late 1920s added a new dimension to film production. Instead of relying on only the visual aspect of cinema, directors could integrate aural elements previously unavailable to them. The age of the movie musical had arrived. By the 1940s, most of the mechanical problems presented by this new technology— proper placement of microphones, capturing individual voices in crowd scenes, accurate reproduction of sounds, and so on—had been overcome, and good storytelling and competent acting had again become primary concerns. In addition, the Hollywood studios had, during the 1930s, created a pantheon of movie stars associated almost exclusively with musicals. Singing and dancing greats like Fred Astaire (1899–1987), Bing Crosby (1903–1977), Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992), Alice Faye (1915–1998), Judy Garland (1922–1969), Al Jolson (1886–1950), Dick Powell (1904–1963), Eleanor Powell (1912–1982), and Ginger Rogers (1911–1995) had become household names, crooning and cavorting in one memorable musical after another. A new galaxy of stars waited in the wings, ready for the 1940s. Along with those individuals mentioned above, people like Cyd Charisse (b. 1921), Betty Grable


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(1916–1973), Rita Hayworth (1918–1987), Gene Kelly (1912–1996), Ann Miller (1923–2004), Carmen Miranda (1909–1955), Donald O’Connor (1925–2003), Frank Sinatra (1915–1998), Vera-Ellen (1921–1981), and Esther Williams (b. 1921), plus two particularly famous singing cowboys, Gene Autry (1907–1998) and Roy Rogers (1911–1998), graced countless motion pictures both during World War II and the postwar period. With such an array of talent, small wonder that the Hollywood musical remained a popular favorite, attracting audiences of all ages. Even with the threat of war hanging heavy over the nation, the escapist pleasures of screen music and dance kept such gloomy thoughts at bay when the decade opened. Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, and George Murphy (1902–1992), another fine hoofer from the era, tap their way across some elaborate MGM sets in Broadway Melody of 1940, while a mostly Cole Porter (1891–1964) score provides a lovely backdrop. Made in late 1939 but not released until February 1940, the movie dishes up glamour and romance, a perfect recipe for that tense period. Even the still-youthful movie veterans Judy Garland (only 18 in 1940) and Mickey Rooney (b. 1920) brighten the screen with Strike Up the Band, a loose but light-hearted adaptation of George and Ira Gershwin’s (1898–1937 and 1896–1983, respectively) 1927 Broadway hit of the same name. Garland and Rooney came right back in 1941 with Babes on Broadway, another breathless romp through show business from the popular pair. That Night in Rio (April 1941) and Week-End in Havana (October 1941) brought together Alice Faye and Carmen Miranda, the latter famous for her tutti-frutti hats, conglomerations of tropical fruits that defy gravity. Both pictures qualify as mindless fluff, but their close release dates suggest the popularity the two actresses enjoyed then—and how studios wasted no time in getting out movies that might have box office potential. In the spring of 1942, and with the nation struggling in the war, Paramount released Holiday Inn, a cheerful film that features Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. A pleasant diversion from the grim headlines, its two debonair stars glide effortlessly through the story. Since the plot involves an inn that opens only for major holidays, the memorable Irving Berlin (1888–1999) score introduces tunes that use that theme, such as “Easter Parade” (written in 1933), “Let’s Say It with Fire Crackers,” “Happy Holidays,” and “White Christmas.” Although the composer had written the song earlier for a neverreleased movie, no one knew it, and so Holiday Inn had the unique honor of launching what would become the most popular single recording of the 20th century. It so impressed the public that Paramount produced a second version in 1954, teaming Crosby with Danny Kaye (1913–1987) instead of Fred Astaire, and wisely titling the remake White Christmas. As the country recovered from the initial shock of Pearl Harbor, a slight change in movie content rippled through Hollywood, one that can be seen in musical titles, if nothing else. The storylines may still involve romance and fluff, but the pictures suggest more topical concerns: The Fleet’s In, Star Spangled Rhythm, True to the Army, Yankee Doodle Dandy (all 1942), down through Anchors Aweigh in 1945 and the return to peace. Uniforms and patriotism might have marked many of the wartime musicals, but the music and dancing remained true to the cause of entertainment. Thus, Stage Door Canteen (1943; United Artists) and Hollywood Canteen (1944; Warner Bros.) ostensibly honor the good works done by show people at the New York


Musicals (Film) | 497 TABLE 70. Year

Representative Film Musicals, 1940–1949 Film Titles

Stars

1940

Broadway Melody of 1940 Dance, Girl, Dance Down Argentine Way If I Had My Way Lillian Russell Little Nellie Kelly Rhythm on the River Second Chorus Strike Up the Band Tin Pan Alley

Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell Maureen O’Hara, Lucille Ball Betty Grable, Carmen Miranda Bing Crosby, Gloria Jean Alice Faye, Henry Fonda Judy Garland, George Murphy Bing Crosby, Mary Martin Fred Astaire, Paulette Goddard Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney Alice Faye, Betty Grable

1941

Babes on Broadway Birth of the Blues Lady Be Good Louisiana Purchase Moon Over Miami Sun Valley Serenade That Night in Rio Week-End in Havana You’ll Never Get Rich Ziegfeld Girl

Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney Bing Crosby, Mary Martin Eleanor Powell, Robert Young Bob Hope, Victor Moore Betty Grable, Don Ameche Sonja Henie, Glenn Miller Alice Faye, Carmen Miranda Alice Faye, Carmen Miranda Fred Astaire Rita Hayworth James Stewart, Judy Garland

1942

Broadway The Fleet’s In For Me and My Gal Holiday Inn My Sister Eileen Orchestra Wives Star Spangled Rhythm True to the Army Yankee Doodle Dandy You Were Never Lovelier

George Raft, Pat O’Brien Dorothy Lamour, Betty Hutton Judy Garland, Gene Kelly Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire Rosalind Russell, Janet Blair George Montgomery, Glenn Miller Victor Moore, Betty Hutton Ann Miller, Judy Canova James Cagney, Walter Huston Fred Astaire, Rita Hayworth

1943

Cabin in the Sky Dixie Du Barry Was a Lady The Gang’s All Here Girl Crazy Stage Door Canteen Stormy Weather Thank Your Lucky Stars This Is the Army Thousands Cheer

Ethel Waters, Lena Horne Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour Red Skelton, Lucille Ball Alice Faye, Carmen Miranda Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland Cheryl Walker, William Terry Lena Horne, Cab Calloway Eddie Cantor, Dinah Shore George Murphy, Joan Leslie Gene Kelly, Kathryn Grayson

1944

And the Angels Sing Follow the Boys Four Jills in a Jeep Going My Way

Dorothy Lamour, Betty Hutton George Raft, Jeanette MacDonald Kay Francis, Martha Raye Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald (continued)


498

| Musicals (Film) TABLE 70. Year


Stars

Hollywood Canteen Irish Eyes Are Smiling

Bette Davis, John Garfield Dick Haymes, Monty Woolley

1944

Lady in the Dark Meet Me in St. Louis Pin Up Girl

Ginger Rogers, Ray Milland Judy Garland, Margaret O’Brien Betty Grable, Martha Raye

1945

Anchors Aweigh The Bells of St. Mary’s Diamond Horseshoe The Dolly Sisters Rhapsody in Blue A Song to Remember State Fair Tonight and Every Night Weekend at the Waldorf Wonder Man

Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra Bing Crosby, Ingrid Bergman Betty Grable, Dick Haymes Betty Grable, June Haver Robert Alda, Joan Leslie Cornel Wilde, Merle Oberon Jeanne Crain, Dick Haymes Rita Hayworth, Janet Blair Ginger Rogers, Lana Turner Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo

1946

Blue Skies Centennial Summer Easy to Wed The Harvey Girls The Jolson Story Night and Day People Are Funny Swing Parade of 1946 Three Little Girls in Blue Ziegfeld Follies

Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire Jeanne Crain, Cornel Wilde Esther Williams, Van Johnson Judy Garland, Ray Bolger Larry Parks, Evelyn Keyes Cary Grant, Monty Woolley Jack Haley, Rudy Vallee Gale Storm, Phil Regan Vera-Ellen, June Haver, Vivian Blaine William Powell, Fred Astaire

1947

Copacabana Down to Earth The Fabulous Dorseys Good News Hit Parade of 1947 I’ll Be Yours I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now Mother Wore Tights Variety Girl Welcome Stranger

Groucho Marx, Carmen Miranda Rita Hayworth, Larry Parks Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey June Allyson, Peter Lawford Eddie Albert, Constance Moore Deanna Durbin, Tom Drake June Haver, Mark Stevens Betty Grable, Dan Dailey Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, many others Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald

1948

A Date with Judy Easter Parade The Emperor Waltz On an Island with You The Pirate The Red Shoes Romance on the High Seas A Song Is Born When My Baby Smiles at Me Words and Music

Jane Powell, Elizabeth Taylor Fred Astaire, Judy Garland Bing Crosby, Joan Fontaine Esther Williams, Peter Lawford Gene Kelly, Judy Garland Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook Doris Day, Jack Carson Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo Betty Grable, Dan Dailey Mickey Rooney, Tom Drake


Musicals (Film) | 499 Year

Film Titles

Stars

1949

The Barkleys of Broadway In the Good Old Summertime It’s a Great Feeling Jolson Sings Again Look for the Silver Lining

Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers Judy Garland, Van Johnson Doris Day, Dennis Morgan Larry Parks, Barbara Hale June Haver, Ray Bolger

1949

My Dream Is Yours Neptune’s Daughter Oh, You Beautiful Doll On the Town Red, Hot and Blue

Doris Day, Jack Carson Esther Williams, Red Skelton June Haver, Mark Stevens Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra Betty Hutton, Victor Mature

and Los Angeles clubs run by the USO (United Service Organizations) to serve the troops as they passed through these cities, but they also celebrate the stars themselves, those performers who took time out to mingle with anxious soldiers and sailors about to embark for foreign shores. Dozens of big names appear in the films and delivered free publicity for the two studios that had the players under contract and put them into these extravaganzas. With the surrender of the Axis powers in 1945, the movie industry quickly shed its patriotic trappings and went back to nontopical entertainment. In the area of musicals, however, a touch of nostalgia, a return to the good old days before world wars, became a popular theme. Centennial Summer (1946) goes back to 1876 and the country’s 100th birthday, whereas Mother Wore Tights (1947) resurrects vaudeville from the turn of the century. In fact, the popularity of Mother Wore Tights caused Twentieth CenturyFox to reunite the two leads, Betty Grable and Dan Dailey (1913–1978), for another exercise in nostalgia, When My Baby Smiles at Me (1948). Instead of vaudeville, the plot utilizes a close relative, burlesque. Both films incorporate much early popular music into their scores. The decade ended by continuing a musical exploration of the past, those innocent years before the United States became a world power and had to contend with a new kind of conflict, namely the Cold War. Trifles like In the Good Old Summertime, Look for the Silver Lining, and Oh, You Beautiful Doll (all 1949) boasted sentimental scores containing chestnuts from yesteryear, and audiences much preferred them to anything raucous or modern. One of the best of this kind, The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), brought back to the screen a dance partnership that millions had loved during the 1930s: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. In a series of nine musicals the two made between 1933 (Flying Down to Rio) and 1939 (The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle), the duo set a virtually unmatched standard of dancing for film. They had worked for RKO in the 1930s, but MGM managed to land them The Barkleys of Broadway. Another exercise in nostalgia, this time on two levels—the biographical story of a dance team from before World War I and the reunion of Astaire and Rogers after an absence of 10 years, the motion picture clearly fits the mood and setting of so many musicals produced during the postwar era. Things would change but not until the 1950s.


500

| Musicals (Film)

The 1940s proved a fruitful decade for Hollywood musicals. The list above, hardly inclusive, leaves out dozens of pictures made on the cheap by small studios and cast largely with unknowns. They usually had short runs, made little money, and then disappeared. The quality musicals released by the major studios during the decade, however, have endured remarkably well and continue to be well received by critics and the moviegoing public alike. See also: Broadway Shows (Musicals); Canteens; Comedies (Film); Costume and Spectacle Films; Shore, Dinah; Smith, Kate; Songwriters and Lyricists; Westerns (Film) Selected Reading Jones, John Bush. The Songs that Fought the War: Popular Music and the Home Front, 1939–1945. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2006. Smith, Kathleen E. R. God Bless America: Tin Pan Alley Goes to War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003. Springer, John. All Talking! All Singing! All Dancing! Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1966. Young, William H., and Nancy K. Young. American Music through History: The World War II Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005.


N

NEWSPAPERS Americans have traditionally relished theirs newspapers, from big-city dailies to country weeklies. Possessed of a colorful history that dates back to the Revolutionary days of the late 18th century and runs to the Roaring Twenties, newspapers ruled supreme and functioned as the nation’s primary mass medium. With the onset of the 1930s, however, two challengers—radio, and to a lesser degree, movies—appeared, giving the press its first real competition. Radio probably did more damage to the newspaper business than did either the Great Depression or World War II. Newspapers had traditionally been the average citizen’s first choice for news, but radios were becoming omnipresent, a ready source for late-breaking stories. Plus radio, with its mix of news, sports, entertainment, and music, took up an increasing portion of advertising revenue—and unlike a daily paper, it came into homes for free. Radio’s popularity skyrocketed during the 1930s, with about two-thirds of American homes possessing at least one receiver in 1935 to over 89 percent by 1945 and 95 percent by 1950. Unfortunately for the newspaper industry, no commensurate gains can be found. Many newspaper publishers therefore acquired radio stations as a way to stay profitable. They may have viewed their electronic rival with some disdain, but they also saw it as a surefire moneymaker and invested in stations accordingly. During the 1940s, newspaper interests owned, or were affiliated with, several hundred broadcast stations. Readership and circulation, however, remained strong during the Depression decade and even displayed increases during that difficult economic time, although some papers fell by the wayside. The public stayed hungry for news throughout World War II, and newspapers did their best to satisfy it; not until the late 1940s did a new challenger— television—make its debut, but it took time to establish this electronic medium in homes, and so the decade closed with newspapers maintaining a seemingly unbeatable lead over any competition. 501


502

| Newspapers

In reality, U.S. newspapers had commenced a long, slow 20th-century decline that first became noticeable during the 1920s. At the beginning of the 1930s, the nation boasted 1,942 daily newspapers, down from some 2,500 in the 1920s. With the onset of the 1940s, the figure had fallen to 1,878 dailies, a loss of 64 more papers. And when the decade drew to a close, 1,772 papers continued daily publication schedules, revealing that 106 additional newspapers had ceased publication. So, despite annual population increases, the number of daily newspapers had been steadily decreasing. Some of this loss can be accounted for by mergers or consolidation, and a number of papers went out of business because of the Depression-era economy, a situation that caused advertising revenues, the lifeblood of newspapers, to tumble, bringing about financial failure. In the war years, shortages, rationing, and price controls continued to restrain the economy, which in turn cut newspaper advertising and again put pressures on publishers. But the postwar period (1945–1949) witnessed a return to a robust consumer economy and subsequent advertising increases, but at least some newspapers seemingly ran counter to these events, because a significant number nevertheless closed their offices. Ironically, daily circulation continued an upward climb that had been ongoing throughout the 20th century. By the late 1930s, circulation could be measured at about 41 million papers sold each day. Assuming, in a typical household, that two or three people read a newspaper on a regular basis, that 41 million number jumps to over 100 million, or well over half of the nation’s population of 131.5 million in 1940. By the end of the decade, U.S. newspapers circulated almost 54 million daily copies, 13 million more than 10 years earlier. The country’s population had also climbed, rising to 149 million at decade’s end, so that the proportion of multiple readers remained stable. It can therefore be seen that people found the medium an essential source of news and entertainment. Before drawing conclusions, however, some additional numbers need to be considered. The nation’s 1940 population represented an increase of about 8 million over 1930, or about 7 percent. Between 1940 and 1950, the total jumped another 13 percent, to 149 million. Daily circulation, however, climbed from the aforementioned 41 million copies to 54 million, or a 33 percent increase. Those numbers, good news to publishers at the time, suggested that readership grew faster than the nation’s population, meaning a higher percentage of Americans regularly read newspapers. But the figures proved an aberration, a momentary fluke. Despite their modest gains in circulation during the 1940s, newspapers would, in the long run, reflect a decline. For a point of reference, in 2000, daily circulation stood at approximately 48 million daily copies, or 6 million fewer than a half-century earlier. But the U.S. population had climbed to 292 million, or almost double the 1950 figures. Even if three people read those 48 million papers, they constituted a distinct minority, and the declines have accelerated in the 21st century. In addition, the number of dailies published in 2000 had shrunk to 1,520, or 252 fewer daily newspapers than in 1950, and with no end to this numerical erosion in sight. Despite the momentary bright spot about circulation in the 1940s, other factors struck the U.S. newspaper industry. The country, still suffering the aftereffects of the Great Depression, became mired in World War II and had to endure numerous


Newspapers | 503 hardships. Printing equipment, such as the huge presses required for big-city papers, were difficult to repair given shortages of replacement parts. Newsprint was in limited supply, and the draft took many employees away from their journalism jobs. The Espionage Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act, both statutes dating from 1917 and World War I, remained on the books in 1941, when the nation again went to war. Both acts gave government the right to censor or block publications felt to be dangerous or supportive of enemies during a national crisis. In late 1941, shortly after Pearl Harbor, the War Powers Act gave the White House a sweeping mandate to censor all communication between the United States and other nations, friend or foe, and resulted in the creation of the federal Office of Censorship. In order to control any news deemed detrimental to the war effort, the government in 1942 printed A Code of Wartime Practices for the American Press; although it claimed to be voluntary, most editors and reporters adhered to its restrictions on covering troop movements, casualties, defense production, new technology, and the like. Broadcast journalists also respected its provisions. In a spirit of cooperation, reporters did not write stories on the successful development of radar and ongoing experiments that would lead to the first atomic bomb. Editors similarly hushed information about a host of other defense efforts. Some individuals in the news business might know about a new weapon or the deployment of troops overseas, but they were expected to maintain a discreet silence, and virtually everyone complied. At its height of influence, the Office of Censorship employed over 14,000 people. Most of these workers examined mail and cable communications between the United States and the rest of the world. They also monitored telephone calls. Another federal agency, the Office of War Information (OWI), much larger and focused more on disseminating specific information about the war, complemented the work done by the Office of Censorship. The OWI, through its news bureau, provided press releases to selected reporters, news organizations, news magazines, and related groups. Much of the content contained in its materials could be classified as propaganda, providing a favorable, pro-U.S. interpretation of events, but the OWI frequently served as the only source of information available to reporters. Despite the blanket of censorship that covered the nation during World War II, reporters nonetheless managed to give readers and listeners remarkably full coverage of the conflict throughout its duration. U.S. newspapers and magazines fielded over 500 correspondents abroad, and some, like Ernie Pyle (1900–1945), painted personalized vignettes of life on the front lines, while cartoonist Bill Mauldin (1921–2003) sketched mostly humorous comments from a foot soldier’s point of view. When the war drew to a close in 1945, the government lifted most domestic censorship. But the onset of the Cold War almost immediately thereafter presented new problems for U.S. journalists. Many government officials wanted news reports from Europe to be strongly, even stridently, anti-Communist in tone. The rise of the investigative powers of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in the later 1940s chilled many reporters because they suspected—correctly, time would show—a wave of witch hunts would grip the committee as it sought to find evidence of Communist subversion within the country. These events would not transpire until the early


504

| Newspapers

1950s for the most part, but a climate of fear nonetheless descended on many newspapers; censorship in wartime was understandable, but the Cold War, a war of rumors and innuendo, demanded new responses from a vigilant press. In the world of newspaper publishing, relations between management and labor have been historically frosty, at best. The New Deal policies of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) broadened the rules for collective bargaining, making it easier for employees to enter into contract negotiations, but they also heightened the chances for angry confrontation. The American Newspaper Guild, which was founded in 1933 to improve the bargaining power of employees, started as a small union. But it affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1936 and then with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1937, moves that considerably increased both its influence and membership, and making it the primary labor union responsive to the needs of those working in the newspaper field. For the remainder of the 1930s, guild chapters struck a number of papers for better wages and more equitable hours and labor unrest became the norm. World War II brought about a nationwide no-strike agreement pledge, but in a peaceful 1946, workers forgot the pledge and labor problems became common in many segments of U.S. industry. For its part, the guild made a general minimum wage for newspaper employees a primary goal for the postwar period, one that it achieved in 1954 with about 90 percent of its contracts. The guild asked for a $100-per-week minimum for members; that figure translates to approximately $800 per week in 2008 dollars. Strikes against recalcitrant papers and management soon followed in 1946, a pattern that would continue into the 1950s. Members of sympathetic trade unions (such as pressmen, typesetters, typographers, and teamsters) joined their comrades in picketing selected papers, usually making production and deliveries impossible. The strikes generally ended as victories for the guild, and a series of crippling walkouts throughout the 1950s financially damaged several newspapers. In most cases, however, arbitration won the day. Other forces also conspired to affect newspaper profitability. During the 1920s and 1930s, most cities with populations exceeding 100,000 residents claimed at least 2 rival papers; by 1940, 25 cities had lost that kind of lively competition and had become 1-newspaper towns. Even New York City, the most competitive of newspaper sites and home to many famous newspapers, felt the change. Earlier in the century, it had boasted some 20 competing dailies, but by 1940 the number had fallen to 7. Those places lucky enough to continue having 2 or more papers usually claimed both morning and evening editions, with the majority coming out in the late afternoon or evening. As Table 71 shows, that disparity continued throughout the decade; not until the 1980s did morning editions surpass their evening counterparts both in number and in popularity. In large metropolitan areas, the absence of heavy traffic simplified the distribution of a morning edition, plus advertisers liked the idea of readers perusing bright, fresh ad copy while they planned their shopping day. Unlike most other developed nations, the United States never published a true national newspaper until the rise of USA Today and the Wall Street Journal in the latter years of the 20th century. Most books and many magazines enjoy nationwide distribution, but the vast majority of newspapers can claim at best a limited regional audience.


Newspapers | 505 TABLE 71.

Number and Circulation of U.S. Newspapers Daily Newspapers Morning

Sunday Newspapers Evening

Year

Number

Circulation

Number

Circulation

Number

Circulation

1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950

383 380 377 345 333 338 330 334 328 328 329 322

n.d. 16,114 16.519 17,111 17,078 18,059 19,240 20,546 20,762 21,082 21,005 21,266

1,505 1,498 1,480 1.442 1,421 1,406 1,419 1,429 1,441 1,453 1,451 1,450

n.d. 25,018 25,561 26,264 27,315 27,896 29,144 30,382 30,911 31,203 31,841 32,563

524 525 510 474 467 481 485 497 511 530 546 549

31,519 32,371 33,436 35,294 37,292 37,946 39,680 43,665 43,151 46,308 46,399 46,582

Note: Circulation figures are in thousands; figures as of October 1 of each year. Source: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. Washington, DC: Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975.

In most cases, that means that, while countless people read newspapers, what someone reads in Chicago might differ from the choices an editor makes in San Francisco or New Orleans. National and international stories might be more or less identical, but state and local news would differ, as would local advertisements and features. Given the apprehensions generated by the rise of Nazi Germany and the accompanying threat of a new world war, smaller papers that lacked overseas bureaus immediately felt themselves at a disadvantage. They could ill afford to send correspondents to cities far from their home bases. Thus, news syndicates like the Associated Press (AP) and United Press (UP) enjoyed significant growth. For a subscription fee paid by the papers, they would supply the reporters and detailed stories an individual newspaper could not hope to provide. Although both the AP and the UP trace their beginnings to the late 19th century, not until the World War II era did they come into their own. With more and more national and international news to cover, only these far-flung organizations could consistently file stories for their growing lists of subscribers. Widespread syndication brought about a certain amount of standardization in U.S. newspapers. The syndicated features found in one paper could easily be found in another. This lessened the insularity of small-town dailies, bringing them more into the mainstream of American life. Standardization occurred not just with news stories; comic strips, horoscopes, crossword puzzles, bridge columns, the latest Hollywood gossip, advice columnists, box scores, and financial pages graced the paper because of syndication. Even with the war, some syndicated columnists relied on gossip and celebrity watching for their appeal. Walter Winchell (1897–1972) probably ranks as the most colorful


506

| Newspapers

of this group. Over 1,000 papers in cities a considerable distance from the Great White Way carried his “On Broadway,” a long-running column published from 1924 until 1963. Louella Parsons (1884–1972) and Hedda Hopper (1890 –1966) followed close on Winchell’s heels, at least in popularity during the 1940s. Both women contributed widely syndicated columns that focused almost exclusively on Hollywood and its stars. Their success helped maintain high circulation figures for movie magazines as well, ranging from the purely gossipy Screen Romances to the slightly more serious Silver Screen. In addition to their newspaper work, the two columnists reported over radio. Parsons hosted Hollywood Hotel, a mix of talent and gossip that premiered in 1934 and remained on the air until 1941. Never one to be outdone, Hopper parlayed her fame and influence into the popular Hedda Hopper Show. A 15-minute blend of chatter and celebrities, it began in 1939 and ultimately ran until 1951. Other types of columnists also enjoyed significant syndication. For example, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) penned a long-running column series called “My Day.” It began in 1935 and chronicled her thoughts and activities for many appreciative readers until 1962. Three other women writers monitored the nation’s manners and mores. Emily Post (1872–1960) provided the last word on etiquette; her book Etiquette, published in 1922, joined the ranks of best sellers and made her famous. She also wrote about good manners for several magazines and, starting in the 1930s, published a popular newspaper column that could be found in over 150 papers until well into the 1940s. Dorothy Dix (b. Elizabeth M. Gilmer, 1870–1951) and Beatrice Fairfax (b. Marie Manning, 1873–1945) wrote advice-to-the-lovelorn features that also enjoyed wide followings. Dix had the distinction of being the highest-paid woman columnist of the 1930s and 1940s; she began writing in the 1890s, but her popular advice pieces did not begin until 1923; after they caught on, over 200 papers carried them. Fairfax likewise started young, and some consider her “Dear Beatrice Fairfax” column of the 1890s as the first newspaper advice series ever to run. An unsuccessful novelist, she wrote for newspapers to assure a steadier income. Fairfax left journalism in the 1920s but returned following the onset of the Depression and remained with her newspaper features until her death in 1945. All three women grew into unofficial arbiters of taste and behavior, their words anxiously studied by millions of readers who wanted to know about proper dining and dating. The smart-alecky, quick-thinking newspaper reporter, along with his or her harried editor, has long been a stock character in much American popular culture. Movies, and later radio, have utilized this figure in comedies, mysteries, and even some Westerns. Throughout the 1940s, Hollywood released dozens of motion pictures, a few good, but mostly mediocre and forgettable, about journalists getting the big story. One of the best, His Girl Friday (1940), stars Cary Grant (1904–1986) and Rosalind Russell (1907–1976), a comedic remake of The Front Page from 1931. Fast paced with machine-gun dialog, it set the pattern for other newspaper films during the decade. Public Enemies (1941), It Happened Tomorrow (1944), The Walls Came Tumbling Down (1946), Trespasser (1947), Call Northside 777 (1948), and On Our Merry Way (1948) serve as representative samples of the genre, although Superman (1948) should not be forgotten. Clark Kent, to hide his identity as the Man of Steel, works as a reporter on The Daily Planet.


Newspapers | 507

Newspaper reporters have long intrigued the public; American popular culture has often depicted them as wisecracking know-it-alls, and this still from the 1940 film comedy His Girl Friday serves as a case in point. Frequently fast and hilarious, it stars Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell as two newspaper people always on the alert for a fresh story and a way to beat out competing papers in acquiring it. (Claridge Pictures/Photofest)

City Desk entertained radio listeners in 1941, and The Front Page reappeared as a broadcast series during 1948. A newspaper-oriented soap opera that could be heard on late afternoons was Front Page Farrell, on the air from 1941 to 1954. Big Town, more about crime than journalism, ran from 1937 to 1952, although a character named Steve Wilson, as a crusading editor, has the lead. Casey, Crime Photographer involves a newspaper photographer; his pictures usually give him clues about crimes, at which point he becomes more of a detective than a representative of the press. It premiered in 1943 and lasted until 1950 on CBS radio. Both movies and radio series tended to evolve into detective or crime stories; the ordinary, day-to-day experiences of a regular reporter probably would not present sufficient drama and excitement for most audiences. The flush times the newspaper business enjoyed during the 1940s no doubt gave publishers a sense of never-ending prosperity, a feeling that readership and advertising volume would continue to rise with each passing year. From Pearl Harbor to the radioactive ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, World War II filled the pages of U.S. newspapers with constant, important news stories. Even the first few postwar years were good to the industry. Advertisers, again able to promote consumer products, and with virtually no television to claim a percentage of every advertising dollar, poured money into


508

| Newspapers

the nation’s newspapers, the dominant marketing medium of the day. Things would change down the road, but during the 1940s, the future looked rosy, indeed. See also: Atomic Bomb, The; Comedies (Film); Crime and Mystery Films; Drama (Film); Photography; Pyle, Ernie, and Bill Mauldin; Radio Programming: Action, Crime, Police, and Detective Shows; Radio Programming: Drama and Anthology Shows; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk; Radio Programming: Soap Operas; Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 (Selective Service, or Draft); Westerns (Film) Selected Reading Emery, Edwin. The Press and America: An Interpretive History of Journalism. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1962. Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism, A History: 1690–1960. New York: Macmillan, 1962. Schudson, Michael. Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers. New York: Basic Books, 1978. Wallace, Aurora. Newspapers and the Making of Modern America: A History. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005.


P

PHOTOGRAPHY During the first half of the 20th century, technological advancements in the manufacture of cameras and film, coupled with improved developing processes and a growing interest in photography, created four distinct groups of camera users: (1) snapshot amateurs, (2) photojournalists and news photographers, (3) fashion and advertising photographers, and (4) artistic photographers. The craft offers aesthetic as well as utilitarian possibilities, dimensions that numerous individuals earnestly explored during the 1940s. War photographers stand as a unique group for a set period of time. To cover World War II, the U.S. armed forces used both military and civilian photographers. The U.S. Signal Corps served as the home base for those in the military, except for the navy, which had its own Naval Aviation Photographic Unit, supervised from 1942 to 1945 by retired photographer Edward Steichen (1879–1973). During this time, he organized two wartime exhibits for the Museum of Modern Art: Road to Victory (1942), a pictorial portrait of the United States at war with a text written by his brother-in-law, poet Carl Sandburg (1878–1967), and Power in the Pacific: Battle Photographs of Our Navy in Action (1945), images taken by photographers in the naval unit. While supervising navy photographers, Steichen also shot pictures himself, which he compiled into The Blue Ghost: A Photographic Log and Personal Narrative of the Aircraft Carrier U.S.S. Lexington in Combat Operation (1947). Back in New York after completing his wartime duties, Steichen became director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Most of the civilian photographers came from Life magazine (founded 1936) or news services, such as the Associated Press (AP), INS (International News Service), Acme Newspictures, and Life magazine. During the course of World War II, 37 U.S. photographers lost their lives and 112 received wounds. Joe Rosenthal (1911–2006), 509


510

| Photography

working for the AP, captured one of the best-known pictures from the war, that of the U.S. flag being raised on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945, and first published in Life. Snapshot amateurs. George Eastman (1854–1932) introduced his first Kodak camera in 1888 and sold his first Brownie, a simple box camera, in 1900. With an attractive price, the Brownie in its many variations experienced great popularity over its 70-year history. Many photographers started at a young age with a Brownie, and a few eventually turned the hobby into a profession, working for magazines and newspapers. Others branched out on their own, establishing studios and contracting for various assignments. To kick off the 1940s, Eastman Kodak offered visitors to the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair a special Brownie for the low price of $1.25 (approximately $19 in 2008 dollars). The plastic case, designed by the famous Raymond Loewy (1893–1986), had the words “New York World’s Fair” in raised letters on the front. It quickly became a collector’s item. The entry of the United States into World War II brought an abrupt change to the business of Kodak and other manufacturers of cameras. They moved from consumer goods to wartime products and government projects. An immediate contribution for the Allies from Kodak involved the development of Airgraph or V-Mail (for victory mail), a system for microfilming letters that conserved both weight and shipping space on cargo ships for the millions of letters sent both from home and abroad. One sack of V-Mail letters equaled over 37 sacks of conventional first-class letters written on regular paper. In 1945, Kodak’s consumer production resumed, and by 1946 three new Brownies were on the market: the Flash Six-20 for $6, the Target Six-16 Camera at $4, and the Target Six-20 Camera, which sold for $3.50 ($66, $42.50, and $37, respectively, in 2008 dollars). The company had also been marketing Kodachrome color film since the late 1930s, and a new photographer on the scene, Eliot Porter (1901–1990), experimented with this product for nature pictures. Until this time, most noted nature photographers, such as Ansel Adams (1902–1984) and Edward Weston (1886–1958), took only black-and-white shots. Porter went on to a distinguished career in color photography and achieved widespread recognition. Eastman Kodak introduced Ektachrome in 1946, the first color film that amateur photographers could process themselves using special chemical kits, an invention that added to the number of people pursuing photography as a hobby. In May 1948, a widely distributed Kodak advertisement consisted of a group of Ektachrome pictures taken by the famous Edward Weston. Two years later, the Polaroid Corporation, founded in 1937 by inventor Edwin H. Land (1909–1991), placed its first instant photography product, the Polaroid camera, on the market. The original model, initially available at Jordan Marsh, Boston’s oldest department store, weighed in at five pounds when loaded with film and sold for $89.75; the film itself cost $1.75 for eight exposures (approximately $800 and $16, respectively, in 2008 dollars). Despite these high costs, on the first day, all 56 available units sold, and first-year sales exceeded $5 million ($44.6 million in 2008 dollars). This was good news for the struggling company; the return to peace had brought to an end its


Photography | 511 business of producing infrared filters, night-vision goggles, and other equipment for the armed forces. Photojournalists. During World War II, photographs published in newspapers and magazines, and sometimes assembled in books, offered information, news, and propaganda, primarily about the home front and, secondarily, about the Pacific and European theaters. The mainstream magazines, such as Life and Look (founded 1937), primarily reported on the war from the angle of how it altered American lifestyles. For example, in 1939, before the United States entered World War II, only 10 of the 52 Life covers featured a military subject, usually a portrait of a general or an admiral. In 1942, with the United States officially involved, fewer than 50 percent of the Life covers depicted something related to the military aspect of the war, and, as in 1939, most of these were portraits of high-ranking officers. Articles and photographs about life at home— victory gardens, scrap drives, blackouts, rationing, and the latest fashion trends for the working woman—appeared regularly. By 1943, however, covers relating to the war on the battlefields appeared and acknowledged ordinary fighting men and women, such as pilots, foot soldiers, PT-boat skippers, bomber crews, and the WACs (Women’s Army Corps) and the WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service). Attention to events and people at home also continued, showing the latest fashions, along with high school graduations, dancing the lindy hop, and the latest gossip about celebrities such as Rita Hayworth (1918–1987) or Frank Sinatra (1915–1998). The United States Office of War Information (OWI, 1942–1945), headed by Elmer Davis (1890–1958), a popular radio news reporter, took up the task of coordinating government information services, primarily for the home front. OWI personnel developed posters, radio programs, and newsreels intended to promote patriotism, recruit women into defense jobs, and warn citizens about foreign spies. Like the picture magazines, OWI photographers documented America’s mobilization during the first years of the war, concentrating on subjects such as aircraft factories and women in the workforce. Margaret Bourke-White (1904–1971), Robert Capa (1913–1954), Walker Evans (1903–1975), Dorothea Lange (1895–1965), Helen Levitt (1913–2009), W. Eugene Smith (1918–1978), and Weegee (b. Arthur Fellig, 1899–1968) can be called photojournalists because they used their cameras to offer illustrated stories about people, events, and the conditions of life. All of these individuals were featured in exhibits at museums or art galleries, and publishers collected their images in book format. Most of the photojournalists in Table 72 worked for magazines. During World War II, Robert Capa went to Europe to cover the war and could thus be classified as a war photographer. His Battle of Waterloo Road chronicles wartime life in Britain with numerous images of London. Capa readily traveled with U.S. soldiers, which resulted in some daring pieces. His advice to other wartime photojournalists was, “If your pictures aren’t good, you’re not close enough.” Two distinguished photographers, Margaret Bourke-White and W. Eugene Smith, also exposed themselves to dangerous situations. Bourke-White spent time in wartorn Europe and Russia, resulting in the three publications noted in Table 72. Smith twice sustained injuries in the war, with the first occurring in 1942 as he simulated battle conditions for a picture for Parade magazine. He also received a serious wound when he


TABLE 72.

Representative Photojournalists, 1940–1949

Photographer

Exhibits and/or Magazine Work

Publications

Other Significant Accomplishments

Margaret Bourke-White

Best-known picture: Any one of many taken of U.S. industries (1920s to 1950s)

1939: North of the Danube 1941: Say, Is This the U.S.A.? (on industrialization of the nation) 1942: Shooting the Russian War

Principal photographer for Fortune magazine 1941: First foreign photographer to chronicle Soviet industrialization and the only foreign photographer present during the German bombing of Moscow 1942: First official woman photographer for U.S. Army Air Corps

Robert Capa

Photographs appeared in Collier’s Weekly and Life magazines Best-known picture: “Death of a Loyalist Soldier” (1936)

1941: The Battle of Waterloo Road 1942: Slightly Out of Focus 1948: Pictures in John Steinbeck’s (1902–1968) A Russian Journal

1944: Set a standard for close-up photography during World War II, landing with U.S. soldiers on Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6 1947: Along with others, formed the Magnum picture agency, a photographic cooperative

Walker Evans

Photographs appeared in Fortune magazine 1948: Walker Evans Retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago Best-known picture: Any one of many taken of migrant workers in the South (1936)

1941: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, with text by James Agee (1909-1955). 1943: Art reviews for Time magazine

1940: Received Guggenheim Fellowship to return to the South and photograph tenant farmers. 1959: Received a second Guggenheim Fellowship to produce a book of pictures of life in the United States

Dorothea Lange

1942: Sixty Prints by Six Women Photographers at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Best-known picture: “Migrant Mother” (1936)

2006: Gordon, Linda and Gary Y. Okihiro publish Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment, which contains some of the 800 pictures taken of Japanese Americans in internment camps in 1943.

1941: Guggenheim Fellowship, the first awarded to a woman 1945: Became a faculty member in the first Fine Arts Photography Department at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) 1952: A founder of the magazine Aperture with Ansel Adams, Minor White (1908–1976), and several others


Helen Levitt

1940: Picture titled “Halloween” included in inaugural exhibit of the Photography Department at MoMA 1943: Helen Levitt at MoMA Best-known picture: “Halloween” (1939)

1945–1946: In the Street, a film 1946–1947: The Quiet One, a film

W. Eugene Smith

Life magazine cover of Marines blowing up a Japanese cave on Iwo Jima, April 9, 1945 Best-known picture: “Walk to the Paradise Garden” (1946)

1948: Life magazine photo essays “Country Doctor: His Endless Work Has Its Own Rewards”

Arthur Fellig, or “Weegee”

1941: “Murder Is My Business” at the Photo League, New York 1943: “Action Photography” at MoMA includes five Weegee photos. 1948: 50 Photographs by 50 Photographers at MoMA Best-known picture: “The Critic” (1943)

1945: Naked City 1946: Weegee’s People


1940s: Worked as a film editor and extended her photographic practice into this medium Numbered among the first to use color in fine art photography 1944–1945: Worked in the Film Division of the Office of War Information

1948: Completed Weegee’s New York, the first of several short features

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accompanied troops on the invasion of Okinawa in May 1945. He did not fully recover until 1947, returning to the staff of Life. Among the representative photographers in the preceding table, Walker Evans is considered to be one of the premier documentary photographers of the 20th century. Much of his work, as with Lange, clearly came from his understanding of and concern about social justice issues. He recorded the conditions of white sharecroppers in the rural South during the Great Depression for an article in Fortune magazine, but the staff voiced some discomfort with the content and the project changed to a book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), published by Houghton Mifflin. It went virtually unnoticed at the time, selling only 300 copies. The publication eventually gained popularity with a reprinting in 1960. Evans joined the staff of Fortune magazine in 1945 and became its special photographic editor in 1948. Also dedicated to addressing social justice through photography, Dorothea Lange produced her strongest images during the years she worked for the Farm Security Administration (FSA, 1937–1943). In 1943, she completed another forceful collection of pictures on the internment of Japanese Americans despite having to work under numerous governmental restrictions. At the end of the year, as she completed her work, the U.S. Army confiscated her almost 800 shots and negatives and held them until shortly after the war, when they went to the National Archives. As a brash press photographer, Arthur Fellig, better known as Weegee, cruised the streets of New York in the early morning hours taking sensational and graphic pictures of people involved in or watching crime scenes, accidents, fires, and other disasters. In 1947, he moved to Hollywood offering technical assistance to that industry and sometimes playing minor roles in the movies. Helen Levitt also roamed the streets of her native New York to photograph children and street life. Except for a brief time in Mexico City in 1941, nearly all of her work depicts Manhattan. She worked often in poor neighborhoods, and an unusual series of photos taken from 1938 through 1948 focuses on children’s chalk drawings and messages on city sidewalks and streets. In the early 1940s, she began working as a film editor and soon became a filmmaker. Mention should be made of two other American documentary photographers active during the 1940s: Minor White (1908–1976) and Russell Lee (1903–1986). White assisted with FSA projects before being drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942. After an honorable discharge in 1945, he moved to California and, in addition to his photographic work, helped found Aperture, a quarterly photography magazine, serving as its editor for many years. Russell Lee started his career with FSA, a member of that government organization from 1936 until 1942. He, too, joined the army for the remainder of World War II and afterwards spent much of his time teaching, starting with the Missouri Photo Workshop in 1948. Fashion photographers. By the 1940s, a number of women’s and fashion periodicals, such as Harper’s Bazaar (founded 1867), Vogue (founded 1892), Mademoiselle (founded 1935), and Glamour (founded 1939) had prospered and offered work opportunities for photographers so inclined. Two, Irving Penn (1917–2009) and Richard Avedon (1923–2004), made names for themselves. Penn, in 1943, became an assistant to Alexander Liberman (1912–1999), art director at Vogue. Initially he suggested


Photography | 515 photographic designs for covers but soon took the pictures himself. An innovator, Penn posed subjects against a simple gray or white backdrop, and his cover picture for the October 1, 1943, issue of Vogue consisted of a still life of a big brown leather bag, beige scarf and gloves, lemons, oranges, and a huge topaz. It cemented Penn’s photographic career. In addition to fashion photography, he did portraits of personalities such as Martha Graham (1894–1991), Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992), and Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986). After serving in the Merchant Marine from 1941 to 1942, Richard Avedon enrolled in a design course at New York’s New School for Social Research and at the same time began working at Harper’s Bazaar. He soon joined Penn as the most prominent of the younger generation of fashion photographers that frequently shot outdoors. Avedon eventually shifted to the studio setting and developed an effective white-backdrop style. He remained at Harper’s Bazaar until 1965, when he went to Vogue. Photographic artists. Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, two younger photographers inspired by the pioneering work of Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946), probably the most influential American photographer of the early 20th century, wanted to put photography on an artistic plane equal with painting. Both Adams and Weston, in 1931 joined with five others—Imogen Cunningham (1883–1976), William Van Dyke (1906–1986), John Paul Edwards (1884–1968), Henry Swift (1891–1962), and Sonya Noskowiak (1900–1975)—to form Group f/64. Intending to adhere to what they called “pure photography,” the organization explored the artistic potential of their craft, experimenting with light and form. Their work, while popular with many, also raised photography to the level of elite art. Group f/64 dissolved in 1935, but Adams and Weston continued to focus on the group’s principles: to use only the most basic equipment and natural light for their sharply focused and carefully framed images of objects, such as peppers, an artichoke half, flowers, sand dunes, mountains, and rock formations. The two also shot landscapes, particularly of the American West, where they did most of their photography. In addition, Weston gained fame for his imaginative and artistic studies of nudes. Both men also taught and wrote about photography. They directed the first U.S. Camera Yosemite Photographic Forum in 1940 and regularly had articles in specialized publications such as Camera Craft, Popular Photography, and Aperture. Ansel Adams’ career spanned over 50 years, and his photographs appeared in numerous books and portfolios. He remained faithful to clarity and precision in his work. Edward Weston started experiencing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in 1946 and two years later made his last photographs at Point Lobos, California; in 1952; his Fiftieth Anniversary Portfolio was published. He died at his home on January 1, 1958. Photography in the 1940s changed in many ways. Amateur photographers found a number of new cameras and new films available for purchase. Documentary photography came into its own and World War II produced many memorable images, including the raising of the American flag over Iwo Jima, the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, and the haunting pictures of Nazi death camps. Professional photographers offered images that glorified the country’s mountains and meadows, while also paying attention to cityscapes and neighborhoods. Museums established photography departments for the first time and displayed solo exhibits for the more notable artists. Pictures


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Representative Artistic Photographers, 1940–1949

Photographer Ansel Adams

Exhibits 1940: A Pageant of Photography, Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco

1943: Manzanar Relocation Center pictures at MoMA, New York City.

Edward Weston

1940: A Pageant of Photography.

1946: Western Retrospective, MoMA, New York City

Other Significant Accomplishments

Publications 1940: A Pageant of Photography, introduction by Adams

1944: Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal JapaneseAmericans (pictures taken at Manzanar Relocation Center, California

1940: California and the West. 1941: Illustrated a new edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass with photographs taken in the South and East 1946: Edward Weston, edited by Nancy Newhall 1947: Fifty Photographs

1940: Helped the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) form a Photography Department 1941: Photographed some of the National Parks and Indian reservations for the Department of the Interior to be used as murals for decoration in their building in Washington, DC 1942–1945: Consultant for the armed forces carrying out photographic assignments including making prints of secret Japanese installations in the Aleutian Islands 1945: Founded and became the first director of the California School of Fine Arts. Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cunningham, and Minor White accepted an invitation to become faculty members. 1946: Along with Lange, White, and others, founded Aperture magazine 1946 and 1948: Guggenheim Fellowships to photograph all of the U.S. National Parks and Monuments 1949: Consultant for the Polaroid Corporation. 1940: Guggenheim Fellowship


Political and Propaganda Films | 517 were even taken from space. In 1946, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory strapped a 35-millimeter motion picture camera to a V-2 missile and shot it into the air at White Sands Missile Range. Ascending to a height of 65 miles, the camera, in a steel case, snapped a picture every one and a half seconds and soon fell straight back to Earth, unharmed. When technicians put the frames together, the view covered a million square miles or more at a single glance, a glimpse of things to come in future years. See also: Hobbies; Internment Camps (Relocation Centers); Technology Selected Reading Green, Jonathan. American Photography: A Critical History 1945 to the Present. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1984. Hulick, Diana Emery, with Joseph Marshall. Photography—1900 to the Present. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998. Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography, from 1839 to the Present. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982. Turner, Peter. History of Photography. New York: Exeter Books, 1987.

POLITICAL AND PROPAGANDA FILMS Always fearful of alienating potential audiences or running afoul of the strictures enforced by the Hollywood Production Code, the various movie studios throughout the 1930s presented a united front and avoided any stories that might offend the political sensibilities—real or imagined—of other nations. Despite the news from Asia involving Japanese imperialism and the loss of freedoms in Germany and Italy under Hitler and Mussolini, American movies followed a path of strict impartiality. But shortly before the German invasion of Poland in the fall of 1939 and the continuing Japanese incursions in the Far East, a crack appeared in the industry’s armor when a few producers and screenwriters declared war on the Axis powers. In 1938, producer Walter Wanger (1894–1968), working through United Artists, released Blockade (1938), a film about the Spanish Civil War. It stars Henry Fonda (1905–1982) as a Spanish soldier, although the movie never explicitly states which side—the Nationalists or the Republicans—he supports. The Code forbade political endorsements, but the script eventually makes clear that Fonda’s on the “good” side, the Republicans. This created problems, because Germany and Italy openly supported the Nationalists, whereas Russia backed the Republican cause. This situation brought about an outwardly noncommittal film, but alert audiences could quickly ascertain that Fonda’s character fought for the Republicans. The following year, Idiot’s Delight spoke out against war in any form, which might seem a safe position, but even pacifism makes a political statement, especially in the tense days before open hostilities, and so the picture upset some in the movie industry. Idiot’s Delight appeared tame when compared to Confessions of a Nazi Spy, Espionage Agent, or Hitler—Beast of Berlin (all 1939). Both Confessions of a Nazi Spy and Espionage Agent came from feisty Warner Bros.; the first stars Edward G. Robinson (1893–1973), the second features Joel McCrea (1905–1990), two leading actors of the


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day. Hitler—Beast of Berlin, a little-known film, originated with Producers Distributing Company (PDC), a tiny, independent studio. Each of these movies, from their titles on, makes no secret about loyalties, and although they raised a number of hackles, especially among isolationists, they indicated the increasingly ideological stance that motion pictures would take as the world descended into chaos. In 1940 —a new year, a new decade, and World War II a reality in Europe—Hollywood shed what remained of its former reticence and more or less caved in to those supporting the Western democracies. Topicality became fashionable (and profitable). United Artists adapted Personal History, a best-selling 1935 memoir by journalist Vincent Sheean (1899–1975). Outspoken in its antipathy toward Hitler’s Germany, the studio turned it into a breathless chase thriller called Foreign Correspondent (1940). The Nazi villainy remains intact, it boasts Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) as the director, uses pre-occupation Holland as its setting, and Joel McCrea returns as a character relentlessly pursued by Nazis. The Mortal Storm presents the theme of flight from the Nazis, one found in several movies made in the early 1940s; it features James Stewart (1908–1997), while Escape (1940) stars Robert Taylor (1911–1969) as a son attempting to free his mother from a German concentration camp. Pastor Hall (English, 1939; released in the United States in 1940 by United Artists) also exposes the reality of concentration camps. Initially rejected by British censors as too anti-German, Pastor Hall promptly gained permission to be shown after September 1939 and the beginning of the European war. American review boards also fretted about its political leanings but granted it full release as the conflict progressed. Torn loyalties propel Four Sons (1940), the chronicle of a German Czech family. Naturally, the worst of the four sons reveals his Nazi sympathies, thereby setting off a tragedy that leaves no one untouched. In The Man I Married (1940; also called I Married a Nazi), Joan Bennett (1910–1990) learns her husband, played by Francis Lederer (1899–2000), embraces the goals of Hitler’s Third Reich. She must then determine to leave him and take their son to the United States. On a lighter note, comedian Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) skewered Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) in a brilliant satire titled The Great Dictator (1940). With the onset of 1941, England stood alone and increasingly beleaguered, but not until the end of the year would the United States actually become a combatant. In the meantime, Hollywood continued to release movies that showed support for the English; their plots often served as virtual recruiting tools for the armed forces. A Yank in the R.A.F., International Squadron (both 1941) and Captains of the Clouds (1942) tell tales of eager Americans, anxious to see action, enlisting in either the British or Canadian air forces. On the home front, one adventure-filled picture after another played at neighborhood theaters, urging anyone of age to sign up for a branch of military service. The movies covered a broad range—I Wanted Wings (1941), Dive Bomber (1941), Flying Tigers (1942), Air Force (1943), The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (1944; documentary)—and carried the message of service to one’s country. Thus, when the United States entered World War II as a combatant, the movie industry could already claim a colorful menu of pro-war motion pictures; all that remained was to shed the last remnants of neutrality and charge ahead with action-packed


Political and Propaganda Films | 519 features that left no question where loyalties stood. The production of more subtle, politically oriented films came to a virtual halt, only to be revived after 1945 with a bevy of pictures that tried to capture the anxieties of the postwar years, especially the beginnings of the Cold War. For the duration of the conflict, Hollywood dutifully produced dozens upon dozens of war stories, almost all of which show Americans and their allies to be good and the Axis to be uniformly bad. There exists, however, a double standard regarding perceptions of the enemy forces. Occasionally, a German soldier or two might be given sympathetic qualities. In The Moon Is Down (1943), an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s (1902–1968) popular 1943 novel of the same name, the story involves the Nazi occupation of Norway. Several of the German invaders question the war and attempt to get along with the Norwegian civilians. Although their efforts prove futile—the townspeople thwart them at every turn—the soldiers are at least humanized. The movies grant no such qualities to members of the dreaded Gestapo or SS (the initials refer to Schutzstaffel, or special police forces); they are shown as inherently evil and beyond redemption. An additional double standard, one with racial overtones, applies to Germans forces and their Japanese counterparts. In movies of the era, some of the Germans at least possess a modicum of culture and often emerge as interesting characters even as villains; the Japanese, on the other hand, usually come across as primitive beasts, and screenwriters spent little time humanizing them. Duplicitous and capable of unspeakable acts of savagery, neither officers nor enlisted men receive three-dimensional personalities; characterization of any kind becomes obvious only by its absence. Propaganda traditionally works best by painting the enemy in the most negative and simplistic terms; to be seen as evil and cruel is, however, one thing; to be depicted as evil and cruel and subhuman is quite another. Because the war so occupied the nation’s consciousness, the movie industry felt no hesitation in referring to it in every conceivable kind of film. Frothy musicals, like The Fleet’s In (1942), This Is the Army (1943), and Four Jills in a Jeep (1944), certainly entertained audiences, but they also reminded people about the ongoing conflict. Similarly, low-budget B mystery series and Westerns often reference the war, as in Counter-Espionage (1939; it features The Lone Wolf, the hero of a long-running detective series), Enemy Agents Meet Ellery Queen (1942; another popular crime series), Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943), Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944), and Hands Across the Border (1944), the last a Roy Rogers (1911–1998) Western. Hillbilly comedienne Judy Canova (1913–1983) outwits a Nazi spy ring in Joan of Ozark (1942); Tarzan of the Apes fights the Nazis in Tarzan Triumphs (1943), a particularly grisly episode in that long-running series; and Blondie, of comic-strip fame, does her part on the home front in Blondie for Victory (1942). In short, all genres of American film incorporated, at one time or another between the late 1930s and 1945, references to World War II. The messages they carried tended to be the same: support the nation’s war effort in every way. All wars eventually draw to a close, and after 1945 the movie industry had lost an urgent topic. Occasional films about World War II continued to be produced, but they now constituted a distinct minority. On the other hand, the adjustments that returning


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service personnel and civilians had to make in peacetime provided the impetus for four outstanding motion pictures of the mid-1940s: The Best Years of Our Lives and Till the End of Time (both 1946), Crossfire and Gentleman’s Agreement (both 1947). The ironic title of the first refers to a group of people reuniting at the close of the war. For many, their best years—which would include youth, family, and careers—were spent in combat or waiting for loved ones. Produced just after the German and Japanese surrenders, the film accurately captures a moment in U.S. history when millions of people had to readjust their lives, best or otherwise, and begin anew. It deservedly won Academy Awards for best picture, best director (William Wyler, 1902–1981), best actor (Fredric March, 1897–1975), best screenplay (Robert E. Sherwood, 1896–1955), plus three other Oscars. Till the End of Time has much in common with the more famous Best Years of Our Lives. It, too, tells about several veterans returning home and the problems they face in moving from military to civilian life in a once-familiar environment. Somewhat uneven and melodramatic—it ends with a confrontation with a group of racial bigots—it nonetheless portrays the period well. The following year, two other pictures addressed social issues that had been suppressed during the war. Each deals with anti-Semitism, until then a taboo topic for Hollywood, and returning veterans. Both films seem dated a half-century after their release, but admirers at the time viewed them as cutting-edge films dealing with social problems. Dated or not, Crossfire and Gentleman’s Agreement led the way for a number of motion pictures that would tackle previously whispered or unspoken topics. The film industry may have taken pride in its daring, but some of that self-importance needs tempering. The producers of Crossfire adapted it from a novel titled The Brick Foxhole (1945), a book that frankly discusses homophobia. Written by Richard Brooks (1912–1945), no studio at that time would venture to challenge the Hollywood Production Code that forbade any overt references to or depictions of homosexual behavior. So Brooks, who also served as screenwriter, changed his theme to anti-Semitism and got the go-ahead for the project, but Crossfire had significantly changed from The Brick Foxhole. The problem of racial intolerance, which has plagued the country since its founding, awaited inspection by the film industry, but little happened in the immediate postwar years. No doubt most studio executives at that time wished that all movies featuring black characters—in itself, something of a rarity—would present America’s racial climate as benignly as did Walt Disney (1901–1966) in his 1946 release, Song of the South. Ostensibly a children’s film, it contains a mix of live action and cartoons and appears to be set in a timeless South. A naive white boy played by Bobby Driscoll (1937–1968) befriends Uncle Remus, a wise elderly black man played by James Baskett (1904– 1948), and learns that “everything is satisfactual” at the plantation. This racial pairing has been, and continues to be, presented in a number of motion pictures. The realities of that time to the contrary, segregation and intolerance have no place in this cinematic never-never land, provided people know their place in the scheme of things. In the Hollywood of 1946, no one wanted to investigate the real racial climate, with the result that, until the end of the decade, virtually no cinematic attempts were made to peel back the veneer of harmony shown in most pictures. A muted attempt occurred


Political and Propaganda Films | 521 in 1948 when an offbeat picture, The Boy with Green Hair, showed in movie houses around the country. Dean Stockwell (b. 1936) stars as an orphaned youth whose hair inexplicably turns green. Immediately ostracized by his peers for being different, the film creates a fable about individuality and tolerance. Easily translated into cultural terms, it challenged conventional beliefs and stirred some controversy because it espouses pacifism. A year later, the release of Lost Boundaries and Pinky opened the gates wider. Both deal with the topic of “passing,” a term that means a person of one race attempting to be accepted as a member of another racial group. In the past, at least in the United States, this situation usually translated as a light-skinned black individual taking on the outward identity of a white person. Too often, in fear of white resentment, the film studios denied choice roles to blacks. Two exceptions to this practice existed: For pictures targeted at primarily white audiences, if the part called for a stereotype such as a maid, butler, cook, or jazz musician, black actors could fill those roles. The second exception occurred with movies produced for black audiences. From the 1920s until the 1960s, a handful of small studios produced so-called race movies that featured all-black casts. Usually made on miniscule budgets and starring largely unknown actors, they normally played at theaters catering to black audiences, but at least they provided an outlet for talented performers otherwise denied full participation in American moviemaking. For Hollywood in the 1940s, passing more often involved a white performer applying some makeup and taking the screen role of a black character. Lost Boundaries and Pinky illustrate this long cinematic tradition. The first picture stars Mel Ferrer (b. 1917), a white actor, playing a black doctor who chooses to pass himself as a white physician in a small New England town. In Pinky, Jeanne Crain (1925–2003), also white, learns of her black heritage while living in the South. The plots of both films proceed to detail how these individuals deal with the disclosure of their true identities and how those around them receive this news. The pictures portray a United States still caught up in questions and attitudes about race and suggest how difficult any resolution of the subject would prove. When news of casting for Pinky made the show business rounds, entertainer Lena Horne (b. 1917), herself a fair-skinned black, campaigned for the title lead but lost the part to Jeanne Crain because the plot involves a love affair between Pinky and a white doctor played by William Lundigan (1914–1975). Twentieth Century-Fox, the studio producing the film, felt that true interracial love scenes (i.e., between Horne and Lundigan) on screen would upset audiences but that anything with Crain and Lundigan, since both are white, would be permissible. It took years after the 1940s before a love scene between two people of different races occurred on screen. Another pair of 1949 pictures also employ racial themes; Intruder in the Dust and Home of the Brave. The first, a movie adaptation of William Faulkner’s (1897–1962) novel of the same name published in 1948, concerns a black man unjustly accused of murder. More a portrait of prejudice in the old South, it explores little new territory but does allow several statements about the need for tolerance and gives a disquieting picture of what life could be for blacks in the days before the civil rights movement. Home of the Brave, on the other hand, tells of a dangerous mission undertaken by a group of marines in the Pacific during World War II. Standard fare, until the troops


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learn one of their comrades, James Edwards (1918–1970), is black. Considerable tension grows out of this revelation, and prejudice almost ruins the mission. By the end, the men have learned that their previous black stereotypes are false, and for soldiers to survive, they must work together, regardless of race. Although both of these pictures might seem to some terribly dated for contemporary times, at their release in 1949 they took an enlightening step ahead for commercial movies. While these foregoing movies that deal with social ills kept many in the industry busy, Hollywood momentarily lacked an issue that would offend no one. But postwar current events quickly provided the fodder for a host of new and controversial movies. After the treaties ending World War II had been signed, relations between Russia and the Western nations deteriorated—a situation that led to the Cold War. Allies became enemies, and Hollywood had found a new focus. While the usual quota of comedies, Westerns, mysteries, musicals, and all the rest continued to flow from the studios, moviemakers also began to gear up for a different kind of film: the anti-Communist picture. It started slowly. In 1948, Sofia, Walk a Crooked Mile, and The Iron Curtain graced marquees. The first two involve foreign locales, vital atomic secrets, and covetous Communist spies. Except for the Communist angle, they rank as mediocre thrillers. The last, a more effective drama, features Dana Andrews (1909–1992) as a disenchanted Communist agent who wants to change allegiances and the misunderstandings that arise from his decision. The plot allows the screenwriters the opportunity to serve up lots of propaganda about Communism and Soviet subversives in the nation’s midst. Not at all unlike the movies from the late 1930s, such as Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), which stirred up strong anti-German feelings, this new generation of motion pictures fit in well with the hysteria then building in some quarters about the threat from the Soviet Union. The success of The Iron Curtain assured more of the same, and 1949 saw Conspirator, I Married a Communist, The Red Danube, and The Red Menace, each advertising “shocking but true” revelations about the growing Communist threat. With the advent of the 1950s, the floodgates opened wide, and numerous pictures detailing Communist subversion were produced, reinforcing what citizens read in books, magazines, and newspapers. Ongoing congressional investigations sought evidence of widespread Communist conspiracies at home and abroad, outspoken legislators demanded security checks and loyalty oaths from U.S. citizens, and it all gave rise to a collective paranoia that has come to be called the Red Scare. In a fascinating bit of political hindsight, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 initiated a series of hearings that predate the above antiCommunist movies. The HUAC investigation sought to find a link between selected American movies and the spreading of Communist propaganda. The films that stirred the queries and drew the most congressional ire consisted of the following five titles: Mission to Moscow (1943), The North Star (1943), Days of Glory (1944), Song of Russia (1944), and Counter-Attack (1945). All of these movies had been made when the Soviet Union stood shoulder to shoulder with the other Western allies in order to defeat Germany. They show ordinary Soviet citizens in a positive light, and little ideology can be discerned in any of them. The propaganda revolves around the mutual desire to defeat the common enemy.


Political and Propaganda Films | 523 TABLE 74.

Selected Political and Propaganda Films, 1940–1949

Year

Film Titles

1940

Escape Escape to Glory Foreign Correspondent Four Sons The Great Dictator I Married a Nazi (also known as The Man I Married) The Mortal Storm Night Train to Munich Pastor Hall Waterloo Bridge

Robert Taylor, Norma Shearer Pat O’Brien, Constance Bennett Joel McCrea, Laraine Day Don Ameche, Alan Curtis Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard Joan Bennett, Francis Lederer

1941

Dangerously We Live 49th Parallel I Wanted Wings International Squadron Man Hunt Paris Calling Sergeant York So Ends Our Night Underground A Yank in the R.A.F

John Garfield, Raymond Massey Richard George, Eric Portman Ray Milland, Brian Donlevy Ronald Reagan, William Lundigan Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett Randolph Scott, Basil Rathbone Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan Fredric March, Magaret Sullavan Philip Dorn, Jeffrey Lynn Tyrone Power, Betty Grable

1942

Berlin Correspondent Casablanca Desperate Journey Joan of Ozark Joan of Paris Joe Smith American Mrs. Miniver Nazi Agent Saboteur The War Against Mrs. Hadley

Dana Andrews, Virginia Gilmore Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman Errol Flynn, Ronald Reagan Judy Canova, Joe E. Brown Alan Ladd, Paul Henreid Robert Young, Marsha Hunt Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon Conrad Veidt, Anne Ayars Robert Cummings, Priscilla Lane Edward Arnold, Fay Bainter

1943

Edge of Darkness For Whom the Bell Tolls Hitler’s Children Hitler—Dead or Alive Hitler’s Madman Mission to Moscow The Moon Is Down The North Star This Land Is Mine Watch on the Rhine Days of Glory Dragon Seed The Fighting Sullivans The Hitler Gang

Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman Tim Holt, Bonita Granville Ward Bond, Paul Fix John Carradine, Edgar Kennedy Walter Huston, Ann Harding Cedric Hardwicke, Lee J. Cobb Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Hara Bette Davis, Paul Lukas Gregory Peck, Tamara Toumanova Katharine Hepburn, Walter Huston Anne Baxter, Thomas MItchell Robert Watson, Sig Ruman

1944

Stars

James Stewart, Robert Young Rex Harrison, Paul Henreid Wilfrid Lawson, Marius Goring Vivien Leigh, Robert Taylor

(continued)


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| Political and Propaganda Films TABLE 74.

(continued)

Year

Film Titles

Stars

The Purple Heart The Seventh Cross

Dana Andrews, Richard Conte Spencer Tracy, Hume Cronyn

Since You Went Away Song of Russia Tomorrow the World The White Cliffs of Dover

Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones, Shirley Temple Robert Taylor, John Hodiak Fredric March, Skip Homeier Irene Dunne, Van Johnson

1945

Back to Bataan A Bell for Adano Betrayal from the East Blood on the Sun Counter-Attack Hotel Berlin The House on 92nd Street The Story of G.I. Joe They Were Expendable

John Wayne, Anthony Quinn John Hodiak, Gene Tierney Lee Tracy, Nancy Kelly James Cagney, Sylvia Sidney Paul Muni, Larry Parks Faye Emerson, Raymond Massey Lloyd Nolan, Leo G. Carroll Burgess Meredith, Robert Mitchum John Wayne, Robert Montgomery

1946

The Best Years of Our Lives Cloak and Dagger Hitler Lives (short documentary) I See a Dark Stranger The Searching Wind The Stranger Till the End of Time

Fredric March, Myrna Loy Gary Cooper, Lilli Palmer

Crossfire Gentleman’s Agreement

Robert Young, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire

1948

The Boy with Green Hair The Iron Curtain The Search Sofia Walk a Crooked Mile

Bobby Driscoll, Pat O’Brien Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney Montgomery Clift, Ivan Jandl Gene Raymond, Mischa Auer Louis Hayward, Dennis O’Keefe

1949

Conspirator The Fountainhead Home of the Brave I Married a Communist Intruder in the Dust Lost Boundaries Pinky The Red Danube The Red Menace The Third Man

Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal James Edwards, Lloyd Bridges Robert Ryan, Laraine Day Claude Jarman Jr., Juano Hernandez Mel Ferrer, Beatrice Pearson Jeanne Crain, Ethel Waters Walter Pidgeon, Ethel Barrymore Robert Rockwell, Barbara Fuller Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton

1944

1947

Trevor Howard, Deborah Kerr Robert Young, Sylvia Sidney Edward G. Robinson, Orson Welles Guy Madison, Dorothy McGuire


Posters | 525 But in 1947, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a former friend, had taken on a new role—that of foe. Led by Representative J. Parnell Thomas (1895–1970; R-N.J.), and with a young Richard Nixon (1913–1994) serving as a member, the committee sought to prove how these pictures spouted the insidious Communist line. In this quest they failed, but the hearings did reveal that the congressional members knew precious little about the content of the movies in question. This investigation would drag on until 1958 and then quietly disappear with no real evidence that any motion pictures ever knowingly served as a vehicle of political propaganda and attempted to seduce the population with lies and disinformation. It did, however, bring about the practice of blacklisting in the film industry, create a group of victims called the Hollywood Ten, and ruin a number of careers. All motion pictures to a degree reflect their times. No one in Hollywood attempted to ignore World War II, the defining event of the 1940s, with the result that it affected the content of virtually every movie made during the period 1940 to 1945. Either as background or foreground, the conflict painted these years in stark blacks and whites, allowing easy distinctions, such as us versus them, good versus evil, and freedom versus totalitarianism. The postwar period, however, blurred the certainties of just a few years earlier. Social and political issues, swept under the rug during the fighting, began to appear on screens. Race relations, the menace of Communism, propaganda, loyalties, the role of movies in a changing world—no easy answers arose for these new problems, and American filmmakers reflected the uncertainty and unease in their productions. See also: Autry, Gene and Roy Rogers; Cartoons (Film); Crime and Mystery Films; Drama (Film); Film Noir; Horror and Thriller Films; Musicals (Film); Race Relations and Stereotyping; War Films Selected Reading Cripps, Thomas. Making Movies Black: The Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Higham, Charles, and Joel Greenberg. Hollywood in the Forties. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1968. Koppes, Clayton R., and Gregory D. Black. Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies. New York: Free Press, 1987. Manvell, Roger. Films and the Second World War. New York: Dell, 1974.

POSTERS Historians generally agree that 17th- and 18th-century broadsides, which conveyed information and could be posted in highly visible spots, serve as a prelude to today’s poster. The development of lithography in the 19th century made for even easier and cheaper mass production. Most consider an advertisement made in 1867 by French artist Jules Cheret (1836–1932) that announced a theatrical performance by Sarah Bernhardt (1844– 1923) to be the first modern commercial poster. By 1940, the poster relied heavily on graphic design and served as a commercial or public service announcement to be used in a variety of ways—promote an event, an entertainment, a product, an idea, or facts or stir emotions and create a sentiment, such as patriotism. Once it has been widely reproduced and displayed in a public place, a poster can have immediate and far-reaching impact.


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This art form had been successfully used by U.S. government officials during World War I to rally support for the country’s participation in the conflict. Likewise, during the Great Depression, the Federal Art Project (FAP), a division of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA, 1935–1943), turned out a compelling number of posters from an impressive list of designers. Their works effectively advertised a broad array of cultural, educational, and recreational activities and could be seen at many places, such as school and community centers, commercial complexes, in government buildings, and on buses and subways. In light of its success, the FAP was moved in 1943, its final year of exisDuring World War II, the United States Office tence, from under the administration of of War Information created and issued volumes the WPA to the Department of Defense. of posters dealing with a wide range of topics There, it brought valuable expertise to relevant to fighting the war successfully, both the United States Office of War Inforon the battlefield and on the home front. Proper eating habits for soldiers and civilians served mation (OWI). Organized in June 1942, as an important theme in the early years of the the OWI designated a Graphics Diviconflict. (Library of Congress) sion to produce posters to again link the home front with the battlefield and attempt to inspire a sense of patriotism and support for the war from all citizens. Prominent artists and illustrators such as James Montgomery Flagg (1877–1960), Norman Rockwell (1894–1978), Ben Shahn (1898–1969), Stevan Dohanos (1907–1994), and John C. Atherton (1900–1952) contributed to the war poster campaign, which called men to military service, urged women to work in defense-related jobs, recommended that those on the home front grow and can their food, warned that loose conversations could give information to spies, and strongly urged everyone to hate the nation’s ruthless enemies. Within the government agencies in Washington DC, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the War Production Board (WPB) joined the OWI in poster projects. Posters also began to emerge from nongovernmental sources, such as businesses, industries, and advertising agencies, causing OWI officials to voice concern about the mechanics of monitoring and controlling so much poster production. Debate also persisted between two groups of OWI personnel over design and guidelines that would be issued to those designing and printing posters. One group saw posters as war art with stylized or abstract images and symbolism, while others, especially advertising specialists, wanted posters to have a realistic, familiar, and homey look similar to the ads that regularly appeared in newspapers and magazines. Under the direction of Francis E. (Hank) Brennan (1910–1992), former art director of Fortune magazine and head of the OWI Graphics Division, the parties reached a compromise. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Posters | 527 Posters would use war graphics that combined the styles of contemporary design with the aims of the government. From these decisions, the OWI, to enforce its oversight responsibility, issued six war information themes that could be used in poster campaigns: (1) the nature of the enemy, offering negative descriptions of the Axis forces; (2) the nature of the Allies, showing the close ties of the United States to Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China, and ennobling their forces; (3) the need to work, emphasizing different ways Americans must labor for the war to be won; (4) the need to fight, depicting a fearless waging of war, which would lead to victory; (5) the need to sacrifice, with citizens giving up all luxuries and contributing their spare time to the war effort; and (6) Americans telling the story of democracy and its freedoms. These guidelines were to be followed by both government and nongovernment groups. Some of the government agencies proceeded to hire artists and illustrators to work for them while also commissioning others to assist in certain areas. Artist Jes Wilhelm Schlaikjer (1897–1982) became the War Department’s official artist with a studio in the Pentagon. He created powerful recruitment posters that featured heroic, handsome figures in dramatic conflict situations. Arthur Szyk (1894–1951) produced patriotic posters for the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s war bond drives and also designed wartime stamps for the postal service. During 1942, the first full year of World War II, most posters retained the characteristic of war art using dark, somber colors and harsh messages, such as “When you ride ALONE you ride with Hitler! Join a Car-Sharing Club TODAY!” By 1943, advertising specialists had gained ground and shaped the appearance of most of the posters. The written content still adhered to the recommended messages of sacrifice and struggle, but symbolism and abstract images had been replaced by commercial illustration standards of literal representation and emotional pull. One states, “Do with less—so they will have enough! RATIONING GIVES YOU YOUR FAIR SHARE,” and shows a smiling soldier lifting his cup in thanks to the viewer. Another, with the words “We’ll have lots to eat this winter, won’t we Mother?” “Grow your own/Can your own,” depicts a brightly dressed mother and daughter obviously happy to be together producing many beautiful jars of canned food. A famous poster from World War I, the presentation of Uncle Sam pointing to the viewer and saying “I WANT YOU for the U.S. ARMY, ENLIST NOW,” drawn by James Montgomery Flagg in 1916, had been reissued before the United States entered World War II on December 7, 1941, since it did not seem dated or in need of improvement. The OWI engaged Flagg and others to produce additional recruitment posters for all the military services, works that utilized war graphics and symbolism. While the OWI concentrated on messages that would enlist men to fight, the U.S. Department of the Treasury turned to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America for assistance in addressing the issue of paying for the war. John C. Atherton’s image of two hands shaking (one representing the government and the other a citizen) above the words “BUY a share in America” appeared on a 48-foot billboard in New York City at the corner of Forty-Second Street and Fifth Avenue in July 1941. Carl Paulsen (active 1940s) also offered a billboard image. His had the American flag dominating the available space with a caption below that read “Buy U.S. WAR SAVINGS BONDS & STAMPS now.” Reported to be one of the most popular World War II poster images, © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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it appeared along highways at more than 30,000 locations across the country in the spring of 1942. It reappeared in the summers of 1942 and 1943. To meet an almost overwhelming demand from the public for copies, the Government Printing Office printed and distributed 4 million small color reproductions. In addition to Flagg and Paulson, untold numbers of artists—some famous, others unknown—provided designs for both the OWI and the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Cyrus C. Hungerford (1888–1983), a well-established editorial cartoonist with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in 1941 devised the line “Production Soldiers,” alluding to Americans on the home front who also served Uncle Sam. Employing stylized images and symbolism, Hungerford created a series of posters portraying civilian defense workers as a part of America’s defense team. Henry Koerner (1915–1991) started painting in 1943 and designing posters provided him much-needed steady work, even after he became a GI in 1945. He entered National Defense Poster Competitions in 1941 to 1943, sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. The museum hoped to inspire many artists to create posters that would encourage citizens to support the war effort. Each year the designs could be seen at MoMA and army recruiting stations, as well as on billboards throughout the country. Koerner was one of several winners with his piece “Someone talked!” Falling under the theme of the nature of the enemy, the poster tells of the importance of not having loose war-related conversations that might reach the ears of spies and thus endanger U.S. soldiers. After V-E Day, Koerner went to Germany to sketch the Nuremberg trials for the U.S. government. Once back in the United States, Koerner’s career as a serious artist grew. He gained fame in the 1950s and in the decades following for his portraits of celebrities, many of them appearing on the covers of Time magazine. Some poster art work first surfaced in other artistic forms. Norman Rockwell’s series of famous paintings, known collectively as The Four Freedoms and commissioned by the Saturday Evening Post, graced the covers of four issues of the magazine. Completed within six months, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear were launched on a nationwide tour in April 1943 in support of selling war bonds. Following that tour, the government printed 4 million copies of the paintings as posters. U.S. industries also got into the act of sponsoring posters that carried one or more of the approved themes. The Westinghouse War Production Co-Ordinating Committee commissioned illustrator J. Howard Miller (ca. 1915–1990) to design a poster to be displayed in its defense plants in hopes of inspiring and boosting the morale of the company’s many women employees. The resulting painting and poster, “We Can Do It,” presents a determined female worker beneath those words looking straight at the viewer with a raised arm flexing her bicep. Miller did not present his work as Rosie the Riveter, the name that eventually represented the millions of working women during the war, but his depiction became one of the most enduring to emerge from World War II; people assumed that “We Can Do It” depicts Rosie. Norman Rockwell, however, did intentionally provide Saturday Evening Post with a Rosie the Riveter for the magazine’s May 29, 1943 cover, an image that also graced posters. The war may have had a strong hold on poster production, but Hollywood also relied heavily on the medium to advertise current and upcoming releases. During the


Posters | 529 1940s, movie posters fell into three categories: lobby cards, teaser posters, and character posters. Lobby cards helped to lure customers into the theater to see the movie. Usually produced in sets of eight by the movie studio and displayed in the lobby, they showed the title of the film, the leading actors and actresses, credits, and glimpses of key scenes. Teaser posters did exactly that. As an early promotional instrument, the poster would contain a basic design or image without revealing too much, but at the same time causing the viewer to want to see the movie. A character poster, the third category, featured a role seen in the film and generally gave the name of the actor playing the part or showed the actor painted realistically so he or she could be recognized. Before 1940, each Hollywood studio maintained an exchange office in major cities across the country. New releases, along with studio-produced advertising, would be sent to the exchange office for distribution to theaters. Once a theater had shown a movie for its three-or four-day run, the film reels, along with the promotional materials, went back to the exchange office to be forwarded to the next scheduled theater. Eventually, the movies themselves, along with any paper advertising still intact, went back to their respective studios. The National Screen Service (NSS), founded in 1920, set out as a business to assist the studios with advertising. Initially NSS only produced movie trailers, or previews, on behalf of all the studios. Gradually the agency added other forms of advertising and, by 1940, had acquired exclusive contracts with movie companies to produce and distribute all three kinds of posters. Artists and graphic designers, most of whom worked anonymously, created countless movie posters. Others, such as Norman Rockwell, William L. Rose (b. 1909) and Bill Gold (b. 1921), received credit for their work. During the 1940s, Norman Rockwell’s signature appeared on posters for The Magnificent Ambersons (1941), The Song of Bernadette (1943), Along Came Jones (1945), and The Razor’s Edge (1946). William L. Rose drew for magazines such as Collier’s while also turning out posters for Citizen Kane (1941), Cat People (1942), Nocturne (1946), and Out of the Past (1947). Bill Gold started his career in 1941, working for Warner Bros. He became the head of poster design in 1947, and some of his better-known work at the time included Yankee Doodle Dandy and Casablanca (both 1942) and Night and Day and The Big Sleep (both 1946). In the late 1950s, he launched his own business and by 2000 had designed thousands of movie posters. Whereas war poster production ceased when the war ended, poster design and production for the movies and other commercial enterprises continued. Throughout the war years, posters pertaining to the conflict had high visibility—on boards in front of city halls, on fences, on buildings, on billboards, at train and bus stations, in government buildings, at USO (United Service Organizations) centers, in factories, in hotel lobbies, in eating establishments, in the windows of vacant stores—anywhere and everywhere a poster could be placed. Theater managers generally restricted movie posters to inside and immediately outside the buildings where a film played. The war posters expressed a sense of urgency and asked citizens to become involved. They served a vital communication function and promoted an important art form. Produced by government agencies and commercial firms, posters conveyed messages through a combination of emotional illustrations and memorable phrases of text.


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Movie posters throughout the 1940s highlighted the outstanding performers of the day and the story told by the film in hopes of drawing patrons into theaters for an evening of escapism from the realities of the times. See also: Art (Painting); Bogart, Humphrey; Boxing; Cold War, The; Education; Scrap Drives; Trains; V-E and V-J Day; Victory Gardens Selected Reading Gallo, Max. The Poster in History. New York: American Heritage, 1972. Judd, Denis. Posters of World War Two. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1973. Nourman, Tony, and Graham Marsh. Film Posters of the 40s. London: Aurum Press & Reed Poster, 2002.

PYLE, ERNIE, AND BILL MAULDIN These two individuals, the first a war correspondent, the other a cartoonist, recorded World War II in a shared manner: they focused their work from the day-to-day perspective of the foot-slogging infantryman, not from the lofty vantage point of generals and tacticians. In retrospect, they made the conflict personal, up close and intimate, instead of one consisting of massed battles, huge bombing raids, and mechanized chaos. No other journalist enjoyed quite the following that Ernie Pyle (1900–1945) built with his columns about everyday GIs fighting a faraway war. Born in rural Indiana, Pyle missed World War I, except for three months in the Naval Reserve in 1918. During the 1920s, he held a desk job with a small Washington, DC, newspaper. Anxious to write, he left the capital and traveled around the country. Upon his return to Washington, he wrote columns about aviation and became expert in the field. The Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, impressed with Pyle’s abilities and style, gave him a job writing nationally about the passing scene in the United States. Out of these experiences, spanning 1935 to 1941, came a posthumous book of his reflections, Home Country (1947). With the outbreak of war in December 1941, Pyle quickly responded and landed an assignment as a war correspondent. Scripps-Howard agreed to run his columns, and, before long, over 300 newspapers carried his observations of the war. Pyle first started writing from England and soon shifted to North Africa, graphically describing the desert warfare between tanks and infantry. When U.S. troops invaded Sicily, he accompanied them, staying with the soldiers on up the boot of Italy, including during the bloody Anzio beachhead. After D-Day and the Normandy landings of 1944, he followed them across France and the bloody encounters among the rural hedgerows. With victory in Europe in sight and the final destruction of the Third Reich assured, Ernie Pyle took a short break stateside and then began island hopping with troops in the Pacific. In April 1945, while riding in a Jeep on the island of Okinawa, a Japanese machine gun found him; he died instantly, and his GI comrades had lost a friend. Pyle lies buried in the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii; a monument also remembers him on Okinawa. The government awarded him a Purple Heart for his injuries, one of few civilians so honored.


Pyle, Ernie, and Bill Mauldin | 531 Out of the many columns Pyle wrote chronicling these events, four anthologies of his writings emerged: Ernie Pyle in England (1941), Here Is Your War: Story of G.I. Joe (1943), Brave Men (1944), and Last Chapter (1946). Once he got into describing the gritty lives of soldiers on the front lines, Pyle had found his niche. Not as instantaneous as the war reports heard on radio, but more detailed and often more moving, his writings from close to the front lines attracted a wide, devoted audience. Given his popularity, Hollywood’s United Artists studio, working closely with the War Department, which supplied both equipment and numerous soldiers for bit parts, created The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), a loose adaptation of Pyle’s 1943 book of the same title. It stars Robert Mitchum (1917–1997) as a U.S. officer who leads a company of infantrymen from North Africa to Italy. In the course of his duties, he keeps encountering Ernie Pyle, played by Burgess Meredith (1907–1997). The correspondent profiles many of the men and establishes a good rapport with them, just as he did in real life. A superior war movie, it also pays homage to the memory of the popular journalist. Pyle expressed great affection for the humble combat infantryman, and how this fellow—until recently a civilian with no military background—coped with the drudgery and horrors of modern warfare. Sometime humorous, other times tragic, but always employing vignettes filled with human interest, he described a war the headlines usually missed. Critics agreed, and Pyle received a Pulitzer Prize for correspondence in 1944. If Ernie Pyle captured in words the lives of U.S. combat soldiers, Bill Mauldin (1921–2003) accomplished much the same, but in pictures. Born and raised in New Mexico and Phoenix, Arizona, Mauldin studied drawing at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts under the legendary Ruth VanSickle Ford (1897–1989). In 1940, still in his teens, he joined the U.S. Army and received assignment to the 45th Infantry Division. When the unit shipped overseas, Mauldin found himself in the Mediterranean theater and participated in campaigns in Sicily and Italy. His commanders allowed him to draw cartoons for the divisional newspaper, and they proved a success. During his time in Italy, Mauldin’s growing popularity among the troops was such that the army saw fit to give him space in Stars and Stripes, the official newspaper of the U.S. military. Wider circulation only increased Mauldin’s appeal among soldiers; he soon operated more or less on his own, touring the front lines in a Jeep and gathering ideas and stories for his cartoons. Not that he shirked his duties; he even gained a Purple Heart from shrapnel wounds in Italy. In time, Mauldin made sergeant, and the army, in appreciation for his many morale-boosting contributions, awarded him the Legion of Merit in 1945. More important than medals and citations, Mauldin created two memorable characters, Willie and Joe. Two weary, usually unshaven, foot soldiers, or dogfaces, often mired over their ankles in mud or cringing in a foxhole while artillery bursts over their heads, they personified the U.S. infantry. Ready with a wry comment about their situation, they groused and griped, but they got the job done. No matter where or what it might be, the pair brought a quiet humor to an otherwise grim war, a humor much appreciated by their real-life counterparts. Six new panel cartoons appeared each week in Stars and Stripes, eagerly awaited by GIs who may well have been in similar mud or foxholes hours before the new issue of


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the newspaper became available. The punch lines seldom favored imperious, by-thebook officers, but always stood up for the enlisted man. Mauldin apparently caught the ire of a few martinets, but those more knowledgeable in the high command got him off the hook, recognizing his positive effect on morale among the troops. Willie and Joe simply offered up observations shared by most soldiers slogging through yet another combat zone. In time, United Feature Syndicate released his cartoons to stateside newspapers, and they were received by an equally enthusiastic civilian audience. In 1945, with peace in sight, publisher Henry Holt issued Up Front, a collection of Mauldin’s best work, the same year that Ernie Pyle’s Brave Men came out. Pyle even wrote an admiring sketch of Mauldin in Brave Men, pointing out how the cartoonist understood what foot soldiers endured on a daily basis. Mauldin contributed a running text to his book, much of which reads like the captions beneath his drawings, and the book climbed the best-seller charts, as did Pyle’s volume. Up Front also won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. Although it took somewhat longer, Hollywood, this time with Universal Pictures, told about Willie (as played by Tom Ewell, 1909–1994) and Joe (David Wayne, 1914– 1995) in a humorous, slapstick way with Up Front (1951). At its release, a new war, the Korean conflict, raged, and perhaps the producers thought a light-hearted view of war and soldiers would attract audiences. They apparently judged somewhat correctly, because Universal made a sequel, Back at the Front, the following year. Harvey Lembeck (1923—1982) took over the role of Joe. The two movies, so different in tone from the newspaper cartoons on which they were based, failed to capture Mauldin’s quiet respect that he displayed for his two tired dogfaces, replacing it with shenanigans of one sort and another, and the artist disassociated himself from the pictures, refusing to see the final cuts. The fact that a major studio thought that Mauldin’s cartoons still had a following nonetheless suggests how popular they had been throughout much of World War II. Following the war, Mauldin continued cartooning, appearing on the editorial pages of many newspapers. He tried politics as an unsuccessful candidate for Congress and did some acting (The Red Badge of Courage, 1951) but finally settled in at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and then the Chicago Sun-Times. He also won a second Pulitzer in 1959. See also: Best Sellers (Books); Comic Strips; Illustrators; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk Selected Reading Mauldin, Bill. Up Front. New York: Henry Holt, 1945. Mauldin, Bill. www.lambiek.net/artists/m/mauldin_bill.htm Pyle, Ernie. Brave Men. New York: Henry Holt, 1944. Pyle, Ernie. www.journalism.indiana.edu/resources/erniepyle/


R

RACE RELATIONS AND STEREOTYPING As they had in the past, U.S. minorities during the 1940s suffered from oppressive attitudes and acts of discrimination and hostility. Segregated schools, restaurants, lodging, housing, public transportation, recreational and entertainment facilities, even drinking fountains, represented the norm. In 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) issued an executive order banning discrimination in plants with federal government defense contracts; in his January 6, 1942, State of the Union address, he warned the American public that “We must be particularly vigilant against racial discrimination in any of its ugly forms.” He then desegregated federal buildings in Washington, DC, and appointed some black leaders to respectable offices, small steps toward guaranteeing equal rights for all citizens, but not enough to make a significant difference at the time. The months preceding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor found the United States preparing for war with soaring industrial production and marked growth in the armed forces. Nevertheless, people of color, roughly 10 percent of the population, continued to be excluded from the rising prosperity of the nation and advancement within the army and navy. According to the United States Census Bureau, in 1940, blacks represented 9.8 percent of the total population; American Indian, Eskimo, and Aleut, 0.3 percent; and Asian and Pacific Islanders, 0.2 percent. The Census Bureau at that time included figures for individuals of Hispanic origin with the totals for white, or Caucasian, citizens. Because of the somewhat negligible number of other minorities, discrimination and stereotyping of blacks overshadowed attitudes toward other racial groups in American life during the 1940s. As the country’s involvement in the European war became inevitable, black Americans faced a two-front battle—at home and overseas in the armed forces. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights group 533


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founded in 1909, regularly attempted to end segregation and acquire equality for all. The organization’s strategies consisted of working through the courts and lobbying legislative bodies. By the early 1940s, with the minor exception of President Roosevelt’s executive orders, matters had not much changed. Jim Crow, a term taken from a 19th-century plantation song and used to express racial discrimination, continued to reign, especially in the South. Even the military held to its World War I practices of segregation, declaring blacks unfit for the front lines and combat. Both enlistees and draftees found themselves in all-black service or supply units working as cargo handlers or cooks under the supervision of white Segregation reigned in the armed forces, and many black soldiers worked in lowly noncombat officers and confined to their own mess jobs during World War II. Submitting to pressure halls and barracks. Amid the unrest concerning military from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, President Roosevelt di- service, Roosevelt in 1941 relented to rected the Army Air Force to train black military pressure from civil rights leaders to espersonnel as pilots and technicians. This action tablish a means for testing the combat resulted in the formation of four squadrons that came to be called the Tuskegee Airmen. (AP readiness of blacks; he directed the U.S. Army Air Corps (later that year it bePHOTO/PAULA ILLINGWORTH) came known as the Army Air Force) to train black military personnel as pilots and technicians. The government constructed Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama at a site near the historically black Tuskegee University; there it activated four squadrons destined to be called the Tuskegee Airmen. The test proved a success; 997 cadets earned their pilot wings before the program closed in 1946. The men saw action in North Africa and Europe, and the 332nd Fighter Group received a Presidential Unit Citation in March 1945. Despite these results, segregation in the armed forces continued with only a few exceptions. General Dwight David Eisenhower (1890–1969) temporarily desegregated the army in 1944 in order to have a sufficient number of troops for the Battle of the Bulge. More than 2,000 black soldiers volunteered to fight. Likewise, the navy, toward the end of the war, desperate for additional personnel, integrated briefly. Also, black nurses could now administer to white soldiers in England. Some parties saw the training of the Tuskegee Airmen as a step forward, but black military personnel still encountered discrimination and intolerance both at home and in the services. Nevertheless, many blacks felt called upon to support their country at this critical time, and before the war’s end more than half a million had served in Europe, including well-known sports stars like boxers Beau Jack (1921–2000), Bob Montgomery (1919–1998), welterweight and middleweight title holder Sugar Ray Robinson


Race Relations and Stereotyping | 535 (1921–1989), and heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis (1914–1981). Louis, who had joined the army in June 1942, immediately set out to support the war effort in a number of ways and particularly wanted to secure the help and support of black citizens. Louis appeared on a recruiting poster, could frequently be seen as a soldier in newsreels, and in 1944 served as a consultant when the War Department made a filmed propaganda documentary titled The Negro Soldier. He and others had hoped that the picture would have a positive effect with regard to race relations both at home and in the military, an end that it did not fully achieve. Aside from his service work, Louis, along with other black athletes such as track and field star Jesse Owens (1913–1980), holder of four gold Olympic medals, hoped to advance racial equality by earning respect and maintaining their celebrity status both during and after the war. Ironically, despite the negative effects of a segregated military, World War II had a positive impact on blacks participating in sports. The diversion of American manpower to the war created vacancies on professional and amateur teams, which blacks occasionally filled. In the sport of baseball, Satchel Paige (1906–1982) and his Negro Baseball All-Star Team gained the opportunity to compete against major league champions; the Negro Collegiate All-Stars of Football saw games against the titleholder of the National Football League (NFL). This trend continued after the war; by the early 1950s, most major sports were integrated. In 1946, the color line fell in the National Football League when the Los Angeles Rams (formerly in Cleveland) signed Kenny Washington (1918–1971) and Woody Strode (1914–1994), while the Cleveland Browns signed Marion Motley (1920–1999) and Bill Willis (1921–2007). Jackie Robinson (1919–1972) made headline news in 1947 as the first black player accepted in major league baseball. Larry Doby (1903– 2003) and Satchel Paige quickly followed, joining the Cleveland Indians in 1948. That same year, Alice Coachman (b. 1923) earned the honor of being the first American black woman to win an Olympic gold medal (for the high jump). Integration occurred in professional basketball in 1950 with the inclusion of Charles “Chuck” Cooper (1926–1984), Nathaniel “Sweetwater” Clifton (1922–1990), and Earl Lloyd (b. 1928) in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Althea Gibson (1927–2003) became the first black woman to compete in the National Championships of Tennis (later the United States Open) at Forest Hills in Queens, New York, in 1950. Frustrated with the ineffectiveness of lobbying for rights by the NAACP, labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979) organized a national, black-led march to the capitol in Washington, DC, for July 1, 1941. Estimates that the event would draw over 100,000 people concerned Roosevelt, fearing that the march would upset the perceived feeling of national unity during wartime. As a preventive measure, one week before the protest, he issued Executive Order 8802 establishing the first Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), an agency with the responsibility of eliminating racial discrimination in government. Randolph then decided the march unnecessary and cancelled the event, but he immediately established the March on Washington Movement (MOWM) as a means of holding the FEPC accountable. Throughout the summer of 1942, MOWM held mass rallies of orderly protest in St. Louis, New York, and Chicago. Randolph’s strategies of involving ordinary people instead of political elites departed from the practices of other civil rights groups. Because of his success, his counterparts


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began to recognize the significance of grassroots black politics and the ability of a blackled mass movement to achieve change. The MOWM continued to interact with the FEPC until 1942, when Roosevelt changed the agency from an independent investigative body to a committee under congressional oversight, an action that reduced the committee’s ability to assist the MOWM in its efforts, and the MOWM ceased operations in 1947. Violent, spontaneous racial protests occurred in Detroit during the spring of 1943. Tensions had been building over the construction of a federal housing project for blacks next to a white Polish American neighborhood. Emotions climaxed on a June day, when more than 100,000 people, white and black, attempted to find relief from the heat at a municipal park on Belle Isle in the Detroit River. Fighting erupted between the two groups and continued intermittently for 12 hours, but without serious injuries. Unfounded rumors the next day caused more violence, and events quickly escalated, resulting in the deaths of 25 blacks and 9 whites; it took 6,000 federal troops to bring the riot to an end. That same year, tensions rose in other cities; Beaumont, Texas; Mobile, Alabama; and New York City were among those urban sites that endured race riots. Various entertainment outlets reinforced long-held myths that blacks displayed low intelligence, criminal tendencies, and physical inferiority; these persisted throughout the 1940s. Radio, a major purveyor of popular culture at the time, aired programs that presented blacks in unattractive ways, but what should have been an issue of racial stereotyping seldom entered any discussions about the shows. For example, Amos ’n’ Andy, one of the most popular programs in the history of the medium, aired from 1929 to 1960, alternating between NBC (National Broadcasting Company) during 1929–1939 and 1943–1948, and CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) in 1939–1943 and 1948–1960. An instant hit for its two white creators and actors, Freeman Gosden (1899–1982) and Charles Correll (1890–1972), the script called for a stereotypical “Negro dialect” and presented blacks as unreliable, lazy, and hapless individuals. Gosden and Correll soon supplemented Amos and Andy by adding others to the cast, including Kingfish, Lightnin’, Calhoun, Sapphire, and Madame Queen. Its popularity reached such heights that movie houses would time the showing of newsreels and the main feature so as to pause in an unobtrusive way and air the radio program to its patrons through speakers mounted in the auditorium. The Beulah Show told the story of Beulah, a meddling, simpleminded black maid who worked for Fibber McGee. The role of Beulah went to two white men: first, Marlin Hurt (1905–1946) from 1945 to 1946 and, second, Bob Corley (1924–1971), from February to August 1947. Their presence created a double insult—a transgendered blackface. In November 1947, CBS changed things by casting Hattie McDaniel (1895–1952), a successful, award-winning black performer, as Beulah. She took the role to television in the 1950s. The Jack Benny Program, another popular show, ran on CBS (1932–1933; 1949– 1958) and NBC (1932; 1933–1948) radio from 1932 to 1958. It introduced Rochester, Benny’s gravel-voiced black valet, in 1937. Played by Eddie Anderson (1905–1977), script writers portrayed Rochester as a servant with little status, the butt of much humor at the hands of Benny, but he also came across as a clever man in his own right. As with Amos ’n’ Andy, white America accepted these behaviors as normal. Other minority performers, frequently played by white actors, had limited exposure on radio, and their shows regularly moved from one network to another. Two © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Race Relations and Stereotyping | 537 characters, however, sustained long careers and popularity over several years. The long-running Lone Ranger Western series (1933–1942, Mutual; 1942–1944, NBC; 1944–1956, ABC) introduced Tonto, supposedly a Potawatomi Indian. Tonto played the crucial role of faithful sidekick to the Lone Ranger. Charlie Chan, a Chinese American detective, came from the pen of author Earl Derr Biggers (1884–1933) in a series of mysteries that ran from 1925 to 1932. Immensely popular, these tales soon made the transition to sound films in 1931, and many motion pictures followed. Between 1940 and 1949, 29 Charlie Chan movies thrilled audiences. White actors made to look Asian play Chan—Sidney Toler (1874–1947) in 23 productions followed by Roland Winter (1904–1989) in 6. The detective could also be heard on radio from 1932 until 1948. Again, a white actor—in this case, Ed Begley (1901–1970)—even on the invisible medium of radio, portrayed Chan. When newspaper comic strips included minorities in their storylines, the figures also tended to be presented in a stereotypical manner and held subordinate roles. Kenneth Kling’s (1895–1970) Joe and Asbestos (1925–1926, 1928–1966) features Joe Quince, a white character, picking real horses for actual races, with his picks always winning. Soon after the strip’s first appearance, Kling gave Joe a companion, a black stable boy named Asbestos. An Al Jolson–style caricature, Asbestos might have been acceptable at the time but would today be considered politically incorrect. Lee Falk (1911–1999), creator of Mandrake the Magician (1934 to present) did somewhat better in showing respect. Mandrake, another white hero, fights criminals and other villains with Lothar, a black character, serving as his crime-fighting companion. Mandrake met Lothar during travels in Africa, and the pair are reported to be among the first interracial team of crime fighters. Falk also created The Phantom at the same time as Mandrake. A muscular white man clad in purple tights and wearing a mask, the Phantom battles evil in the African jungle on “The Dark Continent.” Guran, a member of the pygmy tribe, serves as his loyal helper, not unlike Lothar in the Mandrake series or Tonto in the Lone Ranger serials. In each of these strips, the minority characters perform as subservient figures. The comics also offered renderings of other American ethnic or racial groups. Fred Harman’s (1902–1982) successful strip Red Ryder, which ran from 1938 to 1963, paired a Navaho Indian tyke, Little Beaver, with the tough cowpoke Ryder, creating a hackneyed image of Native Americans as inferior to whites, a role similar to those given blacks, but this time in drawings. The movies likewise presented stereotypes and adopted past racial images. Lincoln Perry (1902–1985), through his portrayal of a character known as Stepin Fetchit, became America’s first black movie star and millionaire. He acquired the distinction and riches at a heavy price. Perry made 54 films between 1925 and 1976, always as a befuddled, mumbling, worthless fool. Although he reached his peak popularity in the mid-1930s, Perry, frustrated with constant battles with Twentieth Century-Fox concerning equal pay, walked away from Hollywood in 1940. He returned to appear in five motion pictures between 1945 and 1949, declared bankruptcy in 1947, went back to Hollywood sporadically during the 1950s and 1970s, and then faded into obscurity. During the 1940s, despite some protests from black leaders concerning stereotypical negative images, Hollywood gave all black actors exaggerated dialects and made them up with exaggerated lips and bulging eyeballs. Scripts called on them to be ignorant, lazy, conniving people, but ones with great rhythm for dancing. Further insult came © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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when studios had white actors and actresses in blackface playing the roles of blacks. One example among many can be found in Paramount Picture’s highly successful Holiday Inn (1942) starring Bing Crosby (1903–1977), Fred Astaire (1899–1987), Marjorie Reynolds (1917–1997), and Virginia Dale (1917–1994). Crosby and Reynolds, along with a chorus and orchestra, appear in blackface for a demeaning musical number titled “Abraham,” a song in honor of President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) and the ending of slavery. Even children’s cartoons such as Bugs Bunny in All This and Rabbit Stew (Warner Bros., 1941) or Universal Pictures’ Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat (1940) reinforce negative images of blacks. In contrast to most mainstream Hollywood productions, a film genre called “race movies” or “race pictures” existed in the United States between 1915 and 1950. It consisted of movies aimed at all-black audiences featuring all-black casts, produced primarily in West Coast or Northern cities, and most often financed by white-owned companies and scripted by white writers. These motion pictures presented characters in roles usually reserved for whites, such as doctors, lawyers, soldiers, cowboys, and powerful gangsters, but in a curious turnaround gave them stereotypical black servants and chauffeurs. Businessman and publisher John H. Johnson (1918–2005), himself black, created the first mass magazines that celebrated black culture and lives through positive images. On November 1, 1945, the debut issue of Ebony, a pictorial news magazine modeled after Life magazine, hit the newsstands of Chicago. The premiere issue sold 25,000 copies and served as a new vehicle for national advertisers to reach black consumers. Johnson had started his publishing career with Negro Digest in 1942. Similar to Reader’s Digest but aimed at black readers, it took a serious look at racial issues. Both Ebony and Negro Digest originally sold for 25 cents per issue (approximately $3 in 2008 dollars), a relatively high price in an era of 5-cent and 10-cent periodicals. Publication of the Negro Digest ceased in 1951, being replaced by Jet, a similar magazine. Early issues of Ebony featured stars such as Lena Horne (b. 1917) and Dorothy Dandridge (1922–1965) and over the years offered articles about notable black celebrities and sports figures. It occasionally presented works by well-established literary figures such as author Langston Hughes (1902–1967) and poet Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000). Johnson’s magazines proved so successful that in 1972 the Magazine Publishers Association selected him as magazine publisher of the year, and 10 years later he became the first black to appear on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans. Minorities in general did not fare as well as whites in advertising. Food products especially at one time used blacks as a part of their labeling. The Quaker Oats Company provides an example. It developed a logo for pancake flour, syrup, and other breakfast foods known to consumers as Aunt Jemima. The company also employed a number of different women over the years to be Aunt Jemima at state and national fairs. Originally, this smiling Mammy image served as a female version of Uncle Tom, a servant presented in unflattering ways and always at the beck and call of whites. Since her first appearance in 1893, Aunt Jemima has undergone significant changes and, according to Quaker Oats, has become racially neutral; some observers, knowing the heritage of the logo, might disagree. Other products utilizing images of blacks on their packages during the 1940s include Uncle Rastus for Cream of Wheat (hot cereal), and Uncle Ben


Race Relations and Stereotyping | 539 (rice products). All of these images appear on the products’ packages, advertisements in magazines and on billboards, and even made it to children’s toys as dolls. Attitudes and acts of discrimination, hostility, and oppression toward blacks were not limited to just this group; other minorities living in the United States had similar experiences. By 1940, Native Americans had suffered a long history of grievances, including loss of their rightful lands and tribal authority, poverty, ill health, and inadequate education. The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 brought some improvement. It recognized tribal ceremonies and practices, allowing tribes to write their own constitutions for self-governance. They could also assume ownership of reservation lands. By 1945, a total of 95 tribes had written constitutions and 70 had formed business corporations to develop reservation resources. Compared with earlier decades, matters had improved, but poverty, disease, and unemployment continued to run at higher levels than among other American minorities. As a group, Native Americans offered strong support for war-related efforts, with 25,000, including 800 women, serving in the armed forces. The Wind Talkers unit from the Navajo tribe served as communication personnel and spoke in a code derived from their untranslatable language. They made another major contribution to winning World War II by taking part in every assault made by the marines from 1942 to 1945. In the wake of the attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, tensions mounted and many people blindly concluded that all Japanese Americans living on the West Coast somehow constituted a threat to national security. On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt issued an executive order calling for the relocation of between 110,000 and 120,000 individuals of Japanese decent residing in California, Oregon, Washington, and southern Arizona. The War Relocation Authority (WRA) administered the program and, by October of that year, had constructed 10 internment camps in California, Arkansas, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona to house the detainees for the remainder of the war. Tremendous financial losses occurred for these citizens, because homes, farms, and businesses were liquated on short notice and most personal property had to be left behind; it frequently mysteriously disappeared, probably by theft, despite government promises to protect it. In addition to the relocation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested nearly 2,000 Japanese Americans. Only one man ever received a conviction, and that for the crime of forgetting to register as a business agent of a Japanese importing firm. During the war, the FBI also arrested thousands of white Germans and Italians, but they suffered no relocation as happened on the West Coast. Conditions for the interned Japanese Americans finally changed on December 18, 1944, when a California state court, after two years of litigation, decided that a civilian agency such as the WRA had no constitutional authority to incarcerate law-abiding citizens. Two weeks later, authorities declared the camps closed, and by March 1946, all occupants had been released. Mexican Americans and other Hispanics who lived primarily in the Southwest, like blacks and Native Americans, had been ill treated for most of their time in the United States. During the 1940s, they continued to experience segregation in schools, public accommodations, and neighborhoods, along with discrimination in the workplace in terms of working hours, pay, training, and advancement. The country’s entry into


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World War II sent millions of U.S. soldiers overseas and created severe labor shortages causing some employers to be more tolerant of hiring Mexican Americans. Biases, however, persisted—especially on the West Coast, where a series of events culminated in what is known as the Zoot Suit Riots. It started with many Mexican adolescents, along with some black and white youths, sporting a new fashion fad—zoot suits. Their attire consisted of long, fitted jackets with outsized lapels and padded shoulders and trousers with a high waist and legs full in the thigh and pegged to ankle-hugging tightness, a statement of teenage rebellion. At about the same time of the appearance of this new dress code, E. Duran Ayers (active 1940s), newly appointed head of the Los Angles Foreign Relations Bureau, reported to a grand jury on the “Mexican element,” describing this group as “individuals with wild and violent tendencies, no matter how much education or training they might receive.” Shortly thereafter, zoot-suiter Henry Leyvas (1923–1971) and some of his friends were arrested and found guilty of murder. Led by local tabloids, the public cried for justice and vengeance against anyone so dressed. The Los Angeles police answered with a roundup of over 600 Mexican Americans, all charged with crimes such as suspicion of assault and robbery. In June 1943, against this backdrop of interracial hostility, 11 sailors on leave reported they had been attacked by a group of zoot-suited Mexican youth. In response, more than 200 sailors and marines on passes to Los Angeles wreaked havoc for three nights in Mexican neighborhoods, while military and civilian authorities looked the other way. The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps command staff finally intervened, confining sailors and marines to barracks and declaring Los Angeles off limits to all military personnel. Despite continuing segregation and acts of discrimination during the 1940s, movement toward equality for all advanced, albeit at a glacial pace. From the outset of World War II, roughly 1 million black citizens, primarily from the rural South, moved to the industrialized North and to the West Coast. Although their new locations sometimes imposed housing restrictions, which created segregated and inadequate living conditions, they still provided greater possibilities for jobs and better schools for children to attend than did their previous places of residence. Doors that opened during and after the war created opportunities toward economic mobility, but not enough to prevent noticeable gaps in income across racial groups. The number of blacks working in manufacturing jumped from half a million to 1.2 million. Another 2 million joined the federal civil service. At the same time, the number of working black women in domestic services declined from 72 percent of their number to 48 percent. Additionally, many of those men who fought in the war returned home with new job skills, relocated in new communities, and pursued new careers. Barriers still existed, just not as many. Housing continued to be a problem, and while developers and realtors initially prevented minorities from buying homes in the fast-growing postwar suburban developments like Levittown, the first black reporter gained entrance to a presidential press conference and his fellow citizens had access to the United States Senate press gallery for the first time. Throughout the 1940s, A. Philip Randolph, the NAACP, and other civil rights organizations continued to fight for civil rights. In 1948, President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) signed an executive order establishing the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Forces. The U.S. military, © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Radio | 541 however, kept black soldiers in separate units until the early 1950s and the Korean War. Segregation officially ended in the military when authorities abolished the last all-black unit in 1954; that same year, the Supreme Court in Brown v. the Board of Education, struck down the separate-but-equal school systems in the United States. Even though MOWM closed its doors in 1948, it served as a model for the 1963 March on Washington, where the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. See also: Crime and Mystery Films; Fads; Leisure and Recreation; MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System); Newspapers; Radio Programming: Children’s Shows, Serials, and Adventure Series; Radio Programming: Comedy Shows; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Westerns (Films) Selected Reading Bayor, Ronald H. Race and Ethnicity in America: A Concise History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Davis, Thomas J. Race Relations in the United States, 1940–1960. Westport, CT Greenwood Press, 2008. Our, Alan M. Blacks in the Army Air Forces During World War II. Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1977. Patterson, James T. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

RADIO For many media historians, the 1930s and 1940s reigned as radio’s golden age. Untold millions of Americans listened to their receivers each and every day, making broadcasting far and away the most pervasive form of mass communication ever developed up to that time. Radio leveled regional and social differences and barriers by its very ubiquity. Varied shows, bold experiments, and high production values marked this period, yet the early 1950s found traditional commercial radio on the ropes, vanquished by television in just a few years, and soon reduced to a bland menu of music and news. The once-mighty medium increasingly became a conduit for recorded music and little else, and disc jockeys emerged as the primary voices on the air. Despite this postwar setback, during the years 1930 to 1949, radio grew at a remarkable rate. The percentage of American homes with radio receivers went from about 46 percent in 1930 (over 13 million sets) to over 80 percent by 1940 (almost 29 million sets). Even with World War II and a shortage of new receivers, the numbers kept growing, reaching 88 percent of homes in 1945 (over 33 million sets). With postwar prosperity and the increased availability of consumer goods, at least one radio could be found in almost 95 percent of homes (almost 40 million sets) by 1949. Today, the figure approaches 100 percent, with most residences claiming multiple receivers. During that same period, the number of commercial AM (amplitude modulation) stations on the air jumped from 618 broadcasters in 1930 to 765 in 1940, and then to 1,912 AM stations in 1949—and all this growth came about despite a crushing economic depression and war-imposed shortages. In addition, 727 FM (frequency © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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modulation) stations had also come into existence by 1949, giving the nation 2,639 radio outlets at the end of the period, and these proliferating broadcasters fiercely competed for listeners. Remarkable statistics in themselves, it must be remembered that radio as a popular medium has been around only since the early 1920s. Thanks to national networks—NBC (National Broadcasting Company), CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), and MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System)—that grew up in the 1930s, electronically and culturally linking the nation and allowing millions to share in the same programming, radio brought a virtual nonstop menu of entertainment, music, news, and sports into the home. In addition, growing numbers of consumers viewed neither cars nor car radios as luxuries. Both had evolved into necessities, right along with food and shelter, and the car radio became as important as the one in the living room. As a result, more and more vehicles purchased during this period came so equipped. From the moment they arose in the morning until they turned off the lights at night, Americans everywhere—at home, on the job, on the road—could stay tuned. As radio became part and parcel of the everyday lives of Americans, the medium assumed a unique importance. Unlike movies and print media, radio, with no admission price or fees per program, gave the illusion of being free. A twist of the dial brought in just about anything a listener might want, and detailed schedules in newspapers and magazines assured the public that no one might miss a favorite show. As a point of comparison, approximately 80 million Americans attended the movies each week during the 1930s, despite a numerical drop during the worst days of the Great Depression; those numbers grew during World War II to 85 million, peaking at 90 million in 1946–1947. At the end of the decade, and also because of the impacts of television, the figures plummeted to 60 million weekly and continued their drop thereafter. But not even the film industry, churning out hundreds of features yearly, could approach radio’s appetite for dozens of shows each day, hundreds each week, thousands by the end of a year. The quality may have been wildly uneven, but the breadth of selections was unparalleled. See also: Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry; FM Radio; Radio Programming: Action, Crime, Police, and Detective Shows; Radio Programming: Children’s Shows, Serials, and Adventure Series; Radio Programming: Comedy Shows; Radio Programming: Drama and Anthology Shows; Radio Programming: Educational Shows; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk; Radio Programming: Quiz Shows; Radio Programming: Soap Operas; Technology Selected Reading Barfield, Ray. Listening to Radio, 1920–1950. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996. Barnouw, Erik. A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Vol. 1, A Tower in Babel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966. ———. A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Vol. 2, The Golden Web. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Maltin, Leonard. The Great American Broadcast: A Celebration of Radio’s Golden Age. New York: New American Library, 2000. Sterling, Christopher H., and John M. Kitross. Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1990.


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RADIO PROGRAMMING: ACTION, CRIME, POLICE, AND DETECTIVE SHOWS During the late 19th century, American publishers began issuing countless dime novels, cheap little volumes—initially a dime, but later often available for as little as a nickel (or about $2.50 and $1.25 in 2008 dollars)—filled with violent tales of action and adventure. Aimed principally at an audience of boys and young men, but if sales serve as any indicator, popular with other readers as well. The dime novels, printed on low-quality pulp paper and poorly bound, featured a pen-and-ink cover illustration depicting an exciting event from the pages within, such as a leap from a cliff; a damsel in distress; guns and fisticuffs; or a mad chase with horses, stage coaches, locomotives, or anything else that might lure a prospective buyer. The crude tales evolved into pulp magazines, big sellers at newsstands and kiosks that continued the tradition of garish covers promising thrills and chills for only a dime or so. Both Hollywood and, later, the radio networks, always alert to trends that might attract audiences, strove to duplicate these early pulp successes. One of the most popular radio shows of both the 1930s and the 1940s featured The Shadow, a wily crime fighter who possessed the power to “cloud men’s minds,” thereby rendering himself invisible. Street and Smith, publishers of numerous pulp magazines, in 1930 sold CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) on the idea of creating a radio show based on one of its most successful titles, The Shadow. An invisible hero presented no problems for an aural medium, and the series quickly built a large audience; it stayed on the air until 1954, an unusually long run for any show. Battling crime, invisibly or more traditionally, proved a profitable road to travel for series producers. True Detective, another popular pulp magazine, debuted in print in 1924; by 1929, its stories, purportedly based on real events, could be heard on the air. Except for occasional breaks, True Detective Mysteries did not sign off until 1958, another long-lived show. With their theme of “crime does not pay,” The Shadow and True Detective Mysteries spawned many another crime series. Gang Busters introduced audiences to wailing police sirens, screeching tires, and the rat-tat-tat of a tommy gun and served as the first of many police-oriented shows. Violence and realism characterized Gang Busters, and legions of listeners relished the mix, keeping it on the air until 1957. By the end of the 1930s, crimes and criminals had established a substantial niche in American broadcasting. With the onset of the 1940s, the period might well be called the decade of the detective. Classic sleuths like Sherlock Holmes and Charlie Chan had already made their mark on radio schedules, but a new breed, the hardboiled detective, moved en masse into network time slots during this period. Inspired by the pulps and writers like Raymond Chandler (1888–1959; Adventures of Philip Marlowe), Earle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970; Perry Mason), Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961; Adventures of Sam Spade, Adventures of the Thin Man), Ellery Queen (shared pseudonym of Frederic Dannay, 1905–1982, and Manfred Lee, 1905–1971, and also the name of their fictional detective; Adventures of Ellery Queen), Rex Stout (1886–1975; Adventures of Nero Wolfe), and a host of nameless other authors, the radio detective had his day.


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Throughout the war years, these new private eyes appeared with some regularity. Top radio actors (or voices) usually played them, such as Ray Collins (1889–1965; Crime Doctor), Hugh Marlowe (1911–1982; Ellery Queen), Santos Ortega (1899– 1976; Perry Mason), Les Tremayne (1913–2003; The Thin Man), and many others. Often, one actor would initiate a role, another would then take it, and possibly another and another before the series had run its course, but such was the hectic nature of network radio during the 1930s and 1940s. In the postwar period, still more sleuths came along. Dick Powell (1904–1963), a former song-and-dance man in Hollywood musicals of the 1930s, established a radio reputation as a wisecracking private eye. He first played in Rogue’s Gallery, a short-lived series (1945–1947) that allowed him to polish the tough-guy persona that he brought to the later Richard Diamond, Private Detective, Powell’s bestremembered show. These roles resembled similar ones he played in several well-received movies at the time: Murder, My Sweet (1944), Cornered (1945), and Johnny O’Clock (1947). Frank Lovejoy (1912–1962), another motion picture actor, could be heard on radio often. His instantly recognizable gravelly voice first caught people’s attention in Gang Busters, and he gave Mr. Malone, the titular hero of Murder and Mr. Malone, a gruff authority. He went to other radio productions in the 1950s, the same time that his film career blossomed. Alan Ladd (1913–1964)—like Frank Lovejoy, a veteran of both radio and the movies—created a syndicated series called Box 13 in 1948. He wrote and starred in the show, a continuing tale about a for-hire adventurer named Dan Holiday. Clients wrote to “Box 13” when seeking Holiday’s assistance, and the ensuing exploits allowed Ladd to burnish his reputation as an action entertainer. Sam Spade, the most famous of Dashiell Hammett’s many characters, finally came to radio in 1946. Actor Howard Duff (1913–1990), who parlayed network success into a movie career, took on the role of the hardboiled gumshoe in 1946 and retained it until 1950, becoming, in the process, one of the most memorable of radio detectives. Wildroot Cream Oil, a hair dressing for men, sponsored the show until its demise in 1950. Finally, two relatively unknown actors rose to considerable fame amid all the private eyes populating the airwaves in the later 1940s: J. Scott Smart (1902–1960) and Jack Webb (1920–1982). Smart played Brad Runyon, a heavyset investigator in The Fat Man. Smart himself weighed in at well over 250 pounds and had a deep voice that seemingly emanated from his considerable depths. The program’s opening, “There he goes, he’s stepping on the scales. Weight, 227 pounds; fortune [pause], danger,” served as one of those classic radio bits everyone came to know. Smart boasted an extensive radio background, mainly character roles, when he came to The Fat Man in 1946. But he quickly molded a distinctive personality for Runyon, and the show enjoyed good ratings for its five-year run. Hollywood released a so-so low-budget feature, The Fat Man, in 1951, which wisely stars the rotund Smart; the picture, however, later became notable primarily as the first film in which Rock Hudson (1925–1985) receives screen credits. Still a youthful 26 when he broke into radio with Pat Novak, for Hire in 1946, Jack Webb worked to establish an identity for Novak, one that consisted mainly of


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TABLE 75. Selected Action, Crime, Police, and Detective Programming on American Radio, 1940–1949 (Arranged Chronologically) Selected Artists/Performers and Shows

Dates

True Detective Mysteries

1929–1930; 1936–1939; 1944–1958 1930–1954 1930–1950; 1955–1956 1932–1948 1935–1957 1936–1949 1937–1952 1937–1955 1939–1948 1939–1941; 1943–1944; 1949–1953 1939–1954 1940–1947 1941–1950 1941–1954 1942–1955 1942–1955 1942–1957 1943–1951 1943–1954 1943; 1945–1954 1943–1955 1943–1955 1944–1950 1944–1952 1944–1953 1944–1958 1945–1947 1945–1950 1945–1951 1945–1953 1946–1949 1946–1951 1946–1951 1946–1954 1947 (partial season) 1947–1949 1947–1951 1947–1951 1947–1954 1947–1957 1948–1950 1949–1953 1949–1953 1949–1954 1949–1956

The Shadow Basil Rathbone, others, in Sherlock Holmes Ed Begley in The Adventures of Charlie Chan Frank Lovejoy, others, in Gang Busters Famous Jury Trials Big Town Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons Adventures of Ellery Queen I Love a Mystery Mr. District Attorney Crime Doctor Adventures of the Thin Man Adventures of Bulldog Drummond Adventures of Mr. & Mrs. North The Whistler Counterspy (also known as David Harding, Counterspy) Adventures of Nero Wolfe Molle Mystery Theater The Falcon John Larkin in Perry Mason Nick Carter, Master Detective Chester Morris in Boston Blackie Herbert Marshall in The Man Called X Michael Shayne, Private Detective The FBI in Peace and War Dick Powell in Rogue’s Gallery Casey, Crime Photographer The Saint This Is Your FBI Jack Webb in Pat Novak, for Hire Howard Duff in Adventures of Sam Spade, Detective J. Scott Smart in The Fat Man Let George Do It Jack Webb in Johnny Modero: Pier 23 Call the Police Adventures of Philip Marlowe Frank Lovejoy in Murder and Mr. Malone The Big Story Official Detective Alan Ladd in Box 13 Brian Donlevy in Dangerous Assignment Dick Powell in Richard Diamond, Private Detective Broadway Is My Beat Jack Webb in Dragnet


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hard-bitten one-liners. That trait—terse dialogue and sarcasm—worked well, and Webb polished it, first in the brief (1947) Johnny Modero: Pier 23 and then in his best work, Dragnet. In that series, Webb played Detective Sergeant Joe Friday, a Los Angeles police officer, and his characterization propelled him to fame. He went on to a later television series of the same name, and several movies, including, not surprisingly, Dragnet in 1954. Webb, something of a one-note actor, seldom strayed far from his tight-lipped, unsmiling Friday character. As with the opening of The Fat Man, Dragnet also featured a memorable introduction, in its case, four musical notes—dum-de-dumdum—that signaled a new episode. Mysteries and detective yarns took up much network programming during the 1940s. Aural extensions of two literary traditions, pulp magazines and crime novels, they found receptive audiences, and many titles carried over from the 1930s. Freely employing sound effects and fast-paced plots, often with tough-as-nails heroes, these many series provided escapism and thrills on a nightly basis. When television began to make inroads at the end of the decade, the new medium likewise looked to similar sources. By the early 1950s, this once-flourishing radio genre had all but disappeared, replaced by images of TV cops and private eyes. See also: Best Sellers (Books); Bogart, Humphrey; Crime and Mystery Films; Film Noir; Illustrators; Musicals (Film) Selected Reading Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Hilmes, Michele, and Jason Loviglio, eds. Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio. Florence, KY: Routledge, 2002. Lackman, Ron. The Encyclopedia of American Radio. New York: Checkmark Books, 2000. Maltin, Leonard. The Great American Broadcast: A Celebration of Radio’s Golden Age. New York: Dutton, 1997.

RADIO PROGRAMMING: CHILDREN’S SHOWS, SERIALS, AND ADVENTURE SERIES From the earliest days of commercial radio, producers created programming targeted at juveniles. One of the first, Coast-to-Coast on a Bus (it began in 1924 as The Children’s Hour), laid the framework for many successive children’s programs: mix music, patter, and brief stories in order to hold the attention of young listeners. Milton Cross (1897–1975), the famed host for the Saturday afternoon broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera from 1931 to his death, served as the bus conductor and took great pride in the show. Two other radio personalities, Ed McConnell (1893–1954) and “Uncle” Don Carney (ne Howard Rice, 1897–1954), modeled their productions, Smilin’ Ed and His Buster Brown Gang and Uncle Don, after the pattern established by Coast-to-Coast


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on a Bus. All three continued into the 1940s, and only the advent of television, with its visual component, doomed that form of programming. (Many people believe that Uncle Don, thinking his microphone was turned off, muttered over the air some curse words about his attitudes toward his listeners. But this bit of media lore actually predated Uncle Don’s show and has since been applied to virtually everyone who has hosted a children’s program. According to www.snopes.com, the leading source for debunking such manufactured claims, no evidence substantiates the incident. Myths, however, possess lives of their own, as do Uncle Don’s purported comments.) Cowboy shows also enjoyed a following. Screen stars Gene Autry (1907–1998) and Roy Rogers (1911–1998), probably the best-known among youngsters, enjoyed high ratings with their programs. Autry, billed as America’s Favorite Cowboy,” led the way with Melody Ranch, which debuted on CBS in 1940. It blended humor, Western tales, and music. Although Autry had to absent himself from the show from 1944 and 1945 for military service, the network and Wrigley’s Doublemint Gum, his continuing sponsor, welcomed him back after the war. Melody Ranch continued for another 11 years as a regular CBS offering, finally heading for its last roundup in 1956. Roy Rogers (1911–1998), the “King of the Cowboys” and Autry’s chief rival in the 1940s, also made the transition to radio. The Roy Rogers Show premiered in 1944 on MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System). Accompanied by the popular Dale Evans (1912–2001), dubbed the “Queen of the West” and also his wife in real life, the program likewise appealed to a youthful audience by mixing music, comedy, and drama but never achieved the success of Melody Ranch. Burdened by an erratic schedule and far fewer affiliates, The Roy Rogers Show struggled along until 1955. For the 1940s, the leading form of children’s programming concerned serials and adventure series. Serials involved continuing, episodic stories that ran for months at a time. Adventure series, on the other hand, usually presented complete, self-contained stories with each broadcast. The cast of characters continued, reappearing from week to week, ready for fresh new thrills. Two of the first serials, taken from the popular comic strips of the day, Little Orphan Annie (1930–1942) and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1932–1940; 1946–1947), made their debuts in the early 1930s. Both weekday offerings, Little Orphan Annie grew out of the strip penned by Harold Gray (1894–1968), and Buck Rogers came from a newspaper series of the same name by author Philip Nowlan (1888–1940) and artist Dick Calkins (1895–1962). The success of these pioneering serials caused competitors to appear on station schedules shortly thereafter. Usually broadcast during the late afternoon, after school but before dinner, serials guaranteed sponsors a returning audience by crafting their stories to end on a suspenseful, cliff-hanging note with each 15-minute episode. The heroes tended to be earnest young American boys; Annie proved an exception, and did not bring about an influx of similar heroines. More characteristically, Jack Armstrong received billing as the “AllAmerican Boy,” a lad that led a group of admiring pals from adventure to adventure.


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| Radio Programming: Children’s Shows, Serials, and Adventure Series TABLE 76.

Representative Children’s Programming, 1940–1949 (Arranged Chronologically)

Artists/Performers and Shows

Dates

Coast to Coast on a Bus (also known as The Children’s Hour) Ed McConnell, Smilin’ Ed and His Buster Brown Gang (also known as The Buster Brown Show) Don Carney (ne Howard Rice; 1897–1954), Uncle Don Nila Mack (1891–1953), creator/director, Let’s Pretend (originally The Adventures of Helen and Mary) Ireene Wicker (1906–1987), The Singing Story Lady (stories accompanied by music for young children) Mary Small (1922–1976), The Mary Small Show (music)

1924–1948 1929–1941; 1944–1953 1929–1949 1929–1954

The Cinnamon Bear (children’s fantasy) Gene Autry (1907–1998), Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch Isabel Manning Hewson (active 1940s and 1950s), Land of the Lost (children’s fantasy) Roy Rogers (1911–1998), The Roy Rogers Show Adventures of Archie Andrews (juvenile comedy; adapted from a popular comic strip) Juvenile Jury (children’s panel show) Lassie (animal adventures)

1931–1941; 1945 1933–1937; 1941–1946 1937–1955 1940–1943; 1945–1956 1943–1948 1945–1956 1945–1953 1946–1953 1947–1950

Cowboy legend Tom Mix (1880–1940) did not appear in the serial bearing his name; instead, professional radio actors impersonated him, but youngsters, gathered about a radio and hanging on every word, did not mind. The imaginary worlds created in the late-afternoon serials relied on a willing suspension of disbelief (often assisted by good sound effects) for their success. The later serials of the war years, and also the self-contained adventure shows, became more realistic, more contemporary, and lost some of the innocence that had characterized those of the 1930s. Axis villains popped up with some regularity, and spies and secret weapons colored the plots. Don Winslow battled enemy ships and planes, Captain Midnight commanded the Secret Squadron, Terry left the pirates behind and focused on his Army Air Force duties, and Hop Harrigan ranged from Berlin to Okinawa. Schuyler (Sky) King came along too late for the war, but his Western flying adventures nevertheless provided thrills aplenty. The radio serial died a lingering death in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A longstanding tradition for kids home from school, the excitement of waiting for the next episode of a favorite program began to pale amid the newfound wonders of a newly acquired television set. Often relegated to inconvenient time slots and sometimes erratic in their scheduling, children’s programming and their audience somehow found one another. The shows could be gentle and sweet (Coast-to-Coast on a Bus, Let’s Pretend) or as violent as anything created in evening prime time for more mature audiences (Terry and the


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TABLE 77. Representative Radio Serials and Adventure Series, 1940–1949 (Arranged Chronologically) Title

Dates

Little Orphan Annie (serial) Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (serial)

1930–1943 1932–1940; 1946–1947 1933–1951 1933–1954 1933–1951 1934–1949 1935–1952 1934–1939; 1943–1947 1936–1952 1937–1939; 1941–1948 1937–1940; 1942–1943 1938–1955

Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy (serial) The Lone Ranger (series—self-contained stories) The Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooters (serial) Adventures of Frank Merriwell (series—self-contained stories) Jungle Jim (serial) Adventures of Dick Tracy (serial) The Green Hornet (series—self-contained stories) Terry and the Pirates (serial) Don Winslow of the Navy (serial) Challenge of the Yukon (series—self-contained stories) (also known as Sergeant Preston of the Canadian Mounted Police, 1951–1955) Captain Midnight (serial) Mandrake the Magician (serial) Adventures of Superman (serial) The Sea Hound (serial)

Hop Harrigan (serial) Red Ryder (series—self-contained stories) The Cisco Kid (series—self-contained stories) Chick Carter, Boy Detective (serial) Tennessee Jed (serial) Sky King (serial)

1939–1949 1940–1942 1940–1951 1942–1944; 1946–1948; 1951 1942–1950 1942–1951 1942–1956 1943–1945 1945–1947 1946–1954

Pirates, Red Ryder). But they had legions of fans, and sponsors were quick to be associated with the popular programs. By the 1950s, however, most of the children’s shows had been cancelled, victims of the mass transition to television. See also: Classical Music; Country Music; Radio Programming: Educational Shows; Westerns (Film); Youth Selected Reading Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Nachman, Gerald. Raised on Radio. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Stedman, Raymond William. The Serials: Suspense and Drama by Installment. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971.


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RADIO PROGRAMMING: COMEDY SHOWS Throughout World War II, commercial radio provided a nonstop diet of entertainment. Along with music and variety shows, comedy programs dominated the evening hours, that time when listenership was at its greatest. Many of the most popular and enduring shows had their beginnings in the 1930s and simply carried over into the 1940s, but new comedians also found radio to their liking, especially in continuing series that came to be called situation comedies. Amid the laughter, both shows and sponsors acknowledged the country’s increasing involvement with the war. Patriotism—support your country, support the troops at home and abroad, buy bonds, save scrap, obey rationing restrictions, give blood— became a repeated theme, just as cheerfulness and good spirits provided some escape from the grim realities of combat. Most shows mixed these seemingly contradictory ideas skillfully, leaving the audience laughing in the best comic tradition. Two pioneers of broadcasting, Freeman Gosden (1899–1982) and Charles Correll (1890–1972), created one of radio’s first comedies, the trailblazing Amos ’n’ Andy, in 1928. Although Gosen and Correll were white, their fictional cast—including Amos and Andy themselves, plus countless others—consisted of black characters. One of the first depictions of black life in then-segregated America, Amos ’n’ Andy soon became one of the era’s biggest hits, sustaining itself for over 30 years. A precursor of many of the situation comedies that dominated much programming in the immediate postwar period, its reliance on running gags and memorable characterizations made it a national favorite with all audiences. Veteran comedians like Fred Allen (1894–1956), Jack Benny (1894–1974), and Bob Hope (1903–2003) reached their greatest fame on radio, telling jokes and laughing along with their guests while being topical yet generally avoiding anything of much substance. Usually accompanied by some buoyant music, their humor served as a good pick-me-up during the war years. In a similar vein, three husbandwife teams—Goodman and Jane Ace (1899–1982; 1897–1974) on Easy Aces, From 1932 to 1958, comedian Jack Benny en- George Burns and Gracie Allen (1896– tertained radio listeners with his top-rated 1996; 1905–1964) on The Burns and weekly show. A veteran of vaudeville, he knew Allen Show, and Jim and Marian Jorhow to fill the time with a mix of patter, music, sketches, and jokes. With a cast of regulars and dan (1896–1988; 1898–1961) on Fibloyal sponsors, The Jack Benny Program en- ber McGee and Molly brought domestic joyed consistently large audiences. (Photofest) humor to the airwaves.


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TABLE 78. Selected Comedy Programming on American Radio, 1940–1949 (Arranged Chronologically) Selected Artists/Performers and Shows

Dates

Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, Amos ‘n’ Andy Goodman Ace and Jane Ace, Easy Aces Chester Lauck and Norris Goff, Lum and Abner Jack Pearl, The Jack Pearl Show

1928–1960 1930–1948 1931–1954 1932–1936; 1948–1951 1932–1946 1932–1947 1932–1949 1932–1950 1932–1958 1935–1959 1935–1959 1936–1949 1936–1951 1936–1956 1938–1940; 1942–1943 1939–1948 1939–1950 1939–1953 1939–1953 1940–1945 1940; 1942–1949 1940–1949 1940–1950 1941–1950 1941–1951 1941–1956 1942–1951 1942–1954 1942–1959 1943–1950 1943–1954 1943–1956 1944–1949 1944–1951 1944–1953 1945–1947 1945–1953 1945–1954 1946–1951 1947–1954 1948–1953

Art Van Harvey and Bernardine Flynn, Vic and Sade Ed Wynn, The Texaco Fire Chief; The Perfect Fool Fred Allen, The Fred Allen Show George Burns and Gracie Allen, Burns and Allen Jack Benny, The Jack Benny Program Bob Hope, The Pepsodent Show (other titles) Jim Jordan & Marian Jordan, Fibber McGee and Molly Milton Berle, The Milton Berle Show (other titles) Fanny Brice, Baby Snooks Edgar Bergen, Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show The Tommy Riggs and Betty Lou Show Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake, Blondie The Aldrich Family Red Skelton, The Red Skelton Show That Brewster Boy Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, The Abbott & Costello Show Meet the Meeks Henry Morgan, Here’s Morgan A Date with Judy Duffy’s Tavern The Great Gildersleeve It Pays to Be Ignorant Junior Miss Art Linkletter, People Are Funny Joan Davis, Leave It to Joan Meet Corliss Archer Jack Carson, The Campbell’s Soup Program Alan Young, The Alan Young Show William Bendix, The Life of Riley Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet Eddie Bracken, The Eddie Bracken Show Adventures of Archie Andrews Beulah Don Ameche and Frances Langford, The Bickersons Marie Wilson, My Friend Irma Life with Luigi


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Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (1903–1978), always accompanied by his dummy Charlie McCarthy, made The Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show a top hit for 20 years. It mattered little that audiences could not see the two, the illusion somehow worked. Another program akin to the Bergen/McCarthy series was The Tommy Riggs and Betty Lou Show. It featured the bivocal talents of Tommy Riggs (1908–1967), an entertainer who created Betty Lou, an imagined youngster who accompanied Riggs in his adventures. Riggs employed no dummy but relied on his voice alone for Betty Lou. Hardly the hit that Bergen achieved, it nonetheless illustrated the imaginative power of radio. Using plots built around characters or events, situation comedies usually ran for 30 minutes on a weekly basis. Each new episode introduced a fresh story, although the cast and characters continued from week to week. The aforementioned Amos ’n’ Andy established many of the conventions governing the genre, and it reached its height of popularity from roughly 1940 to 1950, although a number of series survived into the next decade. Blondie, Duffy’s Tavern, The Great Gildersleeve, Leave It to Joan, The Life of Riley, and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriett (which also starred another real-life couple, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, 1906–1975; 1909–1994) reflect the variety to be found in situation comedies. In addition, a disproportionate number of programs focused on adolescents: The Aldrich Family, A Date with Judy, Meet Corliss Archer, Junior Miss, and The Adventures of Archie Andrews. Since many writers, educators, members of the medical community, and social critics took a heightened interest in the teenage years during the 1940s, the increasing representation of young adults in the entertainment field merely reflected this concern. Always popular, radio comedies provided a respite from the cares of the day. From simple to sophisticated, they introduced new talents to the American public, as well as sustaining the careers of numerous entertainers whose lives went back to vaudeville and silent films. See also: Comedies (Film); Comic Books; Comic Strips; Education; Health and Medicine; Race Relations and Stereotyping; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Texaco Star Theater (Milton Berle); War Bonds Selected Reading Barnouw, Erik. A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Vol. 1, A Tower in Babel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966. ———. A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Vol. 2, The Golden Web. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Lackman, Ron. The Encyclopedia of American Radio. New York: Checkmark Books, 2000.

RADIO PROGRAMMING: DRAMA AND ANTHOLOGY SHOWS Many radio shows, regardless of genre, that made their debuts during the 1930s proceeded to carry over into the 1940s. Good production values, along with effective


Radio Programming: Drama and Anthology Shows | 553 scripting and top-rated stars, attracted substantial audiences and pleased sponsors. Music, comedy, and variety shows might be reliable standbys, but dramatic offerings grew in number during both decades, proof the medium could sustain a broad range of programming. Anthology shows relied on constantly changing stories and characters instead of a continuing cast and connected stories. One week an ongoing series might present a classic tale by an established dramatist. The following week could offer a contemporary script by a new, unknown writer. Both serious and comedic productions often occurred within weeks of one another, and the overall appeal of particular pieces depended on audience preferences. With such a mixture on the season’s program, quality varied; no show guaranteed a masterpiece each and every broadcast. The First Nighter Program, which gave the illusion of an opening night at a fictional theater “off Times Square,” featured a pleasant host (played by several actors over its long run) who informed the audience about the show. Although most of the First Nighter productions tended toward light, romantic comedies, they had a professional sheen, and the program continued on the air until 1953, one of the most successful anthologies. Many other serious dramatic shows entered station schedules. In 1934, The Lux Radio Theater (Lux, a product of Lever Brothers, was a popular beauty soap of the day) premiered on NBC (National Broadcasting Company); shortly thereafter, it switched to CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), where it remained for 20 years, a staple of network radio. This top-ranked anthology had as its host famed Hollywood director Cecil B. De Mille (1881–1959) until 1945. Each week, the series presented one-hour adaptations of leading motion pictures, utilizing, as often as possible, the same stars as had appeared in the movie version. The show served as an ideal way of publicizing films while at the same time illustrating the close connections between the two media, radio and movies. Similar anthology-type shows likewise made their first appearances during the 1930s and carried over into the 1940s. With the war years, still more debuted—Armstrong Circle Theater, The Radio Reader’s Digest, among others—with the last-named taking stories from the popular magazine and dramatizing them. Hallmark Cards began sponsoring this program in 1946, and it evolved into The Hallmark Playhouse in 1948, running until 1953, when it changed titles to The Hallmark Hall of Fame; it lasted until 1955. During the immediate postwar years, and before television took anthology drama to new heights, The Ford Theater, Hollywood Star Preview, Family Theater, and Radio City Playhouse also continued the tradition of presenting new and different dramatic productions on a weekly basis. Four other shows presented dramatic tales of an entirely different kind. Lights Out pioneered the thriller/horror genre in 1934, something that radio, relying on the power of a listener’s imagination, did extremely well. Originally on NBC, it shifted networks from 1942 onward, closing out its radio career on ABC (American Broadcasting Company) in 1947. Sound effects of a macabre nature—stabbings, breaking bones, violent deaths, and whatever else technicians needed to devise for aural thrills—characterized this popular, long-running series. Often more fright-inducing than anything the movies could openly show on the screen, Lights Out provided the sounds and listeners filled in the rest.


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| Radio Programming: Drama and Anthology Shows Selected Drama and Anthology Programming on American Radio, 1940–1949 (Arranged Chronologically)

TABLE 79.

Selected Artists/Performers and Shows

Dates

Death Valley Days (Western dramas) The First Nighter Program Grand Hotel

1930–1951 1930–1953 1933–1940; 1944–1945 1933–1944 1934–1947 1934–1955 1935–1949 1936–1947 1937–1944 1937–1953 1937–1954 1938–1941 1938–1949 1939–1951 1939–1953 1940; 1942–1962 1941–1952 1941–1954 1941–1954 1942–1955

Irene Rich Dramas (also known as Woman from Nowhere) Lights Out (thriller, horror) Lux Radio Theater Helen Hayes Theater (also known as The Electric Theater) The Columbia Workshop Silver Theater Grand Central Station Dr. Christian The Campbell Playhouse (originally Mercury Theater on the Air, 1938) Curtain Time Screen Guild Players Philip Morris Playhouse Suspense (thriller, horror) Inner Sanctum Mysteries (thriller, horror) Stars Over Hollywood Armstrong Circle Theater of Today Radio Reader’s Digest (later The Hallmark Playhouse and then The Hallmark Hall of Fame) Lionel Barrymore, Mayor of the Town Command Performance (produced by Armed Forces Radio Service for military personnel overseas) Hollywood Star Time Ford Theater Hollywood Star Preview (also known as Hollywood Playhouse) Escape (thriller, horror) Family Theater Radio City Playhouse

1942–1949 1942–1949 1944; 1946–1947 1947–1949 1947–1950 1947–1954 1947–1956 1948–1950

In 1941, NBC introduced Inner Sanctum Mysteries (most fans remember it simply as Inner Sanctum), a series in many ways similar to Lights Out. Opening with the sound of a creaking door, it welcomed the listener into a world of chills and even some ghoulish humor. Performers loved the show because it allowed for exaggerated dramatics, and it enjoyed a long radio life. CBS, which became the primary network for this kind of production, gained the broadcasting rights to Inner Sanctum in 1943, keeping it until 1950. It survived on ABC for an additional year, but the creaking door finally closed permanently in 1952. Old-time radio buffs will immediately recognize the trademark door, squeaks and all, possibly one of the most memorable of sound effects. Suspense came on the air over CBS affiliates in 1942. Supposedly a crime series, it usually paid lip service to a mystery of some kind but concerned itself more with


Radio Programming: Educational Shows | 555 keeping audiences in a state of nervous apprehension—thus its title. Each week a new story would unfold, building listener anxiety, and resolution came only in the final minutes of the broadcast. Although it guaranteed no happy endings, top actors took roles on the show, just as on Inner Sanctum. Audiences, obviously fond of the scary nature of the scripting, kept Suspense in the CBS lineup until 1962, making it one of the last dramatic shows still being broadcast in the waning days of commercial radio. Well aware of the devoted followings these shows created, CBS in 1947 introduced Escape. Usually not as bloodcurdling as its predecessors, the producers relied more on skillful plotting than sound effects. The stories, however, could be equally hair-raising and keep an audience on the edge of its seat. Despite its title, the tales frequently dwelt on the seeming impossibility of escape from situations or events. Unfortunately, CBS apparently could never find an ideal time for the show and moved it about without much rhyme or reason. Fans therefore faced the challenge of finding Escape at a given time or day, and yet the network kept it on the air, albeit erratically, until 1954. On virtually any given evening, listeners could find dramatic anthologies or standalone dramas on their radio dials. These shows often displayed a high level of artistic creativity and allowed scriptwriters considerable latitude. The lack of a visual element in broadcasting gave production crews an opportunity to devise all manner of sound effects to compensate for its absence, resulting in an auditory experience that made audiences exercise their imaginations. Good writing and good sound, coupled with good actors, often resulted in exceptional radio programming. See also: Broadway Shows (Musicals); Horror and Thriller Films; Magazines; Radio Programming: Comedy Shows; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Television Selected Reading Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Hilmes, Michele, and Jason Loviglio, eds. Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio. Florence, KY: Routledge, 2002. MacDonald, J. Fred. Don’t Touch That Dial! Radio Programming in American Life, 1920–1960. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1979. Nachman, Gerald. Raised on Radio. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

RADIO PROGRAMMING: EDUCATIONAL SHOWS In the early days of American radio, visionaries held great expectations about the educational potential of the new medium. Over 200 stations, many affiliated with colleges and universities, received broadcasting licenses to produce educational shows during the early 1920s. More than half were gone within a few years, their disappearance caused by financial constraints within their sponsoring institutions. Commercial stations took up some of the slack, but educational broadcasting continued to suffer throughout the Great Depression. By the onset of the 1940s, only 35 educational stations remained on the air. Many of these utilized but a fraction of their available time to present anything fitting the


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educational description, focusing instead on entertainment. Several national committees, formed to study the relative absence of such stations, argued for creating separate, not-for-profit bandwidths on the AM (amplitude modulation) dial that would be reserved for educational purposes, but commercial interests, more concerned with profits than public service, disdained the idea and it floundered. Finally, with the introduction of new FM (frequency modulation) bandwidths, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allocated space at the low end of the FM broadcast band for noncommercial stations, which would include educational broadcasters. On a traditional analog FM dial, reading from left to right, the range extends from 87.5 megahertz (MHz) to 108 MHz. The low end of the range typically includes nonprofit stations from 87.5 to 92 MHz. Bandwidths above that become the domain of commercial interests. Today, most National Public Radio (NPR) stations, along with religious broadcasters, can be found at the numerically lower segment of the dial. World War II put a halt to any expansion of FM broadcasting and the potential growth of educational stations. With the postwar years and growing prosperity, the future looked bright. Various organizations representing schools and allied academic pursuits, and led by the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, pushed for new FM station licenses, with the result that, from 1949 to 1950, almost 90 educational FM stations had come on the air. Most of them again had connections with colleges and universities. But these new start-up stations encountered unforeseen difficulties, including access to a large audience. With the postwar buying spree to acquire consumer goods, radio manufacturers had directed their energies into mass producing ever-cheaper AM receivers, selling tens of millions of small, plastic table models between 1945 and 1949. Virtually all of these receivers, however, carried AM signals only, ignoring the FM market. Electronics companies allocated less than 6 percent of radio production to FM receivers. In addition, the readjustments made to FM bandwidths just prior to World War II rendered most existing FM receivers obsolete. To cap it off, postwar FM sets cost three to four times more than the cheap AM models rolling off assembly lines in the later 1940s. Not until late in the decade did combination AM-FM radios begin to appear in stores, in limited numbers and at much higher prices than AM-only units. Thus the dream of numerous FM stations broadcasting educational content to large, receptive audiences had to be put on hold until the 1950s and the creation of a larger consumer pool. As Table 80 indicates, despite the promise and allure of educational programming, it seldom had much impact on actual station schedules. Among those programs that did come on the air, much of their content revolved around cooking and household advice, as found in Women’s Exchange, Neighbor Nell, and The Jack Berch Show. They could be heard primarily in the morning or afternoon hours and targeted women in the audience. Others, like The American School of the Air and The Music Appreciation Hour, fulfilled the early goals of providing educational materials through radio and were heard in schools as well as homes. Historical dramatizations that combined top actors and good sound effects made the past come alive in NBC’s Cavalcade of America and two memorable CBS productions, You Are There and Hear It Now.


Radio Programming: Educational Shows | 557 Selected Educational Programming on American Radio, 1940–1949 (Arranged Chronologically)

TABLE 80.

Selected Hosts/Performers and Shows

Dates

Betty Crocker (cooking) Walter Damrosch (1862–1950), The Music Appreciation Hour (music education) Alma Kitchell (1893–1997), Women’s Exchange (other titles) (household advice) Everett Mitchell (1898–1990), The National Farm and Home Hour (agricultural reports, advice) Allen Prescott (active 1930s–1940s), The Wife Saver (household hints) Robert Ripley (1890–1949), Believe It or Not (unusual facts and information) John MacPherson (1977–1962), The Mystery Chef (recipes, cooking advice) Robert Trout (1909–2000), The American School of the Air (history, geography, and others; supplement to school courses) Mary Lee Taylor (active 1930s–1950s), The Mary Lee Taylor Program (cooking, household advice) Nellie Revell (1872–1958), Neighbor Nell (other titles) (household advice) Cavalcade of America (dramatized history) John J. Anthony (1902–1970), Mr. Anthony—The Goodwill Hour (marital, social, and financial advice) Dave Elman (active 1930s–1940s), Hobby Lobby (information about various hobbies) Jack Berch (active 1930s–1950s), The Jack Berch Show (household hints) Albert Mitchell (active 1930s–1950s), The Answer Man Katharine Lenroot (1891–1982), The Child in Wartime (child rearing advice) The Man Behind the Gun (war drama, military documentary) John Daly (1914–1991), others, You Are There (historical recreations) Edward Arnold (1890–1956), Mr. President (historical drama) Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965), Hear It Now (historical recreations)

1924–1953 1928–1942 1928–1942 1928–1958 1929–1943 1930–1948 1930–1948 1930–1948 1933–1954 1934–1943 1935–1953 1936–1961 1937–1946; 1949 1937–1954 1937–1956 1942 1942–1944 1947–1950 1947–1953 1950–1951

As it did with so much radio programming, television delivered the knockout blow to educational broadcasting over the airwaves. The ability to add a visual component to aural content made most TV shows infinitely more appealing, especially to children. Watching an expert chef prepare a complex recipe surpassed, for most people, hearing that same chef describe each step in its preparation; scenes from history proved superior to reading from a text; and, from an important economic standpoint, sponsors for educational television could more easily be found than sponsors for educational radio. By the end of the 1940s, only a handful of shows survived, and most of them disappeared within a few years. See also: Education; FM Radio; Food; Radio Programming: Children’s Shows, Serials, and Adventure Series; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk; Radio Programming: Quiz Shows Selected Reading Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Sterling, Christopher H., and John M. Kitross. Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1990.


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| Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows

RADIO PROGRAMMING: MUSIC AND VARIETY SHOWS As American commercial radio went through the stages of defining itself in the late 1920s and early 1930s, producers frequently looked to the still-thriving vaudeville stage for inspiration. Music, comedy—variety—became the hallmark of many pioneering shows broadcast on the new medium. The A & P Gypsies, The Happiness Boys, and The Ipana Troubadors mixed music and patter, but in front of a microphone instead of from a theater stage. Fred Allen (1894–1956), Eddie Cantor (1892–1964), Jimmy Durante (1893–1980), and Al Jolson (1886–1950), veteran vaudevillians all, easily made the move into the radio studio, and their network shows enjoyed long runs. Audiences and sponsors liked their material, making music and variety one of the primary categories of radio programming during the 1930s and into the 1940s. A look at Table 81 reveals the diversity of programming that occurred within this category and also illustrates how many of the listed shows had their beginnings in the 1930s or earlier and continued into the following decade. Even country music and cornpone humor had their niche, with The National Barn Dance and Grand Ole Opry setting records for longevity. At the beginning of the 1940s, a number of new music and variety programs made their debuts, some reflecting the popularity of big bands and their vocalists. Dinah Shore (1917–1994), Ginny Simms (1915–1994), and Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) all came from this background, whereas Judy Canova (1913–1983) claimed a varied musical past, including movies and vaudeville, and ably carried on the traditions of country humor. Knowing that maintaining troop morale constituted an important part of military strategy, the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) began to take shape in 1942. Envisioned as a service for U.S. troops overseas, it at first used the broadcasting facilities of nations friendly to the United States. In time, however, AFRS began installing its own transmitters, creating a network that, by the end of 1943, consisted of over 300 outlets operating in 47 countries. That number swelled to over 800 outlets by 1945. Many of these AFRS stations operated in a mobile capacity, following troops through their campaigns, often close to the front lines. Portable transmitters, usually mounted on trucks, allowed these makeshift stations to inform and entertain soldiers, sailors, and pilots virtually anywhere. Although AFRS broadcast prerecorded programming, the service also carried news and special events, such as sports, by shortwave relay. Its menu included a fair share of comedy and variety shows, but mainly it featured music, especially material found on V-Disc recordings. When and wherever troops turned their radio dials to an AFRS station, they could usually pick up the latest popular tunes. On the home front, larger stations often retained studio bands. These groups did yeoman service and could feature lineups that included some of the best instrumentalists in the business. Their job consisted of playing for live commercials, providing background music for dramatic shows, backing singers and vocal groups, and generally being available whenever someone called for live music. More often than not, what they played


Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows | 559

Swing remained king in the early 1940s, and many radio shows featured big-name musicians. This picture shows (from the left) trombonist and bandleader Tommy Dorsey, the popular disc jockey Martin Block, and guest baseball star Joe DiMaggio. Although DiMaggio had no particular music credentials, he lent celebrity status to the proceedings. (Photofest)

could be categorized as mundane. Few listeners considered the studio band the star of a show; who they accompanied received the attention. Studio orchestras nonetheless provided stable employment for countless musicians during the war years. By the late 1930s, band remotes—direct wires from a radio station to a hotel or dance pavilion—were old hat for many orchestra leaders. Remotes allowed the music to be transmitted directly to a participating station, which in turn would broadcast it to unseen listeners, often recording the proceedings in the process. If a band got lucky, the station would have a network affiliation, and so the program went out to countless affiliates and helped mightily in making the aggregation known to a wide audience. In fact, just such a remote setup assured the success of bandleader Glenn Miller (1904– 1944). He and his orchestra had played innumerable dances and had even cut some forgettable recordings for the Brunswick label. Despite the activity, the group seemed unable to inspire any great enthusiasm among listeners. In the summer of 1939, Miller landed a contract to play the Glen Island Casino, an elegant restaurant and ballroom on Long Island Sound. A series of remote broadcasts from that venue captured the attention of millions, which in turn sparked a flurry of best-selling Bluebird records, and soon Glenn Miller rocketed to the top in terms of popularity.


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| Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows Selected Music and Variety Programming on American Radio, 1940–1949 (Arranged Chronologically)

TABLE 81.


Dates

Various hosts, The National Barn Dance Various hosts, Grand Ole Opry Cities Service Concerts Lanny Ross, The Lanny Ross Show (other titles)

1924–1970 1925 to present 1927–1944 1928–1942; 1946–1952 1928–1946; 1949–1956 1928–1956 1929–1947

Guy Lombardo, The Guy Lombardo Show The Voice of Firestone Rudy Vallee, Rudy Vallee Show, The Fleischmann Hour, The Sealtest Hour (other titles) Paul Whiteman, Paul Whiteman Presents, Forever Tops (other titles) Ben Bernie, Ben Bernie, The Old Maestro (other titles, including The War Workers’ Program, 1941–1943) Harry Frankel, Singin’ Sam, the Barbasol Man Morton Downey, Songs by Morton Downey (other titles) Bing Crosby, various titles, including The Music That Satisfies, Kraft Music Hall, The Chesterfield Show, Philco Radio Time Arthur Tracy, The Street Singer Andre Kostelanetz, Tune Up Time (other titles) Fred Waring, Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians American Album of Familiar Music Kate Smith, The Kate Smith Hour Eddie Cantor, The Chase and Sanborn Hour (other titles) Al Jolson, Kraft Music Hall, The Lifebuoy Program (other titles) Manhattan Merry-Go-Round Various hosts and formats, The Camel Caravan Mildred Bailey, The Mildred Bailey Show (other titles) Eddie Duchin, The Eddie Duchin Show Jimmy Durante, The Jimmy Durante Show Don McNeill, The Breakfast Club Pat Barrett, Uncle Ezra’s Radio Station Phil Spitalny, The Hour of Charm Edward Bowes, Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour Bob Crosby, The Camel Caravan (also known as The Bob Crosby Show) Horace Heidt, The Horace Heidt Show Martin Block, other disc jockeys, Make-Believe Ballroom Various hosts, Your Hit Parade Jessica Dragonette, Saturday Night Serenade Sammy Kaye, Sammy Kaye Show (other titles) Kay Kyser, Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge The NBC Symphony Various hosts, including Fred Allen, The Texaco Star Theater Various hosts and formats, The Fitch Bandwagon Glenn Miller, Glenn Miller Show (various titles including Chesterfield Time, Sunset Serenade, and I Sustain the Wings) © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

1929–1952 (erratic) 1930–1943 1930–1947 1930–1951 1930–1956 1931–1942 1931–1949 1931–1950 1931–1951 1931–1952 1931–1954 1932–1949 1932–1949 1932–1949 1933–1945 1933–1948 1933–1950 1933–1954 1934–1941 1934–1948 1934–1952 1935–1950 1935–1953 1935–1954 1935–1957 1936–1948 1937–1946; 1950–1956 1937–1949 1937–1953 1938–1946 1938–1948 1939–1944

Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows | 561 Selected Artists/Performers and Shows

Dates

Alec Templeton, The Alec Templeton Show Dinah Shore, The Dinah Shore Show (other titles) Various hosts, Maxwell House Coffee Time Gay Nineties Revue (aka Gaslight Revue) Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street Donald Voorhees, The Telephone Hour Spotlight Bands (produced by Armed Forces Radio Service for military personnel at home and abroad; also carried by network radio for civilians, it played under the title Victory Parade of Spotlight Bands) Bob Burns, The Arkansas Traveler Various hosts, American Melody Hour Tom Breneman, Breakfast in Hollywood The Prudential Family Hour Ginny Simms, Ginny Simms Show (other titles) Stage Door Canteen GI Journal (produced by Armed Forces Radio Service for military personnel at home and abroad) Judy Canova, The Judy Canova Show Frank Sinatra, The Frank Sinatra Show (other titles) Various artists, The Chesterfield Supper Club Spike Jones, Spike Jones and His City Slickers Show Harvest of Stars Arthur Godfrey, Arthur Godfrey Time [in addition, Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts]

1939–1948 1939–1955 1940–1944 1940–1945 1940–1952 1940–1958 1941–1946

The Railroad Hour

1941–1947 1941–1948 1941–1949 1941–1949 1941–1952 1942–1945 1942–1946 1943–1953 1943–1954 1944–1950 1945–1949 1945–1950 1941–1945; 1945–1972; 1946–1956 1948–1954

If, however, big band swing failed to meet a person’s expectations, a further twist of the dial would reveal endless additional musical choices. Radio may have been perceived by many as appealing to the lowest common denominator, but in reality both the networks and local stations once saw classical music as a staple of radio programming. Not until the 1950s did serious composition commence its long, slow decline as a part of the broadcasting day. Many stations, including the networks, felt that programming featuring serious music increased the prestige behind the call letters, with the result that even tiny, low-power outlets usually carried some classical offerings, although everyone involved knew such shows drew a limited audience. NBC (National Broadcasting Company) had its own NBC Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of the famed Arturo Toscanini (1867–1957); the program ran from 1937 until 1954. The equally renowned Leopold Stokowski (1882–1977) often conducted in Toscanini’s absence. Not to be outdone, CBS arranged with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, led by John Barbirolli (1936–1941) and Artur Rodzinski (1942–1947), for broadcasting rights. The show aired on Sunday afternoons. Other classically oriented performances found on the networks during the 1940s included such groups as the distinguished Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, along with The Voice of


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| Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk

Firestone, General Motors Concerts, The Ford Sunday Evening Hour, and The Treasure Hour of Song. Of course, no mention of classical music on radio would be complete without acknowledging Saturday afternoons and performances by the Metropolitan Opera. Premiering in 1931 on NBC, this show became a ritual for opera lovers everywhere and continued broadcasting throughout the war years and thereafter. Hosted by the urbane Milton Cross (1897–1975) from its beginnings until 1975, and sponsored by Texaco from 1940 onward, The Metropolitan Opera became one of the longestrunning shows in radio history, a tribute to its unstinting quality of production. By the end of the decade, the programming of popular music to the exclusion of other formats displayed a marked increase, rising to over 75 percent of the average broadcast day on most stations. The variety show, so important in radio’s early days, also faded away. High production costs and the competition raised by similar programming on television sealed its doom. With the rise of FM (frequency modulation) around that same time, alternative forms of music, especially classical, could again be heard with some regularity. The popular song, the hit, had in the meantime come to dominate the AM airwaves. See also: Advertising; Andrews Sisters, The; ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Broadway Shows (Musicals); FM Radio; Restaurants Selected Reading Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Jones, John Bush. The Songs that Fought the War: Popular Music and the Home Front, 1939–1945. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2006. Lackman, Ron. The Encyclopedia of American Radio. New York: Checkmark Books, 2000. Young, William H., and Nancy K. Young. American Music through History: The World War II Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005.

RADIO PROGRAMMING: NEWS, SPORTS, PUBLIC AFFAIRS, AND TALK Entertainment—music and variety, comedy and drama—may have occupied a major part of the typical broadcasting day during the 1940s, but radio also served as an important carrier of news and information. The networks and their affiliates considered the coverage of current events a responsibility, an attitude reinforced by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), the overseer of radio content. Most Americans still looked to their daily newspapers for a broader selection and more in-depth coverage of stories, but for breaking news and continuous updates, people increasingly listened to their radios. World War II, with its constantly shifting mosaic of campaigns, victories, and defeats, provided the medium a unique opportunity to demonstrate its importance in the timely reporting of daily happenings. As the international situation deteriorated and the conflict grew in intensity, radio supplied late-breaking bulletins. Entertainment might remain radio’s primary function, but listeners sought information along with escapism. Edward R. Murrow (1908– 1965), for example, a member of the CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) radio news


Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk | 563 team, brought unequalled sincerity and gravity to his reports. In mournful tones, he described the darkest days of late 1939 after war had broken out across Europe. His depictions of the London Blitz—sirens wailing in the background, the drone of enemy aircraft, the sound of exploding bombs—remain classic. Murrow’s nightly introduction, “This . . . is London,” foretold worse to come. On the air, many newscasters, the word itself a relatively new coinage that often replaced “reporter” or “journalist” beginning around 1939, redefined the traditional image of a newspaper reporter. Along with Murrow, a significant number of newscasters rose to prominence during the course of World War II. This new breed, weaned on electronic newsgathering instead of newspaper beats, had begun to realize radio’s potential during the 1930s and brought a measure of distinction to the networks. They introduced a personal aural style to their scripts and often added interpretive commentary to ongoing stories. News on the radio, no less colorful than that found in many newspapers, also offered the personality of the speaker. Some Notable Newscasters of the 1940s (Arranged Alphabetically) Martin Agronsky (1915–1999). While covering the war in Europe for NBC (National Broadcasting Company), Agronsky joined the new ABC (American Broadcasting Company) network in 1943; he remained there into the 1950s and pioneered television coverage of political events. Mel Allen (1913–1996). Allen covered the New York Yankees’ games throughout the 1940s, but he also did a number of radio shows for the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) while in the army from 1943 to 1945. In addition, he announced most of the World Series and All-Star contests played in the 1940s and 1950s. Walter “Red” Barber (1908–1992). A popular sportscaster, Barber served as the voice of the Brooklyn Dodgers throughout the 1940s. Later in the decade, he also made his first forays into television but remained at heart a radio announcer, continuing with baseball patter until 1966. Morgan Beatty (1902–1975). A commentator as well as a reporter, Beatty anchored NBC’s News of the World from 1944 to 1967. Boake Carter (1899–1944). A veteran news correspondent, Carter freely editorialized during the 1930s, bringing himself some notoriety but costing the support of sponsors and eventually the backing of CBS. He later made noncontroversial war broadcasts over the MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System) until his death in 1944. Charles Collingwood (1917–1985). One of “Murrow’s Boys,” a group of newscasters recruited by Edward R. Murrow and associated with CBS during the war years, Collingwood covered many events during the conflict. He later moved to CBS television. John Daly (1914–1991). A distinguished newsman, busy on many fronts during World War II, Daly nonetheless reached his largest audience as the urbane host of What’s My Line? a popular television quiz show that ran on CBS from 1950 to 1967. Elmer Davis (1890–1958). A prominent announcer on CBS beginning in 1939, he left the network in 1942 to assume the post of director of the Office of War


564


Information (OWI). He returned to radio, but with ABC, in 1945, and remained a top reporter until 1955. Alex Dreier (1916–2000). A wartime reporter for NBC, Dreier remained with the network until 1956, when he moved to ABC and its television news operation. Don Dunphy (1908–1998). A sportscaster, Dunphy covered the busy New York boxing scene from 1939 until 1981, providing ringside commentary on over 2,000 bouts, including a long tenure with Gillette’s popular Fight of the Week. Douglas Edwards (1917–1990). A fixture at CBS, Edwards joined the network in 1942; he rose through the ranks, anchoring several news programs. The network tapped him to be the primary announcer on its nightly television news broadcast when it premiered in 1948. He would remain at the helm of the show until 1962. Richard Harkness (1907–1977). Harkness worked with NBC from 1943 until 1970, covering myriad news events. Joseph C. Harsch (1905–1998). A print reporter for the Christian Science Monitor from 1929 to 1988, Harsch concurrently worked with CBS radio during the 1940s and later for NBC and ABC. His wide-ranging reports about the war and the rise of Communism made him an influential radio commentator. Gabriel Heatter (1890–1972). A popular Mutual newsman remembered for his colorful opening line, “Ah, there’s good news tonight!” Even in the bleakest days of the war, Heatter could find some optimistic bits in the reports he read. He remained with the network from 1935 to 1961. Richard C. Hottelet (b. 1917). The last survivor of the famed Murrow’s Boys, he could boast of being briefly imprisoned by the Gestapo, covering D-Day, getting shot down and bailing out over Germany, as well as later meeting many of the principals of the Cold War. He has remained active into the 21st century. Chet Huntley (1911–1974). Huntley first worked with CBS, beginning in 1939 as a news reporter. He moved to ABC in 1951 but achieved his greatest fame as the partner of David Brinkley (1920–2003) on NBC’s highly rated television news show, the nightly Huntley-Brinkley Report, which premiered in 1956. Ted Husing (1901–1962). Another pioneering sportscaster, Husing’s ability to speak rapidly but understandably allowed him to cover the action in a game and not fall behind. He worked primarily at CBS, but in 1946 left the network and became a successful radio disc jockey. He also continued with limited sports broadcasting into the 1950s. H. V. Kaltenborn (1878–1965). A radio veteran, Kaltenborn began his career as an announcer with CBS in 1928 and joined NBC in 1940, remaining there until 1955. Highly esteemed in his profession and a learned, multilingual man, he offered analyses of events along with straight reportage and could talk with most world leaders without the aid of a translator. Larry LeSueur (1909–2003). Yet another of Murrow’s Boys, LeSueur in World War II made the first broadcast from liberated Paris. In the postwar era, he won awards for the quality of his reporting from the United Nations. He later worked with the Voice of America. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk | 565 Clem McCarthy (1882–1962). A famous sportscaster specializing in calling horse racing and boxing matches, usually for NBC. Millions of radio listeners could immediately recognize his distinctive, gravelly voice. Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965). The dean of radio journalists during the 1940s, Murrow joined CBS in 1935; his job involved recruiting promising young reporters, who came to be called Murrow’s Boys, in order to build an effective news team for the network. Active throughout Europe in the dark days preceding World War II, he eventually took the microphone himself and gave memorable descriptions of the German takeover of the continent; his live broadcasts from London during the 1940 Blitz electrified his growing audience. He later flew aboard U.S. bombing missions over enemy territory, giving listeners at home an intimate presentation of the air war. He also described, in chilling detail, the liberation of some of the Nazi concentration camps. In the postwar era, Murrow worked with the CBS evening news and in 1950 created and narrated Hear It Now, a weekly radio newsmagazine that recreated top stories through tapes and skillful editing. But the show came too late for radio, and Murrow therefore made the aural visual by designing See It Now in 1951, a change that marked his move to television and the beginnings of a second distinguished career. Eric Sevareid (1912–1992). A newspaper reporter recruited by Edward R. Murrow for CBS, Sevareid covered the war from unusual places. His plane went down in Burma and he had to trek through uncharted jungles to make his escape; he later reported from the rugged mountains of Yugoslavia while camped with partisans fighting the Nazis. After the war, Sevareid could be heard regularly with the evening news, but he also created special reports for CBS, again traveling widely. After 1950, he moved to television as a correspondent. William L. Shirer (1904–1993). A long-time European correspondent and one of the first newsmen hired by Edward R. Murrow, Shirer, like many other reporters at this time, came from a print background. A close associate of Murrow’s from the beginning, the two made many broadcasts from Europe, their main focus. Shirer spent considerable time in Berlin in the early days of the war before the United States became involved, and he compiled his reports in Berlin Diary, a 1941 best seller. He continued with CBS until 1947, when he and Murrow had a falling-out; he then briefly went with MBS but finally left broadcasting altogether to focus on writing. Frank Singiser (1909–1982). A former radio pitchman for various products and an announcer on Your Hit Parade in 1935, Singiser became a successful newscaster for Mutual in 1938 and continued there throughout the war and on into the 1950s. Howard K. Smith (1914–2002). After a brief stint with newspapers, Smith became one of Murrow’s Boys in 1940. He served as a CBS correspondent based in Berlin before the entry of the United States into the war. His 1942 book, Last Train from Berlin, sold well and details events immediately following those presented in William L. Shirer’s Berlin Diary, published the preceding year. Smith enjoyed a distinguished later career from 1962 to 1979 as a newscaster and anchor for ABC television. Bill Stern (1907–1971). Along with Red Barber, Bill Stern reigned as one of the leading sportscasters of the 1940s. As host of The Colgate Sports Newsreel, Stern got to tell stories, interview athletes, and entertain celebrity guests. The show ran on NBC © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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from 1937 until 1953. In addition, he also regularly covered boxing matches and baseball games. In the 1950s, he went with ABC and its televised sports offerings. John Cameron Swayze (1906–1995). Listeners first heard Swayze’s voice in 1944 on the West Coast through NBC’s Los Angeles news division; in 1947, the network moved him to its New York offices. Two years later, he had been tapped to anchor its new television news offering, The Camel News Caravan. For a short while, Swayze possessed one of the best-known faces on TV. He lost that distinction when NBC replaced him in 1956 with the team of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley and inaugurated The Huntley-Brinkley Report. He continued to be seen, however, thanks to numerous commercials and occasional appearances on entertainment shows. Raymond Gram Swing (1887–1968). A print journalist, Swing broke into radio in 1932 covering the national elections. After refusing a job at CBS (the one Edward R. Murrow eventually took), he signed on with Mutual as a commentator, speaking to his radio audience learnedly about the oncoming war. He left Mutual in 1942, taking his considerable expertise to NBC, and later ABC, for much of the remainder of the decade. Lowell Thomas (1892–1981). Thomas’s radio career encompassed 46 years, running from 1930 until 1976. After a colorful career as a world traveler and author, he had established his fame and signed with CBS as a news announcer. Two years later, he went with NBC, remaining there until 1947, and then returned to CBS until his retirement. One of the highest-paid newsmen anywhere, Thomas also lectured widely and wrote books about his adventures. His voice can be heard narrating the Fox Movietone newsreels, seen nightly in countless theaters. He always closed his broadcasts with his trademark phrase, “So long until tomorrow.” Robert Trout (1909–2002). Among his many accomplishments over a long career, Trout coached Edward R. Murrow on how to talk into a microphone effectively. Already at CBS when Murrow came on board, Trout remained with the network until 1948, anchoring many news specials, particularly the 1944 D-Day invasion of Europe. He broadcast for NBC until 1952 and then returned to CBS. For many years, he also hosted The American School of the Air, a long-running (1930–1948) educational program on CBS. In the meantime, Trout also moved into television news for both NBC and CBS. Another kind of journalist also gained an audience during the 1930s and 1940s: the electronic gossip columnist. Coming from backgrounds with the newspaper tabloids and movie fan magazines that had become established reading during the Roaring Twenties, writers like Jimmy Fidler (1900–1988), Hedda Hopper (1885–1966), Louella Parsons (1881–1972), Drew Pearson (1897–1969), Adela Rogers St. Johns (1894–1988), Ed Sullivan (1901–1974), and Walter Winchell (1897–1972) created gossip-oriented shows that audiences loved. Relying on tidbits and innuendo about the most popular (or notorious) celebrities of the day, these rumormongers became celebrities in their own right, occasionally engaging in real and fabricated on-air feuds with one another. On the other hand, serious discussion shows, their topics often taken from current headlines, also found a place on station schedules. Usually categorized as public affairs programming, they attracted experts in various fields, and lively conversations ensued.


Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk | 567 Selected Public Affairs and Talk Programming on American Radio, 1940–1949 (Arranged Chronologically)

TABLE 82.

Selected Columnists, Hosts, and Shows

Dates

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) (talk)

Various years, irregular, 1930–1951 1930–1957 1931–1945

Walter Winchell, Walter Winchell’s Jergens Journal (news and gossip) Various hosts, especially Westbrook Van Voorhis (1903–1968), The March of Time (dramatized interpretations of world events) John Howe (active 1930s and 1940s), moderator. The University of Chicago Round Table (public affairs) Ed Sullivan, The Ed Sullivan Show (celebrity gossip) Jimmy Fidler, The Jimmy Fidler Show (gossip) Mary Margaret McBride (1899–1976), Mary Margaret McBride (talk and interviews) George V. Denny Jr. (1899–1959), America’s Town Meeting of the Air (public affairs) Theodore Granik (1906–1970), Mutual Forum Hour (also known as American Forum of the Air) (public affairs) We, the People (human interest) Fulton Lewis Jr. (1903–1966), Top of the News from Washington (political commentary) Hedda Hopper, The Hedda Hopper Show (gossip) Drew Pearson, Drew Pearson Comments (news and commentary) Leave It to the Girls (talk) Galen Drake (1906–1989), This Is Galen Drake (news and commentary) Tex McCrary (1910) and Jinx Falkenburg (1919–2003), Hi Jinx, Tex and Jinx (talk) Various hosts, Meet the Press (public affairs)

1931–1955 1932–1946 1934–1950 1934–1954 1935–1956 1935–1956 1936–1951 1937–1957 1939–1951 1941–1953 1945–1949 1945–1958 1946–1959 1947–1956

With the rise of television, most of this form of radio broadcasting either disappeared by the mid-1950s or made the transition to the new medium. The postwar era seldom offered the day-to-day drama that World War II had provided, but with the sizable corps of newscasters the networks had assembled during the war years, they were reluctant to part with their services. Five-, 10-, and 15-minute newsbreaks became commonplace on stations around the nation, with occasionally longer morning and evening presentations. And then television entered the scene in the later 1940s and quickly introduced news shows of its own. As noted above, many of the best-known reporters moved to the new medium, although some performed double duties, broadcasting on both radio and television slots, at least for a time. By the end of the decade, with television clearly in the ascendancy and radio in decline, stations cut back news-oriented programming. Brief, on-the-hour summations of the biggest stories, seldom without any analysis, along with box scores and short stock market reports, became the rule. Wire feeds replaced staff reporters, usually read by disc jockeys or other non-news station announcers. The heyday of radio news, 1939 to 1947—less than a decade in length—had drawn to a close.


568

| Radio Programming: Quiz Shows See also: Best Sellers; Football; Louis, Joe Selected Reading Cloud, Stanley, and Lynne Olson. The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism. New York: Mariner Books, 1997. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Edwards, Bob. Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2004.

RADIO PROGRAMMING: QUIZ SHOWS The first radio quiz shows, which premiered in the 1930s, promised no great wealth; most awarded inconsequential prizes to winners, and some offered no prizes at all. The era of huge cash awards did not come until the 1950s and the rise of television. Radio quizzes served as prelude to the likes of TV’s scandal-ridden, big-money shows such as $64,000 Question (1955–1958; 1955’s $64,000 would be equivalent to approximately $514,000 in 2008 dollars.) and Twenty-One (1956–1958). An early, informal radio quiz originated with Vox Pop, which made its debut in 1935 and ran until 1948. Interviewers would question passersby on city streets, and the respondents’ spontaneous answers constituted most of the show. Correct answers to silly questions might earn $5 or so (about $75 in 2008 dollars) and perhaps an inexpensive token from a local store. But the formula (question + correct answer = reward) proved popular on the air, and many other shows soon followed suit. Professor Quiz and Dr. I.Q., two other pioneers that also carried into the 1940s, come much closer to the modern concept of a quiz program. Oriented toward awarding correct answers instead of giving interviews, contestants had to respond to serious questions within a specified time limit. Winners were awarded silver dollars on the spot, although the amounts were initially in the $25 range (or about $375 in 2008 dollars). As the audiences for Professor Quiz and Dr. I.Q. grew, so did the prizes, and the 1940s saw occasional winnings in excess of $3,000 (more than $43,000 in 2008 dollars). Different actors, largely unknown outside radio circles, played the resident hosts, but the rapid-fire format remained the same. Writer and critic Clifton Fadiman (1904–1999) hosted Information, Please! and newspaper and magazine columnists Franklin Pierce Adams (1881–1960; he used the pen name FPA in much of his writing) and John Kieran (1892–1981) served as two of the erudite panelists on this long-running show. Fadiman asked questions submitted by listeners, and the panel—other intellectuals joined Adams and Kieran on a revolving basis—would proceed to give witty and extended answers. No prizes went to the panelists, but small awards—including a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and, in a wartime patriotic gesture, war bonds—were given to those people whose questions stumped the experts. For the panelists, clever banter sufficed (along with a healthy salary for the regulars), and moderator Fadiman cheerfully joined in the ongoing conversations. Music played a role in several shows. Bandleaders Kay Kyser (1905–1985) and Sammy Kaye (1910–1987) fronted programs that focused more on dance tunes than


Radio Programming: Quiz Shows | 569 braininess; Kyser’s Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge asked silly questions of participants, whereas Kaye’s So You Want to Lead a Band? allowed members of the audience a chance to conduct, with the winners receiving batons. In Beat the Band, listeners submitted questions to be asked of the musicians in the house orchestra; if a question “beat the band,” the lucky listener received the grand sum of $20 (about $265 in 2008 dollars). Two virtually identical shows, The Singing Bee and Singo, had contestants guessing song titles and putting them together to create stories. Winners could win $4 to $8 (or $50 to $100 in 2008 dollars), typical of the prizes awarded in those days. Finally, Stop the Music, a latecomer to the radio quiz rolls, enticed listeners with larger monetary prizes. The house band would begin playing a familiar pop song, and then suddenly host Bert Parks (1914–1992) would shout “stop the music!” over the air. A random telephone call would then be placed, and if the answering party had been listening to the show and could identify the song, he or she became eligible to guess the name of another song, usually something obscure. A second correct identification led to huge jackpots of $20,000 or more (or over $180,000 in 2008 dollars). Missing the question meant that the jackpot grew until the next call. Many other quiz shows dotted station calendars during the later 1940s. Youngsters got into the act with the popular Quiz Kids, a durable show that went on for 13 seasons. Borrowing from the format established by Information, Please! a panel of five exceedingly bright young people, all under 16 years of age, weekly amazed audiences with their breadth of knowledge and math skills. The panelists changed, the three winningest ones advancing to the next week’s production, the remaining two replaced with fresh faces. The moderator, Joe Kelly (1902–1959), previously a host with The National Barn Dance, kept matters down to earth and reasonably understandable for listeners. Each panelist received a $100 war bond for his or her efforts. One of the last quiz shows to be heard on radio mixed snappy repartee with its questions. Comedian Groucho Marx (1890–1977), a former vaudevillian and movie star, finished out his career as the amusing host and interviewer of You Bet Your Life. Unlike most radio shows of the 1950s, You Bet Your Life survived until 1959, well into the television era. In fact, it also went to television in 1950, and viewers could watch, on prerecorded film, the radio show. This process of broadcasting the audio portion of a television production has come to be called simulcasting. Although the radio version ended in 1959, the TV series played until 1961. People listened to (and watched) You Bet Your Life for the exchanges between Groucho and his guests, not for the questions, which were usually inconsequential, or for the prizes, which consisted of small amounts of money. If, however, a contestant could not seem to answer anything correctly, Groucho would wind up the proceedings with “Who was buried in Grant’s tomb?” With only a few exceptions, quiz shows on radio during the 1940s attracted listeners least of all for the prizes. Instead, these programs found steady audiences because of their hosts, panelists, or format. The sophisticated wit displayed on Information, Please! the remarkable intellects of The Quiz Kids, and the shenanigans found on a number of musically oriented programs kept people coming back for more. Easy and inexpensive (with the exception of the big-money entries, of which there were


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| Radio Programming: Quiz Shows Selected Quiz Show Programming on American Radio, 1940–1949 (Arranged Chronologically)

TABLE 83.


Dates

Vox Pop (also known as Sidewalk Interviews) Professor Quiz True or False? Battle of the Sexes

1935–1948 1936–1948 1936–1956 1938–1941; 1941–1943 1938–1952 1938–1949 1939–1950 1939–1940; 1946–1947 1940–1941 1940–1944 1940–1951 1940–1953 1940–1954 1940–1956 1940–1956 1942–1944 1942–1951 1942–1953 1944–1950 1944–1950 1944–1951 1945–1954 1945–1955 1945–1956 1945–1958 1946–1949 1946–1950 1946–1954 1947–1953 1947–1955 1948–1950 1948–1951 1948–1955 1948–1956

Information, Please! Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge Dr. I.Q. Pot O’ Gold The Singing Bee Beat the Band Can You Top This? Double or Nothing The Quiz Kids $64 Question (also known as Take It or Leave It) Truth or Consequences Singo It Pays to Be Ignorant Bob Hawk Show (also known as Thanks to the Yanks) Ladies Be Seated The Missus Goes A Shoppin’ Quick As a Flash Give and Take Break the Bank House Party Queen for a Day Winner Take All So You Want to Lead a Band? Twenty Questions Grand Slam Strike It Rich (also known as Strike It Lucky) Hit the Jackpot Sing It Again Stop the Music Groucho Marx, You Bet Your Life

few) to produce, with simple sets and little scripting, quiz shows also pleased sponsors and networks. As a result, they sustained themselves well throughout the decade and primed listeners for the onslaught of quiz shows that would appear on television screens in the 1950s. See also: Book Clubs; Country Music; Magazines; Newspapers; Radio Programming: Comedy Shows; Radio Programming: Educational Shows; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Swing


Radio Programming: Soap Operas | 571 Selected Reading Douglas, Susan J. Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Hilmes, Michele. Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922–1952. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Nachman, Gerald. Raised on Radio. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

RADIO PROGRAMMING: SOAP OPERAS Music, along with comedy and variety, may have dominated American radio programming during the 1940s, but soap operas held their own as well. Continuing stories that introduce vividly emotional characters and plotting—unfaithful husbands, conniving wives, romantic triangles, ungrateful children—all presented in melodramatic fashion, along with a helping of pathos and even an occasional dash of bathos, they usually focus on the tormented love lives of their many characters. These programs emerged as a major component of the broadcasting day early in the 1930s and lessened in popularity not at all with a new decade, a world war, and returning prosperity. Christened soap operas because leading soap companies, such as Procter and Gamble, Lever Brothers, Colgate-Palmolive, and others, sponsored most of them, plus their emotion-laden plots brought to mind some characteristics of opera. Canny broadcasters and sponsors, working on the supposition that women would form most of the radio audience for these programs, positioned them in the late morning and early afternoon hours, before the kids came home from school or husbands from work. In creating these shows, producers surmised that men would not only be unavailable, but also that they would be uninterested, allowing the soaps to develop as a small but significant niche area of radio created for women. For housewives and anyone else with idle time on their hands, although clearly the huge soap opera audiences went beyond stereotypes, the daily stories dished up a large helping of escapism. Writers deliberately featured molasses-like pacing in their plotting; if a listener missed an episode or two, it required little or no catching up, and their simple structure and black-and-white characters required minimal attentiveness. True to their perceived audience, these shows emphasized women—their love lives, their families, and the trials and tribulations of contemporary domestic life. Most of these serials displayed blatant gender biases, but listeners ignored that aspect or did not see themselves reflected. Whatever the answer, audiences maintained a high level of enthusiasm and remained remarkably faithful to their favorites, tuning in week after week and, in many cases, year after year. Like most movies of the period, soap operas of the 1940s broke no cultural boundaries and instead affirmed traditions: marriage, family, and friends. Moralistic, conservative, and frequently set in rural locales, the stories took a varied set of characters and cast them into dramatic situations, and it followed that good, solid American values eventually won the day, although the convoluted plots might require a seeming eternity to reach resolution. When a story finally wound down, the


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primary players squared their shoulders and resolutely marched on to the next problem, reassured by the verities expressed along the way in the story. There existed no problem too great, no situation too complex, for their simplistic solutions. And, although the crises may be never-ending, listeners enjoyed the certitude that when a story eventually reached its inevitable conclusion, a new calamity awaited in the succeeding episode. Several individuals, especially writer Irna Phillips (1901–1973) and the production team of Anne and Frank Hummert (1905–1996; 1882–1966), rose to become leading names in the genre. Phillips, often called the mother of the soap opera, developed Painted Dreams for Chicago’s WGN in 1930. It ran until the early 1940s and generally receives credit as the first true radio soap opera. Serendipitously, it also had a detergent, Chipso Soapflakes, as one of its sponsors. Utilizing the techniques of melodramatic love stories then appearing in women’s magazines as well as some romantic film antecedents, Phillips touched a nerve in her listening audience and penned a succession of similar serials, such as Today’s Children (1933–1937, 1943–1950), The Guiding Light (1937–1956), The Right to Happiness (1939–1960), and several others, most of which enjoyed long runs during the 1940s (see table below). Whereas Phillips wrote millions of words a year when creating scripts for her multiple shows, Anne and Frank Hummert did not write their many series, but instead created an agency devoted to their production. The couple reportedly demanded much of their writers and performers but, by maintaining high standards, assured quality technical values. Sponsors agreed, and the Hummerts accounted for over half the advertising revenue generated by soap operas. At times, their agency simultaneously supervised as many as 15 different serials (see table below). Popular titles like Just Plain Bill (1932– 1955), Ma Perkins (1933–1960), The Romance of Helen Trent (1933–1960), and Our Gal Sunday (1937–1959) came from the efficient Hummert operation. For Irna Phillips and Anne and Frank Hummert, along with any other individuals with a successful background in the genre, the rise of television simply presented fresh opportunities for expansion. As radio declined, more than half a dozen series made the transition to the new medium and went on entertaining audiences just as they had in years past. Few series involved big-name actors; cheaply produced and with small budgets, the soap opera world worked on the proverbial shoestring. Players would breathlessly rush from studio to studio, soundstage to soundstage, in order to act out their assigned roles in multiple dramas. Table 84 lists, alphabetically, with dates and networks, 46 of the more popular and enduring soap operas that could be heard during the 1940s. A number of others also existed during this time, but many had brief runs or were syndicated, available only to those stations that subscribed to them for a fee. By the early 1950s, only about 29 radio soap operas remained on the air (NBC [National Broadcasting Company] with 14, CBS [Columbia Broadcasting System] with 14, ABC [American Broadcasting Company] with 1), and by 1959 the number had shrunk to 14, with 5 on NBC and 9 on CBS. The ABC network had by that time dropped all soap opera programming. NBC canceled the last of its productions in late 1959, leaving CBS the lone carrier of the soaps, and, in November 1960, an era came to a quiet close when it simultaneously axed its handful of remaining shows.


Radio Programming: Soap Operas | 573 TABLE 84. Selected Soap Operas on American Radio during the 1940s (Arranged Alphabetically) Title

Network(s), Dates, Comments

Against the Storm Arnold Grimm’s Daughter

NBC, 1939–1942; Mutual, 1949; ABC, 1951–1952 CBS, 1937–1938; NBC, 1938–1942; produced by Anne and Frank Hummert CBS, 1937–1956 NBC, 1942–1951 CBS, 1936–1941; NBC, 1941–1942; CBS, 1942–1946 Mutual, 1935–1936; NBC, 1936–1955; CBS, 1955–1959; produced by the Hummerts CBS, 1936–1952 NBC, 1943–1944 CBS, 1941–1945 NBC, 1948–1949; CBS, 1949–1956; scripted by Irna Phillips; went to TV, 1954 NBC, 1936–1947; CBS, 1947–1950; NBC, 1950–1951; produced by the Hummerts NBC, 1942–1954; produced by the Hummerts NBC, 1937–1946; CBS, 1947–1956; scripted by Phillips; went to TV, 1952 CBS, 1937–1941, 1948–1955; NBC, 1956–1957 NBC, 1936–1942; produced by the Hummerts CBS, 1938–1945; NBC, 1945–1948; ABC, 1951–1952; NBC, 1955 CBS, 1932–1936; NBC, 1936–1955; produced by the Hummerts NBC, 1938; CBS, 1938–1946; NBC, 1946–1954 NBC, 1940–1950 NBC, 1940–1943, 1946–1947; ABC, 1951–1952 NBC, 1943–1950; produced by the Hummerts NBC, 1937–1955; produced by the Hummerts NBC, 1933–1942; NBC and CBS, 1942–1949; CBS, 1949– 1960; produced by the Hummerts CBS, 1931–1942 NBC, 1932–1959; an evening show instead of daytime Mutual, 1934–1935; CBS, 1935–1941; NBC, 1942–1943; went to TV, 1949 CBS, 1937–1959; produced by the Hummerts NBC, 1936–1959 CBS, 1940–1941; NBC, 1941–1951; went to TV, 1954 NBC, 1939–1940; CBS, 1940–1941; NBC, 1941–1956; CBS, 1956–1960); scripted by Phillips NBC, 1937–1954; concurrent with CBS, 1938–1942, 1945–1947, 1952–1954; CBS, 1954–1958); scripted by Phillips; went to TV, 1954 CBS, 1933–1960; produced by the Hummerts NBC, 1944–1945; CBS, 1945–1955 NBC, 1937; CBS, 1937–1946; produced by the Hummerts CBS, 1941–1960 (continued)

Aunt Jenny’s True Life Stories Aunt Mary Bachelor’s Children Backstage Wife Big Sister Brave Tomorrow Bright Horizon The Brighter Day David Harum Front-Page Farrell The Guiding Light Hilltop House John’s Other Wife Joyce Jordan, M.D. Just Plain Bill Life Can Be Beautiful The Light of the World Lone Journey Lora Lawton Lorenzo Jones Ma Perkins Myrt and Marge One Man’s Family The O’Neills Our Gal Sunday Pepper Young’s Family Portia Faces Life The Right to Happiness The Road of Life

The Romance of Helen Trent Rosemary Second Husband The Second Mrs. Burton


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(continued)

Title

Network(s), Dates, Comments

Stella Dallas The Story of Mary Marlin This Is Nora Drake Today’s Children Valiant Lady

NBC, 1938–1955; produced by the Hummerts NBC, but often CBS, 1935–1945; ABC, 1951–1952 NBC, 1947–1959 NBC, 1933–1937, 1943–1950; scripted by Phillips CBS, 1938; NBC, 1938–1942; CBS, 1942–1946; ABC, 1951–1952; produced by the Hummerts; went to TV, 1953 CBS, 1947–1958 CBS, 1939–1941; NBC, 1941–1951; ABC, 1951–1957 NBC, 1938–1940; CBS, 1940–1942; NBC, 1944–1948; scripted by Phillips NBC, 1939–1942 NBC, 1939–1940; CBS, 1940–1960; went to TV, 1958 NBC, 1938–1956; produced by the Hummerts

Wendy Warren When a Girl Marries Woman in White Woman of Courage Young Dr. Malone Young Widder Brown

Soap operas flourished on radio until the early 1950s and only foundered with the surging popularity of television. As late as 1949, the networks still devoted dozens of hours a week to such afternoon programming, with most episodes running 15 minutes in length and competing series often occupying the same time slots so listeners would have to make choices. By the following year, however, the bottom began to fall out, and the decline of the genre gained momentum. It proved a lingering death, however; radio executives convinced themselves that soap operas remained unique to the medium, and they stubbornly continued to produce the shows throughout the 1950s, even occasionally introducing new ones as old favorites died out. See also: Leisure and Recreation; Radio Programming: Drama and Anthology Shows Selected Reading Cantor, Muriel G., and Suzanne Pingree. The Soap Opera. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1983. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Higby, Mary Jane. Tune in Tomorrow. New York: Cowles Education, 1968. Hilmes, Michele. Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922–1952. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

RATIONING With the 1941 entry of the United States as a combatant in World War II, everyday life for Americans changed significantly. The war affected how they spent their time, where they worked and traveled, and what they ate; plus they suffered the stress associated with having loved ones fighting overseas. The conflict called for patriotic sacrifices, and virtually everyone readily accepted the challenges. Some of these changes came about because of Japanese conquests in Asia and unsafe shipping conditions across the Pacific Ocean. Important goods such as silk, rubber, and shellac from that part of the world could no longer reach the United States.


Rationing | 575 In addition, German submarines in the Atlantic and Caribbean, along with a shortage of ships, hindered the transport of sugar, tropical fruits, and other imports from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Central America. Because of dire shortages in England and Russia, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act on March 11, 1941, a move that allowed the president to ship weapons, food, or equipment to any country whose struggle against the Axis assisted U.S. defense. This involved taking supplies away from the American home front in order to aid struggling allies abroad. As the war progressed, the U.S. military also needed vast quantities of food and other goods. These pressures caused scarcities among many consumer items and a corresponding increase in prices for what remained. Along with these problems, however, some of the war-related changes could be viewed as positive. For example, being at war meant more jobs and, in many cases, higher wages. Together, however, these conditions—competition brought about by a shortfall of products, rising costs, and growing employment with money to spend—laid a foundation for inflation. To address these issues, rationing, a method of guaranteeing equitable distribution of limited supplies at any given time, while also controlling prices, became a reality of everyday life. Prior to Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) coped with ways of leading the nation through these difficult times. He displayed particular concern about consumer and economic woes, especially runaway inflation. In April 1941, the president issued an executive order that established the Office of Price Administration (OPA). He charged the agency to find ways to prevent rapid increases in prices and accompanying spirals in the cost of living. Struggling with how best to carry out its responsibilities, the OPA capitalized on the power of advertising to focus initially on encouraging Americans to spend their money on war bonds, an act that would divert income away from purchasing products and at the same time provide funds for some of the cost of the war. Although the resultant bond drives met with immediate success, it nevertheless became clear that bonds alone would not solve all the challenges associated with shortages of goods; something else had to be done. Shortly after the declaration of war, the passage of the Emergency Price Control Act on January 30, 1942, gave the OPA authority to freeze retail prices. Three months later, the agency issued the General Maximum Price Regulation, which set the cost of 60 percent of all civilian food items at March 1942 levels. The OPA now had legislation and guidelines for a War Ration Program. To implement rationing across the country, officials instructed all the counties in the 48 states to form ration boards. Staffed by some 300,000 volunteers, these workers soon began tracking the prices on 90 percent of the goods sold in more than 600,000 retail stores. Local schools became sites for the distribution of numbered war ration books; for example, book 1 became available in 1942, followed by books 2 and 3 in 1943, and so on. Given to every man, woman, and child, including infants, each contained an individual serial number along with red and blue stamps. As the war progressed and more consumer items fell onto the ration lists, the government added brown, green, and black stamps. Together with cash, they allowed citizens to purchase designated goods.


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A war ration program went into effect in March 1942, and shortly thereafter every man, woman, and child received books of ration stamps to be used for purchasing designated goods. (AP Photo)

Consumers traded red stamps for meats, while the blue and green stamps covered canned, bottled, and frozen fruits and vegetables, juices, soups, baby food, catsup, and dry beans. Brown stamps could be used for butter, cheese, lard, and fats, and black ones served as spares for any cost adjustments. In addition to their colors, ration stamps displayed military or patriotic symbols, including drawings of an airplane, an artillery piece, a tank, an aircraft carrier, an ear of wheat, and the Statue of Liberty torch. The use of stamps might require change from the merchant to the consumer; to accommodate this, red and blue tokens made of a thin compressed wood material and about the size of a dime fulfilled that function. Like small change, they could be applied toward future purchases. Details on how the program worked evolved over time as more and more products joined the list of rationed goods. Initially, the system involved a fixed point system for each item. Later a revision introduced a more flexible arrangement that allowed for a reduction or increase in points depending on scarcity. Eventually, the program contained four types of rationing, based on the commodity and its level of availability: (1) stamps used for point rationing for food, (2) uniform (the same for everyone) coupon rationing for shoes and sugar, (3) differential (allotments varied according to need) coupon rationing for fuel oil and gasoline, and (4) certificate rationing for automobiles, tires, and rubber boots.


Rationing | 577 Basic instructions, along with the motto “If you don’t need it, DON’T BUY IT,” appeared on the back of many stamp books. Eventually, the ration books also requested that everyone salvage their tin cans and waste fats. More detailed directions, information that the consumer found necessary for wise shopping, as well as knowing what to do in case of hospitalization or the death of a ration book holder, were issued separately by the OPA. The homework required for maximizing the use of the ration program could be exhausting. For example, the stamps and coupons had expiration dates, a device intended to prevent hoarding but one that added another piece of information to remember. Because the stamps became unusable at the end of four weeks, everyone had to make monthly trips to the ration book distribution site. With the introduction of the flexible points system, it became necessary for shoppers to master an ever-changing point value for specific products; one week ground beef might be seven points and then become nine points the following week. To aid the frustrated shopper, Consumers Union, publishers of the widely known and respected Consumer Reports, issued the weekly Bread and Butter Magazine from 1941 to 1947. It kept people informed about rationing changes, supplies, prices, and potential shortages. The gathering of information did not stop there. Sometimes ration boards offered special deals, such as being able to use a certain coupon on a specific date for a designated product. These particulars could appear at any time in newspapers or on lists posted at stores and thus required that someone in the household seek out these details on an almost daily basis. The following table illustrates samples of such announcements. The first rationing occurred in January 1942 and covered tires. Lack of supplies from the Far East and low U.S. stockpiles along with increased military needs for rubber necessitated a number of measures. The government quickly placed a freeze on the sale of tires as well as a ban on recapping. Automobile owners with more than five tires per car were asked to turn in their extras to a service station; many communities held scrap drives for rubber, while industry geared up to try to find a substitute TABLE 85.

Representative Newspaper Rationing Announcements

Date

Announcement

Tomorrow

Coffee coupon No. 25 expires. Last day to use No. 4 “A” coupons for four gallons of gasoline. Coupon No. 26 in Ration Book No. 1 becomes valid for one pound of coffee until April 25. Processed food stamps for April, D, E, and F in Ration Book No. 2 become valid. The monthly quota of 48 points remains unchanged. Budget these through April 30. Last day to use A, B, and C point coupons for processed foods in Ration Book No. 2. Deadline for first tire inspection for “A” cards. Last day for No. 4 fuel oil coupons. Last day for coupon No. 17 good for one pair of shoes.

March 22 March 25 March 31 April 12 June 15

Source: Lingeman, Richard. Don’t You Know There’s a War On? The American Home Front 1941– 1945. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1970, pp. 256–257.


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or a synthetic. Despite Americans’ love for their automobiles and the accompanying freedom of the open road, most people willingly complied with the tire restrictions. Some even put their cars away for the duration. Rubber nevertheless remained in short supply, causing the OPA to consider additional measures. In May 1942, the agency announced gas rationing for the East Coast, mainly because of a fuel shortage caused by the sinking of a large number of tankers by German submarines in the Atlantic. Meanwhile, a commission appointed by Roosevelt to evaluate the rubber situation reported that the only way to save tires was to limit mileage for the entire country. By December 1, almost one year after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the president ordered nationwide gas rationing as well as a ban on pleasure driving and a 35-mile-per-hour speed limit on all of the nation’s highways. Depending on needs, civilians could obtain stickers for display on their cars or trucks that identified one of a number of classifications of gas ration coupons. These classifications entitled the holder to different quantities each week: an A sticker owner received the lowest gas share of four gallons a week—enough, the government estimated, to permit 60 miles of driving. By 1944, because of enormous military demands for gas, authorities lowered the basic allotment back home to two gallons a week. B stickers were issued to workers essential to the war effort, such as those in the military industry, and allowed them to purchase eight gallons a week, while C sticker drivers— ministers, doctors, and others important to the quality of life for civilians—received whatever they required. Commercial truck drivers earned a T sticker, which signified as much gasoline as needed for their work. Last, X stickers provided unlimited amounts of gas for police, firefighters, and civil defense workers. Somehow, federal legislators also qualified for X stickers, a situation that produced an uproar and a cry of scandal from the American public, but Congress did not relinquish the privilege. Tire and gas rationing did bring about a noticeable decline in cars on city streets as well as some adjustments in daily life. In addition, blackouts, brownouts, and dim-outs greatly reduced night driving. In the East, milk delivery changed from every day to every other day, newspapers made only one delivery of editions to newsstands, and department stores curtailed their deliveries. On the good side, the auto death rate fell dramatically, but localities conversely struggled with a decline in money because of a drop in gasoline tax revenues. A ban on any extended pleasure driving meant just that. The auto tourist trade vanished, because a car owner with an A sticker had only enough gasoline for what the OPA called essential business. This included necessary shopping, attending church or synagogue services or funerals, receiving medical attention, taking trips for family or occupational necessities, and handling emergencies involving a threat to life, health, or property. Recognizing gas rationing as an opportunity for making money, professional criminals produced counterfeit ration coupons that they sold in a variety of ways to individual consumers and service station operators. By buying on the black market, individuals could get more gasoline than their legitimate quota. Service station owners used extra coupons to cover selling fuel above the ceiling price. Some truck drivers who had more than enough gasoline for their work sold any excess coupons to filling station owners, who could then fill the tanks of preferred customers without collecting coupons.


Rationing | 579 Even though difficult to enforce, OPA sleuths attempted to identify gas rationing and pleasure driving violators, and in some communities took coupons from drivers who stopped for a soft drink when making a trip that qualified as essential, parked in front of nightclubs and restaurants, or drove to a symphony concert. Recognizing the enforcement problems, the government cancelled the ban on pleasure driving in September 1943. Throughout the years of limited gasoline, most Americans looked for ways to conserve and coped by forming car pools and share-the-ride clubs or using public transit. Many found that their worn-out prewar cars and tires could last another year, especially if they limited their use to just the most necessary trips. Food rationing was another story and probably had a greater impact on American life than did gas rationing. Sugar, the first table item to become scarce, made it to the ration list in April 1942, with an average allowance of 8, later 12, ounces per person per week. Some complained and incorrectly accused the government of not knowing what it was doing, asserting that a scarcity of sugar did not exist. But most realized the seriousness of the matter and found ways to tolerate the situation. Many people reduced the amount of sugar they put in drinks and food or used substitutes such as saccharin and corn syrup. Homemakers baked less and canned fewer preserves, and some bought from bakeries in order to save their own ration stamps. Restaurants filled their sugar bowls only half full and asked patrons to show their patriotic spirit by limiting how much they used. Coffee rationing of one pound per person every five weeks followed in November 1942. Hotels and restaurants stopped offering refills, and railroad dining cars served coffee only at breakfast. Some coffee drinkers used chicory to stretch their supply, while others brewed their grounds a second time. As a product with limited availability, coffee acquired an aura of luxury, and frequently people used their stamps to buy coffee as a wedding or other special gift. Even some non–coffee drinkers turned to having one cup a day, seeing it as a special treat. Coffee rationing ceased in July 1943, when supplies increased. The need for food by the military, especially canned goods, greatly decreased the amount available for civilians on the home front. In 1943, one-half of the entire production of canned food went to U.S. troops overseas, and a freeze on the selling of canned meats and fish began on February 2 of that year. By March 1, other kinds of canned goods—milk, fruit, vegetables, jams, and jellies—along with dried fruits, beans, and frozen foods, joined the list of rationed foods. Victory gardens became a popular way for those at home to add much-needed fruits and vegetables to their tables. The government limited butter sales on March 22, 1943, and meat rationing followed a week later with a multitude of regulations and associated problems. Even before this rationing began, meat had been scarce because farmers held back their stock, waiting for higher prices. The demand from the armed forces—soldiers reportedly ate four and a half pounds of meat each week, those in the navy reportedly ate seven pounds each week—required civilians to reduce their consumption. The initial rationed portion per person of 28 ounces per week plus 4 ounces of cheese seemed meager to most, with the exception of vegetarians. Meat rationing especially vexed butchers. The OPA provided them with 24 pages of directions for precise cutting of meat with the intention of ensuring uniformity. If a


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T-bone steak had a certain regulated price and red stamp points cost, then T-bone steaks everywhere should be alike. Butchers complained that cutting meat by a ruler became time consuming and resulted in waste, while shoppers felt overwhelmed when trying to understand the various cuts with bone in or bone out and the associated costs. Even with rationing, meat remained scarce, and many felt lucky to get frankfurters containing fillers made from soybeans, potatoes, or cracker meal. Horse meat, muskrat, and rabbit, unusual items in the American diet, sold in some areas of the country. Life magazine attempted to help by publishing articles such as “Raising Rabbits for Meat Is a Helpful Patriotic Hobby” (January 4, 1943) and “How to Prepare Variety Meats” (January 11, 1943). The scarcity and rationing of meat created a chain effect shortage for poultry. Pork, on the other hand, remained plentiful until late in the war, when it too made the ration list. Laborers voiced concern about not getting enough meat and other food for the energy they expended in their work. Miners, led by John L. Lewis (1880–1969), struck on four different occasions, voicing their dissatisfaction with both low wages and inadequate food. In June 1945, the government belatedly increased the miners’ ration to twice the standard amount. Lumberjacks in the state of Washington also struck for higher meat rations. Sheep herders, whose jobs took them far from stores for extended periods, found their rations inadequate and received an increase from 48 points for canned goods to 288 points. Unfortunately, some individuals who simply could not understand the rationing system often went without their allotments. In addition to tires, gasoline, and food, the War Ration Program encompassed other items Americans believed important to their well-being. New typewriters, bicycles, automobiles, shoes, and household appliances became unavailable early in the war, and those already in the supply pool for purchase required a certificate showing need. Clocks, because of the requisitioning of brass and copper, made it to the shortage list, a condition that created some major theft problems and enabled telephone wake-up services to flourish. Fuel oil rationing started just in time for the winter of 1942–1943 with an initial allotment based on a complicated formula involving a dwelling’s square footage. Simplification came later so everyone received about two-thirds of what they used in 1941, or enough to keep the house or apartment at 65 degrees. In the Northwest, firewood and coal were added to the ration list in 1943. As with the war bond campaigns, government-sponsored ads, radio shows, posters, and pamphlets asked Americans to comply with and contribute to the War Ration Program, and they did so without complaint. Nevertheless, announcements of a new item joining the ration lists frequently led to panic buying and hoarding. Within a day, depleted store shelves intensified scarcity and set the stage for the black market; these shady enterprises offered rationed items on the sly at higher prices. Consumers felt increased hardships when nonrationed goods such as whiskey, canned beer, cigarettes, milk, and paper became hard to find because of lowered production and related shortages. These conditions again offered opportunities for illegal entrepreneurs. By the end of 1943, industrial activity for the military had decreased, and production of civilian items such as irons, stoves, and refrigerators slowly resumed. The summer of 1944 brought good news about the war, and the OPA lifted the rationing of canned


Religion | 581 goods and meat, except for beef steaks and roasts. But a temporary halt in the Allied advances during December 1944 crushed the hopes of ending the war soon. The government restored rationing, black market trading became more open, and Congress, fearing another major food crisis, extended the OPA’s authority until June 1946, a date that turned out to be months beyond the V-E and V-J day celebrations in 1945. With the declaration of war against Japan on December 8, 1941 (December 11, 1941, against Germany and Italy), the economy of the United States shifted overnight to war production; consumer needs and goods took a back seat to military production. Rationing, needed to control supply and demand and possibly decrease public anger over shortages, became a reality in the spring of 1942 and continued until 1946. It required a shared sacrifice from all citizens and deeply affected the American way of life. See also: Hobbies; Labor Unrest; Leisure and Recreation; Magazines; Motorsports; Technology; Transportation; Travel Selected Reading “How to Use Your War Ration Book.” Genealogy Today. U.S. Government Printing Office 1626649-1. www.genealogytoday.com/guide/ww2/book_one_intro.html Lingeman, Richard. Don’t You Know There’s a War On? The American Home Front 1941–1945. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1970. Winkler, Allan M. Home Front U.S.A.: America during World War II. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1986. “World War II Rationing Collection, 1942–1946.” New York State Library. www.nysl.nysed.gov/ msscfa/sc22912.htm

RELIGION The 1940s can be seen as a decade of growth for mainline religions as well as evangelistic movements. Circumstances during the 1930s, a period of economic unrest and social turmoil, along with wartime and postwar events of the 1940s, laid the stage for increased religious affiliation within the general population. The Great Depression (1929–1933), with its accompanying economic hardships, had created a state of despair and sense of hopelessness for some citizens. New Deal programs developed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (1882–1945) administration, however, benefited many and allowed Americans to begin to regain national confidence, only to be confronted then by the rise of European fascism, a militaristic Japan, and other ideological challenges. The United States’ sudden entry into World War II in December 1941 ignited new concerns among its citizens about their national heritage, including its religious traditions. Almost four years later, the atomic bomb, the final surrenders, and the return of peace changed American life yet again. Industrial expansion, which had begun in the prelude to war, accelerated and pushed forward a strong economy, allowing a large number of families to move from urban centers to new and larger homes in the suburbs, thanks to improved roads and affordable automobiles. At the same time, the television industry opened countless new opportunities and provided a window to postwar affluence.


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Data from the federal government, the Gallup Poll, and church reports document different aspects of Americans’ involvement with faith communities. U.S. Census Bureau statistics for 1940 to 1949 tracked membership of four major Protestant bodies— Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist, and Southern Baptist—as well as Seventh-day Adventist and Roman Catholic. In addition to membership totals, which grew somewhat equally for all selected bodies, the bureau reported the value of construction contracts made with religious groups in general. Money spent dropped between 1940 and 1945 because of wartime shortages but strongly rebounded after the war. Statistics for other religious groups present in the United States, such as Buddhist, Old Catholic and Polish National Catholics, Eastern churches, and Judaism, did not become available until 1951. The Gallup Poll conducted three surveys giving the percentage of the total population that belonged to a specified church. These reports show a small increase over the decade, rising from 72 percent of the population to 76 percent in 1947. For those citizens who did profess a religious preference, Gallup classified 69 percent as Protestant and 22 percent as Roman Catholic, a clear majority of total religious memberships. The above statistics leave unanswered the decade’s history of church attendance. Reports quoted in the New York Times indicate growing church attendance during the 1940s. At the time, most city dwellers could easily walk or use public transportation to get to houses of worship. For others, however, rubber and gasoline shortages along with rationing caused travel to be restricted to absolute necessities and probably prevented some from participating in church services. For those unable to attend church, both independent and network radio provided broadcasts of worship services and other religious programs that audiences could enjoy in the comfort of their living rooms. This kind of programming had steadily drawn increasing numbers of listeners during the 1930s, a trend that continued throughout the 1940s. Independent stations across the country regularly carried Sunday church services close to or at 11:00 a.m. Radio networks aired long-time favorites as well as new programs in slots anywhere from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Sundays, as well as on some weekdays. The choices varied, with something for almost everyone, whatever the preference. For example, the Columbia Broadcasting System aired The CBS Church of the

TABLE 86.

Growth of Selected American Religious Bodies, 1940–1949

Year

Roman Catholic Membership

1940 1945 1949

21,403,000 n.d. 26,718,000

Percentage Change

+20%

Selected Protestant Groups Membership 16,782,000 n.d. 20,615,000

Percentage Change

+19%

Value of Construction Contracts for Religious Buildings $46 million $35 million $276 million

Note: n.d. = no data available. Source: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. Washington, DC: Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975, pp. 392, 624. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Religion | 583 Air, dating back to 1931. Its format replicated actual church services and attempted to cater to all denominations and faiths. Two broadcasts each Sunday, made it possible to hear one denominational service in the morning and another in the afternoon. Radio Bible Class on MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System) was exactly that, an instructional class on Sunday mornings that the network carried. It came on the air early enough that audiences could tune in at home prior to departing for an 11:00 a.m. service. Musical programs such as The Gospel Singer and Hymns for All Churches, both of which aired several times a week over the years, also proved popular. The table below provides an overview of religious-oriented programming carried by the major networks; it does not include independent stations or syndicated programs. The radio programs listed above allowed some ministers to become well-known, while elevating others to celebrity status. In May 1948, The National Radio Pulpit, which first broadcast in January 1923 on New York’s independent WEAF, celebrated 25 years of broadcasting. NBC (National Broadcasting Company) carried it for 22 of those years, making it at the time the oldest such program on the air. Ralph W. Sockman

TABLE 87.

Religious Network Radio Programs during the 1940s

MBS The Old-Fashioned Revival Hour, 1930s–1944 The Lutheran Hour, 1935–1956 Radio Bible Class, 1940–1957 The Pilgrim Hour, 1942, 1944–1947. This was a supplementary broadcast of The OldFashioned Revival Hour The Voice of Prophecy, 1942–1954 Reverend John E. Zoller, The Wesley League, 1943–1946 The Back to God Hour, 1948–1956 Christian Science Talks, 1949–1956

CBS

NBC

ABC

The CBS Church of the Air, 1931–1960s The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, 1932–1960s

National Radio Pulpit, 1926–1962

The Old–Fashioned Revival Hour, 1949–1960s National Vespers, 1943–1954

Hymns of All Churches, 1936–1938; 1941–1942 Greenfield Chapel Choir, 1937–1943 Wings over Jordan, 1939–1954

National Vespers, 1929–1943 The Catholic Hour, 1930–1960s The Gospel Singer, 1933–1943 Religion in the News, 1933–1950 Message of Israel, 1935–1943 Hymns of All Churches, 1938–1941, 1942–1946 Hour of Faith, 1942–1943 Greenfield Chapel Choir, 1943–1945

Message of Israel, 1943–1950 Hymns of All Churches, 1945–1947 Hour of Faith, 1943–1950 The Lutheran Hour, 1949–1951 The Baptist Hour, 1949–1950

Source: Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 571–574.


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| Religion

(1889–1970), a United Methodist minister, served as the officiating pastor and regularly stood before the microphone from 1936 until the end of its run in 1962. Time magazine, in its January 21, 1946, issue, identified Sockman as the No. 1 Protestant radio pastor in the United States, based on the volume of his fan mail, some 4,000 letters each week. Sockman, in addition to his radio show and Manhattan church responsibilities, regularly traveled the country on lecture tours and wrote best-selling books on Christian life, including Live for Tomorrow (1943), Date with Destiny; A Preamble to Christian Culture (1944), and The Lord’s Prayer (1947). Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979), an American bishop representing the Roman Catholic Church, hosted The Catholic Hour (NBC) on Sundays at 6:00 p.m. for 20 years, 1930 to 1950, and received credit for converting many listeners to Catholicism, including some widely known people such as dramatist, war correspondent, and politician Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987), industrialist Henry Ford II (1917–1987), and actress Virginia Mayo (1920–2005). Time magazine, again in its January 21, 1946, issue, referred to Sheen as “the golden-voiced Msgr. Fulton Sheen” and reported that he received 3,000 to 6,000 letters weekly. In 1950, he moved from radio to the new medium of television and appeared on Time’s cover on April 14, 1952; over the course of his career, Sheen wrote some 73 books. Another prominent minister, radio personality, and author from the period, Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993), received degrees from Ohio Wesleyan and the theological school at Boston University. Originally ordained a Methodist minister, Peale changed to the Dutch Reformed Church, known today as the Reformed Church in America, and served as pastor at the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan for 52 years (1932– 1984). His fame evolved from a regular airing of his sermons on radio, which focused on a positive approach to modern living. He also published several best-selling books, including The Art of Living (1937), Confident Living (1948), and his most famous, The Power of Positive Thinking (1952). In 1945, Peale and his wife, Ruth Stafford Peale (1906–2008), founded the Foundation for Christian Living and distributed the first issue of Guideposts magazine, which today has one of the largest circulations of any religious periodical. In addition to the representatives of mainstream denominations, radio also aired Protestant evangelistic services that went beyond providing a worship service. These programs contained zealous preaching of the Christian gospel with the intent of winning or reviving a person’s commitment to Christ and offered choral music, singers of spirituals, and distinguished soloists, in addition to a crusading sermon. Evangelists, perhaps more than mainline pastors, recognized the potential of radio for reaching large numbers of people and converting them to the speaker’s cause. Following the success of Aimee Semple McPherson (1890–1944), the first woman to preach sermons over radio, evangelists eagerly took to the medium soon after its widespread establishment in the early 1920s. By the 1940s, two men—Charles E. Fuller (1887–1968) and William Franklin “Billy” Graham (b. 1918)—successfully used radio to become well-known internationally and to significantly advance their ministries. Charles Fuller, first a member of the Presbyterian Church and then a Baptist minister, gained fame as the host and speaker on The Old-Fashioned Revival Hour. Beginning


Religion | 585 in 1928, he broadcast from Calvary Church, in Long Beach, California, and could only be heard on the West Coast. Because of his growing audience, he resigned his pastoral position in 1933 and formed the Gospel Broadcasting Association to preach and strengthen his radio ministry. By virtue of being self-employed, he needed money and thus used his radio programs to ask his listeners for contributions; they responded generously. By 1940, Fuller had contracted to pay the Mutual network for coast-to-coast airing of his hour-long show. The weekly services, held before a live audience in California, were transcribed and broadcast the following Sunday with the transcriptions circulated both in the United States and abroad. The content remained the same as it had been for years: a sermon, a choral group performing old-time gospel hymns, a male quartet, and occasional appearances by guest celebrities talking about their experiences in their faith. This format became the prototype for other evangelistic shows. The years during World War II were lucrative ones for Fuller and the Old-Fashioned Revival Hour. Contributions amply covered GBA expenses and payments to Mutual; Fuller even added stations overseas to carry the program to U.S. soldiers in Europe. Mutual, unlike the other major networks that offered slots without commercial sponsorship or advertising, sold time for religious programming and in 1943 came under increasing pressure from the Federal Council of Churches (founded in 1908 as an ecumenical fellowship of major Protestant and Orthodox faith groups) to change its policies. Despite Fuller’s distinction as Mutual’s highest-paying customer, the network decided in 1942 to limit paid-time religious programs on Sundays to half an hour. Fuller accepted a 30-minute slot for The Pilgrim Hour, which had previously aired during the afternoon for an hour. When Mutual in 1944 decided to cancel any religious programming after 12:00 p.m., Fuller moved the more popular OldFashioned Revival Hour to independent stations. The program returned to network radio with ABC (American Broadcasting System) in 1949 and remained there for over a decade. Whereas Fuller pioneered radio evangelism, Billy Graham, an ordained Baptist minister, became the star. Graham received his education from a fundamentalist network of schools, completing a bachelor’s degree in 1943 from Florida Bible Institute. Following graduation, he served briefly as the minister at the Village Church in Western Springs, Illinois. The following year, with financial backing from this church, he added a failing local radio show, Songs in the Night, to his responsibilities and hired George Beverly Shea (b. 1909) as director of radio ministry. Over the decades, Shea became the musical mainstay for Graham’s crusades. Also in 1944, Graham worked as the first full-time employee for the Youth for Christ movement, founded that same year by fellow minister and evangelist, Torrey Johnson (1909–2002). Graham traveled as a field representative in an effort to coordinate religious rallies being held for young people in the United States and Canada. At age 30, Graham moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, to serve for one year as the president of Northwestern College, giving him the distinction of being the youngest person ever to serve in that position at the college. In 1949, while in Los Angeles, he launched what he thought would be a three-week revival. Held in large circus tents erected in a parking lot, his preaching received extensive coast-to-coast front-page coverage by the


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| Religion

Hearst newspapers, and the crusade grew from three to seven weeks. Overnight, Billy Graham had become a person of national prominence, with articles about him appearing in both Time and Life magazines. George Carson Putman (1914–2008), a prominent radio commentator, conducted a poll for New York City’s WOR in 1947. Designed to determine the city’s most influential citizens, William Ward Ayer (1892–1985), minister at Calvary Baptist Church in Manhattan (1936–1950), ranked third, outpaced only by Cardinal Francis Spellman (1889–1967) and Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962). Ayer, educated at the Moody Bible Institute, Lincoln College, and the Northern Baptist Seminary of Chicago, could be heard for more than 41 years in New York over the airwaves. During his tenure at Calvary, the New York Times and the Herald Tribune ran Monday morning summaries of his Sunday sermons. With denominations and ministers acquiring more and more radio air time, issues arose regarding the role of radio in promoting specific faiths and the use of commercial sponsorship or advertising as a part of religious programs. It addition to these matters, some religious leaders, especially those representing evangelistic groups, became concerned about the appearance on radio of people they deemed to be crackpots and fly-by-night operators. Radio station owners likewise found religious material at times to be controversial and difficult to handle. As a consequence of these operational questions, prominent evangelistic ministers, both those with radio shows and those without, formed a number of councils: (1) the American Council of Churches of Christ (1941), (2) the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE, 1942), and (3) the National Religious Broadcasters (1944), an affiliate of NAE. All three of these evangelistic-oriented groups worked toward self-regulating the production side of religious programs and securing radio time for their programs to ensure a continuing presence. Mainline denominations also became active and created four groups: (1) the Protestant Radio Conference (1945, an association of Protestant denomination leaders who oversaw a religious broadcast entity in Atlanta); (2) Joint Religious Radio Commission (1945, five Protestant denominations working to coordinate their radio work); (3) Religious Radio Association (1946, included representatives from Protestant, Jewish, and Roman Catholic faiths); and (4) the Protestant Radio Commission (1948), which took on the responsibility of overseeing The National Radio Pulpit and other programs of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America (1908, an ecumenical fellowship of major Protestant and Orthodox churches). Since the days of the Pilgrims, many have debated religious rights, particularly in the context of public prayer. In 1933, a highly visible use of this basic element of most religions began with the first prayer service attended by a U.S. president-elect held before the swearing-in ceremony. In addition, all presidential inaugurations since 1937 have included one or more prayers delivered by members of the clergy. In times of crisis, many people link prayer and patriotism, and some past presidents, including Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), James Madison (1751–1836), and Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), offered public prayers during difficult times. Franklin Roosevelt is particularly known for his D-Day, June 6, 1944, delivery of “A Prayer in


Religion | 587 Dark Times.” In the days following Roosevelt’s example, large numbers of Americans visited churches to pray for the success of the Allied attempt to liberate Europe and also offered blood to the Red Cross. While churches and their congregations threw support behind the national effort to end World War II victoriously, they also gave their official blessing to conscientious objectors (COs), people who refuse to participate as combatants in war because of their beliefs. Many World War II COs came from three Protestant churches: the Society of Friends (Quakers), Mennonites, and Brethren—sects that historically have advocated pacifism as a part of their basic doctrine. A majority of the conscientious objectors registered as noncombatants, individuals with military status and benefits but not assigned to fighting duties. Most COs held positions in units like the medical corps. Others accepted alternative service in Civilian Public Service from 1941 to 1947. These individuals worked in a variety of areas including land reclamation, firefighting, forest and park service, public health, and hospitals. Perhaps one of the most important contributions made by religious bodies to support the war involved providing chaplains to the various branches of the armed forces. Governmental guidelines required Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish clergy at all military camps, with one for every 1,200 soldiers. Their duties included conducting worship services, participating in patriotic ceremonies, providing classes for religious instruction, acting as counselors to service personnel, visiting the sick and injured, and officiating at baptisms, marriages, and funerals. To accelerate the procurement of Protestant ministers to serve as chaplains, the federal government worked closely with the Federal Council of Churches and created a clearinghouse to handle applications and placement. The Roman Catholic Church and the Jewish Welfare Board provided similar assistance in finding priests and rabbis. Congress in 1941 appropriated almost $13 million (approximately $190 million in 2008 dollars) for the erection of chapels on service posts and camps throughout the nation. Everyday life and popular culture reflected the growth experienced by religion in the United States during the 1940s. Church membership and attendance rose, and religious programming on radio expanded and acquired more listeners. Each year, with the exception of 1941, Time magazine annually dedicated at least two of its covers to a religious topic or leader, such as Cardinal Spellman, (February 25, 1946), and Mormon leader George A. Smith (1870–1951) on its July 21, 1947 issue. “God Bless America,” composed by Irving Berlin (1888–1989) in 1918 and sung and recorded by Kate Smith (1907–1986) in 1938, emerged as one of the most inspiring songs of World War II; in some ways, it served as a second national anthem, while Frank Loesser’s (1910–1969) “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” (1942) turned out to be a popular hit. Some of the choral groups appearing on religious programs, such as the choir on Old-Fashioned Revival Hour, released recordings and experienced successful sales. Enthusiasm about religion continued into the 1950s with nationally known religious figures such as Bishop Fulton Sheen, Billy Graham, Norman Vincent Peale, and Charles E. Fuller taking their religious programs to television, and entertainer and singer Tennessee Ernie Ford (1919–1991) closed his TV show and personal appearances with a religious number.


588

| Restaurants See also: Best Sellers (Books); Levittown and Suburbanization; Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 (Selective Service, or Draft) Selected Reading Ahlstrom, Sidney E. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972. Church Attendance. New York Times, January 18, 1942; January 3, 1946; December 18, 1946. www. proquest.com Hangen, Tona J. Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Packard, William. Evangelism in America, From Tents to TV. New York: Paragon House, 1988.

RESTAURANTS Americans who wanted to eat out in 1940 had an array of possibilities in the kinds of food served and the dining facilities provided. They even had a guide, Adventures in Good Eating by Duncan Hines (1880–1959), which had made the best seller lists in 1939. Descriptive names of eateries varied—restaurants, cafeterias, tea rooms, hamburger stands, drive-ins, delicatessens, inns, lodges, taverns, soda fountains—with offerings that ranged from sit-down, home-cooked meals served family style to a quick bite on the run, from specialties of the region to ethnic restaurants. Whatever the kind of place, ownership could easily range from local mom-and-pop operations to national chains and franchises. Prior to the 1920s and 1930s, the word restaurant referred to establishments that provided table service and fine cuisine prepared by chefs and skilled cooks; some also offered an orchestra or band that played music for both listening and dancing. These kinds of places still existed in the 1940s, but the more casual operations with simpler foods gained popularity both before and after World War II. The growth of a variety of restaurants coincided with increased activity on the nation’s roads and highways and a corresponding upward change in the number of people choosing to eat out. From 1930 to 1940, car ownership had grown, and the totals for automobile miles of travel rose from 206 billion to 302 billion. During the 1930s, astute businessmen such as Howard Johnson (1896–1972) and Maurice and Richard McDonald (1902–1971, 1909–1998) saw an opportunity to meet the emerging interest among people on the go with dining facilities different from those of the past. Howard Johnson serves as a good example. He started out selling 28 flavors of ice cream at a soda fountain in a small corner drugstore in Quincy, Massachusetts, but soon opened a beachfront ice cream stand and added hotdogs to his fare. Next came a family restaurant, again in Quincy, with menu additions of fried clams, chicken pot pies, and baked beans served in a comfortable and recognizable setting. By 1935, he had a franchise agreement with an acquaintance to operate a Howard Johnson’s Family Restaurant on Cape Cod. This kind of business contract allowed a retail business owner, such as Johnson, to expand operations without a large outlay of capital. At the same time, the operator of the new business was able to invest with little risk on an unknown venture and could guarantee the customers a recognized trademark, a uniform


Restaurants | 589 product, and quality service. Over the next four years, through franchises, the number of Howard Johnson’s grew to 107 and continued upward during 1940 and 1941; such phenomenal growth provided evidence of Americans’ growing interest in eating out. While Johnson experienced success in the restaurant business with a somewhat varied menu and table service for New England and East Coast families, the McDonald Brothers took a different approach with their hamburger drive-in restaurants in California. They provided their customers, primarily young families and teenagers looking for a fast-served but good hamburger with French fries and a milkshake—food to be eaten in the car or taken to a park or home. In the meantime, cosmopolitan areas, such as Hollywood, Chicago, and New York City, supplied a larger customer base with broader interests than many smaller communities. This gave rise to a wider variety of eateries, including ethnic restaurants. For example, the Pagoda Chinese Restaurant, still operating in the 21st century, opened in Hollywood in 1940 and, with its ornate glitter and red and gold vinyl, was considered to be one of the most modern and finest Chinese restaurants in the West. Following the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese and the subsequent entry of the United States into World War II, the food industry, like many other businesses on the edge of expansion, experienced challenges. The rationing of many foods and gasoline, along with a shortage of workers, initially proved worrisome at a time when demand for restaurant services increased. The removal of millions of men from the workforce from December 1, 1941, to December 31, 1946, for deployment in the armed forces resulted in a tripling of the number of women workers. Frequently putting in overtime with more pay, these women found restaurants an attractive alternative to preparing and eating a meal at home. Also, families trying to cope with the constraints of rationing and having difficulty providing certain meals, such as the expected Thanksgiving dinner, turned to eating establishments for what they could not prepare at home. After concerted efforts by leaders in the restaurant industry, the Office of Price Administration (OPA) allowed food businesses some variation in the ration points needed for certain items, which in turn enabled them to meet the growing demand. Subsequently, from 1939 to 1946, restaurant sales across the country quadrupled. But even with overall success for the restaurant industry as a whole, some individual operations struggled. For example, during the first years of the war, and before OPA stepped in to help, Howard Johnson’s closed the doors at 188 sites, leaving only 12 operating at the end of the conflict. The company survived by providing commissary food, including ice cream, to military installations, defense plants, and schools. Mindful of potential problems, some entrepreneurs, such as Ike Sewell (1903–1990) of Chicago, nevertheless took risks and grabbed at what seemed to be wartime opportunities. Having dabbled in the restaurant business as a sideline to his job as a salesman with Standard Brands, Sewell embarked on what he saw as a successful venture. In 1943, he and Ric Riccardo (active 1940s), who had recently returned from Italy, opened Pizzeria Uno, a pizza restaurant that offered Chicago, and the country, the first deep-dish pizza and the beginning of an American fascination for this food. The chain remains in operation in the 21st century. The war finally ended in 1945, and U.S. industries quickly reverted to commercial output as citizens rushed to pamper themselves and compensate for the hardships


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| Restaurants

endured for the preceding four years. Mass production supported the cry for new and convenient commodities, and returning veterans and others invested in businesses, including restaurants, that could met the new consumer demands. Restaurants with success under their belts, and those that had struggled during the war to stay afloat, anticipated growth, and some flourished. Howard Johnson’s, by 1947, had reopened most of its closed sites, along with 200 additional new ones. The number grew to 400 by 1954. New chains appeared across the American landscape and included Dwarf House, now known as Chick-fil-A (1946), Shoney’s (1947), Marie Callender’s (1948), Coco’s (1948), and Bob Evans (1948). Restaurants benefited when automobile sales skyrocketed and provided transportation for getting to work, visiting friends and relatives, and taking family vacations—times when people frequently included dining away from home as a part of the excursion. To the detriment of the restaurant business, the resurgence of normal working hours, along with returning veterans and their spouses having babies, meant a growing interest in home and family. New houses with new appliances in new kitchens invited families to eat at home, not out. Also, as the decade drew to a close, sales of televisions soared, creating a powerful incentive for families to stay at home during mealtime and in the evening. Returning veterans had another effect on the food industry. The New Haven Restaurant Institute, not a restaurant but a school, opened in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1946, with 50 students and a faculty consisting of a chef, a baker, and a dietitian. It marked the beginning of a long history of preparing chefs and bakers for the restaurant and bakery industry. Established to offer vocational training to World War II veterans who had served as cooks in the armed forces, the institute experienced immediate growth and, in 1947, moved to a larger building adjacent to Yale University and changed its name to the Restaurant Institute of Connecticut. It became the Culinary Institute of America in 1951, and, with a booming food services industry during the 1950s and 1960s, moved to a larger facility, its current home, at St. Andrew-on-Hudson in Hyde Park, New York in 1969. The 1940s stand as a decade with both highs and lows for the restaurant industry. At the beginning of the decade, the automobile had clearly affected eating habits, and the restaurant business responded by catering to that situation. Howard Johnson’s Family Restaurants owe their pre- and postwar success to being located along major highways. World War II offered some interruptions and challenges for the industry, but for many consumers it was easier to eat out, allowing many eateries to profit. The restaurant business declined nationwide during the postwar years, even with the introduction of new chains. At the same time, the industry laid the groundwork for rapid growth, especially in the area of fast-food operations, in the decades to come. See also: Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry; Baby Boom; Beverages; Desserts, Candy, and Ice Cream; Frozen Foods; Leisure and Recreation; Technology; Television Selected Reading “Howard Johnson International, Inc.” Funding Universe. www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Howard-Johnson-International-Inc-Company-History.html Levenstein, Harvey. Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. The Culinary Institute of America. www.ciachef.edu/admissions/about/history.asp © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Rhythm ’n’ Blues | 591

RHYTHM ’N’ BLUES In the immediate postwar years, younger black audiences, initially so fond of modern jazz and bebop because they represented a revolt against what they considered the sterility of most white big bands, began to search out other innovative musical formats. Most bebop did not prove particularly danceable, and much modern jazz often seemed too cerebral for general audiences. Pop songs, clichéd, predictable, and more often than not performed by white vocalists for white listeners, also failed to stir most young blacks uprooted from the South and living in urban, industrialized communities to the north. The war, particularly defense jobs, had taken them and their families away from traditional Southern music. A group of mainly black artists, some veteran performers of many years’ standing and some as young as the listeners they wanted to reach, sought to appeal to this restless minority audience. Many of these musicians hailed from a blues tradition, and they sought to create a blend of styles that took from the blues, gospel church music, folk, country, barroom and honky-tonk tunes, boogie-woogie, and even from jazz and swing. What they developed came to be called rhythm and blues (often shortened to rhythm ’n’ blues or abbreviated as R & B). The major record companies, always alert to perceived social and musical movements, had begun a policy in the 1920s and 1930s of calling most music they viewed as aimed at black audiences as “race records.” The smaller independent labels, many of them catering to small, niche audiences (including black listeners), likewise followed the race record approach, making their disks sometimes difficult to find in larger shops. Often, record stores in predominantly white neighborhoods or communities did not carry these recordings at all. A customer wanting a particular song by a black artist might have to order it. This kind of segregation even carried over to the airwaves; white radio stations tended not to play what they considered black music. Similarly, most movies with largely black casts seldom played mainstream theaters but were relegated to those located in minority neighborhoods. As far as concerned American popular culture, the forces of segregation strove mightily to keep racial groups apart. In such a racially repressive climate, rhythm and blues began quietly, a musical form about which the majority population knew little. Even Billboard magazine, a periodical that supposedly tracked all the hits of the day, had no category for this new music until 1949—some years later than the style’s inception and steadily growing popularity. Until then, Billboard had employed an awkward, catchall category it called Juke Box Race Records in which jazz, blues, novelty tunes, and anything else the editors thought appealed primarily to black audiences could be lumped. In terms of popularity, rhythm ’n’ blues can be thought of as a postwar phenomenon, but one that can trace its beginnings to the war years. It blossomed in the late 1940s, a time of ferment and change for much American music. Designed for uptempo dancing and stressing a strong, punctuated beat impossible to miss, R & B often featured singers, both solo and in groups, sometimes called shouters, screamers, or criers, depending on the style they utilized. The lyrics, however, carried little importance. Wailing, honking saxophones, played fast, loud, and long, accompanied by a steady, thumping rhythm section, provided the basic ingredients, and the words to a tune often got lost amid the excitement generated by the band. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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Pianist Jay McShann (1916–2006), leader of a Kansas City-based orchestra noted for playing jump blues, began moving in the direction of what would eventually be called rhythm and blues in the late 1930s. His charts featured up-tempo numbers for dancing, and he enjoyed a minor hit with “Jumpin’ Blues” in 1942. No one, however, exemplified this evolving genre better than Louis Jordan (1908–1975). Nicknamed the King of the Jukebox for his many hits on jukeboxes in black neighborhoods, Jordan successfully produced records that also crossed racial lines and attracted white listeners. His band, which he called the Tympany Five, counted titles like “Ain’t Nobody Here but Us Chickens,” “Caldonia (What Makes Your Big Head So Hard?)” “Choo

TABLE 88.

Some Outstanding Performers in the Field of Rhythm ’n’ Blues, 1940–1950

Name and Dates

Specialty

1940’s Hits

Gene “Jug” Ammons (1925–1974) Earl Bostic (1913–1965)

Tenor sax Alto sax

Roy Brown (1925–1981) Ruth Brown (1928–2006) Arnett Cobb (1918–1989)

Singer Singer Tenor sax

Floyd Dixon (1929–2006)

Pianist, singer

Fats Domino (b. 1928) Wynonie Harris (1915–1969)

Piano, organ Singer

John Lee Hooker (1917–2001)

Guitar, vocals

“Bullmoose” Jackson (1919–1989) Illinois Jacquet (1922–2004)

Tenor sax, vocals Tenor sax

Big Jay McNeely (b. 1928)

Tenor sax

Jack McVea (1914–2000) Amos Milburn (1927–1980) Roy Milton (1907–1983) Wild Bill Moore (1918–1983)

Tenor sax Singer, pianist Leader, singer Tenor sax

Hal Singer (b. 1919) Big Joe Turner (1911–1985) [Turner often performed with pianist Pete Johnson (1904–1967)] Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson (1917– 1988) Aaron “T-Bone” Walker (1910– 1975) Jimmy Witherspoon (1920–1997)

Tenor sax Blues singer

“My Foolish Heart,” 1949 “Temptation” and “Flamingo,” late 1940s “Rockin’ at Midnight,” 1948 “So Long,” 1949 In the late 1940s, called the “wild man of the tenor sax” “Wine, Wine, Wine,” and “Too Much Jelly Roll,” both late 1940s “The Fat Man,” 1949 “Drinking Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee,” 1947; “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” 1948 “Boogie Chillen,” 1948; “Moanin’ Blues,” 1949 “I Love You, Yes I Do,” 1948 Noted for his extended solos on Lionel Hampton’s signature “Flying Home,” 1940s “Deacon’s Hop” and “Wild Wig,” both 1949 “Open the Door, Richard,” 1947 “Chicken Shack Boogie,” 1948 “RM Blues,” 1945 “We’re Gonna Rock, We’re Gonna Roll,” 1948 “Cornbread,” 1948 “Roll ’em, Pete” and “Chains of Love,” early 1940s

Alto sax, singer Guitar, vocals

“Kidney Stew Blues” and “Old Maid Boogie,” both 1947 “Stormy Monday Blues,” 1947

Blues singer

“Ain’t Nobody’s Business,” 1949


Rhythm ’n’ Blues | 593 Choo Ch’ Boogie,” and “Five Guys Named Moe” (all from the mid-1940s) among its crossover successes. Real commercial acclaim, however, eluded most bands attempting to emulate the rhythm ’n’ blues style during the early 1940s, but that did not stop musicians from forming groups and cutting records. Among the larger aggregations that made forays into the genre, those led by Tiny Bradshaw (1905–1958), Lionel Hampton (1908– 2002), Buddy Johnson (1915–1977), Lucky Millinder (1910–1966), and Todd Rhodes (1900–1965) became the best-known during these formative years. Countless small combos, too numerous to mention, also raised public consciousness about the music, and the individual soloists from these groups occasionally rose to considerable celebrity. The suggestive, often raunchy, lyrics found in many blues and rhythm ’n’ blues tunes prevented disc jockeys from playing particular records on the air. And without airplay, a considerable part of the R & B audience might never hear the songs. Despite the obstacles of limited radio exposure and a perceived white bias against race music, small, independent record companies sprang up to capture the sounds of rhythm ’n’ blues. Over 400 new labels came into being (but only a handful survived) during the 1945 to 1950 period; for little money, an entrepreneur could record an artist, press 500 or so copies of the performance, and sell them in black-owned record shops. That limited pressing might well be the only evidence that a specific label ever existed. In the meantime, the major record companies (RCA Victor, Columbia, Capitol, and others) looked the other way, releasing less than 10 percent of R & B titles during this time. Success rode on singles, not albums, and all singles until the late 1940s were released on 10-inch, 78-rpm records. Not until the widespread introduction of the 7-inch, 45-rpm single around 1949 did the situation change. The following list identifies a few of the leaders among the hundreds of independent labels that recorded rhythm ’n’ blues performers during the 1940s. Many of these companies also owned subsidiaries with still other names. Some lasted for most of the decade, others enjoyed only a brief moment of success; some merged with their competitors, and some simply disappeared from the marketplace. Collectively, the musicians and promoters of rhythm ’n’ blues launched a revolution, just as did the players then taking up the new sounds of bebop and other forms of modern jazz. With few exceptions, however, the major accomplishments of the individuals listed above would take place later in the 1950s, and not the 1940s. The decade, especially the years immediately following World War II, served as a time when the genre defined itself and set standards. The biggest names in commercial rhythm ’n’ blues, such as Chuck Berry (b. 1926), Lloyd Price (b. 1933), Little Richard (b. 1935), TABLE 89. A Sampling of Independent Record Labels Featuring Rhythm ’n’ Blues Acorn Aladdin Allegro Atlantic

Black & White Chess DeLuxe Excelsior

Imperial Jubilee Jukebox Records King


Modern Regent Savoy Swingtime

594

| Roller Derby

B. B. King (“Blues Boy,” b. 1925), and numerous others, did not come on the R & B scene until the early 1950s. But with its emphasis on a strong rhythmic format, or beat, and because of its appeal to young people, rhythm ’n’ blues paved the way for rock ’n’ roll, arguably the dominant musical form for the last half of the 20th century. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Race Relations and Stereotyping; Technology Selected Reading Ennis, Philip H. The Seventh Stream: The Emergence of Rocknroll in American Popular Music. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1992. Ewen, David. All the Years of American Popular Music: A Comprehensive History. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1977. Gillett, Charlie. The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983.

ROLLER DERBY A lively contact sport, Roller Derby first appeared in the United States in the 1920s. It consists of teams skating around a banked oval track (flat tracks can also be used) in a contest that combines elements of ice hockey, football, rugby, and a bicycle race. Its popularity grew after a 1935 event in Chicago conceived by Leo Seltzer (1903–1978) and billed as a Transcontinental Roller Derby. Seltzer, a successful entrepreneur and promoter of Depression-era dance marathons, saw a financial opportunity to replace this waning fad with something new. He recruited 25 skating teams to compete against one another as they attempted to be the first to complete a race on a track in the Chicago Coliseum. They skated around the course until they had covered a distance equal to that between New York and San Diego, approximately 3,000 miles. In this new sport, audiences witnessed for the first time women competing under the same rules of play as men. The Transcontinental winning team of Clarice Martin (active 1930s and 1940s) and Bernie McKay (active 1930s and 1940s) finished the distance on September 22 after skating for 493 hours and 12 minutes, or slightly more than 20 days. From his success in Chicago, Seltzer took Roller Derby on the road to five other cities, steadily gaining fans along the way and ending in New York. By 1939, radio stations aired Roller Derby contests. Team size increased from two to five members, with men and women playing on separate teams, alternating their play during a match. The sport continued to grow during the 1940s. Then, as today, a Roller Derby starts with the teams tightly bunched in what is called a jam. The objective is for one or two of the skaters to break away from the pack, catch, and hopefully pass the skaters of the other team within a timed period, while members of each team try to block any advances by the opposition. In 1940, sportswriter Damon Runyon (1880–1946), who had been covering the games, realized that the occasional massive collisions and crashes that occurred created the most excitement among the mostly working-class spectators. He urged Seltzer to modify the rules to maximize physical contact and exaggerate the hits and falls.


Roller Derby | 595

Physical contact, sometimes of a violent nature, drew large crowds to both women’s and men’s roller derby events. Here Gerry Murray (left), the captain of a Chicago team, and Midge Brashun, playing for Brooklyn, fight for the lead position in a 1947 match in Chicago. (Bettmann/ CORBIS)

Following Runyon’s advice, matches became known as bouts, and the play depended more on dramatic embellishments than athletic skill, resulting in a form of entertainment instead of a true sport. Because the rules allow a certain amount of roughhousing, skaters readily engage in pushing, shoving, and pulling hair (helmets would come years later); broken wrists and concussions became an expected aspect of a good Roller Derby. As predicted by Runyon, the followers of derbies went wild for the heightened violence of the sport, and 50 cities hosted contests for a combined total of more than 5 million spectators in 1940 alone. The growth of fan clubs accompanied this enthusiasm, some offering newsletters to their members. The Roller Derby News, renamed Roller Rage in the early 1940s, became popular for keeping fans informed about the exploits of their favorite teams. The entry of the United States into World War II, however, interrupted the sport’s ascent when many skaters enlisted in the armed forces and crowds dwindled. After the war’s end in 1945, interest in becoming a member of a Roller Derby team, as well as attending an event, resumed, and growth continued through the remaining


596

| Roller Derby

years of the decade. A number of communities on the East Coast organized local leagues and in 1949 the National Roller Derby League formed with six clubs: the New York Chiefs, Brooklyn Red Devils, New Jersey Jolters, Philadelphia Panthers, Washington-Baltimore Jets, and the Chicago Westerners. The league’s first-season, week-long playoffs at Madison Square Garden in New York City sold out. CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), encouraged by the increasing number of fans, decided to feature Roller Derby on its fledging television network. Contests would be easy to capture on camera, given the confined space of the track. Beginning on November 29, 1948, matches, primarily between the New York Chiefs and Brooklyn Red Devils, aired weekly. Although few people owned television sets at the time, the broadcasts could be seen in bars and storefront windows. At the conclusion of CBS’s 13-week run, the ABC (American Broadcasting Company) bought the rights and, in 1949, began a Roller Derby series that only ceased in 1951 because of scheduling disputes. After the debut of Roller Derby on television, stars such as Midge “Tuffy” Brashun, Elmer “Elbows” Anderson, and Gerry Murphy (all active 1940s and 1950s) became household names. By 1952, interested parties had formed the Roller Derby Hall of Fame in New York City and inducted its first members, Johnny Rosasco and Josephine “Ma” Bogash (both active 1940s and 1950s). Roller Derby, with all of its action, also received attention from Hollywood. Paramount Pictures produced a one-reel short subject, Roller Derby Girl in 1949. Nominated for an Academy Award, it lost to another Paramount production, Aquatic House Party, another short, about performing seals. Twentieth Century-Fox offered a fulllength feature The Fireball (1950) starring Mickey Rooney (b. 1920). It tells the story of a kid who runs away from an orphanage and becomes a Roller Derby star. Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962), in one of her first credited performances, appears as a friend of Rooney’s in a small role. During the later 1940s, Roller Derby briefly threatened to replace wrestling as television’s favorite sport, but as the action became more stylized, the novelty began to diminish. Early in the 1950s, attendance suffered a dramatic fall and television networks stopped broadcasting derbies. With declining interest and little likelihood of the sport continuing on the East Coast, Leo Seltzer moved from New York to Los Angeles. There he helped form two West Coast teams, the LA Braves and the San Francisco Bay Bombers. Bouts were held but with limited success, until the late 1950s, when Seltzer and his son, Jerry (b. 1932), syndicated Roller Derby to West Coast television stations. Interest waned again in the early 1960s with some revival occurring in the 1970s. See also: Fads; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk; Skating (Roller) Selected Reading Coppage, Keith. Roller Derby to Roller Jam. Santa Rosa, CA: Squarebooks, 1999. National Museum of Roller Skating. www.rollerskatingmuseum.com National Roller Derby Hall of Fame. www.rollerderbyhalloffame.com Roberts, Randy, and James Olson. Winning Is the Only Thing: Sports in America since 1945. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Roller Derby Events. New York Times, September 11, 1936; August 18, 1946; November 28, 1948. www.proquest.com


Roosevelt, Eleanor | 597

ROOSEVELT, ELEANOR At age 21, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962), best-known as Eleanor, married a distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945). At the time, she had recently returned to the United States from England, where she had completed her education at Allenswood, a school for girls. Once back home, she participated in charitable activities deemed appropriate for a young educated woman from a well-established and wealthy New York family. As a married woman, she moved from those community activities to family matters, raising five children; backing her husband’s political career as he won elections to the New York State Senate in 1910, New York governorship in 1928, and president of the United States in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944; and assisting him as he struggled with infantile paralysis (polio). By 1940, in addition to the care and support she offered to family and others while fulfilling the duties of first lady for seven years, Eleanor had become an accomplished person within her own right, earning respect for her myriad activities as a social activist for youth, women, blacks, and the downtrodden; humanitarian; newspaper and magazine columnist; prolific author; teacher; lecturer; and radio personality. Always mindful of world affairs and the hostilities and oppression growing in Europe, Roosevelt used her pen to voice opposition to the injustices occurring in other countries. For example, Christmas: A Story, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1940 and first written for Liberty Magazine, tells of a family living in Nazi-occupied Holland gaining strength from their faith and the meaning of Christmas. At this time, in addition to her writing, Roosevelt joined other Americans, such as authors John Dos Passos (1896–1970) and Upton Sinclair (1878–1968), in the newly formed Emergency Rescue Committee and attempted to assist European refugees with relocation. She also worked with the U.S. Committee for the Care of European Children founded by Quaker Clarence Pickett (1884–1965) in 1940. This group focused on removing British children from cities heavily bombed by the Germans and assisting German Jewish refugee children. Both groups were hampered in their work to bring children to the United States because of quota restrictions contained in the Immigration Act of 1924. Nevertheless, throughout World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt worked tirelessly on refugee issues. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a woman of principle, revealed in her writings convictions on issues that she deemed pertinent to a democracy and United Nations delegate and chair of the UN a way of life for its citizens. In The Human Rights Commission, former first lady Moral Basis of Democracy (1940), re- Eleanor Roosevelt poses for a picture outside leased by Howell, Soskin Publishers, UN headquarters in New York City. (Photofest)


598

| Roosevelt, Eleanor

she elaborates on her long-held belief that civil rights serve as the litmus test of a democracy. Just one year earlier, she had acted on this opinion when she withdrew her membership from the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) and arranged for Marian Anderson (1897–1993), an accomplished black contralto, to give an openair concert at the Lincoln Memorial. This followed a refusal by the DAR to allow Anderson to perform at its Constitution Hall in Washington, DC. During the World War II years, life on the home front occupied much of Roosevelt’s time. She played an important role in the establishment of the Fair Employment Practices Committee established by Executive Order 8802 on June 25, 1941. It outlawed racial discrimination in industries that received defense contracts, urged equal treatment for blacks in the military, and serves as only one example of many presidential decisions strongly influenced by the first lady. She was particularly ardent about the continued implementation of New Deal polices and programs, a position that she maintained and argued for throughout the conflict. Just a few hours after the early morning attack by Japanese aircraft on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Eleanor Roosevelt went ahead with her scheduled weekly radio broadcast. She took the opportunity to acknowledge the fear and concern sweeping the nation, urged calmness and determination in carrying out the ordinary business of the day, and asked for support in the war effort. On the West Coast, high anxiety prevailed, with hysterical fear directed toward Japanese Americans living in the region. The federal government responded by establishing 10 relocation centers to house people of Japanese ancestry. Always acknowledging what was happening and how it affected those at home, Eleanor wrote “A Challenge to American Sportsmanship,” which appeared in Collier’s magazine on October 16, 1943. The piece supports the federal government’s decision to establish internment camps, but also urges everyone to view “our Japanese problem objectively” and to remember that “we cannot progress if we look down upon any group of people among us because of race or religion.” She had first iterated this position in 1942, when she wrote an article titled “What Are We Fighting For?” for American Magazine, in which she stated that the war was about fighting for freedom, which had to include freedom from racial discrimination. Whenever Roosevelt had the opportunity, she urged citizens to volunteer in the war effort in any way they could. She briefly served as deputy director of the Office of Civilian Defense (OCD). Upon accepting the job, she immediately became the scapegoat for those critical of her and her husband’s administration. Both Republicans and Southern Democrats accused her of using the $100 million (approximately $1.3 billion in 2008 dollars) appropriated for the OCD to place “unfortunate idle rich people” in civilian defense jobs. She resigned, realizing that she could be more effective in an unofficial capacity. In her daily column “My Day,” which ran in many newspapers, and in her speeches and radio broadcasts, she supported the war loan drives, scrap drives, victory gardens, and USO (United Service Organizations) activities and canteens, always mindful of voicing encouragement and boosting American morale. She offered encouragement to all those fighting in the war, answered letters received from soldiers, and traveled to military bases in England, the South Pacific, and New Zealand.


Roosevelt, Eleanor | 599 Eleanor Roosevelt stressed the necessity of women going to work to fill in the job gaps created by the large numbers of men enlisting or being drafted. Despite laborpool needs and Roosevelt’s support of women working, many Americans voiced opposition because they clung to the belief that mothers belonged at home. To address the issue of children being left at home unsupervised, or sleeping in cars parked in the defense plant parking lot, the first lady advocated the establishment of day care centers and takeout kitchens at war defense industries. Under Community Facilities Grants legislation passed by Congress in 1942, President Roosevelt, at his wife’s urging, approved the construction of four government-sponsored child care centers. Dedicated to this cause, Mrs. Roosevelt immediately embarked upon a campaign to get private industry to follow the federal government’s example. She met with Edgar F. Kaiser (1908–1981), chairman of the Kaiser Company. In 1939, Kaiser had established a shipbuilding company with seven yards on the West Coast, four in Richmond, California, and three on the Columbia River in the vicinity of Vancouver, Washington, and Swan Island, near Portland, Oregon. High production from these plants was essential to the outcome of the war, and, thanks to Roosevelt’s efforts and Edgar Kaiser’s commitment, the Kaiser Company built state-of-the-art 24-hour day care centers—two in Portland and two in Richmond. As a bonus, Kaiser employees could also pick up a fully cooked meal from a takeout kitchen to have with their family that evening. Descriptions and reports of the Kaiser day care facilities and programs indicate they provided exemplary child care and early childhood education. Estimates indicate that, thanks to Eleanor Roosevelt, the Kaiser and government centers served up to 1.6 million children during the war. The two centers in Richmond, operated by he Richmond School District, continue to function as child care facilities in the 21st century. Roosevelt’s speeches, writing, and radio appearances did not stop with the end of the war. She continued with her syndicated column, “My Day.” Running six days a week since 1935, it appeared in newspapers across the country until shortly before her death in 1962. If You Ask Me, a monthly question-and-answer column, appeared in the Ladies Home Journal, June 1941 to May 1949, and then moved to McCall’s, where it remained until 1962. Appleton-Century published an anthology of her “My Day” columns in 1946 in a book under the same title. A regular on radio since shortly after her husband’s 1933 inauguration, she continued to be heard until 1951. She teamed with her daughter Anna Roosevelt Boettiger (1906–1975) for a show called Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt. A popular program, it aired three times a week from November 1948 through September 1949 on ABC (American Broadcasting Company) radio. Even with all of the preceding in place, following the death of Franklin in April 1945 Eleanor faced the question of “What now?” She quickly moved from the White House to her apartment in New York City, and over the remaining years of her life resided there and at Springwood, the family estate in Hyde Park, New York. She lent her name to Democratic Party fundraisers, hosted events commemorating Franklin Roosevelt’s major accomplishments, and campaigned for local, state, and national political candidates. By 1949, she had completed the writing of This I Remember, the story of her 12 years in the White House published by Harper, and her second autobiography. The first, The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt came out in 1937 and covered her life up to 1924.


600

| Roosevelt, President Franklin Delano

President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) appointed her as a delegate to the United Nations, providing her the means for finding a new, postwar public role. As such, she made major contributions to the human rights of individuals around the globe. She became head of the UN Human Rights Commission in 1946, a position she held for seven years. Roosevelt also oversaw the drafting and unanimous passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an accomplishment that further embellished her international reputation. Eleanor Roosevelt’s final presidential appointment came in 1961, when President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) appointed her as chair of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women. She accepted the job with strong credentials: her work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, her lifetime defense of a woman’s right to both economic opportunity and fulfilling the traditional role in the family, and her continuous efforts to respect and work for the betterment of all people. Anna Eleanor Roosevelt—first lady of the United States, first lady of the world, diplomat, and humanitarian—held this position until her death in 1962 at the age of 78. See also: Magazines; Radio Programming: News, Sport, Public affairs, and Talk; Race Relations and Stereotyping; Rosie the Riveter; War Bonds Selected Reading Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project. www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/ Goodwin, Doris Kearns. No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Lash, Joseph P. Eleanor: The Years Alone. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972. ———. Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship, Based on Eleanor Roosevelt’s Private Papers. New York: W. W. Norton, 1971.

ROOSEVELT, PRESIDENT FRANKLIN DELANO The 1940 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945), frequently referred to as FDR, to his third consecutive term as president of the United States brought to an end an unwritten two-term presidential tradition. At the Democratic Party’s 1939 convention, Roosevelt easily won the nomination against Henry A. Wallace (1888–1965) by 946 to 147 votes. He then chose Wallace as his running mate and went on to defeat Republican Wendell Willkie (1892–1944), winning 38 of the 48 states and gaining 54.8 percent of the popular vote. Roosevelt again won the party’s nomination in 1944 and captured a fourth term as president, with 53.5 percent of the vote while carrying 36 states. The surprise in the 1944 election involved the selection of Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) as Roosevelt’s choice for vice president; at the urging of the party, he dropped Wallace after one term because many politicians saw Wallace as too liberal. Franklin Roosevelt came to his first presidential term in 1933 well prepared. After studying as a child under the guidance of his parents and private tutors, he enrolled at age 14 in Groton School, a prestigious boarding school in Groton, Massachusetts. From there he matriculated to Harvard University, receiving a BA degree in history in 1903. Two years later, he married a distant cousin, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1884– 1962); the couple had six children, five of whom lived beyond infancy.


Roosevelt, President Franklin Delano | 601 Roosevelt next pursued law at Columbia University but never graduated. He nonetheless passed the New York bar examination in 1907 and briefly practiced before entering politics in 1910, when he won a seat in the New York State Senate; he achieved reelection two years later. President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) appointed him to be assistant secretary of the navy, a position he held from 1913 to 1920. Before assuming these positions Franklin had early on pursued various hobbies that he continued throughout his life. He exhibited a strong interest in stamp collecting, perhaps influenced initially by his mother’s ongoing collection. After becoming president, Roosevelt asked cabinet members traveling abroad to save him interesting Meeting at Yalta in the Soviet Crimea on Februforeign stamps. He also had Postmaster rary 9, 1945, (from the left) Winston Churchill, General James A. Farley (1888–1976) Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin take a send the first sheets of new issues to break from their talks that dealt with a defeated Germany and other postwar issues. (Photofest) him, always paying for them. He even designed some stamps, encouraged various commemoratives, and frequently received gifts of stamps or exchanged them with fellow philatelists. From a very young age, he also developed a passion for boats and sailing and learned how to make working toy models. He became a skilled sailor and over his lifetime collected thousands of books, manuscripts, pamphlets, and articles on U.S. naval history. As president, whenever he could and despite his paralysis, Roosevelt enjoyed short excursions aboard the presidential yacht Sequoia or on his sailing yacht Amberjack II. His hobbies provided another way for him to connect with a significant number of his fellow citizens. Stricken with infantile paralysis (polio) in the summer of 1921, Roosevelt became paralyzed from the waist down. For the rest of his life, in an attempt to overcome the disease, he spent as much time as he could in Warm Springs, Georgia, swimming. Although the waters did not provide a cure, the activity strengthened his upper body, enabling him to walk with some form of assistance, such as a cane or the arm of a companion. During this time, he maintained a political presence with the skillful help of both his wife and his political adviser, Louis Howe (1871–1936). He concealed his physical limitations as best he could and in 1928 moved into the New York governor’s mansion in Albany. Reelected to that position in 1930, he also began to campaign for the presidency and the 1932 election. Following his inauguration in 1933, FDR, determined to pull the country out of an unprecedented economic depression, during his first 100 days called a special session


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of Congress. He introduced and oversaw a flurry of New Deal legislation, including a massive program headed by the Works Projects Administration (WPA; 1933–1943), which provided jobs for laborers, artists, writers, musicians, and authors. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC; 1933–1942) employed thousands of young men, and the Social Security Act, passed in 1935, created federal unemployment compensation and old-age and survivors’ benefits. In carrying out his many duties, Roosevelt strongly believed in the importance of direct communication with the American public and capitalized on the use of radio and film. On March 12, 1933, he initiated his “Fireside Chats,” a series of evening radio broadcasts made from either the White House or his home at Hyde Park, with each devoted to a single issue. Thousands of letters arrived at the White House following a chat; Roosevelt’s staff saw to it that cameras recorded his radio broadcasts and excerpts then appeared at theaters in the newsreel segment seen between two Hollywood features. The announcement of the showing of one at a movie house guaranteed an increase in the number of patrons seeking admission. He presented a total of 30 such chats, 16 during the 1940s, with the first on National Defense (May 26, 1940) and the last focusing on the Fifth War Loan Drive (June 12, 1944). By 1939, Roosevelt’s presidential attention had increasingly moved away from issues at home to foreign affairs, and his one and only Fireside Chat that year dealt with the European War. Soon fierce debate over aid to England consumed the conversations of many across the country. Antiwar activists, convinced that assistance to Britain would draw the United States into the war, grew in numbers. In the Fireside Chats of the 1940s, Roosevelt dealt with various aspects of the war effort, mentioning freedom of the seas, war loan drives, wartime conferences, the home front, and plans for peace. These topics outnumbered discussions of other pressing issues at the time, such as economic policies and inflation. On December 29, 1940, Roosevelt delivered a chat that has become known as his “arsenal for democracy” speech. In his comments, he stressed national security and the common cause, all in an attempt to undercut his opponents and set a tone for the introduction of legislation called the Lend-Lease Bill. In his closing lines, Roosevelt proclaims that “not the American government, but the American people have the power to turn the tide of the European war” and that “we must be the great arsenal of democracy.” One week later, on January 6, 1941, in his annual State of the Union message, Roosevelt continued with the theme of America’s role in the world conflict and of the fundamental purposes of American democracy. This resulted in another famous speech, called the “Four Freedoms,” in which Roosevelt articulated the basic principles of the U.S. political system: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. In the early months of 1943, four issues of the popular Saturday Evening Post magazine carried illustrator Norman Rockwell’s (1894–1978) rendering of Roosevelt’s four freedoms. In April, officials sent the paintings on a nationwide tour as a part of a war bond drive and Rockwell’s works became the subject of a popular series of posters. On March 11, 1941, soon after the Four Freedoms speech, Congress signed into law legislation that the Roosevelt administration called the Lend-Lease Act. In order to assist other countries militarily, the bill allowed Roosevelt to “sell, transfer title to,


Roosevelt, President Franklin Delano | 603 exchange, lease, lend or otherwise dispose of articles to any country he decided was vital to U.S. security.” An early component of this bill, a “destroyers-for-bases” deal between Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874–1965), drew mixed reaction from Congress and the American public. In the long run, Roosevelt received praised for his skill in obtaining permission from the British to build seven airfields and six bases on their soil in exchange for 50 aging U.S. destroyers. By the time the war ended, the Lend-Lease program had assisted some 38 countries, with Great Britain receiving the largest share. The total figure given for this aid ranges from $13.5 to $20 billion (approximately $178 billion to $264 billion in 2008 dollars). As the war intensified in Europe, Roosevelt and Churchill decided to meet. Through arrangements made by Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins (1890–1946), a frequent and close presidential advisor, the two leaders met aboard British and U.S. naval vessels anchored in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, Canada, on August 9–12, 1941. From their discussions, a statement of agreement called the Atlantic Charter outlined the two country’s war aims. The document became the basis for a Declaration of the United Nations signed on January 1, 1942, by China, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at a conference held in Washington, DC. Eventually 22 other nations would add their endorsement. The original signers of the declaration agreed to stand as united nations in fighting the Axis powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan—making the document the first to officially use the term “United Nations.” Shortly after Roosevelt’s meeting with Churchill, Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Japanese aircraft sank eight battleships, three light cruisers, three destroyers, and four auxiliary craft; 2,403 service people died, with 1,178 left wounded. The next day, at 12:30 p.m., Roosevelt delivered his “Day of Infamy” speech, the title coming from his declaration that December 7 will be remembered as “a date which will live in infamy.” Within an hour, Congress passed a formal declaration of war against Japan. Four days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, giving President Roosevelt, as commander-in-chief of all U.S. armed forces, a war to fight on two fronts—the Pacific and European theaters. World War II would dominate the remaining years of FDR’s presidency. Three wartime conferences played a large part in the course that World War II followed and provided some firsts for a U.S. president. Roosevelt’s attendance at a meeting held in Casablanca, Morocco, January 14–24, 1943, made him the first U.S. president to travel to Africa and the first to leave the country during a time of war. Churchill also attended; Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) declined. By January 24, agreement had been reached that unconditional surrender would be demanded of Germany, Italy, and Japan and that a massive cross-channel invasion of Europe would be undertaken. Stalin joined Roosevelt and Churchill for a second conference held at the Soviet embassy in Tehran, Iran, from November 28 to December 1, 1943. Here the Big Three decided to proceed with the invasion of Europe, tentatively set for May 1944. The leaders met for a final wartime conference at the Black Sea resort of Yalta in the Soviet Crimea on February 4–12, 1945. Their focus involved postwar issues: how to treat a defeated Germany, the future of Poland, Eastern Europe, Japanese-occupied East Asia, and the structure of a new United Nations organization.


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In addition to building an alliance against the Axis powers and providing leadership in wartime conferences, FDR took an active role in choosing the principal field commanders for World War II. They included General George Catlett Marshall (1880–1959), General Dwight David Eisenhower (1890–1969), and General Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964), as well as several other outstanding officers. Successful campaigns in North Africa in November 1942 and in Sicily and Italy in 1943 eventually led to the D-Day landings on Normandy beaches in France on June 6, 1944. By April 1945, victory in Europe appeared certain. While World War II raged, FDR continued to keep U.S. citizens informed about ongoing events. In addition to his effective use of radio and newsreels, he carefully worked with the Washington news media. He averaged two press conferences per week during his four-term presidency, for a total of 997 meetings. At these gatherings, he usually conveyed an attitude of informality, calling the reporters by their first names and frequently engaging in humorous exchanges. He almost always managed to offer some dramatic news that warranted front-page coverage. Because of FDR’s pleasant routine, the press tended to present his policies in a favorable light, and photographers never showed him in an awkward position. Despite, and because of, World War II, Franklin Roosevelt made some significant civil rights decisions, many suggested by Eleanor. Throughout his administration, he appointed a number of black men and women to administrative positions. Known as the Black Cabinet, these individuals primarily assisted as advisors from New Deal agencies. Perhaps the most famous, educator Mary McLeod Bethune (1875–1955), served as director of the National Youth Administration’s Division of Negro Affairs (1935–1943). Beginning in 1941, Roosevelt issued a series of executive orders designed to guarantee racial, religious, and ethnic groups equal opportunity when securing defense jobs and serving in the military. By the end of the war, the number of black workers in manufacturing and government jobs had increased significantly. For example, the number of black individuals serving as federal employees more than doubled from 8.4 percent in 1938 to 19 percent in 1944. Roosevelt advocated the admission of blacks into better positions in the military. Between 1940 and 1945, blacks in the armed forces increased from 5,000 to 920,000, and black officers grew from 5 to over 7,000. Previously, almost every black soldier received a lowly assignment to a service unit, such as food services. By 1945, they held more responsible jobs, receiving placement with artillery, tank, and infantry commands; a selected few served as pilots. On the other hand, in Executive Order 9066, Roosevelt made the final decision on the military’s authority to declare areas from which any or all persons, regardless of their citizenship, could be excluded. This resulted in the imprisonment of between 110,000 and 120,000 Japanese American citizens in 10 bleak internment camps; many remained there until after the war. Also the government confined some 5,000 Germans and Italians, both citizens and aliens, to camps at Fort Lincoln near Bismarck, North Dakota, and Fort Missoula, Montana. A president that serves for 12 years has many opportunities to make significant appointments. Roosevelt, by naming Frances C. Perkins (1882–1962) as secretary of labor, 1933 to 1945, gave the country its first woman cabinet member. She, along


Rosie the Riveter | 605 with Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes (1874–1952), have the honor of being the only two who retained their cabinet chairs for the entire time Roosevelt served as president. Cordell Hull (1871–1956) held the record as the longest-serving secretary of state, carrying out the responsibilities of the office for 11 years, 1933 to 1944. Henry Wallace, who had served as vice president during FDR’s third term, held the positions of secretary of agriculture from 1933 to 1940 and secretary of commerce in 1945. President Roosevelt appointed eight Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States, five during the 1940s. Only George Washington (ca. 1732–1799), who named 10, exceeded him in the number of court appointments. In 1941, FDR promoted Harlan Fiske Stone (1872–1946) from Associate Justice to Chief Justice. He would remain in that position until 1946. Throughout his life, FDR dealt with a variety of personal health issues, including routine childhood diseases, typhoid fever, pneumonia, influenza, surgery for appendicitis, and a tonsillectomy. Despite these ailments and the physical disability caused by polio, medical records indicate that he had great vitality and remained reasonably healthy and active up to 1943. Pictures and records indicate that following the Tehran Conference in November of that year, his condition rapidly declined. In early 1944, his doctor made a diagnosis of hypertension, heart disease, cardiac distress, and acute bronchitis. He did not shirk his duties. Despite the regimen of a low-fat diet, weight reduction, and medication, Franklin Delano Roosevelt died at Warm Springs from a massive cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945, just one month before V-E Day. A funeral train brought his body back to Washington, DC. After the official ceremonies, another train carried him to Hyde Park for interment. Thousands of citizens lined the tracks as his cortege passed. See also: Aviation; Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose; Blackouts, Brownouts, and Dim-Outs; Photography; Political and Propaganda Films; Race Relations and Stereotyping; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk; Religion; Rosie the Riveter; Scrap Drives; Toys; V-E and V-J Day; Victory Gardens; War Bonds; War Films Selected Reading Beschloss, Michael. The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941–1945. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Gies, Joseph. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Portrait of a President. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971. Goodwin, Doris Kearns. No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Graham, Otis L., and Meghan Robinson Wander, eds. Franklin D. Roosevelt, His Life and Times: An Encyclopedic View. New York: G. K. Hall, 1985.

ROSIE THE RIVETER This iconic name, representative of the millions of working women in wartime America, did not take hold until late in 1942. Prior to that, calls to women to join the growing workforce did not employ Rosie or any other name; many pleas were made—“Take His Place,” “Get a War Job!” “Do the Job HE Left Behind,” “It’s a Woman’s War, Too!”—but they did not yet have Rosie as a symbol.


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Illustrator J. Howard Miller (ca. 1915–1990) received a commission earlier in 1942 from the Westinghouse War Production Co-Ordinating Committee to create a morale-boosting poster for its various defense plants that employed growing numbers of women. His painting, “We Can Do It!” depicts a determined-looking, bandanna-topped worker beneath those words, raising her right arm and flexing her bicep, and it quickly attracted a wide circle of admirers. The artist used a woman named Geraldine Hoff Doyle (b. 1924) as his model, but he based his painting on a wire photo he saw of her working at a Michigan factory. Not until much later did Doyle discover that she had beWhen wartime manpower shortages depleted come one of the most enduring images available factory workers, American women to emerge from World War II. Famous flocked to newly available jobs once reserved for men. Here women operate tools on an as- as Miller’s poster was, it did not purport sembly line. With the end of the war in 1945, to be Rosie, although over time many most such jobs reverted to men, and women people have assumed his painting deagain had to seek employment in more tradi- picts her. tional settings. (Photofest) Rosie first received widespread mention in a popular song written toward the end of 1942. “Rosie the Riveter,” with words and music by Redd Evans (1912–1972) and John Jacob Loeb (1910–1970), joined a rush of war-oriented music then filling the airwaves. Originally introduced by a vocal group called the Four Vagabonds, along with recordings by popular bands like the one led by Kay Kyser (1906–1985), it did not make the music charts as a big hit but clearly had an impact on public perceptions about women moving into the workforce. Apparently inspired by a woman named Rosalind Walter (active 1940s) who worked on airplanes at the Grumman Aircraft Corporation’s Long Island plant, Evans’s and Loeb’s lyrics portray Rosie “rain or shine . . . a part of the assembly line,” a faithful, hard-working employee, the equal of any man. Other sources, however, credit Rosina Bonavita (active 1940s), an employee at the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft (Convair) factory in San Diego, as the person responsible for the genesis of the song, although her work as a riveter came after the publication of the music’s lyrics. East Coast or West Coast, the image of Rosie nonetheless took hold as an admirable home-front notable. With the fictitious Rosie assuming a place in the nation’s consciousness, Hollywood in 1943 released a short (three-minute) musical film that bore the title Rosie the Riveter. As would be the case of anything so brief—called in those days a “soundie”—it elicited little attention. That same year, however, Universal Pictures released Follow the Band, a feature-length film that utilizes the talents of numerous musicians but


Rosie the Riveter | 607 skimps on plot. Nonetheless, its soundtrack includes “Rosie the Riveter” as performed by guitarist Alvino Rey (1908–2004) and His Orchestra. This exposure helped further popularize both the song and the idea of women working in nontraditional jobs. One year later, in 1944, another feature called Rosie the Riveter played theaters around the country. This Republic offering stars Jane Frazee (1918–1985) as a hardworking individual trying to hold down a defense job and deal with wartime housing shortages. Its musical score, despite the title, fails to include Evans’s and Loeb’s bynow famous tune, but instead has two innocuous pieces, “I Don’t Want Anybody at All” and “Why Can’t I Sing a Love Song?” But by this time, Rosie had become as famous as many real-life military heroes. Norman Rockwell (1894–1978), at the time far and away the best-known and most popular illustrator in the country, added to Rosie’s renown when he painted a humorous portrait of her in full working garb. His efforts graced the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943. He took as his inspiration not anyone from a factory, but instead looked back to the Renaissance and Michelangelo’s famous 16th-century Sistine Chapel ceiling. One of the artist’s creations shows the prophet Isaiah, and Rockwell borrowed this pose to depict his version of Rosie. He did, however, use a local Vermont woman, Mary Doyle Keefe (b. 1928) as his model. But the end result hardly resembled the petite neighbor he had hired for five dollars a day to pose (about $60 in 2008 dollars). Rockwell’s Rosie—and he clearly identifies her as Rosie the Riveter, the name emblazoned on her lunch pail, riveting gun across her ample lap—has a classical monumentality, with massive arms and torso, yet she also projects a certain femininity with dainty curls in her red hair, painted nails and lipstick, and a lace hanky tucked in her coveralls as she delicately eats her ham sandwich. He also gives her a halo above her pushed-up visor and goggles, and her penny loafers disdainfully rest upon a ragged copy of Mein Kampf. Some time thereafter, Rockwell wrote Mary Doyle Keefe and apologized for making her several sizes larger, although she had never expressed any irritation about his artistic license. Finally, a genuine Rosie emerged, thanks to the efforts of movie actor Walter Pidgeon (1897–1984). In 1943, he had been asked by the government to locate sites for promotional films encouraging the sale of war bonds. His task took him to Ypsilanti, Michigan, and the huge Ford aircraft plant located at Willow Run. In the course of his inquiries, he met Rose Will Monroe (1920–1997), busy at work riveting. Pidgeon quickly realized that Monroe put a real face on Rosie, and she subsequently appeared in several government-produced short films. For the remainder of the war, many and varied images of Rosie the Riveter, both actual and imagined, could be found in factories, post offices, magazines, and anywhere else that people, especially women, might notice her. Her message—that even demanding defense work served as an entirely appropriate venue for women in times of national need—did not go unheeded. In 1940, about 12 million women held jobs of various kinds; by 1945 and the end of the war, over 18 million women worked, a number that represented over one-third of the total labor force. In defense-related sites, the places Rosies might likely be found, the increase grew by over 400 percent. With peace, many industries urged their women employees to leave in order to create job slots for returning veterans. Many, but by no means all, followed this advice. In


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1947, two years after the end of hostilities, almost 16 million women continued working, marking a significant and permanent change in the composition in the ranks of U.S. labor. Most of the stereotypes about helpless housewives, incompetent workers, lack of innate skills, inability to do heavy work, and all the rest came to an end during World War II and the influx of women into the ranks of factory workers. No small thanks for this change must go to the popular images of Rosie the Riveter. See also: Art (Painting); Fashion; Illustrators; Musicals (Film); Radio; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows Selected Reading Colman, Penny. Rosie the Riveter: Women Working on the Home Front in World War II. New York: Crown Publishers, 1995. Honey, Maureen. Creating Rosie the Riveter: Class, Gender, and Propaganda during World War II. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984. Rosie the Riveter (2 parts). www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo5KOCMDe68; www.youtube.com/watch? v=flWvxW4HgwQ


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SCRAP DRIVES The United States Office of Civilian Defense (OCD), created in May 1941, encouraged the American people to participate in a wide-ranging recycling program to benefit defense efforts. On the home front, citizens frequently participated in this program through scrap drives. With the country’s active entry into World War II on December 7 of that year, the drives intensified. Among the most-needed items were rubber, all types of metal, kitchen grease, paper (books, newspapers and magazines), rags, and silk hosiery. Various industries then turned the collected commodities into weapons and other war-related products. In addition to providing essential materials, scrap drives gave ordinary people a way to feel involved, viewing their participation as a patriotic duty by contributing their time and their goods. Most communities engaged in extensive publicity campaigns to identify items that could be donated and to stimulate involvement. Newspapers ran articles and cartoons; the government provided radio commercials, posters, and advertisements; movie theater owners cooperated by holding matinees with admission consisting of a certain amount of copper or other metal instead of money. The War Production Board (WPB) identified school yards as collection sites, which easily allowed children to become part of the program. The WPB also provided curriculum suggestions such as writing essays or working out conversion figures to determine how many tin cans it would take to supply the tin needed for producing certain items. Scholastic Magazine, a periodical distributed to most schools then, offered articles that gave information on how to search attics and garages for salvage, described the mechanics of organizing scrap drives, and encouraged children to write letters to their parents and neighbors about the importance of this effort. The magazine also told of a government pamphlet containing a play script titled “War Against Waste Day” that could be performed by children. 609


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Organized school and neighborhood clubs offered another way for children and young people to be involved in scrap drives and other patriotic efforts. In many cases, fictional heroes from the comic strips offered inspiration for these groups. For example, in the comic strip Little Orphan Annie, Annie became commander-in-chief of the Junior Commandos, a scrap-collecting organization for children that provided official cards, giveaways, posters, and songs. Advancement in rank from private to eventually captain came with how much tin and fat a member collected. Other media promoted children’s participation, such as Jack and Jill magazine, which published a six-part story called “The Scrapper’s Club” that told of a group of young people that found and alerted authorities In May 1941, months before the Japanese atabout an abandoned trolley perfect for tack on Pearl Harbor, the federal government recycling and serving as an example of implemented scrap drives to collect materials that could be recycled into manufacturing what others could do. military equipment for defense efforts. A vaOf all the materials needed, rubber riety of posters explained this effort; this one had appeared on the list before the war shows how tin cans can be turned into ammucommenced. Supplies from the Dutch nition for a soldier’s machine gun. (Library of East Indies became scarce and could no Congress) longer be delivered to the United States when Japanese forces controlled that area. Catchy mottos such as “Save Rubber to Help Slap the Jap” were employed to increase collection participation. Discarded automobile tires, along with old rubber heels and soles from shoes, galoshes, and boots; rubber bands; car trunk and floor mats; and scrap rubber from manufacturing plants could easily push a community’s rubber collection to millions of pounds. Steps that shifted rubber from the consumer market to the manufacturing world included a freeze on the sale of tires for the general public, a ban on recapping, and the requirement of a rationing certificate to purchase shoes and, in special cases, new tires. Recycled rubber, however, proved to be of inferior quality to the naturally occurring variety, and the eventual development and production of a synthetic did more than salvaging to help the United States win World War II. In terms of metal, tin cans appeared high on the list of precious items because it could be used on aircraft instrument panels, bearings, and for solder in electrical equipment. Not harmed by salt water, tin became the ideal container lining for shipping food overseas to military personnel. This metal became so valuable that the WPB on October 19, 1942, issued a mandatory order for any city with a population of 25,000 or more to collect cans. Other scrap metal came from a variety of sources—slot


Scrap Drives | 611 machines, hammers, knives, keys, razors, daggers, revolvers, iron doors and fences, toys, ornamental metal on monuments, cannons, toothpaste tubes, and refrigerator cabinets. Many people, particularly children, peeled the tinfoil from gum and cigarette wrappers, creating a tinfoil ball large enough to be accepted at the collection site. Even the U.S. monetary system changed because of scrap drives. Copper went to war in 1943, when the Department of the Treasury began issuing steel pennies in lieu of the more familiar variety. Prior to World War II, glycerin, like rubber, a critical material needed for the manufacture of gunpowder, came primarily from Pacific areas under Japanese control. Imported fats and oils also appeared on scarcity lists. Thus, the WPB urged homemakers to lead an effort to collect cooking grease to manufacture explosives. Three pounds of fat could provide enough glycerin to make a pound of gunpowder. In many communities, Boy and Girl Scouts and Camp Fire Girls helped the “fat campaign” by going house to house to collect their neighbors’ saved grease. By 1943, increased demand by the armed forces created a paper shortage. War activities requiring paper included packaging for shells, blueprint paper for drawing plans for new weapons, and paper milk bottles shipped to army camps. Magazines and books used an inferior quality paper, but collection centers nonetheless accepted them. Even women’s fashions became a part of the war story. Silk stockings had become a scarce item before the war started because of escalating prices set by Japan in the late 1930s. The DuPont Chemical Company answered this crisis in 1938 with the invention of nylon fiber, which provided an alternative for silk in hosiery and other products. Along with their leftover cooking grease, women were asked to turn in their silk stockings in order to make powder bags in naval and artillery guns and their nylon hosiery for the manufacture of parachutes and tow ropes for gliders. During the war, without stockings for proper dress, some women resorted to applying makeup to their legs and then taking a pen and drawing a seam line down the back of the calf so it appeared as if they were wearing them. Scrap drives highlighted the value of recycling waste materials and reducing the consumption of war-related resources. The effort gained popularity, and numerous national drives occurred between 1941 and 1943. Many large companies such as Sears, Roebuck supported these efforts. With success, local drives proceeded on their own during 1944 and 1945. Towns and cities across the country developed a strong community spirit, sometimes with fierce competition among groups to collect the largest amount of products vital to the U.S. war effort. Historians debate just how much scrap drives contributed to winning the war; some believe that their importance has been exaggerated in the public memory. Either way, however, scrap drives did not slow the American embrace of product obsolescence, causing the continuous buying and consumption of new products as opposed to recycling and reusing. See also: Advertising; Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry; Fashion; Technology; Youth Selected Reading Lingeman, Richard. Don’t You Know There’s a War On? The American Home Front, 1941–1945. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1970.


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| Sculpture Strasser, Susan. Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash. New York: Macmillan, 2000. Winkler, Allan M. Home Front U.S.A.: America during World War II. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1986.

SCULPTURE In the United States, sculpture can be found in various forms and settings. Prior to 1940, it consisted primarily of decorative art objects made from marble or precious metals that resided in museums and the homes of the wealthy; folk art, such as weathervanes and wooden figureheads constructed for ships; busts and statutes formed from stone or clay that adorned public structures and large estates; decorative fountains; and sculpted copper and bronze on buildings. For the average American, sculpture meant traditional, realistic statues seen outside courthouses, in parks, and on the grounds of large homes. The Work Projects Administration (WPA; 1935–1943), a New Deal program, provided jobs for a large number of artisans who produced countless numbers of paintings, murals, and sculptures. Displayed in public places across the United States, this undertaking exposed increasing numbers to fine art. In Washington, DC, alone, approximately 300 pieces of representational sculpture came to stand before many of the capital’s buildings or on their grounds. Two well-known sculptors during this time were James Earle Fraser (1876–1953) and Paul Manship (1885–1966). Fraser, remembered for his earlier works that included the Indian Head, or Buffalo, nickel (1913) and a seated horseman, End of the Trail (1915), had become a prolific creator of large-scale public monuments. For the 1939– 1940 New York World’s Fair, he made a 60-foot-tall plaster statue of George Washington (1732–1799), one of 160 pieces of sculpture displayed throughout the fair grounds. Washington anchored the central intersection of the main walkway, Constitution Mall, and faced the Trylon, a needlelike pyramid, and the Perisphere, a hollow sphere, designed by the New York architectural firm of Harrison and Fouilhoux (Wallace Harrison and Jacques-Andre Fouilhoux, 1895–1981 and 1879–1945, respectively). The Trylon and Persiphere, the symbols of the fair, accounted for two of a small number of purely abstract sculptures distributed throughout the fairgrounds. In the same area, the Time and Fates of Man sundial and Moods of Time fountain by Paul Manship had been installed. At the time, the sundial ranked as the largest in the world. In 1934, Manship had sculpted the gilded Prometheus, which overlooks the skaters at New York City’s Rockefeller Center. Following the closing of the fair, Fraser completed seven large-scale works before his death. He executed four of them in the 1940s: an equestrian sculpture of Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), erected in Central Park in Manhattan (1940); one of Albert Gallatin (1761–1849), the longest-serving secretary of the Treasury (14 years), standing at the Department of Commerce Building in Washington, DC (1947); another of Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) for the Franklin Insurance Company in Springfield, Illinois (1948); and finally a depiction of Thomas Edison (1847–1931) for Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan (1949).


Sculpture | 613 In addition, Jo Davidson (1883–1952), working primarily on portrait busts, sculpted the heads of the famous, including several of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945). He also did a likeness of singer Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) in 1946. The American Academy of Arts and Letters in Manhattan held a retrospective show of Davidson’s work that same year. Yet another American sculptor, Gutzon Borglum (1867–1941), became famous for a monumental work on Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Swinging from ropes or clinging to precarious positions on the sides of the mountain, he and his crew carved the heads of four presidents of the United States—George Washington, Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), and Theodore Roosevelt. The project commenced in 1927 and did not reach completion until October 1941, a few months after Borglum’s death. Numerous delays had kept the task, with its 60-feet-high busts and noses 20 feet long and mouths 18 feet wide, behind schedule for much of its duration. Also in the Black Hills, sculptor Korczak Ziotkowski (1908–1982) in 1948 began carving his memorial to Chief Crazy Horse of the Sioux tribe. Ziotkowski had worked with Borglum on Mount Rushmore and took on this project to commemorate an Indian hero at the request of Sioux Chief Henry Standing Bear (ca. 1874–1953). Still far from completion in the early years of the 21st century, the final planned dimensions call for a piece 641 feet high and 563 feet wide. The head of Crazy Horse measures 87 feet high, outdistancing those of the nearby presidents by 27 feet. Not all American sculptors subscribed to the traditional, despite its known popularity. Starting in the 1930s and continuing through the 1940s, sculpture, in the hands of some, moved away from strictly representational objects to abstract shapes that existed for their own sake with the intent to inspire, as well as surprise or shock, the viewers. Sculptors began to broaden both the materials and techniques they used as they joined in the avant-garde movements of surrealism, abstract expressionism, and constructivism. Four men—Alexander Calder (1898–1976), Joseph Cornell (1903–1972), Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), and David Smith (1906–1965)—had productive careers during the 1940s and represent those artists who introduced new aesthetic approaches to sculpture. Alexander Calder. Born in Philadelphia, Calder reigns as one of the most famous and popular American sculptors. He held miscellaneous jobs as a draftsman, engineer, and insurance company investigator before studying at the Art Students League in New York. He then embarked upon a multifaceted career as a sculptor, painter, illustrator, printmaker, and designer. In 1932, he exhibited his first suspended sculpture, which utilized motors to give it motion. The French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) called Calder’s piece a “mobile,” a term that stuck. Calder abandoned the mechanical aspects of this new art form when he realized that he could design a structure that undulated on its own from air currents. His first public commission for a mobile came in 1937 and consisted of a pair built for a new theater that opened in the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. That same year he constructed his first large bolted “stabile,” a nonmoving structure, to be placed outdoors. Extremely productive during the 1940s, Calder created toys, jewelry, mobiles, and stabiles—the last two ranging from miniature to monumental. They easily found


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homes in museums and public places in many cities in the Western world. In 1943, he attempted to enlist in the Marine Corps to work with camouflage designs, but the examination board rejected him. Up to this time, Calder had primarily employed wire, sheet metal, and bronze as his materials, but the wartime scarcity of metal forced him to experiment with carved wood. This resulted in yet another original form of sculpture, wooden pieces anchored by wire and arranged in three dimensions, giving viewers a sense of the cosmos; thus the name “constellations.” Between 1939 and 1950, six Calder retrospective exhibits were held, three in the United States and three in Paris. In 1949, he constructed his largest mobile to date, International Mobile, for the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Third International Exhibition of Sculpture. The following year, Hollywood star Burgess Meredith (1907– 1997) narrated Works of Calder, a film that Meredith also produced. The camera shows Calder at work in his shop, followed by shots of resultant pieces intercut with images from nature to illustrate the source of the sculptor’s inspiration. Calder continued to be active until his death, which came shortly after the opening of a major retrospective show at the Whitney Museum in New York, in 1976. Joseph Cornell. A self-taught sculptor, collage artist, and experimental filmmaker, Joseph Cornell lived the first 14 years of his life in Nyack, New York. He moved with his mother and sickly younger brother to Queens, New York, in 1917. Forced by the death of his father to take financial responsibility for his family, Cornell worked at a variety of jobs during the 1920s and 1930s, with textile design becoming the most permanent. He started assembling collages, almost by accident, as an after-work recreational pursuit at his kitchen table; constructing shadow boxes soon followed. A natural collector, he accumulated a stash of advertisements, fashion shots, antique prints, art reproductions, photo spreads of singers and starlets, maps, and miscellaneous found objects long before he assembled his first collage or built his first shadow box. Widely read, Cornell regularly browsed used book shops, antique shops, and art galleries, where he became acquainted with Surrealist art dealer Julien Levy (1906–1981). In the early 1930s, Cornell showed some of his collages to Levy, who, impressed by their romantic, sensual, and sophisticated qualities, included them in a survey of new surrealist artists at his gallery. Cornell’s entries received a warm reception and cemented his future as a sculptor. In 1936, he made his first shadow box, and in 1938 his “Untitled (Soap Bubble Set)” appeared in an exhibit “Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism” at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). It ranked as one of the favorites in the show. Two years later, Cornell resigned from his textile job and accepted some freelance illustration and layout jobs for magazines such as House & Garden (founded 1901) and Vogue (founded 1892), where he would continue intermittently until 1957. During World War II, he worked at a defense plant while continuing to work on his artistic assemblages in the evenings. Cornell often spent several years on his boxes, which came with two variants—resting on a table horizontally or hanging vertically on a wall. The tabletop boxes generally had lids that opened for viewing. Those intended for a wall show their contents to the viewer through transparent glass fronts. Cornell admired screen and stage personalities and corresponded with his favorites. Despite his shyness, he sometimes met them backstage after attending a performance.


Sculpture | 615 Using these opportunities to collect memorabilia, he then made elaborate, often romantic, boxes loaded with items, such as pictures of the star, hairpins, a scrap of clothing, or other keepsakes he had acquired. Examples include a vertical Penny Arcade for Lauren Bacall (early 1940s) and a horizontal Homage to the Romantic Ballet (1942). Frequently, Cornell presented his boxes as a series: the Pharmacy group consists of drug store paraphernalia, while the Medici unit shows members of the Florentine family through ghostly reproductions of painted portraits. Other creative activities included writing and publishing articles in small-circulation magazines, most often View (founded 1940) and Dance Index (founded 1927). From 1950 until his death, Cornell continued to make collages. In the 1960s, he stopped building new boxes and instead reconstructed old ones. Isamu Noguchi. California-born Japanese Irish Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) completed his first sculpted piece in the mid-1920s. Over the course of his career he also worked as a designer, architect, and craftsman. Because he lived on the West Coast, he occasionally created busts of celebrities, such as George Gershwin (1898–1937) and Ginger Rogers (1911–1995), and fellow artists Martha Graham (1894–1991) and Berenice Abbott (1898–1991). A turning point in his career came when he won an international competition to design a cast relief to stand above the entrance to the Associated Press building at Rockefeller Center in New York City. On April 29, 1940, he observed the installation of News, a stainless steel art deco plaque celebrating five journalists getting a scoop. He also had designed Chassis Fountain for the Ford Motor Company pavilion at the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair. Throughout his career, he continued to design fountains and always considered the water to be as important a material as the other elements. Following his work in New York City, Noguchi resumed living in California shortly before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941. He quickly returned East, which saved him from being rounded up with other Japanese Americans for relocation to internment camps. Wanting, however, to contribute to the war effort, he agreed to voluntarily enter the Poston, Arizona center with the intention of involving the refugees in arts and crafts; he hoped his instruction would provide them with skills that they could use once released. Noguchi entered Poston on May 12, 1942, just four days after it opened. The experience turned out to be a difficult one for him, and almost immediately Noguchi asked to leave, a process that took seven months. Once again in New York, he did some stone carving with Leda, a stark geometric shape and his first piece after emerging from the camp. The next summer he carved Noodle out of stone, following it with Time Lock. In 1944, Noguchi began a series of works consisting of almost flat, interlocking shapes similar to constructions seen in surrealist paintings. Many critics consider Kouros, made from pink marble and standing nearly 10 feet tall, to be one of his masterpieces. During this time he also produced a series called Lunars, abstract, freestanding sculptures that incorporate hidden electric lights that produce glowing effects through openings. In 1946, MoMA included him in a show titled Fourteen Americans. In addition to working as a sculptor, Noguchi occasionally designed stage sets. His first appeared in 1935 for Martha Graham and her early Frontier. In 1944, he accepted


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another request from Graham to design a set for Appalachian Spring, which she choreographed to music by Aaron Copland (1900–1990). Noguchi continued to design sets for the Martha Graham Dance Company, one in 1945 and again in 1946. Active until his death at the age of 84, Noguchi worked with many materials, such as stone, stainless steel, driftwood, bones, paper, string, wire, wood, and plastic, and fashioned his sculptures in a variety of free forms. In addition to projects in the United States, he frequently traveled to Italy and Japan carrying out commissions in those countries. David Smith. Born in Indiana, Smith (1906–1965) initially aspired to be a painter but switched to sculpture in 1931, making his first constructions from found objects. At the end of 1939, MoMA asked him for a loan of his Blue Construction for its sculpture garden. The piece had been displayed in the Contemporary Arts Building at the New York World’s Fair. In November 1940, the Willard Gallery in Manhattan gave him his second solo show and the beginning of a decade of increased recognition. Subsequent shows of bronze and cast iron pieces almost became an annual event—1941, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Kalamazoo; 1942, Minneapolis; 1943, Manhattan; and 1946, Manhattan—and art critics announced the inevitability of Smith becoming one of America’s greatest artists. In 1947, the American Association of University Women sponsored a traveling retrospective exhibition of Smith’s work. The 1940 exhibit at the Willard consisted of 15 medallions cast in bronze. Called Medals for Dishonor, they offer a statement of protest in their depiction of the horrors of war. Two years later, as an alternative to military service, he took a welding job at the American Locomotive Company plant in Schenectady, New York, assembling M7 tanks and locomotives. He managed to continue with his sculpture, but on a limited basis. As a substitute to working with metal, which officials reserved for defense use, he learned to work with marble at a firm that made cemetery monuments. Smith owned a farm in upstate New York at Bolton Landing on Lake George and in 1944 moved there to work full-time on his artwork. From then until the end of the decade, he experimented with the possibilities of forged and fabricated steel and bronze and welded metal in many variations. Frequently his sculpture contains miniature dramas or scenes such as Widow’s Lament (1942–1943), in which a frame with four boxes convey four separate events in the widow’s life. Cockfight (1945), in a vertical format, tells the story suggested by its title. Jurassic Bird (1945) is a linear, open-form composition, a drawing in air. Much of Smith’s work after 1949 came in series such as Agricola—22 sculptures produced over several years that incorporate farm tools and machinery and allude to agricultural life. The Tanktotem sculptures incorporate commercial boiler tops. He was at the height of his career when, in 1965, he died from injuries received in a vehicle accident on a road near Bennington, Vermont. A number of sculptors during the 1940s, including those already mentioned, successfully utilized new approaches in both materials and techniques. Motion became a possibility, either by motorizing a sculpture or constructing it so that it moved with the wind or from the touch of a hand. Objects formed and gathered in a box told a story much as a painting might do. Welding and a paper-thin sheet of metal now allowed for freestanding and flat pieces to stand in sharp contrast with heavy monumental figures.


Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 (Selective Service, or Draft) | 617 In the succeeding decades, sculptors such as Louise Nevelson (1899–1988) and Richard Lippold (1915–2002) took inspiration from these modern pioneers and combined the monumentality of the past and the abstraction of the 1940s. Another, Jose de Rivera (1904–1985), created elegant flowing linear forms in highly polished metal. Many traditional sculptors, however, continued to execute realistic carvings, and most Americans who acknowledged an interest in sculpture professed a preference for recognizable figures and objects. For the 1949 Third Sculpture International show in Philadelphia, which displayed sculptures executed since 1940, judges selected 250 pieces out of 1,000 entries; 216 came from American sculptors. The exhibit reflected most of what had been happening during the decade, but pictures accompanying a May 15 review in the New York Times showed only monumental realistic figures. Despite the efforts by some to expand the form of expression to include constructivism, abstract sculpture, and surrealism, the decade ended in favor of traditional representative sculpture. See also: Architecture; Art (Painting), Dance; Illustrators; Photography; Rationing Selected Reading Aspinwall, Margaret, ed. 200 Years of American Sculpture. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1976. Calder, Alexander, and Jean Davidson. Calder: An Autobiography with Pictures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966. Duus, Masayo. The Life of Isamu Noguchi: Journey without Borders. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Marcus, Stanley E. David Smith: The Sculptor and His Work. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983.

SELECTIVE TRAINING AND SERVICE ACT OF 1940 (SELECTIVE SERVICE, OR DRAFT) On June 10, 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), in a speech to the graduating class at the University of Virginia, raised the issue of the United States needing a system for drafting men into military service. He deplored the worldwide ramifications of an act carried out that same day by Italy’s Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) when he declared war against France and Great Britain. In Roosevelt’s remarks to both the assembled students and the nation by way of radio, he stated that the United States would “have equipment and training equal to the task of any emergency defense.” His stand that the United States could not exist in a state of isolation, a justification for a peacetime draft, had strong critics, among them clergy, individual citizens, labor leaders, and assorted politicians. Reactions from members of Congress ranged from enthusiastic endorsement to expressions of concern that this step would draw the United States into the European conflict. Shortly after Roosevelt’s talk, matters in Europe swiftly deteriorated. Germany gained major victories in the summer of 1940 as France fell and Great Britain came under aerial and maritime siege. In September, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Tripartite Treaty; they would henceforth be known as the Axis powers.


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Over the course of the summer, pictures of Nazi bombers and burning London appeared in newspapers and magazines across the United States, and public support for conscription changed from 50 percent in a June Gallup Poll to 71 percent by September. It had become clear that the United States had to prepare for the worst, and Congress acted quickly. On September 17, 1940, the headline on the front page of the New York Times read, “Proclamation Calling for Draft Registration on Oct. 16, The First Peacetime Draft in American History Becomes Law.” Not the first draft for the country but the first one enacted in peacetime, conscription had been employed by the United States during two previous conflicts. Both Union and Confederate officials had enforced a draft at the time of the Civil War, a decision that met with much criticism because many people considered it an infringement on individual freedom and personal liberty. The practice ended with the conclusion of the war. The 65th United States Congress created the Selective Service Act of 1917, giving President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) the power to draft men for military service as a part of the country’s participation in World War I. Officials again discontinued conscription in 1920; with the onset of World War II, the government required new legislation to guarantee sufficient numbers for fighting yet another war. The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, passed by the 76th United States Congress, required all men ages 21 to 35 to register for a service period of 12 months. Certain occupations, including ministers, farmers, miners, commercial sailors, and railroad workers, received an exemption. The use of a lottery system for drafting individuals began in Washington, DC, when Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson (1867– 1950), blindfolded, drew the card of the first inductee from a large glass bowl. Initially, students received a deferment, but this practice stopped in July 1941. Conscientious objectors (COs), about 25,000 for the duration of the war, could opt out by accepting alternate noncombatant service through the government’s Civilian Public Service (CPS), performing in such areas as medical services, forestry projects, conservation, and the like. Numerous church-related organizations, including the Society of Friends (Quakers), Seventh-Day Adventists, Brethren, and Mennonites also participated in these efforts. For the most part, however, Americans viewed mandatory conscription as a necessary and patriotic duty, and many men enlisted before being called. On December 7, 1941, the United States suffered the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Congress issued a declaration of war the following day against Japan and then included Germany and Italy three days later, all of which led to an extension of the time for military service. Individuals would remain on active duty for the duration of the conflict, plus an added requirement of six months of service in the Organized Reserves. In November 1942, the age range for inductees, previously 21 to 35, changed to 18 to 45 years of age. Various musicians soon expressed their take on the selective service system and the possibility of the United States becoming involved in a world conflict. For example, the Prairie Ramblers of The National Barn Dance recorded “I’ll Be Back In A Year, Little Darlin’ ” (1941), words and music by Ben Shelhamer Jr., Claude Heritier, and Russ Hull (all active during the 1940s). A response titled “I’ll Be Waiting For You, Darlin’ ” (1941), words and music by Russ Hull, was performed by artists such as Louise Massey (1902–1983) and the Westerners as well as Patsy Montana (1912–1996).


Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 (Selective Service, or Draft) | 619 As conditions concerning a global war intensified, Bradley Kincaid (1895–1989) and Buck Nation (active 1940s) offered “I Won’t Be Back In A Year Little Darling,” a more realistic statement about current conditions. Other pop songs describing the transition from civilian life to that of a soldier reflected the times and briefly enjoyed radio play, along with releases of sheet music. In July 1942, composer Irving Berlin’s (1888–1989) patriotic musical, This Is the Army, opened on Broadway. Based on Yip! Yip! Yaphank, a 1917 skit Berlin had put together while a draftee himself, it tells the story service life in the army for both new recruits and officers through songs and skits. After a two-and-a-half-month run, This Is the Army closed on Broadway, and the cast set off on a tour across the United States. Once on the West Coast, Warner Bros. produced a filmed version released in 1943. Other studios supported the troops in documentaries, features, and shorts. MetroGoldwyn-Mayer issued two short films in 1941 and another in 1942 that related to those signing up for service. You Can’t Fool a Camera (1941) consists of several very different pieces of footage. The film starts out showing photographic proof of unusual facts such as when horses gallop, all four hooves leave the ground, but by the time the short ends, it offers close-ups of the studio’s major stars and a tribute to those who have joined the armed forces. In Holiday Greetings (1941), actor Lewis Stone (1879–1953) urges moviegoers to appreciate those in the U.S. armed forces who will be spending the Christmas holidays overseas away from their families. Victory Quiz (1942), a Pete Smith (1892–1979) Specialty, offers a series of multiple-choice questions such as “When was the parachute invented?” The movie intersperses news footage of the U.S. armed forces in action along with humor, Smith’s real specialty. Universal capitalized on the popularity of the comedy team of Bud Abbot (1895– 1974) and Lou Costello (1906–1959) by releasing Buck Privates, In the Navy, and Keep’ em Flying in 1941, all of which depict recruits adjusting to military life. Across the way, Paramount Pictures also released a war-related comedy in 1941 titled Caught in the Draft. It stars Bob Hope (1903–2003) and Dorothy Lamour (1914–1996). Hope plays a movie star trying to avoid the draft who falls in love with the colonel’s daughter; in a typical slapstick manner, he accidentally enlists in the army, embarking on a service career that contains more laughs than serious intentions. For those more prone to reading than going to the movies, Marion Hargrove (1919– 2003) in 1942 published a collection of his humorous autobiographical newspaper columns about basic training under the title See Here, Private Hargrove. An immediate best seller, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released a film adaptation of the book in 1944 with Robert Walker (1918–1951) and Donna Reed (1921–1986) taking the lead roles. The law requiring the induction of eligible men into military service changed conditions for those remaining on the home front. Active involvement by celebrities and the activities of ordinary citizens selling war bonds helped to finance the war; rationing and scrap drives provided ways to divert manufacturing resources from peacetime uses to defense production; and millions of women, personified as Rosie the Riveter, went to work in the jobs vacated by men fighting in the war. As to overseeing the drafting and enlistments of personnel for military service, two individuals served as director of the Selective Service System. First, Clarence Dykstra (1883–1950), a civilian, carried out the responsibilities from October 1940 to April 1,


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1941. U.S. Army Major General Lewis Hershey (1893–1977) became the second director, from July 31, 1941, to April 15, 1947. Each man faced challenges during his tenure; at the height of its operations, the Selective Service System had 27,371 paid employees and 184,325 volunteers, with 6,642 local boards handling the process while 469 boards listened to appeals. One immediate problem occurred in the initial round of inductions; a large number failed the required physical examination. From the first 1 million men, 40 percent, or about 400,000, were rejected because of nutritional deficiencies. This crisis within the military created a national “healthy eating drive” directed by Paul V. McNutt (1891–1955), head of the Federal Security Agency. After study by various committees, Roosevelt announced the creation of the Office of Health Defense and Welfare, which would be headed by McNutt. This new agency embarked upon a massive campaign using newspaper and magazine articles, posters, curriculum materials for schools, conferences, short films, and professionals to educate the public about healthy menu planning, cooking, and eating. A second issue had to do with a segregated army. The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 stated that it should be the duty of every male citizen of the prescribed age range to present himself for registration; the act prohibited racial discrimination. Both the army and navy, however, continued to follow their established practice of segregation and did not allow blacks at the front lines or in combat. Both enlistees and draftees found themselves in all-black units working at subservient jobs under the supervision of white officers. Additionally, black units were restricted to their own mess halls and barracks. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights group founded in 1909, actively attempted to end segregation in the armed forces. Its tactics included lobbying and personal appeals to various members of Congress, all to no avail. The NAACP also planned a March on Washington for July 1, 1941, expecting to draw over 100,000 people. A week before the protest, an alarmed President Roosevelt issued an executive order establishing the first Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC). In return, the organizers canceled the march and established the March on Washington Movement as a way to hold the FEPC to its promise of desegregating the armed forces. World War II ended in 1945, the draft the following year. By that time, over 10 million men had been inducted into the armed services. The original act expired in 1947, making the joining of a branch of the armed forces voluntary instead of mandatory. Records still needed to be maintained, and Major General Hershey’s title changed to director of the Office of Selective Service Records. Soon after the Axis surrendered, tensions and political conflicts developed between the Union of the Soviet Socialists Republics and the Western powers, including the United States. Concern among the leaders of the armed forces in the early months of this Cold War brought about the passage of a new selective service act in 1948, the second one to be passed in peacetime. It required all men aged 18 to 26 to register, and those between 19 and 26 years became eligible for 21 months’ service followed by five years of reserve duty. General Hershey’s titled reverted to Director of the Selective Service System, a position that he continued to hold until 1970.


Serial Films | 621 Also in 1948, President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) issued Executive Order 9981 that established the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Forces. The order would address inequalities in all branches of service brought about by race, color, religion, or national origin. Blatant signs of segregation continued for several more years and black soldiers only gradually moved out of their units into integrated fighting groups. Finally, in October 1954, the secretary of defense announced that the last racially segregated unit in the armed forces had been abolished. Heavy postwar budget cuts for defense purposes restricted 1948 conscriptions to 100,000 men. In June 1950, the United Nations, with the participation of the United States in what diplomats called a “police action,” entered the Korean War. This brought the United States directly into another war and caused the number of armed forces inductees to greatly increase once again. See also: Atomic Bomb, The; Aviation; Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose; Berlin Airlift, The; Best Sellers (Books); Broadway Shows (Musicals); Canteens; Civil Defense; Cole, Nat King; Education; Eisenhower, General Dwight David; Food; Louis, Joe; MacArthur, General Douglas; Marshall, General George Catlett; Race Relations and Stereotyping Selected Reading Selective Service Act of 1940. New York Times, June 11, 1940; September 17 through October 15, 1940; April 1, 1947. www.proquest.com Selective Service Act of 1948. 80th Cong., 2d sess., HR Rep. 2438. www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_ Law/pdf/act-1948.pdf Young, William H., and Nancy K. Young. American Music through History: The World War II Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005.

SERIAL FILMS Across the country, in the late morning or early afternoon on any given Saturday, kids started milling about the box office at their local movie theater. Clutching a dime (or maybe 15 cents, but seldom more in the 1940s—a dime in the 1940s equals approximately $1.10 in 2008 dollars), they waited for the attendant to pull back the curtain behind the glass enclosure, the announcement that the theater was now open for the Saturday matinee. A weekly ritual fondly remembered by generations of Americans, these special shows were designed for a youthful audience and usually differed from a theater’s main bill. This tradition had its beginnings in the 1900s and the early days of silent films. By the 1930s, and with the addition of sound and occasional color, the Saturday shows had taken on a format that would be followed for the next 20 or so years. When children (and their parents) found in the early 1950s that television offered similar diversions on Saturday mornings, the weekly trek to a neighborhood theater drew to a close, and with it a chapter in American life. In the matinees’ heyday, roughly 1930 to 1950, that dime for admission bought two features, usually a B Western and maybe a low-budget comedy or detective picture, several cartoons, a short or a newsreel, previews, and the next installment of an


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ongoing weekly serial. Mom got the children out of the house for awhile, and the kids got more than three hours of thrills, chills, and a laugh or two. The Westerns they saw, as well as other film genres, receive discussion elsewhere in this encyclopedia. The serials, however, deserve separate attention because of their unique qualities. Back in 1912, the idea of a continuing, or episodic, visual narrative grew out of the enormously popular serializations of popular short stories and novels that magazines of the day featured week-by-week or month-by-month. As the movies gained ever-larger audiences and studios and directors searched for new ways to keep their patrons entertained, the idea of creating similar continuing tales seemed a logical one. In 1912, actress Mary Fuller (1888–1973) achieved unexpected stardom in What Happened to Mary? generally conceded to be the first American film serial. Consisting of 12 reels, each of which told more of the story, the cliffhanging ending to each part left the audience waiting for the next thrilling part. By the 1940s, the conventions of the form had been well established: individual episodes (also called chapters by some studios) should run about 15 to 20 minutes, and the full story should contain 12 to 15 installments, or last about one-fourth of an entire year when seen on a weekly basis. The stories should be constructed in such a way that if a person missed an episode, some brief background filler in the subsequent installment would make events clear, including how the main characters got out of whatever dilemma the story had previously placed them. This suspenseful, episodic structure almost guaranteed a return audience each and every week. In the long stretch from Sunday to Saturday, serial fans could debate how they imagined their heroes would escape the newest fiendish plans laid by the villains. A clear offspring of the penny dreadfuls and dime novels of the 19th century, movie serials rose to extraordinary popularity alongside the garish pulp fiction so beloved by generations of readers. Three Hollywood studios dominated in the production of serials: Columbia, Republic, and Universal. Of the three, Columbia Pictures ranked as a major studio, whereas Republic and Universal tended to be in the second tier, seldom boasting big-name stars or major box office hits. Despite its success with feature-length Hollywood fare, Columbia maintained a tradition of releasing a wide variety of shorter material, such as Three Stooges comedies, variety shorts, cartoons, and numerous serials. In 1956, faced with dwindling interest in the genre and competition from television, Columbia produced its last serial, Blazing the Overland Trail. Once a major player in Hollywood circles, Universal Pictures had fallen on hard times during the 1930s and became known for cheap Westerns, comedy series, melodramas, and a house specialty, horror pictures. Changes in ownership and various financial arrangements kept the company going, and Universal eventually became a pioneer in the area of television production. Although the studio produced many serials in the 1930s and early 1940s, it got out of the field in 1946 with The Mysterious Mr. M, abandoning several serials in various stages of completion. Republic Pictures came into being in 1935 when several small studios merged, including Consolidated Film Industries, Mascot Pictures, Invincible Pictures, Monogram Pictures, Majestic Pictures, Liberty Pictures, and Chesterfield Pictures. They fell into


Serial Films | 623 the category of “Poverty Row” studios, an industry term identifying those companies that eked out their incomes with generally mediocre, low-budget features of any and all kinds. Mascot Pictures brought to the marriage considerable experience in the production of serials, and the newly formed Republic Pictures conglomerate quickly put that expertise to use. From the mid-1930s until 1955 and King of the Carnival, the studio’s last serial, Republic outproduced both Columbia and Universal. During the 1940s, the Columbia-Republic-Universal triumvirate jointly created almost 100 serials, or more than 9 new productions a year. As a rule, Republic would turn out about 4 of these, followed by Columbia with 3, and Universal would contribute 2 titles. In any given year, these numbers might vary slightly, but the totals suggest how large the serial industry had become. TABLE 90.

Year 1940

1941

1942

Representative Movie Serials from the 1940s Number of Chapters

Title Adventures of Red Ryder

12

Drums of Fu Manchu

15

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe The Green Archer The Green Hornet King of the Royal Mounted Mysterious Doctor Satan

12

The Shadow Terry and the Pirates Winners of the West

15 15 13

Adventures of Captain Marvel Don Winslow of the Navy The Green Hornet Strikes Again! Holt of the Secret Service The Iron Claw King of the Texas Rangers

12 12 15 15 15 12

Sea Raiders Sky Raiders The Spider Returns White Eagle Captain Midnight Gang Busters Junior G-Men of the Air King of the Mounties Nyoka and the Tigermen Overland Mail

15 13 12 15

Stars

Studio

Don “Red” Barry, Tommy Cook Henry Brandon, William Royle Buster Crabbe, Carol Hughes

Republic Republic Republic

Victor Jory, Iris Meredith Gordon Jones, Keye Luke Allan Lane, Robert Strange Edward Ciannelli, Robert Wilcox Victor Jory, Veda Ann Borg William Tracy, Jeff York Dick Foran, Anne Nagel

Columbia Universal Republic Republic

Republic Universal Universal Columbia Columbia Republic

12 12 15 15

Tom Tyler, Frank Coghlan Jr. Don Terry, Walter Sande Warren Hull, Keye Luke Jack Holt, Evelyn Brent Charles Quigley, Joyce Bryant “Slingin’ Sammy” Baugh, Neil Hamilton Billy Halop, Huntz Hall Donald Woods, Billy Halop Warren Hull, Mary Ainslee Buck Jones, Raymond Hatton

15 13 12 12 15 15

Dave O’Brien, Dorothy Short Kent Taylor, Irene Hervey Billy Halop, Huntz Hall Allan Lane, Gilbert Emery Kay Aldridge, Clayton Moore Lon Chaney Jr., Noah Beery Jr.


Columbia Columbia Universal

Universal Universal Columbia Columbia Columbia Universal Universal Republic Republic Universal (Continued)

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| Serial Films TABLE 90. Year

1943

1944

1945

1946

(continued) Number of Chapters

Title Perils of the Royal Mounted The Secret Code Spy Smasher

15 15 12

The Valley of Vanishing Men

15

The Adventures of Smilin’ Jack Adventures of the Flying Cadets

13 13

The Batman Daredevils of the West G-Men vs. The Black Dragon The Masked Marvel The Phantom Secret Service in Darkest Africa

15 12 15 12 15 15

Black Arrow Captain America The Desert Hawk The Great Alaskan Mystery

15 15 15 13

Haunted Harbor

15

The Mystery of the Riverboat

13

Raiders of Ghost City

13

The Tiger Woman Zorro’s Black Whip

12 12

Brenda Starr, Reporter Federal Operator 99 Jungle Queen Jungle Raiders

13 12 13 15

Manhunt of Mystery Island The Master Key The Monster and the Ape

15 13 15

The Purple Monster Strikes The Royal Mounted Rides Again Secret Agent X-9 Chick Carter, Detective The Crimson Ghost Daughter of Don Q Ghost Riders of the West

Stars

Studio

Robert Stevens, Nell O’Day Paul Kelly, Anne Nagel Kane Richmond, Marguerite Chapman Bill Elliott, Slim Summerville

Columbia Columbia Republic

Tom Brown, Rose Hobart Johnny Downs, Bobby Jordon Lewis Wilson, Douglas Croft Allan Lane, Kay Aldridge Rod Cameron, Roland Got William Forrest, Louise Currie Tom Tyler, Jeanne Bates Rod Cameron, Joan Marsh

Universal Universal

Columbia

Columbia Republic Republic Republic Columbia Republic

Robert Scott, Adele Jergens Dick Purcell, Lorna Gray Gilbert Roland, Mona Maris Milburn Stone, Marjorie Weaver Kane Richmond, Kay Aldridge Robert Lowery, Eddie Quillan Dennis Moore, Wanda McKay Linda Stirling, Allan Lane Linda Stirling, George J. Lewis

Columbia Republic Columbia Universal

Columbia Republic Universal Columbia

15 13 13

Joan Woodbury, Syd Saylor Marten Lamont, Helen Talbot Lois Collier, Ruth Roman Kane Richmond, Eddie Quillan Richard Bailey, Linda Stirling Milburn Stone, Jan Wiley Robert Lowery, George MacReady Linda Stirling, Roy Barcroft Bill Kennedy, George Dolenz Lloyd Bridges, Keye Luke

15 12 12 12

Lyle Talbot, Julie Gibson Charles Quigley, Linda Stirling Adrian Booth, Kirk Alyn Robert Kent, Peggy Stewart

Columbia Republic Republic Republic


Republic Universal Universal Republic Republic

Republic Universal Columbia Republic Universal Universal

Serial Films | 625

Year

1947

1948

1949

Number of Chapters

Title Hop Harrigan

15

King of the Forest Rangers Lost City of the Jungle The Mysterious Mr. M The Scarlet Horseman Son of the Guardsman

12 13 13 13 15

The Black Widow

13

Jack Armstrong

15

Jesse James Rides Again

13

The Sea Hound Son of Zorro The Vigilante: Fighting Hero of the West

Stars

Studio

William Bakewell, Jennifer Holt Larry Thompson, Helen Talbot Russell Hayden, Jane Adams Dennis Moore, Byron Foulger Paul Guilfoyle, Peter Cookson Robert Shaw, Ray Bennett

Columbia Republic Universal Universal Universal Columbia Republic

15 13 13

Carol Forman, Bruce Edwards John Hart, Rosemary La Planche Clayton Moore, Linda Stirling Buster Crabbe, Jimmy Lloyd George Turner, Peggy Stewart Ralph Byrd, Lyle Talbot

Adventures of Frank and Jesse James Brick Bradford Congo Bill Dangers of the Canadian Mounted G-Men Never Forget Superman Tex Granger, Midnight Rider of the Plains

13

Clayton Moore, Steve Darrell

Republic

13 15 12

Kane Richmond, Rick Vallin Don McGuire, Cleo Moore Jim Bannon, Virginia Belmont Clayton Moore, Roy Barcroft Kirk Alyn, Noel Neill Robert Kellard, Peggy Stewart

Columbia Columbia Republic

The Adventures of Sir Galahad Batman and Robin

15 15

Columbia Columbia

Bruce Gentry Federal Agents vs. Underworld, Inc. Ghost of Zorro The James Brothers of Missouri King of the Rocket Men Radar Patrol vs. Spy King

15 12

George Reeves, Nelson Leigh Robert Lowery, Johnny Duncan Tom Neal, Judy Clark Kirk Alyn, Rosemary La Planche Clayton Moore, Pamela Blake Keith Richards, Robert Bice Tristram Coffin, Mae Clarke Kirk Alyn, Jean Dean

12 15 15

12 12 12 12

Columbia Republic Columbia Republic Columbia

Republic Columbia Columbia

Columbia Republic Republic Republic Republic Republic

A title alone cannot always convey the content of a movie, but some generalizations can be made from the foregoing list. Characters from comic books, comic strips, and radio shows, all of which enjoyed considerable popularity at the time, often made the move to the serial format. For example, from the pages of comic books came Batman (and later Robin), Captain America, Captain Marvel, and Superman. The daily strips in newspapers across the land provided, among others, Brenda Starr, Brick Bradford, Don Winslow, Flash Gordon, The Phantom, Secret Agent X-9, Smilin’ Jack, and Terry


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| Service Flags (Gold Stars and Blue Stars)

and the Pirates. The crossovers with radio supplied Captain Midnight, Gang Busters, Jack Armstrong, and The Shadow. Many serials, although not taken directly from other sources, owe much of their plotting and characters to common areas of popular culture. Movie Westerns made possible such titles as Winners of the West, Daredevils of the West, Ghost Riders of the West, The Vigilante: Fighting Hero of the West, and many others, equally self-explanatory. Science fiction supplied monsters and secret, advanced weaponry in adventures like The Purple Monster Strikes, King of the Rocket Men, and Radar Patrol vs. Spy King, while World War II provided a convenient, catchall category, as in King of the Royal Mounted, Sky Raiders, The Secret Code, and many others. As long as the action continued at a nonstop, breakneck pace, the cliffhangers thrilled, and the directors spent little time with characterization or romance, serials filled the bill for youthful audiences. Most of them provided a woman to costar with the male lead, an obvious device designed to appeal to girls, although the script usually limited her to a role in which she lends moral support, gets conveniently captured, and screams at appropriate moments. But someone like Linda Stirling (1921–1997) nonetheless built a career in serials and even occasionally received top billing, as in 1944’s Tiger Woman. All in all, serials enjoyed a devoted following, and they filled an inimitable movie niche in the 1940s. See also: Children’s Films; Costume and Spectacle Films; Crime and Mystery Films; Horror and Thriller Films; Political and Propaganda Films; Radio Programming: Children’s Shows, Serials, and Adventure Series; War Films; Youth Selected Reading Cline, William C. In the Nick of Time: Motion Picture Sound Serials. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1984. Fernett, Gene. Hollywood’s Poverty Row, 1930–1950. Satellite Beach, FL: Coral Reef Publications, 1973. Lahue, Kalton C. Continued Next Week: A History of the Moving Picture Serial. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964. Stedman, Raymond William. The Serials: Suspense and Drama by Installment. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971.

SERVICE FLAGS (GOLD STARS AND BLUE STARS) During the war years of 1941 to 1945, a pedestrian walking any residential street in any American town, large or small, would notice small rectangular banners or flags displayed in the front windows of countless homes. Each flag, usually cotton or wool but sometimes silk or synthetics, consisted of a field of white bordered in red. One or a number of stars, blue or gold, were affixed vertically to the white area. A blue star represented a loved one on active duty; gold symbolized a family member lost while in the service of the country. Sometimes both blue and gold stars appeared on a single flag, with the gold star(s) always uppermost. These combinations showed a family with sons or daughters still actively serving (the blue) along with any losses (the gold). Such symbols, called service flags, reminded people at home about the human cost of war and the need not to forget those who serve their country, sometimes with their lives. Hardly a new idea, the first service flags appeared in 1917, toward the end of World War I. Unofficial remembrances at first, the flags gained government approval © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Seventeen | 627 in the 1920s. Standardized over time, they achieved their greatest popularity during World War II. Several organizations formed in support of the banners. In 1928, the Gold Star Mothers Club officially formed after years of informally meeting. Open to the mothers of service personnel who died while on active duty, it also extended nonvoting membership to fathers. The Blue Star Mothers Club formed in 1942. Although open to mothers, fathers could obtain associate status. Its numbers swelled to 30,000 mothers during the war, making it the largest of its kind. Seeking recognition for their sacrifices and losses, the Gold Star Wives Club organized in 1945, welcoming the spouses of servicemen killed in the line of duty. Although the display of gold or blue star banners has fallen off in recent years, the use of such service flags remains permissible for the parents or spouses of those serving in the United States military. And, at the time of World War II, the practice enjoyed wide support. See also: Canteens Selected Reading “Service Flags.” www.serviceflags.com

SEVENTEEN This monthly magazine, established to speak directly to high school and college women, first appeared on newsstands in September 1944, a time when many American teenagers had acquired sufficient money to assert significant consumer power. Editor-in-chief Helen Valentine (1893–1986), a mother and grandmother when she assumed her editorial duties, christened the new periodical in honor of Booth Tarkington’s (1869–1946) seminal 1916 novel of the same name. Not the first magazine to acknowledge teenage girls as an audience, it quickly surpassed its competitors and reached an extraordinary number of youthful readers by devoting its entire contents to them. The premier issue included, among other things, a celebrity feature on musician Harry James (1916–1983); a photomontage of crooner Frank Sinatra (1915–1998); a Hollywood gossip column; film, book, and record reviews; and columns titled “First Date Quiz” and “Why Don’t Parents Grow Up?” Seventeen sold 400,000 copies in six days after starting with an initial print run of 530,000. Its monthly circulation exceeded 1 million copies by February 1947. Colorful covers promised the latest fashion news, beauty tips, and helpful information about growing up and getting along with others. Inside section headings organized these leads into categories such as “What You Wear,” “Having Fun,” and “How You Look and Feel.” But Seventeen went beyond clothes and cosmetics. It approached its readers in articles such as “Your Mind,” “Getting Along in the World,” and “What Are You Doing About the War?” as serious, intelligent, thinking young women interested in current affairs and aware of their future responsibilities. It educated them to the importance of responsible adulthood, of being informed, thinking, participating, and voting citizens. To develop the magazine in a planned manner, the publisher, Walter Annenberg (1908–2002), invested substantial resources in three directions: (1) to create and © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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describe a typical teenage reader, whom the staff called Teena, (2) to assure a high volume of advertising, and (3) to increase the size of the readership. To this end, in 1945, the publisher engaged a firm to conduct market research on the topic of what the magazine’s audience and other youth expected to see and read. The results, provided in a pamphlet, Life with Teena, indicated that teenage girls had an interest in reading about relationships, both with boys and friends, and understanding parents. It confirmed that this audience consisted of affluent white girls who had money and were ready to spend it on clothes, jewelry, and cosmetics. Also, the study revealed that if they should run out of cash, parents could be counted on to supply it. The editorial staff used this information, coupled with the magazine’s intent to reach “wholesome” girls between the ages of 13 and 18 who dressed neatly and conservatively for high school and dates as guidelines for articles, columns, and accepted advertisements. For the manufacturers and advertisers, the Seventeen staff published a booklet titled “Who Is Tenna? Judy Jeckyll or Formalda Hyde?” in which they outlined the magazine’s intent to run age-appropriate advertisements geared toward the image described as Teena. The publication also suggested that manufacturers could profit by regularly creating new teenage-specific products, sure items to sell not only to the readers but also their friends—get one teenage girl to buy and wear a product, and her friends will follow. As a final step in Seventeen’s sales plan, its promotional staff brought together an advertising advisory board charged to assist in establishing uniformity in the magazine’s advertising and editorial presentations. Shortly after Seventeen’s appearance on the market, World War II ended, soldiers returned home and soon thereafter married, many to Seventeen readers who had just graduated from high school. The magazine, in hopes of capitalizing on the postwar prosperity and continuing to attract as many readers as possible, broadened its articles to ones that would interest young wives and homemakers. Accepted advertisements now included engagement rings, appliances, china and silver, furniture, carpet, and linens. Careful planning and awareness of changing times paid off. By 1949, Seventeen, an advocate of youth consumerism, had reached a circulation of 2.5 million, thereby achieving a level of readership that exceeded the numbers for any other teen girl–focused publications for many years to come. See also: Fads; Magazines Selected Reading Savage, Jon. Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture. New York: Viking, 2007. Schrum, Kelly. Some Wore Bobby Sox: The Emergence of the Teenage Girls’ Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. ———. “ ‘Teena Means Business’: Teenage Girls’ Culture and Seventeen Magazine, 1944–1950.” In Delinquents and Debutantes, Twentieth-Century American Girls’ Cultures, ed. Sherrie A. Inness, pp. 134–163. New York: New York University Press, 1998.

SHORE, DINAH Remembered as a major star on network television from the early 1950s through the 1980s, Dinah Shore (1916–1994; née Frances Rose Shore) actually broke into the


Shore, Dinah | 629 entertainment business at the end of the 1930s. That aspect of her career, largely forgotten today, save for some longtime fans, involved radio and recordings. For much of the decade, she reigned as one of the most popular female vocalists of the 1940s. Born in Tennessee, her parents encouraged her to pursue a singing career. She took time out for college at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University and, after graduating in 1938, traveled to New York City in search of opportunities. At auditions, she sometimes sang “Dinah,” a 1924 standard from the Broadway show Kid Boots. People everywhere knew the song, which made the screenings go more easily and led Frances to take Dinah as her stage name. In 1939, she landed a singing job at Dinah Shore rose to fame as a popular vocalWNEW, a leading New York radio sta- ist during the late 1930s. Able to sing in many tion. She worked at times with another styles, she enjoyed excellent stage presence, which led comedian Eddie Cantor to hire her rising young vocalist, Frank Sinatra for his NBC variety show. Here she stands be(1915–1998), as well as with Xavier hind the network’s microphone while appearing Cugat (1900–1990), a popular band- on Cantor’s program. (NBC/Photofest) leader who specialized in music with a Latin flavor. These varied experiences led to a recording contract with RCA Victor, a leading label. After a brief stint with Ben Bernie (1891–1943) and his orchestra on CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) radio in 1939, Shore gained her own 15-minute series, The Dinah Shore Show, which ran at various times (and with slight title changes) until 1943. More importantly, as far as her career went, she became a feature attraction on The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street in 1940. The show, which premiered on NBC (National Broadcasting Company) network radio in early 1940, delighted listeners by taking a tongue-in-cheek approach to music in all genres, especially the classics, and thus its long-winded, satirical title. Occasionally abbreviated CMSLBS, it proved an instant hit with jazz and swing lovers and remained on the air until the fall of 1944, a long run for music shows. Everyone seemed to have fun on the show, and the quality of musicianship would be hard to equal. Professionals all, they doubled on numerous instruments, which gave the in-house bands—usually the Dixieland Octet and the Woodwindy Ten, not counting guests—an opportunity to perform in many styles. Guest artists, often the cream of 1940s New York jazz, dropped in often, and “Mademoiselle Diva” Dinah Shore had a chance to sing with some of the best musicians of the day. Shore’s excellent stage presence brought her to the attention of comedian Eddie Cantor (1892–1964), who hosted his own top-rated variety program and had long been


630

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a fixture on network radio. He promptly signed her as vocalist for The Eddie Cantor Show in 1940, and she stayed with him for a year, as well as continuing with her series and the Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street. Cantor urged her to record an old Russian folk song he had come across, and the modernized result, now called “Yes, My Darling Daughter” (1941), enjoyed sensational sales. It soon became her theme song, and the ensuing national exposure on radio and recordings launched her into the front ranks of popular singers. By 1943, she had graduated to a full half-hour evening offering on CBS called The Birdseye Open House. Various guest stars dropped by and chatted and performed. It stayed on the air until 1946, although it shifted to NBC. In the midst of her increasingly busy radio and recording schedule, Hollywood expressed an interest in Shore for possible motion picture roles. Since she could do her radio programs as easily on the West Coast as the East, she moved to California and began a new side to her multifaceted career. Because the war dominated all aspects of American life, the movie industry had, by 1943, shifted into high gear as far as the production of films designed to raise public morale. Warner Bros., a leading studio, decided to create a filmed revue that would showcase its stable of stars and demonstrate its patriotism. Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943) did just that, giving more than two dozen Warner Bros. players some screen time. Although not under contract to the studio, Shore, by virtue of her growing celebrity, also appears in this, her movie debut. She sings three songs written by the team of Arthur Schwartz (1900–1984) and Frank Loesser (1910–1969): “How Sweet You Are,” “Thank Your Lucky Stars,” and “The Dreamer” (all 1943). Both she and the movie received good reviews, and other offers followed. Follow the Boys (1944), a picture similar to Thank Your Lucky Stars, parades many of the actors associated with Universal Studios. Both of these pictures salute the efforts of the USO (United Service Organizations) to bring top entertainment to U.S. troops. Shore, in fact, would later receive a USO Medallion Award for her visits to soldiers on the front lines. In the movie, she performs the standard “I’ll Get By” (1928) and a new tune, “I’ll Walk Alone.” Again, both she and the film received a warm reception. That same year, she appeared in her first acting role by costarring in Up in Arms with comedian Danny Kaye (1913–1987). A farcical musical set in the wartime present, Shore plays an army nurse. In the course of the plot, she sings two songs penned by Harold Arlen (1905–1986) and Ted Koehler (1894–1973), “Tess’s Torch Song” and “Now I Know.” The latter garnered an Academy Award nomination for best song but lost out to “Swingin’ on a Star,” another fine composition from the 1940s. With the success of Up in Arms, she soon appeared in another picture, this time a kind of hybrid Western-musical-comedy called Belle of the Yukon, which came out at the very beginning of 1945. With a miscast Randolph Scott (1898–1987) and burlesque queen Gypsy Rose Lee (1911–1970) in the leads, Shore plays second fiddle. But she gets to sing two good songs by Jimmy Van Huesen (1913–1990) and Johnny Burke (1908–1964), “Like Someone in Love” and “Sleighride in July.” As was the case with “Now I Know,” “Sleighride in July” received an Academy Award nomination for best song, losing to “It Might as Well Be Spring.”


Sinatra, Frank | 631 Following that flurry of moviemaking, Shore did no more feature films for the remainder of the decade, aside from occasionally appearing on screen (as herself) for a guest number or undertaking some voiceovers for a few animated shorts. Instead, she married Western actor George Montgomery (1916–2000) in 1943 and returned to her recording and radio interests. She headlined a variety program on NBC called The Ford Show during the 1946– 1947 season. From that, she went to Call for Music in 1948, where she shared microphones with composer-lyricist Johnny Mercer (1909–1976) and trumpeter-bandleader Harry James (1916–1983). Philip Morris cigarettes, with its distinctive advertising of “Call for Philip Morris!” sponsored the production. She also did a brief show for Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer that lasted into 1949. Like virtually everyone else in show business, Shore knew the days for variety programming on radio were numbered, and she began to look to television as a new medium on which to practice her talents. In the fall of 1951, The Dinah Shore Show made its debut on NBC-TV. After that, she never looked back. Shore became permanently entrenched in television, seldom off the small screen for the next 30-odd years. But that success came from her wide range of experience, especially radio and recordings. One of the most popular vocalists of the decade, Dinah Shore excelled in all her endeavors, yet always exuded an air of casualness and small-town sincerity. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Broadway Shows (Musicals); Canteens; Movies; Musicals (Film); Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows); Songwriters and Lyricists Selected Reading Cassiday, Bruce. Dinah! A Biography of Dinah Shore. New York: Franklin Watts, 1979. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

SINATRA, FRANK Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in an Italian working-class neighborhood, Francis Albert Sinatra (1915–1998) eventually became the leading male vocalist in American popular music of the postwar era. His extraordinary career began in the last years of the 1930s, but much of his fame and fortune occurred after 1950. Sinatra rocketed to early prominence with the big bands, went through a flat period in the later 1940s, and then rebounded in the second half of the 20th century, emerging as a multitalented entertainer and one of the biggest names in show business. An avid student of the vocalist’s art, during his later teenage years he listened to the radio broadcasts and recordings made by many singers, especially Bing Crosby (1903–1977) and Billie Holiday (1915–1959). This exposure encouraged Sinatra to emulate breathing and stylistic techniques, but he avoided outright imitation. Possessed of a tenor voice as an adolescent, it would later mature into the baritone range. Thus equipped, he focused on pursuing a career in music and dropped out of high school at age 15.


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His skinny good looks and obvious talent got him bookings in small New Jersey nightclubs during the later 1930s. Although his voice remained somewhat high, Sinatra demonstrated an ability to phrase his words with the music played by the band behind him, and on romantic ballads he seemingly caressed the lyrics, creating an intimacy between him and the listener. The crooners of the early 1930s—Rudy Vallee (1901–1986), Russ Columbo (1908–1934), and, of course, Crosby—had also exploited this gift of creating a romantic atmosphere within the confines of a three-minute popular song, the average playing time of most 78-rpm records then manufactured. One of several breaks came for Sinatra in 1935, when he and three friends, Rivaled only by Bing Crosby during the 1940s, Frank Sinatra became one of the great entercalling themselves the Hoboken Four, tainers of the 20th century. In this picture, entered a radio talent contest. The Orig- taken early in the decade, a young Sinatra inal Amateur Hour, a popular program holds sheet music of tunes he recorded and of the day, had premiered in New York perhaps muses about his phenomenal success. City in 1934; it offered a showcase for (Photofest) untried, nonprofessional singers, musicians, actors, comedians, tap dancers, mimics, and so on to be heard by a large audience. The NBC (National Broadcasting Company) radio network had picked it up for national distribution in 1935, and it quickly became one of the most popular shows on the air. The Original Amateur Hour featured Major Edward Bowes (1874–1946), a genial, easygoing man, as host for the proceedings on stage. Thousands of optimistic people, young and old, flocked to New York for auditions to appear on the enormously successful program. Hopes sprang eternal in those Depression-era years, and Sinatra and his buddies gave a rendition of Cole Porter’s (1891–1964) “Night and Day” (1932), a song destined to be a regular part of his future repertoire. Only a tiny percentage of winners ever advanced much beyond their brief moments on the program, but the Hoboken Four proved to be one of the lucky acts. The victory put the quartet on the road under the auspices of Bowes and his producers, but Sinatra soon tired of the routine, quit, and returned to New Jersey. Soon thereafter, he branched out on his own. While scrabbling for jobs from the mid-1930s on, Sinatra had landed a waiter’s position at the Rustic Cabin, a well-known Englewood, New Jersey, roadhouse. Close to New York City, the establishment boasted radio remotes of its performers, allowing listeners beyond its confines to enjoy them. In 1938, the club promoted Sinatra to singing waiter, and thanks to this technology, numerous people heard Sinatra’s interpretations of popular songs. He also sang on


Sinatra, Frank | 633 several 15-minute shows broadcast by local New York stations. In the spring of 1939, Harry James (1916–1983), a virtuoso trumpeter and leader of a newly formed swing orchestra, caught one of the young waiter’s broadcasts and soon thereafter offered him a contract to perform with his band. As was the custom with many bands in the late 1930s, James had a vocal group, the Music Makers, as part of his orchestra. Sinatra joined the aggregation in mid-1939 and took the role of lead singer. Within a short time, the James band cut its first recordings for the Columbia label, and Sinatra had the vocal honors on two sides, “From the Bottom of My Heart” and “Melancholy Mood.” With the Swing Era in full flower at the time, the records enjoyed respectable sales but nothing sensational. He and the James band also recorded, along with a number of other titles, “All or Nothing at All” in 1939, but it too did little at the time. After Sinatra had emerged as a full-fledged star several years later, Columbia re-released the tune in 1943 and it became an enormous hit, a song that would be long associated with him. Despite a close friendship with Harry James, Sinatra felt compelled to leave the orchestra when trombonist Tommy Dorsey (1905–1956), leader of another top-flight swing ensemble, offered him a substantial raise at the end of 1939. This new association would mean great things for the vocalist. Expert arrangements, fine musicians, and a chance to sing some of the best tunes of the day made everything jell, and in the first months of 1940, Frank Sinatra found himself one of the hottest properties in the country. Just as Harry James had featured the Music Makers with his band, Dorsey had a vocal group called the Pied Pipers, a quartet that featured the fine voice of Jo Stafford (1917–2008). When Dorsey hired Sinatra, he promptly made him a member of the Pied Pipers. One of his first RCA Victor (Bluebird) recording sessions with Dorsey, conducted in May 1940, included “I’ll Never Smile Again,” a lush ballad that suited Sinatra’s romantic style well. It rapidly climbed the charts to the No. 3 position, his first bona fide hit. In time, many more top-ranked tunes would come from Sinatra, but “I’ll Never Smile Again” signaled the real beginning of his lengthy professional career. The overnight popularity achieved by Sinatra presaged a groundswell of change that would alter the face of popular music as the 1940s progressed. Vocalists, men and women, and vocal groups as well had begun to upstage the bands. The instrumentals remained important, but audiences expected singers to take center stage. In time, they would begin to front many of the bands and often received top billing on marquees and record labels. Sinatra’s skill at intonation gave any ballad an intimate quality, a talent that would make him a rival to Bing Crosby, at the time the leading singer in popular music. During his tenure with Dorsey, Sinatra also demonstrated that he could go beyond just crooning romantic ballads. He performed a moderately up-tempo rendition of “Oh! Look at Me Now” in 1941 that did well on the charts, as well as a popular rendition of “Dolores.” With “This Love of Mine” (1941), the vocalist both wrote the lyrics and sang them, suggesting his talents exceeded merely standing in front of a microphone. As the table below suggests, his many fans nevertheless preferred the slower love songs during the early, formative period of his career. By December 1942, audiences, especially teenage girls, could not get enough of “that skinny kid from Hoboken,” and managers booked him at New York’s Paramount


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Top-Rated Songs Performed by Frank Sinatra, 1940–1949

Year

Song

1940

“I’ll Never Smile Again” “We Three, My Echo, My Shadow, and Me”

with Tommy Dorsey Orchestra with Tommy Dorsey Orchestra

1941

“Oh! Look At Me Now” “This Love of Mine” “Do I Worry?”

with Tommy Dorsey and Connie Haines with Tommy Dorsey Orchestra with Tommy Dorsey Orchestra

1942

“Just As though You Were Here” “Take Me”

with Tommy Dorsey Orchestra with Tommy Dorsey Orchestra

1943

“There Are Such Things” “In the Blue of Evening” “You’ll Never Know” “All or Nothing at All”

with Tommy Dorsey Orchestra with Tommy Dorsey Orchestra with Bobby Tucker Singers with Harry James Orchestra (originally recorded in 1939) with Tommy Dorsey Orchestra a cappella choral arrangement with Tommy Dorsey Orchestra

“It Started All Over Again” “People Will Say We’re in Love” “It’s Always You”

Notes

1944

“I Couldn’t Sleep a Wink Last Night” “I’ll Be Seeing You”

a cappella choral arrangement with Tommy Dorsey Orchestra (originally recorded in 1940)

1945

“Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week)” (originally recorded in 1940)

with Axel Stordahl Orchestra

1946

“Oh! What It Seemed to Be” “Five Minutes More” “They Say It’s Wonderful”

with Axel Stordahl Orchestra with Axel Stordahl Orchestra with Axel Stordahl Orchestra

1947

“Mam’selle”

with Axel Stordahl Orchestra

1948

no songs charted

1949

no songs charted

Theater. Bobby-soxers, as many called them, made Sinatra their new musical rage, and their screams and swoons when he came on stage foreshadowed the later reactions of adolescents toward celebrities like Elvis Presley (1935–1977) and the Beatles. Police had to be summoned to maintain order with the huge crowds anxious to get a glimpse of “the sultan of swoon.” When he made a return engagement at the Paramount in the fall of 1944, some 25,000 screaming teens awaited him. Riding the crest of his blossoming career, Sinatra left Tommy Dorsey in 1943 and moved to a solo contract with Columbia Records. Arranger-conductor Axel Stordahl (1913–1963), a long-time associate, became his musical director. Whereas the Dorsey band featured the usual assortment of reeds and horns, Stordahl favored arrangements that utilized string sections and choral groups. The AFM (American Federation of Musicians) recording ban ran from 1942 to 1944 and took place at the time Sinatra moved to Columbia, with the result he cut some of his first sides a cappella, usually with a chorus behind him. The AFM fortunately did not include vocalists in its restric-


Sinatra, Frank | 635 tions. The arrangements Sinatra used effectively hide the absence of instrumentalists, surprising many listeners that he lacks traditional musical accompaniment. By the end of 1943, the ban had lost much of its force, and nine months later terms had been reached with all the major record producers. Sinatra returned to the recording studio with a full orchestra in attendance and Stordahl arrangements in hand. But by that time, however, the Swing Era had peaked, and new trends in American popular music were replacing the Tin Pan Alley standards of the 1930s and early 1940s. The remainder of the decade would be difficult for Sinatra in terms of recording hit tunes. Despite this setback, and unknown to anyone at the time, the period of Sinatra’s greatest musical acclaim still lay ahead in the 1950s and beyond. During his early career, Sinatra could frequently be heard on network radio. Songs by Sinatra, which aired on CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) stations from 1942 to 1947, usually in 15-minute or half-hour segments sponsored by Old Gold cigarettes, reminded listeners of his records. Rival NBC landed him for Light-Up Time, a similar show sponsored by Lucky Strike cigarettes, which ran from 1949 until 1950. In addition, Sinatra performed both as a soloist and a regular member of the vocal ensemble on Your Hit Parade during 1943–1945 (CBS) and 1947–1949 (NBC), a long-time radio favorite on Saturday nights. He could be heard singing anything from a serious love song to the latest novelty number. But as he slipped in the music charts during the later 1940s, Sinatra cultivated new areas for his talents. Just as Bing Crosby had discovered the lure of Hollywood, Sinatra likewise found the movies appealing. In 1941 and 1942, he had appeared in two music shorts with Tommy Dorsey and his aggregation, but received no on-screen credits; he simply fills the role of anonymous band vocalist. The next year, 1943, he made his debut as an actor in Higher and Higher, a lightweight, nondescript musical. Aside from singing “I Couldn’t Sleep a Wink Last Night,” Sinatra basically shows himself to be a rather wooden newcomer to motion pictures. Similarly, the bland Step Lively, a musical remake of the Marx Brothers’ 1938 Room Service, hardly improves on the original. In 1945, however, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) gave Sinatra a better, more challenging role. The studio teamed him with dancer Gene Kelly (1912–1996) and singer-actress Kathryn Grayson (b. 1922) in Anchors Aweigh, a bouncy musical about two sailors on leave. Thanks to some technological wizardry, Kelly dances with Jerry Mouse, the costar of the many Tom and Jerry cartoons. Sinatra croons “I Fall in Love Too Easily,” one of several songs that allowed the picture to win an Academy Award for best score. His acting also shows considerable improvement. MGM pulled out all the stops in 1946 with Till the Clouds Roll By, a fictionalized biography of famed, recently deceased composer Jerome Kern (1885–1945). Practically all of the musical stars from the mammoth studio can be glimpsed at one time or another in this overblown film. Sinatra has virtually no screen time, appearing toward the very end performing in a finale spectacular. He sings Kern’s “Ol’ Man River,” hardly the best choice for his more intimate singing style, but he gives it his best. It Happened in Brooklyn (1947) continued Sinatra’s streak of tepid musicals. Kathryn Grayson reappears, and veteran vaudevillian Jimmy Durante (1893–1980) has a good supporting role. In the picture, Sinatra sings “Time After Time,” destined to be


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one of his signature songs, and he and Grayson even perform some operatic numbers—in Italian—but the sentimentality of the plot never allows the picture to rise above mediocrity. A different studio, RKO Radio Pictures, saddled Sinatra with the part of a priest in The Miracle of the Bells (1948). Bing Crosby could do these roles well, but this kind of casting hardly fit Sinatra’s image. Costarring Valli (Alida Valli, 1921–2006), a popular Italian actress who made only a few American movies, the contrived plot about a supposed miracle may have played successfully in the immediate postwar years but has not aged well, although everyone remains serious and spiritual throughout. A better picture, but only marginally, follows The Miracle of the Bells. Titled The Kissing Bandit (1948), it has Sinatra playing the son of a bandit whose trademark involved kissing his victims. Not much of a vehicle for anyone in the film, but it kept him in front of movie cameras. The following year, Sinatra found his stride again, thanks to better screenplays and direction. He appears first in Take Me Out to the Ball Game, another MGM musical production that teams him with Gene Kelly again. Esther Williams, best known for her aquatic skills, costars, and the studio even finds an opportunity to dress her in a bathing suit beside a hotel pool. A sprightly plot keeps things going, and the movie served as a prelude to Sinatra’s best cinematic effort of the 1940s, On the Town (1949). Based on Fancy Free, a famed 1944 ballet with music by Leonard Bernstein (1918– 1990) and choreography by Jerome Robbins (1918–1998), the production moved first to Broadway in 1949 as On the Town. Its film adaptation came that same year, with Sinatra and Gene Kelly (their third pairing), along with Vera-Ellen (1921–1981), Ann Miller (1923–2004), Jules Munshin (1915–1970), and a fine supporting cast. Another tale of sailors on the town, the picture shows that Sinatra continued to polish his acting and had mastered some modest dancing skills to add to his resume. Although he appeared in nine motion pictures in a span of seven years during the 1940s, only three of them—Anchors Aweigh, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and On the Town—have endured reasonably well. But that wealth of experience prepared him for meatier roles in the 1950s, especially more dramatic, nonsinging parts. In 1953, he won an Academy Award for best supporting actor with his performance in From Here to Eternity as a young soldier in Hawaii at the dawn of World War II. In all, Frank TABLE 92.

Frank Sinatra Feature Films, 1940–1949

Year

Title

1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948

Higher and Higher Step Lively Anchors Aweigh Till the Clouds Roll By It Happened in Brooklyn The Miracle of the Bells The Kissing Bandit Take Me Out to the Ball Game On the Town

1949

Notes Song: “I Couldn’t Sleep a Wink Last Night” with Gene Kelly, Kathryn Grayson MGM studio spectacular with Kathryn Grayson; song: “Time After Time” with Valli with Gene Kelly, Esther Williams with Gene Kelly, Jules Munshin


Skating (Figure) | 637 Sinatra appeared in over 60 films in just about every genre, an acting career that lasted into the 1980s. While he made movies, Sinatra also continued to sing. In 1953, and in light of declining sales, Columbia Records did not renew his contract. Sinatra proceeded to sign with Capitol, and there he established a close working relationship with arranger Nelson Riddle (1921–1985). The two created a series of singles and albums in the 1950s and 1960s that dramatically turned his sagging musical career around and provided one hit after another. He also branched out into television, both as frequent guest and host of his own shows in 1950 to 1951 and 1957 to 1958. From a boyish band singer in the 1930s, Frank Sinatra in the latter half of the 20th century became one of the most successful entertainers ever. He eclipsed Bing Crosby, becoming Ol’ Blue Eyes, The Voice, the Chairman of the Board, leader of the Rat Pack—familiar nicknames for the vocalist who reinvented himself. The foundation for all this later acclaim, however, had been established in the 1940s, when he commenced a phenomenal show business career that other entertainers could only envy. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Broadway Shows (Musicals); Dance; Fads; Fashion; Jazz; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Songwriters and Lyricists; Swimming and Water Skiing Selected Reading Freedland, Michael. All the Way: A Biography of Frank Sinatra. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Mustazza, Leonard. Frank Sinatra and Popular Culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. ———. Ol’ Blue Eyes: A Frank Sinatra Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. O’Brien, Ed, and Scott Savers. Sinatra: The Man and His Music: The Recording Artistry of Francis Albert Sinatra, 1939–1992. Austin, TX: TSD Press, 1992.

SKATING (FIGURE) Ice skating, a pleasant cold-weather activity requiring the wearing of strap-on runners or boots with metal blades in order to glide on ice, has for centuries provided a welcomed outdoor diversion for children and adults. City parks in cold northern communities in the United States usually feature a frozen pond or lake for such purposes, and evenings find families skating or roasting marshmallows on nearby camp fires. For example, even before the 1870 completion of Central Park in New York City, a skating pond opened, quickly became a top attraction, and continues so today. In 1936, skating enthusiasts were provided a second spot for their sport, this time a man-made outdoor rink at Rockefeller Center. Advances in mechanical means of freezing and maintaining ice allowed for this installation at that time. Since its completion, the rink has drawn overflow crowds almost daily. Skating arrived in North America from Europe in the mid-1700s; as it gained in popularity, many skaters became frustrated with just going in circles around the ice. Trial and error led to alterations to the blade that enabled skaters to break out of a circle and make elaborate figure eights and other geometric or grapevine designs. Some began to focus on cutting certain figures with an emphasis on doing it “properly.”


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Private skating clubs and associations were organized and many built rinks. These groups established standards and rules, provided teachers and coaches, and conducted competitions. By 1892, several European countries had organized the International Skating Union (ISU). The U.S. Figure Skating Association, formed in 1921 (and today known as U.S. Figure Skating), has been a member of ISU since 1923. Under its auspices, world figure skating championships have been held annually since 1896, except during the two world wars and in 1961 after a plane crash killed the entire U.S. team. The years 1944 and 1945 saw the U.S. Figure Skating Championships put on hold after enlistments and the draft sent many of the male skaters off to war. Female skaters and adolescents of both sexes continued to compete, and various ice-show companies held events in major cities. Some groups, in a spirit of patriotism, designated at least one performance per season in honor of service personnel. For example, on November 30, 1942, a show called the Ice Follies opened all the seats at Madison Square Garden to those in uniform at no charge. European and U.S. ice skating competitions produced celebrities. One, Sonja Henie (1912–1969), a native of Norway, emerged as one of the most famous skaters in the world. She placed first in the world singles championship contests for 10 straight years starting in 1927 and received gold medals for singles skating in the 1928, 1932, and 1936 Olympic Games. She moved to Los Angeles in 1936, and by 1940 had easily advanced from success in competitive skating to a lucrative career as a movie star, organizer, and principal performer in her own traveling ice shows and revues. She skated in 12 movies, all light comedies advertised as “musical icetravaganzas,” including Sun Valley Serenade (1941), Iceland (1942), Wintertime (1943), It’s a Pleasure (1945), and The Countess of Monte Cristo (1949). On the road, the “Hollywood Ice Revue,” which starred Henie, toured the United States and drew large crowds. Its January 16, 1940, show at Madison Square Garden in New York City attracted an audience of 16,500, the largest reception the city had ever accorded her. When in New York, Henie did not limit her skating to Madison Square Garden. The Center Theater, located near Rockefeller Center, originally opened in 1932 as a movie theater. It was soon overshadowed by Radio City Music Hall and underwent renovations to accommodate musical ice shows. It reopened in October 1940 as an ice theater with the presentation of a Sonja Henie production, It Happens on Ice (1940–1942). In collaboration with arena owner and sports promoter Arthur Wirtz (1901–1983), Sonja Henie provided similar shows at the Center Theater throughout the 1940s. They included Stars on Ice (1942–1944), Hats Off to Ice (1944–1946), Icetime (1946–1947), and Howdy, Mr. Ice (1948–1949); each attracted millions of patrons during their runs. Young girls credited Henie for kindling in them an interest in skating. One, Mabel Fairbanks (1916–2001), a black woman from New York City, reported that seeing Sonja Henie in a movie in 1938 convinced her that she wanted to be a skater. But Fairbanks encountered major obstacles because of her race; most importantly, she could not join a skating club, the source of both training and entry into competitive events. Maribel Vinson Owen (1911–1961), U.S. Figure Skating title holder in the 1920s and 1930s, learned of Fairbanks’ desire to skate and secretly coached her. That gesture, however, did not solve the competition issue. In order to skate, Fairbanks then attempted to join ice companies, but she again encountered discrimination. She therefore


Skating (Figure) | 639 decided to form her own show. She moved to Los Angeles and, during the 1940s, performed at nightclubs such as Ciros and other local venues. She eventually became a coach, giving free lessons to those too poor to pay. In the context of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Mabel Fairbanks helped to open doors for blacks to become professional skaters. Other women skaters made their way to the West Coast to be in movies in the early 1940s. Gladys Lyne Jepson-Turner (1923–2005), skater, dancer, and swimmer, came to the United States from England in the late 1930s. She toured with the Ice Capades in 1940 and became known as Belita, the Ice Maiden. She had a minor appearance in the movie Ice-Capades (1941), moved on to a more prominent spot in Silver Skates (1943), and achieved top billing in Lady, Let’s Dance (1944). Hoping to maintain a postwar acting career, she accepted a role in a film noir production titled Suspense (1946), which combined skating with a serious plot. For the remainder of her movie career, which extended into the 1950s, she abandoned skating pieces for dramatic vehicles. Republic pictures, in hopes of competing with Twentieth-Century Fox’s successful Sonja Henie movies, brought the modestly successful Vera Helena Hruba (1921–2003) from Prague, Czechoslovakia, to Hollywood to star in Ice-Capades and Ice-Capades Revue (1942). Not satisfied with the outcome, the studio changed Hruba’s surname to the easily pronounced, Ralston, taken from the name of a popular breakfast cereal, and cast her in more serious roles. These performances, however, proved difficult because of Vera Ralston’s limited English and heavy accent. Not all successful skaters journeyed to Hollywood. Some achieved fame just with their skating. Richard “Dick” Button (b. 1929), when only 14 years old, placed second in his first competition and quickly developed an enviable amateur record. From 1946 to 1952, he reigned as the U.S. men’s champion. He became the first American to win the men’s world figure skating championship in 1947 at age 18. In 1949, he received the James E. Sullivan Memorial Award given annually to the most outstanding amateur athlete, and in 1948 and 1952 he added back-to-back Olympic gold metals to his accomplishments. In addition to his status as champion, Button became famous as the first skater to perform two figure skating executions called a double axel and a flying camel. He briefly toured with Ice Capades and Holiday on Ice; since 1962, Button has worked as an expert commentator on figure skating for ABC’s (American Broadcasting Company) Wide World of Sports. Gretchen Merrill (1925–1965) won six U.S. National Championships in the period 1943 to 1949, and in 1947, at the first World and European Championships held after World War II, took home, respectively, silver and bronze medals. During the war, she frequently performed for military personnel. Eugene Turner (b. 1921) placed first in the 1940 and 1941 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. His 1943 enlistment in the U.S. Army Air Force interrupted his career; after the war, he became a coach and skated professionally as a partner with Sonja Henie. Robert Specht (1921–1999), with partner Joan Mitchell (1926–1992), placed third in the U.S. pairs figure skating competition in 1941 and captured first in the men’s single competition the following year. After serving in the air force during World War II, he skated for many years with Ice Capades.


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For those who retired from competition but wanted to continue to skate, ice shows offered several possibilities. One, known as the Ice Follies, founded by the Shipstad brothers, Eddie (1907–1998) and Roy (1911–1975), and Oscar Johnson (ca. 1900s– 1960s), gave its first performance in 1936 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The show combined figure skating and theater and featured the Ice Folliettes, chorus girls who executed a kick line and other skating productions with complete precision and elaborate props. The Ice Follies offered a popular comic ice skating duo with the stage names Frick and Frack. Frick, Werner Groebli (1915–2008), and Frack, Hans Mauch (1919–1979), came to the United States from Switzerland in 1938, having established some of their antics in performances in London. Their slapstick routines with mock collisions and blade-close misses caused Life magazine to call them the “Clown Kings of the Ice.” Their stage names became a slang expression meaning two people who are closely linked in some way. The entire Ice Follies troupe, along with Frick and Frack, appeared in a 1939 movie titled The Ice Follies of 1939 starring Joan Crawford (1905–1977), James Stewart (1908–1997), and Lew Ayres (1908–1996). The movie turned out to be a flop, but Frick and Frack went on to more successful Hollywood films, including Silver Skates (1943) and Lady, Let’s Dance (1944). The immediate success of the Ice Follies, despite one failed Hollywood movie, inspired other entrepreneurs to follow suit. In 1940, John H. Harris (active 1940s), the owner of a skating rink in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, noticed that his hockey crowds swelled when he booked a figure skater to perform between game periods. Borrowing from vaudeville, he hired skaters, comedians, clowns, jugglers, barrel jumpers, and scantily clad showgirls as a part of the extravaganza. The performance usually began with an Olympic skater recently turned professional gliding out onto the ice for a dramatic interpretation of a classical piece of music. This would be followed by beautiful women Harris dubbed the Ice Ca-pets. An immediate success, the show became known as the Ice Capades and moved from a hockey game interlude to a touring show in direct competition with the Ice Follies and Sonja Henie productions. The Ice Capades added a new twist with the introduction of operettas and musicals to the ice show format. Holiday on Ice joined the ranks in 1943 and over the years employed skaters who were not particularly well-known. Each year the program had a different theme, such as “Winter Carnival” or “Candyland,” and always included a traditional element of a spinning wheel in which the skaters link arms with each other, one by one, and in the process lengthen the spokes, which spin around a center point. Although Holiday on Ice originated in the United States, since 1970 it has toured only in Europe and Latin America. The January 1940 cover of Child Life magazine features a young boy and girl decked out in warm clothing, scarves, gloves, and new skates. With smiles on their faces, they gleefully glide along while being chased by a sliding dog. A line of other young skaters can be seen in the background. Throughout the decade, Life magazine offered elaborate layouts about the best-known ice figure skaters, all giving testimony to the popularity of activities on ice. Sonja Henie and Dick Button, perhaps two of the greatest figure skaters of all time, contributed to the growing interest in skating, as did the various show companies formed during the 1940s, and the four U.S. hockey teams.


Skating (Roller) | 641 See also: Classical Music; Dance; Fashion; Leisure and Recreation; Magazines; Race Relations and Stereotyping; Technology Selected Reading Copley-Graves, Lynn. Figure Skating History: The Evolution of Dance on Ice. Columbus, Ohio: Platoro Press, 1992. Whedon, Julia. The Fine Art of Ice Skating: An Illustrated History and Portfolio of Stars. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988.

SKATING (ROLLER) Two varieties of roller skates—traditional four-wheel, or quad, and in-line—have constituted most of the history of this recreational and sporting footwear. Quad roller skates with wooden or composite wheels, a Dutch invention, have been around for many years. They usually consist of a metal frame clamped and locked to the soles of a pair of shoes with a special key. This variety can also be purchased as a pair of boots permanently attached to skate frames. Both kinds of quad skates have four wheels, arranged in a manner similar to the tires of a car. In 1863, James Leonard Plimpton (1828–1911), a New England businessman, improved on earlier inventions by creating a safer model that allowed the wearer to steer by simply leaning to the left or right. Toe stops made their debut in 1876. By the late 19th century, ball bearings allowed the wheels to rotate smoothly, greatly improving the ride. In-line skates, often called Rollerblades after the current popular trade name, also date back to the 1800s. They, too, have a toe stop and can have anywhere from two to five wheels arranged in a single line. This skate lost favor shortly after its invention but experienced a rediscovery in 1980 because of an interest by hockey players and skiers for a way to continue training out of season. Traveling on smooth terrain on either kind of roller skate can be a form of recreation, a means of transportation, or a competitive sport. Following Plimpton’s invention, roller skating initially served as a popular pastime for men and women. Children and teenagers immediately joined the ranks of skaters, and in 1937 a group of skating rink owners formed the Roller Skating Rink Operators Association (RSROA), later known as the Roller Skating Association. Many skating rinks provided weather-protected space with live organ music and soda fountains. RSROA’s promotional efforts included sponsoring amateur competitions; Cincinnati, Ohio, hosted the first one in 1938. The following year, Detroit served as the location for national figure roller skating championships, while Mineola, New York, sponsored dance roller skating contests. Together, these two forms of roller skating are often referred to as artistic skating. In 1940, RSROA brought figure and dance skating championships, along with speed as a third element, into one event held in Cleveland, Ohio. Almost 500 enthusiasts attended. Various popular culture outlets began advancing roller skating during the 1930s, efforts that broadened the ranks of skaters during that time. For example, Hollywood released two shorts—Around the Equator on Roller Skates (1932, Universal Pictures) and Eddie Duchin and Orchestra (1933, Warner Bros.). In the latter, which takes


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place in a nightclub, the staff and orchestra wear roller skates. Paramount countered in 1938 with a cartoon, A Date To Skate, which has Popeye taking his girlfriend Olive Oyl roller skating. Children’s novelist Ruth Sawyer (1880–1970) contributed a book, Roller Blades, in 1936, which tells of the life of Lucinda Wyman in the 1890s, a girl who enjoys skating around New York City. RSROA, wanting to capitalize on the interest shown in their competitions, repeated the 1940 program the following year and attracted twice as many participants. That same year, a roller skating short from Universal Pictures, In the Groove, included a roller skating vaudeville team known as the Lightning Trio. From this success, roller skating hit it big in 1942, when Paramount Pictures produced My Favorite Blonde. The movie stars Bob Hope (1903–2003); the popular comedian skates with Percy, his remarkable roller skating penguin partner. The Chicago Roller Skate Company, founded in 1905, and the largest roller skate manufacturer throughout most of the 20th century, featured a variety of skates, including its Betty Lytle Shoe Skates. Betty Lytle (active 1940s) had attained celebrity status in the world of roller skating, and many rinks offered membership in the Betty Lytle Dance and Figure Club. Newspapers decided that roller skating had attained enough popularity to serve as a way to increase readership. In 1940, the New York Journal-American initiated a twice-a-week column devoted to roller skating. Magazines also covered the activity. Throughout the decade, Life magazine regularly ran features with pictures of children skating on neighborhood sidewalks, as well as dads and their daughters, mothers and their sons, individuals, and couples at indoor rinks. The photographs tell the story of roller skating, showing people of all ages arriving at the rink and changing into skates, tentatively moving out onto the floor, falling and being assisted by attendants, smiling as they later successfully circle the rink, and finally relaxing at the refreshment stand. World War II affected everyday life in the United States in a number of ways, most noticeably with the advent of rationing. In mid-1942, production of most toys requiring quantities of steel and rubber in their manufacture ceased—a restriction that created a time of no more new metal items, including roller and ice skates. For kids who had usable skates and time to play after school and before dinner, gas rationing proved advantageous, because less traffic permitted safer skating on city streets. Rationing also necessitated that adults park their automobiles and use other means of transportation to get places. For short distances, roller skates became an option. Officials gave recreation a high priority for military personnel throughout the war, and, when possible, bases included roller skating areas. During and after World War II, recreation facilities competed for patrons looking for ways to enjoy life. Skating rink owners developed promotional gimmicks such as special days for various groups, contests, and free days for servicemen and -women. Some rinks provided instructors to assist anyone who had lost a leg or had been otherwise injured in combat. The personnel at city parks advertised skating as something good for children to do; others held roller skating pageants to raise money for charities such as the March of Dimes. Interest grew and necessitated the building of additional rinks. Roller skating, in all its forms, had established itself as a healthy family activity, an identity that continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s.


Skiing | 643 See also: Advertising; Beverages; Leisure and Recreation; Photography; Skating (Figure); Skiing Selected Reading Brooks, Lou. Skate Crazy. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2003. Phillips, Ann-Victoria. The Complete Book of Roller Skating. New York: Workman Publishing, 1979.

SKIING This popular outdoor activity, once primarily a sport for the wealthy had, by the 1940s, attracted growing numbers of people from varied walks of life. Prior to the 1930s, climate and geography also limited skiing to those who lived in mountainous regions with snowy winters. Evidence of increasing interest can be gleaned from various aspects of everyday life at this time—a 1940’s die-cut paper toy of the comics’ Captain Marvel Jr. outfitted on skis; the December 1940 cover of Child Life magazine presenting a skiing Santa Claus; a 1941 Charles Addams (1912–1988) cartoon in The New Yorker magazine showing single ski tracks going around both sides of a tree; The Art of Skiing, a 1941 Walt Disney Goofy cartoon; the 1940/1941 Sears catalog selling women’s skiing outfits; and a February 1945 Life magazine cover and photo essay featuring ski clothes. Three events during the 1930s caught the attention of potential skiers and contributed to the sport’s mounting popularity: (1) the 1932 Winter Olympic Games, (2) the invention of chair and T-bar lifts, and (3) enterprising railroad ventures. The Olympics at Lake Placid, a small village deep in the Adirondacks of New York state, offered its snowy slopes, a ski jump, and speed skating facilities, a perfect setting for the games. A daily broadcast over the nationwide NBC (National Broadcasting Company) and CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) radio networks, as well as newsreel features on Movietone News, took these winter sports events, including skiing, to households across the country. Skiing requires determination and stamina, and, before the availability of mechanical assistance, many chose cross-country skiing over downhill; it was simply too difficult to get to the top of a slope for a decent run. Those who preferred alpine skiing had to contend with holding on to a rope tow; not an impossible task but not the most comfortable experience, either. Also, a coast down a mountainside on heavy and clumsy wooden skis could defeat the smoothness of the ride. The installation of the world’s first chair lift at Sun Valley, Idaho, in 1936, offered a welcome convenience for being carried to the top. As the 1930s drew to a close, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana also featured ski areas with chair lifts ready to accommodate an estimated 1 million skiers. Those enthusiasts, however, would have to wait until after World War II for lighter, better skis. Getting to a ski area could be as much of a problem as making it to the top of a slope. In Colorado and Utah, enterprising entrepreneurs occasionally used mining camp trains to carry skiers to high elevations; not necessarily fancy conveyances but a helpful means of transportation. In 1931, the East Coast Boston and Maine Railroad


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instituted 12 weekend ski train excursions to Franconia, New Hampshire, a step above the trains used in the West. Upon arrival at the ski area, the added touch of instruction at the modest Peckett’s Inn encouraged novice skiers to give the sport a try. The third and most ambitious undertaking of promoting skiing came from Union Pacific Railroad chairman, businessman, politician, and diplomat W. Averell Harriman (1891–1986). Recognizing Americans’ growing interest in winter sports, especially skiing, and also wanting to bring travelers back to hopping on a train instead of stepping into their cars, Harriman in 1936 led Union Pacific in building an elaborate ski resort with a 220-room lodge and private cottages, swimming pools, and ski runs with superb snow conditions at Sun Valley, Idaho. The plan also included a ski train to transport customers from distant metropolitan areas. Once at the resort, visitors were offered all the amenities of skiing along with outstanding dining and the best of entertainment. The resort closed to paying customers during World War II to serve as a convalescent facility for the U.S. Navy. It reopened to the public in December 1946, but one floor of one wing of the lodge remained a medical clinic until 1961. Once Sun Valley opened, Hollywood soon arrived. Stars came as guests and to entertain, and Twentieth Century-Fox validated this new winter wonderland and all of its activities with a musical comedy shot on location called Sun Valley Serenade (1941). The storyline involves the entertainment offered at the resort, including the staging of an ice show. The cast includes Norwegian-born figure skating champion Sonja Henie (1912–1969), popular swing bandleader Glenn Miller (1904–1944), and comedian Milton Berle (1908–2002). On a lighter side, but indicative of the growing interest in skiing among Americans during the 1940s, Paramount Pictures issued the animated I’ll Be Skiing Ya (1947), starring Popeye and his girlfriend Olive Oyl. Stories of skiing and ski areas at the local level, along with the latest information and newest tips, came from bulletins and newsletters published by ski clubs and associations under titles such as The Ski Bulletin, The National Ski Weekly, and Western Skier. In 1938, editor, publisher, and skier William T. Eldred (1913–1965) of Schenectady, New York, wrote numerous articles on skiing in his Empire State Ski News and by 1948 had acquired two West Coast periodicals, Western Skiing and Ski Illustrated. A merger of the three gave the country its first national ski magazine titled Ski. Unfortunately, along with the fun of skiing, accidents occur and, by 1938, Charles Minot “Minnie” Dole (1899–1976), with strong support from the National Ski Association president Roger Langley (1901–1976), organized a group in the Northeast to patrol runs and assist injured skiers. Called the National Ski Patrol, the volunteers functioned as a committee of the National Ski Association (founded 1905; today the United States Ski Association), and the idea quickly spread to other parts of the country. In November 1939, while most American skiers were on the slopes for pure enjoyment, Finnish ski-mounted soldiers carried out warfare in severe winter conditions. They glided through their native forests and fought the invading Soviet Union, a feat that caught the attention of Charles Dole. He, as did many other Americans, realized that the United States was preparing for the possibility of a global conflict. Dole sent letters to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) and General George Catlett Marshall (1880–1959) offering to recruit experienced skiers to help train U.S. troops in similar tactics on skis.


Skiing | 645 General Marshall bought Dole’s idea and secured a formal agreement with the National Ski Patrol to serve as an advisor to the War Department. Life magazine chronicled some of the activity in its January 20, 1941, issue with a cover picture and photo essay about an experimental army ski patrol. The activation of a complete unit dedicated to mountain warfare training first occurred in November 1941, at Fort Lewis, Washington. Men already in the army with skiing and mountaineering experience constituted its first members. Dole and fellow patrol members went to work seeking volunteers to serve in other units and brought some of the country’s most accomplished skiers and competent instructors into the 10th Mountain Division, activated on July 15, 1943. Prepared to fight and survive under the most hostile winter conditions, the unit saw action in Italy and the Alps. In 1945, ski periodicals predicted that the postwar years would bring the greatest influx of skiers that the United States had ever known, and indeed they did, creating a building boom of ski resorts led primarily by members of the 10th Division who had returned to civilian life to work as ski instructors, ski school directors, and Olympic and college coaches. Three, Friedl Pfeifer (1911–1995), Johnny Litchfield (b. 1917), and Percy Rideout (active 1930s–1950s), settled in Aspen, Colorado, and helped to usher in what would become a big-time ski industry for the state. In 1945, they launched the Friedl Pfeifer Ski School, reorganized as the Aspen Skiing Corporation in 1946, and installed two chair lifts. Aspen soon became a top-ranked American high-mountain resort. Next on the list for development and another 10th Mountain alumni project, Arapaho Basin, opened in 1946, under the leadership of Larry Jump (1913–1989) and Sandy Schauffler (active 1930s–1950s). At first, the basin catered to day skiers from the Denver area and initially used only a rope tow; Jump and Schauffler added two chair lifts for the 1948–1949 season. Finally, in the late 1950s, Peter Seibert (1924–2002), also from the 10th Mountain Division, started construction of Vail Ski Resort in Colorado, another prominent and successful undertaking. In 1948, the Olympic Games held at St. Moritz, Switzerland, offered downhill (or alpine) and slalom skiing (racing between poles placed close together) for the first time as separate events. Gretchen Fraser (1919–1994), the first American skier to receive Olympic medals in the sport, earned a gold in the slalom and a silver in downhill. Howard Head (1914–1991), an aircraft engineer, went skiing for the first time in 1947, and experienced much difficulty because of the heavy wooden skis. Because of his immediate love of the sport and frustration about the skis, he left his job and devoted all of his time to making a lighter ski. Concentrating on the use of aluminum and plywood, Head made several attempts to perfect his product. By the end of the winter of 1947, and after several trial runs made by pro skier Neil Robinson (active 1930s– 1960s), Head fashioned a ski as strong as a wooden one but half as heavy. In 1949, he started selling his Head standard ski, the first commercially successful aluminum ski on the market. Within a couple of years, the Head Ski Company, with its strong and easy-to-control skis, became a major supplier to enthusiasts far and wide. One final technological innovation from the General Electric Company pushed the number of skiers higher yet—an estimated three million in the United States by 1948. In the late 1940s, its research labs produced white artificial snow in a cold chamber, and,


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by 1952, machines for replicating this procedure appeared on the market. Grossinger’s resort in the Catskill Mountains of New York state, covered its slopes with manmade snow and led the industry by initiating early season skiing. Although skiing as a sport had flourished during the 1930s, it diminished some during World War II. Most skiing news centered on the U.S. ski troops, especially the 10th Mountain Division and its success in crippling several German divisions. During the postwar years, skiing, like all else in the United States, returned to normalcy, and those involved in the ski industry offered a number of improvements: lighter, more durable, and faster skis; synthetic materials to replace cotton and wool in ski clothing; and destination ski resorts such as Sun Valley, Idaho, and Aspen, Colorado. Skiing had definitely taken on a new glamour, and many Americans with extra dollars to spend responded favorably. See also: Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry; Comic Books; Comic Strips; Fashion; Leisure and Recreation; Magazines; Movies; Newspapers; Skating (Figure); Technology Selected Reading Berry, I. William. The Great North American Ski Book. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1982. Needham, Richard. Ski: Fifty Years in North America. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987.

SMITH, KATE A native of Greenville, Virginia, a small town near Staunton, Smith (born Kathryn Smith, 1907–1986) spent her early years in Washington, DC. While still a child, she sang for U.S. troops based in the capital area during World War I. In the mid-1920s, Smith broke into professional show business, appearing as a character named Tiny Little in a 1926 Broadway musical, Honeymoon Lane. Her strong contralto voice impressed producers, and she gained billing as a stage comedienne, subsequently appearing in Hit the Deck (1927–1928) and Flying High (1930). She also cut some recordings during this period, but they gained no notice. Through the efforts of a canny talent agent named Ted Collins (1900–1964), Smith in 1930 signed with Columbia Records, an important breakthrough for the young vocalist. Collins soon thereafter became her manager, a position he would hold until his death. In 1931, Smith released her first recorded hit, a contemporary tune called “River, Stay Away from My Door.” The success of this recording, along with Collins’s continuing astute direction, brought her to the studios of CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) and network radio, where she quickly achieved the rank of queen of the airwaves. Promoters billed her as “the songbird of the South,” a tag that stayed with her for the remainder of her long career. Her work with CBS commenced with Kate Smith Sings, a 15-minute show destined to survive under other titles and with shifting timeslots for many years. Although she already had one show under way, Smith added The Kate Smith Hour (also known as The Kate Smith A & P Bandwagon and The Kate Smith Show), a guest-filled variety offering in 1936; with time and schedule changes, it ran until 1947. That year, she switched to MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System) for a resumption of Kate Smith Sings; it ran through 1949 and had a brief revival in 1951.


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A popular recording artist and radio personality, Kate Smith stayed active throughout the 1940s. She is shown here singing Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” as part of her CBS radio show, The Kate Smith Hour (Photofest)

As if her musical shows did not suffice, in 1938 Smith introduced Speaking Her Mind and Kate Smith’s Column on CBS. Daytime talk shows filled with folksy wisdom and practical advice, they coalesced into Kate Smith Speaks the following year, continuing until 1947. Her talk format proved popular, and after her move to MBS, she continued the program; it stayed on the air until 1951. A deeply conservative woman, Smith espoused homespun American values, wholesomeness, and patriotism—themes that gave her a solid following over the years. A tireless stumper in drives for war bonds, Smith collected some $600 million (roughly $7.4 billion in 2008 dollars) for the Allied cause, making her one of the most successful fundraisers of all time. At one point, in September 1943, she gathered $39 million (roughly $485 million in 2008 dollars) in pledges during a marathon CBS radio broadcast that spanned 18 hours; no other individual had ever raised as much in a single attempt. Smith, like so many entertainers, eventually made the move to television. The Kate Smith Hour premiered on NBC in the fall of 1950. A late afternoon show, it did well enough that, one year later, the network gave her a prime-time show with The Kate Smith Evening Hour. Because she also kept her afternoon program, she had the


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distinction of having two series on television, plus her Kate Smith Sings and her talk programs on radio. After her TV shows ran their course, she remained a frequent guest on many variety shows, a testament to her continuing popularity. As a performer on radio, on television, and in live appearances, Smith opened her performances with a hearty “Hello, everybody!” and closed with a farewell “Thanks for listenin’.” In her early series, Kate Smith Sings, she introduced “When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain” in 1931. The song quickly became her signature piece and remained so until her death in 1986. Her extensive radio exposure led Smith to Hollywood; she broke into the movies with The Big Broadcast (1932), a picture that features the stars of radio. She appears in a cameo singing, of course, her radio theme, “When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain.” Smith then starred in a first-run feature called Hello, Everybody! Despite her presence, the film did poorly at the box office, and it finished Smith’s short-lived venture into motion pictures, at least for the 1930s. In 1943, she made a brief appearance in This Is the Army, another variety musical with a mix of film stars and celebrities. Based on composer Irving Berlin’s (1888–1989) stage production of the same name, it served as a patriotic flag-waver for the war years. In retrospect, Kate Smith’s early recording career, as far as hit singles go, fared little better than her film efforts. Not until 1940 and “The Woodpecker Song” (taken from the popular Woody Woodpecker cartoon series) did she next have a hit. A few charted songs followed in the 1940s—“I Don’t Want to Walk without You” (1942), “Seems Like Old Times” (1946), “Now Is the Hour” (1947), and others—and her numerous additional records and albums sold steadily and in sufficient quantities that producers displayed little reluctance to employ her, given her immense popularity on radio. In time, she recorded over 3,000 songs, many of them during World War II. She favored sincere ballads that touch on loneliness, separation, and a hope for better times ahead. One particular Kate Smith recording from the late 1930s merits attention for the 1940s. Some 20 years earlier, at the close of World I in 1918, Irving Berlin wrote a song he called “God Bless America” for an army camp show, Yip, Yip, Yaphank. Dropped from the final score, the tune languished in a trunk until Berlin exhumed it in 1938. He saw the ominous signs foretelling World War II and wanted to give the nation an unabashedly patriotic song for those dark days. His resurrected composition emerged as one of the most inspiring songs of the era. In addition, Berlin knew exactly who should perform it. Recognizing her considerable fame and talent, he granted Kate Smith exclusive rights to the words and music to “God Bless America,” and she introduced it to the nation on Armistice Day, November 11, 1938, by singing it on The Kate Smith Hour. Smith’s performance spurred an overwhelming audience response that soon made Berlin’s forgotten number into a virtual second, unofficial national anthem for the war years. Her powerful, optimistic rendition of his lyrics lifted people’s spirits whenever they heard it. She recorded “God Bless America,” along with “The Star-Spangled Banner,” in 1939 for RCA Victor, and the disk became an instant standard, played over and over again on stations everywhere. Both Smith and Berlin generously turned over any royalties they might receive to the Boy and Girl Scouts of America, a substantial gift, given the song’s reception (“The Star-Spangled Banner,” already in the public domain, accrued no royalties). Smith went on to perform Berlin’s composition countless times


Softball | 649 thereafter for bond drives and any other occasion that called for stirring people’s patriotic feelings, plus she made it a weekly staple on The Kate Smith Hour. Throughout the conflict, her rendition brought her the admiration of millions, and it not surprisingly turns out to be the song she performs in This Is the Army. By the end of the 1940s, Kate Smith found herself ranked among the most influential women of the era. Over the years, “the first lady of radio” had received numerous honors, her music and talk shows had audiences in the millions, and she had attained the status of a national treasure. World War II only served to burnish her reputation, and “God Bless America,” like “When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain” before it, would always be associated with her. When she died in 1986, her grave bore the inscription, “This Is Kate Smith—This Is America.” See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Broadway Shows (Musicals); Cartoons (Film); Musicals (Film); Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Songwriters and Lyricists Selected Reading Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Hayes, Richard K. Kate Smith: A Biography, with a Discography, Filmography, and List of Stage Appearances. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1995. Jones, John Bush. The Songs that Fought the War: Popular Music and the Home Front, 1939–1945. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2006. Smith, Kathleen E. R. God Bless America: Tin Pan Alley Goes to War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003.

SOFTBALL Two versions about the origin of softball in the United States exist, each giving different dates and places for the first game. Both report it being played some time in the 1880s, utilizing a gymnasium in the Midwest during inclement weather as an alternative to baseball. Players used a ball larger and softer than a regular baseball. Legend also has it that a Chicago fire department officer reinvented the game for outside play in 1895. Exactly wherever and whenever the sport began, it soon became an outdoor game and spread rapidly in the early years of the 20th century. It even served as a popular form of recreation for U.S. soldiers—or doughboys as many called them then— fighting in World War I. Something of a softball craze swept the United States following a single-elimination tournament held in conjunction with the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. Organized by sportswriter Leo Fischer (1897–1970) of the Chicago American and Chicago sporting goods salesman M. J. Pauley (active 1930s), the two advertised the event with stories written and submitted by Fischer to the wire services. Sixteen teams of men and eight for the women’s division came from around the country. By the end of the third and final day, more than 350,000 people had taken advantage of free admission, and softball had established a firm foundation as a sport for both players and spectators.


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Following Chicago’s lead, the 1939– 1940 New York World’s Fair offered all-women and all-men teams in competition. Officials alternated the play of games in the area of special events, and good-sized crowds showed up every Saturday and Sunday. Shortly after the closing of the fair, Columbia Pictures Corporation released a short feature titled Loveable Trouble (1941). The story revolves around a scheme to secure funds to finance a women’s softball team made up of chorus girls, an idea that did not succeed in the film, and the movie likewise did not do much to advance the sport. Its release, however, reflected growing interest in softball. Initially, teams in various regions of the country referred to the game with different names—kitten ball, mush ball, Jo Kennedy, the no-hit, no-run softball queen diamond ball, and indoor baseball. In from Fort Worth, Texas, winds up for a fireball in this 1944 shot. (AP Photo) those formative years, bats varied in length and balls came in many sizes. With the organization of the Amateur Softball Association (ASA) in 1933, uniformity arrived, along with the recognized name of softball. Standardized rules became official. Given its popularity, softball replaced baseball on the list of the 10 most popular sports for women’s college intramurals. The ASA reported in 1940 that more than 5 million people regularly engaged in a game of softball, and sporting goods manufacturers estimated that they annually spent some $20 million (almost $307.5 million in 2008 money) on the sport. Both men and women played on a variety of teams—church, neighborhood, and community—with factory and office teams contributing heavily to the growing number of players. Children also enjoyed the sport, and some, after playing in their backyards with friends, would frequently join a recreation center team. Little League teams for baseball and softball had been organized in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in 1938, with competition commencing in 1939. They became another source of play for children; by 1948, the program had expanded to 94 teams, and the next year to a total of 307. All of this growing interest and active participation in softball necessitated more playing fields. In 1940, the total number of softball diamonds in municipal and county parks stood at 10,042 compared to 3,904 for baseball. Construction of new facilities occurred throughout the decade, resulting in 12,266 facilities for softball and 5,502 for baseball in 1950. Differences in field size require separate playing areas and the smaller softball diamond pares the distance between bases by 30 feet. The nation’s involvement in World War II affected softball in both negative and positive ways. Kapok, a fine, silky fiber that comes from a tropical tree and used in the manufacture of softballs, became scarce because of a reduction in its importation


Softball | 651 and the wartime rationing program. The military needed available kapok to produce, among other things, life preservers. For the duration of the conflict, softballs therefore had to be made from reclaimed kapok or any soft fabric that would hold together as a core stuffing, such as cocoa fiber or cotton. But service officials also recognized the importance of recreational outlets at all training facilities, camps, and military hospitals, and toward this end softball became an integral part of the sports programs carried on by the armed forces. With the rationing of kapok enforced, any military requests for supplies received priority. The ASA nonetheless offered assistance in organizing U.S. service camp programs and, when it could, provided softball equipment. On the home front, with the war in progress, a wide range of individuals and groups came together to raise money for the cause, and sporting events served as a popular venue. One such occasion in New York City in 1945 consisted of stars from Broadway shows, both men and women, playing a comedy softball game against a team of writers, with the proceeds going to the Red Cross War Fund. Softball games continued as a means of raising money after the war. In May 1947, teams from the Senate and the House of Representatives played an exhibition game before a crowd of 25,000. President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) threw out the first ball, and the money raised went to the District of Columbia Police Boys Club. In the postwar years, many high schools and colleges added women’s softball to their sports programs. In August 1946, the New York Times reported on that year’s season: men’s and women’s involvement in the game accounted for an estimated 9 million players on 600,000 teams played before 150 million spectators. A children’s book, The Dooleys Play Ball by juvenile author and sports enthusiast Marion Renick (1904–1983) and released in the spring of 1949, tells the story of a family in which everyone plays softball. The book also includes charts and drawings that illustrate the fundamentals of the game to help its readers learn to play. The fast-pitch softball game, whereby the pitcher throws the ball underhand as fast as he or she wishes and can, dominated the sport until the 1950s. At this time, officials also adopted standardized rules for a second kind of softball game to be called slow pitch. The rulemakers specified that the ball would be thrown in an arc rather than directly over the plate and that the arc had to be between 6 and 12 feet above the ground. As the decade ended, softball continued to be widely enjoyed by both players and spectators. The 1950s saw growing interest in the slow-pitch variation, and the 1960s brought fans their first televised games, an all-star tournament played in Clearwater, Florida, on July 1, 1961, and broadcast by the ABC (American Broadcasting Company) television network. See also: Broadway Shows (Comedy and Drama); Broadway Shows (Musicals); Leisure and Recreation; Youth Selected Reading Dickson, Paul. The Worth Book of Softball: A Celebration of America’s True National Pastime. New York: Facts on File, 1994. Plummer, Bill. The Game America Plays. Seattle: Amica, 2009.


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| Songwriters and Lyricists Softball Games. New York Times, May 13, 1940; April 27, 1943; August 4, 1946; July 1, 1961. www. proquest.com

SONGWRITERS AND LYRICISTS The 1940s may have suffered World War II, the beginnings of the Cold War, labor unrest, and rising inflation, but the decade could also claim the creation of some of the best and most enduring popular music of the 20th century. Among the many reasons contributing to this situation, credit must be given to a remarkably talented group of songwriters and lyricists that continued a tradition of excellence dating back to the 1920s and 1930s. From the Jazz Age to the Swing Era, and then mixing maturity with youthful experimentation in the 1940s, the best of American music displayed consistent imagination, respect for the past, and a keen understanding of popular taste. “The great American songbook,” a term that has gained considerable usage in more recent years (as in “______ sings the great American songbook” or “______ plays selections from the great American songbook”), refers to the lyrics and tunes that have become established over time and known to many. Upon hearing these compositions, people with any knowledge of the music of the 1930s and 1940s can immediately recognize a few bars, maybe even sing a few lines. These songs, usually called standards, hold a special place among fans of this period and occupy a disproportionate amount of space in American musical history. As a rule, novelty songs (such as 1941’s “The Hut-Sut Song,” 1946’s One-zy, Two-zy,” 1948’s “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth,” along with numerous others) may enjoy a brief period of great popularity and become momentary hits, but they usually fade in memory and become a footnote to a particular era. A standard, on the other hand, transcends time and accrues a growing following as years pass. For example, many of the compositions of composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) and his one-time partner, lyricist Lorenz Hart (1895–1943), have long since become songbook standards, as have the words penned by Rodgers’s later colleague, Oscar Hammerstein II One of the more prolific—and possibly the most (1895–1960). Perhaps other names have successful—of the large crop of notable American songwriters and lyricists from the 1940s not enjoyed the renown of Rodgers and was Johnny Mercer. In this photograph, taken Hart or Rodgers and Hammerstein, but late in the decade, Mercer holds the music to such pairings as songwriter Jule Styne “On the Nodaway Road,” a trifle he had penned (1905–1994) with lyricist Sammy Cahn some years earlier. (Photofest)


Songwriters and Lyricists | 653 (1913–1993), Harry Warren (1893–1981) with Al Dubin (891–1945), Jay Livingston (1915–2001) with Ray Evans (1915–2007), and others have resulted in still more standards. Many composers, of course, choose to work independently, as do a sizable percentage of lyricists, and one collaborates with the other as opportunities and commissions demand. Thus, Johnny Mercer (1909–1976), one of the premier musical wordsmiths of the 1940s, sometimes wrote his own music, but more often than not he would partner with the best composers of the day, such as Harold Arlen (1905–1986), Jerome Kern (1885–1945), or Hoagy Carmichael (1899–1981). A significant number of individuals did both, writing both music and lyrics, perhaps feeling more comfortable putting words to melodies they themselves have composed, thereby not having to second guess or try to interpret what someone else intended. Irving Berlin (1888–1989), Cole Porter (1891–1964), and Frank Loesser (1910–1969) worked in this manner, and certainly the results of their efforts have borne the test of time. Table 93 lists, alphabetically by year, a limited selection of the tremendous outpouring of popular music during the 1940s. Most of the songs have achieved the status of standards and should at least invoke some passing familiarity with most readers. The music in the foregoing list became charted hits shortly after their initial release. “Chattanooga Choo Choo” (1941), thanks in part to the movie Sun Valley Serenade (also 1941) and the remarkable popularity of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, soon sold over 1 million records—the first tune on RCA Victor’s Bluebird label to do so. “I’ve Heard That Song Before” became the No. 1 song for 1943, outranking some formidable competition. The next year, “Swinging on a Star” (1944) repeated the feat, as did “The Gypsy” in 1946 and “Near You” in 1947. “Buttons and Bows,” a cheery tune from 1948 and featured in the movie comedy The Paleface, likewise reached the vaunted No. 1 position. A typical Gene Autry (1907–1998) Western, Riders in the Sky (1949), boosted “Ghost Riders in the Sky” to first place, further evidence of the close tie-ins between movies and music during the decade. Although it did not reach No. 1 on the charts, Anton Karas’s (1906–1985) haunting instrumental theme music from the suspense thriller The Third Man (1949) achieved a comfortable place in the top 10 for 1950. In a time notable for hits by vocalists and vocal groups, “The Third Man Theme” ran counter to prevailing tastes and claims no contributing lyricist. A cursory reading of Table 93 should also reveal that certain names—among composers, the likes of Hoagy Carmichael (1899–1981), Duke Ellington (1899–1974), and Jimmy Van Heusen (1913–1990) and among lyricists, such luminaries as Johnny Burke (1908–1964), Mack Gordon (1904–1959), and Paul Francis Webster (1907– 1984)—reappear with some frequency. When added to the other composers and lyricists mentioned previously, it becomes clear that much of the enduring music of the 1940s emerged from the talents of a distinguished few. The war years, 1941 to 1945, had a curious impact on American music. Composers and lyricists wrote uncounted numbers of songs about the conflict, the majority of them forgettable tunes like “Allegiance to the Red White and Blue” (1942), “Be a Hero, My Boy” (1943), “Dear God, Watch Over Joe” (1944), “If the Boys Come Home for Christmas, We’ll Have a Happy New Year” (1943), “Since He Traded His Zoot Suit for a Uniform” (1942), and “We’ll Go Back to Faithful Dobbin (Just to Help the


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| Songwriters and Lyricists TABLE 93.

Representative Popular Songs of the 1940s by Year, Composer, and Lyricist

Year

Title

Composer and Lyricist

1940 “How High the Moon” “I Concentrate on You” “I’ll Never Smile Again” “In a Mellotone” “The Last Time I Saw Paris” “The Nearness of You” “Pennsylvania 6-5000” “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” “Taking a Chance on Love” “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano” 1941 “Bewitched (Bothered, and Bewildered)” “Blues in the Night” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (of Company B)” “Chattanooga Choo Choo” “Georgia on My Mind” “How about You?” “I Got It Bad (and That Ain’t Good)” “Oh Look at Me Now” “Take the ‘A’ Train” “Violets for Your Furs” 1942 “Comin’ in on a Wing and a Prayer” “Der Fuehrer’s Face” “I Left My Heart at the Stage Door Canteen” “I’m Old Fashioned” “Lamplighter’s Serenade” “Moonlight Becomes You” “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” “Serenade in Blue” “Skylark” “Tangerine” 1943 “Do Nothin’ ‘Till You Hear from Me” “I Had the Craziest Dream” “I’ll Be Around” “I’ve Heard That Song Before” “My Shining Hour” “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’ ” “Oklahoma!”

Morgan Lewis (music), Nancy Hamilton (words) Cole Porter (words and music) Ruth Lowe (words and music) Duke Ellington (music), Milt Gabler (words) Jerome Kern (music), Oscar Hammerstein II (words) Hoagy Carmichael (music), Ned Washington (words) Jerry Gray (music), Carl Sigman (words) Jimmy Van Heusen (music), Johnny Burke (words) Vernon Duke (music), John Latouche (words) Leon Rene (words and music) Richard Rogers (music), Lorenz Hart (words) Harold Arlen (music), Johnny Mercer (words) Hughie Prince (music), Don Raye (words) Harry Warren (music), Mack Gordon (words) Hoagy Carmichael (music), Stuart Gorrell (words) Burton Lane (music), Ralph Freed (words) Duke Ellington (music), Paul Francis Webster (words) John de Vries and Joe Bushkin (words and music) Billy Strayhorn (words and music) Matt Dennis (music), Tom Adair (words) Jimmy McHugh (music), Harold Adamson (words) Oliver Wallace (words and music) Irving Berlin (words and music) Jerome Kern (music), Johnny Mercer (words) Hoagy Carmichael (music), Paul Francis Webster (words) Jimmy Van Heusen (music), Johnny Burke (words) Frank Loesser (words and music) Harry Warren (music), Mack Gordon (words) Hoagy Carmichael (music), Johnny Mercer (words) Victor Shertzinger (music), Johnny Mercer (words) Duke Ellington (music), Bob Russell (words) Harry Warren (music), Mack Gordon (words) Alec Wilder (words and music) Jule Styne (music), Sammy Cahn (words) Harold Arlen (music), Johnny Mercer (words) Richard Rodgers (music), Oscar Hammerstein II (words) Richard Rodgers (music), Oscar Hammerstein II (words)


Songwriters and Lyricists | 655 Year

Title


1943 “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)” “Poinciana” “Speak Low”

Harold Arlen (music), Johnny Mercer (words)

1944 “Ac-Cen-Tchuate the Positive” “The G.I. Jive” “Moonlight in Vermont” “Rosie the Riveter” “Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of the Week” “Sentimental Journey”

Harold Arlen (music), Johnny Mercer (words) Johnny Mercer (words and music) Karl Suessedorf (music), John Blackburn (words) Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb (words and music) Jule Styne (music), Sammy Cahn (words)

Nat Simon (music), Buddy Bernier (words) Kurt Weill (music), Ogden Nash (words)

Ben Homer, Les Brown, and Bud Green (words and music) “Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year” Frank Loesser (words and music) “Swinging on a Star” Jimmy Van Heusen (music), Johnny Burke (words) “The Trolley Song” Hugh Martin (music), Ralph Blane (words) “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Burton Lane (music), Ted Koehler (words) Life?”

1945 “It Might As Well Be Spring”

Richard Rodgers (music), Oscar Hammerstein II (words) “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” Jule Styne (music), Sammy Cahn (words) “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over” Richard Rodgers (music), Oscar Hammerstein II (words) “Laura” David Raskin (music), Johnny Mercer (words) “Memphis in June” Hoagy Carmichael (music), Paul Francis Webster (words) “Nancy (with the Laughing Face)” Jimmy Van Heusen (music), Phil Silvers (words) “On the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe” Harry Warren (music), Johnny Mercer (words) “These Foolish Things (Remind Me of Harry Link, Holt Marvell, and Jack Strachey You)” (words and music) “We’ll Be Together Again” Carl Fischer (music), Frankie Laine (words) “You’ll Never Walk Alone” Richard Rodgers (music), Oscar Hammerstein II (words) Harold Arlen (music), Johnny Mercer (words) 1946 “Come Rain or Come Shine” “Five Minutes More” Jule Styne (music), Sammy Cahn (words) “The Gypsy” Billy Reid (words and music) “(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons” William Best (music), Deke Watson (words) “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” Jule Styne (music), Sammy Cahn (words) “Oh! What It Seemed to Be” Bennie Benjamin, George Weiss, and Frankie Carle (words and music) “The Old Lamp-Lighter” Nat Simon (music), Charles Tobias (words) “Ole Buttermilk Sky” Hoagy Carmichael and Jack Brooks (words and music) “They Say It’s Wonderful” Irving Berlin (words and music) “To Each His Own” Jay Livingston and Ray Evans (words and music) 1947 “The Anniversary Song” “Ballerina” “Chi Baba-Baba, Chi-Baba (My Bambino Go to Sleep)” TABLE 93.

Al Jolson and Saul Chaplin (words and music) Carl Sigman (music), Bob Russell (words) Mack David, Al Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston (words and music) (continued)


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| Songwriters and Lyricists

Year

Title


1947 “Huggin’ and Chalkin’ “I Wish I Didn’t Love You So” “Linda” “Mam’selle “Near You” “Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)” “You Do” 1948 “Buttons and Bows” “I’ll Dance at Your Wedding” “It’s Magic” “Love Somebody” “Manana (Is Soon Enough for Me)” “Nature Boy” “Now Is the Hour” “On a Slow Boat to China” “A Tree in the Meadow” “Woody Woodpecker” 1949 “’A’—You’re Adorable” “Again” “Far Away Places” “Ghost Riders in the Sky” “Mule Train” “My Darling, My Darling” “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” “Slippin’ Around” “Some Enchanted Evening” “That Lucky Old Sun” 1950 “A Bushel and a Peck” “Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy” “Dear Hearts and Gentle People” “If I Knew You Were Comin’ (I’d’ve Baked a Cake)” “Mona Lisa” “Music! Music! Music!” “Rag Mop” “The Thing” “The Third Man Theme” “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena”

Kermit Goell and Clarence Leonard Hayes (words and music) Frank Loesser (words and music) Jack Lawrence and Ann Ronell (words and music) Edmund Goulding (music), Mack Gordon (words) Francis Craig (music), Kermit Goell (words) Merle Travis and Tex Williams (words and music) Mack Gordon and Josef Myrow (words and music) Jay Livingston (music), Ray Evans (words) Ben Oakland (music), Herb Magidson (words) Jule Styne (music), Sammy Cahn (words) Alex Kramer and Joan Whitney (words and music) Peggy Lee and Dave Barbour (words and music) Eden Ahbez (words and music) Dorothy Stewart, Macwa Kaihau, and Clement Scott (words and music) Frank Loesser (words and music) Billy Reid (words and music) George Tibbles and Ramey Idriss (words and music) Buddy Kaye, Fred Wise, and Sidney Lippman (words and music) Lionel Newman (music), Dorcas Cochran (words) Joan Whitney and Alex Kramer (words and music) Stan Jones (words and music) Jimmy Lange, Hy Heath, and Fred Glickman (words and music) Frank Loesser (words and music) Johnny Marks (words and music) Floyd Tillman (words and music) Richard Rodgers (music), Oscar Hammerstein (words) Beasley Smith (music), Haven Gillespie (words) Frank Loesser (words and music) Harry Stone and Jack Stapp (words and music) Sammy Fain (music), Bob Hilliard (words) Al Hoffman, Robert Merrill, and Clem Watts (words and music) Jay Livingston (music), Ray Evans (words) Stephen Weiss and Bernie Baum (words and music) Johnnie Lee Wills and Deacon Anderson (words and music) Charles Randolph Green (words and music) Anton Karas (music) Spencer Ross (music), Gordon Jenkins and Mitchell Parrish (words)


Spam | 657 U.S.A.)” (1942). Only a handful of war-oriented melodies captured much public attention, although several government agencies implored songwriters to create martial music that would instill a fighting spirit in those who heard them. Clearly, the public, both uniformed and civilian, displayed little interest in that direction, preferring a more sentimental approach to those old standbys of love, romance, and loneliness. In addition to the few obviously topical tunes listed in the foregoing table, a few others had a slight impact on overall record and sheet music sales during World War II; they include “(There’ll Be a) Hot Time in the Town of Berlin (When the Yanks Go Marching In)” (1943; words and music by Joe Bushkin and John De Vries), “Remember Pearl Harbor” (1942; music by Sammy Kaye and Don Reid, lyrics by Don Reid), and “There’s a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere” (1942; words and music by Paul Roberts and Shelby Darnell [pseudonym of Bob Miller]). By and large, however, people did not want musical reminders of the conflict. On another note, Irving Berlin’s classic “White Christmas” remains associated with the war years, but it does not appear in the listing because he created it in the late 1930s for a failed movie project. Berlin resurrected it—he seldom discarded unused compositions—for 1942’s Holiday Inn, a film musical starring Bing Crosby (1903– 1977) and Fred Astaire (1899–1977). “White Christmas” shortly thereafter became the top song for 1942 and then enjoyed renewed popularity in 1945 and 1946, finally taking its place as a holiday staple for many years to come. Musical preferences change over time, and today’s hit becomes tomorrow’s forgotten melody. A transitional decade, 1940s swing lost its following, as did the major vocalists and groups. The postwar years witnessed the rapid rise of many alternative formats, including bebop (bop), country music, and rhythm ’n’ blues. But nothing in music ever truly dies; these new styles, once unaccustomed ears adjusted to them, gained acceptance and established their own traditions, often borrowing from that which went before. In so doing, they joined the ongoing and always interesting parade of American popular music. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Broadway Shows (Musicals); Comedies (Film); Crime and Mystery Films; Dance; Fads; Fashion; Horror and Thriller Films; Jukeboxes; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Shore, Dinah; Sinatra, Frank; Smith, Kate; Westerns (Film); Youth Selected Reading Furia, Philip. The Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America’s Great Lyricists. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Jasen, David A. Tin Pan Alley: The Composers, the Songs, the Performers and Their Times. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1988. White, Mark. ‘You Must Remember This . . . ’: Popular Songwriters 1900–1980. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1985. Zinsser, William. Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs. Jaffrey, NH: David R. Godine, 2000.

SPAM The name given Hormel Foods Corporation’s 1937 addition to its canned meat line of sausages, ham, chili, and beef stew. The word comes from letters in “spicy” and “ham,” © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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| Spam

which describe the basic taste of the product. Originally called Hormel Spiced Ham, the company held a contest to create a more distinctive name. The winner, Broadway performer Kenneth Daigneau (active 1920s and 1930s), received the grand prize of $100 (approximately $1,440 in 2008 dollars). Hormel, founded in 1891 by George A. Hormel (1860–1946) in Austin, Minnesota, experienced steady growth throughout the early years of the 20th century, with sales offices opening in nearby cities and as far away as Georgia and Texas. A second meatpacking facility began operating in Los Angeles in 1928, and by the end of the Great Depression, 14 distribution centers guaranteed availability of all Hormel products, including Spam, across the nation. The Hormel Corporation gave the U. S. government strong support in both world conflicts, producing sausages and other meats specifically for World War I, a precedent that it adhered to during World War II. Even before the December 7, 1941, attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, Hormel had contracted to provide 15 million cans of Spam per week for the newly enacted Lend-Lease program. This plan allowed President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) to ship food, weapons, or other equipment to any country whose opposition to the Axis nations (Germany, Italy, and Japan) assisted U.S. defense. Spam, an easily transportable meat product high in fat and salt and boasting an indefinite shelf life, served as a perfect food item for this purpose. Before the war ended, Hormel had issued approximately 100 million pounds of Spam, more than half of its total production, to provide rations to U.S., Soviet, and European troops, as well as European citizens needing food. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971), in his book, Khrushchev Remembers (1970), credits Spam with the survival of the Soviet army during the conflict. For the U.S. armed forces’ basic K rations, Spam, a staple, constituted a significant portion of both breakfast and supper units. GIs called it “ham that failed the physical.” The 486th Bomb Group of the Army Air Force, in addition to eating the meat on a regular basis, created “Slammin’ Spammy,” a bomb-throwing pig, as nose art on one of their B-24 aircraft. Spam and Hormel benefited from unsolicited coverage in a wide variety of publications. Throughout the war, Time magazine carried articles informing the public about Spam and its versatility. For example, in the October, 5, 1942, and April 15, 1946, issues, the editors mention Spam as a primary meat for the troops’ suppers. Details of a party held in Rome, published on September 11, 1944, reports “dabs of Spam, corned beef, and Vienna sausage” as the featured food. On March 20, 1944, a reporter let it be known that in England some members of the House of Commons, off the record, referred to the United States as “Uncle Spam.” When it first appeared on the market, Hormel called Spam “the Miracle Meat,” and at the height of meat rationing, Woman’s Day, along with other well-known magazines published primarily for women, reminded readers that Spam provided an easy answer to the high cost and scarcity of meat. A few creative ideas about preparing Spam dishes linked it with many other foods, such as Spam ’n’ Spaghetti, ’n’ Limas, ’n’ Eggs, or ’n’ Waffles. Other possibilities frequently reported by the company and food columnists included Grilled Spam and Vegetables, Spam Barbecue, and Sam Western Salad—all of this, of course, in addition to its original intent, Spam sandwiches.


Spam | 659 Hormel effectively promoted this product through extensive advertising. The company placed ads in “Jessie’s Notebook,” a regular display ad feature in the New York Times, which informed readers of Spam’s many uses: a handy dish to serve to the family, hot or cold; an interesting party food by just adding tomato slices, prepared mustard, and French dressing to the platter; or an unusual presentation when cut into thin strips with onion and celery and served over rice as Spam Suey. A pioneer in this kind of advertising, Hormel developed a singing radio commercial, as did the Pepsi-Cola Company. The Spam number, sung to the tune of a traditional Scottish folk song, “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” reminds listeners of its being “a miracle canned meat, which tastes fine and saves time.” Not only did Hormel use radio for airing commercials, in 1940 and 1941, it sponsored NBC’s (National Broadcasting Company) Burns and Allen, a comedy show starring the husband and wife team of George Burns and Gracie Allen (1896–1996; 1895–1964). Spammy the pig, the company mascot, frequently made guest appearances on the show, and the couple also appeared in print advertisements. Hormel’s best-selling meat even got coverage in ads for other businesses. For example, Puck, The Comic Weekly, in order to suggest its value as a promotional medium, bought space in the New York Times to solicit advertising for its Sunday comic strip supplement. The editors of Puck pointed out that the Hormel Company had not only advertised in the weekly since 1939 but had increased its frequency, recognizing the value of exposure in the Sunday comics. Spam sales soared during World War II, and the product continued to gain in popularity during the postwar years. With peace, many U.S. businesses emphasized the need to hire male war veterans, but Hormel developed a plan to hire women. A competitive drum and bugle corps composed of female veterans from all branches of the armed forces, evolved into a traveling caravan. Its talented members carried out door-to-door sales during the day and performed an assortment of musical productions in the evening, as well as entertaining on radio. The troupe started out in 1946, with 12 women, and when it disbanded in 1953, numbered 60 individuals. Known as the “Hormel Girls’ Band and Chorus,” the group rapidly gained popularity, and the company credited the aggregation with doubling the sales of its packaged foods, especially Spam. The introduction of Spam to the public in 1937 proved to be a significant event for the American diet for decades to come. It served as a staple for both the troops fighting the war and the folks back home, and it continues to reign as a convenience food firmly rooted in the nation’s food culture along with hamburgers, hot dogs, apple pie, and ice cream. See also: Beverages; Comic Strips; Desserts, Candy, and Ice Cream; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Rosie the Riveter; Women in the Military: WACs, WASPs, WAVES, SPARS, and Others Selected Reading Armstrong, Dan, and Dustin Black. The Book of SPAM. New York: Atria Books, 2007. Spam. New York Times, January 16, 1944; August 26, 1948; May 19, 1949. www.proquest.com Spam. Time Magazine, October 5, 1942; March 20, 1944; September 11, 1944; April 15, 1946; October 4, 1948; May 19, 1949.


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| Spock, Dr. Benjamin O. Wyman, Carolyn. Spam: A Biography: The Amazing True Story of America’s “Miracle Meat.” Fort Washington, PA: Harvest Books, 1999.

SPOCK, DR. BENJAMIN O. The eldest of six children born into a well-to-do Connecticut family, Benjamin O. Spock (1903–1998) learned a great deal about baby and child care through personal experience with his siblings. He attended Yale University, where he rowed with an eight-man crew; at the 1924 Paris Olympics, the team won a gold medal. He went on to Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, earning an MD in pediatrics. He also studied psychiatry and, during World War II, served as a psychiatrist in the medical corps of the U.S. Naval Reserve. Following the war, he held chairs at several universities. With his combined expertise in pediatrics and psychiatry, and convinced that many popular child-rearing theories were flawed, Spock in 1946 published The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (hardcover edition). It also came out in a 25-cent (about $2.75 in 2008 dollars) paperbound version that year titled The Pocket Book of Baby and Child Care. He could not have chosen a better time to publish: riding the crest of the postwar baby boom and an immediate best seller in both formats, Baby and Child Care enjoyed phenomenal sales almost from the first days of publication. By 2000, Spock’s book—revised several times, including a 1957 editing to make the text more gender neutral—had sold over 50 million copies around the world in many languages and has continued to do well and remain in print into the 21st century. Prior to the publication of Spock’s classic, most guides to the care of infants and small children stressed parental control and discipline. Prevailing theory held that a child’s behavior had to be carefully guided by its parents, and understanding motivations or needs was unnecessary. Spock, on the other hand, wanted parents to realize that a child’s behavior (or misbehavior) grew out of natural impulses; as a child sought to explore its own autonomy, it would be natural to disobey certain limitations the parent had imposed. Rather than being upset and punishing the child, parents had to enforce appropriate limits but also allow the child freedom to expand its limited horizons. Children that get away with anything turn out spoiled and unhappy, but those raised in restrictive environments will have their natural curiosity stifled and will likewise be unhappy. Finding the middle way between extremes becomes the challenge to parents. As he says in his now-famous opening to the book, parents need to relax; they already know more than they think they know. Laid out like a reference book—“The Father’s Part,” “Schedules,” ‘Crying in the Early Weeks” (Spock famously counsels that allowing a baby an occasional healthy cry will not hurt it, and constantly attending to a crying baby only encourages it to cry more), “Aggressiveness and Timidity,” “Fat Children,” and so on for some 160 entries—Spock dispenses gentle, reasonable advice regarding all aspects of growth from infancy to adolescence. Mothers and fathers responded enthusiastically, making Baby and Child Care the most successful guide to parenting ever written, and certainly one of the biggest best sellers in the history of American publishing.


Steel Pennies (1943) | 661 Not all readers, however, responded so favorably. A few conservative clergy accused Spock of encouraging “permissiveness” (a term he uses early in the book but not in the positive way some believed), of straying from biblical injunctions about sparing the rod and spoiling the child. But their tirades usually evolved from a hasty or careless reading of the text. Others picked up on the theme of permissiveness, including a handful of Congressmen, a few of whom linked Spock to the Communist menace during the dark days of the Cold War. Much of the criticism, however, came later during the 1950s and 1960s, a time when youthful rebellion became a topic of considerable debate. Opponents of his book and its influence accused Spock of contributing to the social ills of the day. The feeling among critics seemed to be one of regret; had Spock’s ideas not taken hold so successfully, then contemporary youth would not be out protesting, dressing inappropriately, listening to rock ’n’ roll, disrespecting their elders, and doing all those other things that upset adults. Despite these complaints about Baby and Child Care—a minority opinion, by the way—parents by the millions wore out their paperback copies of the guide. As the hardcover title states, Spock had set out to write a guide based on common sense, and he achieved remarkable success with that goal. Over the years, the marketing of the book has undergone some changes. Whereas the covers of early editions from the 1940s to 1960s stressed the title Baby and Child Care, more recent printings have greatly enlarged Spock’s name as author, and the title appears in much smaller type. “Dr. Spock” (“Benjamin” also disappeared) or just “Spock’s” strike the eye, working on the assumption that potential buyers will know the correct title once they see the author’s surname. In his later years and approaching retirement, his fame assured by the fabulous success of his book, Benjamin Spock pursued a somewhat different course of activities. He became involved with a number of peace movements during the Vietnam conflict of the 1960s and 1970s and could be found at numerous rallies advocating an end to the war. He advised young men on their draft responsibilities and how to avoid military service, a posture that drew the ire of many, including federal officials. Sentenced to prison in 1968 for aiding and abetting draft resisters, his sentence was shortly reversed upon appeal. Spock kept on protesting, including nuclear weapons and cuts in social services—a far cry from the pediatrician who dispensed folksy advice on raising children. Feisty until the end, Benjamin Spock died in 1998. See also: Atomic Bomb, The; Book Clubs; Education; Juvenile Delinquency Selected Reading Maier, Thomas. Dr. Spock: An American Life. New York: Basic Books, 2003. Spock, Benjamin. The Pocket Book of Baby and Child Care. New York: Pocket Books, 1946.

STEEL PENNIES (1943) Toward the end of 1942, a difficult war year for the United States, the government realized essential defense industries faced a shortage of copper—a strategic material in many products, especially shell casings. To reduce federal copper consumption and


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thus make more of the metal available for manufacturing purposes, officials at the Department of the Treasury decided that the composition of the traditional Lincoln penny would be drastically altered, going from a mix of 95 percent copper and 5 percent tin and zinc to one that contained no copper at all. Throughout 1943, the U.S. Mint produced pennies stamped from 100 percent steel, which came to be called “steelies.” In order to keep them shiny longer, they received a thin coating of rust-resistant zinc. The government minted these new pennies only that one year, making them something of a collectors’ item as time passed and they fell out of general circulation. The temporary discontinuance of traditional copper pennies helped alleviate the shortage, and 1944 saw the reintroduction of the more familiar copper coin. In the meantime, officials estimated that the savings in copper during 1943 totaled the amount needed to make over 1.25 million shell casings for heavy artillery. Even with these economies, scarcities persisted, and from 1944 through 1946, the government allowed the U.S. Mint to utilize discarded cartridge casings instead of new, pure copper in the manufacture of pennies. These used casings contained significant amounts of brass (a mix of copper and zinc) from which the copper could be extracted, so salvaging them meant they could be recycled into coinage. Despite the savings in copper that occurred in 1943, the public generally disliked the steel pennies. The zinc tended to discolor and look drab, not unlike slugs, and many people actually thought they were made of lead. This disfavor caused the government to launch an attempt to remove them from circulation, a program that began in 1945. For something as common as a penny, steel or copper, total success in any recall could never be achieved; from 1945 until 1965, when the effort ended, the mint reclaimed only about 15 percent of them. Because the Philadelphia Mint churned out 684.6 million of the steelies, the Denver Mint 217.7 million, and the San Francisco Mint 191.6 million, over 1 billion steel pennies circulated by the end of 1943. Reclaiming 15 percent of them, or about 164 million pennies, still constituted quite a feat. In the years following World War II, the price of copper rose significantly, causing the manufacturing of pennies to cost more than their individual worth. Although the government never again reverted to steel coins, it did make changes in the composition of the familiar Lincoln-head cent. Today the so-called copper penny actually contains 97.5 percent zinc, with a 2.5 percent copper plating, a change that occurred in 1982. The 1943 steel penny remains legal, and now and then shows up, albeit in everdecreasing numbers. Dealers and suppliers have stashed away untold millions of them, and one in reasonably good condition is worth perhaps a nickel or a dime to a collector and considerably more if uncirculated (anyone can purchase uncirculated coins, dependent on availability, directly from the U.S. Mint, reputable dealers, and other numismatists). In contrast, a regular copper penny from the 1940s has a worth of just a few cents to a collector, or little more than its face value. One exception needs to be noted: The U.S. Mint erroneously manufactured a handful of 1943 pennies that contain the traditional copper-zinc ratio. Officials quickly caught the error, and only a few continue to exist, but they can be worth thousands of dollars in good condition. Over the years, unscrupulous individuals have labored to alter 1943 steelies in order to make them appear to be their infinitely more valuable


Superman | 663 copper counterparts. They have utilized copper plating, dipped them in chemicals to discolor the zinc and impart a reddish or amber hue, and even resorted to disfiguring the dates on genuine copper pennies from the 1940s to make them appear to read 1943. An easy test for authenticity exists: a magnet will attract a real steel penny but has no effect on a copper one. Although calls for abolishing the penny arise every so often (worthless, it’s a nuisance, and so on), the U.S. one-cent piece has so far resisted them. Even the nowrelatively rare 1943 steelie has its supporters, making the lowly penny a hardy survivor in the history of U.S. coins. See also: Hobbies Selected Reading “Pennies/Cents.” Collecting-US-Coins.com. www.collecting-us-coins.com/pennies-cents/penny-cent. html “Steel Wartime Pennies.” USMintQuarters.com. www.usmintquarters.com/steelcents.htm

SUPERMAN The concept of a superhero, an outwardly normal person able to overcome any and all obstacles by remarkable means, has been around since time immemorial, but not until the late 1930s and on into the 1940s did a comic book figure called Superman embody the idea in visual form. Variations on the superhero had been a staple of popular pulp magazines for many years. These larger-than-life heroes opposed the worst evildoers one could imagine. Lester Dent (1904–1959; writing under the pen name Kenneth Robeson) created Doc Savage, The Man of Bronze, a figure that thrilled readers in the 1930s in one breathless tale after another. Savage relied on his physical prowess and an array of futuristic weapons to get out of endless predicaments that would have stymied lesser heroes. More sinister, perhaps, but just as exciting, The Shadow stories of Walter B. Gibson (1897–1985; writing as Max- A typical 1940s cover from DC Comics feawell Grant) involved the adventures of turing Superman. The shadowy background of tanks and artillery links him to the war efa mysterious playboy named Lamont fort, and the American eagle perched on his Cranston. Instead of amazing athletic left arm adds a patriotic note. (DC Comics/ abilities, Cranston could “cloud men’s Photofest)


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minds” and thus seemingly make himself invisible to society’s enemies, easily penetrating their lairs in order to bring them to justice. Two high school chums from Cleveland, writer Jerry Siegel (1914–1996) and artist Joe Shuster (1914–1992), had been trying to interest comic book publishers in just such a figure, sustaining themselves with forgotten comic strips like Doctor Occult, Federal Men, Slam Bradley, and Spy. After knocking unsuccessfully on many doors, Siegel and Shuster in the spring of 1938 convinced the firm of Detective Comics, better known as DC, to allot space for an illustrated adventure narrative they called Superman in the premier issue of Action Comics. Often called the Man of Steel, Superman represented the first of a new breed of imaginary, fictional characters that would come to be called superheroes in the world of comic books. The publishers must have been pleased with the pair’s work; not only did the company run the story, a frame from the tale graces the cover; it depicts Superman lifting up an automobile while its dislodged and terrified passengers scatter in all directions. This muscular man, decked out in blue tights and a flowing red cape, receives no identification, and curious readers would have to look inside the comic book to find out his name. Within a few pages, the comic introduces Superman. The tale, longer than usual for a comic book, briefly alludes to Superman’s origins on the doomed planet Krypton, his escape to Earth, and how the Kents of Smallville became his adoptive parents. Readers learn he can leap (flying would come later) “an eighth of a mile in a single bound” and outrun speeding cars and trains. It tells of his assuming the role of Clark Kent, an apparently meek reporter with The Daily Planet (initially called The Daily Star), the leading paper in Metropolis. The plot has him stop a lynching, save an innocent man from the electric chair, capture the guilty parties, stop bullets and knives with his tough skin, and have a date with colleague Lois Lane. And that just summarizes the first Superman tale. Siegel and Shuster’s Superman captivated readers and helped to reinvigorate a struggling comic book industry. Too many cute anthropomorphic animals, too many reprints from previous newspaper strips, and too little inventiveness had flattened interest in the format. Customers wanted something new, and Superman sparked their interest. A succession of stories by Siegel and Shuster followed, fleshing out details about Superman’s past. His abilities, such as leaping and running, were replaced by the authors with the gift of flight, along with such additional powers as X-ray vision and extraordinary hearing. Sales of Action Comics skyrocketed, and in 1939 Superman gained his own comic book, his name finally splashed brightly across the cover. By 1940, its circulation had surpassed 1 million copies per issue and continued climbing. An American icon had been born, one that flourished throughout the 1940s and beyond. Overnight, other publishers took notice of this newcomer. Competitors of DC in the comic book field began looking for writers and artists for superheroes of their own and soon readied their own versions of Superman. The Arrow, The Batman (the article would shortly be dropped), Captain America, Captain Marvel, The Crimson Avenger, and a host of other caped and costumed superheroes hit newsstands soon thereafter, setting the stage for a comic book revolution.


Superman | 665 As excitement grew over this unique character, newspaper comic syndicates wasted no time in approaching DC Comics and the authors about the possibility of a daily strip featuring Superman. The McClure Syndicate won the rights to distribute the character, and in January 1939, just months after Superman’s initial success as a comic book, it began running in daily newspapers. At first, Siegel and Shuster tried to do it all, but cartoonist Shuster quickly realized that he could not maintain the pace of drawing for both comic strips and comic books. Plus, in the fall of 1939, McClure added a Sunday version, given the enthusiastic reader response to the dailies. By 1941, two years after its inception as a comic strip, Superman appeared in well over 200 newspapers. As a result, Shuster turned over more and more of the inking, coloring, and lettering chores to assistants, which accounts for some of the differences between the comic book Superman and his comic strip twin. Despite the hectic times, Siegel continued to do most of the writing for both formats. In 1943, however, he received his draft notice, and other writers had to step in. Slowly, Siegel and Shuster did less original work on Superman as staff writers and artists assumed more of the load. By 1947, Shuster ceased to work with Superman; Siegel followed suit in 1948 amid financial disputes with DC. Despite the loss of the two originators, the strip continued in hundreds of newspapers until 1966. Siegel and Shuster moved on to other projects, but they never again achieved the success they had enjoyed with Superman. In the meantime, radio producers, already filling the airwaves with late afternoon serials aimed at youthful listeners, correctly foresaw that this character could be adapted to an aural format. In February 1940, The Adventures of Superman could be heard on New York’s WOR; two years later, buoyed by strong listenership, it became an offering on the MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System) network. The show remained with MBS until 1949, at which time ABC (American Broadcasting Company) took the reins. It stayed with ABC until 1951, when it left radio for good. Bud Collyer (1908–1969) served as the voice of the Man of Steel until 1950. Jerry Siegel had no part in the scripting for The Adventures of Superman; that job fell into the hands of other writers, although the show retained the flavor of its comic strip backgrounds. Broadcast at first three times a week, it soon became a daily 15minute serial, usually heard somewhere between 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. Producers and advertisers cherished this time slot because children would be listening to the radio while awaiting dinner. Many similar offerings could be found at this hour, guaranteeing a large audience. Kellogg’s Pep, a popular breakfast cereal of the day that reputedly provided energy (or pep) to anyone consuming it, sponsored the boundlessly energetic Superman throughout most of the 1940s. The radio version, heard by millions of fans, introduced an opening sequence of memorable lines, used on virtually every broadcast, that have become a part of American speech: “It’s a bird!” “It’s a plane!” “It’s . . . Superman!” Random House, a prominent book publishing firm, decided to capitalize on the excitement surrounding Superman and contracted with George F. Lowther (1913–1975), a little-known scriptwriter and dramatist, to pen The Adventures of Superman in 1942. Lowther, who had written episodes of the Superman radio series, knew many of the biographical details surrounding the superhero and thus felt comfortable expanding


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upon them in a novel. The title, taken from the radio show instead of the comic book or newspaper strip, reflects the huge listening audience the serial enjoyed at the time. It can be assumed that too many writing commitments tied down Jerry Siegel, and thus the choice of Lowther to retell the story; the equally busy Joe Shuster, however, contributed a number of drawings to the novel. An unusual and overlooked item in the Superman canon, Applewood Books in 1995 published a facsimile edition of Lowther’s original work. Hollywood should have immediately recognized the potential in such a visually showy character, but belatedly took advantage of the Superman phenomenon. The Fleischer Studio produced and released 17 cartoons collectively titled The Adventures of Superman between 1941 and 1943. Each runs for 10 minutes, and Bud Collyer reprises his Mutual network radio role by doing the voiceovers for the animations. Following these cartoons, several years passed before another Superman picture appeared. In 1948, Columbia Pictures released a 15-episode serial titled, simply, Superman. It stars Kirk Alyn (1910–1999) as the Man of Steel. Apparently the serial fared well enough at Saturday matinees—the venue where most serials played in those days— that Columbia followed it with Atom Man vs. Superman in 1950, another 15-part saga with Alyn again in the lead. The Atom Man turns out to be none other than the notorious Lex Luthor, Superman’s archenemy, in disguise. Lots of science fiction devices, including some early flying saucers, add to the excitement of this film. The next year, Lippert Pictures, a small studio, released Superman and the MoleMen, a low-budget feature. It most notably introduces movie audiences to George Reeves (1914–1959), an actor who would find his niche playing Superman on television two years later. Still in its infancy, television nonetheless seized upon the superhero for his potential in a visual medium. Production for a weekly series commenced in 1951, but the first shows were not broadcast until early in 1953. Carried through a syndicate instead of a network, Superman eventually comprised 104 half-hour episodes and ran until 1957. George Reeves, clad in a padded but slightly baggy set of tights, became so closely associated with the character that he reportedly received no offers for any other roles. By and large, the reign of the comic book superheroes began in the early 1940s amid concerns about the impending war. Like most of his cohorts, regardless of medium, Superman stormed into the fray when World War II broke out. He fought arrogant Nazis and badly caricatured Japanese villains, always emerging victorious, whether it be in comic books and newspaper strips or on the air. The war may have ended in 1945, but it carried on for another year or so in the comics as publishers and syndicates used up stories written before the cessation of hostilities, so Superman continued to bash the enemy for a several months thereafter. With peace, most superheroes lacked any common foes. Many comic books featuring such characters ceased publication, but Superman continued, too popular to be dropped, albeit with different adventures and villains. Characters like the Prankster, the Toyman, and Mr. Mxyztplk taunted the Man of Steel (Mr. Mxyztplk, more mischievous than evil, debuted in the newspapers in 1944, seven months before his first comic book appearance), and the radio version introduced kryptonite in 1943, the one thing


Swimming and Water Skiing | 667 that can weaken Superman’s powers. During the mid-1940s, a youthful Superboy also briefly appeared but never achieved the success of his older counterpart. By and large, the later 1940s marked a continuation of remarkable inventiveness, despite the loss of Shuster and Siegel on the creative end of things. Competent new staffers carried on the traditions, and most readers, listeners, and viewers probably noticed little, if any change. Doubtless his disguise as the mild-mannered Clark Kent fit the adolescent fantasies of countless admirers in the way he could move from an ineffectual Kent character to someone capable of the most incredible deeds. It might have been a daydream, one that eventually touched millions in all its formats, and thus Superman moved into the 1950s as a widely recognized and successful product of American popular culture. See also: Radio Programming: Children’s Show, Serials, and Adventure Series; Serial Films; Youth Selected Reading Bridwell, E. Nelson. Superman: From the Thirties to the Seventies. New York: Bonanza Books, 1971. Dooley, Dennis, and Gary Engle, eds. Superman at Fifty! The Persistence of a Legend! Cleveland, OH: Octavia, 1987. Goulart, Ron. Over Fifty Years of American Comic Books. Lincolnwood, IL: Mallard Press, 1991. Grossman, Gary. Superman: From Serial to Cereal. New York: Popular Library, 1977.

SWIMMING AND WATER SKIING Whether a dip in a pool, a summer vacation at the beach, or a Sunday afternoon swim in a lake or river, for those with access to water, swimming offers both a pleasant pastime and good exercise. U.S. census reports show that for communities with a population of 20,000 and more, the number of pools in municipal and county parks and recreation areas grew 26 percent from 1940 to 1950, with the same change for public beaches. This increase in providing places to swim, however, served primarily the white population of the country. During the 1940s, segregation ruled when it came to the use of public swimming pools, and communities addressed the issue either by building separate facilities for whites and minorities, setting aside separate days for different racial groups, or excluding all but whites entirely. As soon as World War II ended, representatives from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other groups interested in promoting racial equality began to protest pool segregation. Two early and significant pool desegregation contests occurred in Warren, Ohio (1945), and Montgomery, West Virginia (1946), but in many communities it would not be until well after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education that towns and cities across the country opened their swimming pools to black citizens. Water sports garnered their share of publicity during the 1940s from swimmers in synchronized performances featured in movies, entertainment offered by water shows, and the success of American swimmers at the 1948 Olympic Games. Johnny Weissmuller (1904–1984) and Esther Williams (b. 1921), first swimmers and later movie stars, contributed to a growing fascination with the sport. Weissmuller gained


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Whether in a community park or on a luxury cruise ship, pools were popular spots for swimming and socializing during the 1940s. (Photofest)

national attention in the 1924 Olympics when he won three gold medals and one bronze, followed in the 1928 games with two gold medals. Also, in 1928, he reigned as the first person ever to swim the 100-meter event in less than a minute. In addition to these honors, he had achieved 36 national championships before retiring from active swimming in 1932 to star in his first Tarzan film. He completed 12 such features by 1948, and boys and young men, jumping into a river or swimming pool in good cannonball form, could be heard imitating the famous Tarzan yell given by Weissmuller before plunging into a jungle pool. In 1941, at the San Francisco World’s Fair, Weissmuller starred in Billy Rose’s (1899–1966) Aquacade in choreographed duet swims with Esther Williams, a relatively unknown American Athletic Union (AAU) champion in the 100-meter freestyle. She had been picked to be a member of the United States 1940 Olympic swim team in games scheduled for Tokyo. Officials canceled this venue because of the looming global conflict, but Williams then won out over some 75 entries for the Aquacade. Scouts from Hollywood’s Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studio noticed her in the show because of her flashy smile and shapely legs, which resulted in her appearance in two motion pictures, Andy Hardy’s Double Life (1942) and A Guy Named Joe (1943). Williams’ third film and first swimming movie, Bathing Beauty (1944), placed her second to the lead, Red Skelton (1913–1997), and launched a successful career in film


Swimming and Water Skiing | 669 musicals that feature elaborate swimming and diving performances. Her grace and skill inspired many young girls to take up the activities. Appearing in eight motion pictures during the 1940s, she initially continued in the No. 2 spot against stars Van Johnson (1916–2008) in Thrill of a Romance (1945) and Easy to Wed (1946) and William Powell (1892–1984) in The Hoodlum Saint (1946). With Fiesta (1947), however, she achieved top billing, a position she held for the rest of the decade, with the exception of a nonswimming film, Take Me out to the Ball Game (1949), in which Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) receives top billing. The first presentation of Billy Rose’s Aquacade occurred in 1937 at the Great Lakes Exposition in Cleveland. He moved his music, dance, and swimming show to the New York World’s Fair in 1939, where it ranked for two years as one of the outstanding entertainment attractions for fairgoers. The Aquacade did equally well at the San Francisco Golden Gate International Exposition later in 1940. At both exhibitions, Johnny Weissmuller starred, and Gertrude Ederle (1905–2003) enjoyed cameo appearances. A celebrity in her own right, Ederle in 1926 had laid claim to the honor of being the first woman to swim across the English Channel. Esther Williams also joined the Aquacade troupe on the West Coast. In addition to synchronized swimming, water skiing serves as a basic aspect of water shows. The inspiration for skiing on water goes to Ralph Samuelson (1904– 1977), credited as the inventor of the activity. At a 1922 showcase event on Lake Pepin, a wide portion of the upper Mississippi River between Minnesota and Wisconsin, he showed off his creation. Advancement from a one-man performance to an organized water skiing show occurred at Atlantic City’s Steel Pier in 1928. That same year, Richard “Dick” Pope Sr. (1900–1988) awed spectators in Miami by jumping from a long, low, slanted ramp while wearing water skis. As interest grew, several individuals in addition to Samuelson attempted to manufacture the perfect water ski. In 1925, Fred Waller (1886–1954), working in Astoria, New York, for Paramount Pictures, invented and patented skis to support a movie camera on water. He quickly adapted the skis to accommodate feet and secured actress Clara Bow (1905–1965) for pictorial advertising. Waller went on to develop Vitarama, a widescreen film format shown at the New York World’s Fair. Vitarama proved to be the forerunner of Cinerama, popular in the 1950s. A third individual, Don Ibsen (active 1930s–1950s), offered yet another version of water skis in 1928. Operating on the West Coast, he created a show called the SkiQuatic Follies, which he took throughout the country to both entertain audiences and promote his product. Elaborate costuming served as an integral part of the show and made the Ski-Quatic Follies unique, setting a standard for future endeavors undertaken by others. All three inventors offered workable skis, but, because Waller got a patent for his and the others did not, he frequently receives credit for the invention. Pope and his wife Julie (d. 1988) founded Cypress Gardens near Winter Haven, Florida, in 1936 and initially concentrated on developing it as a botanical garden. With the entry of the United States into World War II, Dick joined the navy, leaving Julie and their children to operate the site. In 1942, a group of soldiers visited the gardens, and Julie organized a water ski show featuring her youngsters and others. That exhibition gave birth to what would become Cypress Gardens’ key attraction: an elaborate


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mixture of complex water skiing demonstrations and maneuvers. In 1947, Cypress Gardens featured A. G. Hancock (active 1940s–1950s) and Dick Pope Jr. (1930–2007), respectively, as the first barefoot water skiers. The Popes also hosted the Dixie Water Ski Tournament, and Charles R. “Chuck” Sligh (active 1940s–1970s) proceeded to set a water ski jump record of 49 feet in 1947. The next year the first water ski pyramid joined the show, and soon a 12-person pyramid became the closing act at Cypress Gardens, soon to become known as the “water ski capital of the world.” With the development of a variety of water skis and water shows, individual swimmers and water skiers began to gain recognition. As with other sports, enthusiasts formed an organization to oversee competitions, and in 1939, its infant year, the American Water Ski Association sponsored the first National Water Ski Championships in Long Island, New York; 10 years later, France hosted a world championship. Willa Worthington McGuire Cook (active 1940s and 1950s), a winner in the 1946 and 1947 national championships, had been discovered and encouraged by Don Ibsen to enter competitions. She represented the United States in world water skiing championships, bringing home trophies in 1949, 1950, 1953, and 1955. Worthington joined the Cypress Gardens show in 1948 and served as its star attraction for a decade. The 1948 Olympic Games, held in London, proved to be a time for the United States to revel in the glory of its swimmers and divers who brought home eight gold medals, five silver, and one bronze as seen in Table 94. Before winning Olympic medals, several of these athletes—Wally Ris (1924–1989), Bruce Harlan (1926–1959), Bill Smith (b. 1924), Robert Cowell (1924–1960), and Alan Ford (1923–2008)—served in the U.S. Navy. Wally Ris, along with Adolph Kiefer (1908–2008), a 1936 gold medal recipient for the backstroke, worked as swimming instructors for the navy. Ann Curtis (b. 1926) took home two gold medals. In 1944, she became the first woman and first swimmer to receive the James E. Sullivan Memorial Award given annually to the most outstanding amateur athlete. World War II affected life in the United States in a number of ways. For swimmers, one of the first signs of war came with the shortage of swim caps. Made of latex, they had long been an important part of any swimming outfit for women. The permanent wave hairstyle had been popular for many years, and it took time and money to obtain one. Thus women swimmers wanted something to protect their hair while swimming, but industry needed the rubber used in the manufacture of latex for war materials, and so bathing caps became scarce. During the postwar years, latex caps returned, frequently decorated with colorful plastic petals or leaves in an effort to make them prettier than a simple, head-fitting accessory. Swimsuits for women evolved from 1920s athletic tank suits to 1930s bathing suits, often with small overskirts to hide the thighs, to 1940s figure-hugging numbers that could be one or two pieces. At this time, corset manufactures contributed a stretch tummy control panel to hold in the stomach and inserted bra cups to give bust support, thereby making a perfect outfit for pinup girls whose pictures could be found in army barracks, inside helmets, even on airplanes and bombs. In 1946, a daring two-piece bathing suit called a bikini, which left little to the imagination, made its debut in the Paris salon of French fashion designer Louis Reard (1897–1984). It would be many years, however, before this article of clothing would appear at American swimming


Swimming and Water Skiing | 671 TABLE 94.

1948 Olympic Games: U.S. Swimming and Diving Winners

Event 100-Meter Back Stroke 100-Meter Freestyle 400-Meter Freestyle 1,500-Meter Freestyle 200-Meter Breast Stroke

Male Athlete Allan Stack Robert “Bob” Cowell Walter “Wally” Ris Alan Ford William “Bill” Smith James “Jimmy” McLane James McLane Joe Verdeur Keith Carter Robert “Bob” Sohl

Medal Gold Silver Event Gold Silver Gold Gold Silver Bronze

4-×-100 Freestyle

4-×-200 Relay Team

Female Athlete Medal

Ann Curtis

Gold

Marie Corridon Gold Thelma Kalama Brenda Helser Ann Curtis

Walter Ris, James McLane Wallace “Wally” Wolf, William Smith 10-Meter Platform Diving Sammy Lee (first Asian American to win an Olympic Gold) Bruce Harlan Springboard Diving Bruce Harlan

Gold

Gold Silver Gold

pools and beaches. Illustrator Pete Hawley (1916–1975) nonetheless employed provocative imagery for advertising Jantzen swimwear during the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1940s, it became fashionable for men to wear bathing suits consisting of form-fitting briefs, but some men felt these were too revealing and continued to wear traditional boxer-style trunks. In either case, a separate top for men had by then become obsolete. Adolph Kiefer, a champion swimmer and the owner of a swimming goods business called Adolph Kiefer & Associates, introduced the first nylon suit in 1948. Kiefer, well-known for his many international race victories, understood the advantages to be offered by this lightweight alternative to cotton and wool suits. Kiefers, as they were called, easily became the swimsuits of choice at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Finland. Swimming has wide appeal for both men and women of all ages and has been a human activity since prehistoric times. It costs little, so long as one resides near water. Swimming for fun can lead to improved physical fitness, a trimmer figure, and the opportunity to socialize with others. Competitive swimming as a sport dates back to the early 1800s in Europe. It demands disciplined training and can be in the form of distance, speed, or synchronized events. Water skiing grew up with the 20th century and, like swimming, can be done for fun or competitively. It, however, uses more equipment, including skis and a boat. See also: Fads; Illustrators; Leisure and Recreation; Race Relations and Stereotyping


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| Swing Selected Reading Dulles, Foster Rhea. A History of Recreation: America Learns to Play. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1965. Grimsley, Will, ed. A Century of Sports by the Associated Press Sports Staff. New York: Associated Press, 1971. Wiltse, Jeff. Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

SWING A form of listening and dance music that captivated audiences in the 1930s, swing moved into the 1940s like a steamroller, seemingly unstoppable in its popularity. Yet, by 1945 and the end of World War II, other musical formats had begun to displace swing, and when the decade closed, it seemed an antique, a leftover from another time. The style called swing had its beginnings with jazz and many of the popular dances from the Roaring Twenties. Musicians and bandleaders like Louis Armstrong (1901– 1971), Cab Calloway (1907–1994), Duke Ellington (1899–1974), Fletcher Henderson (1897–1952), Earl Hines (1903–1983), Jimmie Lunceford (1902–1947), Bennie Moten (1894–1935), and Fats Waller (1904–1943), among many others, served as progenitors and pioneers in the movement, playing arrangements that featured a propulsive, toetapping energy that attracted listeners. These artists came from the black jazz tradition, but a handful of white bands, such as those led by Larry Clinton (1909–1985), Glen Gray (1900–1963), Ben Pollack (1903–1971), and Paul Whiteman (1890–1967), also proved receptive to the infectious rhythm in this as-then unnamed music. By the mid1930s, with “swing” firmly ensconced as its proper title, all other forms and styles of American popular music had to take a back seat to the growing popularity of this new musical phenomenon. Black musicians in the main nurtured swing, but white bandleaders came to dominate it. By the late 1930s, orchestras led by the Dorsey brothers (Tommy, 1905–1956, and Jimmy, 1904–1957), Benny Goodman (1909–1986), Glenn Miller (1904–1944), Artie Shaw (1910–2004), and many others had assimilated swing into their repertoires and achieved a level of commercial success never realized by any of the black aggregations that had done so much in bringing it to maturity. The big bands that characterized swing to most audiences as a rule consisted of 12 or more instrumentalists (usually a minimum of four reeds, four brass, and four rhythm), playing carefully written arrangements that blended jazz and popular music in a way that attracted both dance and listening audiences. With the onset of the 1940s, the large aggregations fronted by Charlie Barnet (1913–1991), Count Basie (1904– 1984), the Dorsey brothers, Ellington, Goodman, Miller, and Shaw led the way into the new decade. But close behind came innumerable others, with leaders like Benny Carter (1907–2003), Jan Garber (1894–1977), Shep Fields (1910–1981), Harry James (1916–1983), Sammy Kaye (1910–1987), Kay Kyser (1905–1985), Russ Morgan (1904–1969), and Charlie Spivak (1905–1982) keeping dancers and record buyers of all stripes happy.


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During the heyday of swing, roughly the late 1930s and early 1940s, when a band played an up-tempo number, couples took to the floor and danced the jitterbug, an outgrowth of a number of styles that had gained popularity in previous years. In this photograph, presumably taken at a USO (United Service Organizations) function or military base, a serviceman and his partner demonstrate to onlookers the necessary loose-limbered steps. (Photofest)

Although swing remained king in the early 1940s, the entry of the United States into World War II created unexpected problems for the music industry. By 1942, the demands of the military draft (also called selective service and conscription) resulted in more and more men entering the armed forces. Almost overnight, once-large orchestras shrank appreciably in size. Small groups—sextets, quintets, quartets, and trios—played an increasingly important role in music. From an artistic standpoint, these changes led to the dominance of such groups in evolving areas of modern jazz, encouraging the exploration of new musical formats, and they occurred at the expense of traditional big band swing. The shortage of qualified male musicians led, during the war years, to the creation of “all-girl orchestras,” a phenomenon that virtually disappeared with the end of the draft and the return of men from the various service branches. Perhaps the strongest evidence of changing times for swing bands involved the role of vocalists—the “boy singers” and “canaries” as many called them—that began to accompany every group, large and small. Traditionally, band singers tended to stand off at the edges of the stage and only came into the spotlight when the leader called for


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one of their numbers. In addition, they often earned less than the musicians, since most bands usually played a number of instrumental numbers during a set. Many people, especially the leaders themselves, saw the singers as part-timers and deserving of a lower paycheck. With the war, however, the status of vocalists changed. With manpower shortages reducing the size of many orchestras, the soothing sounds of a crooner often held greater appeal for war-weary audiences than did a large, wailing sax section. Record sales and bandstand requests reinforced the growing popularity of the singers, and this perception also held true for small vocal groups. Although not immediately apparent, public taste underwent a significant shift during the early 1940s. The war also caused the traditional mainstays for booking the many swing orchestras, such as clubs, dance halls, and restaurants, to cut back on their hours of operation. Lighting restrictions such as blackouts, brownouts, and dim-outs imposed after sunset—the most popular time for operating these venues—forced many to close early. A later nationwide midnight-to-dawn curfew effectively shut down most urban areas at night. The rationing of various food products made serving dinners a challenge because menus could not provide many scarce items, often the very favorites of patrons. Lack of personnel, from chefs to wait staff, created additional difficulties. Getting to and from a club or restaurant also presented problems: gasoline rationing severely limited personal travel, and public transportation had been sharply reduced, to the point that many places went to weekend hours only, and a number simply shut their doors “for the duration,” a phrase commonly used from 1941 until 1945. As a final blow, the federal government in 1944 decreed a 20 percent amusement tax to raise much-needed war revenue, making a visit to a nightclub too expensive for many. If all the foregoing were not enough, two non-war-related events also contributed to the woes of the big bands. First, a simmering feud between the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Producers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) caused a boycott that resulted in the protracted absence of ASCAP-related recordings over the airwaves during much of 1941. The second event occurred in late 1942, when the AFM (American Federation of Musicians), under the leadership of its president, James C. Petrillo (1892–1984), decreed that no union musicians could participate in commercial recording sessions, although this restriction did not include vocalists. Not until late 1944 did the ban come to an end, a curious chapter in American music history and one that worked to the detriment of active bands and musicians. With its exceptions for vocalists, the AFM strictures on recordings heightened public awareness of singers and groups. The overriding cause for the erosion of the swing’s dominance, however, came about because of changing tastes. Swing had run its course as America’s favorite music. New approaches and new artists attracted audiences always looking for anything novel or fresh. Too many bands constantly repeated their old hits, relying on the tried and true instead of innovation, and in time this easygoing spirit no longer attracted the multitudes it had during the music’s heyday. What had been new and exciting in the 1930s and early 1940s now sounded old-fashioned to a new generation of musicians and listeners. Despite the growing signs of economic and personnel problems, several new swing bands nevertheless jumped into the already-crowded field. For example, in 1938, Les © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Swing | 675 Brown (1912–2001) introduced his new aggregation, the Band of Renown. Although it boasted no unique sound or style, the orchestra landed several long hotel and club engagements, which gave the musicians some economic stability, and Brown gained a recording contract with RCA Victor’s Bluebird label, a major accomplishment. In 1940, a young singer named Doris Day (b. 1924; nee Mary Anne von Kappelhoff) briefly joined the group. She soon left but returned in 1943, a move that signaled an important change in the orchestra’s image. In late 1944, Day and Brown recorded “Sentimental Journey.” An immediate hit, it stayed on the charts throughout early 1945, peaking that spring. “Sentimental Journey” ultimately emerged as the No. 2 song for the year and ensured the continuing popularity of the Les Brown band at least for a while. For her part, Doris Day moved on to a solo career that culminated with remarkable success in both movies and recordings. After serving an apprenticeship during the 1930s as a pianist, composer, and arranger for a number of big bands, Claude Thornhill (1909–1965) in 1940 likewise started his own orchestra. Following a rocky beginning, he found his own style that combined rich, sonorous dynamics with unusual instrumentation, including tubas, French horns, and several clarinets. With its tonal delicacy, his 1941 composition “Snowfall” captures the band’s unique sound well and achieved considerable commercial success. Just as he was getting established, Thornhill chose to enter the navy, an enlistment that included playing piano with Artie Shaw’s service band as well as fronting a group of his own. Fortunately, a handful of recordings he had previously made kept him in the public eye, so Thornhill soon resumed his commercial duties upon his 1945 discharge and return to civilian life. He organized a new band and hired the immensely talented Gil Evans (1912–1988) as his chief arranger. In no time, the Thornhill/Evans sound found a host of listeners, and the two musicians went on to become significant voices in the creation of new directions in modern American music—neither swing in the traditional sense nor jazz as it evolved in the 1940s. With varying degrees of success, several other new bands attempted to buck the trends of the early 1940s. Most turned out to be short-lived, but they nonetheless produced, during their varying tenures, interesting variations on the ongoing swing motifs then passing from public favor. For example, Hal McIntyre (1914–1959) led a group that played much in the style of Glenn Miller, an approach that initially assured some club and dance hall dates. On another plane altogether, Raymond Scott (1908–1994) led a quintet—called a “quintette” and in reality a sextet—in the late 1930s and then a big band during the 1940s. During his work with a small group, Scott proved himself a real innovator, creating such popular novelties as “The Toy Trumpet,” “Twilight in Turkey” (both 1937), and “In an Eighteenth-Century Drawing Room” and “Huckleberry Duck” (both 1939). Remarkably complex in their composition and execution, these tunes and several others made their way to the soundtracks of Warner Bros.’ cartoons, the medium in which most people gained exposure to his wacky music. The group broke up in 1939, and Scott switched to a big band, did arranging, and worked in radio during the 1940s. But for two years, he pioneered in the creation of offbeat novelty music that had strong jazz and swing overtones. For many, however, he will be best remembered as the man who fronted the orchestra on Your Hit Parade on both radio and television from 1949 until the show went off the air in 1957. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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Another problem, related to conscription and the attrition of personnel occurring in many aggregations, pertained to the bandleaders themselves. Some received their draft notices from the government, and others felt the need to enlist. Either way, a number of the most prominent leaders soon wore uniforms instead of tuxedoes. In 1942, at the height of his popularity in the states and too old for the draft, Glenn Miller enlisted and donned an Army Air Corps uniform bearing the rank of captain. He had tried to join the navy, but officials would not allow it because of his age, 38 in 1942. But the army yielded, thus giving birth to one of the first big-name service ensembles, a huge organization consisting of a 42-piece marching unit, a jazz combo, string accompaniment, and most famously, his 19-piece Army Air Force dance orchestra. Even after Miller’s untimely death in December 1944, the various groups carried on under the leadership of sideman Ray McKinley (1910–1995) until the army finally disbanded them with the return of peace in 1945. But Glenn Miller represented only one of many bandleaders who fronted service orchestras. Miller’s vocalist and saxophonist from his civilian aggregation, Tex Beneke (1914–2000), led a navy band in landlocked Oklahoma. After his discharge, and with the consent of the Miller estate, he took over the leadership of the old Glenn Miller orchestra, allowing the popular band to carry on. Conducting a navy band, for whatever reasons, seemed a magnet for a number of swing-oriented leaders. Artie Shaw also formed a unit, as did sax player Sam Donahue (1918–1974) and pianist Eddie Duchin (1909–1951), while Bob Crosby (1913–1993) wielded a baton for the Marine Corps. Trumpeter Clyde McCoy (1903–1990) enlisted in the navy’s Special Services division, and many members of his band likewise joined at the same time. On the army side of things, Major Tiny Bradshaw (1905–1958) led a large dance orchestra that played for the troops overseas, and “Waltz King” Wayne King (1901–1985), a bit long in the tooth for active duty, served at a post in Chicago with a number of fine musicians in his group. When these and other bandleaders and musicians received their discharges in 1945 and 1946, they returned to a changed musical picture. Many once-prominent swing bands were no more, others faced discouraging economic realities, and new musical styles vied for attention. During 1946, a crucial year, the accumulating problems of the war years such as declining public interest, the rise of vocalists, and new trends in music came to a head: in short order, Les Brown, the Dorseys, Benny Goodman, and Harry James broke up their bands. An era had come to a close, and those still hanging on faced an uncertain future. See also: Andrews Sisters, The; ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Bebop (Bop); Boogie-Woogie; Cole, Nat King; Broadway Shows (Musicals); Jukeboxes; Musicals (Film); Race Relations and Stereotyping; Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Rhythm ‘n’ Blues; Sinatra, Frank; Songwriters and Lyricists Selected Reading An Anthology of Big Band Swing, 1930–1955. 2 CDs. Decca GRD 2–629. Compiled 1993. McClellan, Lawrence, Jr. The Later Swing Era, 1942 to 1955. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. Walker, Leo. The Wonderful Era of the Great Dance Bands. Berkeley, CA: Howell-North Books, 1964. Yanow, Scott. Swing: Great Musicians, Influential Groups. San Francisco: Miller Freeman, 2000. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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TECHNOLOGY In wartime, technology—the practical application of science and the creation of tools and techniques to accomplish tasks—usually makes significant advances. The pressures of war and the need to solve problems as quickly as possible bring together the best minds and available resources. The 1940s turned out to be such a period. An era of unparalleled technological developments in many fields, some of them good, some not, the decade witnessed a continual struggle between the rational and the intuitive. World War II brought about a vastly increased level of government spending on technological research and development. No defense-related projects were too big or too small, from the Manhattan Project and the creation of the atomic bomb to improving the cut and fit of military uniforms. Because of the momentum for newer and better brought about by the conflict, the postwar years demonstrated little slowdown, but peace transferred that energy to a vast array of consumer products. The lists below (one alphabetical, the other chronological) mention some of the more prominent or newsworthy technological inventions and improvements that occurred during this time. An Alphabetical Listing of Selected Technological Achievements of the 1940s Aerosol spray cans. Although a prototype had been designed in 1927, nothing came of it. In 1941, engineers Lyle David Goodloe and William N. Sullivan (both active in the 1940s) developed the first practical aerosol can. They used chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as their propellants. Because of environmental concerns, CFCs were later banned and other gases substituted. Robert H. Abplanalp (1922–2003) devised an efficient nozzle, the crimp-on valve, in 1949. That same year, Edward H. Seymour (active 1940s), marketed the first commercial spray paint, available in aluminum only. 677


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Aqualung. Engineer Emile Gagnan (1900–1979), working with French diver Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997), in 1943 developed a means of breathing while underwater; it came to be called an aqualung. When adopted by the navy, the device received the acronym “scuba,” for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. Atomic bomb. A fearsome weapon, the most destructive of World War II, came about because of a massive effort, involving thousands of scientists and technicians, to produce a nuclear device before the Axis powers could do so. This militarycivilian collaborative effort came to be called the Manhattan Project. In mid-July 1945, the team successfully exploded the first atomic bomb in a test conducted in the deserts of New Mexico. Shortly thereafter, U.S. bombers dropped two atomic bombs; one, on August 6, 1945, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, and the other, on August 9, 1945, on Nagasaki. A few days later, on August 15, 1945, Japan sued for peace and the war came to an end. Automated streetlights. In 1949, the city of New Milford, Connecticut, successfully demonstrated streetlights that would turn on automatically at dusk and turn off at dawn. Using photoelectric cells, the lights responded to changes in light. Other cities would soon adopt this new, efficient lighting system. Automatic washer. In 1947, merchandiser Sears, Roebuck introduced a Kenmore (the company brand name) top-loading washing machine. Its popularity, despite its hefty price tag of $239.95 (slightly over $2,300 in 2008 dollars), would render obsolete traditional manual washing machines. Other manufacturers, aware of the Kenmore’s immediate success, soon offered similar models. Ballpoint pen. Hungarian Laszlo Biro (1899–1995) in 1938 patented an early example of the modern ballpoint pen, a writing instrument he had invented some years earlier. Six years later, after fleeing Europe because of World War II, Biro took out a new patent and began manufacturing his creation. By the end of the 1940s, the pen had demonstrated its usefulness, and a French firm, the Société Bic, bought Biro’s patents and commenced mass producing the cheap and popular Bic pen. Chain reaction. The first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction—the process that occurs when a neutron strikes a nucleus with resultant fission, or the release of atomic energy—occurred in 1942. As part of the ongoing Manhattan Project, Italian-born physicist Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) and his colleagues initiated a controlled chain reaction beneath the playing fields at the University of Chicago, an important step in the development of the atomic bomb. Color television. CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) Laboratories, under the direction of Peter Goldmark (1906–1977), demonstrated a workable color television system in 1940. World War II interfered with its introduction, and not until 1950 did CBS begin broadcasting with Goldmark’s invention. Because it proved incompatible with already-existing black-and-white receivers, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) blocked its use, favoring instead a competing system developed by rival RCA (Radio Corporation of America) and made available in 1953. Even the RCA system required the purchase of a TV set able to reproduce colors; older black-and-white receivers could carry the picture but without the colors. Computer—digital. During the period 1943–1944, British technicians constructed the first digital (binary) computer, the Colossus Mark I. Limited to military uses, it © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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In the early days of commercial television, the necessary equipment tended to be bulky and difficult to move. This photo shows a typical camera setup in a studio. Technicians called the image on the adjoining screen a test pattern; it allowed viewers to adjust their sets for the best picture. (Photofest)

deciphered German codes produced by their Enigma machines; this top-secret ability hastened the end of World War II in Europe. Unfortunately, the zeal for secrecy also delayed other computer developments, because the British shared little information until years after the war. Cortisone. Researchers Edward C. Kendall (1886–1972) and Phillip S. Hench (1896–1965) in 1941 identified cortisone, a steroid hormone that had previously been known as “substance X” or “compound E.” They obtained it from the adrenal glands of oxen and found it useful in treating arthritis. Chemist Percy L. Julian (1899–1975) in 1948 synthesized cortisone, making possible its manufacture, thereby reducing its cost and greatly widening its availability. Cybernetics. The term goes back to ancient Greece, suggesting control, such as that exerted by a steersman or governor. In the 1940s, it gained popularity because of mathematician Norbert Weiner (1894–1964) and a pioneering 1948 book he wrote that bore that title. Weiner used cybernetics to describe how any change in an environment causes other changes within that system. He expanded his ideas to mechanical and electrical applications that tend to replicate human control functions and made understandable some of the early concepts that would define how computers work. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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DDT. The initials used to identify a chemical pesticide, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, which became widely known during the 1940s. First formulated in 1894, its use as a pest control remained undiscovered until 1939. World War II witnessed military and civilian officials using the chemical freely to control mosquitoes, lice, and other disease-carrying pests. With the end of hostilities, DDT became the pesticide of choice among farmers and cooperating governments, and vast amounts of the chemical were indiscriminately sprayed on agricultural sites as well as on any areas where insects might breed. Not until much later—the late 1950s and early 1960s—did scientists begin to realize the environmental risks associated with its use. Finally banned completely in the United States in 1972, DDT continues to be employed in a handful of countries, albeit more sparingly than before, especially in those places that experience a high incidence of malaria. DNA. Deoxyribonucleic acid, a long molecule that resembles a twisted ladder (or a double helix, as it came to be called), received these more easily remembered initials in 1944. It functions to encode the genetic information of all living organisms, except for some viruses that utilize ribonucleic acid, or RNA. Scientists refer to discrete segments of DNA as genes; longer structures of genes become chromosomes. Although laboratory experiments revealed the existence of DNA in 1869, science could not firmly establish its role in the transmission of genetic instructions until 1943, when researchers verified its existence and its importance. Further investigations followed this breakthrough, culminating in the double-helix model of the molecule, formulated in 1953 by molecular biologists Francis Crick (1916–2004) and James D. Watson (b. 1928), with the assistance of Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958). ENIAC Computer. Scientists John W. Mauchly (1907–1980) and J. Presper Eckert Jr. (1919–1995) created a new step in computer design with their electronic numerical integrator analyzer and calculator, or ENIAC machine. It became operational in 1946. Commissioned by the U.S. military, the ENIAC weighed 30 tons, occupied more space than the average room, generated great heat, and consumed enormous amounts of electricity. Over 17,000 vacuum tubes powered its calculations; transistors (see below) had not yet been invented. Mauchly and Eckert followed the ENIAC with the considerably faster and more powerful UNIVAC (universal automatic computer) in 1951. Fender solid-body electric guitar. In 1944, radio repairman Leo Fender (1909– 1991) began experimenting with electric solid-body guitars; two years later, he formed the Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company. His first model, created in 1946 and marketed in 1948, bore the name Broadcaster. It amplified the guitar’s sound electrically, not acoustically, and did not create feedback from the player’s body; its success introduced a new era in popular music, especially in rhythm ’n’ blues and rock ’n’ roll. Because of legal problems with the name, the company rechristened the guitar as the Telecaster in 1951. Fluoridation of public drinking water. Grand Rapids, Michigan, holds the distinction of being the first U.S. community to add fluoride to its public water supply, doing so as a test city in 1945. Following considerable research, scientists determined that minute quantities of fluoride added to water would significantly reduce the likelihood of tooth decay. Despite some opposition that attempted to link fluoridation to


Technology | 681 sinister Communist plots during the Cold War, the United States Public Health Service had by 1951 endorsed fluoridation, and many more towns and cities adopted the practice. In addition, major toothpaste manufacturers began adding fluoride to their products. Since then, dramatic reductions in cavities among the general population have been attributed to fluoride. 45-rpm records. In 1949, RCA Victor introduced a new concept in phonograph recordings: the 7-inch 45-rpm disk. The company released records in this format in a futile attempt to compete with Columbia Record’s 33 1/3-rpm long-playing disks [see below], which had become available to consumers in 1948. The “singles” (one two-sided disk, with a single song on each side) market had long been dominated by 10-inch 78-rpm records, but the latter possessed several disadvantages: they tended to be highly breakable, their large playing surface scratched easily, they wore out quickly with repeated playing, and they were bulky. RCA’s innovative disks, pressed in durable vinyl, seldom broke, had a higher resistance to scratching, and, being smaller and lighter, could easily be transported from place to place. They also boasted a distinguishing feature—a large center hole designed for record players equipped with special spindles manufactured by RCA. It did not take competitors long to get around that disadvantage; they either manufactured spindles of their own or sold plastic “spiders,” small, flexible inserts that reduced the oversized hole to conventional size and made it possible to play one of the disks on an ordinary record player, provided it offered the 45-rpm speed. For a brief period in the early 1950s, RCA and several other labels also tried marketing 45 EPs—the EP standing for extended play. A typical EP would contain two songs per side and sometimes came packaged as albums, with two or three such disks by the same artist, the 45-rpm version of a 33 1/3-rpm disk. EPs did not capture the public’s imagination, did poorly in record shops, and have largely disappeared. Within a few years, however, the 45 single had rendered the once-mighty 78-rpm record obsolete, with the last ones being pressed around 1960. Nevertheless, for virtually all albums, consumers overwhelmingly turned to the long-playing disk, and RCA had to begin issuing its own 33 1/3 recordings in 1950 to remain competitive. Frisbees. The name given plastic disks, which, when tossed correctly, will spin and cover considerable distances in the air. They reputedly received their unusual name from the Frisbie Baking Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Young customers would occasionally keep the aluminum pie plates from the bakery, sailing them in the air for fun. Walter Morrison (b. 1920), a California resident, in 1948 refined the pie plate concept into the plastic disk so familiar today. He peddled his creation at county fairs, calling it, among other things, a “Flyin’ Saucer.” Wham-O, Inc., a California toy manufacturer, in 1955 bought out Morrison and attempted to market his disk as a “Pluto Platter.” Tradition won the day, however, and in 1959 Wham-O trademarked the word “Frisbee.” Frozen TV dinners. C. A. Swanson & Sons, a Nebraska-based food processor, lays claim to the invention of the so-called TV dinner, saying that it introduced the product in 1953. But others preceded Swanson in the development of precooked, frozen meals. In 1944, Maxson Food Systems introduced Sky Plates for navy fliers that


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consisted of full, packaged dinners. They expanded into Strato Plates the following year, featuring similar frozen meals marketed to commercial airline passengers and crew members. Served on plastic plates, the food had been reheated on board the aircraft. Frozen Dinners, Inc., in 1949 sold prepackaged foodstuffs in bars and taverns in the Pittsburgh area. The company became Quaker States Foods in 1952, wholesaling frozen dinners to supermarkets throughout the East. To give Swanson its due, the company tied in the idea of eating meals while watching television and also coined the term “TV dinner.” Hot rods. During the late 1930s and early 1940s, a number of young men took delight in souping up old cars, altering them for speed and fast acceleration. The majority of these automotive tinkerers were based on the West Coast, but a few could be found scattered in other parts of the country. They nicknamed their vehicles hot rods—hot obviously for speed, but rod has never been a synonym for an automobile, so its etymology remains vague. The term “hot rod” nevertheless began appearing in the early 1940s and received dictionary recognition as a legitimate addition to American popular speech in 1945. Since those early beginnings, the hobby has become well established. Jeep. In 1941, the U.S. Army announced that it wanted a sturdy, general-purpose four-by-four utility vehicle. Bantam Motors, a small Pennsylvania-based company, already had on the boards a conveyance it called the Bantam Reconnaissance Car, but the firm possessed limited production capacity. Willys-Overland Motors, Inc., a similar operation, in the meantime developed a stronger, longer-lasting engine, and the army awarded contracts to Willys and to Ford, the latter because of its large assembly lines and ability to turn out vehicles in huge quantities. From this emerged the ubiquitous Jeep, probably the best-known form of military transport in World War II. By the end of 1945, over 650,000 Jeeps had been manufactured. The source of the name Jeep has been open to conjecture for many years. “General-purpose,” or G-P, has been suggested, but the immensely popular Popeye (or Thimble Theatre) comic strip, written and drawn by Elzie C. Segar (1894–1938), contained a character called Eugene the Jeep. This cartoon figure, introduced in 1936, could do almost anything, a trait often attributed to the motorized creation the army adopted. Whatever its true roots, the name Jeep has survived into the present. Jet-propelled aircraft flight (U.S.). Credit for the first flight by an aircraft propelled by a jet engine rightfully belongs to Germany. In August 1939, an experimental Heinkel HE 178 successfully flew under turbojet power. The Germans also manufactured the first operational jet, the Messerschmidt ME 262, which joined the Luftwaffe in 1944. Close behind came the Royal Air Force Gloster E.28/39, which flew in tests in May 1941; this aircraft would evolve into the operational Gloster Meteor in the summer of 1944. The honor of being the first U.S. jet aircraft to fly goes to the Bell XP-59-A Airacomet; it had its maiden flight at the beginning of October 1942. Bell built a total of 66 Airacomets, but none saw combat; they instead trained pilots for flying jet aircraft. Lockheed Aircraft’s P-80 Shooting Star replaced the Bell P-59s in 1945, too close to the end of World War II for combat operations.


Technology | 683 Microwave oven. Percy L. Spencer (1894–1970), a Raytheon Company engineer, accidentally discovered the technology behind the microwave oven found in most contemporary kitchens. Spencer had been working with magnetrons, tubes that utilize electrical and magnetic currents to create energy in the form of microwaves. Such tubes had been created in the 1920s but, lacking any seemingly practical use, lay idle for over a decade. During World War II, Raytheon had done considerable experimental work with radar devices, including the use of magnetrons, and Spencer, when approaching one such tube in 1946, found that a candy bar in his pocket melted. Further investigation showed that microwaves could be used as a source of tightly controlled energy that would cook but without a buildup of heat. Shortly after that discovery, Raytheon commenced work on creating a workable microwave oven that could be marketed commercially. Called Radaranges, they became commercially available in 1947; huge, expensive, heavy ovens, the company sold them to restaurants and institutions. Not until the early 1950s did the company market cheaper, smaller microwave ovens for home use. Mobile telephone. In the days prior to World War II, scientists worked to establish a mobile system of radios and telephones for communication purposes. Led by AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph) and its subsidiary Bell Labs, wireless radios sometimes had telephone capabilities and bore the designation radio-telephones. The government placed most civilian efforts of this nature on hold during the war years, but the military worked intensively to perfect walkie-talkies, mobile radios that soldiers could carry into battle and still have the ability to communicate with others. In 1946, with preprinted circuit boards available for civilian use, much smaller radio-telephones became a reality. That same year, Bell Labs initiated commercial radio-telephone service, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) specified channels for such transmissions. A receiver could thereby pick up a signal on one channel (frequency) and transmit it to another. Antennas, strategically placed on tall buildings and poles, provided maximum efficiency. For longer distances, a signal might go to a nearby antenna and then be transferred to another closer to the designated recipient. By 1948, this service had begun to enjoy widespread use. Penicillin. An early “miracle drug,” British biologist Alexander Fleming (1881– 1955) discovered penicillin in 1928. Quite by chance, he found that mold had formed in one of his Petri dishes, effectively killing the sample it held. This discovery led to an antibiotic that he chose to call penicillin, but it elicited little enthusiasm in the medical community, since sulfonamides (commonly known as sulfa drugs) had been introduced in the 1930s as antibacterial agents. Fleming continued to test penicillin, and with the onset of World War II, it finally gained attention. Foreseeing high numbers of wounds, both the British and U.S. governments underwrote continued experimentation and stockpiling of the drug. Because of its potency in treating various physical injuries, Fleming secured the assistance of scientists Howard W. Florey (1898–1968) and Ernst B. Chain (1906–1979) to devise ways of mass producing penicillin. By the time of D-Day in 1944, sufficient supplies of the antibiotic existed to treat the many wounded at the Normandy landings. Although civilians


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had begun to hear about penicillin, its use continued to be primarily military until the end of 1945, when it became available for widespread public use. Because of their work, Fleming, Florey, and Chain shared in the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1945. Polaroid camera. Edwin Land (1909–1991), a self-taught inventor, in the early 1930s created photographic filters and film that effectively polarized light (polarizing sunglasses eliminate glare on a bright day). In 1937, he and a number of investors formed the Polaroid Corporation; during World War II, the company developed several related products for defense work. In the postwar era, Land achieved his greatest fame and success with the 1947 Polaroid Land camera, a unique camera capable of taking pictures and then developing them in about a minute, an approach labeled “one-step photography.” Polaroid cameras sold well from the day of their introduction, and Land continued to refine and improve his instant cameras for the next several decades. Radar. An acronym coined in 1942 by the U.S. Navy that stands for radio detection and ranging, radar has a long history. Early devices that utilized many of the principles of modern radar underwent testing in the 1900s to 1930s, and some historians argue that the development of the scientific theories behind radar date back to the 19th century. By the mid-1930s, scientists had developed devices capable of sending out radio waves that would detect obstacles (airplanes, ships, icebergs, coastlines, etc.) in their path and allow operators to know their approximate location. In a farsighted move, the British constructed a series of large antennas across the southern approaches to England; when World War II broke out in the autumn of 1939, operators were able to detect the approach of German planes from the European mainland. In a battle of technologies, the British worked continuously to improve their detection capabilities, while the Germans worked to perfect equipment that could in turn detect the presence of enemy radar. Both sides also worked feverishly to improve systems capable of jamming the other’s radar. The Allies soon had radar units small enough to be put in aircraft, allowing them to hunt and locate other planes both at night and in foul weather. These improvements even applied to the oceans; radar equipment that could detect a submarine periscope became part of the Allied arsenal. The end of World War II and the ensuing Cold War did nothing to slow down the development of ever-more sophisticated radar systems. Both the United States and the Soviet Union ringed themselves with early-warning arrays of radar in order to know of any attempted sneak attacks. Postwar commercial aviation and maritime commerce also made extensive use of the technology. On a more popular level, the so-called radar gun came along in 1954. A device to measure the speeds of vehicles, police departments and highway patrols quickly adopted it to catch traffic violators. That led in 1965 to a bustling business in radar detectors, or “fuzzbusters,” for drivers wishing to avoid speeding tickets. Since then, a series of improvements, both in police radar units and civilian detectors, has been ongoing. Refrigerator-freezer combination. The appliance division of the General Electric Company (GE) introduced a new concept in refrigeration when, in 1947, it showed a two-door model that separated the freezer portion from the conventional refrigerator. The upper third of the unit held a freezer accessed by its own exterior door. The lower two-thirds housed a conventional refrigerator, also with a separate door. The upper © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Technology | 685 freezer compartment, much larger than the traditional small box usually built into the refrigerator, allowed for the storage of considerably more frozen items, a reflection of the growing popularity of frozen foods then occurring. This innovation also led to fierce competition among appliance makers as they tried to improve on GE’s model. Rubber—synthetic. In the early days of World War II, Japanese forces had overrun most of the rubber plantations in Southeast Asia, the primary source of this strategic material for U.S. industry. In light of the worsening Asian situation, the government had begun stockpiling rubber in 1940 and had more than a year’s worth set aside when the war broke out at the end of 1941. Strict civilian rationing of rubber products went into effect in early 1942, and posters and scrap drives implored citizens to turn in extra tires, boots, or anything else made of rubber for recycling to fill defense needs. In the meantime, an intensive search had begun in 1940 to find a synthetic form of natural rubber that could be made in the United States. A partnership of the government, commercial rubber companies, the oil industry (petroleum by-products would be key ingredients), chemical firms, and academic research centers undertook this challenge. Efforts to synthesize rubber have a long history, dating back to the 19th century, and, although some substitutes had been found, they did not equal natural rubber. This previous research, however, did lay the groundwork for a quality synthetic, which made the war-generated quest somewhat easier. Thanks to the cooperation of all involved parties, plus the leadership of top executives with varied areas of expertise, the daunting task proved successful in a remarkably short time; in the spring of 1942, the first bales of synthetic government rubber-styrene (GR-S)) were produced. By the end of the year, over 2,000 tons of GR-S had been manufactured, a figure that soared upward each year for the remainder of the war. Silly Putty. Not all technological innovation necessarily leads to scientific or cultural advancement. In 1943, General Electric Company engineer James Wright (active 1940s) had been assigned to work on finding substitutes for natural rubber. Because the Japanese had captured most of the rubber plantations in Southeast Asia, severe shortages in U.S. rubber supplies resulted. Wright tried combining a number of ingredients but failed to create anything that might be useful in making tires, boots, insulators, or other products requiring rubber. He did, however, concoct a gooey substance that would bounce, stretch, and resist high temperatures. Neither he nor his colleagues could find much use for it other than amusing themselves by bouncing it in the laboratory. In 1949, Wright’s gooey discovery made it into a small toy catalog at the insistence of Peter Hodgson (1912–1976), an advertising consultant who bought the production rights and the existing supply held by General Electric. After a year or so in the catalog, “bouncing putty” was dropped, and Hodgson took his savings and decided to market it himself. He called it Silly Putty, and placed one-ounce globs of it in red plastic eggs. After a slow start, Hodgson’s product, “the real solid liquid,” took off, and with effective advertising in key television time slots, it became an enduring favorite. Simulcasting. The late 1940s witnessed the decline of traditional radio programming but also saw the rise of commercial television. Once-favorite radio shows were canceled or went to new TV lives on the small home screen. Occasionally, © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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however, a popular radio show stayed on the air, went to TV also, and then technicians broadcast it over both media. This practice received the name of simulcasting, a blending of words “simultaneous” and “broadcasting.” In the late 1940s, before television stations had large staffs of announcers, baseball games would sometimes be broadcast on radio, and a television hook-up would show the game with the radio play-by-play providing the sound. You Bet Your Life, a popular quiz show hosted by comedian Groucho Marx (1890–1977), ran on radio from 1947 to 1956. It also played on television from 1950 to 1961. When the show made the transition to TV, engineers simulcast the audio portion for radio. Also, in the early days of postwar FM radio, some AM stations would simulcast their programming over an FM affiliate in order to save the costs of running two separate stations. Slinky. Richard James (1914–1974), a naval engineer, discovered the toy potential in certain types of industrial torsion springs in 1943 when he accidentally knocked over one on which he was working and watched it fall, flip, bounce over obstacles, and end upright. The reactions of neighborhood children convinced him he was on to something that might sell. Working closely with his wife Betty (1918–2008), who came up with the name, saying that “slinky” described the motions of the spring, the couple launched their product at a Gimbel’s Philadelphia department store during the 1945 Christmas season. The toy promptly sold out, and they had to manufacture more. Over time, hundreds of millions of Slinkies have since been purchased, and it continues to be one of the most successful toys of all time. Snorkel. This term comes from German naval submarine jargon used during the war years; it refers to a breathing tube, or air intake, that a diesel-powered sub could extend just above the water’s surface when at periscope depth to bring in fresh air. To some, this tube resembled a nose or snout, a schnorchel. Allied sailors Anglicized it to snorkel toward the end of the decade but still limited its use to submarines. In 1953, a rubber tube through which swimmers could breathe while floating face down in the water or swimming just below the surface became popular at beaches, and it inherited snorkel as its name. A verb, to snorkel, also entered water enthusiasts’ speech, meaning to go swimming face down in the water while using this breathing apparatus. Sonar. An acronym, meaning sound navigation ranging, that gained a measure of public recognition in 1946. A naval term used mainly with submarines, sonar devices allow submarines “to see” while underwater. Simply put, a sonar operator sends out pulsing sounds beneath the water’s surface. When these sounds strike an object, the operator can record the echo of that meeting and thus learn the object’s bearings. Although the principles behind sonar had been understood for many years, research and development of improved systems moved slowly and amid top secrecy before and during World War II. A favorite scene in submarine movies of the day involves a sonar operator sending out pings (sound) and awaiting the echoes. Silent and tense, both the observers on screen and the theater audience await the information sonar will provide. Is the enemy close at hand or some distance away? Since the end of the war, advances have been made, with small, sophisticated


Technology | 687 sonar devices being made commercially available to fishermen, divers, and boaters, while defense-based applications have also advanced. Sound barrier broken. The speed of sound exists as a variable number, dependent on temperature, altitude, and several other factors, but it approximates 760 miles per hour (mph) at sea level. On October 14, 1947, while piloting a Bell X-1 in level flight, U.S. Air Force Captain Charles “Chuck” Yeager (b. 1923) broke the so-called sound barrier by attaining a speed of 807.2 mph. Many scientists had long understood the physics of exceeding the speed of sound, and such speeds had been attained previous to Yeager’s flight; aircraft in dives (sometimes unplanned), and some top-secret experimental flights, often using rocket engines, had undoubtedly broken the mythic barrier, but lack of reliable speed measurements and secrecy kept these exploits out of record books. The term “barrier” had arisen because of fears about turbulence (buffeting of the aircraft as it nears, and then exceeds, the speed of sound). In addition, the so-called sonic boom posed problems for those on the ground. As an aircraft exceeds 760 mph, the air around it compresses, unable to expand, with a resultant shock wave made audible as a thunderous boom to all on the ground. The success of Yeager’s flight showed that the sound barrier could be broken, and with proper design and engineering, aircraft could be manufactured that could safely fly at supersonic speeds. Streptomycin. An antibiotic drug discovered in 1943 that became useful in the treatment of tuberculosis (TB). After extensive testing, the Food and Drug Administration allowed its medical use in 1947. Administered via injections, streptomycin proved effective against bacteria that had previously displayed resistance to other treatments. Its success, when accompanied by other antituberculosis drugs, allowed the once-dreaded disease to be treated on an outpatient basis and brought about the closing of TB sanitariums. Suntan lotions, Coppertone. In the 1940s, a good, visible tan, the darker the better, represented robust health. The notion of staying out of the sun because of its longterm injurious effects remained for future generations to discover. In light of the positive attitudes tanning elicited, Miami-based pharmacist Benjamin Green (active 1940s) in 1944 introduced a lotion designed to enhance (i.e., darken) one’s tan. He called his product Coppertone, and he placed the image of an Indian chief on the label with the slogan, “Don’t Be a Paleface.” Not until 1953 did Green’s company create the iconic Coppertone Girl for its advertising. In magazines and on billboards, Coppertone presented the picture of a little girl at a beach with a frisky black cocker spaniel tugging at her bathing suit bottoms. The dog has succeeded in exposing a bit of her white, untanned buttocks, and the slogan, “Don’t be a paleface!” runs across the lower part of the ad. Over time, that humorous image has become famous, and Coppertone has reaped countless benefits from it. In addition, Green reputedly concocted a primitive sunscreen lotion around this time. U.S. troops stationed in the South Pacific suffered from excessive exposure to the tropical sun, and welcomed Red Vet Pet (for Red Veterinary Petroleum), a red, greasy salve that probably blocked some rays if applied heavily enough. But the day for true sunscreens still lay in the years ahead.


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Teflon. Roy J. Plunkett (1910–1994), a chemist with a small firm called Kinetic Chemicals, quite by accident discovered in 1938 that a compound, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) possessed an unusual characteristic. It appeared to disperse both water and oil. His company patented it in 1941 and gave it a trademarked name, Teflon, in 1945. The huge DuPont chemical conglomerate acquired an interest in Kinetic during this time. DuPont, however, wanted to utilize PTFE for industrial and scientific purposes because it reduces friction, resists corrosion, and can be employed as an electrical insulator. A French firm created the first cooking utensil, an aluminum frying pan clad with PTFE, which it marketed as Tefal (or T-Fal in North America) in 1954. This signaled the beginning of consumer applications of PTFE. Since then, Teflon has become a popular coating and lubricant, utilized in a variety of products. 33 1/3-rpm long-playing records. In the summer of 1948, Peter Goldmark (1906– 1977) of Columbia Records unveiled the company’s long-playing record, or LP, as many called it. Pressed on durable vinyl, this new product provided about 20–25 minutes of music per side on a 12-inch disk and about 12–15 minutes on a 10-inch variety. Either way, an LP offered far more than the 3 or 4 minutes available on a traditional 10-inch, 78-rpm single. The LP played at 33 1/3 rpm and boasted microgroove technology—a much narrower groove than anything then on the market. Because LPs played more slowly, they reduced surface noise—the annoying hisses, pops, and clicks associated with 78-rpm records—but consumers had to still treat them with care to avoid scratches. In addition, the slower rotation allowed the phonograph’s tone arm to be lighter in weight and the needle (stylus) could track with less pressure. Both LPs and styli therefore did not wear out as quickly. Excessive heat or improper storage could, however, warp them. Columbia’s long-playing recordings helped usher in the high-fidelity era, a time when electronics manufacturers rushed to produce improved amplifiers and speakers to accompany the new turntables needed to play such recordings. The introduction of the LP also brought about the so-called battle of the speeds, when archrival RCA Victor brought out its competing 45-rpm vinyl singles [see above]. In a tacit admission of defeat, RCA began releasing long-playing disks on its own label in 1950, but its 45s would nevertheless end up becoming the standard for singles. Tide detergent. Until the 1930s, traditional laundry soaps handled almost all washday chores, often in the form of soap flakes for sudsy water. But soaps could not always clean greasy laundry or embedded dirt until Procter & Gamble, a leading U.S. manufacturer of household products, introduced Dreft, the first synthetic detergent. Dreft used a chemical formulation that involved synthetic surfactants (a word combining “surface active agents”). Essentially two-part molecules, one portion pulled grease and dirt from laundry, and the other suspended them so that they could be rinsed away. But Dreft did an inferior job on tough cleaning, so Procter & Gamble chemists came up with Tide detergent in 1943. It, too, utilized surfactants (also called “syndets,” for synthetic detergents) but added what the company called “builders” that improved the cleaning action. After considerable testing, coupled with wartime restrictions, Tide appeared on store shelves in 1946. A runaway success, it achieved full national distribution by 1949 and has remained a top seller in the highly competitive detergent field ever since. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Technology | 689 Transistors. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company, better-known as AT&T, controlled the lucrative long-distance telephone business throughout the 1940s. Because it had to employ vacuum tubes to amplify its signals, the company wanted a product more reliable and cheaper than tubes. That decision led AT&T, through its subsidiary Bell Laboratories, to explore semiconductors, a class of solidstate materials that fall somewhere between an insulator and a traditional conductor (thus its literal name, a “half conductor”). A team of physicists, consisting of William B. Shockley (1910–1989), John Bardeen (1908–1991), and Walter H. Brattain (1902–1987), with Shockley designated as the leader, in 1945 tackled the task of creating a practical semiconductor that could replace vacuum tubes. After two years of experiments, the team found that small cylinders coated with silicon showed some promise. When, in late 1947, Bardeen and Brattain added gold and germanium (a chemical element that can function as a semiconductor) crystals to their efforts, they realized they had invented what came to be called a point-contact transistor. It could amplify electrical signals and also switch on and off, blocking the signal when necessary. Shockley joined in with the concept of a junction transistor, a device that layered, or sandwiched, two different kinds of semiconductors for better amplification capabilities. After much work, scientists announced the creation of a practical junction transistor in 1950. Bell Labs, however, did not wait for everything to work flawlessly. At the end of June 1948, they announced the arrival of a new product, the transistor. Few knew what the word meant, let alone the potential of this new addition to modern science. For the United States, researchers mainly studied possible applications for military use. Texas Instruments, a U.S. electronics firm, marketed the first transistorized radio, the Regency TR1, in 1954 but stopped selling them after a brief time on the market in order to concentrate on other products. Because of advertising and public interest, the word “transistor” nonetheless entered everyday speech and suggested greater things to come. Half a world away, a small Japanese manufacturer of tape recorders, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo, also took notice. When Texas Instruments withdrew from the transistorized radio market in 1955, this company jumped in, releasing its TR-55. Realizing the difficulties that would arise with its Japanese name in the United States, the firm changed it to the now-familiar Sony. Since then, consumer-oriented transistorized products have been dominated by Asian-based companies. Tupperware. Polyethylene, a versatile plastic developed in 1933, comes in two forms, high-density and low-density. Both have become familiar to consumers, with the high-density variant (called HDPE) used in making containers, piping, and automotive parts, and the low-density version (LDPE) in sheeting and packaging, especially the ubiquitous plastic shopping bag. The virtues of both include flexibility, durability, and a resistance to other chemicals. Earl Tupper (1907–1983), an entrepreneur and inventor, recognized the potential in HDPE. He had worked briefly for DuPont during the late 1930s and knew something about plastics. He formed his own company, Tupper Plastics, in 1938 and managed to obtain some lucrative government contracts during World War II for defense-related products. He introduced a line of flexible HDPE kitchen storage containers for consumers in 1946, patenting his ideas in 1947. He called his product Tupperware. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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Possibly the most original thing about Tupperware involved its air- and watertight seal. Basing his design on the covers used with paint cans, Tupper devised a locking lid, easy to close and easy to open, but one that kept items fresh and moisture-free. He also made Tupperware available in several translucent pastel colors that were fashionable at the time, such as yellow, green, orange, and pink (or, as Tupper marketed them, lemon, lime, orange, and raspberry). Department stores, however, seemed reluctant to take on his invention, and those that did found the containers did not sell particularly well. As a result, Tupper hired Bonnie Wise (1913–1992), a marketing expert, for assistance in promoting his containers. She came up with the clever Tupperware Home Party, gatherings where Tupperware products would be sold directly to individuals. Wise capitalized on the concept of women working and socializing simultaneously. Not an entirely new idea, Hostess Plans had evolved in the 1930s with several home products firms, and Wise simply adapted it to Tupperware. She used churches, clubs, and sororities, as well as friends and neighbors, to sell to one another. Tupperware Parties became an overnight success in the early 1950s, and soon the versatile plastic could only be obtained this way—the pastel bowls with the tight lids had been withdrawn from stores. Zamboni. A resident of Southern California, Frank J. Zamboni (1901–1988) displayed a knack for tinkering with machinery. His family operated an ice wholesale business in the 1930s, but as refrigeration technology improved, demand for their product declined. With their knowledge of ice, the family in 1940 opened a large skating rink in Paramount, California, which they named Iceland. At that time, in order to keep the ice smooth and in good condition for skaters, a rink would every so often have to be temporarily closed, a situation no one liked. A tractor rolled out onto the ice, dragging a heavy scraper that would shave the surface, and workers would follow, sweeping up the shavings, hosing down the ice, and then, with squeegees, smoothing it. It all took time and involved considerable labor. As the owner of a rink, Frank Zamboni knew how tedious this kind of maintenance could be, and he resolved to improve the process. Still using a tractor and a scraper, Zamboni devised a conveyor that picked up the shavings and any debris and brushed, wetted, and smoothed the ice all in one operation. This prototype appeared in 1947. By 1949, he had eliminated the tractor. Instead, he utilized a Jeep (see above) chassis and built a surrounding unit that contained the scraper, conveyor, brushes, and water. The resultant boxy, almost military-looking contrivance he named after himself: a Zamboni. Since then, the Zamboni company has built hundreds of machines for hockey teams, ice shows, the Olympics, and, of course, countless rinks. The same firm also created, during the 1960s, Grasshoppers, mechanisms that will vacuum up the standing water on artificial grasses, such as Astroturf. See also: Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry; Cartoons (Film); Civil Defense; Classical Music; Comic Strips; Crosley Automobiles; Fads; Lawns, Lawnmowers, and Fertilizers; Newspapers; Skating (Figure); Sinatra, Frank; Toys


Technology | 691 A Chronological Listing of Selected Technological Achievements from the 1940s 1940

Color Television Radar

1941

Aerosol Spray Cans Cortisone Jeep

1942

Chain Reaction Jet-Propelled Aircraft Flight (U.S.) Rubber—Synthetic

1943

Aqualung DDT DNA Silly Putty Slinky Streptomycin

1944

Ballpoint Pen Computer—Digital Fender Solid-Body Electric Guitar Frozen TV Dinners Snorkel Suntan Lotions, Coppertone

1945

Atomic Bomb Fluoridation of Public Drinking Water Hot Rod Penicillin Teflon

1946

ENIAC Computer Mobile Telephone Sonar Tide Detergent Tupperware

1947

Automatic Washer Microwave Oven Polaroid Camera Refrigerator-Freezer Combination Sound Barrier Broken

1948

Cybernetics Frisbees 33-1/3-rpm Long-Playing Records Transistors

1949

Automated Streetlights 45-rpm Records Simulcasting Zamboni


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Because of the breadth of this chapter, no specific works are recommended; instead, the reader is directed to the bibliography at the end of this encyclopedia.

TELEVISION Following the end of World War II in 1945, a shift occurred in American broadcasting. Radio networks and stations, for many years the primary force in electronic communication, saw their influence gradually wane as television, once a technological curiosity, began its inexorable climb to dominance. The Big Three networks—ABC (American Broadcasting Company), CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), and NBC (National Broadcasting Company)—allocated more and more of their resources to the development of television programming, all at the expense of their radio schedules. Ironically, the profits accrued from commercial radio made possible the development of commercial television. Although radio also expanded in the immediate postwar era, particularly in the number of small, independent stations, long-running network shows got canceled, and long-time stars moved to the new medium. By the early 1950s, however, and despite a lengthy holding action throughout the 1940s, American radio increasingly became a purveyor of music, news, and little else. As early as 1938, a few television receivers, mainly those manufactured by DuMont, became available to the American public in limited markets. Often featuring miniscule round screens as small as three inches in diameter and priced from $125 to $600 (approximately $1,900 to $9,100 in 2008 dollars), they aroused considerable curiosity but few sales. Despite the lack of buyers, the following year saw many more manufacturers—Crosley, General Electric, Muntz, Philco, RCA, Zenith, and others— offer receivers. Appliance stores and similar outlets purchased most of these early sets as demonstration models; few individuals wanted to take a chance on such new technology, plus virtually no broadcasting took place outside New York City and Schenectady, New York, along with limited facilities in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, the sites for most experimental telecasting. At the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair, aptly called “The World of Tomorrow,” the Hall of Television stood out among the many buildings and exhibits, although Crosley, General Electric, and Westinghouse also had displays of television components elsewhere. The hall, sponsored by the RCA (Radio Corporation of America), an early leader in the development of commercial television, featured the new RCA TRK-12 model within its modernistic walls. Additionally, RCA had strategically placed TV receivers around the vast fairgrounds, broadcasting live scenes of events then occurring at the exposition. Viewers watched those exterior images, however, on DuMont receivers, not RCA models. Since DuMont had gotten the jump on its competitors by offering sets in 1938, it could supply enough receivers for the fair. RCA, of course, would eventually catch up and then far surpass DuMont and most other companies in the mass production of television components, but not in 1939. One of the most popular attractions at the fair, the Hall of Television reflected growing public curiosity about the new electronic marvel; for many visitors, it provided their first glimpse of televised images.


Television | 693 Despite this display of confidence about television’s future, confusion marked the opening of the new decade, because broadcasters, manufacturers, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wrangled over standards for transmitting and receiving television signals. In a compromise that pleased no one, the FCC in 1940 allowed a patchwork of rules to remain in place, citing the need to allow research to continue rather than freezing it at an arbitrary point. Finally, in May 1941, with the various parties in essential agreement, the FCC approved a set of basic technical standards for commercial television. In essence, this agreement okayed 18 channels, delayed discussions about the possibilities for color television (at that time, all broadcasters provided only a black-and-white signal), and made FM (frequency modulation) the carrier for sound instead of AM (amplitude modulation). The way had been cleared for commercial television on a broad scale, and NBC’s WNBT and CBS’s WCBW, both located in New York City, went on the air commercially, broadcasting for about 15 hours per week. Schenectady, Chicago, and Los Angeles followed suit in late 1941. The initial programming consisted of shows that could be produced and televised within the stations’ studios. To attract sponsors, an hour of prime time television in 1941 could be purchased for $120 (approximately $1,750 in 2008 dollars); a comparable hour on radio would cost 10 times as much. Given the high cost of receivers, limited production, and the availability of programming in only a few metropolitan areas, television as a mass medium grew very slowly. Estimates place the number of sets in use in 1941 at around 10,000 to 20,000, with most of them in New York City. The outbreak of World War II in December 1941 changed everything; by May 1942, the War Production Board had banned any expansion of existing television facilities and had placed a freeze on the manufacture of new sets, explaining that those resources had to be directed to the war effort. Those already on the air had to drastically cut back operations for the duration of the conflict, effectively bringing the development of American television to a standstill. Engineers and technicians kept things running, however, and a number of advances in equipment and planning still took place. At the same time, license applications for new television stations piled up in FCC offices, and officials knew that, with the return of peace, pressure would be on to grant allocations for broadcasters. Both television and radio transmit their signals on prearranged bandwidths, a system measured in megahertz. The narrow range previously assigned FM radio would be insufficient to accommodate any growing roster of stations and would require increased bandwidth. Following much spirited discussion as manufacturers and broadcasters, particularly NBC and CBS, vied for advantageous positions in any agency rulings, the FCC in 1945 gave television broadcasters 13 VHF (very high frequency) channels and changed and expanded the FM spectrum. The agreements pleased no one completely but brought enough order that it allowed for the postwar advance of commercial television. Stations then in operation had to change frequencies in order to comply and stay on the air, making 500,000 older FM radios obsolete overnight. The FCC identified 140 metropolitan areas and allotted them a minimum of one television channel; since it had 400 licenses to distribute, a number of metropolitan areas received more than one channel. The agency also explicitly restricted channel 1 on the television spectrum to low-wattage community broadcasting. Manufacturers followed the FCC’s lead and had sold at least 175,000 new black-and-white receivers


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by the beginning of 1948. These postwar models usually boasted a 10-inch screen and sold for an average of $375 (approximately $3,600 in 2008 dollars), making them a costly investment for most families. People with access to television signals nonetheless lined up at appliance and department stores to purchase the latest models. Other services, particularly mobile communications, such as police and fire calls, also used the broadcast band, and their proximity to one another sometimes caused interference problems. The FCC in 1948 decreed that the bandwidth space formerly occupied by channel 1 would be turned over to mobile and other special services. In return, channels 2 through 13 would become clear-channel operations, free of electronic interference. Since that time, all VHF television encompasses channels 2 through 13, and channel 1 has disappeared. Additional problems emerged as more television stations came on the air. Stations located in cities close together often encountered interference from one another (e.g., New York City and Philadelphia, Cleveland and Detroit), and the many pending license applications would only exacerbate the situation. Again in 1948, the FCC instituted a freeze on any new stations going on the air until all the technical problems had been ironed out. It would last until 1952, giving ABC, CBS, NBC, and others four years to work on such topics as standards for color television, eliminating electronic interference, fair and impartial allocations for new licenses, and implementing educational (noncommercial) television. The edict did not include those stations already on the air or under active construction, allowing them to continue their activities. At the onset of the 1948 FCC freeze, only about 10 percent of the population had actually seen a television broadcast. Across the country, 34 licensed TV stations were on the air, with another 75 authorized. Out of that 109, only a few large cities had two channels, but that gave the illusion of greater availability. Many sizable communities— Austin, Denver, Little Rock, Portland (Maine and Oregon), among a number of others— had no stations whatsoever. American television therefore had to wait until the early 1950s to evolve into a true mass medium. For consumers, the purchase of a television set in the late 1940s not only involved a significant outlay of money but also demanded time and involvement with the receiver on the part of buyers. Each time they turned on the receiver and often when they changed channels as well they had to contend with five or six knobs—horizontal, vertical, brightness, tint, channel selector, plus a volume control and an on-off switch—on the face of the cabinet. They all required attention, and too much of an adjustment with one might distort another. Stations, when they first came on the air each broadcasting day, provided a test pattern on the screen before they commenced their regular schedule. This image, consisting of static designs that included horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines, along with shades of gray, allowed individuals to twiddle the knobs and adjust the picture until they achieved a satisfactory image, but it took practice and patience. In addition to tuning the set, consumers also had to buy either an indoor or outdoor (sometimes both) antenna in order to pick up a station’s signal. The higher an antenna reached into the air, the better the reception, so rooftops around the country soon sprouted ungainly assemblies of rigid, shaped wire attached to a pole. Inside, “rabbit ears,” as some called them, two adjustable spokes or circles (the ears) on a stand, could be manipulated for a better picture. People usually placed them on tabletops, window sills, or the TV cabinet. So, before anyone could relax and enjoy a show, © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Television | 695 these television rituals had to be performed. The heavy early models also took up large amounts of space in homes; the truly portable TV still lay in the future. In the years immediately following the war, most television stations broadcast only during the late afternoon and evening hours. Virtually all programming came into homes live—it emanated from local studio facilities as it happened, and little could be filmed or otherwise saved for later broadcast. No good way existed to preserve early television shows. Networks and stations used kinescope recording, a method utilizing a filmed image taken from a special, synchronized TV picture tube, but the results lacked definition and tended to be grainy, and the development of videotape did not occur until the early 1950s. Since not all presentations had kinescope recordings made of them, many early entertainment shows, sporting events, and news broadcasts have been lost forever; those fortunate enough to be preserved in the kinescope format tend to be less than satisfactory. Not until 1949 did coaxial cable link the East Coast with the Midwest; true national broadcasting—Atlantic to Pacific—did not occur until 1951, and that link omitted most areas of the Rocky Mountain states. As network affiliates became connected, however, the situation changed. The three major networks dominated the prime-time evening hours (traditionally 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. EST, weeknights), causing affiliate stations to increase their on-air time. Local programming expanded, mainly in the late morning and on into the afternoon and early evening hours, and it usually consisted of cheap, easily produced and telecast material, often called filler shows. Because most broadcasters had prior experience with radio programming, they often borrowed formats that had previously been successful, such as cooking demonstrations, children’s entertainment, musical interludes, and interview and talk programs. But with time to fill, they also experimented with various formats to see what worked best in the new medium. In order to attract larger audiences, network television executives early on looked to the movies for a treasure trove of material. Hollywood, on the other hand, showed little inclination to supply this new rival with motion pictures. The difference between film projection at 24 frames per second (fps) and television images at 30 fps presented technicians the problem of learning how to synchronize the two. Once it had been resolved, most of the movies first shown on TV sets consisted of shorts, cartoons, and the like. The major studios would not release any post-1948 features to television, so stations had to make do with older, less desirable footage in the public domain, including some in the form of silent films. Not until the 1950s would the studios begin to relent and allow more recent features to be shown. With the lack of popular films, television producers turned to vaudeville and radio for inspiration, and thus created the TV variety show. Led by the Texaco Star Theater (NBC, 1948–1953), with comedian Milton Berle (1908–2002); the long-lived Toast of the Town (CBS, 1948–1971), with host Ed Sullivan (1901–1974); and Cavalcade of Stars (DuMont Network, 1949–1952), a series that introduced Jackie Gleason (1916– 1987), the variety show established itself as a staple of the new medium. Dave Garroway (1913–1982), an easygoing radio reporter and disc jockey from Chicago, in 1949 began Garroway at Large, an informal talk show that ran until 1951 and led to his tenure as host of NBC’s pioneering Today in 1952. Garroway’s relaxed format paved the way for the many talk shows that would become regular features of television programming in the years to come. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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Again borrowing from radio, talent shows, such as the Original Amateur Hour (DuMont, others, 1948–1958), with host Ted Mack (1904–1976), and Talent Scouts (CBS, 1948–1958), with Arthur Godfrey (1903–1983), proved popular, as did countless game and quiz shows. Most of them employed simple sets—a desk, possibly some chairs or a podium, and little else. The meager prizes consisted of small amounts of cash or a modest check; not until the 1950s would the elaborate sets and large prizes in the thousands, or tens of thousands, of dollars come along, until a series of scandals, beginning in the mid-1950s, sullied the genre and caused its virtual disappearance from network programming. A high point of these early days of television involved anthology drama series. These shows, such as The Ford Television Theater (CBS, others, 1948–1957), Kraft Television Theater (NBC, 1947–1958), Philco Playhouse (NBC, 1948–1955), and Studio One (CBS, 1948–1958), presented both adapted and original dramatic productions, usually an hour in length. They utilized the talents of the best writers and playwrights of the day and starred top performers. Because the production of virtually all network shows originated in studios located in New York City—the headquarters of ABC, CBS, and NBC—the people involved usually came from radio and Broadway, not Hollywood. Given the limitations of television at the time, dramatic shows tended to be intimate, dialog-based productions instead of action stories or anything dependent on outdoor scenes or elaborate sets. But, as the parenthesized dates above suggest, for a brief period from the late 1940s until the mid-1950s, these programs demonstrated the dramatic potential of the new medium. Children could enjoy the late-afternoon antics on Howdy Doody, which debuted in 1947 on NBC and ran until 1960, one of the most popular youngsters’ shows of all time. They could also watch the puppets on Kukla, Fran and Ollie (NBC, others, 1948– 1957) or sample the variety of Small Fry Club (DuMont, 1947–1951). One of the first attempts to bring the classroom into the home occurred when Ding Dong School went on the air in 1952. Miss Frances (Frances Horwich, 1907–2001, a real-life education professor) presided over her charges on this NBC program that ran until 1956. Mr. I. Magination (CBS, 1949–1952) likewise brought a touch of fantasy to children, as did the interplanetary adventures of Captain Video (DuMont, 1949–1955), a series that introduced science fiction into homes. William Boyd’s (1895–1972) popular Hopalong Cassidy premiered in 1949 and ran for two years on NBC, at which time it went into syndication. One of the first Westerns presented on the small screen, Boyd had wisely TABLE 95.

Representative Television Game and Quiz Shows of the Late 1940s

Game or Quiz Show

Network

Ben Grauer’s Americana Quiz Break the Bank Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge Pantomime Quiz Quiz Kids Stop the Music Winner Take All

NBC NBC NBC CBS, others NBC, others ABC CBS


Years 1947–1949 1948–1956 1949–1950 1949–1959 1949–1953 1949–1952 1948–1952

Television | 697 bought the rights to his many old Cassidy movies and had no hesitation about showing them on television. The areas of news and sports got off to a somewhat slow start. Regular network news shows commenced in 1948, when CBS tapped journalist Douglas Edwards (1917–1990) to be the anchor for Douglas Edwards with the News, a 15-minute summary that stations carried weekday evenings. Rival NBC followed suit in 1949 with John Cameron Swayze (1906–1995) and the Camel News Caravan, also a 15-minute production. The shows relied on filmed newsreel clips, but both Edwards and Swayze frequently had to read headlines directly from scripts without benefit of any pictures, either still or moving. Meet the Press, the longest-running show in the history of American television, preceded both Douglas and Swayze, making its debut in 1947. Created for radio by Martha Rountree (1911–1999), one of the few women prominent in early broadcasting, it easily made the transition to TV. Rountree served as the first moderator of Meet the Press until 1953. Its format of intensively interviewing a prominent guest has since been widely emulated. During the 1949–1950 season, CBS ran Capitol Cloak Room, another interview show that featured members of Congress. Sports presented technical problems for the new medium. The bulky cameras of that era could not be easily maneuvered, so directors had to locate choice positions to cover a contest. The size of the playing fields required for baseball and football presented difficulties in giving viewers a sense of events. A baseball diamond forced cameras to be some distance from players, so what people saw on their screens tended to be tiny figures chasing a fly ball or equally tiny runners rounding the bases. Nevertheless, yearly television coverage of the World Series commenced in 1947 with NBC. The up-and-down field movement of football presented similar problems, and often viewers had no idea of who carried a ball until after a tackle or touchdown. No one even dreamed of instant replays in those early days. Not until the development of smaller, more portable cameras in the 1950s, along with better lenses and microphones, did the two sports begin to receive the coverage contemporary audiences expect. Because they are limited to small, controlled areas, boxing, wrestling, and Roller Derbies enjoyed considerably more television coverage than they receive in more recent times. Bowling likewise could be found in some areas. A boxing ring or its wrestling equivalent needs only one or two cameras to cover virtually all the action up close. Cavalcade of Sports in 1946 began regular local broadcasts of Monday- and Friday-night boxing events from New York City. In 1948, the Gillette Safety Razor Company took it over, renaming it the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports, and broadcast the bouts over the NBC network. A popular show, it remained on the air until 1960, when questions about gambling and criminal influences in boxing forced NBC to drop it. The sponsor’s tagline, “Look Sharp, Be Sharp” became one of the most familiar advertising themes of the time. Serious professional wrestling, long a sport but never one followed by mass audiences, changed in the late 1940s. Thanks to the antics of George Wagner (1915–1963) and television, wrestling came into American homes because of the ease of capturing it for broadcasting. Wagner, a good but not outstanding wrestler, in the mid-1940s grew his hair long, dyed it blonde, and dubbed himself Gorgeous George. He would enter the ring, accompanied by valets who would spray perfume and disinfectant in order to “purify” the ring. He then proceeded to be an outrageous villain during the match,


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applying illegal holds, defying the referee, and deliberately playing to the crowd. He infuriated fans, caused small riots, and generally put professional wrestling on the entertainment (not sports) map. His notoriety convinced Hollywood to cast him in Alias the Champ (1949), one of the few wrestling movies ever made. More legitimate wrestlers, such as Lou Thesz (1916–2002), who held a variety of championships, became the “good guys,” but they never generated the enthusiasm that Gorgeous George could whip up simply by climbing into the ring. A Roller Derby likewise took place in a confined space, and, although watching skaters go around and around the track may sound boring, the pushing and shoving, jamming, tumbles, and pile-ups provided plenty of excitement, not unlike watching stock car racing today. A contact sport that traces it lineage back to the 1920s, Roller Derby started out as an endurance sport. Roller skaters tried to outlast the competition on a banked oval track. This arrangement carried over to early television, often with all-women teams competing. Spectacle, just as in professional wrestling, soon took over, and the more outrageous the collisions, the better fans liked it. As increasingly conventional viewing fare filled television schedules in the 1950s, both wrestling and Roller Derbies declined in viewership, although wrestling would stage a remarkable comeback some years later. What some foresaw but many did not, television in its formative years resembled a sleeping giant that would soon awaken. As engineers worked on the technical challenges, creative people experimented with new formats designed for a small, blackand-white screen. Failures outnumbered successes, but the televised offerings grew, and in a short time it had eclipsed radio, until then the most successful purveyor of mass entertainment. In early 1949, fewer than 7 percent of American families owned a television receiver. Before the decade ended, however, TV sets could be found in about 10 percent of residences, while movie attendance and the hours spent listening to radio dropped sharply. The electronic giant, coming out of its slumber, would awaken fully soon thereafter, and the 1950s marked a time of unparalleled growth. For much of the rest of the 20th century, television showed few signs of slowing down. See also: Advertising; Broadway Shows (Comedy and Drama); Broadway Shows (Musicals); Comedies (Film), Costume and Spectacle Films; Crosley Automobiles; Radio Programming: Drama and Anthology Shows; Radio Programming: Educational Shows; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk; Radio Programming: Quiz Shows; Skating (Roller); Westerns (Films) Selected Reading Barnouw, Erik. Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. Greenfield, Jeff. Television: The First Fifty Years. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977. Reiser, J. W. “Whatever Happened to Channel 1?” www.tech-notes.tv/ [go to “History and Trivia” at the site to find this article] Sterling, Christopher H., and John M. Kitross. Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1990.

TENNIS During the 1940s, the sports sections of newspapers regularly carried stories about amateur tennis championship titles won by players such as Pauline Betz (b. 1919), © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Tennis | 699 Don Budge (1915–2000), Jack Kramer (1921-2009), and Bobby Riggs (1918–1995). Some of the more successful amateurs turned professional and, in attempts to promote the game, gain spectators, and advance their careers, made exhibition tours across the country. Despite these activities, many Americans adhered to a perception of tennis as a game for the wealthy played on country club or private courts, not something to pay money to see or take up as a sport. Some aspects of life in the United States, however, gradually increased the availability of the game and expanded interest. Thanks to building programs initiated by the New Deal, the number of tennis courts provided to the public at municipal and county parks grew from just under 8,400 in 1930 to 12,075 in 1940. World War II slowed construction, and 10 years later they had only grown to a little over 13,000 courts. Shortly after the country entered the conflict in 1941, government officials became concerned about the large number of recruits who failed the physical fitness entry requirements. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) directed the Federal Security Agency (FSA), which included the Board of Social Security, Public Health Service, Food and Drug Administration, Office of Education, and a number of other bureaus, to initiate a campaign to correct the situation. The plan called for better nutrition for all Americans and asked schools and community centers to strengthen their physical education programs and engage more youth and adults in individual and team sports. Despite these efforts, for tennis, it would not be until the arrival of televised matches in the 1950s that the game began to attracted significant numbers of players from various economic backgrounds. Those individuals wanting to play and dedicate considerable time pursuing tennis fell into two groups, amateurs and professionals, with each having an organization governing its activities. The United States Lawn Tennis Association (founded in 1881 and later renamed the United States Tennis Association, or USTA) represents amateur players. The Professional Lawn Tennis Association (founded in 1927 and now known as the Professional Tennis Association) serves a membership of professional tennis coaches and players. Over the years, a recurring discussion between the two groups centered on the question of whether to continue to preserve the system that prevented amateurs and professionals from playing in the same tournaments. Jack Kramer, an active promoter of professional tennis, advocated open tennis, which would remove the restrictions. The regulation, however, held throughout the 1940s; not until 1968 did an open U.S. system come into existence, thereby giving tennis greater visibility and increased acceptance by the public. A handful of U.S. players, both professional and amateur, still managed to became celebrities. For example, amateur Bill Tilden (1893–1953) achieved fame when he dominated the game in the 1920s, winning the men’s singles title for six consecutive years, 1922 to 1927. He turned professional in 1931. Likewise, a woman, Alice Marble (1913–1990), received publicity because she ranked in the world’s top 10 for four straight years, 1936 to 1939. She became a professional player in 1940. The biggest news about tennis players occurred in 1938, when Don Budge, an amateur, made history as the first man to capture all four major tournaments considered the Grand Slam of tennis: the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the United States National Championships (today known as the U.S. Open). Budge joined © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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the professional ranks in 1939 and toured the United States in 1941 with Bill Tilden. Their matches drew decent crowds and the much younger Budge easily won almost all of their 58 events. As happened with many sporting activities, the armed forces took male players away from the game to fight in the war, thus limiting most amateur playing and completely suspending professional matches. Officials canceled the Australian and French Opens and Wimbledon. The United States, however, continued to hold both the men’s and women’s national amateur championship matches at Forest Hills, New York, with only U.S. individuals participating. Even with the return of players from other countries after the conflict, Americans took the U.S. title every year. Among the most famous players of the time, Kramer joined the Coast Guard and Budge entered the Army Air Force. Once in the service, an athletic injury greatly interfered with Budge’s playing but did not stop him from participating in exhibition matches that brought the game to many soldiers for the first time, and possibly served as an inspiration for some to learn the game. Three men—Frank Parker, Jack Kramer, and Pancho Gonzales—not only won the U.S. National title, but each did so for two years in a row. All three continued to accumulate other victories in the succeeding years. Parker captured the French championships in 1948 and 1949. Gonzales turned professional in 1950 and reigned as the world’s No. 1 player for eight consecutive years in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Kramer had been on the winning U.S. National Doubles team in 1940, 1941, and 1943. At Wimbledon, he walked away with the men’s doubles trophy in 1946 and 1947 and won the singles championship in 1947. He declared himself a pro in 1948 and embarked with Bobby Riggs (1918–1995) upon a national tour, which started in New York at Madison Square Garden. Despite a severe snowstorm, the match drew a large crowd. Riggs, a tennis star in his own right and a pro since 1942, had held U.S. amateur titles and a win at Wimbledon. Kramer easily beat Riggs on the tour, winning 69 out of 89 matches. All told, they grossed a healthy $383,000 (almost $3.5 million in 2008 dollars). Whatever the American public might have felt about the appropriateness of women playing competitively, 1887 saw the first United States Women’s National Singles TABLE 96.

United States Men’s and Women’s National Singles Champions, 1940–1949

Year

Men’s Winners

Women’s Winners

1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949

Donald McNeill (1918–1996) Bobby Riggs Ted Schroeder (1921–2006) Joseph Hunt (1919–1945) Frank Parker (1916–1997) Frank Parker Jack Kramer Jack Kramer Pancho Gonzales (1928–1995) Pancho Gonzales

Alice Marble Sarah Palfrey Cooke (1912–1996) Pauline Betz Pauline Betz Pauline Betz Sarah Palfrey Cooke Pauline Betz Louise Brough Clapp (b. 1923) Margaret Osborne duPont (b. 1918) Margaret Osborne duPont


Tennis | 701 Championship matches, just six years after the inauguration of the title for men. Women’s play continued uninterrupted, and, in the 1940s, the winners, as did their male counterparts, enjoyed headlines in the newspapers. USLTA ranked Pauline Betz in the world’s top 10 women players for 1939 through 1946 and she topped the list from 1942 to 1944 and again in 1946. She won Wimbledon the only time she entered, in 1946, without losing a set. Betz appeared on the cover of Time magazine, along with a lengthy article on September 2, 1946, just days before she won her fourth U.S. title at Forest Hills. She became the only tennis player of either gender so honored during the 1940s by the magazine. In 1947, Betz turned pro; she and Sarah Palfrey Cooke toured the United States playing matches but earning far less than their male counterparts. For their efforts, they took home approximately $10,000 each (about $96,500 in 2008 dollars). Also earning a reputation in the field of tennis, Cooke became the second mother to be a U.S. singles winner. She also appeared on a top-level men’s championship list in 1945. Because the war caused a shortage of male players, officials allowed her to team with her husband, Elwood Cooke (1913–2004), a successful tennis player during the 1930s and 1940s, to play in a men’s doubles tournament. They came in second. Margaret Osborne DuPont ranked in the world’s top 10 women players for 1946 through 1950 (rankings were not issued for 1940–1945). In addition to her U.S. women’s singles victories in the 1940s, she won again in 1950. She also came in first at the French Open in 1946 and 1949 and at Wimbledon in 1947, giving her a total of six Grand Slam singles championships. In addition to the skillful play of its champions, U.S. tennis offered some moments of sensationalism. One player, Gertrude Moran (b. 1923), better known as Gorgeous Gussie, became the fourth-ranked player in the world in 1949. At the time, she also shocked the tennis establishment and world by showing up at Wimbledon to play at center court in a short tennis dress that revealed ruffled lace panties along with a sweater that flattered her feminine physique. Moran may have lost the match, but she attracted attention and turned pro in 1950. Hollywood acknowledged tennis only slightly. No feature-length movies of the 1940s dealt with the game per se, but four documentaries did focus on top-ranking players, and one offered lessons in the game. Warner Bros. Pictures highlighted Bill Tilden’s career in a 1941 short titled Big Bill Tilden. Columbia Pictures countered in 1942 in its Columbia World of Sports with Tennis Rhythm with Bobby Riggs, a review of his career during his prime. The studio also produced a sports reel titled Tennis Wizards in 1947 that features Bobby Riggs and Don Budge talking about and demonstrating how to play the game. Paramount offered Queens of the Court (1946) in a Grantland Rice Spotlight with top players such as Pauline Betz, Sarah Palfrey Cooke, Margaret Osborne duPont, and others. Cartoons deemed tennis worthy of being the brunt of some humor. Tennis Racquet (1949) has two Goofys playing a match amid much confusion. In Tennis Chumps (1949), Tom and Jerry take up the sport, and Tom’s game suffers serious trouble in light of his opponent’s (another cat) skills. Jerry the mouse, who has been carrying Tom’s equipment, which includes a killer ball, saves the match for him. Movie stars also got in the act, with Life magazine periodically running pictures of those who played. The January 1, 1940, issue shows Ava Gardner (1922–1990) leaping


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over the net, and Claudette Colbert (1903–1996) appears in the January 1, 1945, copy, smiling as she holds her tennis racket, ready for a match. Tennis gained some popularity as a spectator sport following World War II. Recreational play gradually increased, but a significant change in the number of public courts did not occur until 1965, when the count reached almost 20,000. Country clubs continued as popular places for playing. For ambitious amateurs and professionals, the 1954 establishment of the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island, offered an opportunity for official recognition of the best players. See also: Fashion; Food; Leisure and Recreation; Magazines; Race Relations and Stereotyping; Television Selected Reading Baker, William J. Sports in the Western World. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982. Grimsley, Will. Tennis: Its History, People, and Events. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971.

TERRY AND THE PIRATES (MILTON CANIFF) The name given a popular comic strip of the 1930s and 1940s, it broke new ground in the areas of content and drawing. Cartoonist Milton Caniff (1907–1988) created Terry in 1934. Prior to that, he drew a fantasy series called Dickie Dare, stories about a boy who dreams of adventures with heroes from the past. Caniff eventually dropped the dream sequences in favor of having Dickie accompany “Dynamite Dan” Flynn, an adult soldier of fortune, for more realistic escapades. The 1930s marked the heyday of action-adventure comic strips, with popular titles like Dick Tracy, Jungle Jim, Red Barry, Scorchy Smith, and many others adorning the funny pages of U.S. newspapers. But Dickie Dare, awkward in its drawing and pedestrian in its plotting, enjoyed at best modest success. Caniff’s luck changed in 1934, when Captain Joseph Medill Patterson (1879–1946) asked him to create a new strip set in the exotic Far East. A legend in comics circles for his unerring eye in discovering new talents, Patterson headed the Chicago Tribune–New York News Syndicate and strove to hire the best cartoonists for its staff. When approached by Patterson, Caniff decided to set the stories in China and came up with a youthful hero he named Tommy Tucker and a companion called Pat Ryan, a “two-fisted adventurer.” Patterson rejected the childlike name Tommy Tucker and suggested Terry Lee in its place. Always looking for a gimmick, Patterson proposed that the pair become involved with Asian pirates, thus the title, Terry and the Pirates. Together with an array of villains, usually bandits, evil warlords, or rogue military units instead of actual pirates, George Webster “Connie” Confucius plays a stereotyped Chinese who dresses oddly, speaks in strange aphorisms, and butchers the English language. Connie serves as a sidekick of Terry and Pat, but more for comic relief than for advancing any plots. For the period, however, such demeaning characterizations of racial minorities, especially Asians, appeared in many comic strips. The old image of the “Yellow Peril” had not died out, especially as war with Japan loomed, and variants abounded, from Charlie Chan to Fu Manchu.


Terry and the Pirates (Milton Caniff) | 703 At first, the new strip closely resembled Dickie Dare, but it quickly took on its own personality. By the end of the decade, Terry has grown into a young man capable of independent action. And Pat Ryan, who stood in for and resembled Dan Flynn, plays less of a role while Terry’s importance increases. As the series matured, so did Caniff’s drawing style. From simple line drawings, he mastered brushing in large areas of black ink that gave his work a distinctive chiaroscuro effect. This use of shadow, reminiscent of cinematic techniques, added atmosphere, especially suspense, for heightened story lines. His characters also evolved from simple cartoons to realistic figures, especially glamorous women, which soon became a specialty of his. Within a short time, Terry began to separate itself visually from most other action-adventure series of the era. The popularity and circulation of Terry and the Pirates grew throughout the decade, and the stories take on strong topical overtones in the late 1930s. Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China in 1937, a prelude to World War II. The United States professed neutrality toward the worsening Asian problem, a situation that forced movies, radio shows, and other popular media outlets to more or less follow suit. In Terry’s case, this meant calling the Japanese the “invaders,” but no doubt exists in regard to their true identity. As the 1940s opened, war raged in Europe, and the far eastern locale that Captain Patterson had presciently suggested gained increasing attention. The “pirates” of the title disappear, and Terry and the Pirates moves resolutely toward war. When the United State finally has to enter the conflict in December 1941, Terry Lee—suddenly more mature than before—stands poised to fight not “invaders” but the Axis powers, especially Japan. In October 1942, he enlists in the Army Air Force, and Terry and the Pirates becomes one of the most earnest and patriotic of all strips. One year later, Terry has his wings, and his commanding officer, Colonel Flip Corkin, gives him an eloquent talk on duty, responsibilities, and teamwork. This memorable Sunday panel touched so many readers that it has been widely reprinted and entered in full in The Congressional Record, the only instance of a comic strip being so honored. During the war years, the adventures lose some of their exotic, picaresque (a favorite term of Caniff’s) qualities, becoming more military in their themes. Since Terry has become a pilot, many of the stories involve airplanes, aerial combat, and life in the Air Force. The freckle-faced Hotshot Charlie, or Chazz, another pilot, becomes an important character but at the expense of some of the more romantic and mysterious figures from the 1930s. Terry remained one of the best strips of the 1940s, but it mellowed, as had the cast, and it lacked some of the zest that had characterized its earlier days. Caniff also found he had a flair for drawing beautiful, sensuous women, and never more so than in his seductive Dragon Lady. This enigmatic character reappears throughout the strip’s run, usually as a femme fatale, and she plays the role to the hilt. Readers might never be really sure whose side this temptress represents, but they know she will lead most of the men she encounters to no good. Even innocent Terry occasionally falls into her clutches, although she usually takes sympathy on him. With her presence, sex entered the usually sexless comics. Along that line, in 1943 Caniff began drawing a special weekly series for distribution only to the armed forces. Called Male Call, it consisted mainly of pinups of attractive women, although its lead character, aptly called Miss Lace because of her


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usual attire, gave the cartoons a form of continuity. Immensely popular, Male Call ran until 1946, and its cheesecake endeared Caniff with a generation of servicemen from all military branches. When the war ended, and with Terry boasting strong circulation among subscribing newspapers, Caniff announced he was dropping the strip and moving to a competing syndicate. Contrary to common belief, cartoonists as a rule do not own their creations; they work as employees of a syndicate, which normally owns the copyrights to any strips it carries. By leaving the Tribune-News group at the end of 1946, Caniff knowingly surrendered Terry and the Pirates. He moved to Chicago’s Field Enterprises and, at the beginning of 1947, introduced Steve Canyon, a new series featuring an Air Force veteran in his apparent thirties, an urbane, grown-up version of Terry Lee with a roguish wink in his eye. It would run until 1988 and enjoyed considerable popularity during most of that interval. Despite an artist’s departure or death, successful comic strips seldom disappear; the original syndicate brings in a successor and the series goes on. In the case of Terry and the Pirates, George Wunder (1912–1987), a former sports cartoonist and a veteran of World War II, took over the drawing and writing of the comic strip. Never Caniff’s equal in either artwork or storytelling, Wunder nevertheless did a workmanlike job with Terry, moving from imitation to eventually giving it a new and distinctive look. He would spend more years with the series than Caniff and kept it running until 1973. During much of his tenure, he has Terry and his friends battling Communists, a reflection of the Cold War in the aftermath of World War II. Most followers of Terry and the Pirates, however, have always thought of the strip as Caniff’s alone, and they tend to look on Wunder as a kind of apprentice hired to fill in for the master. The strip’s exotic Far East locale and muted references to ongoing events matched up well with the radio serials of the day. Terry and the Pirates received a late afternoon slot—the preferred time for most adventure serials on radio—with NBC (National Broadcasting Company) in 1937. It premiered on the air in November and continued until 1948; despite a crowded field, it brought a dash of realism to serial programming. But the adult dialogue and situations of the newspaper comic strip never transferred with complete success to radio, and Terry Lee seemed more an imitation of such juvenile favorites as Jack Armstrong. In 1940, Columbia Pictures produced a 15-part movie serial that shared little more than its title with the comic strip. William Tracy (1917–1967) plays Terry, and Jeff York (1912–1995) takes the role of Pat Ryan. But cheap production values and little attempt to build characterizations mire the effort in mediocrity. Twelve years later, Terry and the Pirates reappeared on television in a syndicated series that lasted about a dozen episodes. John Baer (1923–2006) took Terry’s part, and William Tracy, too old now to play the young hero, reappeared as Hotshot Charlie, Terry’s buddy. Milton Caniff served as a significant innovator for newspaper comics in a variety of ways. He discovered he had a gift for rapid-fire, snappy dialogue, something that allowed him to place wisecracks and one-liners throughout the speech balloons. No matter how desperate the situation, someone will utter a flippant remark at the height of the tension. Terry never ceases being an action strip, but one with a humorous edge. Unique for its time, the strip touches on current events of the era. Caniff’s cinematic


Texaco Star Theater (Milton Berle) | 705 eye advanced comic art, and his drawing skills, especially with the use of large areas of black, changed the appearance of American comic strips. See also: Aviation; Race Relations and Stereotyping; Radio Programming: Children’s Shows, Serials, and Adventure Series; Serial Films; Youth Selected Reading Goulart, Ron. The Adventurous Decade: Comic Strips in the Thirties. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1975. Marschall, Richard. America’s Great Comic-Strip Artists. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1997. Walker, Brian. The Comics before 1945. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2004. ———. The Comics since 1945. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002.

TEXACO STAR THEATER (MILTON BERLE) On September 21, 1948, still the early days of American television broadcasting, NBC (National Broadcasting Company) unveiled a new variety show for which it held high hopes. Texaco (The Texas Company), a large oil firm whose gasoline bears the corporate name, sponsored NBC’s offering. The producers chose an energetic radio comedian named Milton Berle (1908–2002) to headline and host the proceedings. As was the custom then, sponsors did not merely place spot advertisements along with commercials from others during the running of a show, they often wielded a heavy hand in the planning, content, casting—even the time slot when it aired—of a production. They owned the entire show, all 15, 30, or 60 minutes of it, and their name in the title often took precedence over anything else, even the stars. Thus, the Camel Caravan, the Chesterfield Supper Club, the Colgate Comedy Hour, the Ford Theater, the Kraft Music Hall, the Voice of Firestone, and many other TV shows bore a corporate or product name, and the sponsor enjoyed top billing. A carryover from radio (e.g., The Chase and Sanborn Hour, The Jell-O Program, The Maxwell House Show Boat, The Royal Gelatin Hour), this practice would gradually end during the 1950s. Sponsors instead bought time on a network and seldom exerted the level of control seen in the 1940s. Raised in New York City, Berle (ne Berlinger) made his professional debut in 1914 as a child actor in silent films. Urged on by his mother, he appeared on stage in a traveling show when just 12 years of age. Berle soon thereafter began to perform as a comedian in vaudeville. By the early 1930s, with vaudeville on the wane, he moved to nightclubs and radio and found himself in demand as a guest comic on various variety shows. Quick-witted and possessed of a vast mental storehouse of jokes and one-liners at his command, he worked steadily in the medium and eventually got a radio show of his own in 1947. Philip Morris cigarettes underwrote The Milton Berle Show on NBC from 1947 to 1948. Although it failed to ignite strong audience interest, his radio show would serve as a stepping-stone to the Texaco Star Theater. Beginning in the late 1930s and continuing until the end of the 1940s, variations on the Texaco Star Theater played on network radio. In 1938, the first Texaco Star Theater made its debut on CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System); it then went through a series


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| Texaco Star Theater (Milton Berle)

of changes in hosts, formats, and networks until March 1948, when ABC (American Broadcasting Company) acquired the property. At first, no one person dominated, and a rotating schedule of singers, dancers, and comics appeared. This version of the show remained on radio until the summer of 1949—less than a year—but it launched Berle’s career, not as a radio celebrity but as a television star. For a brief period of time, September 1948 to June 1949, Berle actually held down two jobs, and both with the Texaco Star Theater. Because television was still in its infancy, he hedged his bets by remaining with the ABC radio broadcasts, while polishing his TV image on the new NBC show. He need not have worried; Milton Berle, overnight, became the hottest star on television. Radio exists as an aural medium, and no matter how physically animated a performer may be or how clownish his or her costume, the audience cannot see any of that. Sound effects may give a hint of on-stage antics but little more. Television, on the other hand, provides the images to accompany the sound. And Berle’s comedic gift shone in slapstick, something he had mastered in his vaudeville experiences. Many radio stars found it difficult to make the transition to TV; they were used to talking into a microphone and doing little else, invisible to their listeners. Before the unblinking eye of a television camera, they often appeared awkward and wooden. Not so Berle. Radio had confined the comedian, making him reliant on his wealth of jokes and little else. The camera, however, freed him. As he approached his stride on the Texaco Star Theater, Berle clearly considered no costume too outlandish, no stunt too foolish. The jokes and oneliners continued also, but his routines relied on their visual aspects; his gags became sight gags, a return to the vaudeville humor of years earlier. A kid with a new toy, Berle explored the possibilities of television comedy with glee. In no time at all, the Texaco Star Theater dominated the ratings for Tuesday nights. The show aired at 8:00 p.m., EST, and Berle owned the hour. He called himself Uncle Milty, but fans dubbed him Mr. Television, the During the 1940s, comedian Milton Berle first superstar of the young medium. struggled to establish his career on radio, but Texaco continued to sponsor the show, the advent of commercial television changed delighted that it continued as the No. 1 his fortunes. He became one of the first major viewing attraction. The ratings wavered stars on the new medium, and the Texaco Star Theater, a comedy-variety show, provided him slightly in the fall of 1951, and Berle cut a vehicle to fame. He wears one of his tradedown slightly on his hectic schedule. In mark zany costumes in this 1948 picture. (NBC/ 1953, Texaco dropped Berle, but Buick Photofest)


Toast of the Town (Ed Sullivan) | 707 Motors quickly picked up his contract, calling the production The Buick-Berle Show. It lasted two years, and then he had his own Milton Berle Show beginning in 1955. More changes followed, but Mr. Television remained a strong presence on American TV for the next several decades. He also appeared on Broadway and resumed acting in a number of movies. See also: Advertising; Broadway Shows (Comedy and Drama); Broadway Shows: Musicals: Comedies (Film); Radio Programming: Music and Variety Shows; Toast of the Town (Ed Sullivan) Selected Reading Berle, Milton, with Haskell Frankel. Milton Berle: An Autobiography. New York: Delacorte Press, 1974. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

TOAST OF THE TOWN (ED SULLIVAN) In June 1948, CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) television welcomed a new variety show to its Sunday evening lineup, calling its offering Toast of the Town. It would soon become a television staple, running until June 1971. During its remarkable 23-year tenure, New York Daily News columnist Ed Sullivan (1901– 1974) served as its one and only host. In its first year, the show appeared on home screens from 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. EST, but then shifted to its more familiar 8:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. slot in 1949, a position it retained until its 1971 cancellation. For most of that time, the Lincoln-Mercury division of the Ford Motor Company sponsored Toast of the Town. Sullivan had begun his professional career as a newspaper reporter, first as a sports writer at several small dailies. He moved to the New York Evening Graphic in 1927 and eventually replaced Walter Winchell (1897–1972) Long-time newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan as the paper’s gossip columnist. During served as host of Toast of the Town from 1948 the 1930s, he moved to the New York to 1971, an unusually long run for a television Daily News, where he wrote a Broad- show of any kind. Stiff and seemingly awkward way theater column. This position gave while on camera, Sullivan showcased an endless variety of entertainers, from old vaudeville him considerable renown in New York’s acts to the latest teen sensations. This picture entertainment circles, and he gained captures Sullivan in a characteristic pose. experience as a radio emcee at various (CBS/Photofest)


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events and even hosted several short-lived shows of his own. Hardly a household name outside the city, he moved into the relatively new world of television in 1948, when CBS tapped him to host its planned revue for prime time broadcasting. Seemingly wooden in the glare of the TV cameras, shoulders back, arms stiff at his sides or tightly crossed, and with a curious, hesitant manner of speaking, Sullivan quickly became the butt of countless impressionists, and it all served to endear him to a growing public. With his wide range of acquaintances in show business, Sullivan and his staff knew how to make contact with celebrities. But he also had an eye for unknown performers, and so Toast of the Town gained a reputation for offering a true mix of troupers. He might schedule a concert pianist, followed by a trained dog act; from there a popular vocal group, possibly some jugglers, and maybe a ballerina would take the stage. The show perhaps could wind it down with slapstick comedians and the resident June Taylor Dancers. In the early years (1940s to 1950s), the producers featured 6 or 7 acts; later (1960s onward), the number grew to 11 or 12; either way, the show seldom suffered a dull moment. In many respects, Toast of the Town resembled nothing so much as an old-time vaudeville revue. One unrelated act followed another, with everything occurring at a rapid pace, so if one performance did not appeal, perhaps the next one would. Sullivan stressed diversity at all times, and no particular theme or idea linked the entertainers on stage. The host himself, a man of few words, would briefly, often awkwardly, introduce each successive act—“right here, on our stage”—with no patter, no insider jokes, and then step away. But the audiences—both those at CBS’s TV Studio 50, a venerable theater in Manhattan and the show’s home for its entire run, and those at home—came to expect and enjoy this format. Although the glory days of Toast of the Town lay in the decades following the 1940s, Sullivan had become such an integral part of the production that the network renamed it The Ed Sullivan Show in the fall of 1955. As television in its formative years strove to find the best ways to attract audiences, variety shows proliferated. That format had been successful on radio—The Rudy Vallee Show, which ran from 1929 to 1939, serves as a good example—and much early television owes a debt to the medium. But although many variety shows came along in the late 1940s and early 1950s, none could ever replicate the formula that Ed Sullivan and his staff created with Toast of the Town in 1948. See also: Advertising; Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry; Broadway Shows (Comedy and Drama); Broadway Shows (Musicals); Newspapers; Texaco Star Theater (Milton Berle) Selected Reading Bowles, Jerry. A Thousand Sundays: The Story of the Ed Sullivan Show. New York: Putnam, 1980. Harris, Michael David. Always on Sundays: Ed Sullivan, An Inside View. New York: Meredith, 1980. Maguire, James. Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan. New York: Billboard Books, 2006.

TOYS Children living during World War II might not have comprehended all of the ramifications of the United States’ involvement in the conflict, but they certainly knew that © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Toys | 709 something had happened with many of their favorite toys. Some could no longer be found in department stores, while others continued to be plentiful but greatly changed in materials and appearance. Prior to 1940, cast-iron toys ranked as favorites, and the Hubley Manufacturing Company prided itself as the world’s largest manufacturer of them. The firm supplied children with a wide variety of trains, fire and circus wagons, trucks, cars, motorcycles, cap pistols, and dollhouse kitchen appliances. In mid-1942, however, after a half-year of U.S. participation in the war, production of all toys utilizing metal and rubber in their manufacture ceased, an event that created a time of no more new cast-iron items, such as tin windups, tricycles, steel wagons and trucks, metal cap pistols, ice skates, roller skates, sleds with metal runners, even balloons and rubber squeak toys. These wartime restrictions, along with a scarcity of workers, meant hard times for most toy manufacturers. Some closed their plants, while others such as Hubley, Lionel Trains, Auburn Rubber Company, Grey Iron, Fisher-Price, Manoil, and Marx retrofitted to make a wide range of war-related products including gaskets, torpedo and bomb racks, fuses for explosives, ship fenders, first-aid kits, cots, bomb crates, shell casings, pistol grips, gun plugs, and parts for hand grenades. Adults nevertheless believed that, no matter how dire the conditions, kids needed playthings, and several toy manufacturers quickly retooled to try to make exciting toys out of wood, plastic, cardboard, and papier mâché. The wooden ones could be described as crude and lacking in detail, cardboard and papier mâché as always fragile, and plastic as brittle. But, whenever these kinds of toys appeared on store shelves, they quickly sold despite their drawbacks. The Moline Pressed Steel Company, with its Buddy “L” line, had led the industry in pressed-steel toys; with the restrictions, it offered pine station wagons, taxicabs, Greyhound buses, and Coca-Cola trucks. After the war, the company returned to its pressed-steel toys, but ultimately cheaper plastic ones surpassed both wood and steel in demand. Built-Rite Toys turned out cardboard items that tended to be more attractive than wooden toys. Airports, railroad stations, and forts just the right size for the five-anddime tin soldiers bought before the war, as well as cardboard dollhouses and furniture, proved popular. Complete army fighting units, also made of cardboard, became available in 1942. Once cut out and assembled, children could use the soldiers, officers, various vehicles, weapons, bombs, and flags, all in camouflage, to replicate battles being reported on the news. But World War II did not mean difficulties for all toy companies, as exemplified by the 1941 founding of Molded Products. The father-son team of Leslie S. Steinau and Leslie S. Steinau Jr. (both active 1940s), working in advertising, correctly anticipated that the war would create a shortage in consumer goods with a corresponding lack of advertising. Mindful of needing to be employed, they turned to toy making; by 1942, their Molded Products worked at full capacity manufacturing soldiers out of wood flour, starch, whiting, and water. Despite crude designs that lacked detail and a tendency to dissolve in water, the scale matched that of the prewar tin soldiers, making them a desirable purchase. One year later, another company, Transogram, also offered similar soldiers but made from wood flour, 20 Mule Team Borax, water, and unbleached white flour. Both types sold well. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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Home run king Babe Ruth dons a Santa suit in 1940 and gives out toys to good little girls and boys. Sports and entertainment celebrities frequently participated in various promotions built around the Christmas holidays (Photofest)

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, several firms offered simple lead casting kits. The owner could melt lead bars, often in a small electric furnace that the manufacturer provided, pour the liquid lead into heated molds, and, when cool, three-dimensional lead soldiers or small artillery pieces resulted. Because of shortages, the government banned the commercial sale of lead in 1942. The kits made a comeback in the postwar years, but growing concerns about safety and the toxicity of lead sharply dampened sales. With the exception of lead items, children, especially boys, enjoyed a tremendous selection of military-oriented toys in addition to as many miniature soldiers as they could afford. Tanks, armored cars, howitzers, destroyers, battleships, and submarines dotted merchants’ shelves. And for a staged battle in an empty lot, full-size imitation pistols and rifles of all types were readily available, ranging from cheap replicas of side arms to detailed machine guns with ratchet mechanisms to suggest the rat-a-tat-tat of the real thing. Despite all the shortages of materials, manufacturers somehow found what they needed for the toy arsenal, plus everyone thought it patriotic that boys could play soldier and annihilate the country’s enemies in the space of an afternoon. After 1945 and the return of peace, the toy military hardware did not entirely disappear. The most famous battles of the recent war—Normandy, Iwo Jima, Salerno, Okinawa—could always be fought once more while still fresh in people’s memories;


Toys | 711 plus the old standbys, cowboys and Indians, found a new generation of cowpokes toting shiny plastic six-shooters, flimsy bows and arrows, and costumes complete with boots, chaps, holsters, and a small Stetson hat or a feathered headdress. These getups attracted hordes of youngsters and proved enduring favorites in the postwar era. Three toy companies—the Holgate Toy Company, dating back to 1789; the Playskool Manufacturing Company, established in 1928; and Fisher-Price, incorporated in 1930—had led in research and development of wooden educational toys throughout the 1930s. Many of their toys sold in the early 1940s, such as Holgate’s Bingo Bed and Playskool’s wooden mailbox, which had been designed to develop eye-hand coordination or to teach about certain areas of employment. In 1941, even before the United States entered the conflict, Holgate sold toy army vehicles, but the company discontinued them after 1945. Playskool bought the J. L. Wright Company in 1943 and thereby added Lincoln Logs to its inventory. Fisher-Price decided to manufacture warrelated items but, during the first half of the decade, also turned out a limited number of wooden toys, such as Granny Doodle and Doctor Doodle ducks. Model kits fulfilled many of the goals of educational play and had become a significant endeavor by 1940. Although model making dates back to antiquity, it boomed in the 1930s. The Strombeck-Becker Company (founded in 1911) in 1934 introduced the novel idea of assembling and painting your own toy using kits for trains seen at the recent Century of Progress Exposition held in Chicago. They expanded to airplane kits with the China Clipper in 1936. To stimulate interest in model building, the company organized a club and awarded young builders with badges denoting skill levels based on the number of kits completed. A huge success, 1940 catalogs from StromBecker Toys offered precut wooden model kits for airplanes, navy warships, artillery, and trains. The company drastically cut back on production of its kits during the war in order to provide wooden items for the government. Strombecker, along with two other model airplane companies, Comet and Megow, created simple kits to aid in the training of recognition of different planes and ships by those serving in military units. At the conclusion of the war, StromBecker embarked on a business plan for a full line of new and updated assembly kits, especially those that replicated the many military airplanes flown in World War II. Initially, however, the firm also continued to offer several of its prewar kits while gearing up for new lines. Future architects, engineers, and scientists could while away long afternoons designing and building all manner of structures and devices with products made available by several long-established manufacturers. On a basic level, Tinkertoys, introduced in 1913, but popular ever since, remained available throughout World War II, since wood constituted all of the components. Similarly, Lincoln Logs, which had made their initial appearance in 1916, utilized wood for their traditional round, notched logs and allowed young builders to construct cabins, forts, farm houses, and the like. A direct competitor, Roy Toys’ Log Building Sets, which debuted in the mid-1930s, boasted square-cut logs and claimed greater stability than their round counterparts. American Bricks, wooden bricks that could be arranged and stacked to form buildings, provided another construction favorite. Originally marketed by Halsam Products Company of Chicago in the 1930s, the red-stained brick continued to be turned out throughout the


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war years and had great popularity. In the late 1940s, Halsam turned to plastic for its bricks. But the biggest building and construction sellers of them all were the Erector Sets manufactured by the A. C. Gilbert Company. Based on the actual building methods employed in modern skyscrapers, Erector Sets gave their owners hundreds of metal pieces that looked like the girders found on any large construction site. Tiny nuts and bolts joined these pieces in endless patterns, limited only by one’s imagination. Because they employed steel and aluminum almost exclusively, virtually unavailable during the war, Erector Set sales surged in the postwar era. Gilbert, a primary source for technologically and scientifically oriented toy kits, also sold simple microscopes, along with chemistry, physics, and electricity sets. The company also carried the highly realistic American Flyer train sets. The toy market did not ignore girls, despite its intense focus on military items. Fortunately, the war did not interrupt the production of paper dolls, although they came to consumers made from inferior stock. This popular toy has been around as long as there has been paper and artists to apply images to it. Starting in the early 1900s, women’s and children’s magazines made paper dolls readily available to a large number of children in the United States by including cut-out paper dolls on their pages. In the 1940s, such dolls continued to appear in newspapers and magazines, especially the popular children’s periodical Jack and Jill. Comic books moved beyond the subjects of adventure and heroes to appeal to a growing girls’ market by including paper doll pages. Walt Disney characters and historical and folk figures frequently served as models for paper dolls. In 1941, Blondie, from the comic strip of the same name, joined other comic strip characters like Dick Tracy, Daisy Mae, and Li’l Abner in this medium. Many Hollywood movie stars and other celebrities also appeared, and children’s publishing companies such as Whitman and Merrill issued paper doll books. Traditional dolls and stuffed animals stand out as classic toys that have crossed all generations; because they utilized nonstrategic materials, the war affected them less than it did some other toys. The demands of the draft, however, created sudden shortages of workers that caused production difficulties. Companies such as Ideal Toy Company and Dream World nevertheless continued to manufacture dolls based on famous Hollywood stars such as Shirley Temple (b. 1928), Judy Garland (1922–1969), Carmen Miranda (1909–1955), and Rita Hayworth (1918–1987). Molly’es International Doll Company, famous for its Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy cloth dolls, presented dolls in 1940 based on characters found in the popular United Artists movie, The Thief of Bagdad. Vogue Dolls, Inc., founded in 1922, issued two composition dolls from 1942 to 1944 dressed in military uniforms; one wore the brown outfits of the WACs (Women’s Army Corps), and the other appeared in blue to represent the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Employment Emergency Service) in the women’s branch of the navy. During the war years, the Freundlich Novelty Company also offered uniformed dolls of both servicemen and -women and in 1942 created a doll version of one of the popular World War II heroes, General Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964). After 1945, doll design returned to prewar favorites, including toddler dolls that resembled young children. Jiminy Cricket, Pinocchio, and Superman, from the comics


Toys | 713 and movies inspired composition and wood character dolls. In 1949, Ideal introduced the Toni doll, an advertising doll for the popular Toni Home Permanent. Ongoing radio shows served as another source of toys. Premiums like decoder rings, badges, toy space guns, and assorted trinkets came either in a sponsor’s box of cereal or in the mail upon receipt of proofs of purchase. Easily shown off before school or during recess or lunch, these toys were treasured by many youngsters both during and after the war. Despite the challenges of manufacturing restrictions, a few new toys emerged during the war years. Richard (1914–1974) and Betty James (1918–2008) defied the struggles experienced by many in the industry with their 1943 introduction of the Slinky, a springy wire that walks down either an inclined plane or stairs. Engineer Richard James, while working on an antivibration device for ships’ instruments, accidentally knocked off the shelf a spring he had made and observed it “walking” down to the floor. He told his wife about the possibility of this device becoming an interesting toy. She agreed and suggested the name Slinky. The couple produced 400 Slinkies and convinced Gimbel’s Department Store in Philadelphia to sell their creation just before Christmas 1945—a true success story, because their total supply sold out in 90 minutes. For a brief time in the late 1940s, Slinkies could be purchased in red, blue, or green. This clever plaything has continued to fascinate and delight children and adults into the present, so much so that both the Discovery and History television channels selected Slinky as one of the top 10 toys of the 20th century. A wartime experiment provided another fascinating new toy, Silly Putty. Early in the war, Japan invaded rubber-producing countries in Southeast Asia to cut off supplies to the United States. To help overcome the lack of this important product, U.S. citizens donated to the government any rubber they had such as spare tires and boots. Their donations proved insufficient for military needs, and so the federal government ordered industries to find a compound that could be transformed into synthetic rubber. In an attempt to find such a product, James Wright (active 1940s), an engineer with the General Electric Company (GE) developed a substance in 1943 that could be manufactured cheaply, would bounce and stretch, and did not collect mold. It failed to replace rubber but did serve as a good caulking material. When the war ended, Peter Hodgson (1912–1976), a marketing consultant familiar with the putty, recognized a unique potential with Wright’s compound to entertain. Hodgson bought production rights and the supply held by GE and, with Easter approaching, decided to capitalize on the event. He put small amounts of the putty in plastic eggs, and sold it under the name Silly Putty. Because of the flexibility of this product and its ability to assume various wacky shapes, both adults and kids loved it. It could be used to create any number of objects, animals, or insects such as spiders and snakes, and it made effective Halloween masks when applied to the face; it could even lift comic strip images off the pages of the Sunday funnies. Silly Putty also served practical uses by picking up dirt, lint, and pet hair. It eventually evolved into a bestselling novelty of many colors and continues to fascinate all ages. At the end of the war, the cessation of rationing restrictions stimulated a return to normal industrial production, and older toy manufacturers resumed their usual output of Erector Sets, American Flyer trains, science experiment kits, and whimsical and


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brightly colored windups. Executives from many toy firms, along with marketing and advertising professionals, anticipated the now-historic baby boom and realized that a new and larger customer base for toys would develop as returning servicemen married and started families. Marketing analyses of both current and potential consumers soon revealed a desire for toys that conveyed realism. Kids and adults had seen newsreels, photographs, and Hollywood movies showing real life, people hurt, soldiers fighting in mud, and camouflaged vehicles. Accuracy and detail in toys grew in importance. Cognizant of the demand for realism, C. W. Doepke Manufacturing Company, an old industrial toolmaker, introduced a side business of heavy construction equipment toys in 1946. Under the banner of Doepke’s Model Toys and copied from blueprints of real trucks and bulldozers, the miniaturized Barber-Greene high-capacity bucket loader, the Adams diesel road grader, and the Heiliner earth scraper operated just like real pieces of equipment and sold as authorized replicas. The actual brand names also appeared on these reproductions. More collector’s items than toys, they found a market interested in extreme realism. Similarly, the Ertl Company specialized in farm toys and contracted with manufacturers such as John Deere and International Harvester to issue toy replicas at the same time they unveiled the latest models to farmers. New to the business of toys, the Mound Metalcraft Company, located in a small schoolhouse basement in Mound, Minnesota, originally specialized in garden tools, a good spring/summer product. The owners, while searching for a fall/winter item to balance their enterprise, in early 1947 bought the dies and tools of Streeter Industries, which included a toy steam shovel with a wooden cab and steel base, boom, and bucket. With this die, Mound Metalcraft created a second toy, a crane, and by the end of the year had produced 37,000 units of their two products. They named their toys Tonka, after Minnesota’s Lake Minnetonka and the Sioux word tonka, which means great. The firm advertised realism and cultivated the idea of boys sharing the world of work with men. Tonka trucks, with their ability to withstand the toughest play, won immediate acceptance in postwar America and demand far outpaced production, making these vehicles in miniature very successful. Mound Metalcraft quickly dropped its line of garden tools, changed the company name to Tonka, and by 1949 carried 13 different vehicles and even expanded its line to include a doll hospital bed with mattress. Today, the Tonka brand has grown into a line of trucks and vehicles that have kept abreast with developments in the construction and transportation industries, as well as dolls and other toys aimed at girls. The postwar years posed the problem of families reconnecting—husbands and wives, fathers and children—and toy companies were quick to advertise along these lines. Lionel Trains, because of large war-connected government contracts and restrictions on the use of metal parts, had stopped making toy trains in 1942 but resumed its prewar production in 1945. Throughout the late 1940s, Lionel met both the realism demand and parent-child bonding challenge. Correctly scaled and detailed trains had appeared before World War II with model railroaders. In the postwar era, Lionel added an array of accessories such as coal cars, log carriers, ice containers, barrel loaders and unloaders, spotlight and beacon towers, crossing gates and signals, switchmen, brakemen, streetlights, and water towers, just


Toys | 715 to mention a few. Most Lionel Train ads, and some of those from other toy companies, appeared in adult-oriented magazines such as, Life, the Saturday Evening Post, and Parents’ Magazine. Advertising for Lionel Trains, as well as their chief competitor, A. C. Gilbert’s American Flyer series, illustrate the trend of linking toys with parents and their children, frequently picturing a father and son accompanied by a script that suggested Lionel Trains and accessories could strengthen emotional ties with fathers and sons. Manufacturers introduced other interesting new toys during the second half of the decade. One, the Magic 8-Ball debuted in 1950 as a variation on a pocket-size fortunetelling tube named the Syco-Slate, which in turn had started out in a larger size called the Syco-Seer. The Seer, initially invented in 1946 by either or both Abe Bookman or Al Carter (both active during the 1940s), of the Alabe Toy Company, progressed through several improvements and name changes to the Magic 8-Ball status. The device’s popularity and success rested on its supposed ability to help advice-seekers find answers to questions about their future. This 20-sided die offers 20 possible replies—10 positive, 5 ambiguous, and 5 negative—ranging from “all signs point to yes” to “ask again later” to “don’t count on it.” Since the emergence of the first Magic 8-Ball, numerous variations of the concept have appeared and gained popularity. Japan, the wartime enemy of the United States, both before and after the conflict played a major role in the selling of toys in North America. Japan had led the world in the production of celluloid since the 1920s. A cheap commodity, the Japanese exported to customers everywhere inexpensive items such as teething rings, baby rattles, pingpong balls, bathtub toys, dolls, farm equipment, circus figures, trains, planes, boats, and cars, along with reproductions of American comic strip characters, sports heroes, and movie stars. With the outbreak of World War II, both the production and distribution of such items to the United States stopped. Immediately after Japan’s surrender, a highly favorable exchange rate made it profitable for Japanese manufacturers to resume production immediately and once again export celluloid products all over the world. The items remained somewhat the same as before the war—figurines representing various aspects of a child’s life, including ice cream wagons and vendors, dolls of all descriptions, various vehicles, skiers, animals, and clowns—but they now bore the words “Made in Occupied Japan,” a requirement made by the U.S. forces occupying the country. This designation would not be dropped until 1952 and the return of an independent Japanese government. In the meantime, resourceful Japanese entrepreneurs created special mechanisms that, combined with celluloid, allowed for the production of new items such as dancing and crawling dolls, merry-go-rounds, and other toys with special functions. Even robots became available, although they were not plentiful and varied until the 1950s. But celluloid’s one defect, high inflammability, raised concerns in the mid-1950s, a problem solved by the development and growing use of fire-resistant plastics. On the home front, Ruth (1916–2002) and Elliot Handler (b. 1918), along with Harold Matson (active 1940s) in 1945 launched Mattel (a play from their names, Matt-el) out of a garage workshop to make picture frames and dollhouse furniture. Harold Matson soon sold out to the Handlers, who turned all of their attention to toys. In 1947, the Uke-A-Doodle became the first of a line of Mattel musical toys. Creation of the Barbie


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doll in 1959 by Ruth Handler moved the company forward and over the course of its history it expanded its many different lines of playthings. With mergers and acquisitions, Mattel entered the 21st century as America’s largest toy manufacturer based on revenues. In 1948, another West Coast garage venture carried out by two students at the University of Southern California, Arthur Melin (1924–2002) and Richard Kerr (1926– 2008), resulted in the founding of Wham-O to market by mail slingshots and other projectile-firing goods. In 1955, the company acquired rights to the Frisbee, the flying disk that surged in popularity during that decade. Toy manufacturer Mattel bought out Wham-O in 1994, but the Frisbee maker became independent again in 1997 and has continued in that capacity into the present. As the country approached the 1950s, changes continued to occur in toy manufacturing. Cast iron had become obsolete for toys, and plastic had emerged as the favored material. Tried and true science fiction toys such as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers had fallen in popularity. The postwar phenomenon of television and the first airing of a children’s program called The Howdy Doody Show on December 27, 1947, meant the arrival of more and more television-inspired toys. Captain Video debuted on June 27, 1949, and, in the tradition of radio, offered premiums as a way to obtain new toys— flying saucer rings, Rite-O-Lite flashlights, rocket launchers and rocket ships, secret seal rings, space fleet ray guns, and rocket balloons. During the first half of the decade, the work of some former toy companies as military suppliers eclipsed their reputations as toy manufacturers; some never returned to toys, and others closed their doors forever with the return to peace. Most toys marketed during World War II, usually inferior to prewar ones, nonetheless continued to capture the hearts of children. The postwar era immediately gave way to a level of realism, variety, and abundance seldom seen before. See also: Architecture; Cartoons (Film); Children’s Films; Comic Strips; Education; Hobbies; Scrap Drives; Superman; Technology Selected Reading Cross, Gary. Kid’s Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. O’Brien, Richard. The Story of American Toys, from the Puritans to the Present. New York: Abbeville Press, 1990. Walsh, Tim. Timeless Toys, Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, 2005.

TRAINS England gave birth to the railroad industry in 1797 with the invention of the steam locomotive. Thirty years later, the United States saw its first train when Baltimore merchants chartered the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Throughout New England and in other parts of the United States, tracks spread rapidly and made the Civil War (1861– 1865) the first major U.S. conflict in which railroads played a significant role, because both sides used trains to move troops and supplies. By May 1869, at Promontory Point


Trains | 717 in the Utah Territory, a golden spike joined the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads, marking the completion of the first transcontinental line. The industry experienced steady growth and passenger usage throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, reaching a peak in 1920, with no other mode of transportation challenging its position as the primary means of travel. This monopoly, however, could not last forever. Two factors caused a drop in railroad passenger travel: first, automobiles steadily served as a major competitor with an almost threefold increase in registrations from 1920 to 1930, growing from a little over 8 million registrants, or 7.5 percent of the population, to 23 million or 18.5 percent of the population. Second, during the Great Depression, the use of trains dropped, forcing several lines into bankruptcy. The industry managed to regain some ground with the 1934 debut of diesel-powered locomotives, which offered greater efficiency and economy, plus the introduction of streamlined locomotives and air-conditioned passenger cars with recessed fluorescent lighting. Over the next five years and the opening of the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair, passenger rail travel increased 38 percent, and trains held a major spot in the fair’s Transportation Zone. But this gain proved illusory;

Train travel grew in popularity during World War II. With peace, railroad industry administrators attempted to prevent a postwar decline by investing millions of dollars in new diesel engines, freight equipment, and passenger trains. The New York Central Railroad spent some of these dollars on a new Pullman-Standard dining car shown in this 1948 photograph. (Bettmann/CORBIS)


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fewer riders took trains with greater frequency; over the long term, the automobile rose as the transportation star, and this vehicle of choice for most people offered a serious challenge for the railroad industry. Railroad executives, anticipating U.S. involvement in World War II, in 1939 organized to argue with the federal government against a repeat of the World War I nationalization of railroads. At that time, the government guaranteed each railroad company a net operating income with any amount above accruing to federal authorities, a situation that ultimately sent a large portion of the industry’s profits to Washington. The railroad officials successfully prevented any renewal of government control, a victory that laid the groundwork for a new life for railroads. With the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the continuing escalation of the war in Europe, the United States became engaged in a two-front conflict, which required huge shipments of military personnel and equipment to both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Trains could easily meet this need, and the years 1942 to 1945 saw record-setting figures for both passengers and freight volume. Efficiency also increased because runs, going and coming, contained full or nearly full cars. Profitability for the railroad industry similarly grew; in addition to the military use of trains, civilians, with

TABLE 97.

Selected Train Usage Statistics, 1920–1950

Number of Operating Year Railroads 1920

1,085

1940

573

1941 1942 1943 1944 1945

n.d. n.d. 534 524 517

1946 1947 1948 1949 1950

513 502 485 481 471

Number of Passengers Carried n.d.

Passenger Revenue (rounded)

$1 billion (average for 1916–1920) 471,000 (annual $420 million average for (average for 1936–1940) 1936–1940) n.d. n.d. n.d. n.d. n.d. $1.7 billion n.d. $1.8 billion 772,000 (annual $1.7 billion for average 1941–1945) n.d. $1.3 billion 706,000 $955 million n.d. $956 million n.d. $862 million 488,000 $815 million

Average Number Passengers per Train

Freight Revenue (rounded)

n.d.

$3.5 billion (average for 1916–1920) 57 (average for 3.3 billion 1936–1940) (average for 1936–1940) n.d. n.d. n.d. n.d. n.d. $7 billion n.d. $7.1 billion 158 (average for $6.6 billion 1941–1945)

110 101 92 89

$5.9 billion $7.1 billion $8 billion $7.1 billion $7.9 billion

Number of Automobile Registrations (rounded) 8.1 million

27 million

30 million 28 million 36 million 26 million 26 million

28 million 31 million 33 million 36 million 40 million



Trains | 719 TABLE 98. Total Railroad Track Mileage in the United States, 1910–1950 Year

Miles

1910 1916 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950

240,430 254,037 252,845 249,398 249,052 241,822 233,670 226,696 223,779

Source: John Stover, The Life and Decline of the American Railroad. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.

their automobiles parked at home because of gas rationing, likewise turned to trains for transportation. A booming business can have its problems, even the railroad industry. Normal operating procedures included the annual discarding of some tracks and the building of new ones. Soon after its 1920 peak, railroads experienced a steady decline in the number of miles of railroad track, creating a curtailment of service in some areas because the tracks given up exceeded any new construction. With the Great Depression, rail abandonment hastened—a condition that continued throughout the 1940s and into the present. The demand for military rail services during World War II initially served as a boon for the industry, but it also created overcrowded trains, schedule delays, and long waits for the general public at some stations. The trains carrying troops would stop along the way at stations with USO (United Service Organizations) canteens, providing a good break for the soldiers but sometimes presenting frustration for other passengers. Advertising by the railroad companies addressed civilian usage but at the same time displayed images of fighting men headed to war and asked civilians to consider limiting their travel to absolutely necessary trips. In an attempt to help the American public understand the importance of the military use of the railroads, Columbia Pictures Corporation and the U.S. Office of War Information produced Troop Train in 1943, a 10-minute documentary explaining the need and difficulties of transporting military vehicles, heavy armaments, and soldiers on trains. The heavy military train traffic experienced during the war briefly became greater once peace had been achieved; soldiers in large groups returned to the United States and used trains to get home. The greatest troop movement of the entire war occurred on August 3 and 4, 1945, when more than 20,000 solders packed into 31 trains and departed from Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, to various destinations around the country; everywhere, families excitedly greeted their loved ones home. Railroad administrators, expecting a slight postwar decline in demand but still optimistic about future growth, immediately invested billions of dollars in new diesel


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engines, freight equipment, and passenger trains. To their dismay, impediments occurred. Production delays postponed delivery of a large number of new coaches, causing some lines to have to continue to use worn and unsatisfactory cars that had been in service for some time. In addition to the equipment problems, civilian passenger numbers dropped at a much greater rate than predicted. Gas rationing had ended, and the motor vehicle industry began to advertise heavily as customers lined up at dealerships. As soon as new automobiles became available, factory sales skyrocketed, and, by the end of the decade, the number of cars on the road had almost doubled since 1940, from 3.7 million to 6.6 million. Automobiles and buses made significant inroads in urban travel and, at the same time, joined airplanes for intercity travel. For many decades, trains dominated transportation in the United States. In the 1920s and 1930s, railroad travel began to experience a decline in popularity against a growing motor vehicle industry. World War II provided a much-needed burst of energy, but the movement of 43 million military personnel in 114,000 special troop trains, while simultaneously meeting unprecedented civilian travel needs, exhausted the railroad industry. After the war ended, both passenger and freight traffic declined steadily. In 1948, as a part of his presidential campaign, Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) gave the industry high visibility as he traveled across the country in a famous whistle-stop campaign, addressing crowds from the rear platforms of trains. But even this could not lure passengers back onto trains because the prewar competitors—automobiles, buses, trucks, and airplanes—had gained too much in popularity and usage. See also: Aviation; Leisure and Recreation Selected Reading Barger, Harold. The Transportation Industries, 1889–1946: A Study of Output, Employment, and Productivity. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1951. Stover, John F. The Life and Decline of the American Railroad. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.

TRANSPORTATION During the 1900s, technological discoveries brought major changes to the lives of Americans, including the transport of people and goods over increased distance in shorter periods of time and with a greater degree of comfort. Significant transportation advancements began with the successful completion of a transcontinental rail system in 1869. Established railroad lines and new ones expanded quickly to serve industries and cities, and, by the 1920s, trains ranked as the nation’s preferred means of travel. By the 1930s, however, the development and mass production of automobiles created a popular alternative. Cars by the hundreds rolled off assembly lines in 1903. That same year, an adventurous pair, Horatio Nelson Jackson (1872–1955) and his chauffeur, bicycle racer Sewall K. Crocker (ca. 1881–1913), drove from the West Coast to the East Coast in a Cleveland-made Winton, and this publicity for auto travel proved invaluable. As the number of cars increased, prices tumbled. By the 1920s, thanks to competition between Henry Ford’s (1863–1947) Model T at $300 and his 1927 Model A at $385


Transportation | 721 (roughly $3,690 and $4,760, respectively, in 2008 dollars) along with General Motor’s annual model changes for all its cars, automobiles had made significant gains in replacing trains as the predominant means of getting around, especially in cities. But another mode of transportation made its debut in 1903. Brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright (1871–1948; 1867–1912) successfully flew a powered aircraft at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and by 1914 the first commercial flights had been established. The United States Post Office in 1918 provided airmail delivery between New York and Washington, DC; two years later, the government extended the service to California. In 1923, two lieutenants with the Army Air Service completed a nonstop transcontinental flight, opening up another way for faster travel over great distances. Still more improvements in all modes of transportation occurred throughout the 1930s, making the exhibits at the New York World’s Fair Transportation Zone a major component of the 1939–1940 event. Even with war enveloping Europe and the inevitable involvement of the United States, exhibitors used the fair’s theme of “Building the World of Tomorrow” to project an optimistic and comfortable future for Americans. Staying true to the message, the Transportation Zone underscored modernization and prosperity with its celebration of cars, trains, and airplanes, housing them in spectacular buildings containing breathtaking displays. For the fair as a whole, crowd favorites included the exhibitions by the Big Three U.S. automobile manufacturers—Chrysler Motor Company, General Motors Company, and Ford Motor Company. The Chrysler exhibit, located at the forefront of the Transportation Zone, used moving pictures projected upon a map of the world to chronicle the story of transportation from the time of using one’s feet to the arrival of trains, cars, and airplanes. Audiences at General Motor’s Futurama exhibit, created by designer Norman Bel Geddes (1893–1958), reclined in moving chairs that took them over a 36,000square-foot scale model of a futuristic city that showed them the highway world of 1960: seven-lane roads with bridges and inviting landscapes connecting homes, farms, and industrial plants to the urban complex. The Ford Motor Company likewise envisioned a modernistic highway, the product of a collaboration between architect Albert Kahn (1869–1942) and designer Walter Dorwin Teague (1883–1960). Visitors rode sample cars over an elevated, winding half-mile “Road of Tomorrow.” In addition to these shows, all three automobile companies provided convenient displays of their newest cars. Trains also held a prominent spot in the fair, with 27 Eastern railroad lines participating. The Railroads Building, the largest at the exposition, contained various train models and dioramas. Historic locomotives, as well as new ones, such as the Pennsylvania Railroad’s streamlined Model S1, designed by Raymond Loewy (1893–1986) and the largest locomotive ever built by the Altoona, Pennsylvania, railroad shops, were housed outdoors. Railroads at Work, a 40-minute show with 500 pieces of equipment, demonstrated every facet of railroading. The aviation industry, not to be outdone, boasted a building that consisted of a long hanger section and a half-dome, which housed three Army Air Corps fighters and three navy aircraft. Scale models showed the latest technical developments, and displays highlighted the comfort and safety of flying.


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| Transportation

In addition to the transportation exhibits, fairgoers could use a variety of ways to move themselves from one zone to another. The Long Island Railroad brought visitors to the fair and deposited them at an ultramodern terminal. Sixty-five miles of paved streets and footpaths into the fairgrounds could then be used for walking or riding one of Greyhound’s sleek 160-passenger buses designed by Loewy. The New York World’s Fair closed in the fall of 1940, and a little over a year later the United States plunged into World War II, causing many of the transportation dreams shown at the fair to be put on hold and passenger usage to change rapidly. Just days after the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) signed Executive Order 8989, which created the Office of Defense Transportation (ODT) under the leadership of Joseph B. Eastman (1882–1944). The agency had the responsibility for coordinating all domestic transportation and it acted immediately. In succession, between January and May 1942, government regulations placed limits on purchasing tires, converted automobile production lines to military vehicle and tank production, and instituted a gas rationing system for all drivers. Posters, radio programs, newspaper articles, and advertisements emphasized the importance of all Americans accepting these sacrifices as a part of their patriotic duty and support of winning World War II. Citizens on the home front responded and drastically reduced personal travel, drove their cars less, used bus and rail transport at levels never before or since equaled, and car pooled (a term coined in 1942), walked, and bicycled more. When bicycle tires wore out and could not be replaced, this option decreased in usage. Taxi companies, once a popular means of getting around in large cities, had struggled to stay solvent during the 1930s because of a number of issues—primarily regulations, low rates, and a questionable public image. By the end of the decade, most taxicabs were owned and operated by local entrepreneurs with only local restrictions, if any, to follow. Effective September 1, 1942, significant changes occurred for the taxicab industry when the ODT gained authority to control the operating characteristics of the country’s taxi fleets. Their regulations prohibited the production of new taxicabs and stopped employment of taxis for recreational trips and deliveries. Travel in a cab within a city could not exceed 35 miles, and excursions outside city limits could not go beyond 10 miles. Throughout the war, the supply of taxis dwindled, while ridership increased. For example, in 1942, the industry, with a loss of 4.5 percent of its vehicles, experienced a 12 percent increase in passengers served. By the end of 1943, 45 cities had implemented shared riding, an efficient way to serve more people in fewer vehicles without increasing the miles traveled or gas consumed. The two-way radio, a wartime instrument, came into common taxi use after the war, and the industry, despite being hampered by old, worn-out cars, reported a gradual increase in usage until 1949. That year, the industry experienced an 11 percent decline, a trend that continued into the 1950s as more and more people resumed driving their own cars. Even with this drop in business, the cessation of shared taxi riding plus the increased length of average trips caused by families moving to the suburbs and still using taxis, allowed the industry to maintain an acceptable level of business after 1949.


Transportation | 723 When the war ended in 1945, Americans unleashed pent-up consumer demand by purchasing new cars. Late that year, Detroit produced 75,000 automobiles, enough for two cars for each of the some 33,000 dealers across the country. In 1950, the United States Census Bureau reported a 44 percent increase in sales for new cars as compared to 1940 and a 32 percent increase in automobile registrations. So many cars on the highways required improvements in existing roads, as well as the building of new ones. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944 called for 41,000 miles of interstate highways, but lack of funding delayed significant construction until the passage of another Federal-Aid Highway Act in 1956, which included the necessary money. Other motorized vehicles—namely buses and trucks—had likewise played an important role in the development of U.S. transportation systems. By the mid-1920s, over 6,500 companies provided bus service, most of them small operations with as few as one vehicle and limited routes. Nevertheless, buses, along with greatly increased numbers of cars, pushed streetcars and trolleys off city streets. In 1927, Greyhound Bus Company, a large firm dating back to 1914, sent a vehicle from its fleet across the country, showing the feasibility and comfort of this kind of traveling. Trailways, Greyhound’s only national competitor, consisted of an association of many small motor coach companies working together to enable passengers to transfer easily when traveling from one company’s territory to another. During World War II, buses therefore served as an alternative for many whose cars remained parked in their driveways or garages. In 1948, building on its publicity and success at the New York World’s Fair and free of wartime restrictions, Greyhound announced a new air-conditioned luxury bus with seats for 50 passengers, each equipped with a reading lamp and radio, and large windows for good viewing of the passing scene. Other features included a lounge that would accommodate 12 riders at a time, a refrigerated cabinet, drinking fountain, and wash room and toilet. One year later, Greyhound introduced a 43-passenger Scenicruiser designed by Raymond Loewy. Borrowing an idea from the railroad industry, this two-story bus featured a glass-covered observation deck that provided an unobstructed view of the road ahead and offered an expanded baggage compartment and a public-address system for announcements and musical programs. After a series of test runs, the 40-foot-bus went into production. Before 1900, trains carried most of the freight transported over land—a system with limitations, because they primarily could deliver only to centralized urban centers. As the decade advanced, the appearance of several innovations, such as the gasolinepowered internal combustion engine, improvements in automotive technology, and the development of the 18-wheel tractor-trailer, along with the building of a system of roads, gave rise to the modern trucking industry. Shortages of steel, rubber, and gasoline during World War II hampered the motor freight business, but after the war trucking companies large and small experienced steady and rapid growth. Railroads witnessed declines in passenger travel during the 1920s and 1930s but then enjoyed a sharp increase during World War II. Restrictions on buying tires, gas rationing, and a ban on pleasure driving greatly reduced competition from cars, buses, trucks, or planes and sent civilians to trains for both business and vacation travel. At the peak of the war, more than 74 percent of city travelers rode a train. The biggest


724

| Transportation

gain in railroad traffic, however, came from the military, because the railroad industry over the course of the war transported some 43 million armed forces personnel, or an average of 1 million a month. Freight trains carried more than 90 percent of all military and defense freight as well as a large amount of civilian goods. The end of World War II brought a gradual lifting of road travel restrictions and also produced heavy traffic for the railroads, as millions of soldiers, sailors, and aviators worked their way through process centers and back home, nearly all traveling by train. While the railroads continued to handle wartime business after the war, other modes of transportation responded to peacetime civilian demand. Soon a large number of consumers returned to automobiles because of convenience and the sense of freedom they provided. They also booked flights on airplanes for their speed and efficiency for traveling great distances. Both railroad passenger and freight traffic thus declined steadily through the remaining years of the decade as well as throughout the 1950s. No matter how hard the railroads tried to lure passengers back onto trains, Americans preferred to take to the road or the skies. In 1941, prior to the nation joining the Allied forces in the war in Europe, the airline industry had carried 3.4 million passengers, primarily business travelers, throughout the United States and across the Atlantic Ocean. World War II caught the military ill-prepared in terms of equipment and personnel for aerial combat. The major commercial airlines, American, Eastern, United, Trans World Airlines (TWA), and Pan American Airways (Pan Am), canceled many of their civilian flights and turned over some 200 of their 360 airplanes to the military. Many of their pilots became flying instructors for the armed forces. By the spring of 1942, most aircraft factories ran 24 hours a day, six to seven days a week, to manufacture the badly needed planes. They also attempted to improve on their basic aircraft construction and military features. Countless women joined the defense workforce, bringing the labor pool to a high of 2.1 million employees. By the end of 1943, aircraft plants had turned out more than 300,000 military planes for the armed forces and the Allies. This nonstop work schedule did two things: (1) it spurred technological discoveries and improvements with airplanes ahead of what would have been accomplished in a standard work week, and (2) it contributed to challenging demands being made on the transportation industry for around-the-clock service. After the war, airplane travel grabbed Americans’ attention as never before, and commercial aviation grew rapidly. In December 1945, American and Pan Am initiated schedules to England, with the intention to expand to Amsterdam, Stockholm, and Berlin as soon as possible. TWA opened a flight from New York to Paris in February 1946. International flying benefited enormously from wartime construction of airfields at locations around the world that had been converted to civilian passenger use. When the war ended, government travel dropped drastically, providing more seats on commercial aircraft for the average traveler. At first, airlines cut the cost of their tickets to be slightly below that of first-class and lower-berth tickets on trains. For example, in 1945, an airline ticket from New York to Chicago could be purchased for $32.85 (approximately $390 in 2008 dollars) compared to the rail ticket of $36.88 (approximately $440 in 2008 dollars). Also, at the conclusion of the war, the army turned over many of its transport airplanes to the airline companies. United acquired Douglas DC-4s, and TWA utilized the sleek four-engine Lockheed C-69, better known as the Constellation. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Travel | 725 Throughout World War II, jet engines underwent testing and revision in laboratories. Germany started production of the Messerschmitt Me 262 in 1944, the world’s first jetpowered fighter aircraft. The United States soon followed suit with the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star in 1944, although it did not become operational until 1945, too late for combat in World War II. Development of practical commercial jet engines consumed a number of years but, once perfected, served as a big boon to the airline industry. On May 2, 1952, British Overseas Airways Corporation sent the first commercial jet flight from London to Johannesburg, giving birth to modern commercial aviation. While the sky filled with planes, ocean liners regained use of the seas. Both prior to World War II and afterward, ocean liners served as important means of transportation for European emigration to the United States and Canada, as well as U.S. travelers who could afford a sojourn in Europe or along the Mediterranean. But during the war, civilian ocean travel ceased. The United States’ vulnerability on the West Coast became apparent with the successful assault on Pearl Harbor. In early 1942, the same became true for the East Coast, when German U-boat attacks disrupted Atlantic shipping. That threat caused all transatlantic pleasure travel to cease, and authorities quickly converted cruise ships into troop carriers. After bringing soldiers back home in 1945, the ocean liner companies again refitted their vessels for cruise service and prospered. With travel restrictions to Europe lifted, eager vacationers lined up to book an ocean voyage, many having to wait a year or two for available space. Interest in air travel also grew but slowly, and it did not initially serve as an immediate competitor to ocean travel. During World War II, the development of transportation systems in the United States for civilian use came to a standstill. Any advances that occurred stemmed from the country’s focus on strengthening its military tactics and winning the war. With victory, demand for all those things not available during the war ushered in a period of rapid technological progress. The resulting prosperity created a modern transportation system that offered unequalled convenience and flexibility to its users. See also: Advertising; Leisure and Recreation; Levittown and Suburbanization; Newspapers; Technology Selected Reading Bilstein, Roger E. Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984. Gilbert, Gorman, and Robert E. Samuels. The Taxicab: An Urban Transportation Survivor. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Weiner, Edward. Urban Transportation Planning in the United States: An Historical Overview. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1999. Wurts, Richard. The New York World’s Fair, 1939/1940. New York: Dover, 1977.

TRAVEL By the late 1930s, many Americans owned automobiles and regularly took to the road—to get to their jobs, go shopping, enjoy a Sunday afternoon drive, or embark upon an extended trip for the family vacation. The nation’s active entry into World War II on December 7, 1941, changed those driving behaviors and pleasant pastimes. The © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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postwar years, however, saw a return to normalcy for a large number of citizens; they once more could travel and viewed both leisure and business excursions as part of the American way of life. Wartime rationing of consumer items diverted raw materials and necessary products for the war effort and, at the same time, created shortages for civilians, forcing many to spend their vacation on their front porches. The first controls on goods for sale, issued in January 1942, included tires, an essential item for operating a car. The following month, the government called for the conversion of automobile assembly lines to the production of military vehicles and by May had placed restrictions on purchasing gasoline. Travel for fun ceased abruptly, and, as seen in Table 99, motor vehicle sales and distances covered plummeted until late 1945 and a return to peace. New cars purchased during the war years would have been manufactured prior to February 7, 1942, the date the government ordered an end to all nonmilitary automobile production. The steady increase in automotive sales for the last half of the decade resulted in a significant jump of 44 percent, from prewar figures of over 4 million vehicles sold in 1940, to around 8 million in 1950. During this same period, the distances traveled went from a low of roughly 249 million miles in 1946 to more than 458 million in 1950, a 45.5 percent climb. By 1940, the American Automobile Association (AAA), promoter of travel and safety since 1902, found itself riding the wave of expanded travel and growth of the tourism industry. With over 1 million members, it reigned as the largest leisure travel agency in the United States and offered many services, including customized routing maps, evaluation reports on lodgings and restaurants, emergency road service, and two publications: Digest of Motor Vehicle Laws and Motoring in the United States. Throughout the war years, the AAA continued to serve its members while also supporting the war effort. It made its mapping facilities available to the army, conducted TABLE 99.

Motor Vehicle Sales and Motor Vehicle Travel

Year

Factory Sales (in millions of dollars)

Vehicle Miles (in millions)

1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950

4.5 4.8 1.0 0.7 0.7 0.7 3.0 4.8 5.3 6.3 8.0

302.1 n.d. n.d. n.d. n.d. 249.6 340.7 370.6 397.6 424.0 458.4



Travel | 727 motor-pool driver education classes, and monitored tire and gas rationing. After the war, the organization broadened a driver training program originally created in 1942 for veterans with artificial limbs to include all wounded veterans. In 1946, anticipating a huge postwar increase in traffic, it released Traffic Jam Ahead, a film that presented ways to maintain road safety. Duncan Hines (1880–1959), a traveling salesman for a printing firm, in 1936 turned a hobby of sharing his evaluations of eating establishments with friends into a thriving business with the publication of a guidebook titled Adventures in Good Eating. He followed this highly successful venture with another guide, Lodging for a Night, in 1938, and a cookbook, Adventures in Good Cooking, in 1939. A second edition of Adventures in Good Eating became available in 1942 and sold well, primarily to families that traveled extensively to take jobs in defense plants. The National Park Service (NPS), created in 1916 and operated by the federal government under the U.S. Department of the Interior, also encouraged travel, particularly to national parks, monuments, historical and military sites, and parkways. As occurred with motor vehicle sales and vehicle miles shown in the preceding table, visits to these areas plunged during the war years, only to rebound strongly after the end of the conflict. In 1941, NPS facilities attracted a high of 20.4 million visits. The figures dropped to 6.6 million visits at the height of World War II. Two factors—large numbers of citizens fighting in the war and civilians not taking vacations—greatly influenced the drastic decrease in the number of traveling Americans. The Park Service surpassed 1941’s record count in 1946; by 1950, it had established new highs with 30.7 million visits to NPS sites. TABLE 100.

Visits to National Parks, Monuments, and Historical and Military Sites

Year

Number of Visitors to National Parks (in millions)

Number of Visitors to National Monuments (in millions)

Number of Visitors to Historical and Military Sites (in millions)

Number of Visitors to National Parkways (in millions)

Total Number of Visitors to National Park Service Sites (in millions)

1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950

7.4 8.5 3.8 2.0 2.6 4.5 9.0 10.7 11.3 13.0 13.9

2.8 3.7 1.8 1.6 1.9 2.5 3.6 4.0 4.4 4.9 5.3

5.9 7.3 3.1 2.9 3.3 3.7 6.7 7.6 7.8 8.8 9.5

n.d. 0.9 0.3 0.1 0.3 0.4 1.3 1.2 1.5 1.4 2.0

16.1 20.4 9.0 6.6 8.1 11.1 20.6 23.5 25.0 28.1 30.7



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Newspaper travel coverage reflected the decline in Americans engaged in that pursuit. For example, New York Times reporter Diana Rice (active 1930s to 1950s) took over a biweekly column “Random Notes for Travelers” in June 1936 and, over the course of a year, featured cruises and tours to just about all parts of the world. By 1941, however, the column appeared erratically, with only 11 for the year. Topics tended to be confined to travel opportunities to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, South America, or within the United States. One column even focused on holding family reunions at military camps so that those in the service would not miss out on those important gatherings. No travel columns appeared in the New York Times for the years 1943 to 1946. They resumed in July 1947 under a new name—“News and Notes from the Field of Travel”—but still under Rice’s byline. Good roads enhance an interest in traveling by car or bus, and as a modern highway system began to develop in the United States in the 1920s, long-distance road trips became more common and required stops at places to stay. At the time, hotels tended to be located in the center of cities near railroad stations, not along the roads connecting urban areas. Out on the highway, auto camps, which initially ranged from tents on platforms to sparsely furnished rooms, provided the first lodging for travelers. In time, some of these facilities improved to offer individual cabins with more furnishings and increased privacy. Motels (a combination of the words “motor” and “hotel”) soon followed; usually one long building with adjoining rooms, they offered exterior doors along the front, which allowed for easy parking and entrance to a room. Most early motels consisted of one business under a single owner. But a few enterprising individuals built a number of lodgings within a geographic area and formed a chain under their management. Others increased their earnings by selling franchises to buyers who operated the motels under one name and shared in the profits. For example, Scott King (active 1930s to 1940s) followed the 1935 construction of his modernistic King’s Auto Court in San Diego, California, with 24 more in Southern California over the next five years. In 1940, he established a co-ownership method of operating these facilities with managers under the collective name TraveLodge and set the stage for franchise growth and success that has continued into the present. The tourist industry, as did most other businesses, struggled with a variety of challenges during World War II. Countless small motels and hotels along the highway, because of their dependence upon a virtually nonexistent automobile trade, went out of business. Hotels located near train stations, on the other hand, experienced a revival thanks to an increase in the number of rail passengers. Motels and hotels near defense plants and military camps also thrived because they provided much-needed housing to the millions who had relocated to work in the war effort or be near family members in the service. After the conflict, many returning veterans, looking for employment and sensing a good opportunity, decided to go into the motel business. With an end to gas rationing, demand for clean, inexpensive lodging soared. These entrepreneurs opened small mom-and-pop motels, many following the guidance offered in a 1947 Veterans Administration manual, Occupational Outlook Series, which highlighted both the benefits and difficulties of running small tourist businesses. Others also seized upon these opportunities. California hotelier M. K. Guertin (active 1940s to 1950s) of Long


Travel | 729 Beach, built his first Best Western in 1946, a venture that became a franchised chain and today remains known worldwide. By 1948, the country boasted 26,000 motels, twice the number available in 1939, and another 15,000 joined the ranks between 1949 and 1952, giving the country many more motels than hotels for the first time. With peace restored, Americans eagerly returned to traveling, and in 1946 the publishing and tourist industries responded. Advertisements for the perfect vacation spot, tours, and means of travel increased in newspapers and magazines. New and updated travel guidebooks included all three of Duncan Hines’s publications, with 900,000 copies sold almost immediately, and G. P. Putnam’s Sons Your Mexican Holiday, Harcourt Brace’s The Story of Bermuda, and Sheridan House’s The Romantic West Indies also did well. Reinhold Publishing, anticipating that many travelers would be businesspeople, offered Going Abroad for Business. Curtis Publishing, located in Philadelphia, in 1946 issued a new magazine named Holiday and sent writer and humorist S. J. Perelman (1904–1979) and artist Al Hirschfield (1903–2003) around the world to send back witty and informative illustrated copy about their adventures. Travel to Europe for pleasure had been restricted in 1939. German submarines patrolling the Atlantic Ocean, sometimes close to America’s shores, prohibited any ocean travel east. Besides, most ocean liners and commercial airplanes had been commandeered for military transportation needs. Soon after the end of World War II, American Airlines and Pan American World Airways (commonly known as Pan Am) scheduled a limited number of flights to England, as did Transcontinental & Western Air (T&WA; in 1946 the company changed its name to the more familiar Trans World Airlines, or TWA) to Paris. Douglas Aircraft Company sold its first postwar passenger plane, a DC-6, to United Airlines with many more to follow, and Lockheed followed suit with its popular Constellation being first acquired by TWA. At this time, most transatlantic passengers consisted of government officials and business travelers, but as the airlines acquired more planes and as governments relaxed wartime travel restrictions to Europe, many adventurous civilians crossed the Atlantic by air and ocean liner, not only to London and Paris but to Amsterdam, Stockholm, and Berlin. The American Express Company had shepherded U.S. citizens in and out of cities and museums in Europe for over 30 years; by 1947 it had reopened many of its European offices to address any concerns about expenses or to locate adequate accommodations and the other necessities for a comfortable trip. By 1949, almost 1 million people (less than 100,000 short of 1938, the last normal travel year) made their way to European and Mediterranean tourist spots. Ocean liners accounted for the major share of this trade because commercial airlines, although offering some flights, struggled with reaching agreements about assignments of air routes and setting fares. Americans’ thoughts about travel also turned to touring at home. In 1946, AAA, concerned about the transportation needs of the country, launched a national campaign encouraging the construction of a 40,000 mile interstate highway system that had been defined in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944. The bill, however, had not authorized the necessary funds and construction had been slow. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, signed by President Dwight David Eisenhower (1890–1969), increased the proposal to 41,000 miles and contained sufficient dollars to commence


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construction, making this the largest public works project in U.S. history at that time. By the early 21st century, the Interstate Highway System totaled at 47,742 miles. Many travelers, whatever their destination, considered cameras necessary equipment for recording scenes and adventures. The Eastman Kodak Company, founded in 1870, had introduced its Kodak Ektra Camera in 1941. It boasted a fast shutter speed that made it an advanced instrument at the time and, as with their other products, proved to be user friendly. The following year, the firm introduced Kodacolor film for prints. The Bell and Howell Company, incorporated in 1907, quickly moved from a business of repairing movie equipment to manufacturing film projectors. By the 1920s, Bell and Howell also sold cameras and camera accessories. They produced Action Autographs (1949), a series of 15-minute films that highlighted unique vacation spots as well as displayed unusual or entertaining events with the intention of showing that travel experiences can be enjoyed through film. The Allied victory and the return to peace made the postwar years a time to travel and relax, celebrate, and have new experiences. The tourist industry attempted to adjust to both situations by meeting wartime challenges and, after the conflict, capitalizing on the growing interest in travel. Bus lines built luxury coaches and airlines offered passenger services and ticket prices competitive with trains. Tour packages with an all-inclusive price tag could be purchased for air tours to Mexico; bus journeys to the Southwest, the Pacific Coast, or the Rockies; and train trips to national parks. By 1949, ocean liners were booked to capacity, AAA offered its first escorted tour, and Diana Rice of the New York Times once again wrote regularly about travel to various parts of the world. See also: Aviation; Fast Food; Leisure and Recreation; Photography Selected Reading Belasco, Warren James. Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910–1945. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979. Rice, Diana. “Random Notes for Travelers” and “News and Notes from the Field of Travel.” New York Times, February 4, 1940, through December 25, 1949. www.proquest.com Rose, Mark H. Interstate: Express Highway Politics, 1941–1956. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1979.

TRUMAN, PRESIDENT HARRY S. At the 1944 Democratic national convention, the party nominated Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) for an unprecedented fourth term as president of the United States. World War II still raged, although things were going better for the Allies by then, and Roosevelt promised a continuation of his strong leadership as commander-inchief. The public knew that Roosevelt suffered a variety of ills, including the crippling effects of polio from his younger years, but few realized the gravity of the situation. Party leaders, despite the president’s diminished health, nevertheless urged him to drop then–Vice President Henry A. Wallace (1888–1965), seeing him as too liberal for the


Truman, President Harry S. | 731 good of the ticket. Roosevelt went along with the politicians and reluctantly chose as his running mate a little-known senator from Missouri, Harry S. Truman (1884–1972; the middle initial S in his name does not stand for anything, and disagreements persist about whether to include a period following it. Truman himself sometimes omitted it, and other times used it). In the November 1944 election, Roosevelt and Truman won, defeating Republicans Thomas E. Dewey (1902– 1971) and John W. Bricker (1893–1986), and the nation looked forward to another four years with Roosevelt at the helm. But his physical liabilities overtook him and he died on April 12, 1945, having In this 1945 photograph, Harry Truman was served just a few months of his new term. still serving as vice president. He became the He had been president for over 12 years, nation’s 33rd president in April of that year and his death thrust Vice President Tru- upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Bettmann/CORBIS) man into office as a relatively unknown quantity. From the time he assumed the presidency, Truman faced momentous decisions, and many wondered if he would be up to the enormous job that awaited him. Born in rural Missouri, Truman had served in World War I in France, returned to Missouri and married Bess Wallace (1885–1982), and went into the men’s clothing business in Kansas City. The recession of 1921 ended that venture, but with political patronage he became a judge in the Missouri court system. In 1934, with Democratic Party backing, he won election to the U.S. Senate. As a first-term senator, Truman gained little acclaim, but he campaigned tirelessly in 1940 and emerged victorious in a try for a second congressional term. He chaired several committees and began to be noticed; thus, with strong backing from several important Democrats, Truman emerged as Roosevelt’s running mate in the 1944 presidential contest. Less than a month following Roosevelt’s death, Germany, on May 7, 1945, accepted the surrender terms offered by the Allies, and the war in Europe came to a close, but the fighting dragged on in the Pacific Theater. Prior to becoming vice president, Truman knew little more than other senators about specific plans for defeating the Japanese. During his first months in office, the conflict barely let up; the ferocious battle of Iwo Jima finally concluded in March 1945, but fighting on Okinawa, which had commenced in late March, would not end until June. Although virtually everyone realized victory would eventually be achieved, few knew any details relevant to the development of the atomic bomb, a top-secret project that had been withheld from most members of Congress. Only in the rushed days after his nomination and subsequent election did Truman become aware of the immensity of the project and how close it was to completion.


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Once Okinawa fell in June, the obvious next military step involved a land invasion of the Japanese home islands. Truman and his advisors knew that such action would in time overcome the tenacious enemy defenders, but at the cost of countless American lives. On July 16, 1945, just a month after the Okinawa campaign, scientists successfully detonated a nuclear device in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico. With this test, Truman had to make a fateful decision: to go ahead with the invasion or to employ a nuclear weapon in an attempt to secure peace with the Japanese. Always a decisive man, Truman opted for the latter course of action. On August 6, 1945, less than a month following the New Mexico tests, a single atomic bomb virtually wiped out the Japanese city of Hiroshima. When the Japanese government did not respond, three days later a second bomb destroyed Nagasaki. Faced with the total destruction of their country, Japanese leaders surrendered unconditionally on August 15, an event that brought World War II to a close. Truman’s decision to drop the bombs has been debated ever since, and neither position, pro or con, enjoys a clear preponderance of supporters. The end of the war, however, did not grant Truman a respite from major decisions. The United Nations, in the discussion and planning stages for many years, officially came into being in October, and Truman gave the fledgling organization his strong backing. An internationalist in many ways, he also supported the 1947 creation of the states of Israel and Pakistan and the 1949 formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (more commonly known as NATO). Perhaps his crowning achievement involved his successful negotiations with a recalcitrant Republican Congress in the summer of 1947 to fund the Marshall Plan, a massive aid program designed to assist in the rebuilding of war-torn Europe. Domestically, Truman characterized his policies as a “Fair Deal,” borrowing on Roosevelt’s New Deal. He wanted to end unfair employment practices, raise the minimum wage, and grant higher unemployment compensation. But 1946 also saw the offyear congressional elections, and Republicans and disgruntled Democrats attacked the Truman agenda, with the result that his party lost control of Congress. The president thereafter faced fierce political opposition to many of his plans. The return to peacetime also opened up a host of other problems. U.S. labor organizations, restive under wartime restrictions against strikes and pay raises, seized the opportunity in the immediate postwar years to assert themselves. Steel plants, automotive manufacturers, shipping companies, railroads, electrical suppliers, telephone companies, oil firms, and coal producers all felt the sting of strikes, some brief and some prolonged. This wave of labor unrest finally caused Congress to pass the Taft-Hartley Act in June 1947. It prohibited most strikes without prior mediation, curtailed union powers, allowed right-to-work laws, and limited the practice of closed shops. Truman saw the popular bill as antilabor and vetoed it, but a conservative Congress, including many Democrats, overrode his veto. Despite his distaste for the Taft-Hartley Act, Truman would invoke its powers 12 times between its passage and 1952 in attempts to resolve continuing labor-management problems. Truman also had to face the growing threat of Soviet expansionism during his tenure as president. In the period 1946–1947, Greece and Turkey, considered strategically important to U.S. security, were threatened by civil wars fomented by Communist-


Truman, President Harry S. | 733 supported forces using the guise of “popular uprisings.” To prevent any takeovers, he supplied the beleaguered Greek and Turkish governments with massive foreign aid, much of it military, and talked of the Truman Doctrine, a policy of containment backed by U.S. might. These actions reflected his awareness of the so-called Iron Curtain, an impenetrable military and ideological barrier then closing down on much of Eastern Europe. The Truman Doctrine attempted to block any further encroachments toward the more democratic West, and he willingly provided aid to pro-West governments needing bolstering. When 1948 and a new presidential election rolled around, Truman found himself in difficult political territory. His general popularity appeared low, the Soviet Union cast hungry eyes on much of Europe, and his Fair Deal had realized none of its broad objectives. The Republicans nominated Thomas E. Dewey, a strong campaigner, as their party candidate for the presidency, just as in 1944. But Truman, a feisty opponent in his own right, fooled the experts by mounting a remarkable whistle stop campaign, speaking from the rear platforms of trains as he crisscrossed the country. When the ballots were counted, he had squeaked out an upset victory and won a second term. People liked his mannerisms and his plainspoken approach to complex problems. The election also returned Congress to the Democratic column in both chambers. Part of Truman’s campaign strategy included railing against a “do nothing” Congress, and the tactic paid off handsomely. Buoyed by his victory, an energized Truman returned to office ready to implements his plans. But new and continuing international problems held his attention, the most serious of which involved the revelation that the Soviet Union had detonated its own atomic bomb in late August 1949. Captured wartime German scientists and their Soviet counterparts, along with considerable espionage involving U.S. nuclear secrets, enabled the Communist nation to complete the research and production of a working atomic weapon well ahead of most predictions. U.S. hegemony in the nuclear arena came to an end, and Truman and his advisors had to rethink defense strategies and the relative balance of power between the two countries. That same year, in another upset, the Western-leaning Nationalist Chinese lost their long civil war with the Communist People’s Republic of China. Chang Kai-shek (1887–1975), the Nationalists’ longtime leader, and his followers fled to the island of Formosa (now called Taiwan) off the mainland China coast. Invoking the Truman Doctrine, the president vowed to defend the Nationalists and sent the navy’s Seventh Fleet to defend the island. Taiwan has remained a problem for United States diplomacy ever since. As the Cold War heated up in the late 1940s, anti-Communist feelings rose sharply within the United States. Many conservative factions accused Truman of being “soft on Communism” (a popular phrase of the day) and responsible for placing the nation at risk against its Soviet adversary. Heated congressional investigations suggested extensive infiltration by Soviet spies in many levels of the government and the military, and several outspoken members of Congress urged loyalty oaths, immediate arrests and trials for any suspected spies, and virtual witch hunts to uncover subversion. This postwar “Red Scare” gained in intensity as international tensions rose, a wave of popular feeling that isolated Truman and his administration.


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It culminated in June 1950, when North Korea, a Communist state, attacked independent South Korea. With little hesitation, Truman committed U.S. troops and planes to a United Nations effort to stop the aggression. It would prove a costly, divisive war (or “peace action”; diplomats refrained from using the word “war”), and Truman bore considerable criticism for his handling of it as commander-in-chief. There were even calls for his impeachment when, in 1951, he fired General Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964), the popular commander of the UN forces, for publicly disagreeing with him over military policies. With the Korean conflict and the MacArthur incident, Truman’s poll ratings tumbled. As the sitting vice president, he had taken office with the death of Roosevelt. Truman therefore remained eligible for a second full term with the upcoming 1952 election, but he decided not to run again and instead retire to private life. The Truman era drew to a close amid charge and countercharge. He would live for another 20 years and see his reputation restored. By early years of the 21st century, Harry S. Truman has steadily risen as an effective president in the eyes of most political analysts and historians. His stubborn devotion to his principles marks him as more of a statesman than his detractors would admit at the time, and many estimates now place him in the top tier of America’s presidential leaders. On a more personal level, Truman delighted the press and many citizens. He enjoyed taking brisk walks on Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues, often unescorted, much to the chagrin of his Secret Service guards. When on vacation or playing an occasional game of golf, he favored bright Hawaiian sport shirts, topped off with a casual hat or cap. Bess, his devoted wife, stayed dutifully in the background and granted only one press conference in all her years as first lady. She answered most of the reporters’ queries with a terse “no comment.” The Trumans had a daughter, Margaret (1924–2008), who had dreams of a career as a professional singer. During the mid-1940s, she began appearing in public recitals and concerts, as well as performing on radio and television. At one such event in 1950, a music critic reviewed her concert in less-than-flattering terms; outraged, her father responded in a widely publicized letter that he would break the writer’s nose and do other bodily damage should he ever encounter him, and opinion sided with the president. But plain speaking characterized the 33rd president; his motto, displayed on a desk in the Oval Office, famously read “the Buck Stops Here.” See also: Berlin Airlift, The; General George Catlett Marshall Selected Reading McCullough, David. Truman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. Patterson, James T. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.


U

UFOS (UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS) Since time immemorial, people have seen objects in the skies they could not identify. Often others—especially those who had not witnessed the same phenomena—thought such individuals must be seeing things. Too much to drink, hallucinations, religious frenzies, sickness, and endless other explanations were put forth to explain these mysterious sightings. The advent of air travel in the early 20th century hardly put an end to such reports; if anything, it increased them. During World War II, pilots and crews occasionally spotted strange lights and swiftly moving shapes and dubbed them “foo fighters.” The word “foo,” a nonsense term, gained popularity from the comic strip Smokey Stover, a widely read humor series created by cartoonist Bill Holman (1903–1987) that ran from 1935 to 1973. From its inception, Smokey Stover enjoyed a diverse readership, mainly for its sheer wackiness and playful use of language. “Foo” made frequent appearances in the strip and had no real significance. Service personnel began using it to designate, among several meanings, a thing or event that cannot be rationally explained. Thus, a foo fighter might be an imaginary aircraft that crews thought they saw. The various Allied air forces duly made note of such sightings and assumed the enemy possessed secret weapons that could fly at amazing speeds and demonstrate great maneuverability. In time, however, military intelligence found that German and Japanese pilots submitted similar reports, further complicating the issue. In most cases, the objects tended to be spherical or disk-shaped, brightly lit or glowing (some even appeared to burn), and seemed to have a form of intelligence controlling them. Documents—some only declassified in recent years—accumulated, but no concrete findings emerged. Toward the end of the war in 1945, the news media reported on the sightings of unidentified objects, particularly foo fighters, a term certain to entertain readers. Despite the publicity, little came of the articles, and the subject elicited minimal interest from the public at large. The reports continued, however, and in late June 1947, a private 735


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pilot named Kenneth Arnold (1915–1984), flying over the western part of the state of Washington, reported observing nine strange saucer-shaped objects, from his small airplane. He further said that they flew in formation at an extremely high speed and did not threaten him. The press gave the story wide circulation, and hundreds of similar reports came in from locations not just in the Seattle region but from around the world that corroborated his descriptions. Arnold’s mention of the mysterious disks as saucer-shaped soon gave rise to the popular expression “flying saucers,” a term that has remained in use since then. In addition, by the late 1940s, the formal description “unidentified flying object” was simplified to UFO. It, too, has become a part of everyday language when discussing such events. Air Force intelligence officers dismissed Arnold’s experience and those of others, suggesting illusions caused by the sun, clouds, mirages, errant weather balloons, and numerous other possibilities. But the reports kept coming in. One of the most famous, recorded in July 1947, claimed that a saucerlike object crashed in the area of Roswell, New Mexico. Again, the military denied the incident but nonetheless launched an investigation. Those inquiries eventually culminated in Project Blue Book, a lengthy examination of these and related events that ran from 1947 until 1967. Although shrouded in secrecy, occasional details leaked out, and people continued to report sightings of UFOs, so that many individuals became convinced that a complex government conspiracy had come into being to discredit any dissenting testimony. By the end of the decade, a hard core of believers in UFOs had evolved. Hollywood, in the meantime, sensing an opportunity, was gearing up to release science fiction movies about flying saucers and extraterrestrial visitors to Earth. The 1950s would see movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The Thing (1951), Invaders from Mars (1953), It Came from Outer Space (1953), War of the Worlds (1953), Earth Versus the Flying Saucers (1956), and many others. For those who believed, these films, fictional as they may be, reinforced the idea of UFOs. Nonbelievers, on the other hand, could be entertained by the screenwriters’ creativity. The Air Force may have attempted to squelch any public interest in unidentified flying objects, but with few plausible explanations, they only succeeded in further firing the imaginations of many. By the end of the 1940s, UFOs, real or unreal, were firmly fixed in American popular culture. See also: Aviation; Comic Strips; Newspapers Selected Reading Clark, Jerome. The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon from the Beginning. 2 vols. Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics, 1998. Keyhoe, Donald E. Flying Saucers from Outer Space. New York: Henry Holt, 1953. Ruppelt, Edward J. The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. New York: Doubleday, 1956.

UNITED NATIONS, THE The name United Nations (often abbreviated as UN), suggested by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), first appeared in a document titled “Declaration © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

United Nations, The | 737 by United Nations,” that China, the United Kingdom, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and the United States signed on January 1, 1942, at a conference in Washington, DC. Eventually 22 other nations added their signatures as endorsements of standing together as “united nations” in fighting the Axis powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan. Three years later, 282 official delegates from 50 countries met in April in San Francisco to establish a global organization with the aim of promoting peace, security, cooperation, and the self-determination of nations. This meeting had been preceded by extensive work and discussions at several conferences of the Allies, including the foreign ministers of Great Britain, the USSR, and the United States (secretary of state) in Moscow in 1943, and a Tehran meeting later that same year attended by President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874–1965), and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin (1878–1953). Ironically, an international group with similar goals had formed after World War I (1914–1918), a conflict that left the world devastated by an unprecedented loss of life among both soldiers and civilians along with extensive destruction throughout Europe. Calling itself the League of Nations, this body operated from 1920 to 1946, with the intention of ensuring security for its member countries and promoting peace among them, although it attained few of its objectives. The U.S. president, Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), credited as the father of the League, received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in realizing this dream. The United States Congress, however, despite the dedication of the president to this new organization, twice voted against membership and thereby destroyed any chances that the League of Nations would succeed. Wilson, a 1944 American feature movie, stars Alexander Knox (1907–1995), in a role for which he received an Academy Award nomination as best actor. He plays a beleaguered president trying to establish the League of Nations against a recalcitrant Senate led by Henry Cabot Lodge (1850–1924), portrayed by Cedric Hardwicke (1893–1964). A message movie, it created obvious parallels between Wilson and Roosevelt, just as the later president also strove to get Congress’s approval for his efforts. In this case, however, Roosevelt prevailed. The work at the historic United Nations gathering in San Francisco proceeded amid heavy publicity; countless concerned private citizens followed the event thanks to the 2,600 print and radio reporters present that kept the world informed. The attending countries included France, which had been occupied by Germany through most of the war, but nevertheless managed to sign the charter on June 26, 1945, just one month after the end of hostilities in Europe. Poland did not have representation at the conference; it signed later and brought the original members to 51. In 2009, the number stood at 192 member states. Certain organizational aspects of the League of Nations can be found in the later plan of the United Nations. Both identified a basic structure of a general assembly, a secretariat, a security council, and a world court. The UN system initially added two more divisions, an economic and social council and a trusteeship council. The last named, before suspending operations in 1994, supervised the administration and eventual independence of territories that had been under the mandate of the League of Nations or were colonies of nations defeated in World War II. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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The primary responsibilities of the other divisions at the time of the formation of the UN also continue as follows: United Nations General Assembly: Composed of representatives from all United Nations members, the assembly meets in regular session annually under a president elected from among the member states. United Nations Security Council: Charged with maintaining peace and security among all members, the Security Council consists of 5 permanent representatives with veto powers from China (today known as the People’s Republic of China), the USSR (today known as the Russian Federation), the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, along with 10 members serving limited terms. It is the only group in the UN that has the power to make binding decisions that member governments have agreed to carry out. Economic and Social Council: Promotes international economic and social cooperation and development under the direction of a membership of 54 countries elected by the General Assembly. Secretariat: Provides information and facilities needed by UN bodies for their meetings and is headed by a secretary-general. International Court of Justice: Fifteen judges from around the world hear cases relating to atrocities and injustices such as war crimes, illegal state interference, and genocide. The justices meet at The Hague in the Netherlands. On January 11, 1946, the delegates to the UN met for the first time in London while looking for a site in New York City to construct a permanent building. Philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. (1874–1960) donated six blocks he owned on Manhattan along the East River between Forty-Second and Forty-Eighth Streets; the United States declared this property an international territory. The United Nations Board of Design, an international team of 11 individuals that included such notable architects as Oscar Niemeyer (b. 1907), Le Corbusier (1887– 1965; b. Charles Edouard Jeanneret-Gris), and Wallace K. Harrison (1895–1981). They reviewed the plans submitted for the building that would house the organization. Despite heated debate among the members of the board, the group finally approved four structures to be built in the International Style and to serve as a symbol of a new beginning after World War II. Work started with the largest, the Secretariat building, with occupancy occurring in 1951. The Conference building followed in February 1952 and the General Assembly building in October of that year. The Dag Hammarskjold (1905–1961) Library, named for the organization’s second secretary-general, reached completion in 1961, the year Hammarskjold died in a plane crash. With construction underway, the delegates to the United Nations worked on matters that related to the reasons for its existence. For example, the General Assembly in 1946 established the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). In 1948, the Security Council dealt with a dispute between India and the new nation of Pakistan and, in another matter, ordered a cease-fire in Palestine, along with approval


USO (United Service Organizations) | 739 of the creation of UN Relief for Palestine refugees. Problems such as these continue to plague the United Nations. In June 1950, North Korea invaded its southern neighbor, the Republic of Korea. The Security Council called upon UN members to resist aggression by taking police action to provide South Korea with military assistance. During the summer, the U.S. Congress voted to vigorously support the United Nations’ effort to halt this breach of peace. President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) deployed troops to South Korea and, with UN approval, appointed General Douglas McArthur (1880–1964) as supreme commander of United Nations forces in Korea, thus closing out the first five turbulent years of the new organization. The United Nations, an idea conceived with the League of Nations following World War I, had its birth during the difficult years of World War II. It officially came into existence on October 24, 1946, when the charter had been ratified by China, France, the USSR, the United Kingdom, the United States, and a majority of the other participating countries. In 1950, with the completion of one of four buildings at its headquarters in New York, the United Nations took its first major police action; others would come in the following years. See also: Architecture; Cold War, The; Design; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk; Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 (Selective Service, or Draft) Selected Reading Bookmiller, Kirsten Nakjavani. The United Nations. New York: Chelsea House, 2008. Gorman, Robert F. Great Debates at the United Nations: An Encyclopedia of Fifty Key Issues, 1945– 2000. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001. United Nations. Charter of the United Nations. New York: United Nations, 2004. www.un.org/en/ documents/charter/

USO (UNITED SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS) More than a year before the December 1941 attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government acknowledged the growing unrest in the world and began to prepare for the possibility of involvement in a major conflict. Shortly thereafter, Congress passed the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, a law requiring all men aged 21 to 30 to register with their local draft boards. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) promptly signed the bill and the country’s first peacetime draft system came into being. Five months later, on February 4, 1941, the USO (United Service Organizations) took form, a response to an urgent request from the president. Concerned about providing recreation and boosting morale for the rapidly growing armed forces, Roosevelt had determined that private, not government, agencies could best address the matter. Six civilian organizations—the Salvation Army, the Young Men’s Christian Association, the Young Women’s Christian Association, the National Catholic Community Services, the National Travelers Aid Association, and the National Jewish Welfare Board—agreed with the president and established a separate umbrella group to coordinate their efforts and resources.


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The new entity quickly developed a two-pronged approach for meeting its responsibilities: (1) organized entertainment and (2) designated places for soldiers to go for recreation and relaxation. As early as May 1941, seven traveling show buses had taken performers to training camps in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. Demand for similar shows increased rapidly, and, in order to efficiently meet the requests for entertainment, the USO formed a separate corporation, the USO Camp Shows, Inc. This division became chartered on October 30, 1941, and operated in affiliation with and supported by the USO. Eventually, four circuits comprised the USO Camp Shows with its operatThe usually sultry Marlene Dietrich in a pro- ing structure. The Victory Circuit, estabmotional photograph for the USO; she wears lished in 1941, took full-sized revues, an army shirt and tie instead of a slinky evening Broadway shows, and concerts to the gown. The actress tirelessly worked to raise larger military installations. The Blue funds for the USO, war bonds, the Red Cross, Circuit consisted of smaller touring and other worthy causes. (Photofest) companies performing vaudeville-type shows at smaller bases. The Hospital Circuit, introduced in 1944, enabled entertainers to visit wards and auditoriums at U.S. military hospitals and included the Sketch Artists program. This unit involved some 170 illustrators and painters who drew portraits of wounded servicemen. Finally, and the most dangerous, the Foxhole, or Overseas Circuit, went as close to the front lines as possible, where entertainers of all types performed for the troops. Participants in the USO Camp Shows included both the famous and the unknown, the young and the old, with personalities from all facets of the entertainment and sports worlds. Because it is impossible to list them all, the following examples serve as a brief introduction to the many individuals who dedicated themselves to supporting the armed forces wherever they were stationed—in training camps in the United States, in hospitals, and on the battlefields in foreign lands. Bob Hope (1903–2003), well-known for more than 50 years of traveling to military bases and hospitals to show his patriotism and entertain the troops, made his first overseas tour for USO Camp Shows in 1942. Vocalist Frances Langford (1913–2005), actor Tony Romano (1915–2005), and vaudeville dancer and singer Jack Pepper (1902–1979) accompanied him. In the spring of 1943, ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (1903–1978) and his dummy Charlie McCarthy entertained in Newfoundland, while comedian Jack Benny (1894– 1974) and harmonica player Larry Adler (1914–2001) traveled to the Middle East. Comedian Joe E. Lewis (1902–1971) and dancer Ray Bolger (1904–1987), who played


USO ( United Service Organizations) | 741 the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz (1939), covered military bases in the Pacific, as did the Oklahoma! company from Broadway. Playwright and director Moss Hart (1904– 1961) took the production The Man Who Came to Dinner to the Pacific and Australia, and actress Judith Anderson (1897–1992) offered Shakespearean plays in Hawaii. In 1944, a cast for the folk opera Porgy and Bess gave a preview performance at Mitchell Field, Long Island, before touring in Europe for the Foxhole Circuit. For these varied performances, Camp Show units created backdrops that would fold into suitcases and built supports that dismantled easily. Frequently, they had to improvise, such as lighting a stage entirely with flashlights. Leading singers, vocal groups, musicians, and bandleaders participating in USO Camp Shows included The Andrews Sisters (Patty [b. 1918], Maxene [1916–1995], and LaVerne [1911–1967]), Fred Astaire (1899–1987), Bing Crosby (1903–1977), Duke Ellington (1899–1974), Spike Jones (1911–1965) and his City Slickers, Andre Kostelanetz (1901–1980), Glenn Miller (1904–1944), and Dinah Shore (1916–1994). An operatic concert unit that included tenor Frederick Jagel (1897–1982), violinist Isaac Stern (1920–2001), soprano Polyna Stoska (active 1930s to 1940s), baritone Robert Weede (1903–1972), and pianist Alex Zakin (1903–1990) landed in amphibious military DUKWs (commonly called “ducks”) to perform for 10,000 GIs in New Guinea. Athletes also did their share of boosting the morale of service personnel. Wrestler Nick Munday (active 1940s) went to France and Belgium, as did boxers Jack Sharkey (1902–1994) and Mickey Walker (1903–1981), while world table tennis champion Ruth Aarons (1910–1980) played the game with GIs in Normandy. Baseball greats Frankie Frisch (1898–1973), Carl Hubbell (1903–1988), Lefty Gomez (1908–1989), and Mel Ott (1909–1958) called on troops, and Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher (1905–1991) took 22 people, including players, managers, and umpires, to visit the various theaters of war. The severity of the battle zone or the roughness of a spot did not stop Camp Shows, and the entertainers often faced the same dangers as the troops. In the spring of 1944, the tent cities on the British fields and beaches bordering the English Channel received entertainers, and on July 28 of that year, just 48 days after the D-Day invasion, plywood appeared atop a 30-ton ammunition carrier to accommodate the group that had arrived to give a show in France. By then, units had branched out to North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. Entertainers in North Africa included actors John Garfield (1913–1952), Jack Haley (1898–1979), and George Raft (1895–1980), singer Nelson Eddy (1901– 1967), and violinist Jascha Heifetz (1901–1987). From 1941 to 1947, USO Camp Shows presented 428,521 performances and hit a peak in 1945 with 700 shows a day to audiences as large as 15,000 and as small as 25 at some distant outposts. These performances, both overseas and in the United States, meant entertainment for an audience totaling at least 173 million. In all, more than 7,000 entertainers traveled overseas. To achieve its second charge, to provide a place for service members to gather, the USO established centers in communities close to bases across the country, using whatever available vacant space that would work, such as churches, yacht clubs, old mansions, storefronts, log cabins, and barns. The first one opened its doors on November 28,


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1941, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and by 1944, more than 3,000 such clubs had become the GIs’ home away from home. Successful operation of the USO centers required the involvement of many volunteers, a role fulfilled by more than 1.5 million people by war’s end. Usually residents of the communities housing a club provided this service. In 1944, the National Recreation Association published a volunteer’s handbook that gave tips on social issues, such as appropriate dress and lists of favorite refreshments to prepare. The guide also offered advice on ways of making conversation and included suggestions for acceptable topics—home, hobbies, schools, and movies—as well as subjects to avoid, mainly anything touching on military matters. Military personnel visiting special USO clubs close to Los Angeles and New York City, the Hollywood Canteen and the Stage Door Canteen in Times Square, had the opportunity to interact with a unique set of volunteers: stars from the entertainment world who performed for the soldiers, talked with them, and served refreshments or a meal. These activities became the focus of two movies, Stage Door Canteen (1943) and Hollywood Canteen (1944). Both starred an array of actors and actresses portraying themselves as they provided this important service for those in the armed forces. Programs at the USO centers varied as much as the places that housed them. The primary focus of all the clubs dealt with providing recreational opportunities for offduty soldiers—a place to read, dance, meet and talk with people, see a movie, write letters, and enjoy free coffee and doughnuts. By December 31, 1947, all USO clubs and facilities had closed, and the organization disbanded the Camp Shows. President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) even gave the USO an honorable discharge. But in 1951, the outbreak of the Korean War revived both the clubs and touring shows. USO Camp Shows, Inc., which had evolved into a separate entity, ceased operation in 1957. The USO itself assumed all responsibility for managing the entertainment needs of military personnel around the world, a practice that has continued to the present. See also: Broadway Shows (Comedy and Drama); Broadway Shows (Musicals); Canteens; Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show, The; Jack Benny Program, The Selected Reading USO. www.uso.org/whoweare/ourproudhistory/ USO and USO Camp Shows. New York Times, March 1, 1942; July 27, 1942; April 6, 1944; August 27, 1944; September 14, 1944. www.proquest.com Young, William H., and Nancy K. Young. Music of the World War II Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008.


V

V-E AND V-J DAY Anticipation about the successful end to World War II grew throughout 1944, and two terms appeared in print and were heard on radio: V-E Day and V-J Day. They meant “victory in Europe” and “victory over Japan,” although no actual surrenders had yet taken place. Credit for the terms often goes to James F. Byrnes (1879–1972) who, as director of the United States War Mobilization Board, used them in a 1944 speech, although others perhaps employed similar phrasing before him. The more generic Victory Day or V-Day may have preceded them, especially in Europe. An accurate etymology will probably never be discovered, but V-E Day and V-J Day quietly entered everyday American language some time in 1944. Allied commanders correctly foresaw that, by mid-1944, with the landings at Normandy and the bold tactic of island hopping in the Pacific, the conclusion of World War II loomed in the near future. But they also knew that many more bloody battles would be fought and that the Axis powers would not surrender easily. For Americans back home, however, this sense of inevitability grew as they read about victories on all fronts, and any setbacks, no matter how bloody, seemed like delaying actions by the enemy. On April 30, 1945, Germany’s Adolf Hitler (b. 1889) committed suicide. In the chaotic aftermath of his death, his generals rushed to secure a peace with advancing Allied forces. A week later, virtually all fighting came to a halt, and the various parties reached the terms for an unconditional surrender by the following day in Berlin. President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) declared May 8, 1945, as the official V-E Day, and celebrations, both in the United States and elsewhere, reflected people’s relief at the cessation of hostilities. The war in the Pacific, however, would drag on for another three months. Japan stubbornly rejected any peace overtures and vowed to fight to the last defender. Finally, 743


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on August 6 and 9, U.S. bombers dropped two atomic bombs—one on the city of Hiroshima and the other on Nagasaki. Shortly thereafter, the Japanese agreed to surrender, and on August 15, 1945, the war in the Pacific ended. Officials from both sides signed the formal documents on September 2, 1945, on the deck of the U.S. battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. President Truman thereupon proclaimed that date as the official V-J Day. Once again, celebrations, even more joyous and riotous than those held in May, broke out across the land. World War II had finally come to a close. See also: Atomic Bomb, The; D-Day; Eisenhower, General Dwight David; MacArthur, General Douglas; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk Selected Reading Kennedy, David M. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

VICTORY GARDENS Immediately after the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States’ official entry into World War II the following day, government leaders asked citizens at home to organize and make necessary contributions to the war effort. One suggestion involved cultivating home vegetable gardens, a successful concept first used in World War I in both England and the United States; at the time, the two nations called them war gardens. Following Armistice Day in 1918, officials had encouraged continued production, with a name change to victory gardens, but most people turned to other pursuits and it failed to have much of an impact. With a new war, however, the idea once again received a strong, positive response. Resplendent with vegetables, fruits, and herbs, home gardens quickly appeared in America’s backyards, front lawns, city rooftops, and vacant lots. The lawn at San Francisco’s City Hall exemplified how many towns and cities converted public land to vegetable gardens; other municipalities boasted communal planting areas in parks, such as one located in the Boston Commons. By now called victory gardens again, plots sprang up in Chicago’s Arlington Race Track and Portland, Oregon’s zoo. Even factories got into the act by using farms outside cities to grow food for consumption in employee cafeterias. By the fall of 1943, some 40 percent of the nation’s vegetables came from these efforts, easily the most popular of all the homefront war projects. Three situations drove the necessity for gardens: shortages of materials and food for home use, decreases in the labor force, and rationing. Materials, such as tin cans, utilized in food processing and canning had to be redirected to the manufacture of items for the war, thus decreasing supplies of produce and canned products available for stocking grocery and supermarket shelves. Also, the government allocated over 50 percent of commercially canned food to the military. At the same time, as thousands of men joined the armed forces, a lack of labor and transportation hindered the harvesting and movement of fruits and vegetables to market. Finally, the federal government, in the spring of 1942, imposed rationing to regulate the amount of commodities


Victory Gardens | 745 that consumers could buy. This included canned, bottled, and frozen fruits and vegetables, plus juices. Along with the obvious need for victory gardens, participation in the program clearly offered other benefits. Reducing food scarcities through homegrown produce meant more food on the family table as well as fuller stomachs. Those who had a victory garden reported a feeling of satisfaction because of their participation and proudly took credit for contributing to the war effort in a way that directly helped the nation’s servicemen. The planting and care of the garden offered a recreational activity for the family that sometimes included friends or neighbors. Finally, what could be seen as both a work and leisure activity also doubled as exercise. Supporting the government’s request, both agricultural and wildlife services offered assistance. The U.S. Department While sons, husbands, brothers, and fathers of Agriculture issued a 20-minute film picked up rifles to fight the enemy, those on the home front picked up shovels and hoes and titled Victory Garden to encourage par- planted victory gardens. It was estimated that ticipation and teach people how to plant by 1943, some 40 percent of the country’s vegand harvest a garden. Extension agents etables came from these backyard efforts. (Liwith this department provided seed, fer- brary of Congress) tilizer, and simple gardening tools. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published leaflets alerting gardeners to ways to protect their vegetables from common pests, including rabbits, moles, rats, and groundhogs. Both pamphlets and classes offered instruction in the art of successful canning. The United States Office of War Information (OWI) issued posters and slogans to encourage Americans to plant and harvest a victory garden: “Plant A Victory Garden—Our Food Is Fighting,” “Grow It Yourself,” “Your Victory Garden Counts More Than Ever,” and “War Gardens For Victory—Grow Vitamins At Your Kitchen Door,” to name a few. In addition to government agencies, various organizations contributed to the victory garden endeavor. The nonprofit Ad Council, created in 1941, encouraged the building of victory gardens and assisted with publicity efforts. Magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and Life ran stories about the program and published plans for successful gardens. Photographs in the May 3, 1943, issue of Life show a flower garden at a townhouse complex in Los Angeles that had been converted to a vegetable plot, prisoners in Chicago working on a victory garden in their walled-in jail yard, nuns growing vegetables for the residents at a home for the aged, and a lush garden situated in a vacant lot in downtown New Orleans only one block from busy Canal Street. Even


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a portion of the manicured grounds of the White House were tilled. Newspaper ads suggested gardening supplies and promoted presentations on how to garden and put up canned goods. Public service booklets published by Good Housekeeping magazine, International Harvester, Beech-Nut Packing Company, House & Garden magazine, and seed companies and nurseries taught the basics of gardening and suggested vegetables to plant. Depending on the climate and time of the year, most amateur gardeners planted squash, beans, cabbage, peppers, eggplant, peas, lettuce, kale, cucumbers, and tomatoes, although many attempted other items whenever they could. Shortly after the 1942 announcement of the program, Grosset and Dunlap published Food Gardens for Defense, by M. G. (Maurice Grenville) Kains (1868–1946). Comedian Jack Benny (1894–1974), by way of his radio program, let it be known that he had a victory garden and perhaps convinced many to join him. Hollywood promoted the concept through cartoons. In December 1942, MGM released Barney Bear’s Victory Garden. The next year saw more activity. Paramount’s Popeye had one in Ration Fer the Duration, and Warner Bros. Pictures issued three films with victory garden references. Bugs Bunny cracks garden jokes in Jack Wabbit and the Beanstalk and steals all the carrots from a plot in a small San Fernando Valley town in Buckaroo Bugs. Babbit, a take-off on comedian Bud Abbott (1895–1974) of Abbott and [Lou] Costello (1906–1959), waters his plot in A Tale of Two Kitties, and in a Private Snafu short, The Home Front; this last film shows a victory garden fertilized with horse manure. From 1942 through 1945, the OWI collaborated with Hollywood production companies on 47 documentaries, each addressing an issue related to the war effort. One, released by Warner Bros. Pictures in 1943 and titled Food and Magic, stars actors Faye Emerson (1917–1983), Fred Kelsey (1884–1961), Bill Kennedy (1908–1997), and Mark Stevens (1916–1994). In this short, a carnival magician teaches his audience how to aid the war effort by producing and conserving food. Everyone got the message. Neighbors in communities across the country gathered on weekend mornings to build and maintain individual and communal garden sites. The Girl Scouts learned how to grow seedlings and transplant them to their family’s plot, and groups of schoolchildren shared the responsibilities of a garden, frequently on school grounds. Billboard advertisements for products such as Dr. Pepper and Budweiser carried gardening themes, and department stores ran films and created displays on canning. Botanical societies offered classes on a variety of topics, ranging from appropriate fruits for home gardens to both storing and canning methods. Women enrolled in classes on the topic, and programs for women’s clubs, church groups, and garden clubs frequently focused on raising and preserving food. The lawns gracing wealthy homes, such as the Charles M. Schwab estate in New York City, provided space for demonstration gardens. The FSA (Farm Security Administration) and the OWI photographed and publicized a plethora of examples of the movement: Vice President Henry Wallace (1888–1965) working in his victory garden; an empty corner in Forest Hills, New York, converted to a garden; families caring for gardens in Washington, DC, New England, the South, and the Midwest, to name but a few.


Victory Gardens | 747 In order to maintain a high level of interest, state war councils sponsored harvest fairs where anyone could exhibit his or her best produce, and towns and cities, small and large, participated. In 1943, such an event, called Harvest Show, occupied the lobbies of RKO theaters throughout the five New York City boroughs and moved to the Pershing Square Center for the 1944 and 1945 events. Chicago gardeners showed off their successes at Soldier’s Field in a festival sponsored by the Chicago Sun newspaper. Catherine Benso (active 1940s), a resident of Norway, Michigan, in 1944 won that year’s garden record book contest and received a $1,000 savings bond from the National Victory Garden Institute for her outstanding home garden of prize tomatoes, onions, and 35 other kinds of vegetables. In short, it became stylish to garden. Estimates indicate that Americans planted more than 15 million victory gardens in 1942 and more than 20 million in 1943. By the end of the conflict, the Department of Agriculture calculated that the program had achieved a total home-front production of over 1 million tons of fruits and vegetables worth roughly $85 million, or valued at about 4 cents a pound (approximately $1 billion and 47 cents, respectively, in 2008 money). The businesses needed to support this effort flourished. Seed companies experienced significant success. In 1943, American families bought 315,000 pressure cookers for canning vegetables and fruits, up from 66,000 in 1942, but the supplies were limited. Some home canners utilized community canning centers that had been established for the sharing of such equipment. In March 1944, the War Production Board allowed the release of 500,000 enamel pressure cookers for home use, thus alleviating the shortage. At the end of the war, however, with an expectation of greater produce availability and the anticipated convenience of supermarket shopping, many of the wartime gardeners put away their pressure cookers and hung up their shovels and hoes. With the postwar economic boom, if Americans did anything with the grounds surrounding their homes, they tended to concentrate on exceptional lawns, shrubs, and flower beds, not on vegetable gardens. When the United States entered World War II, it had asked its citizens to help out in a number of ways. One of those, victory gardens, although not a new idea, had appeared across the nation during World War I and again as a Great Depression relief project. With the onset of the Second World War, victory gardens, along with the purchase of war bonds, conservation of raw materials, and scrap drives, provided those on the home front ways to support the national war effort. Millions stepped up to the challenge. Only two public examples of the successful victory garden endeavor remain active today—the Fenway Victory Gardens in the Back Bay area of Boston, which now feature mainly flowers, and the Dowling Community Garden in Minneapolis, which retains a focus on vegetables. See also: Advertising; Grocery Stores and Supermarkets; Frozen Food; Hobbies; Lawns, Lawnmowers, and Fertilizers; Leisure and Recreation; Newspapers; Photography Selected Reading Lingeman, Richard. Don’t You Know There’s a War On? The American Home Front, 1941–1945. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1970.


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| Voice of America McCutcheon, Marc. The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life from Prohibition through World War II. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1995. Miller, Char. “In the Sweat of Our Brow: Citizenship in American Domestic Practice during WWII— Victory Gardens.” Journal of American Culture 26 (September 2003): 395–409. Victory Gardens. New York Times, April 12, 1942; August 30, 1942; March 13, 1943; January 12, 1945. www.proquest.com

VOICE OF AMERICA Officials gave this name to the external broadcasting arm of the federal government of the United States. Created in 1942 and run by the Office of War Information (OWI), the Voice of America (VOA) carried informational radio programming to other countries—especially Germany, Italy, and Japan, as well as those nations occupied by Axis forces. At first limited to radio signals transmitting news, it has long since grown to offer a varied menu, such as music and special interest programming. In more recent times, the organization expanded to include television and Internet content. When World War II ended in 1945, the government cut VOA programming sharply, and the State Department took over its operation. This arrangement lasted until 1953, when the service became part of the newly formed United States Information Agency (USIA). In both cases, the Voice of America existed as an extension of ongoing foreign policy. Unlike private AM and FM stations in the United States, federal law, exercised through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), exempts the Voice of America from many FCC regulations, including customary call letters or call signs. The service carries programming in numerous languages to make it accessible to nations everywhere, and bears the responsibility of presenting the culture of the United States in a positive light and promoting international goodwill. During the war years, the VOA worked strenuously to counter anti-American propaganda emanating from the Axis powers; in the postwar period, Communist propaganda became its target. With the rise of the Cold War in 1946 and after, the Voice of America soon became a tool in the struggle between East and West. Officials felt the organization could be an asset in advancing American values. In 1947, VOA commenced Russianlanguage broadcasts aimed at the Soviet Union. In a continuing, rancorous dispute between the two countries, the Soviets attempted to jam incoming signals by blocking them with electronic interference, and American engineers worked to devise ways of countering those efforts. This radio confrontation provided reams of propaganda for both sides. The practice of jamming continued in most Soviet-controlled countries well into the 1950s and beyond. The height of the Cold War also saw the emergence of Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL), two broadcasting services that complemented the anti-Communist tone of VOA transmissions. RFE, founded in 1949, received most of its monies from the United States Congress. Radio Liberty came along two years later. Both emerged at a critical time in international relations and focused their attention on the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. Stridently anti-Communist in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, the two organizations merged in 1976, citing changes in world


Voice of America | 749 affairs and a duplication of effort. In more recent years, the RFE/RL budget has been slashed, and most congressional funding has gone to the Voice of America. Ever since the launching of the Voice of America, FCC rules have prevented it from broadcasting within the United States, although listeners with shortwave equipment (which most radios lack) could pick up its signals with relative ease. The FCC has stated that broadcasting VOA programming within the United States does not meet its requirements for content, although critics have charged that the commission, by forbidding VOA broadcasts within the United States, imposes it own form of censorship. See also: Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose; FM Radio; Political and Propaganda Films; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk Selected Reading Heil, Alan L., Jr. Voice of America: A History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Hixon, Walter L. Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Puddington, Arch. Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003.


W

WAR BONDS To raise funds, governments and public companies can issue bonds that promise to repay the buyer, over a certain period of time, the face amount plus a stated rate of interest. Historically, governments have helped to pay for wars through the issuance of bonds, and World War II has become a classic illustration of the effectiveness of bond drives as a means of securing money. At no other time in U.S. history—the Revolution, the Civil War, World War I—did bonds play such an important role. For example, the sale and purchase of the much-touted Liberty Bonds during World War I were so dismally low that the government ceased issuing them with the 1918 Armistice. In 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) appointed Henry Morgenthau Jr. (1891–1967) as secretary of the United States Treasury. With the country in the midst of the Great Depression, Morgenthau turned out to be an imaginative secretary, overseeing numerous programs that helped alleviate the hardships, including the reinstatement of bonds. Congress accepted Morgenthau’s opinion that they could be a secure savings instrument for all investors, including those of modest means, as well as a guaranteed source of funds for the Treasury. The sale of Series A bonds (and later series B, C, and D) commenced on February 4, 1935. Easily purchased, with a 10-year maturity, they soon gained the popular name of “baby bonds.” Supported by a mail campaign, they sold steadily, primarily to wealthy individuals, banks, and corporations, not ordinary citizens as had been hoped. Thanks in part to Morgenthau’s measures, the nation by 1940 had experienced some relief from its economic problems, but the government acknowledged the reality of an impending war and the need to make preparations. Morgenthau and his advisors anticipated two economic conditions that would emerge with the advent of war: (1) inflation and (2) huge financial burdens.

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In an attempt to prevent wartime inflation brought on by rising costs, growing employment, and competition for fewer goods caused by scarcity and rationing, Roosevelt issued an executive order on April 11, 1941, that established the Office of Price Administration (OPA), an agency that would operate within the Office for Emergency Management. Charged with attempting to avert inflation, the OPA decided to concentrate on encouraging the American public to invest in bonds. The War Finance Committee, a group under the direction of the United States Treasury, also addressed the sale of bonds; before the war’s end, it had overseen eight bond The fifth of eight war bond drives ran from drives as well as thousands of special June 12, 1944, to July 8, 1944, and raised $20.6 billion (approximately $252 billion in 2008 dol- events that sold bonds. It was decided that a new bond, the Selars). This picture shows a giant cash register erected in New York City’s Times Square to tally ries E savings bond, would be one means the results, part of an estimated $42.7 million of defraying some of the costs associated worth of donated advertising (approximately with another war. They went on sale in $522 million in 2008 dollars). (Bettmann/ the spring of 1941, along with new SeCORBIS) ries F and G offerings, designed more for institutional and commercial investors instead of the average citizen of limited means. Treasury officials called all three categories defense bonds, a name that promptly changed to war bonds after Pearl Harbor and the nation’s active entry into World War II. The Series E offering, the bond of choice for most people, initially came in five denominations, $25, $50, $100, $500, and $1,000; they could be purchased for 75 percent of face value. Thus, a $25 bond could be bought for $18.75, a $50 bond for $37.50, and so on. In addition, the Treasury Department created a special $10 bond for active members of the armed forces. Regardless of denomination, the E Bonds paid 2.9 percent interest, with a 10-year maturity. To encourage as much citizen participation as possible, the government made the E series available to individuals only. At first, bonds could be bought at post offices and banks or at specified campaigns and special events, but officials soon broadened those restrictions to include department stores and other commercial establishments. Anyone regularly employed could also purchase them directly through payroll deductions. By 1945, the peak year, enrollment in various payroll savings plans exceeded 25 million workers. Bond programs encouraged schoolchildren to participate by issuing Defense Savings Stamps (which superseded earlier Postal Savings Stamps). They came in 10-cent, 25-cent, 50-cent, one-dollar, and five-dollar denominations. The figure of the Minute Man, the famous statue by sculptor Daniel Chester French (1850–1931) that stands


War Bonds | 753 in Concord, Massachusetts, in honor of the American Revolution, became the symbol of the program, and the Defense Stamps display the iconic citizen-soldier, rifle at the ready. Boys and girls—along with many adults—traded their dimes, quarters, and other change for these stamps, pasting them in albums provided by post offices and schools. When an album reached the desired amount—usually $18.75 for children (roughly $274.50 in 2008 dollars)—it could be turned in for a bond. The weekly addition of a stamp or two became a ritual for people around the country. On April 30, 1941, President Roosevelt went on network radio and urged citizens to invest in the new bonds; the following day, in a much-publicized ceremony, he purchased the first Series E bond from Secretary Mongenthau. The wartime campaign lasted until January 3, 1946, although the Series E bonds would remain available until 1980, When the proceeds from the last drive had been deposited, the government’s allout effort to sell bonds of all kinds reached nearly $186 billion (approximately $2 trillion in 2008 dollars) in funds for the war. Of that total, the Series E bonds accounted for a remarkable $33.7 billion (approximately $388 billion in 2008 dollars). From past bond-selling experiences, the Treasury Department recognized a need to educate the American public about the safety of this way of investing in one’s country. The department understood that achieving a high level of sales would require unique and extensive advertising, a move that could incur expenses that reduced overall yields. When estimates on the costs of advertising reached $4 million (approximately $51 million in 2008 dollars), the War Finance Committee determined that assistance from the private sector would be needed. A speech by James Webb Young (1886–1973) in November 1941 provided a solution. Young, an advertising executive with the J. Walter Thompson agency and a lecturer at the University of Chicago’s School of Business, spoke on the topic of “What Action Can Be Taken?” at the first joint meeting of the Association of National Advertisers and the American Association of Advertising Agencies. In this speech, Young emphasized that advertising’s survival depended on the strength of businesses but that advertising had a responsibility to use its potential power to influence social change. The private sector received Young’s speech with a strong, positive response, which led to the immediate formation of the Advertising Council, informally known as the Ad Council. Charged with distributing public service announcements for charitable, commercial, and government organizations the council first accepted a request from Morgenthau for it to play a key role in the Series E savings bond campaign. Under the leadership of advertising executive and scholar Walter Weir (1909–1996), the agency became known as the War Advertising Council, with headquarters in both Washington, DC, and New York City, It launched a campaign to sell the public on the merits of the new Series E war bonds and by 1945 had secured in excess of $300 million (approximately $3.5 billion in 2008 dollars) in advertising time and space from media outlets. By capitalizing on a strong sense of patriotism and encouraging an attitude of partnership with the government, the council stressed that buying bonds assured everyone a personal role in the war effort and fostered the idea of influencing others to do likewise. Constant and effective advertising of all kinds brought together untold numbers of Americans from all walks of life in a common pursuit. By purchasing war bonds, citizens saw themselves serving their country and hastening the end of the conflict.


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The increased availability of money from good-paying defense jobs and a reduction in the availability of consumer products, along with rationing, gave people the wherewithal to obtain bonds—a combination that assured the success of the plan. Purchasing bonds during specific campaigns also was unusually effective. Table 101 offers basic statistics for eight such events conducted between November 30, 1942, and December 8, 1945—one in 1942, two in 1943, three in 1944, and two in 1945. The eighth and final campaign, which commenced in October 1945 and did not end until December of that year, actually occurred after the May surrender of Germany and Japan’s September capitulation. Despite the formal end of the war, expenses continued long afterward, making every dollar raised important. Each campaign had unprecedented support in donated money and advertising, exceeding stated goals so that the Treasury Department from these efforts alone collected over $156 billion (almost $1.5 trillion in 2008 dollars). Combined with the payroll savings plan, over 85 million Americans individually bought close to 800 million war bonds and raised the most money ever to help finance a war.

TABLE 101.

United States Department of the Treasury War Bond Campaigns, 1942–1945

Goal

Total Collected Through The War Effort

Donations for Advertising the Campaign

Dates

Campaign

November 30–December 23, 1942 April 12–May 1, 1943

First War Loan

$9 billion

Almost $13 billion

n.d.

Second War Loan

$13 billion

Over $18.5 billion

Third War Loan

$15 billion

Almost $19 billion

Over $4.5 million worth space from newspapers and $170,000 from magazines Estimated $23.4 million worth of ads

Fourth War Loan

$14 billion

$16.7 billion

Fifth War Loan Sixth War Loan

$16 billion

$20.6 billion

Not known

$21.6 billion

Seventh War Loan Eighth War Loan

$7 billion

Over $26 billion

$11 billion

Over $21 billion

September 8–October 2, 1943 January 18– February 15, 1944 June 12–July 8, 1944 November 20–December 16, 1944 May 14–June 25, 1945 October 29– December 8, 1945

Almost $25 million worth of donated ads and 6 million volunteers Estimated $42.7 million worth of ads Over $11 million worth of ads Over $42 million worth of ads n.d.

Note: n.d. = no data available. Source: “Brief History of World War Two Advertising Campaigns War Loans and Bonds,” Duke University Libraries. www.library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess/warbonds.html


War Bonds | 755 The First War Loan Drive, conducted in November and December 1942, although financially successful, did not attract as many buyers as anticipated. Only $1.6 billion of the almost $13 billion (approximately $20 billion and $165 billion, respectively, in 2008 dollars) came from individuals, with the remainder contributed by corporations and commercial banks. The level of individual buying doubled, however, with the Second War Loan Drive. The third and fourth campaigns, likewise, attracted increased numbers of individual buyers. Some of the drives targeted specific war costs: for example, the second, which carried the name “Outfit the Outfit,” focused on raising funds needed to feed, dress, and equip a soldier; the fourth emphasized the purchase of hospital equipment. Promotional materials encouraged various demographic groups to buy bonds. The fourth campaign targeted farmers with pamphlet titles of “Our Good Earth . . . Keep It Ours” and “The Minute Man Was A Farmer Too.” All of the drives reminded Americans that purchasing bonds ranked high on the list of what needed to be done to win World War II quickly. Judging from the results of the bond program, Americans agreed. Although advertising and media businesses played a major role in all war bond promotions, a large number and variety of other businesses, industries, organizations, and individuals also gave impressive support in both money and time. Groups as diverse as the Daughters of the American Revolution and B’nai B’rith provided the Treasury Department with member addresses for direct mail campaigns. War bond committees, established in communities across the country and made up of volunteers, spurred on their friends and neighbors to participate and staffed booths selling bonds at theaters, public gatherings, and stores. Cashiers urged their patrons to take their change in savings stamps, and organizers often figured the price of admission to various functions in the ubiquitous stamps. The major radio networks regularly devoted entire broadcasting days to “Radio Bond Days.” During these periods, every scheduled show tied itself to buying bonds in one way or another, and announcers urged listeners to make telephone pledges for still more bonds. The Treasury Department also ran daily ads that promoted war bonds on stations across the land. Retailers ranging from mom-and-pop operations to large companies allowed for a variety of bond-selling promotions. In addition to establishing booths at their businesses, some offered free products or services with the purchase of a bond at their store, and many devoted window display space to advertising war bonds. In fact, the Treasury Department organized advertising contests in connection with the Fifth and Sixth War Loan Drives. The War Finance Committee, which oversaw all sales, designated July 1942 as Retailers for Victory Month and asked all merchants to set aside a 15-minute period on July 1 to sell only war bonds. For the Seventh War Loan Drive, the Treasury introduced the Third Army Plan, a promotion that awarded small badges to retail employees, ranking them from private to general depending on their bond sales record. Teachers, administrators, and students came under the Treasury’s “Schools at War” program, which held bond and stamp drives. Materials provided by the government contained stories, plays, songs, and recitations that linked the buying of savings bonds and stamps to the value of democracy, citizenship, and patriotism. Some drives


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encouraged children to purchase stamps in order to raise enough funds for specific purposes, such as buying Jeeps or other designated pieces of military equipment. Trade unions, although initially opposed to the foreign policy positions of the Roosevelt administration, changed their opinion and supported the federal government as the country’s possible involvement in European matters accelerated in 1940. With the launching of the savings bond program, labor leaders assisted with the distribution of government pamphlets, such as Defense Bonds for American Workers, to a total of 15 million members of the unions. Much of the copy generated for these campaigns showed considerable originality. Materials addressed to women became commonplace. A pamphlet titled Mrs. Brown Goes to War, paid for by grocery chains such as A&P, Safeway, Kroger, and Piggly Wiggly, appeared on store shelves along with canned corn and peas. In addition to in-store endorsements, grocery stores and supermarkets, like many businesses, promoted sales in their radio and newspaper ads. All the major magazines available in the country—some 500 different titles— collaborated in July 1942 by featuring similar covers, both on newsstands and for subscribers. The covers depict a U.S. flag and the words “United We Stand,” the name given this unique campaign unify the country for the struggle ahead. Ladies’ Home Journal partnered with the Treasury Department in the publication of Home Front Journal, a newsletter for women serving on bond promotion committees. War stamp bouquets, made of war stamps instead of flowers, became a new table decoration or party favor and served as a way to bring the campaign directly into homes. The year 1943 saw a Bonds for Babies promotion, and a similar Bonds for Brides campaign followed with the launching of the Grandmothers’ War Bond League in 1944. Even the incarcerated became supporters of the campaigns. In 1942, prisoners at the Ohio State Penitentiary spent $6,325 (approximately $80,500 in 2008 dollars) on bonds and $1,333.75 (approximately $17,000 in 2008 dollars) on savings stamps. That same year, a defendant convicted of arson in Massachusetts received as punishment instruction to purchase $5 (approximately $64 in 2008 dollars) worth of defense stamps each week for the duration of the war. If he failed to comply, he would receive two years’ imprisonment. In addition to these innovative approaches, the Treasury also employed some classic sales techniques, such as linking the purchase of a bond to specific holidays. For Christmas 1942, a special envelope designed to hold a war bond became available as a holiday present, and the Treasury, in 1944, offered a V-Mail certificate to friends and relatives of service personnel, redeemable as a war bond. Celebrities of all kinds turned out in record numbers in a variety of ways to support the buying of war bonds as well as assist with all eight war loan drives. For example, more than three dozen entertainment stars organized into seven groups and visited 353 cities and small towns in September 1942 with an extravaganza called “Stars Over America.” Actress Carole Lombard (1908–1942), before the first official campaign began in November 1942, appeared in January in Indianapolis, a city very near the country’s population center at that time, and in one day sold $2.5 million (approximately $32 million in 2008 dollars) worth of war bonds. Her successful technique? She would only give an autograph to those who made a purchase. As a tragic consequence of her


War Bonds | 757 efforts, the plane carrying her back to California crashed and burned near Las Vegas, making her one of Hollywood’s first wartime fatalities. Dorothy Lamour (1914–1996) followed Lombard as an early volunteer and easily brought in $30 million (approximately $382 million in 2008 dollars) during the first four days of an effort in New York City and throughout New England. In 1943, the Hollywood Cavalcade, which crisscrossed the country to develop awareness of bond sales, showcased stars such as Lucille Ball (1911–1989), James Cagney (1899–1986), Fred Astaire (1899–1987), Dick Powell (1904–1963), and Kay Kyser (1905–1985). They paraded through dozens of towns and cities seated in army jeeps that bore their names. Singer Kate Smith (1907–1986), in a separate marathon effort, sold $39 million (approximately $485 million in 2008 dollars) worth of bonds in a 18-hour, nonstop radio session on September 21, 1943. The motion picture industry exerted intense efforts to support the bond drives, producing movies, shorts, and trailers to show in theaters, schools, war plants, and other places where people gathered. In 1942, Warner Bros. Pictures distributed Any Bonds Today? a three-minute cartoon featuring Bugs Bunny and friends singing and dancing to promote the sale of bonds. It boasts an original 1941 number by composer Irving Berlin (1888–1989) called “Any Bonds Today?” Berlin generously donated his considerable share in royalties to the U.S. Treasury. Hollywood Victory Caravan, a 20-minute short produced in the fall of 1945 for that year’s Eighth Victory Loan Drive, interviews various stars on the sets of whatever film they were currently involved in. Participants include Humphrey Bogart (1899–1957), Bing Crosby (1903–1977), Bob Hope (1903–2003), Betty Hutton (1921–2007), to name but a few, along with Oregon theater executive Theodore R. Gamble (active 1940s), who served as the national war finance director. Athletes, sports figures and teams, boxers, sporting contests, even greyhound racing events assisted the Treasury Department in promoting and selling bonds. Professional baseball players supported a number of activities, such as Baseball Defense Bond Day held in 1941 and an exhibition game in 1943 between the Washington Senators and Navy All-Stars. That same year, a baseball autographed by President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874–1965) sold for $10,000 (approximately $120,000 in 2008 dollars) in bond sales. Sportscaster Red Barber (1908–1992) raised $100,000 (approximately $1.2 million in 2008 dollars) during the broadcast of a game between the Dodgers and Giants. The 1944 football game between West Point and the Naval Academy, a traditional rivalry, included a war bond pitch, and proceeds from the 1943–1944 season of the Bowlers’ Victory Legion were dedicated to bond purchases. Heavyweight champion Joe Louis (1914–1981) invested all his prize money from a 1941 match with Billy Conn (1917–1993) in war bonds; Louis also appeared on a 1942 government poster, one of just a handful that featured a black celebrity. Musicians and writers also played important roles. From a Treasury Department request to songwriters and lyricists for help, several tunes with a war bond theme emerged, and sheet music of songs about war bonds became popular at schools and community club meetings. The Treasury’s Writers’ War Board, with the popular mystery writer Rex Stout (1886–1975) as its president, oversaw the creation of campaign


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slogans, posters, and other promotion materials and engaged the help of many authors. Novelist Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) headed an effort called Books and Authors Rallies, events where professional writers assisted with selling bonds and sometimes auctioned off an autographed copy of one of their works. Some wrote short essays about the benefits of investing in bonds, and many allowed their book jackets to contain war bond messages. Artists and commercial illustrators likewise made significant contributions, especially in the development of posters. Midway in the war, Norman Rockwell (1894– 1978) joined with others to help boost sales. Rockwell allowed the original oils of his The Four Freedoms (freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear), a quartet of famous paintings that he had created for Saturday Evening Post covers, to tour the country in 1943 for a special Four Freedoms War Bond Show. These paintings, which themselves had been inspired by an often-quoted “Four Freedoms” speech given by President Roosevelt before Congress in 1941, eventually drew in over 1 million viewers on this tour. They also purchased some $133 million in war bonds (approximately $1.6 billion in 2008 dollars). During this drive, the Saturday Evening Post, with which Rockwell had close connections because of these and many other covers, commissioned composer Robert Russell Bennett (1894–1981) to write The Four Freedoms, a symphony. Notable orchestras performed it throughout the war. Each war loan drive experienced phenomenal success and jointly obtained a level of selling to help finance the war that has never been matched, before or since. The buying of bonds helped stave off major inflation, provided a safe investment for income earned during the wartime boom, and assisted in keeping home-front morale at a high level. Finally, the program achieved overwhelming popularity across all segments of American life; it offered a way for all citizens to express patriotic attitudes and gave them a personal stake in the war. In the immediate postwar years, a euphoric time for many, government and business leaders agreed that a savings bond program should continue. They considered the sense of thrift developed by many citizens in order to purchase savings stamps or bonds a civic virtue that needed encouragement. Less philosophical, but more practical, the argument that the purchase of government securities took cash out of circulation and thus lessened the pressures of inflation also received support. When rationing and shortages ended and more consumer goods came onto the marketplace, the urge to buy could drive up prices and create inflationary pressures, a real threat to the postwar economy. Thus, at the beginning of 1946, with the Eighth War Loan Drive still fresh in everyone’s memory, the Treasury Department created the Savings Bond Division. Its goal was to continue the already successful operations instituted during the war. The Ad Council remained, payroll savings and over-the-counter sales would carry on, as well as the savings stamp programs in the schools. The popular bond drives with parades and celebrities, however, came to a halt, and the promotion of savings bonds became more subdued. On certain anniversaries, such as D-Day (June 6), the Fourth of July, Pearl Harbor Day (December 7), and a few others, promotional activities increased amid a flurry of advertising, and sales picked up noticeably. But the sense of


War Films | 759 emergency had passed and the public no longer rallied to the extent it had during the 1941–1945 period. The Department of the Treasury feared a rash of redemptions following the war, but it did not come about. People held on to their bonds, viewing them as a form of financial insurance, and many continued to buy more. A few other gimmicks received trials in the late 1940s, but most bond-selling operations continued with a business-asusual approach while Americans slowly caught their breath after the long and painful conflict. Significant changes in bonds and their promotion would occur in the ensuing years, but the decade of the 1940s witnessed an unparalleled willingness by U.S. citizens to participate voluntarily in the purchase of bonds for the greater good of the country. See also: Best Sellers (Books); Classical Music; Hobbies; Radio Programming: News, Sports, Public Affairs, and Talk; Technology Selected Reading Ad Council. www.adcouncil.org Hoopes, Roy. When the Stars Went to War: Hollywood and World War II. New York: Random House, 1994. Samuel, Lawrence R. Pledging Allegiance: American Identity and the Bond Drives of World War II. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997. U.S. Department of the Treasury, U.S. Savings Bond Division. A History of the United States Savings Bonds Program. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Treasury, 1991. www.treasurydirect. gov/indiv/research/history/history_sb.pdf War Bond Drives and Advertising. www.library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess/warbonds.html

WAR FILMS For much of the Western world, World War II broke out in earnest in September 1939 when Germans troops invaded Poland. In far-off Asia, the conflict had been simmering since the early 1930s; Japanese forces marched in Manchuria, began a systematic conquest of China, and defied Western requests to recognize treaties and borders. For the United States, however, seemingly protected by two oceans, a mood of isolationism prevailed in many quarters, and much of the nation turned away from foreign affairs and potential involvement. This course of events left the American entertainment industry—especially Hollywood—in something of a quandary. Although most citizens appeared opposed to the nation’s participation in what critics called “foreign wars,” neither did they feel much sympathy toward the Axis powers (Germany, Japan, and Italy). The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, better known simply as the draft, weighed on the minds of many young men. Entering the military meant interrupting schooling or a job, and the gloomy course of international events had young and old worrying about the prospect of a war. The motion pictures that issued from Hollywood during this period gave viewers mixed messages: most ignored current realities altogether and doled out escapist fare; a handful depicted the looming threats a bit more accurately and stressed preparedness.


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Only a few studios, however, produced movies with an anti-Axis tone. Most others assumed a stance of studied neutrality in order not to offend anyone or keep patrons away from the all-important box office. In 1939, Warner Bros. offered Confessions of a Nazi Spy and Espionage Agent, while Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), a small, independent studio, released Hitler—Beast of Berlin. In 1940, the number of such pictures increased, and more studios participated, with titles like Foreign Correspondent and The Great Dictator (both United Artists) and The Mortal Storm and Escape (both MGM). Twentieth Century-Fox produced Four Sons and The Man I Married (also known as I Married a Nazi). By 1941, popular opinion had clearly turned sharply against the tyranny of the Axis powers, and the movie industry felt emboldened to shed its own lingering impartiality; it slowly moved toward the idea of U.S. involvement in a new war. Two releases that illustrate this shift are The Fighting 69th (1940) and Sergeant York (1941), both actionpacked pictures about World War I; seemingly historical, they also advance the idea of Americans fighting abroad, and their enemies just happen to be German soldiers. Other productions eschewed politics and instead glorified duty in one of the branches of the military, making service look adventurous, exciting, and even fun. Films like A Yank in the R.A.F., International Squadron (both 1941) and Captains of the Clouds and

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Hollywood studios poured a large portion of their considerable resources into patriotic war films. In the dark days of 1942, Paramount Pictures released Wake Island. In this studio still (from the left) a determined Albert Dekker, Brian Donlevy, Walter Abel, MacDonald Carey, and Robert Preston stand atop the sandbags, ready to take on any enemies. (Paramount Pictures/Photofest)


War Films | 761 Flying Tigers (both 1942) give audiences stories about American volunteers, young men who eagerly sign up for action with the air forces of Great Britain, Canada, and China. I Wanted Wings and Dive Bomber (both 1941) create glowing portraits of the training raw recruits receive upon joining the U.S. Army or Navy and certainly must have served as strong enlistment tools. Some movies even put the draft and service in general in humorous terms. For example, Abbott and Costello (Bud Abbott, 1895–1974; Lou Costello, 1906–1959), a hugely popular comedy team of the 1940s, reflected this heightened awareness of all things military in a trio of 1941 slapstick films: Buck Privates, In the Navy, and Keep ’em Flying. They carried on in 1947 with Buck Privates Come Home, humorously showing how the draftees—now veterans—return to their civilian lives. Veteran comedians Laurel and Hardy (Stan Laurel, 1890–1965; Oliver Hardy, 1892–1957) also employed contemporary events for a pair of war enlistment movies: Great Guns (1941) and Air Raid Wardens (1943). Similarly, former vaudevillians Jimmy Durante (1893– 1980) and Phil Silvers (1911–1985) went for laughs in You’re in the Army Now (1941). Bob Hope (1903–2003), no stranger to topical humor, shows up as a hapless draftee in Caught in the Draft (1941). Later in the conflict, with millions of Americans serving their country, Columbia Pictures released Mr. Winkle Goes to War (1944). It stars Edward G. Robinson (1893– 1973), an actor better known for his roles as hard-bitten gangsters and law enforcement officers—as an example, he portray a determined Secret Service agent in the aforementioned Confessions of a Nazi Spy. In Mr. Winkle Goes to War, however, he appears as a mild-mannered banker unexpectedly thrust into the army. To the amazement of his friends, he returns a hero. The film suggests, both comically and realistically, how the draft became a great equalizer, making even the most unlikely candidates into soldiers. Mr. Lucky (1943), another picture that deals with the draft, serves as a vehicle for the popular Cary Grant (1904–1986). In this case, however, instead of going into the army, Grant, playing against type as an amoral gambler, chooses draft dodging, a serious topic for the times. But the actor carries it off with his usual aplomb and, of course, by the ending finds redemption for his misdeeds. Characters from the newspaper comic strips also got into the spirit of the early 1940s. Private Snuffy Smith and Hillbilly Blitzkrieg (both 1942), based on individuals found in Barney Google & Snuffy Smith by cartoonist Billy De Beck (1890–1942), brought a rural flavor to both the comic pages and theater screens in their hillbilly depictions of military life. Comedies about the war—particularly those that featured soldiers, sailors, and pilots—nonetheless remained a distinct minority, especially when the country finally plunged into the war as a combatant. In short order, U.S. troops found themselves fighting in far-flung campaigns, and, as casualties mounted, World War II and the draft quickly ceased being a source for film comedy other than in occasional flashes of humor. In 1942 and 1943, the darkest years of the conflict, motion picture messages and images were deemed important at the highest levels of government, but initially no real plan existed for coordinating ways of dealing with the influential film industry. A mixed group of federal agencies that often competed with one another had sprung up in


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the period 1940 through 1941, and several felt the government should monitor the content of commercial films. To many observers, their attitudes smacked of censorship, although few of these agencies shared matching points of view about what constituted proper content in a time of war. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) recognized the need for a coherent voice, and he wanted a liaison between Hollywood and official Washington. Out of the squabbling came the Office of War Information (OWI) in June 1942, with journalist Elmer Davis (1890–1958) at its helm. Davis had the able assistance of Lowell Mellett (1884–1960), the former coordinator of government films and head of the Office of Government Reports, and newspaper publisher Nelson Poynter (1903–1978). Together the two men managed the Bureau of Motion Pictures (BMP) in Hollywood, a federal agency that functioned as a part of the larger OWI. With the support of Davis, they urged the film industry to produce war-related pictures that carried consistent, up-beat, pro-American content at all times for both domestic and foreign distribution. They maintained that such movies reinforced the country’s image and boosted morale. The BMP asked to review scripts prior to production, and the studios complied, although they did not always accept the advice the agency offered. While Mellett, Poynter, and the BMP were making their suggestions regarding content, the powerful War Department (superseded by the Department of Defense in 1947), a cabinet-level branch of the federal government, had earlier established its own Bureau of Public Relations in Hollywood. This group represented the interests of the various armed services and had enjoyed a long and harmonious relationship with the industry. When filmmakers needed military equipment or the expertise of service personnel, the War Department usually obliged. Movie credits often acknowledged this support—“Thanks to [the United States Army, Navy, etc.] without whose assistance this picture would not have been possible,” or words to that effect—because they suggested that the action on screen presented accurate images and details about the U.S. military. During the remainder of the war, both the OWI and the War Department proffered advice to studios, usually after reviewing scripts. Hollywood accepted this mild form of censorship, couched as “recommendations,” with everyone involved denying any attempts at editing or suppressing material. Both agencies maintained that wartime movies should be “educational, inspirational, and recreational,” but they disagreed on how best to achieve such goals, and a rivalry developed over authority. The OWI, more civilian and politically oriented than the War Department, argued that crime, poverty, labor unrest, and the like should be downplayed in order to paint an optimistic picture of life in the United States. The War Department, on the other hand, maintained that the various services knew best how to present themselves on film and that clearly stating the military objectives of the country in the conduct of the war should have priority. The department also felt it should not be subordinate to a civilian authority. Roosevelt asked that they resolve their differences behind closed doors but did not explicitly order one agency to defer to the other. The discussions continued, with each side outwardly agreeing to work harmoniously, but still arguing the merits of their respective positions. In the end, the studios politely listened and then pretty much went ahead with their own plans, despite the


War Films | 763 well-meaning (and sometimes myopic) remarks from government agencies. To no one’s surprise, no dire consequences ensued, and an increasingly conservative Congress looked askance at any governmental oversight in regard to motion pictures. In 1943, legislators slashed the OWI budget for 1944, effectively limiting its operations. The Motion Picture Bureau was shut down, and the once-powerful Office of War Information ceased functioning in 1945. While all this infighting ensued, the War Department in early 1942 commissioned director Frank Capra (1897–1991) as a major in the U.S. Army and placed him in the Morale Branch of the Special Services Division. Essentially a public relations position, the army allowed Capra to develop a series of films designed to explain the nation’s participation in the war. The department gave him free rein to employ archival and recent materials in the project, and from this work came seven remarkable documentaries bearing the collective heading Why We Fight. The series commenced production in 1942 and reached its conclusion in 1945. Individually, they bore the following titles: Prelude to War, The Nazis Strike, Divide and Conquer, The Battle of Britain, The Battle of Russia, The Battle of China, and War Comes to America. Designed both for service personnel and civilians, they detailed the complexity of fighting a world war from the perspective of U.S. military forces. Servicemen had the privilege of viewing the first film, Prelude to War, which finished production in October 1942, at the end of that month. In April 1943, the War Department allowed it to be shown in defense plants, and the general civilian population first saw it the next month. The others followed similar schedules and received favorable audience reactions but little commercial success. Billed as “The Greatest Gangster Picture Ever Made,” Prelude to War did not do well at the civilian box office. People saw its topic as dated; by mid-1943, they knew the origins of World War II and wanted more immediate news. Despite their lack of public appeal, these documentaries can be seen as splendid examples of cinematic history and art. They also stand as blatant propaganda—not an unreasonable outcome, since the U.S. government underwrote them—one of the few examples of an official presence in the normally freewheeling realm of popular culture. A number of other documentaries, also overseen by leading Hollywood directors and supported by various official agencies, deserve mention: The Battle of Midway (1942), directed by John Ford (1894–1973); Report from the Aleutians (1943) and The Battle of San Pietro (1944), both directed by John Huston (1906–1987); Memphis Belle (1944), directed by William Wyler (1902–1981); and Fighting Lady (1944), produced by Louis De Rochemont (1899–1978). Hardly in the tradition of commercial filmmaking, these hard-hitting chronicles stand, for their time, as unique records of the struggles faced by U.S. forces in all theaters of the war. Also worthy of note, The March of Time, a combination of radio news and film newsreel, also informed the American people about the war. Underwritten by Time magazine, the radio version premiered in 1928 and could be heard on network stations until 1945; its movie counterpart first appeared in 1934 and continued in theaters until 1951. Over the years, they set new standards for broadcast journalism, presenting hundreds of vignettes about the news of the day, going beyond the headlines to present insightful interpretations of events.


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The cinematic March of Time helped give birth to the contemporary docudrama, the blending of the factual documentary with dramatic additions. The shows frequently combined newsreel footage with dramatized segments, smoothly mixing truth with fiction based on fact. The approach enlivened events, creating a kind of heightened reality, but at the expense of total, unbiased accuracy. Unlike the weekly 10-minute theatrical newsreels that chronicled recent happenings and spiced up their content with ephemera like beauty contests, sports, and the latest gadgets, The March of Time documentaries ran monthly for approximately 20 minutes. The producers tackled just a few important news stories during that brief time, usually handling difficult or complex events that involved politics, economics, or military subjects. Usually, one piece in particular dominated each issue of the show, receiving up to 15 minutes of discussion and dramatization. Consigned to the middle of a theater’s double bill with other short subjects, The March of Time competed with previews and cartoons, so it did not always receive the attention it deserved. It nonetheless provided audiences a level of visual reporting about the war seldom achieved in conventional newsreels. Documentaries, however, occupy a small niche in any chronicle of moviemaking during World War II. Far too many war-oriented commercial films came out between 1942 and 1945 to create any comprehensive listing; it has been estimated that, of the 1,700 or so feature movies released during those years, fully a third of them—over 500—fit the category of war films. Table 102 charts Hollywood’s war films and mentions primarily those pictures produced by the major studios that focused their storylines on action and the depiction of combat. Musicals, comedies, domestic dramas, wartime romances, and many other noncombat tales have been omitted for the sake of both brevity and cohesion. The content of the table also makes it obvious that, with the return of peace in the fall of 1945, the film industry lost no time in distancing itself from the conflict. Production of war-related films plummeted, and only in the last two years of the decade did studios once more commence creating full-fledged war pictures. With the onset of the 1950s and an ongoing war in Korea, Hollywood resumed releasing numbers of such movies, some dealing with the Cold War, others looking back at actions that occurred during World War II. Military combat had again become a marketable film commodity, but it had taken about five years to reach that point. Many of the titles also suggest, such as Stand By for Action (1942), Action in the North Atlantic (1943), Aerial Gunner (1943), Bombardier (1943), Wing and a Prayer (1944), God Is My Co-Pilot (1945), and so on, that a majority of the pictures emphasize the techniques of modern warfare and the simultaneous need for a spiritual foundation in the face of formidable odds. The many stars—mostly men; this category of film offered few roles for women—can suffer mightily, as in Bataan (1943), Guadalcanal Diary (1943), The Purple Heart (1944), They Were Expendable (1945), and others, but because of the rightness of their cause they will prevail. The pictures often show setbacks on the road to victory such as Wake Island (1942), Corregidor (1943), The Fighting Sullivans (1944), and others, but more importantly they portray the indomitability of the American will. The Beginning or the End (1947), about the development of the atomic bomb and the emerging nuclear capabilities in warfare, contains no combat footage at all but is harrowing in its implications about mass destruction, one of the few commercial motion pictures to address this topic.


War Films | 765 TABLE 102.

Representative War-Oriented Movies, 1940–1949

Year

Movie Titles

Stars

1940

The Fighting 69th Flight Command Murder in the Air

James Cagney, Pat O’Brien Robert Taylor, Walter Pidgeon Ronald Reagan, John Litel

1941

Dive Bomber I Wanted Wings Man Hunt Sergeant York A Yank in the R.A.F.

Errol Flynn, Fred MacMurray Ray Milland, William Holden Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan Tyrone Power, Betty Grable

1942

Across the Pacific Berlin Correspondent Danger in the Pacific Desperate Journey Eagle Squadron Flying Tigers Half Way to Shanghai Invisible Agent Joan of Paris Little Tokyo, U.S.A. Nightmare Remember Pearl Harbor Reunion in France Stand By for Action Submarine Raider Thunder Birds To the Shores of Tripoli Wake Island A Yank on the Burma Road

Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor Dana Andrews, Virginia Gilmore Don Terry, Leo Carrillo Errol Flynn, Ronald Reagan Robert Stack, Eddie Albert John Wayne, Paul Kelly Kent Taylor, Irene Hervey Jon Hall, Peter Lorre Paul Henreid, Michele Morgan Preston Foster, Brenda Joyce Diana Barrymore, Brian Donlevy Don “Red” Barry, Alan Curtis Joan Crawford, John Wayne Robert Taylor, Brian Donlevy Larry Parks, Forrest Tucker Preston Foster, Gene Tierney Randolph Scott, John Payne Brian Donlevy, William Bendix Barry Nelson, Laraine Day

1943

Action in the North Atlantic Aerial Gunner Air Force Bataan Bombardier China Corregidor Corvette K-225 Crash Dive Cry “Havoc” Destination Tokyo Edge of Darkness Five Graves to Cairo Guadalcanal Diary Gung Ho! The Story of Carlson’s Makin Island Raiders A Guy Named Joe Hangmen Also Die Immortal Sergeant The Moon Is Down

Humphrey Bogart, Raymond Massey Chester Morris, Richard Arlen John Garfield, Gig Young Robert Taylor, George Murphy Randolph Scott, Pat O’Brien Loretta Young, Alan Ladd Otto Kruger, Elissa Landi Randolph Scott, Barry Fitzgerald Tyrone Power, Anne Baxter Margaret Sullavan, Ann Sothern Cary Grant, John Garfield Errol Flynn, Walter Huston Franchot Tone, Erich von Stroheim Preston Foster, William Bendix Randolph Scott, Robert Mitchum Spencer Tracy, Van Johnson Brian Donlevy, Walter Brennan Henry Fonda, Thomas Mitchell Henry Travers, Lee J. Cobb (continued)


766

| War Films TABLE 102.

(continued)

Year

Movie Titles

Stars

1943

The North Star Pilot #5 Sahara So Proudly We Hail! Submarine Alert Wings Over the Pacific

Dana Andrews, Anne Baxter Gene Kelly, Van Johnson Humphrey Bogart, Bruce Bennett Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard, Veronica Lake Richard Arlen, Wendy Barrie Edward Norris, Montagu Love

1944

Days of Glory The Fighting Seabees The Fighting Sullivans Marine Raiders The Purple Heart Song of Russia Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo To Have and Have Not Wing and a Prayer Winged Victory

Gregory Peck, Alan Reed John Wayne, Dennis O’Keefe Anne Baxter, Thomas Mitchell Pat O’Brien, Robert Ryan Dana Andrews, Richard Conte Robert Taylor, John Hodiak Spencer Tracy, Van Johnson Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall Don Ameche, Dana Andrews Lon McCallister, Edmund O’Brien

1945

A Bell for Adano Back to Bataan Betrayal from the East Counter-Attack God Is My Co-Pilot Objective, Burma! Pride of the Marines The Story of G.I. Joe They Were Expendable A Walk in the Sun

Gene Tierney, John Hodiak John Wayne, Anthony Quinn Lee Tracy, Nancy Kelly Paul Muni, Larry Parks Dennis Morgan, Dane Clark Errol Flynn, Henry Hull John Garfield, Eleanor Parker Burgess Meredith, Robert Mitchum Robert Montgomery, John Wayne Dana Andrews, Richard Conte

1946

The Best Years of Our Lives O.S.S. 13 Rue Madeleine Till the End of Time

Frederic March, Dana Andrews Alan Ladd, Geraldine Fitzgerald James Cagney, Richard Conte Robert Mitchum, Guy Madison

1947

The Beginning or the End

Brian Donlevy, Robert Walker

1948

Beyond Glory Command Decision Fighter Squadron Homecoming Jungle Patrol Saigon

Alan Ladd, Donna Reed Clark Gable, Walter Pidgeon Edmund O’Brien, Robert Stack Clark Gable, Lana Turner Kristine Miller, Arthur Franz Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake

1949

Battleground Malaya The Red Danube Sands of Iwo Jima Twelve O’Clock High

Van Johnson, John Hodiak Spencer Tracy, James Stewart Walter Pidgeon, Ethel Barrymore John Wayne, Forrest Tucker Gregory Peck, Dean Jagger


War Films | 767 To make the war more understandable, the studios often employed stereotyping. For the Axis nations, the images of cruel Gestapo agents clad in long, black leather coats, contemptuous of everyone around them, or of snarling Japanese soldiers, peering through round spectacles, ready to rape and pillage, may seem hopelessly dated to contemporary audiences. But at the time they constituted the enemy—the threat to the United States—and anything that could differentiate us from them could be, and was, employed in all branches of popular culture. Similarly, noble Britons, as in Mrs. Miniver (1942), and valiant Russians and Chinese in North Star (1943) and Dragon Seed (1944) fight tyranny and show themselves to be, in their two-dimensional portrayals, the proper types to have as allies. Closer to home, the studios shifted their emphases from the rugged American individualism so celebrated in the past to the need for group cooperation. In picture after picture, smoothly functioning military units rise to any challenge. Although heroes abound, they do not seek glory for themselves but allow the group, the team, to be victorious in its mission. This approach reinforced positive attitudes about U.S. fighting forces, the idea of democracy in action. These ideas carried over into movies about civilian life. Rosie the Riveter, the name of both a 1944 comedy and an iconic figure in advertising and public service announcements, symbolized the teamwork concept in the nation’s industrial efforts at this time. Rosie epitomizes the tens of thousands of women who worked in defense plants, stepping into traditional realms of men’s labor while the men go off to fight. The film industry presented this kind of imagery repeatedly in commercial motion pictures dealing with both military and civilian life and created a collective body of work that reassured a troubled nation. With teamwork, with the subordination of self for the greater national good and everyone doing his or her part, the country would prevail. During the course of World War II, Hollywood succeeded in building a vast production machine capable of portraying virtually any aspect of the conflict. The industry strove to lift morale for millions of viewers on the home front by mixing entertainment with propaganda in hundreds of pictures. Not only did the countless war-oriented movies lift the spirits of those at home, some went to considerable lengths to explain some of the complexities surrounding the events shown on theater screens. It would be impossible to know, with any quantitative accuracy, exactly how much American motion pictures contributed to winning the war, but for the millions of people who weekly went to the movies, Hollywood’s latest offerings usually diverted them from the grim headlines and news reports of the day, and in that way positively contributed to the overall war effort. See also: Comedies (Film); Drama (Film); Musicals (Film); Newspapers; Radio Programming: Drama and Anthology Shows; Serial Films Selected Reading Doherty, Thomas. Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Koppes, Clayton R., and Gregory D. Black. Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies. New York: Free Press, 1987. Manvell, Roger. Films and the Second World War. New York: Dell, 1974. McLaughlin, Robert L., and Sally E. Parry. We’ll Always Have the Movies: American Cinema During World War II. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006.


768

| Westerns (Film)

WESTERNS (FILM) In the early years of the 20th century and the birth of the American film industry, one of the very first offerings bore the title The Great Train Robbery (1903). Directed by Edwin S. Porter (1870–1941) and released by the Edison Manufacturing Company, this pioneering effort established many of the conventions of the movie Western. Crude by modern standards, it nonetheless inspired countless directors, actors, and studios—an influence that has carried on into the present. Porter created a series of expectations in the audience, including thrilling gunfights and fisticuffs, galloping horses and breathless chases, and even the stylized outfits that countless Westerns ever since have attempted to honor and satisfy. By the 1940s, the conventions had long been in place; audiences knew what to expect, liked what they saw, and made the Western one of the most durable and consistently profitable genres of filmmaking. The pressures of World War II may have brought about shortages in materials, restrictions on travel, and a depleted pool of male actors, but it affected the production of Westerns only in passing. They continued to roll out of the Hollywood studios, a staple of double features and Saturday matinees, and adults and children gladly paid admission to see the latest exploits of their cowboy heroes. The larger, more prosperous studios, usually called the majors or Big Five (MGM, Paramount, RKO, Twentieth Century-Fox, and Warner Bros.), attempted to produce quality Westerns that employed their leading contract players. MGM in 1940 put Gary Cooper (1901–1961) and an all-star supporting cast in The Westerner, a big-budget tale about range wars, and followed it that same year with Northwest Passage, featuring the popular Spencer Tracy (1900–1967) and Robert Young (1907–1998). Not to be outdone, rival Twentieth Century-Fox countered with The Return of Frank James (1940) with Henry Fonda (1905–1982) and Western Union (1941) starring Randolph Scott (1898–1987), an actor destined to make some 18 Westerns in the 1940s alone, including a number for RKO. Warner Bros., usually associated with musicals and gritty urban crime pictures, utilized the star power of swashbuckler Errol Flynn (1909–1959) in a series of action-filled movies: Dodge City (1939), Virginia City (1940), Santa Fe Trail 1940), They Died with Their Boots On (1941), and San Antonio (1945). Another competitor, Universal Studios, often consigned to the “Little Three” among studios (along with Columbia and United Artists), released a pair of 1940 Westerns with unlikely casting. When the Daltons Rode stars Brian Donlevy (1901–1972) and Broderick Crawford (1911–1986), whereas Trail of the Vigilantes features Franchot Tone (1905– 1968) and Crawford again. None of these performers enjoyed particular renown in the Western genre; perhaps Universal wanted actors associated with other forms of drama to give their productions a mark of quality and thereby attract a broader audience. Not all the production companies went in the direction of large-budget Westerns. A number of smaller, less affluent ones released countless Westerns made quickly and cheaply. Most of these studios, which fell under the name “Poverty Row,” struggled for their very existence and frequently went out of business after valiant attempts to achieve financial solvency. Acquisitions and mergers muddied the details about this side of the movie business, but Mascot, Monogram, Republic Pictures, and Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) gained the most prominence and developed the strongest distribution networks and the widest array of talents. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Westerns (Film) | 769 To meet costs, the Poverty Row studios utilized the services of relatively anonymous players and usually shot outdoor scenes on the back lots that abutted their properties. They scavenged sequences, such as pitched battles and stagecoach robberies, that had been shown in previous pictures and spliced them into new movies to save even more money. Their films, usually shorter than those released by both the Big Five and the Little Three, averaged 60 minutes instead of the customary 80- to 90-minute running time. For the most part, these productions received little publicity and tended to be shown in smaller neighborhood theaters as the bottom part of a double feature. Collectively, such movies fell into the category of what came commonly to be called B pictures, the “B” meaning they qualitatively ranked below their more expensive counterparts. For whatever reason, the term “B Western” came into widespread usage, more so than for other film genres. People rarely spoke, however, about “A Westerns” as a category when differentiating the two varieties. Whereas the major studios could call upon recognized stars like Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn, Henry Fonda, Robert Taylor (1911–1969), and John Wayne (1907–1979), the Poverty Row organizations enjoyed no such luxury. They had their rosters of players, but few boasted any celebrity. Nevertheless, actors like Johnny Mack Brown (1904–1974), Fuzzy Knight (1901–1976), Lash La Rue (1917–1996), Ken Maynard (1895–1973), Charles Starrett (1903–1986), Bob Steele (1907–1988), Dub Taylor (1907–1994), Jimmy Wakely (1914–1982), and a host of other players found steady employment performing in endless B Westerns. Sometimes they had top billing in a film, other times they served as sidekicks, but only a handful rose to be leading men in the more expensive productions of the Big Five. For example, John Wayne paid his dues in endless minor cowboy movies during the 1930s; not until 1939 and the classic Stagecoach did he move from B player and begin his rise as a major star. Two other cowboy actors, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers (1907–1998 and 1911–1998, respectively), spent their entire careers in B Westerns but nonetheless achieved substantial fame and fortune in the later 1930s and throughout the 1940s. Similarly, William Boyd (1895–1972), better known to millions as Hopalong Cassidy, ran a long string of formulaic Westerns into considerable success. Such exceptions, however, do not describe the overwhelming majority of performers who got typecast as B players and dutifully labored in virtual anonymity for most of their professional lives. Out of the hundreds of Westerns released during the 1940s, only a handful dealt with World War II; most, of course, had as their settings the 19th or early 20th centuries, and any references to a modern conflict would have been anachronistic at best. A few, however, pushed history aside and attempted to cash in on patriotic feelings. Monogram Pictures distributed a series of B Westerns featuring the Range Busters, a trio of cowboys that appeared in several dozen usually nontopical releases. But in Texas to Bataan (1942), they discover a Japanese spy ring, and in Cowboy Commandos (1943), they battle Nazi spies at a strategic mine. The scene shifts to more traditional territory in Black Market Rustlers (1943), where they break up a ring of racketeers trying to rustle beef to sell illegally on the black market. Such efforts proved the exception, and few other Westerns of any kind chose to reflect ongoing events. The smaller studios did, however, display a fondness for series Westerns. The continuing adventures of both groups and individuals found a solid base of fans. Tim McCoy (1891–1978), Buck Jones (1891–1942), and Raymond Hatton (1887–1971) joined forces © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

770

| Westerns (Film) TABLE 103.

Representative Western Movies, 1940–1949

Year

Movie Titles

Actors

1940

Arizona Dark Command The Man from Tumbleweeds Prairie Schooners Rangers of Fortune The Return of Frank James Three Faces West Virginia City The Westerner When the Daltons Rode

Jean Arthur, William Holden John Wayne, Claire Trevor Bill Elliott, Iris Meredith Bill Elliott, Dub Taylor Fred MacMurray, Gilbert Roland Henry Fonda, Gene Tierney John Wayne, Charles Coburn Errol Flynn, Randolph Scott, Humphrey Bogart Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan Randolph Scott, Brian Donlevy

1941

Badlands of Dakota Belle Starr Billy the Kid Fight Bill Fargo Honky Tonk King of Dodge City North from the Lone Star Texas They Died with Their Boots On Western Union

Richard Dix, Robert Stack Gene Tierney, Randolph Scott Robert Taylor, Brian Donlevy Johnny Mack Brown, Fuzzy Knight Clark Gable, Lana Turner Bill Elliott, Tex Ritter Bill Elliott, Dub Taylor Glenn Ford, William Holden Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland Randolph Scott, Robert Young

1942

American Empire Deep in the Heart of Texas Down Texas Way The Great Man’s Lady The Mysterious Rider Ride ’Em, Cowboy! The Spoilers Texas to Bataan Valley of the Sun Vengeance of the West

Richard Dix, Preston Foster Johnny Mack Brown, Tex Ritter Buck Jones, Tim McCoy Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea Buster Crabbe, Al St. John Bud Abbott, Lou Costello John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Marlene Dietrich John “Dusty” King, Max Terhune Lucille Ball, Dean Jagger Bill Elliott, Tex Ritter

1943

Arizona Trail Blazing Frontier Buckskin Frontier Death Valley Manhunt The Desperadoes In Old Oklahoma A Lady Takes a Chance The Outlaw The Ox-Bow Incident The Texas Kid

Tex Ritter, Fuzzy Knight Buster Crabbe, Al St. John Richard Dix, Lee J. Cobb Bill Elliott, Gabby Hayes Glenn Ford, Randolph Scott John Wayne, Gabby Hayes Jean Arthur, John Wayne Jane Russell, Jack Buetel Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Anthony Quinn Johnny Mack Brown, Raymond Hatton

1944

Arizona Whirlwind Belle of the Yukon Buffalo Bill Fuzzy Settles Down Land of the Outlaws

Ken Maynard, Hoot Gibson Randolph Scott, Gypsy Rose Lee Joel McCrea, Maureen O’Hara Buster Crabbe, Al St. John Johnny Mack Brown, Raymond Hatton


Westerns (Film) | 771 Year

Movie Titles

Actors

Nevada Song of the Range Tall in the Saddle Tucson Raiders The Woman of the Town

Robert Mitchum, Anne Jeffreys Jimmy Wakely, Dennis Moore John Wayne, Gabby Hayes Bill Elliott, Robert Blake Claire Trevor, Albert Dekker

1945

Along Came Jones Dakota Flame of the Barbary Coast Frontier Feud Lone Texas Ranger The Navajo Kid San Antonio Song of Old Wyoming Springtime in Texas West of the Pecos

Gary Cooper, Dan Duryea John Wayne, Vera Ralston John Wayne, Ann Dvorak Johnny Mack Brown, Raymond Hatton Bill Elliott, Robert Blake Bob Steele, Syd Saylor Errol Flynn, Alexis Smith Eddie Dean, Lash La Rue Jimmy Wakely, Dennis Moore Robert Mitchum, Barbara Hale

1946

Abilene Town Beauty and the Bandit California Canyon Passage Duel in the Sun The Gentleman from Texas In Old Sacramento My Darling Clementine Terror Trail The Virginian

Randolph Scott, Ann Dvorak Gilbert Roland, Martin Garralaga Ray Milland, Barbara Stanwyck Dana Andrews, Susan Hayward Jennifer Jones, Gregory Peck Johnny Mack Brown, Raymond Hatton Bill Elliott, Constance Moore Henry Fonda, Walter Brennan Charles Starrett, Barbara Pepper Joel McCrea, Brian Donlevy

1947

Angel and the Badman Bandits of Dark Canyon Desert Fury The Fabulous Texan The Fighting Vigilantes Land of the Lawless Pursued Robin Hood of Monterey Ramrod The Sea of Grass

John Wayne, Gail Russell Allan “Rocky” Lane, Bob Steele Burt Lancaster, John Hodiak Bill Elliott, John Carroll Lash La Rue, Al St. John Johnny Mack Brown, Raymond Hatton Robert Mitchum, Teresa Wright Gilbert Roland, Chris-Pin Martin Veronica Lake, Joel McCrea Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn

1948

Albuquerque Blood on the Moon Fort Apache Four Faces West The Man from Colorado Red River Relentless 3 Godfathers Whispering Smith Yellow Sky

Randolph Scott, Gabby Hayes Robert Mitchum, Robert Preston Henry Fonda, John Wayne Joel McCrea, Charles Bickford Glenn Ford, William Holden John Wayne, Montgomery Clift Robert Young, Barton MacLane John Wayne, Ward Bond Alan Ladd, Robert Preston Gregory Peck, Richard Widmark

1949

Gun Law Justice Hellfire

Jimmy Wakely, Dub Taylor Bill Elliott, Marie Windsor


(continued)

772

| Westerns (Film) TABLE 103. Year

(continued) Movie Titles

Actors

I Shot Jesse James Lust for Gold Renegades of the Sage She Wore a Yellow Ribbon Son of Billy the Kid South of St. Louis Stampede Streets of Laredo

Preston Foster, John Ireland Ida Lupino, Glenn Ford Charles Starrett, Smiley Burnette John Wayne, Ben Johnson Lash La Rue, Al St. John Joel McCrea, Alexis Smith Rod Cameron, Gale Storm William Holden, William Bendix

Note: List does not include films by Gene Autry or Roy Rogers, which are covered elsewhere in this encyclopedia.

as The Rough Riders, undercover marshals in a series of eight Monogram pictures. The Three Mesquiteers, led by Robert Livingston (1904–1988), foiled latter-day criminals in a quasi-contemporary series that ran from 1936 until 1941. Livingston moved from the Mesquiteers to The Lone Rider series in 1942, in which he appeared in half a dozen additional features, all the while making other movies on an individual basis. Veteran actor Duncan Renaldo (1904–1980) endeared himself to audiences by playing the roguish Cisco Kid, a character created in 1907 by the American writer O. Henry (pen name of William Sidney Porter, 1862–1910). Renaldo first portrayed him in three Monogram pictures released in 1945. At that point, former romantic film star Gilbert Roland (1905–1994) renewed his career by taking over the Cisco Kid franchise with six additional Monogram titles released between 1946 and 1947. Renaldo then reappeared as the Kid and starred in yet another five adventures produced from 1948 to 1950 by United Artists. By this time, television had begun searching for materials to fill air time, and Renaldo parlayed the Cisco Kid into an early TV series that ran from 1950 until 1955. The fact that two different actors portrayed the Cisco Kid at roughly the same time did not seem to faze audiences, and they willingly suspended any disbelief at the box office. In the hectic world of B Westerns, characters appeared, disappeared, reappeared, and often a number of different performers filled the roles at one time or another. Finally, Bill Elliott (sometimes advertised as William “Wild Bill” Elliott; 1904– 1965), a busy actor in Westerns, had established himself in a series of 13 feature films that ran from 1938 until 1942 in which he portrayed the legendary lawman Wild Bill Hickok. Opportunity presented itself again when he took on the role of Red Ryder in 1944. Based on a character found in a popular newspaper comic strip of the same name drawn by Fred Harman (1902–1982) and written by Stephen Slesinger (1901–1953), Elliott reprised the role in 16 features that ran until 1946. Actor Robert Blake (billed at the time as Bobby Blake; b. 1933) also appeared in this series as Little Beaver, Ryder’s young Navajo sidekick, a boy who can get laughs, but also proves valuable when the need arises, which occurs frequently. Blake eventually played in more Red Ryder films than did Elliott, who bowed out of the series with Conquest in Cheyenne (1946); Allan “Rocky” Lane (1909–1973) came in as a replacement, and he and Blake acted in seven additional Ryder movies, concluding with Marshall of Cripple Creek in 1947. Many other Western series of one kind and another played theaters around the country during the 1940s. In most of them, anything contemporary or topical proved the © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

“White Christmas” (Irving Berlin) | 773 exception, and the vast majority of Westerns, A or B, steered clear of that kind of obvious plotting. The themes accompanying the stories could, however, be more subtle than spy rings or black marketers. In a number of pictures, such as Western Union (1941), California (1946), and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), the idea of westward expansion coupled with a strong sense of nationalism gave audiences reassurance about American destiny—positive, inevitable, irreversible. In a decade when the nation faced both World War II and the threats implicit in the Cold War, the image of the cowboy (cavalryman, Indian fighter, scout, pioneer, settler, cattle rancher, farmer) had to be comforting, even if on a subconscious level. This familiar Western mythology, repeated hundreds of times in features both good and mediocre, probably helps to account for the genre’s continuing popularity. Director John Ford (1894–1973), considered by many to be the cinematic poet of the American West, created a number of memorable Westerns that began in the late 1930s and carried through the 1940s and beyond. Quality A pictures in every respect, they reinforce the mythic story of expansion and destiny in both their stories and imagery. Often employing the glorious scenery of Utah’s Monument Valley, Ford emphasized the vastness of the land, its stark beauty, and the arrival of U.S. civilization in this harsh setting. Starting with 1939’s Stagecoach and continuing with My Darling Clementine (1946), 3 Godfathers (1948), Wagon Master (1950), and, in particular, his epic cavalry trilogy—Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950)—he defined the elements audiences have come to associate with motion pictures about the West. See also: Comedies (Film); Comic Strips; Costume and Spectacle Films; Crime and Mystery Films; Crosby, Bing; Howdy Doody Show, The; Murphy, Audie; Newspapers; Radio; Radio Programming: Children’s Shows, Serials, and Adventure Series; Serial Films Selected Reading Cameron, Ian, and Douglas Pye, eds. The Book of Westerns. New York: Continuum, 1996. Fenin, George N., and William K. Everson. The Western: From Silents to Cinerama. New York: Orion Press, 1962. Fernett, Gene. Hollywood’s Poverty Row, 1930–1950. Satellite Beach, FL: Coral Reef Publications, 1973. McVeigh, Stephen. The American Western. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

“WHITE CHRISTMAS” (IRVING BERLIN) Irving Berlin (1888–1989), one of the most successful and prolific of all 20th-century American songwriters, had a gift for touching the emotions of everyone who heard his music. The strut of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (1911), the lilt of “Blue Skies” (1926), the nostalgia of “Easter Parade” (1933), the patriotic fervor of “God Bless America” (written in 1918 but revised and published in 1938)—the list could go on for pages, but few years between 1907 and his death in 1989 failed to produce a memorable Berlin song or two. A favorite of both Broadway and Hollywood producers, the versatile composer usually had a show or a movie to work on during the 1930s and 1940s, arguably two of his peak decades. So it was that 1938 (or 1939; sources do not agree) saw the composer working on a number for a proposed motion picture revue that revolved around popular © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

774

| “White Christmas” (Irving Berlin)

holidays. He called the project Happy Holiday. As he sketched out some lyrics for a tune about Christmas, he apparently was basking in the Arizona sun, a fact that would cause some minor changes in later versions of the song. But the project lagged, and Berlin moved on to other things, putting his notes and incomplete music aside. He had, however, a reputation for never discarding any of his compositions, knowing, as in the case of “God Bless America,” that it might be used again. A brief period passed, and in April 1941, discussions about Happy Holiday came back to life. By then, Berlin had roughed out a more complete score with songs for numerous major holidays, and Paramount Pictures had agreed to produce the musical. Two of the biggest names in movies of the era, Bing Crosby (1903–1977) and Fred Astaire (1899–1987), shared the lead, and Mark Sandrich (1901–1945), a man with whom Berlin had worked several times before, directed the proceedings. Playwright and novelist Elmer Rice (1892–1967) undertook the task of adapting Berlin’s notes and ideas into a workable screenplay. In the midst of all this activity, the title Happy Holiday underwent a change and became Holiday Inn, an alteration that more accurately refers to the plot. The film opened in August 1942. Given its casting, the picture enjoyed immediate box office success and would quickly become a Christmas favorite, even though it hit theaters long before the start of the holiday season. Paramount had not marketed Holiday Inn as a Christmas movie, because the picture recognized a number of other traditional celebrations as well. In the story, Crosby operates a small Connecticut inn that, implausibly, opens only at specific times, such as New Year’s, Easter, the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and so on, including Christmas. Most of Berlin’s music for this movie remains forgettable, such as “Abraham” for Lincoln’s birthday (done in blackface, possibly the only number that dates the picture) and “I Can’t Tell a Lie” for George Washington’s. But “Be Careful, It’s My Heart,” a paean to Valentine’s Day, did well for a brief time. Had he written nothing else in his long career, Irving Berlin would, however, be remembered for another song from Holiday Inn: “White Christmas.” Bing Crosby has the privilege of performing this number in the movie twice, but few people realize he had previously introduced it on his popular radio program, The Kraft Music Hall, a broadcast carried on Christmas Day 1941. At that time, it elicited little attention, and no transcription of that particular show has ever been discovered, so the true debut performance of “White Christmas” has been lost. Although many listeners heard Crosby on a regular basis, his rendition of the song apparently caused few ripples. In the long stretch between the December 1941 broadcast and the August 1942 release of Holiday Inn on film, nothing more was heard about Berlin’s composition. Everything changed when the picture began playing theaters. Paramount had expected great things with “Be Careful, It’s My Heart,” and the public did not disappoint the studio. It quickly climbed the charts for several weeks that summer, and the popular Tommy Dorsey (1905–1956) orchestra recorded it, with the up-and-coming crooner Frank Sinatra (1915–1998), who at the time sang with the band, doing the vocal honors. But after its brief moment of fame, “Be Careful, It’s My Heart” entered the ranks of forgotten pretty ballads and lost its place among the hits of the day. Not so for “White Christmas.” As more and more people heard the song in the movie or over the airwaves, demand for sheet music and the phonograph record featuring the Bing Crosby rendition grew, even though the way he sings it on the Decca


“White Christmas” (Irving Berlin) | 775 recording does not match exactly the version heard in the film. After the July 1942 release of the record, “White Christmas” spent 29 weeks on the 1942 hit charts and peaked in popularity and sales in late October. It even won Berlin an Academy Award for the best song in a movie. In 1943 and 1944, his composition continued to sell at a remarkable clip. In 1945, three years following its initial release, “White Christmas” reappeared at No. 13 on the Billboard charts and in 1946 continued its winning ways, earning a respectable No. 20 position. Within five years, it had sold 5 million records and another 3 million copies of sheet music. After those remarkable figures, it settled into the comfortable niche of a standard, one of those widely known, often-performed songs that enjoys steady sales year in and year out. Music historians give “White Christmas” the honor of being the best-selling single recording of the 20th century, with over 100 million copies sold in the United States and abroad. This unprecedented demand caused Decca to wear out the master, and in 1947 Crosby had to return to the studio and re-record his 1942 effort, note for note, to create a fresh copy. Virtually no one could tell the difference. The lyrics for typical 20th-century American popular songs, as constructed by Irving Berlin and most of his contemporaries, consist of a verse-chorus format. The opening verse sketches a situation or vignette, and then the chorus elaborates on the details found in that introductory section. In practice, although most songwriters provided a verse, the chorus became the portion of the song most people knew. Verses tend to be wordy and often unmelodic, whereas the chorus, with its emphasis on melody, provides familiarity. When Berlin initially wrote “White Christmas” in the late 1930s, World War II had not yet begun for the United States, and he dutifully provided a prewar verse that the subsequent chorus would expand. But by the time of Holiday Inn, the world situation had significantly changed. In his original version, the speaker in the verse resides in Los Angeles amid palm trees and warmth, but he longs for an old-fashioned Christmas in New England with snow. He makes no mention of war or current events, just nostalgia for the past. But the versions heard in the film and on recording drop the verse and simply move into the wistfulness of Christmas dreams, of a Christmas that the speaker will probably not experience firsthand. With the war, and U.S. troops spread out around the globe, “White Christmas,” what some have come to call a secular carol, turned out to be the perfect vehicle for summarizing these feelings. Without ever referencing the conflict in any way, it became an ideal war song, and with more and more men going overseas, families separated during the holidays, and people looking back fondly on more peaceful times, “White Christmas” in its final form turned out to be a runaway hit and an iconic musical composition from World War II. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Broadway Shows (Musicals); Musicals (film); Smith, Kate, Songwriters and Lyricists Selected Reading Kimball, Robert, and Linda Emmet, eds. The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. Rosen, Jody. “White Christmas”: The Story of an American Song. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2002.


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| Women in the Military: WACs, WASPs, WAVES, SPARS, and Others

WOMEN IN THE MILITARY: WACS, WASPS, WAVES, SPARS, AND OTHERS The United States Congress approved a peacetime conscription program, or draft, called the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. Induction initially applied only to men aged 21 to 30. As the likelihood of war grew, both political and military leaders recognized the need for raising the number of personnel in the nation’s armed forces, and discussions included the possibility of utilizing women in the various service branches, but no actions transpired. After active hostilities broke out in December 1941, with the attack on Pearl Harbor, men from 18 to 45 greatly enlarged the size of the eligible pool of draftees, and tours of duty increased from 12 months to the duration of the war. Women, however, continued to remain exempt from conscription. The growing pressures of World War II coupled with strained manpower resources led officials to reconsider allowing women to serve in uniform and pragmatism won out over preconceived notions. Edith Nourse Rogers (1881–1960), a member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts, had been advocating the creation of a women’s branch of the army since early 1941. After considerable debate and compromise, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, or WAAC, came into being in May 1942. Opposition came mainly from conservative congressmen who disliked the concept of women in the armed forces in any way, but President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) promptly signed the bill the day following its passage. The final proposal established a corps whose duties did not involve combat. Instead, its members would take on mainly clerical and communications assignments, such as switchboard and radio operations. At no time would WAAC officers be in command of men, and pay schedules would not be commensurate with the amounts paid to men for similar work. Limitations were also placed on benefits, especially for overseas duties. Despite these inequities, Oveta Culp Hobby (1905–1995), a member of the Women’s Interest Section of the War Department, assumed command of the fledgling corps with the rank of major; she would later be promoted to colonel. Although a ceiling of 25,000 recruits had initially been set, response to the new army branch proved so overwhelming that in November 1942, the secretary of war boosted it to 150,000 volunteers. In the early days of the WAAC, when the first recruits completed basic training, they frequently received assignments to Aircraft Warning Services locations, tedious jobs requiring them to plot the positions of aircraft over or near the Eastern seaboard. Later recruits began to take over clerical and motor pool duties. The Army Air Force (AAF) eagerly accepted WAAC personnel, broadening their responsibilities to include weather forecasting, mechanical repair and upkeep, photography interpretation, parachute rigging, and a host of other duties; in time, the AAF used almost half of all available women. Regardless of branch, as their postings increased, these enlistees freed growing numbers of men for combat operations, thereby fulfilling the primary goal of admitting women into the military. As was the case in every branch of the armed forces at the time, the army imposed strict racial segregation on WAAC activities and facilities. Although most of their training might be integrated, base theaters, shops, and social events remained separated. White platoons had white officers, and black units had black officers. Not © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Women in the Military: WACs, WASPs, WAVES, SPARS, and Others | 777 until the mandated racial desegregation of the U.S. military, which did not occur until the late 1940s and early 1950s, would these practices be discontinued. In the meantime, the army, anxious to maximize the effectiveness of the WAAC, agreed to make this women’s branch a full and equal part of the service. In the summer of 1943, the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps became the Women’s Army Corps and its members soon went by the familiar term “WACs.” They quickly lost any stigma that the former “Auxiliary” might have carried with it. At the time of the change, those members of the WAAC were given the choice of going with the new organization or returning to civilian status. Over 75 percent chose to remain and become WACs. The army, like any large organization performing multiple tasks, has long been divided into subgroups with varying responsibilities. For example, during the World War II years, the Army Service Forces (ASF) functioned as the supply and administrative branch that fed, clothed, housed, and equipped the millions of troops serving at any given time. The ASF made extensive use of WACs, usually without any overt prejudice toward women. From driving trucks to keeping track of soldiers in the field, WACs turned in outstanding performances, and top-ranking officers, including General Dwight David Eisenhower (1890–1969), praised their work. On the other hand, the Army Ground Forces (AGF), charged with providing ground units organized and trained for combat operations, turned out to be the only group reluctant to use WACs. It clung to the men-only military tradition, with the result that WACs assigned to AGF functions found themselves the victims of overly strict discipline, nonexistent promotions, and demeaning tasks not worthy of their skills or training. When the conversion from WAAC to WAC took place in 1943, over a third of those women in AGF units chose to return to civilian life, the highest percentage among all WAC groups. With the Allied campaigns in North Africa (1942–1943), Italy (1943–1945), and Normandy (1944–1945), WACs usually came ashore only weeks after the initial landings. By the end of the war in Europe (V-E Day, May 8, 1945), close to 8,000 WACs held various posts in the European theater. In the sprawling Pacific, about 5,500 WACs served through V-J Day (September 2, 1945), primarily in New Guinea and the Philippines. Among the hardships endured by WACs, the Pacific contingent, because of poorly managed supply orders, had been issued heavy winter uniforms unsuitable for tropical climates. Many WACs in this theater suffered from skin diseases brought on by constant humidity and incorrect dress, and about 25 percent of those in island environments had to request medical transfers. Added to health questions, a number of Pacific commanders opposed having women in the field. Headquarters thus gave them gratuitous duties instead of challenging work. In addition, many WACs found themselves confined to guarded, fenced-in compounds on off-duty hours “for their own protection.” Morale, therefore, seldom stayed as high as that among WACs assigned to the European theater. With the end of World War II, the army commenced a rapid demobilization. But roughly 10,000 WACs continued in active service, their futures in doubt. Colonel Hobby had resigned her commission in the summer of 1945, and Lieutenant Colonel Westray Battle Boyce (1926–1972) assumed command of the Women’s Army Corps. She served from 1945 until 1947, whereupon Colonel Mary A. Hallaren (1907–2005) assumed the post until 1953. Although many officials favored a complete demobilization of the corps, others felt it should be retained. In June 1948, after considerable © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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congressional deliberation, the WAC became a permanent part of the United States Army, with equal pay and benefits, and those remaining WACs were phased into the service. The Army Air Force also utilized the skills of Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), a group of approximately 1,000 women. Hired not as military personnel but as employees with civil service status and thus ineligible for service benefits, they ferried aircraft, taught flying to AAF cadets, towed gunnery targets, and anything else that might free male pilots for combat. Jacqueline Cochran (1906–1980), a famed aviatrix who could probably fly circles around any man, was enlisted to command the WASP program as director of women pilots. From its beginnings in 1942, the WASP program became embroiled in controversy, most of it gender-based in one way or another. Male civilian pilots felt threatened and did not want their jobs endangered by women, especially with the end of the war approaching. Many critics believed women should not fly or be in command of men, and others objected to any female presence in the armed forces whatsoever. When a 1944 proposal to militarize the WASP and grant its members full service equality, columnist Drew Pearson (1897–1969) engaged in a scurrilous campaign against the group. Although his motives remain unclear, his diatribes so inflamed both sides that a counterproposal to disband the WASP met with success. In December 1944, with the war still raging, the program came to an abrupt end, and officials declared its records as classified; they would not be made unavailable until 1979. Only in the 1980s and thereafter has an accurate history of this little-known women’s unit become known. The navy likewise created an all-women service branch popularly known as WAVES, or Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service. Mildred McAfee (1900–1944; fondly known as “Captain Mac” by her associates) received a commission in the U.S. Naval Reserve as a lieutenant commander in the late summer of 1942, the first woman to hold that rank. Years earlier, in 1919, some navy nurses had carried the curious rating of yeomen (F). McAfee thus became the director of a new organization dedicated to recruiting and training women for a wide range of naval duties. The word “emergency,” a political ploy to assuage some officials resistant to women in the navy, suggested that the WAVES would disband when the “emergency”—World War II—had come to an end. As was the case with the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps, interest ran high among civilians, and within a year McAfee and her staff had 27,000 women wearing navy blue in a distinctive new uniform. In order not to repeat a mistake the WAC had made in regard to military dress, leaders of the WAVES commissioned Mainbocher, an old, established New York fashion house, to design the clothing the new branch would wear. Most people agreed that the World War II WAC outfits suffered from dowdiness, that they appeared too masculine to hold much feminine appeal. Mainbocher’s designs blended fashion and utility and have remained little changed since the 1940s. By the war’s end in 1945, almost 90,000 women served in the WAVES, second only to the Women’s Army Corps. The recruitment of WAVES to serve on shore-based naval installations thereby freed up more men for sea duties. Restrictions forbade them from serving on board any navy vessels or aircraft and they could not participate in any combat operations. In addition, the WAVES excluded all black women from enlisting until late in 1944, when a formula allowing for one black enlistee for every 36 white applicants went into effect.


Women in the Military: WACs, WASPs, WAVES, SPARS, and Others | 779 Not until years later, when the desegregation of the armed forces took place, did the navy discard that artificial ratio. At the same time as the creation of the WAVES, the Marine Corps, a distinct branch of the U.S. Navy, also received permission to form a women’s contingent. Officials made no attempt to form a memorable name or acronym, and the group became the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve. Like the WAVES, the distaff Marines were supposed to undertake shore-based duties to allow greater numbers of men for combat. Major (later Colonel) Ruth Cheney Streeter (1895–1990) served as their first commander and saw the group grow to over 18,000 by 1945. In 1946 and peacetime, the Marines deactivated the Women’s Reserve. After 1948 and passage of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act remaining members became eligible to join the regular Marine Corps. This stipulation also held true for women in the other services as well. The Coast Guard, recognized as an official branch of the U.S. military establishment, originally existed as an arm of the Department of the Treasury. In more recent times, it has served as a part of the Department of Homeland Security. The previously all-male service accepted women into a new unit formed in 1942, shortly after the creation of the WAVES program. Officially called the U.S. Coast Guard Women’s Reserves, it operated under the command of Dorothy C. Stratton (1899–2006), a former dean at Purdue University and an officer in the WAVES. Stratton began her assignment as a lieutenant commander and soon attained the rank of captain in 1944. In order to identify women in the Coast Guard, she suggested the distinctive name of SPARS by combining the Coast Guard’s motto of Semper Paratus and its translation, “Always Ready.” She also noted that a spar, in nautical usage, consists of a supporting beam, and that her SPARS would support the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard traditionally has fewer members than the other main services, so when the SPARS program attained a strength of over 11,000 women in 1945, it could therefore boast having the highest ratio of women enlistees and officers to men of any service branch (1 out of 16 enlisted personnel and 1 out of 12 officers). Unlike the other services, the Coast Guard was the only military branch during the war to train women officers at its own academy in New London, Connecticut. West Point and Annapolis remained men-only throughout World War II. As with WACs, WASPs, WAVES, and Women Marines, SPARS initially served only on land in the continental United States and were barred from combat. Toward the end of World War II, SPARS also performed their duties in Alaska and Hawaii, and the range of tasks they performed expanded greatly. Demobilized after the war, like other women in the armed forces, SPARS could eventually join the regular military. Surprisingly, American popular culture did not capitalize to any great degree on women entering the military. Perhaps a sense of patriotism in time of war or a reluctance to engage in controversy kept the subject, one seemingly ripe for exploitation or satire, muted. Cartoonist Russ Westover’s (1886–1966) popular Tillie the Toiler comic strip had its titular heroine enlist as a WAC in 1942, one of the few comic characters to do so. Tillie accepts her new role as she would a new job, and much of the focus of the strip remains on her love life, just as it always had. Hollywood released a short, Women at War, in 1943. It depicts several women, including actresses Faye Emerson (1917–1983) and Dorothy Day (1897–1975), who for


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various reasons enlist in the Women’s Army Corps. That same year saw So Proudly We Hail! a story about army nurses (a group separate from the Women’s Army Corps) on duty in the Philippines. It graphically depicts the grueling work and dangers they daily faced in the early days of the war from a relentless advance by Japanese forces. On the other hand, that same war plays no real part in Here Come the Waves (1944), a frothy musical that stars Bing Crosby (1903–1977) and Betty Hutton (1921–2007), the latter in a dual role. The movie simply accepts the premise that women served in the navy and focuses instead on music and fun. For most films, however, any references, visual or otherwise, to women in the military exist as background, bit parts that lend realism to a picture but add little or nothing to the plot. The purveyors of popular music, swept up in a wave of tunes that referred to the war in many ways, did not ignore the WACs and the WAVES. A spate of songs, none destined to be hits, paid their respects to women serving in the armed forces. Such titles as “I’ve Got a WAAC on My Hands and a Wave in My Hair” (1942), “Wait Till the Girls Get in the Army, Boys” (1942), “In My Little G.I. Shoes” (1942), “Yankee Doodle Girl” (1943), “WAVES in Navy Blue” (1943), “The WAAC Is in Back of You” (1942), “Song of the WAC” (1944), and “One Little WAC” (1944) acknowledge the novelty of women in uniform—sometimes humorously, other times sentimentally—but collectively failed to capture the public imagination. Mediocre efforts all, they survive as footnotes to the musical history of World War II. Children’s dolls could be purchased wearing the uniforms of the various service branches, so that miniature WACs or WAVES would be dressed up reasonably authentically, but they merely reflected the wartime years when uniformed citizens—men and women—could be seen daily on city streets. Scattered newspaper and magazine advertisements also utilized WACs and WAVES to sell products, but overall, women serving in the military receive only the most perfunctory coverage in media outlets. Conversely, despite a continuing campaign of disrespect and misunderstanding about the role of women in the armed forces, much of it fueled by a tradition-bound officer corps that felt women infringed on a previously all-male domain, U.S. military women—volunteers all—have always conducted themselves with distinction. And gradually, often grudgingly, they have won the respect of their male colleagues. Today, women serve alongside men in virtually all jobs, and few think much about it. To those pioneers from the World War II era that broke down gender barriers, the nation owes a debt of gratitude. See also: Advertising; Comic Strips; Magazines; Musicals (Film); Newspapers; Race Relations and Stereotyping; Toys Selected Reading Bellafaire, Judith A. The Women’s Army Corps: A Commemoration of World War II Service. www. history.army.mil/brochures/wac.htm Godson, Susan H. Serving Proudly: A History of Women in the U.S. Navy. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001. Holm, Maj. Gen. Jeanne. Women in the Military: An Unfinished Revolution. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1992. Morden, Bettie J. The Women’s Army Corps, 1945–1978. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1992.


Y

YOUTH The word “teenage,” sometimes shortened to “teen” and used to denote the period of growth in persons between 13 and 19 years of age, has been in the English language since at least early in the 20th century. Advertisers and marketers initially utilized “Teenager,” coined in the late 1930s, as a means of reaching adolescent girls of junior high and high school age. They soon expanded its usage to include both sexes in a developmental stage with their own patterns of behavior, values, peer interactions, and fads, a trend captured by America’s Youth, a March of Time newsreel released in 1940. Schools, as both a place for learning and social activities, played an important role in the formation of this identifiable age group. The proportion of 14- to 17-year-olds in high school grew from 10.6 percent of that demographic in 1900 to 51.1 percent in 1930, 71.3 percent in 1940, and approximately 85 percent in the early 1950s. This growing school population included members from various socioeconomic strata and backgrounds. Gathered together much of the year, seven hours a day, cliques formed, and the teenager’s life soon revolved around peers. Instead of parents or adults, other teens served as the source for information and advice; influenced speech, clothing, entertainment, and other leisure activities; insisted on conformity; and announced approval and disapproval. Money also served as a major impetus in the emergence of a youth culture. Parents still provided the necessities of life; some also granted a weekly allowance. This spending money, often along with pay from after-school and occasional full-time jobs, empowered teenagers to be viable consumers—a condition manufacturers, marketers, and retailers rarely ignored. Throughout the 1940s, an explosion of goods and services—magazines, records, clothes, dances, drinks, and food, to name a few— targeted this new teenage market. Promoted by various media, the purchases made by teenagers identified their lifestyle. 781


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| Youth

Like so many aspects of American culture during this time, the youth culture of the 1940s can be split into two periods: the wartime years and the postwar years. During 1940–1941, various magazines for women, such as Ladies’ Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, and Parents, ran columns about, and sometimes for, teenage girls. With titles like “Trick for Teens” and “Teens of our Times,” these pieces usually presented updates on dating etiquette, hints for getting along, or the latest slang. Life magazine, in January 1941, included an article titled “SubDebs, They Live in A Jolly World of Gangs, Games, Gadding, Movies, Malteds & Music.” Photographs show affluent teenage girls in Detroit who expect to marry well and join the ranks of high society relaxing at home wearing moccasins, drinking chocolate milkshakes at commercial establishments, and attending dances, while the text explains their special slang. Their activities of going after school to a soda fountain for a shake made and served by teenage boys who worked as soda jerks, taking in a movie, dancing a jitterbug at a high school dance with a well-stocked jukebox, or gathering at someone’s home for a slumber party proved to be popular throughout the decade with most adolescents, not just subdebs. In July 1941, the publishers of Parents began offering Calling All Girls, the first magazine explicitly for girls. It carried a few articles on dating, beauty, fashion, and manners—a clear continuation of the previous decades’ emphases on an innocent, peaceful life and perceived gender-appropriate topics for girls such as behavior, appearance, and relationships. Its format resembled that found in comic books, a popular publishing phenomenon that attracted millions of young readers during the decade by including a number of “girl comics,” an approach and feature that turned away some potential readers, mainly young women who wanted to be treated as being older than their years. Comic strips, on the other hand, long a staple in U.S. newspapers, had early on identified teenagers as a potential audience. As far back as 1912, with Cliff Sterrett’s (1883–1964) Polly and Her Pals, the world of adolescents became a focus. Language, fashions, and teen rituals played out frame by frame in this and other pioneering strips, such as Merrill Blosser’s (1892–1983) Freckles and His Friends and Carl Ed’s (1890– 1959) Harold Teen. Freckles debuted in 1915; Harold Teen in 1919. By the 1940s, and with teenagers receiving more and more scrutiny, strips like 1941’s Teena (by Hilda Terry, 1914–2006), 1943’s Penny (by Harry Haenigsen, 1900–1991), 1944’s Bobby Sox (by Marty Links, 1917–2008), and 1947’s Archie (by Bob Montana, 1920–1975) made their appearances on the funny pages. All of the foregoing comics prospered during the 1940s and continued running well into subsequent decades. These cartoonists had opened a rich vein of humor, proved astute observers of teen virtues and foibles, and yet avoided stereotyping their characters as boorish juveniles. At the same time the comics were going strong, a new singer on the scene, a crooner named Frank Sinatra (1915–1998), skyrocketed to stardom by garnering heavy media attention. His adoring and screaming female teenage fans, called bobby-soxers, stood in line for hours with their socks rolled down to ankle level and worn with loafers or two-tone saddle shoes, in hopes of getting an autograph from “Blue Eyes” before attending his show.


Youth | 783 Concurrent with the continuous attention paid by the media to adolescents in general, as well as those wearing bobby sox or considered to be subdebs, clothing manufacturers began to increase their advertising directed at young women and suggested that they needed age-appropriate sizes and styles. This business-driven acknowledgement of teenagers—no longer children and not yet adults—led department stores to place clothes for girls in their own sections initially called “girls’ wear” or “high school shop.” A 1944 movie, Janie, produced by Warner Bros. and starring Joyce Reynolds (b. 1925), Robert Hutton (1920–1994), Edward Arnold (1890–1956), and Ann Harding (1901–1981), tells a wartime story of bobby-soxers who, when not on the telephone, regularly frequent the local drugstore to buy malts and magazines and spend hours speculating about the hundreds of young GIs at a nearby army camp. Another film, RKO Radio Picture’s 1947 romantic comedy titled The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer, stars Gary Grant (1904–1986), Myrna Loy (1905–1993), Shirley Temple (b. 1928), and Rudy Vallee (1901–1986). It follows a teenage girl whose crush on a playboy artist creates slapstick consequences before her infatuation abates. Best-selling author Sidney Sheldon (1917–2007) won a 1947 Oscar in the category of best original screenplay for his efforts with this movie. While bobby-soxers made headlines, stylish young men sporting zoot suits—long, fitted jackets with padded shoulders and multibutton sleeves worn with trousers with high waists and legs cut full in the thigh and pegged at the ankle—also appeared in the news. This fad originated on the West Coast with young Mexican Americans and became a short-lived teenage indulgence bordering on rebellion for boys in different parts of the country. Official production of zoot suits ceased in 1942 when, at the request of the War Production Board (WPB), clothing manufacturers reduced the amount of fabric used in men’s suits. Narrower lapels and shorter jackets destroyed the zoot suit look. Even though they continued to be found on the black market in larger cities, the craze soon died out and never made a comeback. Throughout the war years, an attitude of youth as a fun time prevailed for many who seemed oblivious to the conflict. They immersed themselves in the fads of the day and took advantage of increased social activities, such as extracurricular programs, sports, and dances offered by schools and community organizations. At the same time, some felt that their days of youth had been unjustly hampered by food rationing, little or no chewing gum, and lack of gasoline for cars for dating or for team buses going to school athletic events. But changing conditions and uncertainties could not be completely ignored. Slogans such as “Study, Sacrifice, Save, and Serve” posted in schools underscored wartime expectations and told adolescents, especially young men, to expect an uncertain future. Students regularly participated in air raid drills as a reminder to be always alert for possible dangers. A small number, about 22 percent of those eligible, became members of the High School Victory Corps organized by the Federal Security Agency as a preinduction program for voluntary high school students. Many eagerly joined adults in raising money in war bond drives, tending victory gardens, and collecting for scrap drives.


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The demands of national defense granted a new prestige to the youth of the country, especially young men. Life magazine, in a November 1942 issue, acknowledged the lowering of the draft age for men from 21 to 18 years with a cover story on Bob Berger, an 18-year-old undergraduate at the University of Nebraska. The cover photograph offers a typical representation of the 2.5 million newly drafted eligible adolescents—a serious youth wearing a cardigan, collared shirt and tie, carrying an armful of textbooks. Four pages of pictures reveal a pre–military service life for a young man as a mix of work and play. With many draft-age men in service,, the government urged boys below this age group, along with girls and women, to find work in essential jobs. A number of teenagers, sensing an opportunity for freedom, service, and money, quit school and found full-time employment, while others worked part-time after school. Together, the employment figures for boys and girls 14 years or older increased from just over 1 million in 1940 to nearly 3 million by 1944, with even more taking jobs during the summer months. Educators worried about this trend, and the United States Office of Education launched a National Go-to-School Drive for the 1944–1945 academic year. Officials provided communities with a handbook on how to address the issue. Along with growing teenage employment, fathers in military service, and mothers working, juvenile courts across the country reported increases in arrests and convictions of both boys and girls for crimes such as petty larceny, incorrigibility, and disorderly conduct. Court cases increased at such a startling pace during the war years that President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972), in December 1945, declared juvenile delinquency to be the most alarming problem in the nation since the war. A national panel consisting of representatives from groups such as Camp Fire Girls, Boys Clubs of America, Big Brother Movement, and Boy and Girl Scouts convened in 1946 to study the situation and assisted the Department of Justice in formulating plans to be distributed to social service and law enforcement agencies. Meanwhile, many localities across the country established teen centers, which offered a place for young people to gather under supervision to play ping pong, dance, and hang out. By 1947, large cities reported a noticeable drop in juvenile delinquency statistics and attributed this success to a combination of preventive measures. This trend continued through the remaining years of the decade. In September 1944, as U.S. citizens looked forward to a return to peaceful times, a new publication for young women appeared on newsstands. Recognizing the potential of a growing teenage national market, especially girls, this periodical, titled Seventeen, focused on beauty, careers, and relationships, but also asserted that its readers were serious, intelligent, thinking young women approaching adulthood and wanting to know what was happening in the world, politically and socially. These editorial decisions proved profitable. Within six days, 400,000 copies of Seventeen’s premier issue had been sold, and the magazine went on to set fashion trends and answer behavior and dating questions during the postwar years. Still in publication in the 21st century, Seventeen achieved a circulation of 2.5 million by 1949, an audience larger than any other girl-focused publication. At the time of the first issue of Seventeen, department stores strove mightily to identify and attract the teenage market. They dropped references to girls and now called


Youth | 785 their clothing sections for young women “teen-age wear” or the “teen shop.” At the same time, teenagers viewed their social life as a barometer of success, and retailers stood ready to sell them the right clothes to wear; inform them on the right places to go for fun; and, with magazines such as Seventeen, provide them with the best advice on a wide range of topics. Boys’ fashions also moved into the limelight, and Life, in June 1945, ran a cover story titled “Teen-age Boys.” The article leads off showing a variety of young men’s outfits, from rolled jeans and white socks for school dress to a tie and oxfords for a date. It suggests that a teenage boy’s day consists of a number of activities, including school, working part-time, sports, and listening to the radio, with the favorite being at least four hours of “goofing off,” both with peers and alone. According to the magazine’s story, all of this requires foods such as milkshakes, ice cream, candy, pop, sandwiches, milk, crackers, cereal, fruit, jam, butter, eggs, meat, and vegetables to be consumed at breakfast, lunch, first afternoon snack, second afternoon snack, dinner, and evening snack. This article differs in focus from a number of other publications of previous years about boys that stressed education, sports, work, rebellion, and outdoor adventures and also stands in sharp contrast to Life’s wartime coverage of draftee Bob Berger. The radio as a popular form of mass entertainment extended to both sexes, who frequently joined their families or peers to catch a late afternoon or early evening airing of The Lone Ranger, The Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show, or The Jack Benny Program. Music of all kinds proved to be equally popular, and they listened to Sinatra, Bing Crosby and shows ranging from the swing bands of the early 1940s to bebop, country, and blues toward the end of the decade. Teenagers also regularly tuned in to Your Hit Parade (first aired in 1935), especially from February 1943 through December 1944, when Frank Sinatra sang on the show In addition to listening to the radio, teenagers could be counted on to take in the latest movie, sometimes with family members, frequently with peers, or with a date—an acceptable unsupervised postwar activity. Surveys consistently reported adolescents as the most frequent and faithful customers at theaters, no matter what the movie. Wanting to exert their independence, they related to 17-year-old Willy, a young man who asks to be called William. Jackie Cooper (b. 1922) plays Willy in Paramount Picture’s 1940 Seventeen, a film loosely based on the 1916 novel of the same name by Booth Tarkington (1869–1946). But the subject matter hardly mattered. Young movie audiences were equally satisfied with the depictions of middle-class families as seen in Andy Hardy’s family or the Henry Aldrich series; incorrigible goof-offs such as the Dead End Kids (also known as the East Side Kids or Bowery Boys); or Saturday afternoon double features of Westerns starring Gene Autry (1907–1998) or Roy Rogers (1911–1998). By the early 1940s, American adolescents had emerged as an identifiable group, with the words “teenage” and “teenager” serving as acceptable descriptors. Over the course of the decade, a strong youth culture existed with its own rules for dress, language, behavior, dating, and determinations of popularity. The most admired boys had achieved the designation of star athlete, while many girls measured their standing by their degree of popularity with boys. Socioeconomic status, as in the past, continued to


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play a role in adolescent activities and pursuits, while fads such as wearing bobby sox or zoot suits and adoring Frank Sinatra crossed socioeconomic groups. Finally, members of the youth culture, as reported by Life magazine in 1950, had their idols, and those in the realm of popular culture won out. Five of the final top 12—Joe DiMaggio (1914–1999), Vera-Ellen (1921–1981), Roy Rogers (1911–1998), Doris Day (b. 1924), and Babe Ruth (1895–1948)—came from the entertainment and sports worlds. See also: ASCAP vs. BMI Radio Boycott and the AFM Recording Ban; Automobiles and the American Automotive Industry; Best Sellers (Books); Beverages; Country Music; Desserts, Candy, and Ice Cream; Jukeboxes; Leisure and Recreation; Photography; War Bonds Selected Reading Considine, David M. The Cinema of Adolescence. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1985. Palladino, Grace. Teenagers: An American History. New York: Basic Books, 1996. Savage, Jon. Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture. New York: Viking, 2007. Schrum, Kelly. Some Wore Bobby Sox: The Emergence of the Teenage Girls’ Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.


Timeline for the 1940s

Some general statistics about the decade: U.S. population, 1940: 132 million; 1950: 149 million. Life expectancy, 1940: 60.8 years (men), 68.2 (women); 1950: 65.6 years (men), 71.1 years (women). 1940: 75 percent of population urban or suburban, 25 percent rural; 1950: 85 percent of population urban or suburban, 15 percent rural. Gross national product (GNP), 1940: $100 billion (roughly $1.48 trillion in 2008 dollars); 1950: $365 billion (roughly $3.14 trillion in 2008 dollars). Federal budget, 1940: $13 billion (roughly $192 billion in 2008 dollars); 1950: $40 billion (roughly $344 billion in 2008 dollars). For comparison, the actual 2009 federal budget equaled approximately $3.1 trillion. National debt, 1940: $43 billion (roughly $600 billion in 2008 dollars); 1950: $257 billion (roughly $2.3 trillion in 2008). For comparison,; the national debt in 2009 equaled some $12 trillion. Some significant events occurring during the 1940s:

1940 The decade opens gloomily, with war already raging in Europe and Asia and the threat of direct U.S. involvement growing daily. Civilians learn new words like blitzkrieg (a quick, decisive attack) and blitz (sustained bombing of a target; literally, “lightning”). But the dark international news is tempered by good economic statistics: as the nation prepares for conflict, defense-oriented industries grow markedly and

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reduce any lingering unemployment left from the Great Depression; 1940 stands as a prosperous year. In the June Republican national convention, Wendell L. Willkie, a political unknown, secures the party’s nomination to run again Franklin D. Roosevelt for the presidency; although Willkie conducts a strong campaign, Roosevelt easily defeats him in November and thus gains an unprecedented third term. CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) successfully demonstrates a working color television setup in August. The impending war, however, prevents its wide deployment, although experimental black-and-white broadcasting continues. The America First Committee, an isolationist group organized in an attempt to keep the country out of any European or Asian war, contests President Roosevelt’s support for foreign allies and begins to attract attention and supporters. In October, Selective Service officials draw numbers in the nation’s first peacetime draft; by the end of the year, some 16 million men have been registered for possible conscription. With the Germans and Japanese victorious in Europe and Asia, President Roosevelt throughout the year sharply increases the amount of military aid to beleaguered Britain, throwing off any pretense of neutrality. In a Fireside Chat broadcast on December 29, he coins the phrase “arsenal of democracy” to describe to listeners how U.S. industrial might will arm both the country and its allies against the Axis powers. Despite Roosevelt’s exhortations supporting hard work and unstinting sacrifice, American popular culture gives little indication of the crisis. Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch premieres on radio, as does Superman, and listeners laugh at Jack Benny and thrill to I Love a Mystery. The movies offer a little bit of everything, from The Grapes of Wrath to The Philadelphia Story, a screwball comedy. Rodgers and Hart’s Pal Joey opens on Broadway, Frank Sinatra croons his way to stardom, and the top recording for the year is Glenn Miller’s up-tempo “In the Mood.” Finally, readers buy Richard Llewellyn’s gentle How Green Was My Valley, the No. 1 best seller for the year, a book far removed from the headlines of the day.

1941 In his January State of the Union address, President Roosevelt enumerates the Four Freedoms that must be defended in this time of crisis: the freedoms of speech and expression and the freedoms from want and fear. It inspires many and lives on as an American credo. In the spring, the government establishes the Office of Price Administration to keep prices and wages in line, because record defense spending has created inflationary pressures. Throughout the summer, as tensions rise, the United States and the Axis powers close one another’s consulates, impose import and export restrictions, and freeze assets abroad. In the meantime, a series of incidents involving U.S. ships and German submarines creates a state of emergency, and the navy is given permission to attack


Timeline for the 1940s | 789 any enemy (i.e., German or Italian) vessels operating within the nation’s three-mile coastal boundaries. Despite the growing hostilities, network radio premieres the slapstick Red Skelton Show, along with the situation comedy, The Great Gildersleeve. Moviegoers line up to see Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon; one of the greatest American films, Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane, similarly debuts but not as successfully—only with time will it achieve its lasting reputation. On stage, Watch on the Rhine, by playwright Lillian Hellman, tackles the subject of fascism in Europe and argues against neutrality, a courageous position for the time. Jimmy Dorsey’s rendition of “Amapola (Pretty Little Poppy)” holds down the No. 1 position for popular songs, and novelist A. J. Cronin’s The Keys of the Kingdom ranks first in fiction. In major league baseball—the teams increasingly riddled by the loss of players by the draft or through enlistment—Ted Williams bats .406 for the season and Joe DiMaggio hits safely in 56 consecutive games; fans cheer them on, and both records have never been broken. But everything suddenly changes when, on the morning of December 7, warplanes from the Imperial Japanese Navy without warning attack Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, thereby precipitating, on the following day, a declaration of war by the United States against Japan. Three days later, December 11, the United States also declares a state of war exists between it and Germany and Italy. On December 12, those two nations formally reciprocate against the United States. And so the year closes with World War II at last a reality, a conflict that will continue for four years.

1942 The year opens with the Office of Production Management, another wartime agency, ordering an outright ban on the production and sale of new cars, a ban that lasts until the end of hostilities in 1945. In March, federal troops on the West Coast commence rounding up citizens of Japanese descent, many of whom reside in California. Although guilty of no crimes, they are placed in compounds for national security, a controversial decision. The government does not take similar measures with those of Italian or German ancestry, nor does it include those of Asian ancestry living elsewhere in the country. After losing the Philippines to the Japanese and in retreat across the Pacific, Army Air Force pilots led by Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle stage a morale-boosting April bombing raid on Tokyo and other key cities. It accomplishes little militarily but cheers the public and punctures the enemy’s supposed invulnerability. In August, Marines storm ashore Guadalcanal, a Japanese-occupied island in the South Pacific. It signals a turn in strategy and a campaign of island hopping that will continue for the remainder of the war. On the home front, the Office of Civilian Defense comes into being in May. Citizens from all walks of life don helmets and check their flashlights in order to serve as air raid wardens on guard against enemy planes and bombs. Blackouts, brownouts, and dim-outs become commonplace in many cities.


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To avoid shortages, gasoline rationing commences in July, one of many commodities that will be strictly controlled through ration books and stamps. Children collect metals, newsprint, and kitchen grease in neighborhood scrap drives. U.S. and British troops invade North Africa in November, the first large-scale operation against German and Italian forces. General Dwight D. Eisenhower serves as commander. The overall picture of the war continues to look grim, and the entertainment media slowly shift gears in order to acknowledge events and create optimistic, patriotic messages designed to reassure their audiences. Radio presents Stage Door Canteen, a cheerful revue with celebrities entertaining the troops, while Hollywood cranks out one war-themed feature after another. Leading the list are Casablanca and Mrs. Miniver, with Humphrey Bogart outwitting the Gestapo in North Africa in the first and Greer Garson coping with any problem the war might bring in the second. Irving Berlin scores two big hits during the year: his timely musical This Is the Army celebrates soldiers and life in the army, and he touches everyone’s sentimental side with “White Christmas,” the year’s top-selling record and a tune that goes on to be a recurring hit year after year. In books, escapism, more than relevance, continues to rule publishing. The Song of Bernadette, a religious tale about a young girl and her visions, ranks as No. 1 in fiction sales.

1943 To ensure maximum production, defense plants begin in February to operate on a minimum 48-hours-per-week schedule. Two months later, President Roosevelt freezes all wages and prices at their April levels in order to curb inflation and price gouging. At about the same time, the ages men can be drafted are expanded to 18 through 38; deferments will be granted only to those employed in essential wartime industries. Throughout 1943, the traditional penny receives a zinc coating to conserve copper supplies. People nickname the altered coins “steelies.” Despite Roosevelt’s objections, Congress passes the Smith-Connally Anti-Strike Act in June. This law makes union-led strikes at essential industries illegal and allows the government, if necessary, to forcibly take over a plant and operate it. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt, having met early in the year at Casablanca, Morocco, to map strategy, convene in late November with Soviet Union Chairman Josef Stalin in Teheran, Iran, to discuss mutual cooperation. “The Big Three,” as the press calls them, also discuss their ideas about the postwar era. While world leaders meet, entertainment goes its own way. News shows abound, and listeners can learn the latest from reporters stationed in far-flung battle zones; closer to home, The Army Hour and Meet Your Navy, two musical variety presentations, keep listeners abreast of both pop music and activities within the service branches. For Whom the Bell Tolls, a film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s novel about the Spanish Civil War, has a stalwart Gary Cooper battling to the end, while Air Force has lots of exciting shots of bomber crews in action. Similar fare can be found in movie houses throughout the year. On Broadway, one musical dominates: Rodgers and


Timeline for the 1940s | 791 Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! Its unparalleled success announces the arrival of a writing team that will, in the years to come, overshadow all the competition. In the recording field, although songwriters strive to pen patriotic war songs, they seldom find receptive audiences. So tunes like “I’ve Heard That Song Before” (No. 1) and “Paper Doll” (No. 2) take top honors on the music charts, much to the chagrin of government, which wants a nationally popular song about the war and even appoints a commission in an ill-fated attempt to get one. In like fashion, readers eschew books dealing with the conflict, falling back instead on old favorites. For 1943, Lloyd C. Douglas’s religious epic, The Robe, tops the best-seller lists.

1944 As the year opens with the Allies increasingly taking the offensive, people realize that eventually a second front—a full-scale invasion of continental Europe—will occur, and the question becomes when. Allied troops continue their arduous march up through Italy, and virtually continuous strategic bombing of German installations throughout Europe weaken the German war machine, but much bloody fighting continues. In the Pacific, the island-hopping tactics of General Douglas MacArthur pay off, and many formerly Japanese territories fall into U.S. hands, but at an expensive price in casualties. Formerly unknown names like Tarawa, Kwajalein, the Admiralty Islands, Bougainville, Saipan, Guam, and Leyte make newspaper headlines as marines and army troops push ever closer to mainland Japan. On June 6, the long-awaited invasion of France begins in Normandy. The largest military operation in history, it entails hundreds of thousands of troops along with thousands of aircraft, ships, and artillery. Despite a vigorous defense by the Germans, the Allies secure a beachhead and move inland. The conflict will continue for another year, but the Normandy landings mark a partial beginning of the end for World War II. General Dwight Eisenhower commands the undertaking, which he dubs the Great Crusade. Aware of the millions of men in uniform, Roosevelt in June signs the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, better known as the GI Bill. This legislation, containing some of the most sweeping social reforms in the nation’s history, makes it possible for discharged U.S. service personnel to obtain grants for finding jobs and furthering their education. Looking to the near future and the end of the war, the government plans to cushion their transition back to civilian life. In its original form, the GI Bill will run until 1965; it contributes immeasurably to the prosperity of the postwar era and countless GIs take advantage of its generosity. Late in June, the Republicans nominate Thomas E. Dewey, the governor of New York, as their candidate to run for president. In July, the Democrats once again place their hopes with Franklin D. Roosevelt, who will be attempting to win an unprecedented fourth term. While the war continues its bloody course and citizens await the November election, an unexpected September hurricane strikes New England and kills over 400 people and causes untold millions in property damage.


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Despite the war and the weather, November arrives and Roosevelt defeats Dewey. He has, as his running mate, Harry S. Truman, a little-known senator from Missouri. In the Pacific, B-29 bombers pound Japan daily, launching raids from captured islands that lie ever closer to the homeland. In Europe, however, a last-ditch offensive by German troops in the days just before Christmas turns out to be one of the costliest battles of the war; called the Battle of the Bulge, it takes its toll in thousands of lives on both sides. The Allies eventually prevail and in the process destroy a significant part of German military might and will. Spirits perceptibly rise throughout 1944, and the entertainment industry breathes a sigh of relief. Radio offers a vast menu of programming, with comedies leading the way (The Pepsodent Show with Bob Hope, The Abbott and Costello Show), while teary soap operas take up the afternoons (Ma Perkins, The Romance of Helen Trent), and kids can hear their favorite serials (Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy, The Lone Ranger). Movie marquees boast an equally large selection, from the joyful music of Meet Me in St. Louis to the gripping submarine exploits of Destination Tokyo. On stage, Leonard Bernstein’s On the Town, a musical tale about three sailors on leave in New York City, draws appreciative audiences. And once again, popular music stays with the tried and true formula of up-tempo optimism. “Swinging on a Star” tops the charts, followed closely by “Don’t Fence Me In.” Popularized religion momentarily takes a back seat in the world of fiction when Lillian Smith’s Strange Fruit, a controversial, chilling story of race relations in the contemporary South, briefly rides to the top on reams of publicity. Readers will return to their more conventional choices in the upcoming years.

1945 February witnesses a second meeting of the Big Three—Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin—at the Crimean resort city of Yalta. At this conference, the leaders map plans for the imminent postwar era, including the formation of the United Nations. Although outwardly cordial, tensions build and Roosevelt appears tired. Between February and July, U.S. Marines and soldiers capture two strategic islands close to Japan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. In Europe during this same period, U.S. troops cross the Rhine into Germany proper. But April also marks the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, weakened by the stresses and pressures of 17 consecutive years in office. A Great Depression and a World War have simply worn him out. Harry Truman assumes the presidency that same day, April 12, and an era draws to a close. Working desperately against time, German technicians develop the first operational wartime missile, the V-2, which replaces the primitive V-1, or “Buzz Bomb.” They also produce the Messerschmitt ME-262, a true jet fighter plane. But the expertise arrives too little, too late; on May 7, 1945, Germany gives its unconditional surrender to the Allies. The victors divide the country into zones—American, British, French, and Russian—and people rejoice that Europe is once again at peace. While the Germans try to assemble their secret devices, scientists in Tennessee and desolate New Mexico strive to perfect a fearsome new weapon. The work takes time, but on July 16 they successfully detonate an atomic bomb in the desert near Los


Timeline for the 1940s | 793 Alamos and it exceeds expectations. Within three weeks, on August 6, another atomic bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy,” is detonated over the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, another nuclear device, “Fat Man,” explodes over Nagasaki, Japan. In a subsequent series of complex negotiations defining terms that take place between August 10 and 15, the Japanese announce their intention to capitulate. The Allies accept the offer, and on September 2, 1945, Japan formally surrenders aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo harbor. The world is momentarily at peace. As the war winds down, radio stations continue to program comedy, crime, and music for the evening hours, while the daily soap operas retain their core of dedicated listeners. In a last gasp of war films, Hollywood releases, among others, The Story of G.I. Joe, They Were Expendable, and The House on 92nd Street. For the most part, however, the studios return to musicals and nonwar dramas. The Glass Menagerie announces the Broadway arrival of an important new playwright in the person of Tennessee Williams. Popular music, which has basically ignored the war, follows its familiar patterns. A novelty number, “Rum and Coca-Cola,” tops the charts in a lively rendition by the Andrews Sisters, and a number of new vocalists, such as Perry Como, Doris Day, and Vaughn Monroe, signify a change in public preferences, with singers replacing the big bands. Readers choose a racy historical romance with the best-selling Forever Amber. The city of Boston feels otherwise, however, and bans the book, a move that only increases sales further (and the Massachusetts Supreme Court will overturn the ruling in 1947). The demobilization of millions of U.S. service personnel begins in autumn as state, federal, and military officials attempt to address the myriad problems that will accompany this move, one that sees upward of 35,000 discharges a day. As the armed forces shrink, going from over 11 million men in 1945 to just over 1 million in 1946, the more farsighted in Washington realize that the Soviet Union, an ally in the war, is now making unreasonable demands about the occupation of Germany and casting hungry looks at the rest of Europe, especially the eastern tier of nations. As the year ends, the Cold War, in its formative stages, begins. The term “Cold War,” however, does not achieve any particular notoriety in 1945, although British author George Orwell employs the phrase in his writing. The opposite of a “hot war,” the phrase remains unknown until pundit Bernard Baruch uses “Cold War” in a 1947 speech; at that time, it enters the popular vocabulary.

1946 Americans, inured to sacrifice during the war, delight in most consumer controls being lifted. Armed with record personal savings accumulated during the conflict, they go on a buying binge, and manufacturers rush to refit their factories to churn out automobiles, appliances, radios and television sets, the latest fashions, and any and everything else the public might desire. For example, an RCA 10-inch black-and-white television, one of the biggest-selling models at the time, retails for about $375 (roughly $4,000 in 2008 dollars). The steep


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price slows sales not at all. Instant gratification of wants, after so long without, becomes the order of the day. Organized labor, also freed from the wartime strictures imposed on it, challenges management in many industries, with thousands of walkouts and strikes during the year. One of the first major disruptions occurs in the steel industry; a January strike cripples production and results in increased wages for workers and higher prices for steel and helps trigger inflation across the board. Coal mines, automobile plants, appliance manufacturers, and railroads soon follow suit. In a March speech given in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill utters the famous words, “an iron curtain,” to describe the Soviet Union’s military and political seizure of much of Eastern Europe, a move that effectively seals it off from the more democratic western portion of the continent. To make the fledgling United Nations a physical reality, philanthropist John D. Rockefeller contributes over $8 million (roughly $89 million in 2008 dollars) to the organization. The money will be used to construct a permanent headquarters in New York City along the East River. Recognizing both the threat and promise of nuclear power, the government in August forms the Atomic Energy Commission; a civilian agency, its duties include overseeing the production and applications of nuclear components. In another technological advance, the University of Pennsylvania in February formally unveils a computer some years in development, the ENIAC (electronic numerical integrator and computer). Crude by modern standards—it occupies an entire room and generates tremendous heat because of the thousands of vacuum tubes necessary to run it. The machine nonetheless performs complex mathematical equations in seconds and points the way to the future. To drum up listenership, network radio begins to offer a variety of quiz shows ranging from Winner Take All to Twenty Questions. Although the prizes are pitifully small by later standards, the programming piques public interest. In contrast, a number of mature, thoughtful movies come out during the year, including The Best Years of Our Lives and The Razor’s Edge, along with a sprinkling of foreign films, like Henry V (England) and Shoeshine (Italy). A rich Broadway season boasts such plays as The Iceman Cometh, Born Yesterday, and Annie Get Your Gun. Theatergoers are happy to see the Great White Way ablaze in lights once again, and the quality of the fare seems to reflect this. The Ink Spots, a popular vocal group, have the No. 1 recording with “The Gypsy,” but bebop (or simply bop), a modern, evolving form of jazz, generates considerable publicity and controversy. The King’s General, a long, complex English romance set in the 17th century, attracts a bevy of readers, perhaps hungry for more historical fiction after the success of 1945’s Forever Amber.

1947 The Voice of America, a powerful, federally funded shortwave radio network run by the State Department, begins broadcasting in Russian to counter Soviet broadcasts. Originally formed in 1942, it becomes an important propaganda tool in the Cold War.


Timeline for the 1940s | 795 It transmits information and entertainment to nations under Communist control and achieves considerable popularity among its foreign listeners. The Soviet Union responds in 1949 by attempting to jam (electronically block) the transmitters, but most efforts prove futile. Interestingly, the broadcasts cannot be heard within the continental United States; federal law bans them for resident citizens. In March, President Truman articulates what has come to be called the Truman Doctrine, a foreign policy initiative that says the United States can and will provide substantial aid to non-Communist nations seeking assistance to ward off Soviet aggression. Despite heightening international tensions, Congress discontinues the peacetime draft in March but reinstates it in June 1948 amid deteriorating relations with the Communist bloc. With minimal fanfare, President Truman in September signs the National Security Act. This important piece of legislation, along with some subsequent amendments, reorganizes the military services, changing the National Military Establishment into the Department of Defense, led by a cabinet-level secretary of defense. The United State Air Force breaks away from the army and emerges as an independent branch of the armed forces. The act also dissolves the Central Intelligence Group, formed in 1946 to replace the colorful Office of Strategic Services, the nation’s World War II spy organization, and creates the Central Intelligence Agency, giving it the task of carrying out intelligence work overseas. To coordinate these changes, Congress creates the National Security Agency, a secretive council charged with overseeing all aspects of national security. In the face of a growing Russian threat, especially with evidence of Soviet espionage, few quibble about any aspects of the new law and resultant agencies. Emboldened by the growing clamor about Communist influences in American life, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (popularly abbreviated HUAC) stages a series of investigative hearings in the fall. It charges that the entertainment industry harbors Communist supporters, especially in Hollywood. Some 300 writers, producers, and actors see their careers ruined or damaged by this investigation when the industry blacklists them and a climate of fear envelops the movie capital. On a brighter note, the Bell XS-1, an experimental rocket-powered aircraft, successfully breaks the sound barrier in the fall, and the United States lays claim to being the first nation to do so, although several groups challenge the claim. Since the Air Force executed the XS-1 flight under strict test conditions, most aviation groups accept its validity. Within a short time, supersonic flights become almost commonplace for advanced military aircraft. As more people purchase television receivers and the industry inexorably expands, broadcasters increase the variety of their programming, the networks sense the potential for limitless profits, and sponsors envision reaching vast audiences. The excitement gives birth to a new mass medium. Radio, the nearest competitor to television, does not accept the challenge lightly. The networks sink considerable money into new programs and schedules, and the old standbys—Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Jack Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly—remain loyal to radio for the time being, but the novelty of the small home screen lures new video fans daily. The movies likewise feel the pressure brought by television. Relying on superior production values and a better picture, the film industry at first tries to ignore the


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interloper, but as more and more families stay glued to their sets instead of going to their neighborhood theaters, movie attendance drops, and the decline does not lessen with time. Prestige films like Gentleman’s Agreement and Crossfire do little to lessen the hemorrhaging of a once-reliable audience. Broadway theater, perhaps a little more removed from television than radio and the movies, offers a fine season for 1947: Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire introduces Marlon Brando to the stage, and All My Sons gives playwright Arthur Miller his first major theatrical success. Popular music, unaffected by the inroads television makes on other media, goes its own way. The No. 1 song for 1947 originates in Nashville, Tennessee, a town more associated with country music than big pop hits. “Near You,” written and performed by bandleader Francis Craig, starts out slowly and regionally but picks up speed and finally gains national recognition in August, staying on the charts for the remainder of the year. Other artists, particularly the Andrews Sisters, cut their own versions, making “Near You” a major happening in music circles. While people hum Craig’s tune, many of them read The Miracle of the Bells, another in the stream of religious novels that reach best-seller status during the 1940s. Written by Russell Janney, it consists of spiritual platitudes and little else, but readers flock to it, making the book the biggest selling title of the year. An unheralded paperback mystery, I, the Jury, a debut novel by Mickey Spillaine, also attracts attention because of its explicit sex and violence.

1948 In April, the Marshall Plan, a program of generous U.S. aid to war-devastated European countries, begins to disburse funds. Originally proposed by Secretary of State George C. Marshall in 1947, the program will, by 1951, give over $13 billion (roughly $121 billion in 2008 dollars) in aid to non-Communist countries and hastens reconstruction and expands trade. In addition, the month sees most of the nations within the Western Hemisphere cooperating to form the Organization of American States. The group encourages countries to work together and resist meddling from any nonmembers. At their June convention, Republicans nominate Thomas E. Dewey to be the party standard-bearer in the November presidential elections. The Democrats, a month later, grant Harry Truman the nomination but not without serious squabbling. A group of disaffected Southern Democrats break away from the party, call themselves the States Rights Party (or Dixiecrats), and put up South Carolina governor Strom Thurman as a third-party candidate. On the more liberal side, the Progressive Party, composed of somewhat radical Democrats and their supporters, nominate Henry Wallace. It all promises an exciting election in November. While the political parties square off against one another, the Soviets close down land transportation into occupied Berlin in June, effectively sealing off the city. The Western Allies—England, France, and the United States—respond by instituting nonstop flights of food and other needed supplies into the beleaguered city, a response that takes on the popular name the Berlin Airlift (although officials give it the military title of Operation Vittles). Powerless, the Soviet Union finally backs down in May


Timeline for the 1940s | 797 1949, almost a full year later. The airlift electrifies the Free World and humiliates the Soviet Union. Pundits’ prognostications to the contrary, Truman defeats Dewey in November and the splinter parties have little effect on the election. Instead of a New Deal, his platform calls for a Fair Deal. On radio, Ralph Edwards dispenses nostalgia, sentiment, and good feeling in This Is Your Life, a fall offering that lasts only until mid-1950, when it makes the transition to television, where it will remain ensconced until 1961. In the meantime, television captures an ever-larger audience share, The Toast of the Town, with host Ed Sullivan, premieres in June on CBS. An instant success, this variety show will run until 1971. Three months later, NBC’s The Texaco Star Theater, featuring comedian Milton Berle, brings more vaudeville and variety to the small screen. Newscasters like John Cameron Swayze and Douglas Edwards become celebrities in their own right and make watching the evening news part of the American TV diet. Radio, fighting a losing battle, nonetheless offers Stop the Music, with host Bert Parks, a quiz that challenges contestants’ musical knowledge. With prizes averaging $20,000 (roughly $179,000 in 2008 dollars), it presages the huge jackpots TV will later offer. In terms of quality, 1948 stands as a good movie year; in terms of audience, the numbers continue their decline. Despite all-star offerings like Treasure of Sierra Madre (Humphrey Bogart), Red River (John Wayne, Montgomery Clift), Easter Parade (Fred Astaire), and Hamlet (Laurence Olivier), weekly attendance falls below 75 million admissions a week—a healthy figure but considerably below the 90 million of 1945. On a more upbeat note, playwright Tennessee Williams returns to Broadway with Summer and Smoke, actor Henry Fonda delights in Mr. Roberts, and composer Cole Porter creates a memorable score for Kiss Me, Kate. In music, Dinah Shore’s rendition of “Buttons and Bows,” taken from a Bob Hope comedy Western titled The Paleface, takes top honors for the year and also wins an Academy Award for best film song. More important, however, CBS, owner of Columbia Records, announces the successful development of 33-1/3 rpm long-playing vinyl records. They surpass 78-rpm disks in popularity because of their longer playing time and durability. Competing record companies, especially RCA Victor, rush to duplicate Columbia’s technological feat and release long-playing records of their own. Novelist Lloyd C. Douglas repeats with another No. 1 best seller with The Big Fisherman, another religious offering that purports to tell the story of Peter and his relationship with Jesus. The second-place finisher, The Naked and the Dead, comes from a young writer named Norman Mailer, a veteran of World War II. The plot involves the nightmarish combat on a mythic Pacific island and has become an American classic.

1949 Various Western European nations, along with the United States, in April establish the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. A mutual defense pact aimed squarely at curbing Soviet aggression, real or potential, it reflects the heightened security worries facing the Free World.


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Alger Hiss, an official with the State Department, goes on trial in late May for perjury regarding possible Communist connections. Although it ends in a hung jury, the proceedings mirror the mounting concern about spies and Soviet infiltration into government circles. More hearings, accusations, and ruined careers will follow as paranoia grows in some quarters about “Reds,” “Commies,” “Pinkos,” and “fellow travelers” in public life. People worried about Soviet military power find their fears justified in September, when President Truman announces the USSR’s detonation of an atomic bomb. The unthinkable becomes real. Labor unrest continues in several key U.S. industries, especially coal. Led by John L. Lewis, the unionized miners stage a work slowdown in December. These disputes take place in the midst of a year-long recession, a period of economic adjustment after the immediate postwar boom. Most Americans, however, take a rosy view of things and look to a prosperous future. Congress raises the minimum wage from 40 cents to 75 cents (or from roughly $3.50 to $6.50 in 2008 dollars). Developer William Levitt converts some former Long Island potato fields into one of the largest planned communities ever attempted in the United States. Work on Levittown had commenced in 1947 with several thousand Cape Cod–style houses for sale or for rent. By 1949, this “instant suburb” consists of thousands of homes, including larger models called ranches. Television continues to makes gains as home entertainment. Hopalong Cassidy, a Western series starring William Boyd, begins a two-year run on NBC, capturing an audience of both kids and adults. The Lone Ranger, a comic strip character that also runs on radio, likewise debuts, becoming a fixture on ABC until 1957. CBS counters with two sentimental family shows, Mama and The Goldbergs. The first stars Peggy Wood in the title role (based on the hit 1944 play, I Remember Mama) and runs until 1957; the second, taken from radio’s popular series that had premiered back in 1929, features Gertrude Berg recreating her original character of Molly Goldberg. The Goldbergs stays on CBS until 1951, then goes to NBC and later Dumont, finally ending up in syndication until 1955. Radio continues a gradual retreat from original programming, offering instead disc jockeys and recorded music on many stations. The networks, however, still strive to come up with winning combinations, the most notable being the creation of Dragnet, a realistic police series with Jack Webb. It draws sizable audiences, to the point that it stays on the air until 1957, although a television version (also with the inimitable Webb) comes along in 1951, providing a choice: radio or television? Refusing to throw in any kind of towel, the movie industry advertises something for every taste, from gritty wartime stories (Twelve O’Clock High) to psychological drama (Champion) to musicals (On the Town) to sophisticated comedies (Adam’s Rib). But nothing the studios do stanches the gradual loss of audience to television. On the other hand, people line up at New York’s Morosco Theatre for seats to Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s tragic portrait of Willy Loman, a defeated man. And Broadway also boasts one of the great Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, South Pacific, another unqualified hit.


Timeline for the 1940s | 799 Although the Western-tinged “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky” dominates the music charts for 1949, and the somewhat similar “Mule Train” also makes a respectable showing, a novelty number by a real cowboy star becomes an instant classic. Gene Autry records “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and establishes it as a staple for the holiday season, as enduring as any carol. The publishing business enjoys no such luck; the No. 1 title in fiction goes to The Egyptian, a historical novel by Finnish writer Mika Waltari (in translation) about the age of the pharaohs. But readers do not entirely desert their more conventional preferences; The Big Fisherman, the leader in 1948, claims second place. The U.S. Air Force, after a two-year investigation, denies the existence of unidentified flying objects in a lengthy report that leaves many dissatisfied with its findings. Although the event goes relatively unnoticed, Volkswagen ships it first cars to the United States; the company sells a total of two Beetles this first year. Finally, in Italian restaurants, bars, and kiosks across the country, a new menu offering quickly finds acceptance: pizza.

1950 The decade ends and a new one begins; the transition does not offer an optimistic picture of things to come. President Truman gives the go-ahead to develop a hydrogen bomb, a weapon immeasurably more powerful than the atomic bomb. In response, Soviet authorities announce that they, too, will pursue research in this direction. Plans for home bomb shelters appear in periodicals, and the government issues survival pamphlets. In a second trial, held in January, a jury finds Alger Hiss guilty of perjury, and he receives a five-year sentence. Shortly thereafter, Wisconsin’s Senator Joseph McCarthy launches a crusade to weed out Communists in government; he claims that over 200 active members of the Communist Party serve in the State Department. Although experts later debunk this particular charge, it sets off a virtual witch hunt, with McCarthy leading the attack. Emboldened by the publicity, in March McCarthy claims, with little, if any, concrete evidence to back him, that Owen Lattimore, a ranking State Department employee, is a top Soviet agent. Lattimore chooses to contest the Wisconsin senator, and eventually a Senate committee accuses Lattimore of perjury in 1952. His career in tatters, he will continue to protest his innocence, and by 1955 all charges will subsequently be dropped, but the entire affair illustrates the poisonous atmosphere pervading Washington at that time. If anti-Communist hearings were not enough, Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver opens hearings on organized crime in May. They will continue on into 1951, but testimony reveals a far-flung web of gambling, prostitution, corruption, theft, and murder overseen by various organizations linked in one way or another. Cameras televise the proceedings, bringing the reality of crime into people’s living rooms and making Kefauver an overnight celebrity. On June 25, North Korean forces sweep into South Korea, the first large-scale open warfare the world has seen since World War II. The United Nations immediately


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responds and dispatches a multinational force led by the United States. This action results in a protracted campaign that will endure until the two sides agree on an armistice in 1953. Because of the conflict, the country again mobilizes. Congress grants Truman power to regulate prices and wages and to impose rationing if needed. In December, just five years after the end of World War II, he declares a state of national emergency, a move that allows the country to again get on a war footing. But with anti-Communist hysteria rising, the government also squelches dissent, a menacing development for the start of a new decade that will come to be called the Age of Anxiety. The new decade will witness the astronomical rise of television as an entertainment medium. New shows abound in 1950, such as The Colgate Comedy Hour, Your Show of Shows, The Jack Benny Program, What’s My Line? and many others. An exodus of famous stars from radio to television exacerbates network radio’s decline. NBC retaliates for the loss of Jack Benny and Edgar Bergen (along with Charlie McCarthy) by producing The Big Show, a celebrity-studded variety extravaganza that premieres on Sunday evenings. Hosted by Tallulah Bankhead with musical support from Meredith Willson, it costs a fortune. The network sees little return for its money and throws in the towel in 1952, the end of significant variety programming on radio. The year also sees movie attendance drop to approximately 60 million admissions a week—still a sizable figure but down 30 million from 1945, a decline of one-third. And the losses will continue throughout the 1950s. Television simply eclipses fine motion pictures such as All About Eve, Sunset Boulevard, Born Yesterday, The Asphalt Jungle, and Harvey. The studios search for technological improvements to lure people back into theaters, but nothing outstanding appears for 1950. Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls and Irving Berlin’s Call Me Madam brighten Broadway, as the legitimate theater follows an independent path, seemingly removed from the threat of television. In literature, tradition continues its reign. The leading best seller, Henry Morton Robinson’s The Cardinal, falls squarely into the religious category so favored by readers throughout the 1940s. Patti Page warbles The Tennessee Waltz, the year’s No. 1 tune, followed closely by the Weavers’ interpretation of “Goodnight Irene.” Such conservative tunes, steeped in tradition, give no hint about the momentous changes facing popular music. A noisy revolution, rhythm ’n’ blues and rock ’n’ roll, waits in the wings and will soon dominate.


Selected Resources

Bibliographical Note As the Internet’s World Wide Web (WWW) grows in thoroughness, accuracy, and ever-easier access, the number of available resource tools will continue to increase. In any work that stresses popular culture such as this encyclopedia, familiarity with invaluable sources like the Historical New York Times (www.proquest.com); the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com); the Internet Broadway Database (www.ibdb.com); and, for music, the bands-composers-lyricists database (www.info.net/index.html) is necessary. Access to the National Archives and the Library of Congress, two treasure troves of information on just about anything connected with the United States, can be found at www.archives.gov/ and www.loc.gov/index.html. Monetary conversions are simple, thanks to the Federal Reserve. Go to www.minneapolisfed.org/research/data/us/calc/ and the site will do the calculations. YouTube (www.youtube.com/) can unearth countless visual images. Literally hundreds of other Web sites will provide information about the 1940s, and readers are encouraged to avail themselves of these research tools.

Audio American Musical Theater. 6 LPs. Smithsonian Collection of Recordings. R 036. Compiled 1989. American Popular Song. 7 LPs. Smithsonian Collection of Recordings. R 031. Compiled 1984. American War Songs, 1933–1947: Hitler and Hell. CD. Trikont 0280. Compiled 1971. An Anthology of Big Band Swing, 1930–1955. 2 CDs. Decca GRD 2–629. Compiled 1993. As Time Goes By: World War II Songs. 3 CDs. Dynamic Entertainment DYN 3508. Compiled 2004. The Best Female Big Band Singers of the 40’s. CD. Chestnut CN 1007. Compiled 2005. Classic Songs from World War II. 2 CDs. Kiss the Boys Goodbye, BMG 66702, and Always in My Heart, BMG 66703. Compiled 1995.

801


802

| Selected Resources Copland, Aaron. Copland Conducts Copland: Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, Others. CD. CBS Records Masterworks MK 42430. 1988. The Country Hits of the 40s. ASV Living Era CD AJA 5418. Compiled 2002. 40’s Hits: Country. CD. Curb Records D2–77346. Compiled 1990. Forty #1 Hits of the Forties. 2 CDs. Collector’s Choice Music CCM 307. Compiled 2002. G.I. Favorites: The Tunes of World War II. 2 CDs. Sounds of Yesteryear DSOY685. Compiled 2005. G.I. Jukebox. CD. St. Clair Entertainment VNL14512. Compiled 2005. G.I. Jukebox: Songs from World War II. CD. Hip-O HIPD-40142. Compiled 1998. Great Vocalists of the Big Band Era. 6 LPs. Columbia Special Products, CBS Records. Compiled 1978. The Great War Songs. 3 CDs. REDX Entertainment RXBOX31063. Compiled 2006. The Jazz Singers. 5 CDs. Smithsonian Collection of Recordings. RD 113. Compiled 1998. Jones, Spike. (Not) Your Standard Spike Jones Collection. 3 CDs. Collectors’ Choice Music CCM329–2. Compiled 2005. Mercer, Johnny. The Johnny Mercer Songbook. Vol. 1, Blues in the Night; Vol. 2, Trav’lin’ Light; Vol. 3, Too Marvelous for Words. 3CDs. Verve 314555 268–2; 314555 402–2; 314557 140–2. Compiled 1997–1998. Popular Songs, 1946 (various artists). Hit Parade 1946. CD. Dynamic DYN2907. Compiled 2007. Popular Songs, 1947 (various artists). Hit Parade 1947. CD. Dynamic DYN2908. Compiled 2007. Popular Songs, 1948 (various artists). Hit Parade 1948. CD. Dynamic DYN2909. Compiled 2007. Popular Songs, 1949 (various artists). Hit Parade 1949. CD. Dynamic DYN2910. Compiled 2007. Popular Songs, 1950 (various artists). Hit Parade 1950. CD. Dynamic DYN2911. Compiled 2007. The Road to Nashville: A History of Country Music, 1926–1953. 3 CDs. Sanctuary Records IGOTCD 2559. Compiled 2004. Rock ’n’ Roll Roots: The Country Influence. CD. Smith and Co. SCCD 1103. Compiled 2005. Rock ’n’ Roll Roots: The R&B Influence. CD. Smith and Co. SCCD 1105. Compiled 2005. Star Spangled Rhythm: Voices of Broadway and Hollywood. 4 CDs. Smithsonian Collection of Recordings. RD 111. Compiled 1997. Swing Out to Victory! Songs of WWII. 4 CDs. Intersound Records 1482. Compiled 2005. V-Discs (various artists). G.I. Jukebox Jive. CD. Giant Steps GIST 002. Compiled 2003. V-Discs (various artists). Swinging on a V Disc. 4 CDs. Jasmine Records JASBox 16–4. Compiled 2005. V-E Day: Musical Memories. CD. ASV Living Era AJA5163. Compiled 1995. The Victory Collection: The Smithsonian Remembers When America Went to War. 3 CDs. Smithsonian Collection of Recordings. RD 106–1, -2, -3. DMC3–1243. Compiled 1995. The War Years. 4 CDs. Intersound CDC 1046–1049. Compiled 2003. Wills, Bob. Take Me Back to Tulsa: Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. 4 CDs. Proper Records Box 32. Compiled 2001. The Words and Music of World War II. 2 CDs. Columbia/Legacy C2K 48516. Compiled 2001.

Print and Electronic Ad Council. www.adcouncil.org Advertising. John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History. Duke University Libraries. www.library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess Ahlstrom, Sydney E. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972. Alinder, Mary Street. Ansel Adams, an Autobiography. Boston: Little, Brown, 1985. Alinder, Mary Street, and Andrea Gray Stillman, eds. Ansel Adams: Letters and Images, 1916–1984. Boston: Little, Brown, 1988. All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Sean Lahman’s Baseball Archive. www.baseball1. com/bb-data/bbd-wb1.html; www.aagpbl.org/league/history.cfm


Selected Resources | 803 Allen, Bob, ed. The Blackwell Guide to Recorded Country Music. Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1994. Allen, Frederick. Secret Formula: How Brilliant Marketing and Relentless Salesmanship Made Coca-Cola the Best-Known Product in the World. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. Allen, Frederick Lewis. The Big Change. New York: Bantam Books, 1952. Alvarez, Luis. The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Ammer, Christine. Unsung: A History of Women in American Music. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980. Ancelet, Barry Jean, Jay D. Edwards, and Glen Pitre. Cajun Country. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991. Andrews, Wayne. Architecture, Ambition and Americans: A Social History of American Architecture. New York: Free Press, 1964. Anobile, Richard J., ed. Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca. New York: Flare Books, 1974. Antfarm [Chip Lord]. Automerica: A Trip Down U.S. Highways from World War II to the Future. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1976. Armour, Richard. Give Me Liberty. New York: World Publishing, 1969. Armstrong, Dan, and Dustin Black. The Book of SPAM. New York: Atria Books, 2007. Armstrong, Tom, Wayne Craven, Norman Feder, Barbara Haskell, Rosalind E. Krauss, Daniel Robbins, and Marcia Tucker. 200 Years of American Sculpture. New York: David R. Godine, 1976. Ashe, Arthur R., Jr. A Hard Road to Glory: A History of the African-American Athlete, 1919–1945. 3 vols. New York: Warner Books, 1988. Atkinson, Brooks, and Albert Hirschfeld. The Lively Years: 1920–1973. New York: Association Press, 1973. Atomic Bomb. www.atomicarchive.com/historymenu.shtml Atwan, Robert, Donald McQuade, and John L. Wright. Edsels, Luckies, and Frigidaires: Advertising the American Way. New York: Dell, 1979. Austin, James C., ed. Popular Literature in America. Bowling Green, OH: Popular Press, 1972. Austin, Joe, and Michael Nevin Willard, eds. Generations of Youth: Youth Culture and History in Twentieth-Century America. New York: New York University Press, 1998. Awmiller, Craig. This House on Fire: The Story of the Blues. New York: Franklin Watts, 1996. B Westerns. “The Old Corral.” www.b-westerns.com/ Baeder, John. Gas, Food, and Lodging. New York: Abbeville Press, 1982. Bailey, Robert Lee. An Examination of Prime Time Network Television Special Programs, 1948– 1966. New York: Arno Press, 1979. Bak, Richard. Joe Louis: The Great Black Hope. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998. Baker, William J. Sports in the Western World. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1982. Barbour, Alan G. A Thousand and One Delights. New York: Collier Books, 1971. Barfield, Ray. Listening to Radio, 1920–1950. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996. Barger, Harold. The Transportation Industries, 1889–1946. New York: Arno Press, 1951. Barnouw, Erik. A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Vol. 1, A Tower in Babel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966. ———. A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Vol. 2, The Golden Web. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. ———. A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Vol. 3, The Image Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. ———. Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. Barr, Andrew. Drink: A Social History of America. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1999. Barrier, Michael. Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Barrier, Michael, and Martin Williams, eds. A Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981.


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| Selected Resources Barson, Michael, and Steven Heller. Red Scared! The Commie Menace in Propaganda and Popular Culture. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2001. Baseball Songs. “Bibliography of Published Baseball Music and Songs in the Collections of the Music Division of the Library of Congress.” Performing Arts Reading Room. www.loc.gov/rr/ perform/baseballbib.html Basie, Count. www.rutgers.edu/ijs/cb/index.html Basinger, Jeanine. A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930–1960. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Bastin, Bruce. Red River Blues: The Blues Tradition in the Southeast. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986. Batchelor, Bob, ed. Basketball in America: From the Playgrounds to Jordan’s Game and Beyond. New York: Haworth Press, 2005. Batterberry, Michael, and Ariane Batterberry. Mirror Mirror: A Social History of Fashion. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977. Baxandall, Rosalyn, and Elizabeth Ewen. Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened. New York: Basic Books, 2000. Baxter, John. Science Fiction in the Cinema. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1970. Bayor, Ronald H. Race and Ethnicity in America: A Concise History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Becker, Stephen. Comic Art in America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959. Belasco, Warren James. Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910–1945. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979. Bellafaire, Judith A. The Women’s Army Corps: A Commemoration of World War II Service. www. history.army.mil/brochures/wac.htm Benny, Jack, and Joan Benny. Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story. New York: Warner Books, 1990. Benton, Mike. The Comic Book in America: An Illustrated History. Dallas: Taylor, 1989. Berger, Michael L. The Automobile in American History and Culture: A Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. Bergreen, Lawrence. As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin. New York: Viking Penguin, 1990. Berle, Milton, with Haskell Frankel. Milton Berle: An Autobiography. New York: Delacorte Press, 1974. Bernstein, Adam. “Iva Toguri D’Aquino, 90: ‘Tokyo Rose’ in WWII.” www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/ar2006092700133.html Bernstein, Mark, and Alex Lubertuzzi. World War II on the Air. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2003. Berry, I. William. The Great North American Ski Book. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1982. Beschloss, Michael. The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman, and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941–1945. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Big Bands Database Plus. www.nfo.net/index.html Bilstein, Roger E. Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984. Biracree, Tom. The Country Music Almanac. New York: Prentice Hall, 1993. Black Gospel Music. www.arts.state.ms.us/crossroads/music/gospel/mu2_text.html Blackbeard, Bill, and Martin Williams. The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977. Bliss, Edward, Jr. In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow, 1938–1961. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967. Block, Geoffrey. Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from Show Boat to Sondheim. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Bloom, John, and Michael Nevin Willard, eds. Sports Matters: Race, Recreation, and Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Bloom, Ken. The American Songbook: The Singers, the Songwriters, and the Songs. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2005.


Selected Resources | 805 Bloom, Lynn Z. Doctor Spock: Biography of a Conservative Radical. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972. Blum, Daniel. A Pictorial History of the American Theatre, 1860–1970. New York: Crown, 1969. Bogart, Leo. The Age of Television. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1956. Bogdanov, Vladimir, Chris Woodstra, and Stephen Thomas Erlewine, eds. All-Music Guide to Country. San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2003. Bonn, Thomas L. Under Cover: An Illustrated History of American Mass Market Paperbacks. New York: Penguin Books, 1982. Bookmiller, Kirsten Nakjavani. The United Nations. New York: Chelsea House, 2008. Bordman, Gerald. American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama, 1930–1969. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. ———. Jerome Kern: His Life and Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Bowles, Jerry. A Thousand Sundays: The Story of the Ed Sullivan Show. New York: Putnam, 1980. Bowling. www.bowl.com/recordsstats/ Boyd, Jean A. We’re the Light Crust Doughboys from Burris Mill. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003. ———. “Western Swing: Working-Class Southwestern Jazz of the 1930s and 1940s.” In Perspectives on American Music, 1900–1950, ed. Michael Saffle, 193–214. New York: Garland, 2000. Boyd, William. “Hoppy” and the Bar-20 Ranch-Hands: Unofficial Web Site of William “Hopalong Cassidy” Boyd. www.hoppyandthebar-20.50megs.com Boyer, Paul. By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985. Bridwell, E. Nelson, ed. Superman: From the Thirties to the Seventies. New York: Bonanza Books, 1971. “Brief History of World War Two Advertising Campaigns War Loans and Bonds,” Duke University Libraries. www.library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess/warbonds.html Broekel, Ray. The Great American Candy Bar Book. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982. Brooks, Lou. Skate Crazy. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2003. Brooks, Tim. The Complete Directory to Prime Time TV Stars: 1946–Present. New York: Ballantine Books, 1987. Brooks, Tim, and Earle Marsh. The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, 1946– Present. New York: Ballantine Books, 1988. Brown, Bob, and Eleanor Parker. Culinary Americana: 1860–1960. New York: Roving Eye Press, 1961. Brown, Curtis F. Star-Spangled Kitsch. New York: Universe Books, 1975. Brown, Les. Les Brown’s Encyclopedia of Television. 2nd ed. New York: Zoetrope, 1982. Buechner, Thomas S. Norman Rockwell: Artist and Illustrator. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1970. Buscombe, Edward, ed. The BFI Companion to the Western. New York: Atheneum, 1988. Cajun Music. www.npmusic.org Calder, Alexander. Calder: An Autobiography with Pictures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966. Cameron, Ian, and Douglas Pye, eds. The Book of Westerns. New York: Continuum, 1996. Cameron, Kenneth M. America on Film: Hollywood and American History. New York: Continuum, 1997. Canteen Spirit. PBS Home Video, 2006. Cantor, Muriel G., and Suzanne Pingree. The Soap Opera. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1983. Caplow, Theodore, Louis Hicks, and Ben J. Wattenberg. The First Measured Century: An Illustrated Guide to Trends in America, 1900–2000. Washington, DC: AEI Press, 2001. Capra, Frank. The Name above the Title. New York: Macmillan, 1971. Carlson, Reynold E., Theodore R. Deppe, and Janet R. MacLean. Recreation in American Life. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1963. Carringer, Robert L. The Making of Citizen Kane. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Carruth, Gordon, ed. The Encyclopedia of American Facts and Dates. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1959. Carter, Ernestine. The Changing World of Fashion: 1900 to the Present. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1977.


806

| Selected Resources Casdorph, Paul D. Let the Good Times Roll: Life at Home in America During World War II. New York: Paragon House, 1989. Cassiday, Bruce. Dinah! A Biography of Dinah Shore. New York: Franklin Watts, 1979. Castleman, Harry, and Walter J. Podrazik. Watching TV: Four Decades of American Television. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982. Chanin, Michael. Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and Its Effects on Music. New York: Verso, 1995. Chipman, John H. Index to Top-Hit Tunes, 1900–1950. Boston: Bruce Humphries, 1962. Church Attendance. New York Times, January 18, 1942; January 3, 1946; December 18, 1946. Churchill, Allen. Remember When. New York: Golden Press, 1967. Civil Air Patrol. www.caphistory.org/ Civitello, Linda. Cuisine and Culture: A History of Food and People. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2008. Clancy, Deirdre. Costume Since 1945: Couture, Street Style, and Anti-Fashion. New York: Drama Publishers, 1996. Clarens, Carlos. An Illustrated History of the Horror Film. New York: Capricorn Books, 1967. ———. Crime Movies: From Griffith to the Godfather and Beyond. New York: W. W. Norton, 1980. Clark, Clifford Edward, Jr. The American Home: 1800–1960. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986. Clark, Eric. The Want Makers: Inside the World of Advertising. New York: Penguin Books, 1988. Clark, Jerome. The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon from the Beginning. 2 vols. Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1998. Clarke, Alison J. Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999. Clarke, Donald. All or Nothing at All: A Life of Frank Sinatra. www.donaldclarkemusicbox.com/ ———. The Rise and Fall of Popular Music. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Cleary, David Powers. Great American Brands. New York: Fairchild, 1981. Cline, William C. In the Nick of Time: Motion Picture Sound Serials. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1984. Clothing Regulations and Availability: New York Times, January 5, 1941; April 9, 1942; October 18, 1942; August 1, 1942; February 2, 1945; November 25, 1946. Cloud, Stanley, and Lynne Olson. The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front lines of Broadcast Journalism. New York: Mariner Books, 1997. Cochran, David. America Noir: Underground Writers and Filmmakers of the Postwar Era. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000. Coffey, Frank, and Joseph Layden. America on Wheels: The First 100 Years, 1896–1996. Los Angeles: General Publishing Group, 1998. Cogley, John. Report on Blacklisting I: The Movies. New York: Fund for the Republic, 1956. ———. Report on Blacklisting II: Radio-Television. New York: Fund for the Republic, 1956. Cohen, Norm. Folk Music: A Regional Exploration. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. Cohen, Stan. V for Victory: America’s Home Front During World War II. Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories, 1991. Coin Collecting. www.collecting-us-coins.com/pennies-cents/penny-cent.html Collins, Max Allan. The History of Mystery. Portland, OR: Collectors Press, 2001. Colman, Penny. Rosie the Riveter: Women Working on the Home Front in World War II. New York: Crown, 1995. Composers and Lyricists Database. www.nfo.net/cal/ Considine, David M. The Cinema of Adolescence. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1985. Cooke, Alistair. The American Home Front: 1941–1942. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007. Coontz, Stephanie. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. New York: Basic Books, 1992.


Selected Resources | 807 Cooper, Martin, ed. The New Oxford History of Music: The Modern Age, 1890–1960. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. Copley-Graves, Lynn. Figure Skating History: The Evolution of Dance on Ice. Columbus, OH: Platero Press, 1992. Coppage, Keith. Roller Derby to Roller Jam. Santa Rosa, CA: Squarebooks, 1999. Corkin, Stanley. Cowboys as Cold Warriors: The Western and U.S. History. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004. Corn, Joseph J., and Brian Horrigan. Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future. New York: Summit Books, 1984. Costantino, Maria. Men’s Fashion in the Twentieth Century, from Frock Coats to Intelligent Fibres. New York: Drama Publishers by Design Press, 1997. Country Music Magazine Editors. The Comprehensive Country Music Encyclopedia. New York: Random House, 1994. Couperie, Pierre, and Maurice C. Horn. A History of the Comic Strip. New York: Crown, 1968. Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. More Work for Mother. New York: Basic Books, 1983. Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Sitcoms. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007. ———. Music Radio: The Great Performers and Programs of the 1920s through the Early 1960s. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005. Cox, Stephen, and John Loftin. The Abbott and Costello Story: Sixty Years of “Who’s on First?” Nashville: Cumberland House, 1997. Crawford, Richard. America’s Musical Life. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Cripps, Thomas. Making Movies Black: The Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Crosley Cars. www.crosleyautoclub.com Cross, Gary. Kids’ Stuff: Toys and the World of American Childhood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Cross, Mary, ed. A Century of American Icons: 100 Products and Slogans from the 20th-Century Consumer Culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. Crowther, Bruce, and Mike Pinfold. Singing Jazz: The Singers and Their Styles. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 1997. Crumpacker, Bunny. The Old-Time Brand-Name Cookbook. New York: Smithmark, 1998. ———. The Old-Time Brand-Name Desserts. New York: Abradale Press, 1999. Csida, Joseph, and June Bundy Csida. American Entertainment: A Unique History of Popular Show Business. New York: Watson-Guptil, 1978. Culinary Institute of America. www.ciachef.edu/admissions/about/history.asp Cullen, Jim. The Art of Democracy: A Concise History of Popular Culture in the United States. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1996. Cummings, Richard Osborn. The American and His Food. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941. Cusic, Don. Discovering Country Music. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008. Dahl, Linda. Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Dale, Alan. Comedy Is a Man in Trouble: Slapstick in American Movies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Dale, Rodney. The World of Jazz. New York: Elsevier-Dutton, 1980. Dance, Stanley. The World of Count Basie. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1980. ———. The World of Duke Ellington. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970. Daniels, Les. Comix: A History of Comic Books in America. New York: Bonanza Books, 1971. Davies, David R. The Postwar Decline of American Newspapers, 1945–1965. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006. Davis, Francis. The History of the Blues. New York: Hyperion, 1995. Davis, Ronald L. A History of Music in American Life. Vol. 3, The Modern Era, 1920–Present. Malabar, FL: Robert Krieger, 1981.


808

| Selected Resources Davis, Stephen. Say Kids! What Time Is It? Notes from the Peanut Gallery. Boston: Little, Brown, 1981. Davis, Thomas J. Race Relations in the United States, 1940–1960. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008. Dawidoff, Nicholas. In the Country of Country: People and Places in American Music. New York: Pantheon Books, 1997. Dawkins, Marvin P., and Graham Charles Kinloch. African American Golfers during the Jim Crow Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000. Delamater, Jerome. Dance in the Hollywood Musical. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1981. DeCillis, Tom. Toms Zone: The inComplete Jukebox. www.tomszone.com DeLong, Thomas A. The Mighty Music Box: The Golden Age of Musical Radio. Los Angeles: Amber Crest Books, 1980. ———. Radio Stars. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1996. Denisoff, R. Serge. Great Day Coming: Folk Music and the American Left. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971. Denisoff, R. Serge, and Richard A. Peterson, eds. The Sounds of Social Change. New York: Rand McNally, 1972. Denison, Edward F. Trends in American Economic Growth, 1929–1982. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1985. Derks, Scott, ed. The Value of a Dollar: Prices and Incomes in the United States, 1860–1999. Lakeville, CT: Grey House, 1999. ———. Working Americans, 1880–1999. Vol. 1, The Working Class. Lakeville, CT: Grey House, 2000. ———. Working Americans, 1880–1999. Vol. 2, The Middle Class. Lakeville, CT: Grey House, 2001. Dettelbach, Cynthia Golumb. In the Driver’s Seat: The Automobile in American Literature and Popular Culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976. DeVeaux, Scott. The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Dick, Bernard F. The Star-Spangled Screen: The American World War II Film. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985. Dickson, Paul. The Worth Book of Softball: A Celebration of America’s True National Pastime. New York: Facts on File, 1994. Diggins, John Patrick. The Proud Decades: America in War and Peace, 1941–1960. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988. Disney Archives. www.disney.go.com/vault/archives/today.html Dixon, Wheeler Winston, ed. American Cinema of the 1940s: Themes and Variations. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006. Dodds, John W. Everyday Life in Twentieth Century America. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1965. Doherty, Thomas. Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Dooley, Dennis, and Gary Engle, eds. Superman at Fifty! The Persistence of a Legend! Cleveland: Octavia, 1987. Dorner, Jane. Fashion in the Forties and Fifties. New York: Arlington House, 1975. Doss, Erika, ed. Looking at LIFE Magazine. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001. Douglas, George H. All Aboard! The Railroad in American Life. New York: Paragon House, 1992. Douglas, Susan J. Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. Drexler, Arthur, and Greta Daniel. Introduction to Twentieth Century Design from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1959. Dryer, Sherman H. Radio in Wartime. New York: Greenberg, 1942. Duany, Andres, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck. Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. New York: North Point Press, 2000.


Selected Resources | 809 Dulles, Foster Rhea. A History of Recreation: America Learns to Play. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1965. Dunkleberger, A. C. King of Country Music: The Life Story of Roy Acuff. Nashville: Williams Printing, 1971. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. ———. Tune in Yesterday: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, 1925–1976. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976. Durgnat, Raymond. The Crazy Mirror: Hollywood Comedy and the American Image. New York: Dell, 1969. Duus, Masayo. The Life of Isamu Noguchi: Journey without Borders. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. ———. Tokyo Rose: Orphan of the Pacific. New York: Kodansha Amer, 1979. Eames, John Douglas. The MGM Story: The Complete History of Fifty Roaring Years. New York: Crown, 1975. Eberly, Philip K. Music in the Air: America’s Changing Tastes in Popular Music, 1920–1980. New York: Hastings House, 1982. “Education.” New York Times, November 5, 1940; November 9, 1941; August 23, 1942; July 18, 1943; November 5, 1943; July 30, 1944; March 20, 1950. Edwards, Bob. Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2004. Eells, George. The Life That Late He Led: A Biography of Cole Porter. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1967. Eisinger, Chester E., ed. The 1940’s: Profile of a Nation in Crisis. New York: Doubleday, 1969. Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project. www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/ Elliott, William Y. Television’s Impact on American Culture. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1956. Emde, Heiner. Conquerors of the Air: The Evolution of Aircraft, 1903–1945. New York: Bonanza Books, 1968. Emery, Edwin. The Press and America: An Interpretive History of Journalism. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1962. Engelhardt, Tom. The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation. New York: Basic Books, 1995. Engen, Alan K. For the Love of Skiing: A Visual History. Salt Lake City: Gibbs-Smith, 1998. Ennis, Philip H. The Seventh Stream: The Emergence of Rocknroll in American Popular Music. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1992. Epstein, Daniel Mark. Nat King Cole. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. Epstein, Edward J. News from Nowhere: Television and the News. New York: Random House, 1973. Erenberg, Lewis A., and Susan E. Hirsch, eds. The War in American Culture: Society and Consciousness during World War II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Ermoyan, Arpi. Famous American Illustrators. New York: Society of Illustrators, 1997. “Ernie Pyle.” Indiana University School of Journalism. www. journalism.indiana.edu/resources/erniepyle/ Evangelista, Nick. “At Sword’s Point: Swashbuckling in the Movies.” www.classicalfencing.com/ articles/swash.php Ewen, David. All the Years of American Popular Music: A Comprehensive History. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1977. ———. Great Men of American Popular Song. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1970. ———. A Journey to Greatness: The Life and Music of George Gershwin. New York: Henry Holt, 1956. ———. The Life and Death of Tin Pan Alley: The Golden Age of American Popular Music. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1964. ———. Panorama of American Popular Music. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1957. Ewen, Stuart. Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.


810

| Selected Resources Ewen, Stuart, and Elizabeth Ewen. Channels of Desire: Mass Images and the Shaping of American Consciousness. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982. Faith, William Robert. Bob Hope: A Life in Comedy. New York: Da Capo Press, 2003. Fass, Paula S. Outside In: Minorities and the Transformation of American Education. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Feather, Leonard. Jazz. Los Angeles: Trend Books, 1957. ———. The New Edition of the Encyclopedia of Jazz. New York: Bonanza Books, 1962. Feather, Leonard, and Ira Gitler. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Fehrman, Cherie, and Kenneth Fehrman. Postwar Interior Design: 1945–1960. New York: Reinhold, 1987. Felsen, Henry Gregor. Hot Rod. www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/MSC/ToMsC650/MsC601/felsen. html Fenin, George N., and William K. Everson. The Western: From Silents to Cinerama. New York: Orion Press, 1962. Fernett, Gene. Hollywood’s Poverty Row, 1930–1950. Satellite Beach, FL: Coral Reef Publications, 1973. Ferris, William, and Mary L. Hart, eds. Folk Music and Modern Sound. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1982. Fielding, Raymond. The American Newsreel, 1911–1967. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972. Finch, Christopher. The Art of Walt Disney: From Mickey Mouse to the Magic Kingdoms. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1975. ———. Norman Rockwell’s America. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1975. Flexner, Stuart Berg. Listening to America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982. Flink, James J. The Car Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1975. Flusser, Alan. Clothes and the Man: The Principles of Fine Men’s Dress. New York: Villard Books, 1989. “Flying Fortress Fashions.” Life, May 17, 1943. Foertsch, Jacqueline. American Culture in the 1940s. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. Foley, Karen Sue. Television and the Red Menace. New York: Praeger, 1985. Foley, Mary Mix. The American House. New York: Harper & Row, 1980. Football. New York Times, December 31, 1941; July 28, 1942. Ford, James L. C. Magazines for Millions: The Story of Specialized Publications. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969. Forte, Allen. Listening to Classic American Popular Songs [includes CD]. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. Forty, Adrian. Objects of Desire: Design and Society since 1750. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1986. Fowles, Jib. Advertising and Popular Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996. Fox, Stephen. The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators. New York: William Morrow, 1984. Frank, Rusty E. Tap! The Greatest Tap Dance Stars and Their Stories, 1900–1955. New York: Da Capo Press, 1990. Fraser, Antonia. A History of Toys. New York: Delacorte Press, 1966. Fraser, James. The American Billboard: 100 Years. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991. Fred Waring. www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/waring.html Freedland, Michael. All the Way: A Biography of Frank Sinatra. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. ———. Jerome Kern. London: Robson Books, 1978. Freeman, Larry, ed. Yesterday’s Games. Watkins Glen, NY: Century House, 1970. Friedwald, Will. Jazz Singing: America’s Great Voices. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996. ———. Stardust Melodies: A Biography of Twelve of America’s Most Popular Songs. New York: Pantheon Books, 2002. Fuller, M. Williams. Axis Sally. Santa Barbara, CA: Paradise West, 2004.


Selected Resources | 811 Funderburg, Anne Cooper. Chocolate, Strawberry, and Vanilla: A History of American Ice Cream. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Press, 1995. Furia, Philip. The Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America’s Great Lyricists. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. ———. Skylark: The Life and Times of Johnny Mercer. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003. Furia, Philip, and Michael Lasser. America’s Songs: The Stories behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley. New York: Routledge, 2006. Fyne, Robert. The Hollywood Propaganda of World War II. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1997. Gabler, Neal. Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. New York: Vintage, 2007. Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin Press, 2005. Galbraith, John Kenneth. The Affluent Society. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958. Gallo, Max. The Poster in History. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972. Gans, Herbert J. The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Garraty, John A., and Mark C. Carnes, eds. American National Biography. 24 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Gehring, Wes D., ed. Handbook of American Film Genres. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988. Gelber, Steven M. Hobbies: Leisure and the Culture of Work in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Getz, Leonard. From Broadway to the Bowery: A History and Filmography of the Dead End Kids, the Little Tough Guys, the East Side Kids, and the Bowery Boys Films, with Cast Biographies. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006. Gianokos, Larry James. Television Drama Series Programming: A Comprehensive Chronicle, 1947— 1959. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1980. Giddins, Gary. Bing Crosby, a Pocketful of Dreams: The Early Years, 1903–1940. Boston: Little, Brown, 2001. ———. Visions of Jazz: The First Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Gies, Joseph. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Portrait of a President. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971. Gifford, Denis. The Great Cartoon Stars: A Who’s Who. London: Jupiter Books, 1979. Gilbert, Gorman, and Robert E. Samuels. The Taxicab: An Urban Transportation Survivor. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Gilbert, James. Another Chance: Postwar America, 1945–1968. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981. Gillett, Charlie. The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983. Ginell, Cary. The Decca Hillbilly Discography, 1927–1945. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989. Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Giordano, Ralph G. Fun and Games in Twentieth-Century America: A Historical Guide to Leisure. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003. Gleason, Ralph J., ed. Jam Session: An Anthology of Jazz. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1958. Glickman, Lawrence B., ed. Consumer Society in American History: A Reader. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Godfrey, Donald C., and Frederic A. Leigh, eds. Historical Dictionary of American Radio. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998. Godson, Susan H. Serving Proudly: A History of Women in the U.S. Navy. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001. Golden Age Radio. 101 Old Radio Commercials. CD. Plymouth, MN: Metacom, n.d. Golden, Claudia. “America’s Graduation from High School: The Evolution and Spread of Secondary Schooling in the Twentieth Century.” Journal of Economic History 58 (2) (June 1998): 345–374. Goldstein, Carolyn M. Do It Yourself: Home Improvement in 20th Century America. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998. Golenbock, Peter. American Zoom: Stock Car Racing—from the Dirt Tracks to Daytona. New York: Macmillan, 1993.


812

| Selected Resources Goodman, Jack, ed. While You Were Gone: A Report on Wartime Life in the United States. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1946. Goodrich, Lloyd. Three Centuries of American Art. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966. Goodrum, Charles, and Helen Dalrymple. Advertising in America: The First 200 Years. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990. Goodwin, Doris Kearns. No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Gordon, Linda, and Gary Y. Okihiro, eds. Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Gordon, Lois, and Alan Gordon. American Chronicle: Six Decades in American Life, 1920–1980. New York: Atheneum, 1987. Gorman, Robert F. Great Debates at the United Nations: An Encyclopedia of Fifty Key Issues, 1945– 2000. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishers, 2001. Gossett, Sue. The Films and Career of Audie Murphy. Madison, NC: Empire, 1996. Gottesman, Ronald, ed. Focus on Citizen Kane. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971. Gottfried, Martin. Broadway Musicals. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1979. Gottlieb, William P. The Golden Age of Jazz. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979. Goulart, Ron. Cheap Thrills: An Informal History of the Pulp Magazines. New York: Arlington House, 1972. ———. Over 50 Years of American Comic Books. Lincolnwood, IL: Mallard Press, 1991. Goulart, Ron, ed. The Encyclopedia of American Comics. New York: Facts on File, 1990. Gourse, Leslie. Louis’ Children: American Jazz Singers. New York: Quill, 1984. ———. Unforgettable: The Life and Mystique of Nat King Cole. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. Gow, Gordon. Suspense in the Cinema. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1968. Graebner, William S. The Age of Doubt: American Thought and Culture in the 1940s. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Graham, Otis L., Jr., and Meghan Robinson Wander, eds. Franklin D. Roosevelt: His Life and Times, an Encyclopedic View. New York: G. K. Hall, 1985. Grams, Martin, Jr. The Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show: An Episode Guide and Brief History. www.old-time.com/otrlogs2/charlie_mg.html Green, Benny. Let’s Face the Music: The Golden Age of Popular Song. London: Pavilion Books, 1989. Green, Douglas B. Singing in the Saddle: The History of the Singing Cowboy. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002. Green, Jonathan. American Photography: A Critical History, 1945 to the Present. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1984. Green, Samuel M. American Art: A Historical Survey. New York: Ronald Press Company, 1966. Green, Stanley. Broadway Musicals: Show by Show. 4th ed. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard, 1994. ———. Encyclopaedia of the Musical Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Greene, Bob. Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen. New York: William Morrow, 2003. Greenfield, Jeff. Television: The First Fifty Years. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977. Greenfield, Thomas Allen. Radio: A Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989. Griffith, Richard, and Arthur Mayer. The Movies. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970. Grimes, William. Straight Up or on the Rocks: A Cultural History of American Drink. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. Grimsley, Will. Golf: Its History, People and Events. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1966. Grossman, Gary. Superman: From Serial to Cereal. New York: Popular Library, 1977. Grout, Donald Jay, and Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988. Gruber, Frank. The Pulp Jungle. Los Angeles: Sherbourne Press, 1967. Grudens, Richard. Bing Crosby: Crooner of the Century. Stony Brook, NY: Celebrity Profiles, 2004. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Selected Resources | 813 ———. Chattanooga Choo Choo: The Life and Times of the World Famous Glenn Miller Orchestra. Stony Brook, NY: Celebrity Profiles, 2004. ———. The Spirit of Bob Hope: One Hundred Years, One Million Laughs. Stony Brook, NY: Celebrity Profiles, 2004. Guttman, Allen. A Whole New Ball Game: An Interpretation of American Sports. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. Haas, Robert Bartlett, ed. William Grant Still and the Fusion of Cultures in American Music. Flagstaff, AZ: Master-Player Library, 1972. Hackett, Alice Payne, and James Henry Burke. 80 Years of Best Sellers, 1895–1975. New York: R. R. Bowker, 1977. Hajduk, John C. “Tin Pan Alley on the March: Popular Music, World War II, and the Quest for a Great War Song.” Popular Music & Society (December 2003): 497–512. Hamm, Charles. Yesterdays: Popular Song in America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1979. Handlin, David P. American Architecture. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1985. Hangen, Tona J. Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Harper, Dale P. “Mildred Elizabeth Sisk: American-Born Axis Sally.” www.historynet.com/mildredelizabeth-sisk-american-born-axis-sally.htm Harris, Andrew B. Broadway Theatre. New York: Routledge, 1994. Harris, Mark Jonathan, Franklin D. Mitchell, and Steven J. Schechter. The Homefront: America during World War II. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1984. Harris, Michael David. Always on Sundays: Ed Sullivan, an Inside View. New York: Meredith, 1980. Harris, Neil. Cultural Excursions: Marketing Appetites and Cultural Tastes in Modern America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Harris, Rex. Jazz. New York: Penguin Books, 1952. Hart, Dorothy. Thou Swell, Thou Witty: The Life and Lyrics of Lorenz Hart. New York: Harper & Row, 1976. Hart, James D. The Popular Book: A History of America’s Literary Taste. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961. Harvey, James. Romantic Comedy in Hollywood. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998. Haskell, Barbara. The American Century: Art and Culture, 1900–1950. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. Hawes, William. American Television Drama: The Experimental Years. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1986. Hayden, Delores. Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820–2000. New York: Vintage Books, 2004. Hayes, Joanne Lamb. Grandma’s Wartime Kitchen: World War II and the Way We Cooked. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. Hayes, Richard K. Kate Smith: A Biography, with a Discography, Filmography, and List of Stage Appearances. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1995. Heide, Robert, and John Gilman. Dime-Store Dream Parade: Popular Culture, 1925–1955. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979. ———. Home Front America: Popular Culture of the World War II Era. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1995. Heidenry, John. Theirs Was the Kingdom: Lila and DeWitt Wallace and the Story of the Reader’s Digest. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. Heil, Alan L., Jr. Voice of America: A History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Heisman Trophy (Football). www.heisman.com/index.php Heller, Steven, and Louise Fili. Cover Story: The Art o f American Magazine Covers, 1900–1950. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1996. Henderson, Amy, and Dwight Blocker Bowers. Red, Hot and Blue: A Smithsonian Salute to the American Musical. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996. Henderson, Mary C. Broadway Ballyhoo. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989. Henderson, Sally, and Robert Landau. Billboard Art. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1981. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

814

| Selected Resources Hennessey, Maureen Hart, and Anne Knutson. Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999. Hentoff, Nat, and Albert McCarthy, eds. Jazz. New York: Grove Press, 1959. Hentoff, Nat, and Nat Shapiro, eds. The Jazz Makers. New York: Grove Press, 1957. Hess, Alan. Ranch House. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2004. Hiesinger, Kathryn. Design since 1945. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1983. Higby, Mary Jane. Tune in Tomorrow. New York: Cowles Education, 1968. Higgs, Robert J. Sport: A Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982. Higham, Charles. The Art of the American Film, 1900–1971. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1973. Higham, Charles, and Joel Greenberg. Hollywood in the Forties. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1968. Hill, Daniel Delis. Advertising to the American Woman, 1900–1999. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2002. Hilliard, Robert L., and Michael C. Keith. The Broadcast Century: A Biography of American Broadcasting. Boston: Focal Press, 1992. Hillier, Bevis. Austerity Binge: The Decorative Arts of the Forties and Fifties. London: Cassell & Collier Macmillan, 1975. ———. The Style of the Century: 1900–1980. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1983. Hilmes, Michele. Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922–1952. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Hilmes, Michele, and Jason Loviglio, eds. Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio. Florence, KY: Routledge, 2002. Hine, Thomas. Populuxe. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986. ———. The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager. New York: Avon Books, 1999. Hirshorn, Paul, and Steven Izenour. White Towers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979. “Historical and Future Population Trends.” www.npg.org/popfacts.htm Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. Washington, DC: Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975. Hixon, Walter L. Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Hobbs, Robert Carleton, and Gail Levin. Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1978. Hoffmann, Frank W., and William G. Bailey. Fashion and Merchandising Fads. New York: Haworth Press, 1994. ———. Sports and Recreation Fads. New York: Haworth Press, 1991. Holm, Maj. Gen. Jeanne. Women in the Military: An Unfinished Revolution. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1992. Holme, Bryan. The Art of Advertising. London: Peerage Books, 1985. Hooker, Richard J. Food and Drink in America: A History. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1981. Hoopes, Roy. Americans Remember the Home Front: An Oral Narrative. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1977. Hoopes, Roy. When the Stars Went to War: Hollywood and World War II. New York: Random House, 1994. Hopalong Cassidy. www.hopalong.com/home.asp Horn, Maurice. Women in the Comics. New York: Chelsea House, 1977. Horn, Maurice, ed. 100 Years of American Newspaper Comics. New York: Gramercy Books, 1996. ———. The World Encyclopedia of Comics. New York: Chelsea House, 1976. Hornung, Clarence P., and Fridolf Johnson. 200 Years of American Graphic Art. New York: George Braziller, 1976. Horowitz, Joseph. Classical Music in America: A History of Its Rise and Fall. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005. Horse Racing and World War II. New York Times, December 22, 1940; May, 25, 1942; January 1, 1943; December 26, 1943; August 6, 1946. Hot Rod. www.hotrod.com/index.html


Selected Resources | 815 Houston, Penelope. The Contemporary Cinema, 1945–1963. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1963. Howard Johnson’s. www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Howard-Johnson-InternationalInc-Company-History.html “How to Use Your War Ration Book.” Genealogy Today. U.S. Government Printing Office #16– 26649–1. www.genealogytoday.com/guide/ww2/book_one_intro.html Hughes, Robert. American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. Hulick, Diana Emery, and Joseph Marshall. Photography: 1900 to the Present. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998. Hurley, Andrew. Diners, Bowling Alleys, and Trailer Parks: Chasing the American Dream in Postwar Consumer Culture. New York: Basic Books, 2001. Huss, Roy, and T. J. Huss. Focus on the Horror Film. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972. Hyland, William G. Richard Rodgers. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. ———. The Song Is Ended: Songwriters and American Music, 1900–1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Inge, Thomas M., ed. Concise Histories of American Popular Culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982. ———. Handbook of American Popular Culture. 3 vols. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981. Inness, Sherrie A. Dinner Roles: American Women and Culinary Culture. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2001. ———, ed. Delinquents and Debutantes: Twentieth-Century American Girls’ Culture. New York: New York University Press, 1998. Internet Movie Database. www.imdb.com/ Jablonski, Edward. Gershwin. New York: Doubleday, 1987. Jablonski, Edward, and Lawrence D. Stewart. The Gershwin Years. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958. Jackson, Carlton. Hounds of the Road: A History of the Greyhound Bus Company. Bowling Green, OH: Popular Press, 1984. Jackson, Kathy Merlock. Images of Children in American Film. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1986. Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Jakle, John A. The Tourist: Travel in Twentieth-Century North America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985. Jakle, John A., and Keith A Sculle. The Gas Station in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. ———. Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Jakle, John A., Keith A. Sculle, and Jefferson S. Rogers. The Motel in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Jandl, H. Ward. Yesterday’s Houses of Tomorrow: Innovative American Homes, 1850–1950. Washington, DC: Preservation Press, 1991. Janello, Amy, and Brennon Jones. The American Magazine. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991. Jasen, David A. Tin Pan Alley: The Composers, the Songs, the Performers and Their Times. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1988. Jeffries, John W. Wartime America: The World War II Home Front. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996. Jenkins, Virginia Scott. The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994. Jennings, Jan, ed. Roadside America: The Automobile in Design and Culture. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1990. Jewell, Derek. Duke: A Portrait of Duke Ellington. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977. Johnson, Judy. “History of Paper Dolls.” Original Paper Doll Artists Guild. www.opdag.com/history. html


816

| Selected Resources Johnson, Paul. Modern Times: From the Twenties to the Nineties. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Jonas, Susan, and Marilyn Nissenson. Going, Going, Gone: Vanishing Americana. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1994. Jones, Gerard. Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book. New York: Basic Books, 2004. Jones, James H. Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. Jones, John Bush. Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theatre. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2003. ———. The Songs that Fought the War: Popular Music and the Home Front, 1939–1945. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2006. Jones, Landon V. Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1980. Jones, Max, and John Chilton. Louis: The Louis Armstrong Story. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971. Jones, R. L. Great American Stuff. Nashville: Cumberland House, 1997. Judd, Denis. Posters of World War II. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973. Jukebox History. www.nationaljukebox.com Jukebox History. www.radiomuseum.org/forum/jukebox_history_of_coin-operated_phonographs.html Jungk, Robert. Brighter Than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of Atomic Scientists. Translated by James Cleugh. New York: Grove Press, 1958. Juvenile Delinquency. New York Times, September 22, 1942; December 28, 1942; May 21, 1943; July 18, 1943, September 22, 1943; September 25, 1943; August 6, 1944; December 12, 1945, February 10, 1946; April 28, 1947; July 20, 1947; April 24, 1949. www.proquest.com Kael, Pauline. The Citizen Kane Book. New York: Limelight Editions, 1988. Kaledin, Eugenia. Daily Life in the United States, 1940–1959: Shifting Worlds. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. Kallir, Jane. Grandma Moses: The Artist behind the Myth. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1982. Kammen, Michael. American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the 20th Century. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. Kaplan, Donald, and Alan Bellink. Classic Diners of the Northeast. Boston: Faber & Faber, 1980. Karolyi, Otto. Modern American Music: From Charles Ives to the Minimalists. Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996. Kashima, Tetsuden, and the United States Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996. Kaye, Marvin. A Toy Is Born. New York: Stein & Day, 1973. Keats, John. The Crack in the Picture Window. Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1956. Keepnews, Orrin, and Bill Grauer, Jr. A Pictorial History of Jazz. New York: Crown, 1955. Kennedy, David M. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Kennedy, Michael. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Kenney, William Howland. Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory, 1890–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Kenrick, John. Musicals 101: The Cyber Encyclopedia of Musical Theatre, TV and Film. www. musicals101.com/ Kern-Foxworth, Marilyn. Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Rastus: Blacks in Advertising, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994. Keyhoe, Donald E. Flying Saucers from Outer Space. New York: Henry Holt, 1953. Kidwell, Brush, and Valerie Steele, eds. Men and Women: Dressing the Part. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989. Kidwell, Claudia B., and Margaret C. Christman. Suiting Everyone: The Democratization of Clothing in America. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1974. Kimball, Robert, and Linda Emmet, eds. The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.


Selected Resources | 817 Kingsbury, Paul, and Alan Axelrod, eds. Country: The Music and the Musicians. New York: Abbeville Press, 1988. Kinkle, Roger D. The Complete Encyclopedia of Popular Music and Jazz, 1900–1950. 4 vols. Westport, CT: Arlington House, 1974. Kinsey Book Reviews. Time, January 5, 1948; April 12, 1948; August 24, 1953. www.time.com/ time/magazine/article; New York Times, January 4, 1948; August 30, 1953; September 24, 1953. Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. www.kinseyinstitute.org/ Kirby, Edward M., and Jack W. Harris. Star-Spangled Radio. Chicago: Ziff-Davis, 1948. Kirchner, Bill, ed. The Oxford Companion to Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Kirkendall, Richard S. The United States, 1929–1945: Years of Crisis and Change. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974. Kitahara, Teruhisa. Yesterday’s Toys. Vol. 1, Celluloid Dolls, Clowns, and Animals. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1989. ———. Yesterday’s Toys. Vol. 2, Planes, Trains, Boats, and Cars. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1989. ———. Yesterday’s Toys. Vol. 3, Robots, Spaceships, and Monsters. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1989. Kizer, George A. “Federal Aid to Education: 1945–1963.” History of Education Quarterly 10 (1) (Spring 1970): 84–102. Klapp, Orrin E. Heroes, Villains, and Fools: The Changing American Character. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1961. Kleeblatt, Norman L., ed. Action/Abstraction: Pollock, De Kooning, and American Art, 1940–1976. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Kleinfelder, Rita Lang. When We Were Young: A Baby-Boomer Yearbook. New York: Prentice Hall General Reference, 1993. Knapp, Wilfred. A History of War and Peace: 1939–1965. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. Knight, Arthur. The Liveliest Art. New York: New American Library, 1957. Knight, Edgar W. Education in the United States. 3rd ed. Boston: Ginn, 1951. Knott, Robert. American Abstract Art of the 1930s and 1940s. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998. Koppes, Clayton R., and Gregory D. Black. Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies. New York: Free Press, 1987. Kostof, Spiro. America by Design. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Kouwenhoven, John A. The Beer Can by the Highway. New York: Doubleday, 1961. Kozol, Wendy. Life’s America: Family and Nation in Postwar Photojournalism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. Kraus, Richard. Leisure in a Changing America: Trends and Issues for the 21st Century. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000. ———. Recreation and Leisure in Modern Society. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971. Krivine, John. Jukebox Saturday Night. London: New English Library, 1977. Kushner, David. Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America’s Legendary Suburb. New York: Walker, 2009. Lackman, Ron. The Encyclopedia of American Radio. New York: Checkmark Books, 2000. Laforse, Martin W., and James A. Drake. Popular Culture and American Life. Chicago: NelsonHall, 1981. Lahue, Kalton C. Continued Next Week: A History of the Moving Picture Serial. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964. Landau, Robert, and James Phillippi. Airstream. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1984. Lange, Jeffrey J. Smile When You Call Me a Hillbilly: Country Music’s Struggle for Respectability, 1939–1954. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004. Lanza, Joseph. The Cocktail: The Influence of Spirits on the American Psyche. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Larka, Robert. Television’s Private Eye: An Examination of Twenty Years of Programming of a Particular Genre, 1949–1969. New York: Arno Press, 1979. Larrabee, Eric, and Rolf Meyersohn, eds. Mass Leisure. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958.


818

| Selected Resources Lash, Joseph P. Eleanor: The Years Alone. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972. ———. Eleanor and Franklin. W. W. Norton, 1971. Lax, Roger, and Frederick Smith. The Great Song Thesaurus, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Lears, Jackson. Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America. New York: Basic Books, 1994. Leming, Barbara. Orson Welles: A Biography. New York: Viking Penguin, 1985. Lender, Mark Edward, and James Kirby Martin. Drinking in America: A History. New York: Free Press, 1987. Leonard, Neil. Jazz and the White American: The Acceptance of a New Art Form. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. Leonard, Thomas C. News for All: America’s Coming-of-Age with the Press. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Lesser, Robert. A Celebration of Comic Art and Memorabilia. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1975. Lesy, Michael. Long Time Coming: A Photographic Portrait of America, 1935–1943. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002. Leuchtenburg, William E. A Troubled Feast: American Society since 1945. Boston: Little, Brown, 1979. Levenstein, Harvey. Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Levin, Martin, ed. Hollywood and the Great Fan Magazines. New York: Arbor House, 1970. Levinson, David, and Karen Christensen, eds. Encyclopedia of World Sport. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Lewine, Harris. Good-Bye to All That. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970. Lewine, Richard, and Afred Simon. Songs of the American Theater. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1973. Lewis, David L., and Laurence Goldstein, eds. The Automobile and American Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983. Lewis, Lucinda. Roadside America: The Automobile and the American Dream. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000. Ley, Sandra. Fashion for Everyone: The Story of Ready-to-Wear, 1870’s–1970’s. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975. Lhamon, W. T., Jr. Deliberate Speed: The Origins of Cultural Style in the American 1950s. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990. Libby, Bill. Great American Race Drivers. New York: Cowles Book Company, 1970. Lichty, Lawrence W., and Malachi C. Topping. American Broadcasting: A Source Book on the History of Radio and Television. New York: Hastings House, 1975. Liebs, Chester H. Main Street to Miracle Mile: American Roadside Architecture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985. Liesner, Thelma. Economic Statistics, 1900–1983. New York: Facts on File, 1985. LIFE Editors. “LIFE”: The Second Decade, 1946–1955. Boston: Little, Brown, 1984. “Life Presents a Review of Fall Fashions.” Life, May 22, 1947. Lifshey, Earl. The Housewares Story. Chicago: National Housewares Manufacturers Association, 1973. Lingeman, Richard. Don’t You Know There’s a War On? The American Home Front, 1941–1945. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1970. Lippa, Mario, and David Newton. The World of Small Ads. Secaucus, NJ: Chartwell Books, 1979. Long, Robert Emmet. Broadway, the Golden Years: Jerome Robbins and the Great ChoreographerDirectors, 1940 to the Present. New York: Continuum, 2001. Longley, Marjorie, Louis Silverstein, and Samuel A. Tower. America’s Taste: 1851–1959. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960. Louis, Joe, fights. Joe Louis vs. Billy Conn; Ringside Remembers; Joe Louis vs. Abe Simon II; Joe Louis vs. Jersey Joe Walcott Fight 2KO (Round 11); The Negro Soldier (1944); Joe Louis vs. Sky High Lee. www.youtube.com Love, Brian. Play the Game. Los Angeles: Reed Books, 1978. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Selected Resources | 819 Lovegren, Sylvia. Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads. New York: Macmillan, 1995. Lowenthal, Leo. Literature, Popular Culture, and Society. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1961. Lucie-Smith, Edward. American Realism. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994. ———. Visual Arts in the Twentieth Century. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996. Luke, Tim. American Insider’s Guide to Toys and Games. London: Octopus Publishing Group, 2002. Lupoff, Dick, and Don Thompson, eds. All in Color for a Dime. New York: Arlington House, 1970. Lupton, Ellen. Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from Home to Office. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993. Lynch, Vincent, and Bill Henkin. Jukebox: The Golden Age. Berkeley, CA: Lancaster-Miller, 1981. Lynes, Russell. The Lively Audience: A Social History of the Visual and Performing Arts in America, 1890–1950. New York: Harper & Row, 1985. Macdonald, Dwight. Against the American Grain. New York: Vintage Books, 1965. MacDonald, J. Fred. Don’t Touch That Dial! Radio Programming in American Life, 1920–1960. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1979. ———. Who Shot the Sheriff? The Rise and Fall of the Television Western. New York: Praeger, 1987. Maddocks, Melvin. The Great Liners. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1978. Magee, Jeffrey. The Uncrowned King of Swing: Fletcher Henderson and Big Band Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Maguire, James. Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan. New York: Billboard Books, 2006. Maier, Thomas. Dr. Spock: An American Life. New York: Basic Books, 2003. Malone, Bill C. Country Music, U.S.A. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968. Malone, Bill C., and Judith McCulloh, eds. Stars of Country Music: Uncle Dave Macon to Johnny Rodriguez. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975. Maltby, Richard. Passing Parade: A History of Popular Culture in the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Maltin, Leonard. The Great American Broadcast: A Celebration of Radio’s Golden Age. New York: Dutton, 1997. ———. Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980. Manchester, William. American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964. Boston: Little, Brown, 1978. ———. The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932–1972. 2 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974. Mandel, Richard D. Sport: A Cultural History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. Mandelbaum, Howard, and Eric Myers. Forties Screen Style: A Celebration of High Pastiche in Hollywood. Santa Monica, CA: Hennessey + Ingalls, 1989. Manvell, Roger. Films and the Second World War. New York: Dell, 1974. March of Time, The. www.xroads.virginia.edu Marcus, Stanley E. David Smith: The Sculptor and His Work. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983. Margolies, John. Home Away from Home: Motels in America. Boston: Little, Brown, 1995. ———. Pump and Circumstance: Glory Days of the Gas Station. Boston: Little, Brown, 1993. Margolies, John, and Emily Gwathmey. Ticket to Paradise: American Movie Theaters and How We Had Fun. Boston: Little, Brown, 1991. Mariani, John. America Eats Out. New York: William Morrow, 1991. Markin, Rom J. The Supermarket: An Analysis of Growth, Development, and Change. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1963. Marschall, Richard. America’s Great Comic-Strip Artists. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1997. Marshall, William. Baseball’s Pivotal Era, 1945–1951. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. Marter, Joan M. Alexander Calder. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Martin, Richard. American Ingenuity: Sportswear, 1930s–1970s. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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| Selected Resources Marum, Andrew, and Frank Parise. Follies and Foibles: A View of 20th Century Fads. New York: Facts on File, 1984. Marx, Samuel, and Jan Clayton. Rodgers and Hart: Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976. Marzulla, Elena, ed. Pictorial Treasury of U.S. Stamps. Omaha, NE: Collectors Institute, 1974. Mathy, Francois. American Realism: A Pictorial Survey from the Early Eighteenth Century to the 1970’s. New York: Skira, 1978. Mattfeld, Julius. Variety Music Cavalcade. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1962. Matthew-Walker, Robert. Broadway to Hollywood: The Musical and the Cinema. London: Sanctuary, 1996. Mauldin, Bill. www.lambiek.net/artists/m/mauldin_bill.htm ———. Up Front. New York: Henry Holt, 1945. May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York: Basic Books, 1988. May, Larry, ed. Recasting American Culture and Politics in the Age of the Cold War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Mayo, James M. The American Grocery Store: The Business Evolution of an Architectural Space. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993. Mazo, Joseph H. Prime Movers: The Makers of Modern Dance in America. New York: William Morrow, 1977. McAlester, Virginia, and Lee McAlester. A Field Guide to American Houses. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984. McArdle, Kenneth, ed. A Cavalcade of Collier’s. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1959. McArthur, Colin. Underworld U.S.A. New York: Viking Press, 1972. McBride, Joseph. Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success. New York: Touchstone Books, 1992. McBrien, William. Cole Porter: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. McCallum, John D. College Basketball, USA: Since 1892. New York: Stein & Day, 1978. McClellan, Lawrence, Jr. The Later Swing Era, 1942 to 1955. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. McClintock, Inez, and Marshall McClintock. Toys in America. Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1961. McClure, Rusty, with David Stern and Michael A. Banks. Crosley. Cincinnati: Clerisy Press, 2008. McCullough, David. Truman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. McCutcheon, Marc. The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life from Prohibition through World War II. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1995. McDermott, Catherine. Book of 20th Century Design. New York: Overlook Press, 1998. McDonagh, Don. Martha Graham: A Biography. New York: Praeger, 1973. McGee, Mark Thomas. The J.D. Films: Juvenile Delinquency in the Movies. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1982. McLaughlin, Robert L., and Sally E. Perry. We’ll Always Have the Movies: American Cinema During World War II. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006. McNeil, Alex. Total Television: The Comprehensive Guide to Programming from 1948 to the Present. 4th ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1996. McShane, Clay. Down the Asphalt Path: The Automobile and the American City. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. McVeigh, Stephen. The American Western. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Meeker, David. Jazz in the Movies. New York: Da Capo Press, 1981. Meikle, Jeffrey L. Design in the USA. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Mergen, Bernard. Play and Playthings: A Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982. Meyer, Susan E. America’s Great Illustrators. New York: Galahad Books, 1978. Meyerowitz, Joanne. Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. Millard, Andre. America on Record: A History of Recorded Sound. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Millard, Bob. Country Music: 70 Years of America’s Favorite Music. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Selected Resources | 821 Miller, Char. “In the Sweat of Our Brow: Citizenship in American Domestic Practice during WWII— Victory Gardens.” Journal of American Culture 26 (September 2003): 395–409. Miller, Chuck. “V-Discs.” www.chuckthewriter.com/vdisc.html Miller, William H. The Last Atlantic Liners. London: Conway Maritime Press, 1985. Mintz, Steven, and Susan Kellogg. Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life. New York: Free Press, 1988. Mirtle, Jack. Thank You, Music Lovers: A Bio-Discography of Spike Jones, 1941–1965. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986. Modell, John. Into One’s Own: From Youth to Adulthood in the United States, 1920–1975. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Moline, Mary. Norman Rockwell Encyclopedia: A Chronological Catalog of the Artist’s Work, 1910– 1978. Indianapolis: Curtis, 1979. Moon, Krystyn. “There’s No Yellow in the Red, White, and Blue: The Creation of Anti- Japanese Music during World War II.” Pacific Historical Review (August 2003): 333–352. Morath, Max. The NPR Curious Listener’s Guide to Popular Standards. New York: Berkley, 2002. Mordden, Ethan. Better Foot Forward: The History of American Musical Theatre. New York: Grossman, 1976. Morden, Bettie J. The Women’s Army Corps, 1945–1978. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1992. Morella, Joe, Edward Z. Epstein, and John Griggs. The Films of World War II. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1973. Morgan, Robert P. Twentieth-Century Music: A History of Musical Styles in Modern Europe and America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991. Morthland, John. The Best of Country Music. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984. Morton, Brian. “Swing Time for Hitler.” Nation 277 (7) (2003): 33–38. Motorsports. New York Times, January 12, 1941; August 16, 1941; December 21, 1941; May 9, 1942; July 4, 1942; August 18, 1946; June 29, 1947; June 13, 1948; October 3, 1948; January 9, 1949; September 18, 1949. Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism, a History: 1690–1960. 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan, 1962. Mott-Smith, Geoffrey. Guide to Popular Hobbies. Chicago: J. G. Ferguson, 1954. Muller, Jurgen. Movies of the 40s. Cologne, Germany: Taschen, 2005. Mulvey, Kate, and Melissa Richards. Decades of Beauty: The Changing Image of Women, 1890s– 1990s. New York: Checkmark Books, 1998. Murphy, Audie. To Hell and Back. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1949. Murray, Albert. Stomping the Blues. New York: Da Capo Press, 1976. Murray, Alice Yang. Historical Memories of the Japanese American Internment and the Struggle for Redress. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008. Mustazza, Leonard. Frank Sinatra and Popular Culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. ———. Ol’ Blue Eyes: A Frank Sinatra Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. Nachman, Gerald. Raised on Radio. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Naremore, James. More Than Night: Film Noir and Its Contexts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. National College Football Champions. www.infoplease.com/ipsa/A0908943.html National Nutrition Campaign. New York Times, March 24, 1941; September 4, 1941; December 8, 1941; April 5, 1942; May 25, 1942; January 11, 1943; October 3, 1943; November 19, 1943; February 5, 1944; October 6, 1944; May 13, 1945; June 1, 1947; August 20, 1947. NFL Championship Games: A History. www.4nflpicks.com/NFL%20Championship%20Games.html National Hot Rod Association. www.nhra.net/aboutnhr/history.html National Museum of Roller Skating. www.rollerskatingmuseum.com National Opinion Research Center. The Effects of Television on College Football Attendance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951. National Roller Derby Hall of Fame. www.rollerderbyhalloffame.com Needham, Richard. Ski: Fifty Years in North America. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987. © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

822

| Selected Resources Neuberg, Victor. The Popular Press Companion to Popular Literature. Bowling Green, OH: Popular Press, 1983. Neumeyer, Martin H., and Esther S. Neumeyer. Leisure and Recreation. New York: Ronald Press, 1958. Nevins, Francis M. Bar-20: The Life of Clarence E. Mulford, Creator of Hopalong Cassidy. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1993. Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography from 1839 to the Present. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982. Newhouse, Thomas. The Beat Generation and the Popular Novel in the United States, 1945–1970. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000. Nobel Laureates. www.nobelprize.org/ Nourmand, Tony, and Graham Marsh, eds. Film Posters of the 40s: The Essential Movies of the Decade. New York: Taschen, 2005. Nye, Russel. The Unembarrassed Muse: The Popular Arts in America. New York: Dial Press, 1970. O’Brien, Ed, and Scott Savers. Sinatra: The Man and His Music: The Recording Artistry of Francis Albert Sinatra, 1939–1992. Austin, TX: TSD Press, 1992. O’Brien, Kenneth Paul, and Lynn Hudson Parsons, eds. The Home-Front War: World War II and American Society. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995. O’Brien, Richard. The Story of American Toys: From the Puritans to the Present. New York: Abbeville Press, 1990. Oermann, Robert K. America’s Music: The Roots of Country. Atlanta, GA: Turner, 1996. ———. A Century of Country: An Illustrated History of Country Music. New York: TV Books, 1999. “Old-Time Radio Commercials: Selling Stuff during the Golden Age of Radio.” www.old-time.com/ commercials/ Olian, JoAnne. Everyday Fashions of the Forties as Pictured in Sears Catalogs. New York: Dover, 1992. Oliphant, Dave. The Early Swing Era: 1930 to 1941. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. Oliver, Paul, ed. The Blackwell Guide to Recorded Blues. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Oliver, Valerie Burnham. Fashion and Costume in American Popular Culture: A Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996. Olmstead, Clifton E. History of Religion in the United States. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1960. Olney, Ross R. Great Moment in Speed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1970. Orbanes, Philip E. Monopoly: The World’s Most Famous Game and How It Got That Way. New York: Da Capo Press, 2007. Osgerby, Bill. Playboys in Paradise: Masculinity, Youth and Leisure-Style in Modern America. New York: Berg, 2001. O’Sullivan, Judith. The Great American Comic Strip: One Hundred Years of Cartoon Art. Boston: Little, Brown, 1990. Osur, Alan M. Blacks in the Army Air Forces during World War II: The Problem of Race Relations. Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1977. Oswald, Greg. Race and Ethnic Relations in Today’s America. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001. “Our Proud History: 67 Years of the USO.” www.uso.org/whoweare/ourproudhistory/ Packard, William. Evangelism in America: From Tents to TV. New York: Paragon House, 1988. Palladino, Grace. Teenagers: An American History. New York: Basic Books, 1996. Panati, Charles. Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. ———. Panati’s Parade of Fads, Follies, and Manias. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Passman, Arnold. The Deejays. New York: Macmillan, 1971. Patterson, James T. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Patton, Phil. Open Road: A Celebration of the American Highway. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986. Pautz, Michelle. “The Decline in Average Weekly Cinema Attendance, 1930–2000.” www.org.elon. edu/IPE/Pautz2.pdf


Selected Resources | 823 Peacock, John. Fashion Sourcebooks: The 1940s. London: Thames and Hudson, 1998. Peatman, John Gray. “Radio and Popular Music.” In Radio Research 1942–1943, eds. Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Frank N. Stanton, 335–393. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1944. Persico, Joseph E. Edward R. Murrow: An American Original. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988. Pendergrast, Mark. For God, Country, and Coca-Cola: The Unauthorized History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993. ———. Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Pepsi-Cola Canteens. New York Times, March 1, 1943; July 22, 1943; July 22, 1944. Perret, Geoffrey. Old Soldiers Never Die: The Life of Douglas MacArthur. Holbrook, MA: Adams Media, 1996. Peterson, Richard A. Creating Country Music: Fabricating the Authentic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Peterson, Robert W. Pigskin: The Early Years of Pro Football. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Peterson, Theodore. Magazines in the Twentieth Century. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1964. Peyser, Joan. The Memory of All That: The Life of George Gershwin. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. “Phil Spitalny’s All Girl Orchestra.” www.cornslaw.net/allgirlorchestra/index.html Phillips, Ann-Victoria. The Complete Book of Roller Skating. New York: Workman, 1979. Phillips, Lisa. High Styles: Twentieth-Century American Design. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1985. Phillips, Lisa, ed. The American Century: Art and Culture, 1950–2000. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. Photography. New York Times, February 22, 1942. Pillsbury, Richard. From Boarding House to Bistro: The American Restaurant Then and Now. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990. Pitz, Henry. 200 Years of American Illustration. New York: Random House, 1977. Placksin, Sally. American Women in Jazz: 1900 to the Present. New York: Wideview Books, 1982. Pluto, Terry. Tall Tales: The Glory Years of the NBA, in the Words of the Men Who Played, Coached, and Built Pro Basketball. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. Poppe, Fred C. The 100 Greatest Corporate and Industrial Ads. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1983. Potter, David M. People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954. Prendergast, Roy M. Film Music: A Neglected Art. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977. Puddington, Arch. Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003. Pulos, Arthur J. The American Design Adventure, 1940–1975. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988. Pyle, Ernie. Brave Men. New York: Henry Holt, 1944. Quart, Leonard, and Albert Auster. American Film and Society since 1945. New York: Praeger, 1991. Quinlan, Sterling. Inside ABC: American Broadcasting Company’s Rise to Power. New York: Hastings House, 1979. Rader, Benjamin G. American Sports: From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Spectators. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1983. ———. Baseball: A History of America’s Game. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Radway, Janice A. A Feeling for Books: The Book-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Rae, John B. The American Automobile: A Brief History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965. ———. The Road and the Car in American Life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971. Raeburn, Michael, and Alan Kendall, eds. Music in the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.


824

| Selected Resources Ramsey, Frederic, Jr., and Charles Edward Smith, eds. Jazzmen. New York: Harvest Books, 1939. Randel, William Peirce. The Evolution of American Taste. New York: Crown, 1978. Rapaport, Brooke Kamin, and Kevin L. Stayton. Vital Forms: American Art and Design in the Atomic Age, 1940–1960. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001. Rautiolla-Williams Suzanne. “The Howdy Doody Show.” Museum of Broadcast Communications. www.museum.tv/archives/etv/H/htmlH/howdydoodys/howdydoodys.htm Read, Oliver, and Walter L. Welch. From Tin Foil to Stereo: Evolution of the Phonograph. Indianapolis: Howard W. Sams, 1959. Reed, Walt, and Roger Reed. The Illustrator in America, 1880–1980. New York: Society of Illustrators, 1984. Reiser, J. W. “Whatever Happened to Channel 1?” www.tech-notes.tv/ Reisman, David, Reuel Denny, and Nathan Glazer. The Lonely Crowd. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1953. Remmers, Hermann. The American Teenager. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957. Reynolds, Nancy, and Malcolm McCormick. No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. Rice, Diana. “Random Notes for Travelers” and “News and Notes from the Field of Travel.” New York Times, February 4, 1940, through December 25, 1949. Richards, Jeffrey. Swordsmen of the Screen. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977. Rideout, Walter B. The Radical Novel in the United States: 1900–1954. New York: Hill and Wang, 1956. Roberts, Randy, and James Olson. Winning Is the Only Thing: Sports in America Since 1945. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Robertson, William H. P. The History of Thoroughbred Racing in America. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1964. Robinson, Frank M., and Lawrence Davidson. Pulp Culture: The Art of Fiction Magazines. Portland, OR: Collectors Press, 2007. Robinson, Jerry. The Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974. Robson, Eddie. Film Noir. London: Virgin Books, 2005. Rogers, Donald I. Since You Went Away. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1973. Roller Derby Events. New York Times, September 11, 1936; August 18, 1946; November 28, 1948. Rollin, Lucy. Twentieth-Century Teen Culture by the Decades: A Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. Rome, Adam. The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Roosevelt, Eleanor. The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958. Rose, Lisle. The Cold War Comes to Main Street. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999. Rose, Mark H. Interstate: Express Highway Politics, 1941–1956. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1979. Rose, Mark H., Bruce E. Seely, and Paul F. Barrett. The Best Transportation System in the World: Railroads, Trucks, Airlines, and American Public Policy in the Twentieth Century. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006. Rosen, Jody. “White Christmas”: The Story of an American Song. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2002. Rosenberg, Bernard, and David Manning White, eds. Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1957. Rosenberg, Deena. Fascinating Rhythm: The Collaboration of George and Ira Gershwin. New York: Penguin Books, 1991. Rosenberg, Neil V. Bluegrass: A History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985. Rosenblum, Naomi. The Story of Women Photographers. New York: Abbeville Press, 1994. Rosie the Riveter (2 parts). www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo5KOCMDe68; www.youtube.com/watch ?v=fl WvxW4HgwQ


Selected Resources | 825 Ross, Alex. The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Roth, Leland M. A Concise History of American Architecture. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. Rottman, Gordon L. Fubar: Soldier Slang of World War II. London: Osprey, 2007. Rowsome, Frank, Jr. They Laughed When I Sat Down. New York: Bonanza Books, 1959. Ruppelt, Edward J. The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. New York: Doubleday, 1956. Sadie, Stanley, ed. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 29 vols. New York: Macmillan, 2001. Saffle, Michael, ed. Perspectives on American Music, 1900–1950. New York: Garland, 2000. Sammons, Jeffrey T. Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Samuel, Lawrence R. Brought to You By: Postwar Television Advertising and the American Dream. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001. ———. Pledging Allegiance: American Identity and the Bond Drives of World War II. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997. Sanjek, Russell. Pennies from Heaven: The American Popular Music Business in the Twentieth Century. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996. Sann, Paul. Fads, Follies and Delusions of the American People. New York: Crown, 1967. Santelli, Robert, and Emily Davidson, eds. Hard Travelin’: The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1999. Santelli, Robert, Holly George-Warren, and Jim Brown, eds. American Roots Music. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001. Sarf, Wayne Michael. God Bless You, Buffalo Bill: A Layman’s Guide to History and the Western Film. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1983. Savage, Jon. Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture. New York: Viking Penguin, 2007. Savage, William W., Jr. Comic Books and America, 1945–1954. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990. Sayre, Nora. Running Time: Films of the Cold War. New York: Dial Press, 1982. Scanlan, Tom. The Joy of Jazz: The Swing Era, 1935–1947. Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 1996. Scaruffi, Piero. “A Brief History of Rhythm and Blues.” www.scaruffi.com/history/rb.html Schaub, Thomas Hill. American Fiction in the Cold War. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. Schicke, C. A. Revolution in Sound: A Biography of the Recording Industry. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974. Schickel, Richard, with George Perry. Bogie: A Celebration of the Life and Films of Humphrey Bogart. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006. ———. The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney. New York: Avon, 1968. Schnurnberger, Lynn. Let There Be Clothes. New York: Workman, 1991. Schoenberg, Loren. Count Basie: The Columbia Years. Booklet accompanying Count Basie and His Orchestra: America’s #1 Band! Columbia/Legacy C4K 87110. 4 CDs. 2003. ———. The NPR Curious Listener’s Guide to Jazz. New York: Berkley, 2002. Schremp, Gerry. Kitchen Culture: Fifty Years of Food Fads. New York: Pharos Books, 1991. Schreuders, Piet. Paperbacks, U.S.A.: A Graphic History, 1939–1959. San Diego: Blue Dolphin Enterprises, 1981. Schrum, Kelly. Some Wore Bobby Sox: The Emergence of Teenage Girls’ Culture, 1920–1945. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Schudson, Michael. Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers. New York: Basic Books, 1978. Schuller, Gunther. The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Sears, Richard S. V-Discs: A History and a Discography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980. Sears, Stephen W. The American Heritage History of the Automobile in America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977.


826

| Selected Resources Segrave, Kerry. Drive-In Theaters: A History from Their Inception. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1992. Seidman, David. All Gone: Things That Aren’t There Anymore. Los Angeles: General Publishing Group, 1998. Seldin, Joseph L. The Golden Fleece: Selling the Good Life to Americans. New York: Macmillan, 1963. Selective Service Act of 1940. New York Times, June 11, 1940; September 17 through October 15, 1940; April 1, 1947. www.proquest.com Service Flags. www.serviceflags.com/about.htm Settel, Irving. A Pictorial History of Radio. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1967. Settel, Irving, and William Laas. A Pictorial History of Television. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1969. Sexton, Richard. American Style: Classic Product Design from Airstream to Zippo. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1987. Shanken, Andrew M. 194X: Architecture, Planning, and Consumer Culture on the American Home Front. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Shapiro, Jerome F. Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imagination on Film. New York: Routledge, 2002. Shapiro, Mitchell E. Radio Network Prime Time Programming, 1926–1967. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002. Shapiro, Nat. “William ‘Count’ Basie.” In The Jazz Makers, eds. Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, 232– 242. New York: Grove Press, 1957. Sheppard, W. Anthony. “An Exotic Enemy: Anti-Japanese Musical Propaganda in World War II Hollywood.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 54 (2) (Summer 2001): 303–357. Shestack, Melvin. The Country Music Encyclopedia. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1974. Shindler, Colin. Hollywood Goes to War: Films and American Society, 1939–1952. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979. Sibley, Katherine A. S. Red Spies in America: Stolen Secrets and the Dawn of the Cold War. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004. Sickels, Robert. American Popular Culture through History: The 1940s. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. Silver, Alain, and Elizabeth Ward. Film Noir: An Encyclopedia of the American Style. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1992. Silver, Alain, and James Ursini. The Noir Style. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1999. Simmon, Scott. The Invention of the Western Film: A Cultural History of the Genre’s First Half Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Simon, George T. The Big Bands. New York: Macmillan, 1967. ———. Glenn Miller and His Orchestra. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1974. Simon, Mary. Racing through the Century: The Story of Thoroughbred Racing in America. Irvine, CA: Bowtie Press, 2002. Singer, Arthur J. Arthur Godfrey: The Adventures of an American Broadcaster. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999. Sklar, Robert. Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies. New York: Random House, 1975. Skolnik, Peter L. Fads: America’s Crazes, Fevers and Fantasies. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1978. Smith, Andrew F. Encyclopedia of Junk Food and Fast Food. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. Smith, Bradley. The USA: A History in Art. New York: Doubleday, 1975. Smith, C. Ray. Interior Design in 20th-Century America: A History. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. Smith, Jane Webb. Smoke Signals: Cigarettes, Advertising, and the American Way of Life. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. Smith, Kathleen E. R. God Bless America: Tin Pan Alley Goes to War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003.


Selected Resources | 827 Snider, Lee. 80 Years of American Song Hits, 1892–1972. New York: Chappell, 1973. Smith, Leverett T., Jr. The American Dream and the National Game. Bowling Green, OH: Popular Press, 1975. Smith, Robert. Pro Football: The History of the Game and the Great Players. New York: Doubleday, 1963. Soares, Manuela. The Soap Opera Book. New York: Harmony Books, 1978. Softball Games. New York Times, May 13, 1940; April 27, 1943; August 4, 1946; July 1, 1961. www. proquest.com Solberg, Carl. Conquest of the Skies: A History of Commercial Aviation in America. Boston: Little, Brown, 1979. Solid! The Encyclopedia of Big Band, Lounge, Classic Jazz and Space-Age Sounds. www.parabrisas. com/index.html Solomon, Jon. The Complete Three Stooges: The Official Filmography and Three Stooges Companion. Glendale, CA: Comedy III Productions, 2002. Solomon, Louis. America Goes to Press: The Story of Newspapers from Colonial Times to the Present. New York: Crowell-Collier Press, 1970. Spam. New York Times, January 16, 1944; August 26, 1948; May 19, 1949. Spam. Time Magazine, October 5, 1942; March 20, 1944; September 11, 1944; April 15, 1946; October 4, 1948; May 19, 1949. Spigel, Lynn. Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. ———. Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. Spivey, Donald, ed. Sport in America: New Historical Perspectives. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985. Spock, Benjamin. The Pocket Book of Baby and Child Care. New York: Pocket Books, 1946. Springer, John. All Talking! All Singing! All Dancing! Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1966. Stanfield, Peter. Horse Opera: The Strange History of the Singing Cowboy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Stearns, Marshall. The Story of Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1958. Stearns, Marshall, and Jean Stearns. Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance. New York: Schirmer Books, 1968. Stedman, Raymond William. The Serials: Suspense and Drama by Installment. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971. “Steel Wartime Pennies.” www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_steel_cent Stehman, Dan. Roy Harris: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991. Sterling, Christopher H., and John M. Kitross. Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1990. Stern, Robert A. M. Pride of Place: Building the American Dream. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986. Sterner, Alice P. Radio, Motion Picture, and Reading Interests. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1947. Stevenson, Isabelle, ed. The Tony Award: A Complete Listing. New York: Arno Press, 1975. Stewart, Mark. Hockey: A History of the Fastest Game on Ice. New York: Franklin Watts, 1998. Stilgoe, John R. Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820–1939. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988. ———. Metropolitan Corridor: Railroads and the American Scene. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983. Stoddard, Bob. Pepsi-Cola: 100 Years. Los Angeles: General Publishing Group, 1997. Stodelle, Ernestine. Deep Song: The Dance Story of Martha Graham. New York: Schirmer Books, 1984. Stoltz, Donard R., and Marshall L. Stoltz. Norman Rockwell and the Saturday Evening Post. Vol. 2, The Middle Years, 1928–1943. Philadelphia: Saturday Evening Post, 1976.


828

| Selected Resources ———. Norman Rockwell and the Saturday Evening Post. Vol. 3, The Later Years. Philadelphia: Saturday Evening Post, 1976. Stoltz, Donald Robert, Marshall Louis Stoltz, and William B. Earle. The Advertising World of Norman Rockwell. New York: Madison Square Press, 1985. Stover, John F. The Life and Decline of the American Railroad. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. Strasser, Susan. Never Done: A History of American Housework. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982. ———. Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash. New York: Macmillan, 2000. Strege, John. When War Played Through: Golf during World War II. New York: Gotham Books, 2005. Strombecker Model Kits. www.commercemarketplace.com/home/collectair/strombecker.html Struble, John Warthen. The History of American Classical Music: MacDowell through Minimalism. New York: Facts on File, 1995. Sturcken, Frank. Live Television: The Golden Age of 1946–1958 in New York. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001. Sugar, Bert Randolph, and the Editors of Ring Magazine. 100 Years of Boxing. New York: Galley Press, 1982. Sudhalter, Richard M. Stardust Melody: The Life and Music of Hoagy Carmichael. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Summers, Harrison B. A Thirty-Year History of Programs Carried on National Radio Networks in the United States, 1926–1956. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1958. Suskin, Steven. Show Tunes: The Songs, Shows, and Careers of Broadway’s Major Composers. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Swanberg, W. A. Luce and His Empire. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972. Sweeney, Russell C. Coming Next Week: A Pictorial History of Film Advertising. New York: Castle Books, 1973. Symons, Julian. Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel. New York: Penguin Books, 1972. Tassava, Christopher J. The American Economy during World War II. http://eh.net/encyclopedia/ article/tassava.WWII Tawa, Nicholas E. Serenading the Reluctant Eagle: American Musical Life, 1925–1945. New York: Schirmer Books, 1984. Taylor, Ella. Prime Time Families: Television Culture in Postwar America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Taylor, John W. R., and Kenneth Munson. History of Aviation. New York: Crown, 1972. Taylor, Joshua. America as Art. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1976. Tchudi, Stephen N. Soda Poppery: The History of Soft Drinks in America. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1986. “Teacher Shortages.” New York Times, January 25, 1942; December 13, 1942; June 29, 1946; February 27, 1949. www.proquest.com Tebbel, John. The American Magazine: A Compact History. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1969. ———. A History of Book Publishing in the United States. Vol. 4, The Great Change, 1940–1989. New York: R. R. Bowker, 1981. Tebbel, John, and Mary Ellen Zuckerman. The Magazine in America: 1741–1990. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. “Teen-Age Boys.” Life, June 11, 1945. Television History. Museum of Televison. www.MZTV/mz.asp Tennyson, Jeffrey. Hamburger Heaven: The Illustrated History of the Hamburger. New York: Hyperion, 1993. Terrace, Vincent. The Complete Encyclopedia of Television Programs, 1947–1979. 2 vols.; 2nd ed. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1979. Terry, Walter. I Was There: Selected Dance Reviews and Articles, 1936–1976. New York: Marcel Dekker, 1978.


Selected Resources | 829 Thomas, Bob. Walt Disney: An American Original. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976. Thomas, Ron. They Cleared the Lane: The NBA’s Black Pioneers. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. Thomas, Tony. The Films of the Forties. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1975. Thompson, Don, and Dick Lupoff, eds. The Comic-Book Book. New York: Arlington House, 1973. Thompson, Neal. Driving with the Devil: Southern Mooonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR. New York: Crown, 2006. Thornburg, David A. Galloping Bungalows: The Rise and Demise of the American House Trailer. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1991. Three Stooges, The. www.threestooges.com/ Tichi, Cecilia. Electronic Hearth: Creating an American Television Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. ———. High Lonesome: The American Culture of Country Music. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Time-Life Books. This Fabulous Century. Vol. 5, 1940–1950. New York: Time-Life Books, 1969. Toll, Robert C. The Entertainment Machine: American Show Business in the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. ———. On with the Show: The First Century of Show Business in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. Tonka Toys. www.hasbro.com/tonka/ Trager, James. The Food Chronology: A Food Lover’s Compendium of Events and Anecdotes from Prehistory to the Present. New York: Henry Holt, 1995. Trahey, Jane. Harper’s Bazaar: One Hundred Years of the American Female. New York: Random House, 1967. Tribe, Ivan. Country: A Regional Exploration. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. “Truman.” American Experience: The Presidents. PBS. www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/video/ truman_27_qt.html#v184 Tucker, Mark, ed. The Duke Ellington Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Tucker, Sherrie. Swing Shift: “All-Girl” Bands of the 1940s. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000. Tudor, Dean, and Nancy Tudor. Grass Roots Music. Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1979. Turner, Lillian. “The Singing Cowboys: Real to Reel.” Points West Online. www.bbhc.org/pointswest/ Turner, Peter. History of Photography. New York: Exeter Books, 1987. Turudich, Daniela. 1940s Hairstyles. Long Beach, CA: Streamline Press, 2001. Tyler, Don. Hit Parade: An Encyclopedia of the Top Songs of the Jazz, Depression, Swing, and Sing Eras. New York: William Morrow, 1985. Ulanov, Barry. A History of Jazz in America. New York: Da Capo Press, 1952. United Nations Facts. Department of Public Information. Basic Facts about the United Nations. New York: United Nations Publications, 2004. www.un.org/aboutun/untoday/ United Service Organizations and United Service Organizations Camp Shows. New York Times, March 1, 1942; July 27, 1942; April 6, 1944; August 27, 1944; September 14, 1944. Ursini, James. Humphrey Bogart. Los Angeles: Taschen, 2007. U.S. Department of the Treasury, U.S. Savings Bond Division. A History of the United States Savings Bonds Program. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Treasury, 1991. www.treasurydirect. gov/indiv/research/history/history_sb.pdf USO. www.uso.org/whoweare/ourproudhistory/ USO and USO Camp Shows. New York Times, March 1, 1942; July 27, 1942; April 6, 1944; August 27, 1944; September 14, 1944. Van Dover, J. Kenneth. Murder in the Millions: Erle Stanley Gardner, Mickey Spillane, and Ian Fleming. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1984. Variety Books. The Variety History of Show Business. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1993. Verney, Kevern. Black Civil Rights in America. New York: Routledge, 2000. Victory Gardens. New York Times, April 12, 1942; August 30, 1942; March 13, 1943; January 12, 1945.


830

| Selected Resources Visser, Margaret. Much Depends on Dinner. New York: Grove Press, 1986. Vocalists Database. www.nfo.net/usa/voc.html Wachs, Martin, and Margaret Crawford, eds. The Car and the City: The Automobile, the Built Environment, and Daily Urban Life. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992. Wainwright, Loudon. The Great American Magazine: An Inside History of Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986. Walker, Brian. The Comics: Before 1945. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2004. ———. The Comics: Since 1945. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002. Walker, Janet. Westerns: Films through History. New York: Routledge, 2001. Walker, Leo. The Big Band Almanac. Rev. ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 1989. ———. The Wonderful Era of the Great Dance Bands. Berkeley, CA: Howell-North Books, 1964. Walker, Lester. American Shelter. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1996. Wallace, Aurora. Newspapers and the Making of Modern America: A History. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. Wallechinsky, David. David Wallechinsky’s Twentieth Century: History with the Boring Parts Left Out. Boston: Little, Brown, 1995 [Previously published as The People’s Almanac Presents the Twentieth Century]. Wallis, Allan D. Wheel Estate: The Rise and Decline of Mobile Homes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Walsh, Tim. Timeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them. Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel, 2005. War Bond Drives and Advertising. www.library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess/warbonds. html Ward, Geoffrey C., and Ken Burns. Jazz: A History of America’s Music. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. Warner, Jay. American Singing Groups: A History from the 1940s to Today. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard, 2006. Watkins, Julius Lewis. The 100 Greatest Advertisements: Who Wrote Them and What They Did. New York: Dover, 1959. Watters, Pat. Coca-Cola: An Illustrated History. New York: Doubleday, 1978. Weibel, Kathryn. Mirror Mirror: Images of Women Reflected in Popular Culture. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1977. Weiner, Edward. Urban Transportation Planning in the United States: An Historical Overview. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999. Weiner, Mark. “Democracy, Consumer Culture, and Political Community: The Story of Coca-Cola Advertising during World War II.” Food and Foodways 6 (1996): 109–129. Weinstein, David. The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004. Weiskopf, Herman. The Perfect Game: The World of Bowling. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1978. Wertham, Frederic. Seduction of the Innocent. New York: Rinehart, 1954. West, Elliott. Growing Up in Twentieth-Century America: A History and Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996. West, James L. W., III. American Authors and the Literary Marketplace since 1900. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988. Whedon, Julia. The Fine Art of Ice Skating: An Illustrated History and Portfolio of Stars. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988. Whisnant, David E. “Forgotten Soldier Boy: War and the Politics of Country Music.” Office of News and Communications, Duke University. www.dukenews.duke.edu/2003/01/country0103._print.ht Whitburn, Joel. A Century of Pop Music. Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research, 1999. ———. Pop Memories, 1890–1954: The History of American Popular Music. Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research, 1986. Whitcomb, Ian. After the Ball: Pop Music from Rag to Rock. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1972.


Selected Resources | 831 White, David Manning, and Robert H. Abel, eds. The Funnies: An American Idiom. New York: Free Press, 1963. White, G. Edward. Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms Itself, 1903–1955. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. White, Mark. ‘You Must Remember This . . . ’: Popular Songwriters 1900–1980. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1985. White, Roger B. Home on the Road: The Motor Home in America. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000. Whitfield, Stephen J. The Culture of the Cold War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Whyte, William H., Jr. The Organization Man. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956. Wicker, Tom. Shooting Star: The Brief Arc of Joe McCarthy. New York: Harcourt, 2006. Wilcox, Walter W. The Farmer in the Second World War. Ames: Iowa State College Press, 1947. Wilder, Alec. American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. Williams, Anne D. The Jigsaw Puzzle: Piecing Together a History. New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 2004. Williams, John R. This Was “Your Hit Parade.” Camden, ME: Courier-Gazette, 1973. Williams, Martin T., ed. The Art of Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959. ———. The Jazz Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Willis, Barry R. America’s Music: Bluegrass. Franktown, CO: Pine Valley Music, 1989. Wills, Rosetta. The King of Western Swing: Bob Wills Remembered. New York: Watson-Guptill, 1998. Wilson, Sloan. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. New York: Pocket Books, 1955. Wiltse, Jeff. Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Winer, Deborah Grace. On the Sunny Side of the Street: The Life and Lyrics of Dorothy Fields. New York: Schirmer Books, 1997. Winkler, Allan M. Home Front U.S.A.: America during World War II. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1986. ———. Life under a Cloud: American Anxiety about the Atom. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999. Wittner, Lawrence S. Cold War America: From Hiroshima to Watergate. New York: Praeger, 1974. Witzel, Michael Karl. The American Gas Station. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1999. Witzel, Michael Karl, and Tim Steil. Classic Roadside Americana. New York: MBI, 2006. Wojcik-Andrews, Ian. Children’s Films: History, Ideology, Pedagogy, Theory. New York: Garland, 2000. Wolfe, Charles K., and James E. Akenson, eds. Country Music Goes to War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005. Woll, Allen L. The Hollywood Musical Goes to War. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1983. Wood, James Playsted. Magazines in the United States. New York: Ronald Press, 1956. Woodham, Jonathan M. Twentieth-Century Design. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Woody Guthrie. www.woodyguthrie.org/index.htm World War II: The Home Front. www.teacheroz.com/WWIIpropaganda.htm World War II Canteens (Ohio). Cam-Tech Publishing. www.canteenbooks.com World War II Rationing Collection: 1942–1946. New York State Library. SC22912. www.nysl.nysed. gov/msscfa/sc22912.htm Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Wright, Gwendolyn. Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1981. Wrynn, V. Dennis. Coke Goes to War. Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories, 1996. Wulffson, Don. Toys: Amazing Stories behind Some Great Inventions. New York: Henry Holt, 2000.


832

| Selected Resources Wurts, Richard. The New York World’s Fair, 1939/1940. New York: Dover, 1977. Wyman, Carolyn. Spam: A Biography: The Amazing True Story of America’s “Miracle Meat.” Fort Washington, PA: Harvest Books, 1999. Yanow, Scott. Bebop. San Francisco: Miller Freeman, 2000. ———. Swing: Great Musicians, Influential Groups. San Francisco: Miller Freeman, 2000. Yaquinto, Marilyn. Pump ’em Full of Lead: A Look at Gangsters on Film. New York: Twayne, 1998. Yellin, Emily. Our Mothers’ War: American Women at Home and at the Front during World War II. New York: Free Press, 2004. Yoggy, Gary A., ed. Back in the Saddle: Essays on Western Film and Television Actors. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1998. Young, Jordan R. Spike Jones Off the Record: The Man Who Murdered Music. Albany, NY: Bearmanor Media, 2004. Young, William H., and Nancy K. Young. American Music through History: The World War II Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005. ———. The Great Depression in America: A Cultural Encyclopedia. 2 vols. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007. Zieger, Robert H. John L. Lewis: Labor Leader. Boston: Twayne, 1988. Zieger, Robert H., and Gilbert J. Gall. American Workers, American Unions. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Zierold, Norman J. The Child Stars. New York: Coward-McCann, 1965. Zinn, Howard. Postwar America, 1945–1971. Boston: South End Press, 1973. Zinsser, William. Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs. Jaffrey, NH: David R. Godine, 2000. Zuckerman, Mary Ellen. A History of Popular Women’s Magazines in the United States, 1792–1995. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998.


Index

AAA (American Automobile Association), 726 AAA Championship Trail Races, 485 AAFC. See All-American Football Conference Aalto, Alvar, 23–24, 262 Abbott, Bud, 172, 203, 204t Abbott, George, 151 Abbott, Senda Berenson, 87 ABC (American Broadcasting Company), 1–4, 21, 183, 286, 287, 288, 459, 692 abstract expressionism, 4–8, 7t–8t, 30 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), 384 Acaro, Eddie, 391 Action Comics, 208, 664 Acuff, Roy, 8–10, 9 (photo), 230 Adams, Ansel, 411, 510, 515, 516t Adams, Frank David “Dooley,” 392 Adams, Franklin Pierce, 568 Adrian, Gilbert, 313 Adventures in Good Eating (Hines, Duncan), 109–110, 588, 727 The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, 276 advertising, 5, 11–15, 37, 75, 121

automobile, 52 baseball and, 77 Citizen Kane and, 174 Coca-Cola, 107 design, 263 fashion and, 321 grocery stores and, 366, 367 on The Howdy Doody Show, 400–401 on The Jack Benny Program, 419 jukeboxes, 429–430 Kraft Television Theatre and, 438– 439 lawns and, 447–448 on The Lone Ranger, 461 magazines and, 468 newspapers, 501 Pepsi-Cola, 107–108 radio and, 332 in Seventeen, 628 Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Kinsey), 436 Spam, 659 stereotyping and, 538–539 war bonds, 753, 755 water skiing, 669 women’s role in winning war, 336 to youth, 783 I-1


I-2

| Index

Advertising Council, 753 AEC. See Atomic Energy Commission aerosol spray cans, 677 AFL. See American Federation of Labor AFM. See American Federation of Musicians AFR. See Armed Forces Radio AGF. See Army Ground Forces Airgraph, 510 Alajalov, Constantin, 405 Alison, Joan, 166 All My Sons (Miller, Arthur), 139 (photo) All the King’s Men, 278 (photo) All-American Football Conference (AAFC), 349 All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, 78–79, 79t Allen, Fred, 3 all-girl orchestras, 15–19, 18t, 673 Almanac Singers, 333–334, 442–443 Almond Joy, 271 Almond ROCA Buttercrunch, 270 AMA. See American Medical Association Amalgamated Clothing Workers, 47 Amateur Softball Association (ASA), 650 Ameche, Don, 482 America First Committee, 788 American Automobile Association. See AAA American Bowling Congress, 128, 129 American Bricks, 711–712 American Broadcasting Company. See ABC American Federation of Labor (AFL), 441, 443 (photo), 504–505 American Federation of Musicians (AFM), 40–41, 91, 634–635, 674 American Jockey Club, 389 American Medical Association (AMA), 338 American Motorcycle Association, 488 American Newspaper Guild, 504–505

American Society of Composers, Authors, and Producers. See ASCAP The American Stud Book, 389 American Theatre Wing, 139, 150 American Way, 392 AMI. See Automatic Music Instrument Company Amos ‘n’ Andy, 550 AMPAS. See Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Anchors Aweigh, 635 Anderson, Eddie, 418, 536 Anderson, Elmer “Elbows,” 596 Anderson, Marian, 598 Anderson, Walter L., 322 Andrews, Dana, 187 (photo), 522 The Andrews Sisters, 19–21, 19 (photo), 20t, 112, 124, 229, 249 Andriola, Alfred, 221–222 Andy Hardy, 172, 199t Annenberg, Walter, 627–628 Annual Automotive Equipment Display and Hot Rod Exposition, 395 AP. See Associated Press Appalachian Spring (Copland), 223, 616 Apple Mary, 216 Aquacade, 668–669 aqualung, 678 Arapaho Basin, 645 architecture, 22–28, 263, 738 Argetsinger, Cameron, 486 Arlen, Harold, 408 Arlen, Michael, 244 Armed Forces Radio (AFR), 183, 453, 558 Armstrong, Edwin H., 330–333 Armstrong, Louis, 422, 423 Army Ground Forces (AGF), 777 Army Service Forces (ASF), 776 Arnheim, Gus, 247 Arnold, Eddy, 231 Arnold, Edward, 783 Arnold, Kenneth, 736


Index | I-3 Arp, Jean (Hans), 262 Arriola, Gus, 214 The Arrow, 208 Arsenic and Old Lace (Kesselring), 139, 146–147 art, 4, 6, 30, 53, 404 (photo) See also abstract expressionism; design; illustrators; painting; sculpture Arthur Godfrey Time, 359–360 The Arthur Murray Party, 288 Artists for Victory, 29 Artzybasheff, Boris, 405 “As Time Goes By,” 168–169 ASA. See Amateur Softball Association ASCAP v. BMI, 32, 37–40, 674 Asch, Moses, 334 ASF. See Army Service Forces Assault, 391 Associated Press (AP), 505, 509 Astaire, Fred, 249, 253–254, 496, 499, 538, 774 Astor, Mary, 118 (photo) Atherton, John C., 527 atomic bomb, 24, 42–46, 44 (photo), 63t, 466, 474, 581, 678, 731–732, 744, 792–793 Hayworth, Rita, on, 309, 453 New Yorker and, 473 newspapers and, 503–504 Soviet Union and, 45–46, 179–180, 191, 733, 798 technology, 191 Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), 45 Atwater, Edith, 139 Auerbach, Artie, 418 Austin, Gene, 249 automated streetlights, 678 Automatic Music Instrument Company (AMI), 427 automatic washer, 678 automobiles, 13–14, 46–53, 48t, 49t, 74, 720–721 postwar demand for, 723 sales and travel, 726t

Autry, Gene, 25, 53–61, 57t, 170, 223, 231, 547, 769 Avedon, Richard, 514–515 Avery, Milton, 5 Avery, Sewell, 189 Avery, Tex, 166 aviation, 61–70, 63t–65t, 68t–69t, 721, 724–725 jet, 682 See also Berlin airlift Axis Sally, 70–72 Ayers, E. Duran, 540 B. H. Wragge Company, 321 Babes on Broadway, 496 baby boom, 73–76 education and, 75, 297 fast food and, 323 movies and, 491 suburbanization and, 455 Bacall, Lauren, 120–121, 122 The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, 306, 783 Back at the Front, 532 Bad Boy, 495 Baer, Buddy, 131, 463 Baker, George, 214 Balanchine, George, 255, 256 Ballew, Smith, 54 ballpoint pen, 678 Bambi, 275 Banks, Henry, 485 barbecues, 342 Barbera, Joe, 165–166 Barfield, Johnny, 124 Barnaby (Johnson, Crockett), 215 Barney Google (De Beck), 392 Barris, Harry, 247 Barrymore, Lionel, 199, 413 Baruch, Bernard, 188 baseball, 76–82, 81t, 184, 345, 478, 789 television, 697 Triple Crown, 391 war bonds and, 757


I-4

| Index

Basie, Count, 17, 82–85, 82 (photo), 84t, 419 basketball, 85–88, 363 Baskett, James, 520 Baskin, Burton, 325 Baskin-Robbins, 272, 325 Batman, 208 Battle of the Bulge, 534, 792 Battle of Waterloo Road (Capa), 511 Battleship, 355 Bazooka Joe, 310 Beard, James, 112, 342, 343 The Beast with Five Fingers, 386 (photo) bebop (bop), 84, 88–92, 194, 420, 591 Beemer, Brace, 459 (photo), 460 Begley, Ed, 242, 537 Bell, Benny, 48 Bell and Howell Company, 730 Belle of the Yukon, 630 Belluschi, Pietro, 23, 26 Belmont Stakes, 390 Beneke, Tex, 481, 676 Bennett, Joan, 518 Bennett, Robert Russell, 758 Benny, Jack, 196, 417–419, 550 (photo) Benso, Catherine, 747 Benson, Sally, 271 Berg, Patty, 363 Bergen, Edgar, 291–293, 292 (photo), 552 Berger, Bob, 784 Bergman, Ingrid, 167, 167 (photo) Berkeley, Busby, 254, 482 Berle, Milton, 2, 255, 259, 426, 644, 705–707, 706 (photo) Berlin, Irving, 56, 151, 156, 249, 496, 587, 619, 648, 657, 773–775, 790 Berlin airlift, 93–95, 190, 796–797 Bernhardt, Sarah, 525 Bernstein, Artie, 420 Bernstein, Leonard, 183, 184 Berry Brothers, 255 Bertoia, Harry, 265 Best, Willie, 384

best sellers (books), 95–97, 98t–103t, 125, 435–437, 506, 660–661 Best Western, 729 The Best Years of Our Lives, 97, 104– 106, 104 (photo), 105 (photo), 176, 281, 414, 520 Betz, Pauline, 701 The Beulah Show, 536 beverages, 11, 106–113, 159, 579 Beyond Glory, 494–495 Big Little Books, 207 The Big Sleep, 121 Big Town, 507 Bigelow, Ruth, 111 Biggers, Earl Derr, 241–242, 537 bikini, 45, 317, 670–671 Billboard, 591 Billy the Kid (Copland), 223 Birdland, 92 Birds Eye, 350 Birdseye, Clarence, 349–350 birth rates, 73–74, 74t Bisquick, 268 Black, Brown and Beige (Ellington), 302–303 Black, Johnny S., 41 black market, 113–115, 445, 578, 580 food, 114, 340, 341 grocery stores and, 366 blackouts/brownouts/dim-outs, 115– 117, 177, 578 Blake, Eurbie, 193 Blanc, Mel, 418, 425 Blanchard, Doc, 347 Blitzstein, Marc, 183 Block, Martin, 559 (photo) Blockade, 517 Blondie, 172, 201–202, 201t, 214 (photo), 216, 218 blood transfusions, 372 The Blue Ghost: A Photographic Log and Personal Narrative of the Aircraft Carrier U.S.S. Lexington in Combat Operation (Steichen), 509


Index | I-5 Blue Grass Boys, 232 blue jeans, 319 BMI v. ASCAP, 32, 37–40, 674 BMP. See Bureau of Motion Pictures The Bob Hope Show, 382 bobby-soxers, 306, 320, 633–634, 782, 783 Boettiger, Anna Roosevelt, 599 Bogart, Humphrey, 117–123, 118 (photo), 119t, 167, 167 (photo) Bohannon, David Dewey, 25 BOMC. See Book-of-the-Month Club Bonavita, Rosina, 606 Bonneville Salt Flats, 395, 484, 486– 487 Bonney, Betty, 78 boogie-woogie, 15, 21, 123–125, 591 book clubs, 97, 125–127, 451 Book-of-the-Month Club (BOMC), 125 Borglum, Gutzon, 613 Born Free and Equal (Adams, Ansel), 411 Bosch, Carl, 448 Boston Blackie, 240–241, 241t Boston Symphony Orchestra, 185 Boswell Sisters, 20 Boulanger, Nadia, 223 Bourke-White, Margaret, 511, 512t Bow, Clara, 669 Bowery Boys, 205, 206t Bowes, Edward, 288, 632 bowling, 127–129, 449, 697 boxing, 129–134, 462–464, 697 The Boy with Green Hair, 521 Boyce, Westray Battle, 777 Boyd, Edward F., 109 Boyd, William (Hopalong Cassidy), 25, 58, 134–138, 137t–138t, 769 Boyle, Jack, 240–241 Bracken, Eddie, 196 Braddock, James J., 462 Bradley, Will, 124 Brashun, Midge “Tuffy,” 595 (photo), 596 Bread and Butter Magazine, 577

Brecht, Bertolt, 398 Breger, Dave, 214 Brennan, Francis E. (Hank), 526 Breuer, Marcel, 24, 27 The Brick Foxhole (Brooks, Richard), 520 bridge, 353–354, 449 Brimsek, Frank, 380 Bringing Up Father (McManus), 215 Briskin, Samuel J., 414 British Open Championship, 361 Broad Hollow Steeplechase Handicap, 392 Broadcast Music Incorporated. See BMI Broadway Melody of 1940, 496 Broadway shows comedy and drama, 138–145, 141t– 145t musicals, 148–156, 152t–155t, 256, 798 See also specific shows Brook National Steeplechase Handicap, 392 Brooks, Richard, 520 Brown, Edward, Jr., 284 Brown, Johnny Mack, 54 Brown, Les, 78, 674–675 Brown & Haley Candy Company, 269, 270 Brown v. Board of Education, 541 Bruce, Nigel, 240 Brunot, James, 356, 452 bubble gum, 309–310 Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein, 386 Budge, Don, 699–700 Built-Rite Toys, 709 Bunshaft, Gordon, 24 Bureau of Motion Pictures (BMP), 762 Burnett, Murray, 166 Burnette, Smiley, 55 Burns, Bob “The Arkansas Traveler,” 310, 311, 424 Burns, Ralph, 421–422 Bush, Vannevar, 42


I-6

| Index

Button, Richard “Dick,” 639, 640 Buttram, Pat, 55–56 Butts, Alfred, 356, 452 Byrnes, James F., 743 Byron, Robert “Red,” 487 C. A. Swanson and Sons, 351 CAA. See Civil Aeronautics Administration Cabin in the Sky (Duke), 149, 304 Cadet Nurse Corps, 371 Cagney, James, 494 Calder, Alexander, 613–614 Call Me Mister, 156 Calloway, Cab, 306, 306 (photo), 310 Calvert, John, 244 canasta, 354 Candoli, Pete, 422 Candy Land, 356 Caniff, Milton, 222, 702–705 canteens, 12, 21, 109, 139, 157–161, 305 teen, 433 Cantor, Eddie, 12, 373, 629–630 CAP. See Civil Air Patrol Capa, Robert, 511, 512t Capitol Records, 194 Capp, Al, 214, 218, 307 Capra, Frank, 413–415, 763 The Captain and the Kids, 215 Captain Video, 288 Carl’s Jr., 322 Carney, Don, 547 Carson, Jack, 158 (photo) Carson, Rachel, 372 Carvel Ice Cream Company, 272 Casablanca, 106, 120, 166–169, 167 (photo), 176 Casey, Crime Photographer, 507 The Catholic Hour, 584 Catlett, Sid, 423 Cavalcade of Stars, 287–288, 287 (photo) CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), 1, 37, 136, 184, 286, 287, 692

CCA. See Comics Code Authority CCC. See Civilian Conservation Corps CDC. See Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 374 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 189, 795 Cerdan, Marcel, 131 Chain, Ernst, 371 “A Challenge to American Sportsmanship” (Roosevelt, E.), 598 The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street, 629, 630 Chambers, Whittaker, 192 Champion, Gower, 151, 259 Champion, Marge, 259 Chandler, Raymond, 121 Chaplin, Charlie, 170, 518 Chapman, Ceil, 318 Charles, Ezzard, 132t, 464 Charlie Chan, 241–242, 242t, 537 Charlie McCarthy, 291–293, 292 (photo), 552 Charteris, Leslie, 243 Chase, Mary, 147 Chatterton, George Edward, 308 Cheret, Jules, 525 Chiang Kai-shek, 190–191, 733 Chicago Roller Skate Company, 642 Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 185–186 Chicago World Fair, 649 child care centers, 599 “Chiquita Banana,” 344 Christian, Charlie, 420, 421 Christian, Sara, 487 Christie, Agatha, 96 “The Christmas Song,” 195 Christy, June, 422 Chrysler, 46, 50t Churchill, Henry, 25, 601 (photo), 603 Churchill, Winston, 187, 188, 794 Chutes and Ladders, 355 CIA. See Central Intelligence Agency


Index | I-7 CIO. See Congress of Industrial Organizations Cisco Kid, 772 Citation, 391 Citizen Kane, 173–176, 174 (photo), 355 (photo) Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA), 66t Civil Air Patrol (CAP), 178 civil defense, 116, 176–180, 191 youth and, 430–431 Civil War, 618 Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), 447 Civilian Defense Corps, 178 Civilian Public Service (CPS), 618 Clark, Joel Bennett, 358 Clark, Tom, 433 classical music, 180–186, 222–226, 273–274 lacking copyright protection, 460 radio and, 181, 185t, 332, 561–562 Clay, Lucius, 93, 298 (photo) Cleveland Orchestra, 185, 186 Clifton, Nathaniel “Sweetwater,” 87, 535 Clue, 357 Coachman, Alice, 535 Coast-to-Coast on a Bus, 546–547 Coates, Robert, 4 Coca-Cola, 11, 107–109, 299 Cochran, Jacqueline, 778 A Code of Wartime Practices for the American Press, 503 coin collecting, 376–377, 662–663 Cold War, 46, 69t, 93, 179, 187–193, 277, 300, 397–399, 446, 474, 499, 519, 620, 733, 793 movies and, 492–493 newspapers and, 504 See also Soviet Union The Cold War (Lippmann), 188 Cole, Nat King, 52, 193–196 Colley, Sarah Ophelia, 230–231 Collins, Ted, 646 Collyer, Bud, 476 (photo)

Columbia Broadcasting Company. See CBS Columbia Records, 83, 184 The Columbia Symphony Orchestra, 184 comic books and strips, 25, 52, 207–213, 210t–211t, 213–222, 217t–218t, 219t, 220t–221t, 307, 460, 702 atomic bomb in, 44, 45 boxing, 133 horse racing and, 392 juvenile delinquency and, 212, 432–433 scrap drives, 610 serial films and, 623 stereotyping in, 537 youth and, 782 Comics Code Authority (CCA), 433 Comingore, Dorothy, 175, 355 (photo) The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (Spock), 660–661 Community Facilities Grants, 599 computers, 678–679, 680, 794 Condon, Eddie, 423 Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), 441, 446, 504–505 Conn, Billy, 131, 463 conscientious objectors (COs), 587, 618 Consolidated Edison Company, 443 (photo) Constant Comment, 111 Conway, Tom, 244 Cook, Willa Worthington McGuire, 670 Cook It Outdoors (Beard), 342 Cooke, Sarah Palfrey, 701 Cooper, Charles “Chuck,” 87, 535 Cooper, Gary, 319 Cooper, Jackie, 200 Cootie, 356 Coplan, Aaron, 181, 183, 222–226, 224 (photo), 256, 616 Coppertone, 687 Corley, Bob, 536 Cornell, Joseph, 614–615 Correll, Charles, 536, 550


I-8

| Index

cortisone, 679 COs. See conscientious objectors Costello, Lou, 172, 203, 204t Cotton Club, 301 Council of National Defense, 36 Count Fleet, 391 country music, 8, 38, 55, 229–236, 258 Cousy, Bob, 87 Cover Girl, 309 CPS. See Civilian Public Service Crain, Jeanne, 521 Cranbrook Academy of Art, 262 Crawford, Broderick, 278 (photo) Crawford, Joan, 54, 313 Crazy Horse (Chief), 613 The Crimson Avenger, 208 Crocker, Betty, 268, 340 Crockett, Johnson, 215 Crosby, Bing, 2, 10, 19 (photo), 21, 40, 111, 202–203, 229, 246–251, 247 (photo), 248t, 276, 382 (photo), 383, 424, 437, 496, 538, 774 golf and, 361 (photo), 363 top-rated songs performed by, 250t Crosley automobiles, 251–252 Cross, Milton, 546–547 Crossfire, 281, 520 Crusade in Europe (Eisenhower, D.), 300 Culinary Institute of America, 590 Cummings, Robert, 408 Cunningham, Briggs, 486 Cunningham, Imogen, 515 Cureton, Thomas K., 370 Curtiz, Michael, 167 cybernetics, 679 Cypress Gardens, 669–670 Daffan, Ted, 234 Dailey, Dan, 156 Dairy Queen, 272, 324 Dale, Virginia, 538 Dameron, Tadd, 91 dance, 39, 150, 253–259, 496 Dance Index, 615

DAR. See Daughters of the Revolution Dark Legend (Wertham), 432 A Date with Judy, 483 Daughters of the Revolution (DAR), 598 Davidson, Jo, 613 Davies, Marion, 175 Davis, Bette, 158 (photo) Davis, Elmer, 511, 762 Davis, Miles, 91 Davis, Sammy, Jr., 255–256 Day, Dennis, 418 Day, Doris, 19, 675 Day, Dorothy, 779–780 Day, Ned, 129 Daytona 500, 488 D-Day, 259–261, 260 (photo), 299, 372, 480 DDT, 372, 680 de Graff, Robert, 96 de Mille, Agnes, 151, 223, 256 (photo), 256 Dead End Kids, 205, 206t, 432 Death of a Salesman (Miller, Arthur), 146 DeBeck, Billy, 392 Defense Savings Stamps, 752–753 Dell, Gabriel, 205 DeMille, Cecil B., 134, 228 Department of Defense, 189 design, 13, 23, 261–267, 456 desserts/candy/ice cream, 267–273 DeSylva, Buddy, 194 Detective Comics, 208 Dewey, Thomas E., 733 Dexter, Al, 233–234 Diamond, David, 182 Dick Tracy, 221–222, 246 Dies, Martin, Jr., 397 Dies Committee, 397 Dietrich, Marlene, 740 (photo) Dietz, Howard, 156 DiMaggio, Joe, 78, 559 (photo) “Dinah,” 629 The Dinah Shore Show, 629, 631 Dior, Christian, 313, 317–318


Index | I-9 Dirks, Rudolph, 165–166 Disney, Walt, 161–163, 273–277, 274 (photo) See also Walt Disney Dix, Dorothy, 507 Dixon, Lee, 256 (photo) DNA, 680 Dobson, Harmon, 324 Doby, Larry, 80, 535 do-it-yourself tasks, 377–378 Dole, Charles, 644–645 Dollar Book Club, 125 dolls, 712–713 Donald Duck, 275, 277, 320 The Dooleys Play Ball (Renick), 651 Dorsey, Tommy, 124, 559 (photo), 633–634 Doubleday & Company, 125 Dowd, Elwood P., 147 Down Argentina Way, 481–482 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 239–240 Doyle, Geraldine Hoff, 606 draft. See Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 drag racing, 52, 393–397 Dragnet, 546 Dragstrip Girl, 396 Drew, Charles, 372 Dreyfuss, Henry, 261, 262, 267 Driscoll, Bobby, 520 drive-ins, 53, 282–286 banks, 285–286 theaters, 282–285, 283 (photo) Duff, Howard, 544 Duke, Vernon, 149, 304 DuMont network, 286–289 Duncan, Isadora, 257 Dunkin’ Donuts, 324 DuPont, Margaret Osbourne, 701 DuPont Chemical Company, 315, 349–350 Durante, Jimmy, 635 Durham, Eddie, 17–18, 83 Dust Bowl Ballads (Guthrie), 333 Dykstra, Clarence, 619–620

Eames, Charles, 26, 262, 265 Eames, Ray, 26, 262, 265 Earl, Harley, 266–267 East Side Kids, 205, 206t Eastman, George, 510 Eastman, Joseph B., 722 Eastman Kodak Company, 376, 510, 730 Eberle, Ray, 479 Ebony, 538 EC Comics, 212 Eckstine, Billy, 89, 90 The Ed Sullivan Show, 708 The Eddie Cantor Show, 630 Eddy, Nelson, 183 Ederle, Gertrude, 669 Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show, 291–293, 552 Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America (Kinsey), 344 Edison, Harry, 84 Edison, Thomas, 427 education, 14, 85, 293–298, 358 baby boom and, 75, 297 film as tool for, 338 health, 336 (photo) Japanese American fund for, 412 money for college, 74 physical, 370 radio, 555–557, 557t sex behavior and, 436 Edward B. Marks Music Company, 38 Edwards, James, 522 Edwards, John Paul, 515 Eerie, 211–212 Eichler, Joseph, 26 Einstein, Albert, 42 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 108, 259, 298– 300, 298 (photo), 534 fashion and, 299, 311, 313 Eisenhower, Milton S., 409–411 Eldred, William T., 644 Eldridge, Roy, 421 Ellington, Duke, 91, 300–304, 301 (photo), 303t, 306


I-10

| Index

Elliott, Bill, 772 Ellison, James “Jimmy,” 136 Elman, Dave, 375, 376 Emde, Floyd, 488 Emergency Price Control Act, 576 Emergency Rescue Committee, 597 Emerson, Faye, 779–780 Erector Sets, 712 Escape, 518, 555 Espionage Act, 503 Esquire, 308–309, 407–408, 469 Etiquette (Post), 506 Evans, Dale, 58, 60, 547 Evans, Redd, 606 Evans, Walker, 511, 512t, 514 Everybody Comes to Rick’s (Burnett & Alison), 166 Ewell, Tom, 532 Exner, Virgil, 48, 266 Fadiman, Clifton, 568 fads, 305–312, 320 Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), 535–536, 598, 620 Fairbanks, Mabel, 638–639 Fairfax, Beatrice, 507 The Falcon, 244, 244t Falk, Lee, 537 Famous Funnies, 207 Fanfare for the Common Man (Copland), 225 Fantasia, 162–163, 180, 273–274 FAP. See Federal Arts Project Faraway Hill, 288 Farley, James A., 601 Farm Security Administration (FSA), 514 fashion, 263, 312–321, 611 atomic bomb and, 45 Eisenhower, D., 299, 311, 313 Miranda, Carmen, 482 (photo), 484 photography, 514–515 Seventeen and, 627 youth, 319–320, 785 fast food, 321–325, 336, 590 The Fat Man, 544

Fatool, Nick, 420–421 Faulkner, William, 120, 121, 521 Faye, Alice, 482, 496 FBI. See Federal Bureau of Investigation FCC. See Federal Communications Commission Federal Arts Project (FAP), 29, 115 (photo), 525–526 federal budget, 787 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 411 Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 1, 331, 693, 694, 748 Federal Housing Authority (FHA), 455 Federal Interagency Committee, 450 Federal Security Agency (FSA), 336– 337 Federal Theatre Project (FTP), 139 Federal-Aid Highway Act, 723, 729– 730 Feller, Bob, 77–78 Fellig, Arthur. See Weegee Fender solid-body electric guitar, 680 FEPC. See Fair Employment Practices Committee Fermi, Enrico, 43 Ferrer, Mel, 521 Field, W. C., 292 Finegan, Bill, 39 The Fireball, 596 First Motion Picture Unit of United States Army Air Forces, 66 The First Nighter Program, 553 Fischer, Leo, 649 Fisher, M. F. K., 268 Fisher-Price, 711 fishing, 449 Fitzgerald, Ella, 19 Flagg, James Montgomery, 527 Flaherty, Robert, 14 Flanders, Charles, 460 Flatt, Lester, 232 Fleer Chewing Gum Company, 309 Fleischer, Max, 163 Fleming, Alexander, 371


Index | I-11 Flock, Truman Fontell “Fonty,” 487 Florey, Howard, 371 fluoridation, 680–681 FM radio, 330–333, 332t, 556, 693 FNB. See Food and Nutrition Board Fogarty, Anne, 318 Foggy Mountain Boys, 232 Foley, Clyde “Red,” 231 folk music, 333–335 labor unrest and, 442–443 Folkway Records, 334 Follow the Band, 606–607 Follow the Boys, 630 Fonda, Henry, 517 food, 93, 150, 335–345, 361, 364–367 black market, 114, 340, 341 fast, 321–325, 336, 590 frozen, 339, 349–351, 367, 681–682 health and, 369 posters, 526 (photo) rationing, 339–342, 579–580, 589 See also beverages; desserts/candy/ ice cream Food and Drug Act of 1938, 371 Food and Nutrition Board (FNB), 337, 370 football, 81, 345–349, 478, 697 war bonds and, 757 Ford, Gerald, 72 Ford, John, 773 Ford, Ruth VanSickle, 531 Ford Corporation, 46, 47 (photo), 50t– 51t, 67, 721 Foreign Correspondent, 518 Fortune, 469, 514 Foster, Dan, 489 Foster, Stephen, 39 Fouilhoux, Jacques-Andre, 261 Four Sons, 518 France, William “Bill,” 487, 488 franchising, 323–324 Fraser, Gretchen, 645 Fraser, James Earle, 612 Frazee, Jane, 607 Frisbee, 452, 681, 716

From Here to Eternity, 636–637 frozen food, 349–351, 367 complete meal, 351, 681–682 FSA. See Farm Security Administration; Federal Security Agency FTP. See Federal Theatre Project Der Fuehrer’s Face, 161–162, 275, 425 Fulbright, J. William, 297 Fulks, Joe, 87 Fuller, Charles E., 584–585 Fuller, Mary, 622 Fuller, Paul M., 428, 429 Fun and Fancy Free, 276 Funnies on Parade, 207 Funny Pages, 208 Gable, Clark, 318 Gaines, William M., 212 games, 353–357, 449 Gang Busters, 543 The Gang’s All Here, 482 Garbo, Greta, 313 Gardner, Ava, 309, 453 Gardner, Erle Stanley, 96 Garfield, John, 158 (photo) Garland, Judy, 496 Gasoline Alley (King, Frank), 52, 214, 393 Gaynor, Charles, 156 Gebhard, Paul, 435 GED (General Equivalency Diploma), 295 Geddes, Norman Bel, 261, 262, 721 General Electric Company, 45 General Equivalency Diploma. See GED General Foods Company, 349–350 General Maximum Price Regulations, 576 General Motors, 46, 51t, 721 Gentleman’s Agreement, 281 The Ghost Breakers, 384 GI Bill (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944), 25, 74, 86, 106, 284, 296, 357–359, 791 suburbanization and, 455


I-12

| Index

Gibson, Althea, 535 Gibson, Walter B., 476–477, 663–664 Gilbert, Peggy, 15–16 Gilbert, Ronnie, 334 Gillars, Mildred, 70–72 Gillespie, John Birks “Dizzy,” 89, 89 (photo), 91, 92, 422 Girard, Alexander H., 263 Giuffre, Jimmy, 92 The Glass Key, 326 (photo) The Glass Menagerie (Williams, Tennessee), 146 Gleason, Jackie, 259, 287–288, 287 (photo) Glory for Me (Kantor), 97, 104 GNP. See gross national product Go for Broke, 412 GOC. See Ground Observer Corps “God Bless America,” 587, 648 Goddard, Paulette, 254, 384 Godfrey, Arthur, 359–360 Gold, Bill, 529 Goldberg, Rube, 270 golf, 360–364, 362t, 364t, 452 Crosby and, 361 (photo), 363 Louis, Joe, and, 363 Gonzales, Pancho, 700 Goodman, Benny, 10, 16, 92, 182, 225, 419–420 Goosens, Eugene, 183 Gorcey, Leo, 205 Gordon, Dorothy, 431–432 Gordon, Ruth, 139 Gosden, Freeman, 536, 550 Gould, Chester, 221–222, 246 Gould, Morton, 181–182 Grable, Betty, 156, 309, 310, 404 (photo), 453, 482 Graham, Billy, 437, 584, 585–586 Graham, Martha, 223, 256–257, 615– 616 Grahame, Kenneth, 274 Grand Ole Opry, 229–235 Grant, Cary, 199, 306, 507, 507 (photo), 761, 783

Graves, Jackie, 133 Gray, Harold, 214 Grayson, Carl, 425 Grayson, Kathryn, 635 Graziano, Rocky, 129, 131, 132t, 133 “The Greatest Gift” (Stern), 413 Green, Johnny, 420 Green, William, 441 The Green Hornet, 208, 460 Greenberg, Clement, 5, 6 Greenberg, Hank, 77–78 Greenwich Village, 482–483 Greyhound Bus Company, 723 Griffith, Clark, 77 Griswold, Frank, Jr., 486 grocery stores/supermarkets, 113, 338, 364–367, 365 (photo) Groebli, Werner, 640 Grofe, Ferde, 183 Gropius, Walter, 24 gross national product (GNP), 787 Grotell, Majilis (Maija), 266 Ground Observer Corps (GOC), 178– 179 Groves, Leslie R., 42, 373 Guarnieri, Johnny, 420 Guertin, M. K., 728–729 Gustavson, Paul, 208 Guthrie, Woody, 333, 442–443 Haber, Fritz, 448 Hall, Huntz, 205 Hallaren, Mary A., 777 Halop, Billy, 205 Hammerstein, Oscar, III, 149, 151, 156, 256 (photo) Hammett, Dashiell, 544 Hammond, John, 83, 124 Hampton, Lionel, 420 Hancock, A. G., 670 Handy, George, 422 Hanna, William “Bill,” 165–166 Hansen, Howard, 182 Harding, Ann, 783 Hardy, Oliver, 205


Index | I-13 Hargrove, Marion, 619 Harley-Davidson, 488 Harman, Fred, 537 Harper’s Bazaar, 515 Harriman, W. Averell, 188, 644 Harris, Bill, 422 Harris, Harwell H., 26 Harris, Joel Chandler, 276 Harris, John H., 640 Harris, Roy, 181 Harrison, Wallace K., 23, 261 Hart, Lorenz, 149 Hartley, Fred, 445 Harvest Show, 747 Harvey (Chase), 147 Haskell, William N., 177 Haugdahl, Sig, 487 Hawkins, Coleman, 420 Hawks, Howard, 120 Hayden, Russell, 136 Hayes, Clancy, 423 Hayes, George “Gabby,” 58, 136 Hayes, Helen, 139 Haymes, Dick, 19, 40, 41 Hays, Lee, 333–334, 442–443 Hayworth, Rita, 254, 309 on atomic bomb, 309, 453 Head, Howard, 645 health, 369–374 Hearst, William Randolph, 173–179 Heatter, Gabriel, 477 Hedda Hopper Show, 506 Hefti, Neal, 421–422 Heggen, Thomas, 147 Hellerman, Fred, 334 Help Your Doctor Help You, 369 Hemingway, Ernest, 120 Henderson, Fletcher, 420 Henie, Sonja, 638, 640, 644 Henry Aldrich, 199–200, 200t Herlihy, Ed, 439 Herman, Woody, 92, 421–422, 423 Herman Miller Company, 264, 265 Herriman, George, 215 Herrmann, Bernard, 175–176

Hersey, John, 473 Hershey, Lewis, 620 Hershey Corporation, 269–270 The Hidden Persuaders (Packard), 14 High Sierra, 118 Hill, George Washington, 13 Hill-Burton Act of 1946, 371 Hillman, Sidney, 47 Hines, Duncan, 109–110, 588, 727 Hines, Earl, 89 Hirohito (Emperor), 48, 467 His Girl Friday, 507, 507 (photo) Hiss, Alger, 192, 798 Hitchcock, Alfred, 518 Hitler, Adolph, 425, 518, 743 Ho Chi Minh, 190 hobbies, 375–379 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 601 Hobbies, 375 Hobby, Oveta Culp, 776 Hobby Lobby, 375 hockey, 379–381, 640 Hoffman, Hans, 4 Hogan, Ben, 361, 362 Holgate Toy Company, 711 Holiday, 729 Holiday, Billie, 83, 423 Holiday Inn, 249, 496, 538, 657, 774 Holiday on Ice, 640 Hollingshead, Richard, Jr., 282–283 Hollywood Canteen, 159, 183, 742 Hollywood Cavalcade, 757 Hollywood Hotel, 506 Hollywood Production Code, 517 Hollywood Ten, 398–399, 398t, 492, 525 Hollywood Victory Caravan, 757 Holman, Bill, 735 Home Country (Pyle), 530 Home of the Brave, 521–522 Home Sweet Home, 71 Hoosier Hot Shots, 231 Hoover, Herbert, 354, 465 Hope, Bob, 196, 202, 248, 363, 381– 385, 382 (photo), 383t–384t


I-14

| Index

Hormel, George A., 658 Hormel Foods Corporation, 657–660 Horn, Ted, 486 Horne, Lena, 521 Hors d’Oeuvres and Canapés (Beard), 343 horse racing, 389–393 Horwitt, Arnold B., 156 Hot Rod, 394 (photo) hot rods, 52, 312, 379, 393–397, 431, 682 Hour of Charm Orchestra, 16 (photo), 17 House and Garden, 448, 614 House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), 191–192, 277, 397–399, 492, 504, 522, 524–525, 795 How Green Was My Valley, 173 How to Cook a Wolf (Fisher), 268 Howard, Charles S., 390 Howard Johnson’s, 271, 325, 588–590 The Howdy Doody Show, 270, 400–401, 401 (photo) Howe, Louis, 601 HUAC. See House Un-American Activities Committee Hubley Manufacturing Company, 709 Hull, Cordell, 605 Hull, Josephine, 139 Humes, Helen, 83 Hummert, Anne, 572 Hummert, Frank, 572 Humphrey, Doris, 257 Hungerford, Cyrus C., 528 hunting, 449 Hupfeld, Herman, 168–169 Hurt, Marlin, 536 Huston, John, 119, 121 Hutton, Ina Ray, 15, 16 Hutton, Marion, 479 Hutton, Robert, 783 Hyams, Marjorie, 15 I Wanted Wings, 315 Ibsen, Don, 669 Ice Capades, 640

Ice Follies, 640 Ickes, Harold L., 605 Idiot’s Delight, 517 If You Ask Me (Roosevelt, E.), 599 “I’ll Never Smile Again,” 633 illiteracy, 295, 296 illustrators, 403–408, 406t–407t, 526 USO club, 740 war bonds and, 758 Indian Motorcycle Company, 488 Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, 539 Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, 484, 485–486 Industrial Designers Institute, 266 Information Please!, 568 Ingram, Edgar W., 322 Inner Sanctum Mysteries, 554 In-N-Out Burger, 285, 323–324 INS (International News Service), 509 Inside U.S.A. (Schwartz & Dietz), 156 Institute of International Education, 297 International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, 446 International Mobile (Calder), 614 International News Service. See INS International Skating Union (ISU), 638 International Sweethearts of Rhythm, 17, 18 internment camps (relocation centers), 408–413, 410t, 539, 598, 604, 615, 789 Intruder in the Dust, 521 The Iron Curtain, 187 (photo), 522 Iroquois Steeplechase, 392 ISU. See International Skating Union It Happened in Brooklyn, 635–636 It’s a Wonderful Life, 413–415 Ives, Burl, 151, 156, 334–335 Ives, Charles, 180–181 J. P. Seeburg Corporation, 428 Jack, Beau, 132t, 534 The Jack Benny Program, 417–419, 536 Jaffe, Moe, 314 James, Henry, 633


Index | I-15 James O. Welch Company, 271 Jameson, Betty, 363 Janie, 783 Jannus, Tony, 61 Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act, 412 Japanese Relocation, 410 jazz, 5, 39, 82, 88, 123, 193, 301, 304, 419–424, 591 Jeep, 682 Jell-O, 200, 268–269, 419 Jenkins, David Abbott “Ab,” 484 Jepson-Turner, Gladys Lyne, 639 Jet, 538 jigsaw puzzles, 355–356, 355 (photo), 449 jitterbug, 258, 305, 673 (photo) job training, 74 Joe and Asbestos (Kling), 392, 537 John Gabel Manufacturing Company, 427 Johnson, John H., 538 Johnson, Pete, 123 (photo) Johnson, Philip, 24, 27 Jolson, Al, 2 Jones, Bobby, 361 Jones, Isham, 421 Jones, Spike, 275, 424–426 Jordan, Bobby, 205 Jordan, Louis, 592–593 Joy Ride, 396 “Juke Box Saturday Night,” 428 jukeboxes, 229, 427–430, 427 (photo), 480, 592 Jump, Larry, 645 Jump for Joy (Ellington), 303 Junior Mints, 271 juvenile delinquency, 430–434, 784 comic books and, 212, 432–433 movies and, 432, 495 Kahn, Albert, 22–23, 261, 721 Kaiser, Edgar F., 599 Kane, Bob, 208 Kantor, MacKinlay, 97, 104

Kapp, Jack, 247 Karcher, Carl, 322 Karcher, Margaret, 322 Karloff, Boris, 243 Karns, Roscoe, 288–289 The Katzenjammer Kids, 215 Kayak II, 390 Kaye, Sammy, 568–569 Keefe, Mary Doyle, 607 Keeshan, Bob, 400 Kefauver, Estes, 799 Kelly, Gene, 253–254, 635, 636 Kelly, Joe, 569 Kelly, Walt, 215–216 Kennan, George F., 188, 189 Kenton, Stan, 422 Kentucky Derby, 390, 392 Kentucky Fried Chicken, 324 Kern, Jerome, 182, 381, 635 Kerry Drake, 221–222 Kesselring, Joseph, 139, 146–147 Key Largo, 122 Keys, Ancel Benjamin, 339 Kid Boots, 629 Kidd, Michael, 151 Kiefer, Adolph, 671 Kieran, John, 568 Kilroy, James J., 307 “Kilroy was here,” 307–308, 308 (photo) King, Andrea, 386 (photo) King, Frank, 52, 214 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 541 King, Muriel, 316 King, Pee Wee, 233 King, Scott, 728 Kinsey, Alfred C., 344, 435–437 Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, 435 Kirstein, Lincoln, 223 Kiss Me Kate (Porter, Cole & Abbott, George), 151 Klamfoth, Dick, 488 Klein, Evelyn Kaye, 17 Kling, Kenneth, 392, 537 Knoll, Florence Schust, 265


I-16

| Index

Knoll, Hans, 265 Knox, Alexander, 737 Knudsen, William S., 46 Koerner, Henry, 528 Kool-Aid, 111–112 Korean War, 467, 621, 734, 739, 799– 800 Kostelanetz, Andre, 182–183, 184 Kracken, Jack, 462 The Kraft Music Hall, 248, 249, 424, 437, 774 Kraft Television Theatre, 437–439 Kramer, Jack, 699, 700 Krazy Kat (Herriman), 215 Kroc, Ray, 323 Krupa, Gene, 421 Kubelsky, Benjamin, 417 Kubik, Gail, 183 Kyser, Kay, 568–569 La Guardia, Fiorello, 177, 216, 314 La Touche, John, 149 labor unrest, 441–446, 504–505, 580, 732, 798 Ladd, Alan, 326 (photo), 494–495, 544 Ladies Home Journal, 455 Lake, Arthur, 201 Lake, Veronica, 315, 317, 326 (photo) Lamarr, Hedy, 309, 310 LaMotta, Jake, 132t, 133 Lamour, Dorothy, 202, 382 (photo), 383 war bonds and, 757 L’Amour, Louis, 135 Lampell, Millard, 333–334, 442–443 Land, Edwin, 376, 510 Landis, James M., 177 Lang, Fritz, 492 Lange, Dorothea, 411, 511, 512t, 514 Langley, Roger, 644 Lantz, Walter, 165 Lapidus, Morris, 263 Lapin, Aaron, 269 Lattimore, Owen, 799 Laurel, Stan, 205 Lautner, John, 263

lawns, lawnmowers, and fertilizers, 446–448 Lawrence, Gertrude, 139 League of Nations, 737 Leatherneck, 396 Lee, Peggy, 19, 420 Lee, Russell, 514 leisure and recreation, 97, 348, 449– 453, 450t, 451t Lembeck, Harvey, 532 Lend an Ear (Gaynor), 156 Lend-Lease Act, 575, 602–603 Lesnevich, Gus, 132t Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Evans, Walker), 514 Levitt, Abraham, 455–458 Levitt, Alfred, 455–456 Levitt, Helen, 511, 513t, 514 Levitt, William, 26, 455–458 Levittown, 453–458, 457 (photo), 540 Levy, Julien, 614 Lewine, Richard, 156 Lewis, Fulton, Jr., 477–478 Lewis, Jerry, 205–206 Lewis, John L., 441, 444, 445, 580, 798 Leyvas, Henry, 540 Liberman, Alexander, 514 Liberty, 469 Liberty Films, 414 Life, 469, 509, 511 rationing and, 580 The Life and Times of the Shmoo, 307 life expectancy, 369, 374, 787 Life is Worth Living, 288 Life with Teena, 628 Lights Out, 553 Light-Up Time, 635 Li’l Abner (Capp), 218, 307 Limiting Order L-85, 313, 314–315 Lincoln Logs, 711 Lionel Trains, 714–715 Lippmann, Walter, 188 Lipton Tea, 360 Liston, Melba, 15 Litchfield, Johnny, 645


Index | I-17 Literary Guild, 125 Little Annie Rooney, 216 Little Caesar, 432 Little Orphan Annie, 216 “Little Steel Formula,” 444 Little Tokyo, U.S.A., 409 Little Tough Guys, 205, 206t Livingstone, Mary, 418 Lloyd, Earl, 87, 535 Loeb, John Jacob, 606 Loewy, Raymond, 13, 48–49, 266, 721 Log Building Sets, 711 Lomax, Alan, 333 Lombard, Carole, 418 war bonds and, 756–757 Lombardo, Carmen, 359–360 Lombardo, Guy, 489 The Lone Ranger, 208, 459–462, 459 (photo), 461 (photo), 476, 537 The Lone Wolf, 245, 245t Longden, Johnny, 391 Look, 455, 511 Looney Tunes, 164–165 Loring, Eugene, 223 Lost Boundaries, 521 The Lost Weekend, 282 (photo) Louis, Joe, 129, 130–131, 130 (photo), 132t, 462–464, 462 (photo), 535 golf and, 363 war bonds and, 757 Louisiana Story, 14 Lovejoy, Frank, 544 Lowther, George F., 665–666 Loy, Myrna, 105 (photo), 783 Luce, Henry, 469 Lucky Strikes, 12–13, 419, 635 Luke, Keye, 243 Lundigan, William, 521 The Lux Radio theater, 553 Lydon, Jimmy, 200 Lytle, Betty, 642 M. M. Cole Publishing Company, 38 MacArthur, Douglas, 298, 465–467, 466 (photo), 467, 734, 739, 791

Macfadden, Bernarr, 469 Mack, Ted, 288 Mack, Walter S., 108 Macon, Uncle Dave, 9 MAD. See mutual assured destruction “Magazine War Guide,” 433 magazines, 12, 56, 96, 107, 125, 128, 468–473, 471t–473t atomic bomb in, 43 Berlin airlift in, 94 celebrating black culture, 538 Cold War and, 192 gardening, 448 lifestyle reporting, 511 pinup girls in, 308–309 pulp, 326, 543, 663 skating and, 642 Spam and, 658 suburbanization and, 454, 455 victory gardens and, 745 war bonds and, 756 youth and, 782 Magic 8-Ball, 715 Mainbocher, 314, 778 Make Mine Manhattan (Lewine & Horwitt), 156 Make Mine Music, 276 Male Call, 703–704 The Maltese Falcon, 118 (photo), 119 The Man I Married, 518 The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (Wilson, Sloan), 319 Mandrake the Magician (Falk), 537 Mankiewicz, Herman J., 173 Manship, Paul, 612 Mao Zedong, 190–191 Marble, Alice, 699 March, Fredric, 104, 105 (photo), 520 The March of Time, 763–764 March on Washington Movement (MOWM), 535–536, 541 Marciano, Rocky, 464 margarine, 341 Marin, John, 5 Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, 779


I-18

| Index

Marks, Sadye, 418 marriage, 73, 74t Mars, Incorporated, 269–270 Marshall, George C., 108, 189, 298, 299, 474–475 Marshall Plan, 189, 474–475, 732, 796 Martin, Clarice, 594 Martin, Clyde, 435 Martin, Dean, 205–206 Martin, Freddy, 39 Marvel Comics, 209 Marx, Groucho, 2–3, 204–205, 483, 569 Marx Brothers, 204–205 Mary Kay and Johnny, 288 Masters Tournament, 361 Mathews, Billy, 488 Mattel, 715–716 Mauch, Hans, 640 Mauldin, Bill, 504, 530–533 Mauriello, Tami, 464 Maxson Food Systems, 351 May, Cliff, 26 Mays, Rex, 486 MBS. See Mutual McAfee, Mildred, 778 McCalls, 316 McCardell, Claire, 317 McCarthy, Clem, 392 McCarthy, Joseph, 192, 225, 799 McConnell, Ed, 547 McCormack-Dick Committee, 397 McCrea, Joel, 518 McCullough, Alex, 324 McCullough, J. F., 324 McDaniel, Hattie, 536 McDonalds, 285, 322–323, 588–589 McGrane, Paul, 428 McKay, Bernie, 594 McKinley, Ray, 124, 481 McLuhan, Marshall, 14 McManus, George, 215 McNutt, Paul V., 336–337, 620 McPherson, Aimee Semple, 584 McShann, Jay, 592 Meany, George, 446

medicine, 369–374 Meet the Press, 478 Mehrtens, Warren, 391 Mellett, Lowell, 762 Melodears, 16 Melody Ranch, 55–56, 547 Melody Time, 276 Menninger, Karl, 437 Menotti, Gian Carlo, 182 Mercer, Johnny, 194, 247 (photo), 408, 652 (photo) Meredith, Burgess, 531, 614 Merman, Ethel, 148 (photo) Merrie Melodies, 164–165 Merrill, Gretchen, 639 Metcalf, Nelson C., Jr., 12 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. See MGM Metronome, 194 MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), 165– 166, 490 Mickey Mouse, 162, 212, 273, 320 microwave oven, 683 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 23, 24, 26–27 Mikan, George, 87 Mike and Ike, 270 Milland, Ray, 282 (photo) Miller, Ann, 254 Miller, Arthur, 139 (photo), 140, 146 Miller, Glenn, 12, 39, 420, 428, 479– 481, 479 (photo), 482, 559, 644, 676 Miller, J. Howard, 316–317, 528, 606 Miller, Johnny, 193 Mills Brothers, 41 Milton Bradley, 354, 355 Minton, Henry, 88 Minute Maid, 111, 350 The Miracle of the Bells, 636 Miranda, Carmen, 481–484, 482 (photo), 496 Mister Roberts (Heggen), 147 Mitchell, Joan, 639 Mitchum, Robert, 531 Mix, Tom, 548


Index | I-19 M&Ms, 270 mobile telephone, 683 model making, 378–379, 711 Modernaires, 479 Mohr, Gerald, 245 Molded Products, 709 Moline Pressed Steel Company, 709 Monogram Pictures, 205 Monopoly, 354, 449 Monroe, Bill, 231–232 Monroe, Rose Will, 607 Monroe Brothers, 231–232 Montana Moon, 54 Montgomery, Bob, 534 Montgomery, George, 631 The Moon Is Down, 519 Moore, Clayton, 461 (photo) Moore, Oscar, 193 Moorehead, Agnes, 477 The Moral Basis of Democracy (Roosevelt, E.), 597–598 Moran, Gertrude, 701 Morgan, Henry, 2 Morgan, Julia, 175 Morgenthau, Henry, Jr., 751 Morris, Chester, 240–241 The Mortal Storm, 518 motels, 728 Moten, Bennie, 83 Motion Picture Alliance for the Production of American Ideals, 277 Motley, Marion, 535 Motor Trend, 395 motorcycle races, 488 motorsports, 484–490 Mounds Bar, 270–271 Mount, William Sydney, 456 Mount Rushmore, 613 Mountain Dew, 112 movies, 2, 21, 57t, 59t–60t, 82, 84, 119t, 134, 137t–138t, 148, 159, 166– 176, 181, 195, 202–203, 204t, 218, 223–224, 291–292, 299, 382–384, 383t–384t, 398, 417–418, 426, 449, 450, 461, 463–464, 477, 480–483,

490–493, 494–495, 531–532, 630, 635–638, 636t, 648, 668–669 anti-Communist, 187 (photo), 192, 399, 522 atomic bomb, 44 attendance, 491 aviation, 66–67 baby boom and, 491 baseball, 76–77 black market and, 114 blacklisting and, 399, 492, 525 boxing, 133–134 cartoons, 161–166, 701, 746 children’s, 169–173, 171t–172t comedies, 196–206, 197t–198t costume/spectacle, 226–229, 227t– 228t crime and mystery, 120, 236–246, 237t–239t drama, 278–282, 279t–281t drive-in, 282–285, 283 (photo) as education tool, 338 fashion in, 313 film noir, 119–120, 122, 281, 325– 330, 327t, 328t–330t, 386–387 football, 349 golf, 362–363 horror and thriller, 385–389, 387t– 389t horse racing, 392 juvenile delinquency and, 432, 495 labor unrest, 443 monopoly, 491 music and, 656 musicals, 495–500, 497t–499t newspapers and, 492, 501, 507 nursing, 371 package, 276 pinup girl, 309 political and propaganda, 517–525, 523t–524t posters, 529 race, 538 racial intolerance in, 520–522 Roller Derby, 596


I-20

| Index

Rosie the Riveter, 606–607 Selective Service and, 619, 761 serial, 172, 621–626, 623t–624t skating, 638–640, 641–642 skiing, 644 softball, 650 sound technology, 54, 495 stereotyping in, 537–538 swimming, 668–669 television and, 491, 695 UFO, 736 war, 759–767, 765t–766t war bonds and, 757 westerns, 25, 53–61, 134, 170, 767– 773, 770t–772t youth and, 785 See also specific movies MOWM. See March on Washington Movement “Mr. Chad,” 308 Mr. Lucky, 761 Mr. Winkle Goes to War, 761 Mr. Wong, Detective, 242–243 Mulford, Clarence, 134–135 Muller, Paul, 372 Mundy, Jimmy, 83 Murphy, Audie, 493–495 Murphy, George, 156, 496 Murphy, Gerry, 596 Murphy, Turk, 423 Murray, Arthur, 258 Murray, Gerry, 595 (photo) Murray, Kathryn, 258 Murray, Philip, 442, 446 Murrow, Edward R., 115, 562–563 Museum of Modern Art, 22 music, 258 about conflict, 656–657 atomic bomb and, 45 baseball, 76 movies and, 656 popular, 654t–656t race records, 591 radio, 558–562 Rosie the Riveter, 606

Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 and, 618–619 standards, 652, 656 See also classical music; specific songs Mutual (Mutual Broadcasting System), 1, 37, 60, 85–86, 136, 348, 426, 459, 475–478, 583, 585 mutual assured destruction (MAD), 191 “My Blue Heaven,” 249 “My Day” (Roosevelt, E.), 598, 599 NAACP. See National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Naismith, James, 85 NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing), 53, 395, 487 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 372, 533–534, 620 National Barn Dance, 231 National Basketball Association (NBA), 86–88 National Broadcasting Company. See NBC National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), 85, 346 national debt, 787 National Education Association (NEA), 75 National Football League (NFL), 347, 348t, 349 National Hockey League (NHL), 380 National Hot Rod Association (NHRA), 395 National Japanese American Student Relocation Council, 411 National Labor Union, 441 National Mental Health Act, 374 National Park Service (NPS), 727 The National Radio Pulpit, 583–584 National Screen Service (NSS), 529 National Security Act, 189, 300, 795


Index | I-21 National Security Agency, 795 National Security Council (NSC), 189 National Security Resources Board (NSRB), 179 National Ski Patrol, 644–645 National Speed Trials, 395 National War Labor Board (NWLB), 41, 441 Native Land, 443 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), 190, 300, 475, 732, 797 “Nature Boy,” 195 NBA. See National Basketball Association NBC (National Broadcasting Company), 1, 2, 37, 85, 286, 287, 459, 692 The NBC Symphony Orchestra, 184 NCAA. See National Collegiate Athletic Association NEA. See National Education Association The Negro Soldier, 463, 535 Nelson, Byron, 362, 363 Nelson, George, 264–265 Nelson, Harriet Hilliard, 3 Nelson, Ozzie, 3 Neutra, Richard, 25, 26 New Orleans, 423 New York Drama Critics Circle Awards, 140, 151 New York Philharmonic, 185 New York World’s Fair, 23, 46, 261– 262, 344, 350, 490, 510, 612, 650, 692, 721–722 New Yorker, 473 newspapers, 4, 56, 96, 125, 128, 179– 180, 201, 213, 460, 501–508, 506t, 530, 665 Berlin airlift in, 94 canasta and, 354 Citizen Kane and, 173–174 Cold War and, 192, 504 comic books and, 207 D-Day and, 261

education and, 294 horse racing and, 392 movies and, 492, 501, 507 pinup girls in, 308–309 reporters, 507, 507 (photo) scrap drives, 609 skating and, 642 travel and, 728 NFL. See National Football League NHRA. See National Hot Rod Association Nicholas Brothers, 255 “Night and Day,” 632 Nixon, Richard, 399, 524 Noble, Edward J., 1–2 Noble, Ray, 91, 293, 479 Noble, Sherwood, 324 Noguchi, Isamu, 263, 615–616 North Atlantic Treaty Organization. See NATO North Platte Canteen, 157–158 Noskowiak, Sonya, 515 NPS. See National Park Service NSC. See National Security Council NSRB. See National Security Resources Board NSS. See National Screen Service nuclear chain reaction, 678 Nurse Training Act of 1943, 371 NWLB. See National War Labor Board nylon, 315, 318, 611 O. M. Scott and Sons, 447 OCD. See Office of Civil Defense ocean liners, 725 O’Day, Anita, 421, 422 O’Donnell, Cathy, 104 (photo) ODT. See Office of Defense Transportation OEM. See Office for Emergency Management O’Farrell, Chico, 92 Office for Emergency Management (OEM), 29, 177 Office of Censorship, 503, 504


I-22

| Index

Office of Civil Defense (OCD), 177, 180, 609 Office of Defense Transportation (ODT), 722 Office of Health Defense and Welfare, 337 Office of Price Administration (OPA), 114, 226, 576, 752, 788 Office of Production Management (OPM), 46–47 Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), 42 Office of War Information (OWI), 168, 433, 504, 511, 526, 527, 748, 762, 763 Oh Henry!, 270 O’Keeffe, Georgia, 5 Oklahoma! (Rodgers, R. & Hammerstein), 149, 151, 156, 256 (photo) Oland, Warner, 241 The Old-Fashioned Revival Hour, 584–585 On the Town, 636, 792 O’Neill, Eugene, 140, 146 OPA. See Office of Price Administration OPM. See Office of Production Management Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 42 The Original Amateur Hour, 288, 632 Osborne, Mary, 15 OSRD. See Office of Scientific Research and Development Our New Music (Copland), 225 Outdoor Advertising Association of America, 527 Owen, Maribel Vinson, 638 Owens, Jesse, 535 OWI. See Office of War Information Pabst Blue Ribbon, 112 Packard, Vance, 14 Page, Walter, 83 Pagoda Chinese Restaurant, 589 Paige, Satchel, 80, 535 painting, 5, 29–32, 30t, 31t, 32t–35t

The Paleface, 383–384 Pan, Hermes, 256 Pan American Coffee Bureau, 110 Panama Hattie (Porter, Cole), 148 (photo) paperbacks, 96 Paramount, 490 Parker, Charlie “Bird,” 89, 90 (photo), 91, 92 Parker, Frank, 700 Parker Brothers, 354, 357 Parks, Bert, 3, 569, 797 Parks, Wally, 395 Parsons, Louella, 506 Pastor Hall, 518 Pat Novak, for Hire, 544, 546 Pauley, M. J., 649 Paulsen, Carl, 527–528 Peale, Norman Vincent, 584 Peale, Ruth Stafford, 584 Peanuts, 175 Pearl, Minne, 230–231 Pearson, Drew, 778 Peer, Ralph, 38 Penguin Books, 96 penicillin, 371–372, 683–684 Penn, Irving, 514–515 People’s Book Club, 126 People’s Song, 334 Pep, Willie, 132t, 133 Pepsi & Pete, 107–108 Pepsi-Cola, 11, 107–109, 160 The Pepsodent Show, Starring Bob Hope, 381–382, 384 Perkins, Frances C., 604–605 Perry, Antoinette, 140, 151 Perry, Lincoln, 537 Personal History (Sheean), 518 Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company, 270–271 Petersen, Robert E. “Pete,” 395 Petrillo, James C., 40, 674 Petty, George, 309, 407–408 The Petty Girl, 408 Pfeifer, Friedl, 645 PGA Championship, 361


Index | I-23 The Phantom (Falk), 537 Philadelphia Orchestra, 185, 273–274 Philip Morris, 183 Phillips, Irma, 572 photography, 30, 262, 376, 509–517, 516t in Citizen Kane, 175 film noir, 122, 281, 326, 387 staying connected through, 376 Technicolor, 228 travel, 730 Physical Fitness Research Laboratory, 370 Pickett, Clarence, 597 Pidgeon, Walter, 607 Pied Pipers, 633 The Pilgrim Hour, 585 Pillsbury, 269 Pinky, 521 Pinocchio, 162 pinup girls, 308–309, 407, 453, 703–704 Piston, Walter, 182 Pittsburgh Orchestra, 186 Pizzeria Uno, 589 Playskool Manufacturing Company, 711 Plimpton, James Leonard, 641 Plunkett, Roy J., 343 Pocket Books, 96 Pogo (Kelly, Walt), 215–216 Polaroid Corporation, 376, 510–511, 684 polio, 373, 601 Pollard, Red, 390 Pollock, Jackson, 6, 30 Pomeroy, Wardell, 435 Pope, Richard, Jr., 670 Pope, Richard, Sr., 669 Popeye, 214 Popular Mechanics, 378 Popular Science, 375–376, 378 population, 787 Porter, Cole, 91, 148 (photo), 151, 381, 496 Porter, Del, 425 Porter, Edward, 510 Post, Emily, 506

posters, 525–530, 526 (photo) grocery stores, 367 scrap drives, 609, 610 (photo) victory gardens, 745 Potsdam Proclamation, 44 Powell, Dick, 544 Powell, Eleanor, 254, 496 Power in the Pacific: Battle Photographs of Our Navy in Action, 509 Poynter, Nelson, 762 Pozo, Chano, 91 Prairie View Co-eds, 18 Pratt, Anthony E., 357 Preakness Stakes, 390, 392 Preminger, Otto, 492 President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Forces, 540–541, 621 President’s Cup, 489 Price, Vincent, 243 Prince, Wesley, 193 Professional Tennis Association, 699 Prohibition, 110, 112, 113–114 Project Blue Book, 736 Prontosil, 371 Pulitzer, Joseph, 147 Pulitzer Prizes, 147 Punsly, Bernard, 205 Puppet Playhouse Theater, 400 Pure Food and Drug Act, 369 Putnam, George Carson, 586 Pyle, Ernie, 504, 530–533 race relations, 533–541 movies and, 520–522 radar, 684 radio, 1, 8, 12, 17, 20, 25, 37, 52, 54, 70–71, 83, 85–86, 107, 136, 148, 184, 195, 196, 224–225, 283, 291–293, 301, 341, 359–360, 375, 381–382, 417–419, 449, 480, 541– 542, 602, 629–630, 646–647, 659, 665, 692, 748–749, 798 action, crime, police, and detective shows, 543–546, 545t–546t advertising and, 332


I-24

| Index

AM, 331–332, 332t, 541, 556 children’s shows, 546–549, 548t classical music and, 181, 185t, 332, 561–562 comedy shows, 550–552, 551t D-Day and, 261 drama and anthology, 552–555, 554t educational, 555–557, 557t FM, 330–333, 332t, 556, 693 folk music and, 333 football and, 345 horse racing and, 392 husband-wife teams, 550 music and variety, 558–562, 560t– 561t news, sports, public affairs, and talk, 562–568, 567t newspapers and, 501, 507 notable newscasters, 563–566 propaganda, 71 quiz shows, 568–571, 570t religion, 582–586, 583t Roller Derby and, 594 schedules, 542 scrap drives, 609 serial films and, 623 serials and adventure series, 546–549, 549t soap operas, 216, 571–574, 573t–574t stereotyping, 536 technology, 331 toys from, 713 two-way, 722 war bonds and, 755 youth and, 785 Radio Berlin, 70–72 Radio Bible Class, 583 Radio Corporation of America (RCA), 331 Radio Free Europe (RFE), 189, 748–749 Radio Liberty (RL), 748–749 Radio Tokyo, 70–72 Raeburn, Boyd, 422 Ralston, Vera, 639 Randell, Ron, 245

Randolph, A. Phillip, 464, 535–536, 540–541 Rankin, John, 358 Rathbone, Basil, 240 Ration Board Game, 355 rationing, 11, 110, 114, 183, 214–215, 226, 271, 379, 574–581, 575 (photo), 619 black market and, 114 butter, 268 canteens and, 159 drag racing and, 394 food, 339–342, 579–580, 589 frozen food, 350 gasoline, 29, 48, 125, 252, 484, 578– 579, 722, 790 grocery stores and, 366 horse racing and, 390 Life and, 580 motor oils, 48 motorsports and, 484 paper, 97 removing, 341, 342, 580–581 restaurants and, 322 skating and, 642 softball and, 651 Spam and, 658 sugar, 108, 267–268, 579 swing and, 674 tires, 48, 577–578 travel and, 726 youth and, 430–431 Raymond, Alex, 214 RCA. See Radio Corporation of America Reagan, Ronald, 66, 156, 399, 412, 464 Reard, Louis, 45, 317, 670–671 records, 681, 688 Red, Hot and Blue (Porter, Cole), 381 Red Cross clubmobiles, 110, 160 Red Ryder (Harman), 537, 772 Reed, Carol, 326 Reed, Donna, 413 Reeves, George, 666 refrigerator-freezer combination, 684– 685


Index | I-25 religion, 581–588, 582t, 583t relocation centers. See internment camps (relocation centers) The Reluctant Dragon, 274 Renaldo, Duncan, 772 Renick, Marion, 651 Republic Pictures, 622–623 restaurants, 109, 271, 588–590 drive-in, 285 fast food, 321–325 rationing and, 322 Reuther, Walter, 446 Reynolds, Joyce, 783 Reynolds, Marjorie, 538 Reynolds Wrap, 342 RFE. See Radio Free Europe rhythm and blues, 39, 426, 591–594, 592t, 593t The Rhythm Boys, 247 Riccardo, Ric, 589 Rice, Diana, 728 Richards, Johnny, 422 Richmond, Kane, 477 Rickey, Branch, 80 Rideout, Percy, 645 Riggs, Bobby, 700 Riggs, Tommy, 552 Rinker, Al, 246, 247 RL. See Radio Liberty The Road to Good Nutrition (Roberts), 337 Road to Singapore, 202, 382 (photo), 383 Road to Victory, 509 Robbins, Irvine, 325 Robbins, Jerome, 151, 257 Roberta (Kern), 381 Roberts, Lydia J., 337 Robeson, Paul, 443 Robinson, Bill “Bojangles,” 255 Robinson, Edward G., 122, 199, 761 Robinson, Jackie, 80, 463, 535 Robinson, Neil, 645 Robinson, Sugar Ray, 132t, 133, 463, 534–535 Rock, George, 426

Rockefeller, John D., Jr., 738 Rockefeller Center, 22 Rockefeller Foundation, 436 The Rockettes, 257–258 Rock-Ola Manufacturing Corporation, 428 Rockwell, Norman, 107, 317, 403–405, 528, 529, 607 war bonds and, 404–405, 528, 758 Rocky King, Inside Detective, 288–289 Rodeo (Copland), 223, 224 (photo) Rodgers, Jimmie, 230 (photo) Rodgers, Richard, 149, 151, 156, 256 (photo) Rogers, Edith Nourse, 358, 776 Rogers, Ginger, 253, 254, 499 Rogers, Roy, 25, 53–61, 54 (photo), 59t–60t, 163, 170, 231, 547, 769 Rohde, Gilbert, 264 Roland, Gilbert, 772 Roller Blades (Sawyer), 642 Roller Derby, 594–596, 595 (photo), 596, 698 Roller Skating Association, 641 Rooney, Mickey, 172, 199, 496, 596 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 269, 506, 597–600, 597 (photo) Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 24, 41, 42, 46–47, 77, 86, 110, 159, 176–177, 188, 284, 313, 336, 357, 377, 409, 443–444, 466, 474, 504, 575–576, 581, 600–605, 601 (photo), 617 “Arsenal for Democracy” speech, 602, 788 “Day of Infamy” speech, 603 death of, 187, 359, 731, 792 “Fireside Chats,” 71, 602 “Four Freedoms” speech, 404, 602, 788 health care and, 374 polio and, 373 “A Prayer in Dark Times,” 586–587 race relations and, 533 Rose, Billy, 668–669 Rose, Fred, 9, 230


I-26

| Index

Rose, Mauri, 485 Rose, Wally, 423 Rose, William L., 529 Rose Bowl, 345, 347 Rosenberg, Harold, 5, 6 Rosenberg, William, 324 Rosenthal, Joe, 509–510 Rosie the Riveter, 11, 528, 605–608, 619, 767 “Rosie the Riveter” (Rockwell), 317, 404, 607 Ross, Shirley, 382–383 Roswell, New Mexico, 736 Rountree, Martha, 478 Roventini, Johnny, 12 Royal Gelatin Hour, 291 RTA. See Russeta Timing Association rubber, 610, 685 “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” 56 Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, 428 Rugolo, Pete, 422 Runyon, Damon, 594–595 Rushing, Jimmy, 83 Rusk, Howard A., 436 Russell, George, 91 Russell, Harold, 104 (photo) Russell, Jane, 309 Russell, Rosalind, 507, 507 (photo) Russeta Timing Association (RTA), 395 Ruth, Babe, 710 (photo) Ryder Cup Matches, 362 Saarinen, Eero, 24, 262, 265 Saarinen, Eliel, 24, 262 Saddler, Sandy, 132t, 133 The Saint, 243, 243t Salk, Jonas, 373 Salvation Army, 160 Samuelson, Ralph, 669 San Francisco Ballet Company, 183 Sandburg, Carl, 224–225, 509 Sanders, Colonel, 324 Sanders, George, 243, 244 Sandrich, Mark, 774 Saroyan, Williams, 147

Saturday Evening Post, 403–405 Savoy Records, 91 Sawyer, Ruth, 642 Schaper, William Herbert, 356 Schauffler, Sandy, 645 Schilling, David C., 67 Schindler, Bill, 488 Schlaikjer, Jes Wilhelm, 527 Schlesinger, Leon, 164 Schlumbohm, Peter, 266 Schmeling, Max, 462, 463 Schmidt, Gottfried, 128 Scholastic Magazine, 609–610 Schulz, Charles, 175 Schuman, William, 182 Schwartz, Arthur, 156 Scobey, Bob, 423 Scott, Raymond, 675 Scrabble, 356, 452 scrap drives, 11, 295, 609–612, 610 (photo), 619 Crosby and, 249 grocery stores and, 366 youth and, 430–431, 609–610 Scruggs, Earl, 232 SCTA. See Southern California Timing Association sculpture, 612–617 Seabiscuit, 390 Seduction of the Innocent (Wertham), 432–433 See Here, Private Hargrove (Hargrove), 619 Seeger, Pete, 333–334, 442–443 Seiberling, Dorothy, 6 Seibert, Peter, 645 Selective Service. See Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, 295, 336, 443–444, 617–621, 673, 739–742, 776 movies and, 619, 761 Seltzer, Leo, 594, 596 service flags (gold stars and blue stars), 404, 626–627


Index | I-27 Service Training Units (STUs), 295–296 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944. See GI Bill Sessions, Roger, 182 Seventeen, 321, 627–628, 784–785 Sewell, Ike, 589 Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Kinsey), 435–437 Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Kinsey), 344, 435–436 The Shadow, 476–477, 543, 663–664 Shaw, Artie, 419 Shaw, Wilbur, 484, 485 Shearing, George, 92 Sheean, Vincent, 518 Sheen, Fulton J., 288, 584 Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, 209, 211 Sherlock Holmes, 239–240, 240t Sherman, Harry, 134–135 Sherwood, Robert E., 104, 520 Shibley, Arkie, 52, 396 Shore, Dinah, 628–631, 629 (photo) Shuster, Joe, 163–164, 208, 476, 664 Siegel, Jerry, 163–164, 208, 476, 664 Silent Spring (Carson, Rachel), 372 Silly Putty, 685, 713 Silverheels, Jay, 461 (photo) Simmons, Zalmon, Jr., 489 Simon, Abe, 131, 463 Simon & Schuster, 96 simulcasting, 685–686 Sinatra, Frank, 19, 40, 41, 195, 256, 306, 320, 363, 631–637, 634t, 636t, 782 singing cowboy, 54, 60, 231, 496 Singleton, Penny, 201 Sir Barton, 390 skating figure, 637–641 roller, 641–643 Ski, 644 Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. See SOM skiing, 643–646 water, 667–672 Slack, Freddie, 124

slang, 310–312 Sleight, Rae, 157–158 Sligh, Charles R., 670 Slinky, 686, 713 Smart, J. Scott, 544 Smith, Bob, 400 Smith, David, 616 Smith, George A., 587 Smith, Kate, 344, 587, 646–649, 647 (photo), 757 Smith, Louise, 487 Smith, W. Eugene, 511, 513t, 514 Smith, W. Warren, 283 Smith, Willie “the Lion,” 82 The Smithsonian Collection of Classical Country Music, 236 Smokey Stover (Holman), 735 Snead, Sam, 361, 362 Snickers, 270 snorkel, 686 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 273 Snuffy Smith, 392 Snyder, Esther, 323–324 Snyder, Harry, 323–324 So Dear to My Heart, 276 So Proudly We Hail!, 780 Sockman, Ralph W., 584 softball, 649–652 Soglow, Otto, 107 SOM (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill), 24–25 Something for the Boys, 483 sonar, 686–687 Song of the South, 276, 520 Songs by Sinatra, 635 songwriters and lyricists, 652–657, 757 Sons of the Pioneers, 57 sound barrier, 67, 687 “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” (Kennan), 188 “South American Way,” 481 South Pacific (Rodgers, R. & Hammerstein), 151 Southern California Timing Association (SCTA), 393–394, 395


I-28

| Index

Southern Music Publishing Company, 38 Soviet Union, 187–193, 397–399 atomic bomb and, 45–46, 179–180, 191, 733, 798 See also Cold War Spam, 341, 657–660, 658 SPARs, 779 Specht, Robert, 639 speedboat racing, 488–489 Spellman, Francis Joseph Cardinal, 467, 587 Spencer, Tim, 57 Spice Islands Company, 365 Spiegelhoff, John, 488 spies, 191, 192, 398, 409 The Spike Jones Show, 426 Spillane, Mickey, 95 (photo) Spitalny, Phil, 15, 16 (photo), 17 Spivak, Lawrence, 478 Spock, Benjamin, 75, 660–661 Spotlight Revue, 426 Springtime in the Rockies, 482 Stafford, Jo, 19 Stage Door Canteen, 139, 150, 159, 742 Stalin, Joseph, 187, 188, 601 (photo), 603 stamp collecting, 376–377, 408, 601 Standard Oil Company, 14 Stanley, Frederick Arthur, 380 Stanley Cup, 380, 380t, 381 Stars and Stripes, 531–532 “The Star-Spangled Banner,” 648 steel pennies, 611, 661–663 Steichen, Edward, 509 Steinbeck, John, 519 Steiner, Max, 168 stereotyping, 533–541 in war movies, 766–767 Stern, Philip Van Doren, 413 Steve Canyon, 222, 704 Stevens, Clifford Brooks, 428 Stevens, George, 414 Stevenson, Adlai, 300 Stewart, Jimmy, 293, 413, 518

Stewart, Redd, 233 Stieglitz, Alfred, 515 Still, William Grant, 181, 261 Stillman, Al, 428 Stimson, Henry L., 409, 618 Stirling, Linda, 623 stock cars, 395–396, 486–487 Stockwell, Dean, 521 Stokowski, Leopold, 162, 273–274 Stone, Edward Durrell, 22 Stone, Harlan Fiske, 605 Stone, Lewis, 199 Stop the Music, 569, 797 Stordahl, Axel, 634 Stormy Weather, 306, 306 (photo) The Story of G.I. Joe, 531 “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” 194 Strandlund, Carl, 27–28 Stratton, Dorothy C., 779 Strayhorn, Billy, 302 A Streetcar Named Desire (Williams, Tennessee), 146 Streeter, Ruth Cheney, 779 streptomycin, 372, 687 Strike Up the Band, 496 Striker, Fran, 459, 460 Strode, Woody, 535 Stubbins, Hugh, Jr., 24 Studebaker Corporation, 48–49, 266 STUs. See Service Training Units Suburban Life, 377–378 suburbanization, 453–458 Suggs, Louise, 363 Sullivan, Ed, 417, 707–708, 707 (photo), 797 Sun Valley, 643, 644 Sundblom, Haddon, 107 suntan lotions, 687 Superman, 163–164, 208, 476, 476 (photo), 507, 663–667 Suspense, 554–555 Swift, Henry, 515 swimming, 667–672, 668 (photo), 671t swimsuits, 670–671 See also bikini


Index | I-29 swing, 12, 16, 19, 83, 89, 124, 182, 194, 225, 232–233, 258, 301, 419, 420, 479, 591, 633, 672–676, 673 (photo) Swing, Raymond Gram, 478 Szilard, Leo, 42 Szyk, Arthur, 527 Taft, Robert A., 75, 297, 445 Taft-Hartley Act, 441, 445 Take Me Out to the Ball Game, 636 Tanforan Assembly Center, 409 (photo) Tarzan, 172 taxis, 722 Taylor, Deems, 162 Taylor, June, 259 Taylor, Robert, 518 Teagarden, Jack, 423 Teague, Walter Dorwin, 261, 262, 721 technology, 184, 677–692 atomic bomb, 191 chronological listing of achievements in, 691t Copland and, 225 frozen food, 351 magazines and, 468 motorsports, 490 sound, 54, 495 Teen Trouble, 431 Teflon, 343, 688 Tehran Conference, 603, 605, 790 television, 2, 12, 16, 21, 41, 54, 85, 128, 135, 140, 166, 168, 195, 200, 228–229, 233, 285–289, 293, 375, 382, 437–439, 450, 461, 477, 581, 631, 637, 647–648, 666, 692–698, 705–708, 798 anthology dramas, 437–439, 696 baseball and, 697 bowling, 697 boxing, 134, 697 camera setup, 679 (photo) children’s, 696 color, 678, 788 FM radio and, 331–332

football and, 347, 697 game/quiz shows, 696t Golden Age of, 439 hockey and, 381 horse racing and, 392 inspired toys, 716 movies and, 491, 695 news, 697 newspapers and, 501 Roller Derby, 596, 698 variety shows, 695–696 wrestling, 697–698 See also specific programs Temple, Shirley, 170, 306, 783 tennis, 452, 698–702, 700t Terry, Paul, 165 Terry and the Pirates, 214, 222, 702– 705 Terrytoons, 165 The Texaco Star Theater, 255, 259, 705–707, 706 (photo), 797 Thank Your Lucky Stars, 630 “Thanks for the Memory,” 382 That Night in Rio, 482, 496 theaters, 449 drive-in, 282–285, 283 (photo) Theatre World Award, 140, 151 This Is the Army (Berlin), 151, 619, 790 Thomas, George, 123 Thomas, J. Parnell, 398, 524 Thompson, J. Walter, 437 Thomson, Virgil, 181, 183 Thornhill, Claude, 675 Three Stooges, 172, 203–204 Throttle Magazine, 394 Tide detergent, 688 Tierney, Gene, 187 (photo) Tilden, Bill, 699 Till the Clouds Roll By, 635 Till the End of Time, 520 Tillie the Toiler (Westover), 779 Tillman, Floyd, 234 Time, 465, 467, 469 “Time After Time,” 635 The Time of Your Life (Saroyan), 147


I-30

| Index

timeline (1940s), 787–800 Tinkertoys, 711 Tito, Josip Broz, 189 To Be or Not to Be, 196, 418 To Have and Have Not, 120 To Hell and Back, 495 Toast of the Town, 707–708, 707 (photo) The Toast of the Town, 259, 797 Todd, John, 460 Toguri, Iva, 70–72, 70 (photo) Tokyo Rose, 70–72 Toland, Gregg, 173 Toler, Sidney, 241, 537 The Tommy Riggs and Betty Lou Show, 552 Tonka, 714 Tony Award, 140, 151 Tootsie Rolls, 270 Topps, 310 Toscanini, Arturo, 183, 184 Tough Hill, 392 toys, 53, 94, 708–716 Trading with the Enemy Act, 503 trains, 93, 157, 716–720, 718t, 719t, 721, 733 decline in, 720, 723 military service, 719, 724 toy, 714–715 Transcontinental Roller Derby, 594 transistors, 689 transportation, 46, 61, 75, 226, 286, 720–725 fast food and, 321–322 food, 340 horse racing and, 390 labor unrest and, 444 restaurants and, 590 skiing, 643–644 suburbanization and, 455 swing and, 674 travel, 67, 94, 282, 725–730, 726t, 727t Travern, B., 121 Travis, Merle, 235–236 TravLodge, 728 The Treasure of Sierra Madre, 121–122

Trendle, George, 459, 460 Trotter, John Scott, 424 Troup, Bobby, 52 True Detective Mysteries, 543 True-Life Adventures, 276 Truman, Harry S., 4, 6, 44, 75, 93, 128, 177, 187, 189, 300, 319, 399, 412, 433, 445, 467, 474, 600, 621, 730– 734, 731 (photo), 739, 743, 797 on food, 342 health care and, 374 race relations and, 540–541 speedboat racing and, 489 Truman Doctrine, 189, 733, 795 Tubb, Ernest, 230 (photo), 235 Tupperware, 343, 689–690 Turner, Curtis, 487 Turner, Eugene, 639 Turner, Lana, 309, 321, 453 Tuskegee Airmen, 534, 534 (photo) Twentieth Century-Fox, 490 UAW. See United Automobile Workers of America U-boats, 116 UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects), 735–736 UMW. See United Mine Workers of America Underwood, Michael, 373 Unidentified Flying Objects. See UFOs United Artists, 490 United Automobile Workers of America (UAW), 443 United Mine Workers of America (UMW), 444 United Nations, 621, 732, 736–739 Declaration of, 603, 737 Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, 182 Human Rights Commission, 600 Roosevelt, Eleanor, appointed to, 600 Secretariat, 23 United Service Organizations. See USO (United Service Organizations)


Index | I-31 United States Committee for the Care of European Children, 597 United States Information Agency (USIA), 189–190, 748 United States Public Health Service, 371 Universal Pictures, 622 Up Front (Mauldin), 532 Up in Arms, 630 Upson Company, 355 USA Today, 505 USIA. See United States Information Agency USO (United Service Organizations), 12, 18, 21, 58, 84, 126, 150, 159, 183, 230, 384, 451, 499, 529, 739–742 VA. See Veterans Administration Valentine, Helen, 627 Vallee, Rudy, 291, 306, 783 Van Dyke, William, 515 Vance, Louis Joseph, 245 Vargas, Alberto, 309, 407–408 Varipapa, Andy, 128–129 Vaughan, Sarah, 89 V-Discs, 41, 558 V-E Day, 743–744 vending, 112–113 Verdi, Giuseppe, 183 Veterans Administration (VA), 358, 371, 728 Victory Book Rallies, 97, 126 victory gardens, 370, 379, 452, 579, 744–748, 745 (photo) golf and, 362 Victory Through Air Power, 275 View, 615 Village Vanguard, 334 vitamins, 369 V-J Day, 743–744 V-Mail, 510 Vogue, 316, 514–515, 614 Voice of America (VOA), 189, 748–749, 794–795

The Volga Boatman, 134 Vox Pop, 568 WAC. See Women’s Auxiliary Corps Wagner, George “Gorgeous George,” 697–698 Wake Island, 760 Walcot, Jersey Joe, 130 (photo) Wall Street Journal, 505 Wallace, Coley, 464 Wallace, Henry A., 600, 730–731 Waller, Fats, 82 Waller, Fred, 669 Wallichs, Glenn, 194 Walt Disney, 161–163, 172, 180, 212, 273–277, 425, 520, 712 Walter, Rosalind, 606 Wanger, Walter, 517 War Advertising Council, 11, 13, 753 war bonds, 11, 58, 140, 150, 295, 619, 751–759, 752 (photo) boxing and, 129 campaigns, 754t Crosby and, 249 grocery stores and, 366 Hope and, 384 jukeboxes and, 430 Rockwell, Norman, and, 404–405, 528, 758 Smith, Kate, and, 647, 757 War Powers Act, 503 War Production Board (WPB), 48, 108, 313 War Ration Program, 576, 580 War Relocation Authority (WRA), 409, 409 (photo), 539 Warm ‘n Fresh Donut, 324 Warner Bros., 164, 172, 212, 277, 490 Warren, Robert Penn, 278 (photo) Washburne, Joe “Country,” 425 Washington, Kenny, 535 WASPs. See Women Airforce Service Pilots Watkins Glen Grand Prix, 486 Watson, Lucile, 139


I-32

| Index

Watters, Lu, 423 WAVES. See Women Accepted for Volunteer Military Services Wayne, David, 532 Wayne, John, 54, 319, 769 WBA. See World Boxing Association “We Can Do It!” (Miller, J. Howard), 316–317, 528, 606 Weaver, Winstead “Doodles,” 425 Webb, Jack, 544, 546 Weegee, 511, 513t, 514 Week-End in Havana, 482, 496 Weir, Walter, 753 Weissmuller, Johnny, 667–668, 669 Welles, Orson, 71, 173–176, 174 (photo), 183, 355 (photo), 477 Wells, Herman B., 436 Wertham, Fredric, 432 West, Mae, 311 Westinghouse War Production CoOrdinating Committee, 528 Weston, Edward, 510, 515, 516t Westover, Russ, 779 Wham-O, 716 “What Are We Fighting For?” (Roosevelt, E.), 598 What Happened to Mary?, 622 Whataburger, 324 “When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain, 648 Whirlaway, 391 White, Minor, 514 White Castle, 322 “White Christmas,” 56, 249, 496, 657, 773–775, 790 Whiteman, Paul, 246, 437 Why We Fight, 763 WIBC. See Women’s International Bowling Congress Wick, Claude R., 339 Wilder, Billy, 492 William, Warren, 245 Williams, Esther, 636, 667–669 Williams, Hank, 10, 234–235 Williams, Ike, 132t

Williams, Mary Lou, 15 Williams, Ted, 78, 78 (photo) Williams, Tennessee, 140, 146 Willis, Bill, 535 Wills, Bob, 232–233 Wills, Royal Barry, 26 Wilson, 737 Wilson, Don, 418 Wilson, Dooley, 169 Wilson, George, 396 Wilson, Sloan, 319 Wilson, Woodrow, 737 Winchell, Verne, 324 Winchell, Walter, 3–4, 72, 506 Wings for This Man, 66 Winter, Roland, 537 Winters, Roland, 241 Wismer, Harry, 67 Woman’s Day, 365 Women Accepted for Volunteer Military Services (WAVES), 314, 778 Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), 314, 778 Women at War, 779–780 women in military, 314, 776–780 Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, 779 Women’s Auxiliary Corps (WAC), 314, 776–778 Women’s International Bowling Congress (WIBC), 127–128 Wood, Craig, 361, 362 Wood, Garfield, 489 Wood, Morrison, 112 Woodruff, Robert W., 108 woodworking, 378 Works Projects Administration, 29, 447, 612 World Boxing Association (WBA), 130 WPB. See War Production Board WRA. See War Relocation Authority wrestling, 697–698 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 22, 22 (photo), 23, 24, 27, 263–264 Wright, Henry, 264


Index | I-33 Wright, Orville, 61 Wright, Russel, 265–266 Wright, Wilbur, 61 Wrigley, Phillip K., 78 Wrigley Company, 270 Wunder, George, 704 Wurster, William W., 26 Wyler, William, 104, 414, 520 Wyman, Jane, 158 (photo) Yank, 309 Yeager, Charles E. (Chuck), 67 Yeoman, Richard S., 377 Yip Yap Yaphank (Berlin), 151, 156, 648 York Cone Company, 270 York Peppermint Patty, 270 You Bet Your Life, 569 Young, Chic, 172, 201–202, 214 (photo), 216, 218 Young, James Webb, 753 Young, Lester, 83

Your Hit Parade, 635 Your Share: How to Prepare Appetizing, Helpful Meals with Foods Available Today (Crocker), 268, 340 youth, 91, 305, 430–434, 781–786 civil defense and, 430–431 fashion, 319–320, 785 oriented agencies, 452–453 rationing and, 430–431 scrap drives and, 430–431, 609–610 softball and, 650 Youth in Crisis, 432 Youth Runs Wild, 432 Zaharias, Babe Didrikson, 363 Zale, Tony, 129, 131, 132t, 133 Zamboni, 690 Zeisel, Eva, 266 Zero Hour, 71–72 Ziolkowski, Korczak, 613 zoot suits, 306, 306 (photo), 320, 431, 540, 783


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