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"Farm family meal, 1940."
I recall similar scenes from 20 years later -- picture calendar on the wall, oilcloth on the table, milk in a pitcher, Grandma in an apron.
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in old movies they always dress up for dinner at home?
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I recall similar scenes from 20 years later -- picture calendar on the wall, oilcloth on the table, milk in a pitcher, Grandma in an apron.
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MikeKardec
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As Lizzie sort of said, Hollywood, especially in the Depression, traded in lifestyle porn. Even the actors in those days were often more classically good looking than many today ... we tend to forget that because now we define attractiveness by the way people who are celebrities look, more because they are famous than because they are attractive. Famous is the new black (tie). It's kind of warped but kind of open minded too.
Whether back then or today, you really don't go to the movies to see someone who's life is just like yours ... especially if yours isn't all that great. Entertainment deals with the exotic or it wouldn't be entertainment. Exotic could be the environment or the the emotional circumstances, whatever.
Luckily, independent film and a good deal of cable TV is no longer quite so enslaved to that "rich and famous," sort of "Dallas" mentality. But the transition was not very long ago and the old broadcast networks STILL can't really make the change.
We are kind of spoiled in the US by a certain sort of artistic vision in movies. In many countries film is financed to a great extent by the government. The deal is, however, that it must reflect the "history or culture" of the home country. In the US, you tend to see movies that do not so directly reflect our "history and culture" but our "fantasies and fears," because our films are all privately funded. Our soap operas can be about the fashion industry, in Australia it might be about a bunch of people living in a trailer park.
As time has passed we in the US have suffered from a great deal of stakes inflation (drama produced in mass always creates stakes inflation until there is a sudden correction like we saw in the late 1960s); our fantasies and fears today have grown operatic and apocalyptic. Thus the rise of all this Superhero madness. At a guess the "fantasy" in many of those is about being a sort of royalty, a child rewarded for whatever he does; it's having power you didn't have to work for, in fact in many cases you could gain it through being a hapless victim. The "fear" is that there is actually no one capable or competent enough to solve the world's problems. Don't get me started on Vampires or Zombies, I suspect those are indications of even more disturbing stuff.
LizzieMaine
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I've always sort of seen the superhero craze as, simply, the power fantasies of an entire culture that sees itself, deep down, as powerless. I think this was true of the original superhero fad of 1939-41, with characters created by a generation that had come of age right in the teeth of the Depression and the gaping gullet of Fascism, and I think it's doubly true today, with a generation of creators who've come of age in a time when society is being tossed back and forth at random by incomprehensible outside forces. A superhero, in 1940 or in 2017, represents a sense of control and certainty and clarity of absolute purpose that doesn't exist outside of fantasy.
All societies have had such fantasies, of course -- the mythologies of all cultures abound with "superheroes." Where the trouble begins is when you start to take the fantasies seriously, and actually start believing that there's any one special individual who can come sweeping along and make all the confusion and frustration go away, and make it all simple again. Even though it was never simple to begin with.
All societies have had such fantasies, of course -- the mythologies of all cultures abound with "superheroes." Where the trouble begins is when you start to take the fantasies seriously, and actually start believing that there's any one special individual who can come sweeping along and make all the confusion and frustration go away, and make it all simple again. Even though it was never simple to begin with.
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⇧ The recent Nolan "Batman" trilogy, IMHO, was basically just that - Batman as an individual who could - sometimes - make a difference, who had power, who could fight not only crime, but public corruption and terrorism. That he was attacked physically, emotionally and legally in these efforts - and from all sides (criminals, the public and the government) - was a symbolic reflection of society's frustration at fighting all the same things. His struggle was our struggle.
MikeKardec
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Batman (and Ironman) are almost exceptions to what I was thinking. However, in recent versions great emphasis is now put on Bantam's wealth yet I can't remember how he made his money (that's not a rhetorical device, I truly can't remember), Ironman was at least a "Steve Jobs/Sam Cummings" (SC was a famous arms dealer) but again with a wealthy father. They are princes. Anointed by heaven, or at least the previous generation.
I'm not sure we need to look at politics past or present to find a reason for kids liking Superheroes. Kids are always powerless; of course they have fantasies. Adults? That's another story. Possibly they need to grow up. That's what the occasional complex, dark, "origin story-esque" Superhero movie these days does. Grow the characters up and make them like the Superheroes of ancient times, the Greek Gods. They are fairly poor Greek Gods but if you look at their beginnings, that's not surprising! The updating has worked well and has some legitimacy to it.
The "society is against Superheroes" theme in more modern comics and movies is an attempt at complexity to make them relevant but again it fits the childhood power fantasy model by making the secretly powerful heroes victims because they are so special average society can't tolerate them.
I'm making this all up, I don't spend much time thinking about it. One thing is true; the best talent in Hollywood has been lavished on these stories because it's all the business has got going for it right now. It's not all that surprising that they're about as good as you can make them, at the limit of what the genre can provide. It's also true that in the comic BOOK world the audience, though pretty small, is totally captive. The writers have had a certain freedom to experiment and perfect (for their audience) because marketing in that world is like shooting fish in a barrel and feedback is very fast. I don't really have a point to make by saying that, it's just something I know to be true. These days the DC and Marvel film divisions use the comics as a testing ground for whether something is worth trying in a film.
Regardless, whenever you see nutso stakes inflation; James Bond saves the entire world both underwater and in SPACE, you are heading for a correction in the genre or the industry or society as a whole. Throughout the 1960s European films reeducated American audiences back to gritty reality because the audiences were ready to be reeducated. Traditional Hollywood had become too slick and too much about fancy people doing fancy things to survive. But it's cyclical in many ways American depression cinema influenced Europe then they brought it back to us.
LizzieMaine
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The kids-vs-adults angle is interesting, when you look at the fact that superheroes weren't exclusively a kiddie phenomenon in the early 1940s. Superman, especially, was a bona-fide national craze from 1939 to 1941, with a substantial percentage of his comics being sold to adults -- and well into the late 1940s, the "Superman" radio show had almost as many adult listeners as it did kids. Something in the original conception of the character clearly hit a note with that generation, something that I suggest has been lost in subsequent reiterations.
I think it also says something that the largest-selling publications at military post exchanges thruout the war were comic books. At the height of the war, in 1944, "Captain Marvel Adventures" was coming out twice a month, with a combined monthly circulation of over three million copies. That dwarfs anything going on with superheroes today.
I think it also says something that the largest-selling publications at military post exchanges thruout the war were comic books. At the height of the war, in 1944, "Captain Marvel Adventures" was coming out twice a month, with a combined monthly circulation of over three million copies. That dwarfs anything going on with superheroes today.
Inkstainedwretch
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Not at all a superhero, but Mike Hammer represented adolescent power fantasy to a generation of Americans. What Mike had was not super powers, he was just plenty strong and tough. What he had was a total lack of the restraint that keeps us from exercising our most primitive instincts, for good reason. Whether facing thugs, rich above-the-law types, or Commie scum, Mike punched them out, then stomped their faces. If the situation was especially serious, he hauled out his .45 and blew them away. Surprisingly, Mickey Spillane did not shy from making it clear that Mike was clinically insane, at least periodically. As a 12-year-old I really wanted to be Mike Hammer.
LizzieMaine
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The strongest readership for Spillane novels after WWII was young, pissed-off, unemployed ex-GIs who didn't know what to do with themselves now that the war was over -- in other words, the very same generation that had spent much of its off time during the war years reading comic books. There was never a more perfect confluence of product with market.
Spillane, was, of course, an ex-comic book writer himself, and knew how to capture those fantasies. It's interesting to note that the rise of bloody, violent "true crime" comics targeted to young adult male readers coincided precisely with the end of the war and the rise of Spillane-style paperback violence.
Spillane, was, of course, an ex-comic book writer himself, and knew how to capture those fantasies. It's interesting to note that the rise of bloody, violent "true crime" comics targeted to young adult male readers coincided precisely with the end of the war and the rise of Spillane-style paperback violence.
MikeKardec
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A lot of weird things were happening then. Mike Hammer is interesting because he's VERY emotional and it doesn't seem that was a big part of male role models in those days. My memories of him are like more like a super id than a superhero.
I'm not a fan of comics even though I've worked a bit in that business. It was much more of an intellectual challenge than I had thought and reading them, if they are written well, is a surprisingly nuanced business. It's odd. I'm pretty good at it. I'd love to do it again. But I don't really like reading them.
I'm not a fan of comics even though I've worked a bit in that business. It was much more of an intellectual challenge than I had thought and reading them, if they are written well, is a surprisingly nuanced business. It's odd. I'm pretty good at it. I'd love to do it again. But I don't really like reading them.
I think the Mickey Spillane sort of adult action fiction that became popular after the war, which also occurred in the movies, including in Westerns, was due to the men coming out of the armed forces who had seen enough brutal and bloody reality that the movies aimed at grade school kids, like the B-westerns, wasn't enough. But perhaps we read too much into the movies.
My father never went further in school than grade school and drove a truck for a laundry for a living. But we had a "servant," who was referred to as a housekeeper whenever a title was necessary. The reason was because my mother was an invalid. That's another theme that kept cropping up in movies; someone needed an operation and didn't have the money. Only my mother had had a stroke and eventually died before she was 50. There were two different housekeepers over the years, one of whom was an older widow woman who lived only two blocks away. She was sort of a 3/4-time housekeeper and stayed at the house only some of the time, probably in the winder but I don't recall. There's nobody left to ask about it, either.
My father and I always went to church on Sunday and my father kept his suit on all day. So he sort of dressed for dinner one day a week.
The way people dressed in the movies was semi-accurate. Sam Spade didn't have to go home and cut the grass or work on the plumbing. So he wore a suit and tie all the time. Even if he did, that wasn't part of the story anyway. Stories typically never included "ordinary time" when someone was doing household chores and as near as I recall, shopping. The clothes that cowboys wore were fairly accurate but only for the years they were made, not the years in which they were set. Westerns these days go overboard with characters looking scruffier and hairier than in actuality. But the horses always look correct.
One thing about the past for most people, referring here to before, oh, the late 1950s, is that they had work clothes and they had dress-up clothes. There was nothing in-between and that's still true for a lot of people. My boss joked that he went jogging in an oxford cloth dress shirt but he may have been pulling our leg. I have a theory that the everyday clothes of one generation becomes the dress clothes two generations later, or something approaching that. An ordinary business suit is as dressy as it gets for most men. Can't speak for women. Few men wear dinner jackets, white sport coats, white tie or a morning coat. I imagine some get by without even a suit. William Faulkner had a character who showed up for work on his first day wearing a suit (a "suit of clothes") and another character commented that he bet that he'd get proper work clothes after his first payday. And he did.
Most but not all of the men I knew in my working class neighborhood (which included two schoolteachers) wore practically nothing but work clothes their entire lives. During the time I lived there from the 40s to the 60s, that meant the matching outfits of grey, green or khaki that were available everywhere then. There were exceptions a-plenty.
One man was a painter and paper hanger. He wore the same things painters wear today. He was a weekend drunk. Another man worked for the power company as a linesman. He frequently wore breeches and high lace-up boots and flannel shirt. He was also a weekend drunk. And one man was a small contractor who would pour sidewalks, build retaining walls and stuff like that. He wore a dress shirt and tie with the tie tucked into his shirt army-style. Yet another man who worked for a heating and boiler company invariably wore a knit polo shirt. None of the men ever wore shorts. Ever.
My father never went further in school than grade school and drove a truck for a laundry for a living. But we had a "servant," who was referred to as a housekeeper whenever a title was necessary. The reason was because my mother was an invalid. That's another theme that kept cropping up in movies; someone needed an operation and didn't have the money. Only my mother had had a stroke and eventually died before she was 50. There were two different housekeepers over the years, one of whom was an older widow woman who lived only two blocks away. She was sort of a 3/4-time housekeeper and stayed at the house only some of the time, probably in the winder but I don't recall. There's nobody left to ask about it, either.
My father and I always went to church on Sunday and my father kept his suit on all day. So he sort of dressed for dinner one day a week.
The way people dressed in the movies was semi-accurate. Sam Spade didn't have to go home and cut the grass or work on the plumbing. So he wore a suit and tie all the time. Even if he did, that wasn't part of the story anyway. Stories typically never included "ordinary time" when someone was doing household chores and as near as I recall, shopping. The clothes that cowboys wore were fairly accurate but only for the years they were made, not the years in which they were set. Westerns these days go overboard with characters looking scruffier and hairier than in actuality. But the horses always look correct.
One thing about the past for most people, referring here to before, oh, the late 1950s, is that they had work clothes and they had dress-up clothes. There was nothing in-between and that's still true for a lot of people. My boss joked that he went jogging in an oxford cloth dress shirt but he may have been pulling our leg. I have a theory that the everyday clothes of one generation becomes the dress clothes two generations later, or something approaching that. An ordinary business suit is as dressy as it gets for most men. Can't speak for women. Few men wear dinner jackets, white sport coats, white tie or a morning coat. I imagine some get by without even a suit. William Faulkner had a character who showed up for work on his first day wearing a suit (a "suit of clothes") and another character commented that he bet that he'd get proper work clothes after his first payday. And he did.
Most but not all of the men I knew in my working class neighborhood (which included two schoolteachers) wore practically nothing but work clothes their entire lives. During the time I lived there from the 40s to the 60s, that meant the matching outfits of grey, green or khaki that were available everywhere then. There were exceptions a-plenty.
One man was a painter and paper hanger. He wore the same things painters wear today. He was a weekend drunk. Another man worked for the power company as a linesman. He frequently wore breeches and high lace-up boots and flannel shirt. He was also a weekend drunk. And one man was a small contractor who would pour sidewalks, build retaining walls and stuff like that. He wore a dress shirt and tie with the tie tucked into his shirt army-style. Yet another man who worked for a heating and boiler company invariably wore a knit polo shirt. None of the men ever wore shorts. Ever.
LizzieMaine
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There was a lot of suppressed rage in that generation of young soldiers coming home -- you can see it not just in the comics and paperback novels directed at them but also in the entire genre of barber-shop "men's adventure" magazines that rose up when they got home. And it really shouldn't be surprising -- take a generation of young men, train them to kill or be killed, and then bring them home and expect them to seamlessly take their places in adult peacetime society, when a good number of them have never actually been adults in peacetime society, and you're bound to end up with some issues.
Because a lot of people still remembered how things had worked out following World War I -- a lot of young men finding their way into criminal pursuits, radical politics, etc. -- there were efforts made to ease their transition. Most returning vets qualified for what was called the "52-20" club -- a program which paid them $20 a week for 52 weeks to help with their readjustment. Many young men took advantage of this program while attending college under the GI Bill, many others were able to reintegrate into their old jobs -- but more than a few just spent their 52 weeks loafing around, glaring sullenly, and reading violent comics, magazines, and paperbacks. Readjustment for these would be more difficult than anticipated.
Spillane's work really shows these tensions without any effort at concealment. Don't like authority? Punch it in the face. Don't like a woman crossing you up? Blow her head off with a shotgun.
Because a lot of people still remembered how things had worked out following World War I -- a lot of young men finding their way into criminal pursuits, radical politics, etc. -- there were efforts made to ease their transition. Most returning vets qualified for what was called the "52-20" club -- a program which paid them $20 a week for 52 weeks to help with their readjustment. Many young men took advantage of this program while attending college under the GI Bill, many others were able to reintegrate into their old jobs -- but more than a few just spent their 52 weeks loafing around, glaring sullenly, and reading violent comics, magazines, and paperbacks. Readjustment for these would be more difficult than anticipated.
Spillane's work really shows these tensions without any effort at concealment. Don't like authority? Punch it in the face. Don't like a woman crossing you up? Blow her head off with a shotgun.
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⇧ William Bendix's character in 1946's "Blue Dahlia" is an unvarnished example of this. Haven't seen the movie in awhile, but if memory serves, he has what today we'd call post traumatic stress disorder from his WWII service and is always one wrong word away from becoming violent.
I knew about the GI bill (as does everyone), but don't recall reading about the 52-20 club - amazing how much I've missed despite having been a reasonably active reader and follower of WWII and the broader period's history in general. My handy-dandy internet inflation calculator tells me that $20 in '46 would be about $250 today - no lear jet to Paris for lunch, but something to help the transition. The GI Bill, obviously if leveraged well, would do much more to help.
I knew about the GI bill (as does everyone), but don't recall reading about the 52-20 club - amazing how much I've missed despite having been a reasonably active reader and follower of WWII and the broader period's history in general. My handy-dandy internet inflation calculator tells me that $20 in '46 would be about $250 today - no lear jet to Paris for lunch, but something to help the transition. The GI Bill, obviously if leveraged well, would do much more to help.
LizzieMaine
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Another thing with the 52-20 Club was that a veteran didn't have to take the 52 weeks consecutively -- the entitlement was to up to 52 weeks of payments, period. So Joe Veteran might find work for a while and go off the program, and then take it up again when that job ended. Because of this arrangement, some vets were still collecting 52-20 payments into the 1950s.
There's a lot of things in that immediate postwar period that have been glossed over in collective memory -- in the mythology, all the soldiers came home to joyful reunions with their loved ones and immediately went out and bought a new Mercury, a Deep-Freeze unit, and a house in Levittown. But the reality was a lot more complicated, and the adjustments were a lot more stressful. Economic readjustment was difficult, there was a lot of pent-up frustration from labor that led to a wave of strikes, there was a chronic housing shortage, the divorce rate spiked to an all time high, Truman clearly wasn't FDR and wasn't especially good at projecting an air of calm confidence in the face of trouble, and there was a lot of anger from troops still in uniform that they weren't coming home immediately: the "Wanna Go Home Riots" of 1946 found thousands of US servicemen rising up and going on strike in Germany against their continued deployment.
"The Best Years Of Their Lives" tried to capture some of this, but Hollywood, as always, was not allowed to tell the unvarnished truth, with the result being a sentimentalized, "inspiring" picture that tried to reassure audiences that everything was going to be just fine.
There's a lot of things in that immediate postwar period that have been glossed over in collective memory -- in the mythology, all the soldiers came home to joyful reunions with their loved ones and immediately went out and bought a new Mercury, a Deep-Freeze unit, and a house in Levittown. But the reality was a lot more complicated, and the adjustments were a lot more stressful. Economic readjustment was difficult, there was a lot of pent-up frustration from labor that led to a wave of strikes, there was a chronic housing shortage, the divorce rate spiked to an all time high, Truman clearly wasn't FDR and wasn't especially good at projecting an air of calm confidence in the face of trouble, and there was a lot of anger from troops still in uniform that they weren't coming home immediately: the "Wanna Go Home Riots" of 1946 found thousands of US servicemen rising up and going on strike in Germany against their continued deployment.
"The Best Years Of Their Lives" tried to capture some of this, but Hollywood, as always, was not allowed to tell the unvarnished truth, with the result being a sentimentalized, "inspiring" picture that tried to reassure audiences that everything was going to be just fine.
Doctor Strange
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Lizzie, you should cut The Best Year of Our Lives some slack, it was shot and released in 1946... before the full extent of the unvarnished truth was even clear.
My parents had both been in the service, and they met when my dad and his army-buddy partner had just opened their photography business. Their early years together were about cold-water flats, a ten-year-old car, a struggling business, and a community of ex-service folks amusing themselves in low-cost ways (parties in the bigger-than-anyone's-apartment studio that were mainly just deli cold cuts, cheap beer and wine, and ballgames on the radio). They both took advantage of the GI Bill - Dad at the NYC School of Modern Photography, Mom at NYU... though she ended up quitting after a couple of years and also going to the School of Modern Photography - but it was a real hand-to-mouth existence for years. The only way they were eventually able to buy a house was from their apartment insurance after we were burned out of our apartment by a started-by-Xmas-lights electrical fire on Christmas 1959 (the great traumatic event of my early childhood!)
OTOH, neither of them had been in combat, so they didn't have any of those rage/violence or PTSD issues. For both of them, their years in service were a transformative experience out of their difficult Depression childhoods that gave them new skills, drive, and discipline. They were lucky, and they knew it.
My parents had both been in the service, and they met when my dad and his army-buddy partner had just opened their photography business. Their early years together were about cold-water flats, a ten-year-old car, a struggling business, and a community of ex-service folks amusing themselves in low-cost ways (parties in the bigger-than-anyone's-apartment studio that were mainly just deli cold cuts, cheap beer and wine, and ballgames on the radio). They both took advantage of the GI Bill - Dad at the NYC School of Modern Photography, Mom at NYU... though she ended up quitting after a couple of years and also going to the School of Modern Photography - but it was a real hand-to-mouth existence for years. The only way they were eventually able to buy a house was from their apartment insurance after we were burned out of our apartment by a started-by-Xmas-lights electrical fire on Christmas 1959 (the great traumatic event of my early childhood!)
OTOH, neither of them had been in combat, so they didn't have any of those rage/violence or PTSD issues. For both of them, their years in service were a transformative experience out of their difficult Depression childhoods that gave them new skills, drive, and discipline. They were lucky, and they knew it.
My father certainly saw combat and even spent a year as a POW in Germany, coincidentally not far from where I was stationed in the army (My son was stationed in the same town Elvis had been stationed in). But he got a job almost right away after leaving the army in late 1945, glad that the atomic bomb had ended the war without an invasion of Japan. He kept that job until 1963. He didn't seem to have an post-war stress of any kind and we even lived with his mother-in-law.
While I understand what Miss Lizzie is saying, at least some people lived in Levittown.
We all have different standards. I once remember when my father was still alive but a widow a second time, we were on the way to visit relatives and passing through my hometown. He made a comment about one cluster of homes just on the outskirts of town and said that "this used to be a shantytown." By 1946 Levittown standards, it still looked like one.
While I understand what Miss Lizzie is saying, at least some people lived in Levittown.
We all have different standards. I once remember when my father was still alive but a widow a second time, we were on the way to visit relatives and passing through my hometown. He made a comment about one cluster of homes just on the outskirts of town and said that "this used to be a shantytown." By 1946 Levittown standards, it still looked like one.
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Cool info - thank you
Unfortunately, no one had had the opportunity to read McCullough's biography of him yet.
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LizzieMaine
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Unfortunately, no one had had the opportunity to read McCullough's biography of him yet.
Heh. It's hard for people who think of ol' Harry with the "Give 'em hell!" image he's had since the end of his presidency to realize just how unpopular he was right after the war. Hard-core FDR partisans in the press like Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson couldn't stand him -- and said so at every opportunity. (A story went around that Truman had threatened Pearson with a pistol after the columnist critcized the First Daughter in print.) The Left loathed him for his response to the railroad strike: "Go back to work or I'll personally draft you into the Army!" The Right saw him as a cheap little Kansas City ward heeler who could be bulldozed out of the way, the better to get rid of the New Deal heresy once and for all. And Joe Blow looked around, saw the housing shortage and the continuing food and consumer-goods shortages and wondered just why in the hell he still had to carry around a sugar-ration book when the war was over. "I'll have a Truman Beer," he joked. "Just like any other beer, 'cept it hasn't got a head."
LizzieMaine
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No one's saying that "all veterans" reacted the same way. But enough had difficulty readjusting that it was probably the most-talked-about domestic problem of the 1946-48 period, even more so than Truman being a blockhead or the Commies hiding under the bed. "What are we going to do about the veterans?"
Most veterans in 1946-48 could only dream about a cheap beaverboard house in an old potato field -- for every family that got a niche in such a development, hundreds were turned away because there simply wasn't room. It became a common thing for returned servicemen to skip over the funnies and the sports page when they opened their daily paper and turn right to the obituaries to see if any good houses or apartments might have been freed up in the neighborhood. Some veterans found themselves packed into communal living arrangements in abandoned Quonset huts. Others adapted shipping crates or chicken coops or even mothballed bomber planes for emergency housing. Others basically seized motels and tourist camps and refused to leave, even after the owners called the police to force them to move on. Even a sitting U. S. Senator couldn't find a place to live -- Sen. Glen Taylor of Idaho, an eccentric who cultivated a "singing cowboy" image, stood on the steps of the Capitol with his wife and kids and his guitar, and regaled the press with this song:
"Oh, give me a hooooome,
By the Capitol dooooome,
With a Yarrrd, where the li'l children can playyyyyyy
Jes' one rooom or twooooo
Any ol' thang will dooooo
Oh, we cain't find no plaaaace to stayyyyyy!"
(And people thought "Senator Claghorn" was a caricature.)
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You can "feel" the post-war housing shortage in the movies of the time. While "Gentleman's Agreement's" main story line is about a reporter masquerading as being Jewish to experience anti-semitism, his actual Jewish friend in the movie is desperate to find an apartment or house amidst the post-war shortage. And while no other movies immediately jump to mind, I have seen several where a reference is made to the housing shortage or challenges of finding an apartment immediately after the war. That, IMHO, is telling as these are not the plot drivers, but just the normal things that pop up in movies that reveal a period's concerns.
