The 19 FORTIES

Hiding the Lockheed Plant during World War II

2011-07-01T13:52:00.000-07:00

Hidden in Plain View during the forties. Lockheed aircraft company camoflaged their plant from any enemy aircraft that might have flown over California. None ever did of course, but it was a good precaution.

"Rosie the riviter dies"

2011-01-05T08:26:00.000-08:00

At 17, a young factory worker named Geraldine Doyle unwittingly inspired J. Howard Miller’s iconic “We

This Day in History

The "original" Rosie the Riveter, who inspired Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb to write the 1942 song of the same name, was Rosalind P. Walter, who came from a wealthy New York family and worked as a riveter building fighter planes on the night shift.

In 1942, a United Press International photographer visited a metal pressing factory outside Detroit and took a snapshot of a slim, fresh-faced brunette leaning over a machine. The picture enchanted the graphic artist J. Howard Miller, who had been hired by the Westinghouse Company to design a series of motivational posters aimed at boosting female factory workers’ morale. He incorporated its pretty young subject’s face and polka-dot headscarf into one of the posters, which features a determined-looking woman flexing her right bicep under the slogan “We Can Do It!” Decades later, the poster became one of America’s most recognizable emblems of women’s empowerment, spawning countless imitations and reproduced on everything from mugs and magnets to postage stamps.

Geraldine Hoff Doyle, the real-life inspiration behind the iconic poster, died on December 26 in Lansing, Michigan, at the age of 86. Just 17 when the photographer captured her, she had taken a factory job after graduating high school, one of 6 million women who entered the workforce during World War II to plug gaping holes in the industrial labor force. An aspiring cellist, Doyle left after just two weeks of employment when she learned that the machinery had badly injured another worker’s hands. She found a position at a soda fountain and bookstore, where she met her future husband, Leo, in 1943. The couple had six children and ran a successful dental practice.

More than four decades would go by before Doyle learned of the poster’s existence and discovered that her likeness had inspired a pop culture reference. Paging through a magazine one day in 1984, she spotted a photograph of the poster and recognized her younger self. In a 2002 interview with the Lansing State Journal, Doyle, who began making frequent appearances in Michigan to sign posters, explained that motherhood and daily life had kept her too busy to realize she had become the face of Rosie the Riveter. "I was changing diapers all the time," she said.

Unlike another famous depiction, painted by Norman Rockwell and featured on a Saturday Evening Post cover in 1943, the “We Can Do It!” poster was not originally intended as a portrayal of Rosie the Riveter, who was first immortalized in a 1942 hit song and starred in numerous government-sponsored recruitment campaigns. One of many in Miller’s series, the poster was barely seen outside Westinghouse factories in the Midwest, where women were making plastic helmet liners. It was not until later, when feminists rediscovered the poster during the 1970s and 1980s, that it achieved its iconic status and became associated with the World War II-era character.

The war was almost over

2010-10-31T09:56:00.001-07:00

VJ (victory over Japan) was in September 1945. This magazine had an issue date of August 18, 1945. It was all over but final surrender by that time. Everyone knew it was over, finally over. The well known Jeep would be converted for peacetime use. The cover illustrates a family still intact after four years of fear and angst whenever the doorbell would ring. I can only imagine if they were a real family what thoughts would have gone through their minds. How anything, how any dream is now possible to dream.

2 months before WWII started. typical downtown in the forties

2010-04-19T06:52:00.000-07:00

Amsterdam NY
Submitted by Grego on Wed, 06/18/2008 - 12:46am.

Most of downtown Amsterdam's a ghost town. A good size chunk of it was demolished to build a big mall, which is now 90% empty. Sad, really...

Urban renewal at its worst.

Grand Central Station 1941

2010-04-18T09:33:00.000-07:00

Key Largo

2010-04-18T09:20:00.000-07:00

In the forties Key Largo was a big movie. Radio was still huge, so listen now to Key Largo on the radio, and your imagination will provide the pictures.

Bushido

2010-04-18T08:48:00.000-07:00

I served in the military overseas in Japan 1956-57. Being very young and not the brightest bulb in the package I ran up against a conundrum. How could the Japanese behavior in peacetime be so opposite of what it was during the war years? I know they were a defeated army, but their overt behavior towards the American military was not what I expected. It wasn't until later in my life that I discovered a simple answer, what you don't know, you can discover by reading. The Jekyll and Hyde of the Japanese war behavior and their postwar conduct was explained in one word, Bushido.

Japanese Military Culture

At the outbreak of the Pacific war, the Japanese armed forces combined modern technology -- including ships and aircraft equal to or superior to their Allied equivalents -- with a military spirit that remained feudal. Termed Bushido (The Way of the Warrior), that spirit gave rise to behavior that Allied soldiers found bewildering as well as barbarous and fanatical.

Based on peculiar perspectives on Confucianism and Zen Buddhism, Bushido demanded unquestioning loyalty and sacrifice. The Japanese soldiers' written code ordered them to keep in mind that duty was "weightier than a mountain," while death was "lighter than a feather." Indeed, death was idealized as something to be welcomed. Thus, soldiers, sailors, and airmen willingly sacrificed themselves in banzai charges, kamikaze aircraft, and kaiten submarines.

Japan's leaders now believed surrender as unthinkable for Japanese and contemptible in enemies, thus justifying abominable treatment of prisoners after prior years of very decent treatment of prisoners (also attributed to Bushido). In keeping with the samurai tradition, they also revered the sword, which led to the beheading of their captives. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East blamed Bushido as a contributing factor in Japanese atrocities.

Atrocities were part of every major Japanese land operation and were directed against both combatants and civilians. The demeaning training and disciplinary regimes in the Japanese services featured corporal punishment and probably contributed to the brutality of their personnel. The Japanese army employed ruses that their enemies considered unacceptable, including wearing enemy uniforms, booby-trapping corpses, and feigning surrender in order to kill would-be captors.

The atrocities could be blamed on other reasons. The Japanese were fighting a losing war, combating insurgencies, and trying to survive amid starvation. However, the atrocities had begun when Japan was winning the war.

Japanese servicemen were repeatedly told that their martial spirit was superior to that of their materialistic enemies, who would eventually succumb. Initially, the combination of Japanese ferocity and skill was frighteningly successful. However, the ultimate defeat of the Japanese discredited their cultural prejudice.

Flying Tigers

2010-04-18T08:12:00.000-07:00

Undoubtedly the most macho looking fighter at the beginning of WWII was the Curtiss P40 Warhawk better known as a flying tiger. The group was a voluntary American group assembled in China, headed by Gen. Clair Chennault.

2009-04-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

WHAT WAS RATIONED DURING WORLD WAR II?

Answer

Note. There were differences in rationing between the various countries in the war, and variations over time. In addition to rationing by coupon, some products were simply not available for civilian use (for example nylon), and others were often hard to find (for example, photographic film and good quality paper).

Answer

Many things were rationed. Foodstuffs like bananas were scarce and many things including sugar, meat, butter, cheese, eggs, milk, tea, chocolate, clothes, fuel oil, rubber, typewriters, cooking oil and many other things were rationed. This happened because the Nazis were sinking ships importing these foods and materials.

Answer

Nearly all food products were rationed. Cloth, wood and metal, as well as rubber and leather, were all rationed so that the armed forces would have enough for their needs.

Gasoline, oil and grease, as well as kerosene and industrial alcohol, and ink. Paper, carbon paper, pencils, pens and typewriter ribbons, as well as erasors and paperclips and envelopes.

Automobile tires, parts and belts were all unavailable during the war, as the factories were sending all their production to the military's needs. Nylon and silk were used for parachutes, not women's stockings.

Answer

Rationed items: gasoline, tires (or just impossible to get?), sugar, coffee, shoes, meats hard or impossible to get: chocolate, nylons, butter, some spices, cheese, cigarettes, candy bars, things containing rubber, sheets and pillow cases, linens (used flour sacks in place of dish towels).

Answer

Tires and fuel for sure. However many things were just not made as U.S companies were told what to make. For example, Studebaker made trucks, Ford made jeeps and liberty ships and so on. So rationing was twofold with entire types of manufacturing shifted to war production.

Answer

It varied from country to country and from year to year and even from month to month - and sometimes even from week to week. Most countries continued rationing for a time after the end of WWII. In Britain, for example, even bread (!) was rationed for a while in 1946-47.

Things in short supply throughout WWII in most countries included foodstuffs (especially animal products, ranging from milk to meat) and also oil.

Answer

In Great Britain, the weekly ration per person got smaller and smaller as the war dragged on in to its second and third years. Almost every type of food was rationed; some things were simply not available, like oranges and bananas. Eggs were scare and sugar was limited to one ounce a week, per person. Powdered milk and eggs were the usual things for breakfast.

Clothing was rationed, so were paper, ink and soap. Gasoline was limited to those who had a job that was essential to the war effort. Most people parked their car for the duration of the war. Coal and oil was severely rationed in Great Britain, as was all most everythinh else.

WHY?

Because so many things had to be brought to the UK by a ship, and the German U-boats were sinking many of them as they crossed the Atlantic Ocean from North America. In order to send much-needed supplies to Great Britain, people in Canada and the USA had to give up SOME of what they were used to, but the rationing here was no where as bad as it was in Great Britain.

An entire generation of British kids grew up undersized and sickly due to a lack of vitamins during their first few years of life during the war years.

Answer

Actually, great efforts were made in Britain to ensure as far as possible that the next generation did not grow up 'undersized and sickly'. In my schooldays we were given milk and A and D vitamins every day at school, and sometimes further supplements. We also ate a higher proportion of vegetables than was usual before or after rationing.

Take a look at Britons born between about 1935 and 1947 and see if they show any obvious signs of being stunted. :)

In Britain rationing continued till 1954, though clothing was taking off rationing in 1949 and bread was rationed for only about 12 months in 1946-47.

2009-04-23T08:34:00.000-07:00

A 1940'S PIN-UP and A GOOD ACTRESS TOO. ("you know how to whistle, don't you Steve? Just pucker up and blow".) Bogie didn't stand a chance. Oh I almost forgot, it's Lauren Bacall, did I have to add this line? Naw. She and Bogie got married in my hometown, cool.

2009-04-22T20:48:00.000-07:00

Battle of Okinawa

2009-04-15T06:35:00.000-07:00

I go to the Palomar for some good music from the forties era, but the news about Glenn Miller's death just keeps getting weirder and weirder. I think soon someone will say they saw the Yeti again and he looked just like Miller himself.

Check out the most recent events here at the the Palomar. Before you leave the site, click on some of their music. If you are of a certain age you'll be glad you did.

Here is the link to the Miller story.

2009-04-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

A collage from the site BACK WHEN. Take a look.

2008-12-29T19:10:00.000-08:00

My cousin sent me a group of posters. I've seen some of them, but some are new to me. I will post them later, but I will post this one of the Sullivan brothers. I am taken aback each time I run across the story of the five Sullivan boys who perished together during the same battle. I cannot but imagine as in a nightmare how the parents dealt with a tragedy of that magnitude. Of course, because of that tragedy the war department never again assigned family members overseas together.

2008-12-17T19:28:00.000-08:00

I wrote this several years ago, and was reminded of it during remembrances of Pearl Harbor Sunday. I hope you like it.

MY UNCLE FRANK
A Fiction
By Jim Kittelberger

The bright sunlight illuminated my room making it nearly impossible to keep my eyes closed any longer. It was Saturday morning, which meant no school for two days, two glorious days. It’s not that I hate school; it’s just that everybody always seems to be one step ahead of me. Well, maybe I’m not such a great scholar, and maybe I’m a little shy, backward if you want to be downright nasty about it, but it seems like it takes me a beat or two longer to get the drift of what’s happening around me. Of course, I don’t talk about this with any of my friends on the street; we don’t really talk that seriously about anything, well, except maybe baseball, football, bicycles, or the latest and greatest cupcakes we might buy, if we happen to have any money that day, to go along with a Grapette or an RC cola. Maybe if I had an older brother, or maybe even a sister, no a brother, he could answer a lot of questions I can’t, or won’t, ask my parents. But I don’t so I’ll just have to make do being an only child, it’s not really that bad, especially at Christmas time, but that’s another story.

The sun was filling the room with it’s yellow-white rays and was really making it impossible to keep my eyes closed any longer, so with momentary sadness, I left the dream that seemed so real about a B-24 bomber on which I was the tail gunner. It faded away and I took the plunge. I opened one eye, and then a minute later both eyes to the brightness that almost gave me a headache. I reached over to my radio on the stand beside my bed and clicked it on. After a moment, waiting for the tubes to warm up, the familiar voice of Smiling Ed brought me fully awake as he prepared to plunk his magic twanger and conjure up the presence of froggie, the best part of the Buster Brown show with smiling Ed McConnell. It was a regular Saturday morning fixture that I would probably soon outgrown, but not just yet. Besides who knows what I listen to anyway. I could tell the other kids I listen to the Quiz Kids, but I don’t think they would care one way or the other.

As I lay motionless, relishing the warmth of my bed and the smell of the newly laid coal fire wafting into my room through the nearby register, I think back to what I can remember of my dream. It seemed so very real to be flying in a blue sky and watching the tracer shells streaking toward their target, unafraid and courageous. I turned on my side and smiled as I looked at the set of wings on the table beside the radio. They were the gift from my uncle Frank, who came to visit us nearly a year after the war ended, to assure his sister, my mom, that indeed he was all right and in one piece. I loved my uncle Frank and was in awe of him. He was bigger than life to me. He was only twenty-five years old, but when I first saw him in his uniform and then listened to his letters as my mom read them to us at the supper table, he became the stuff of dreams, at least ten-year-old boy dreams.

After each reading of his letters, I couldn't’t wait to be excused and set free to regale my friends with what I had just heard. Just hearing words or phrases such as Germany, England, bomb runs or such would set my mind into such excitement that it became inevitable we would have to dramatize the events with some of the guys holding their arms out horizontally and becoming airplanes trying to shoot down the bomber where I would be manning the machine guns and expelling at least a million rat-a tat-tats. It would end with all of us lying on the ground too tired to stand. At other times he would describe the fire balls created by the bombs they dropped, or the shells exploding close to the plane from the defenders below. During the war I was much too young to know much of what was really going on, and the closest my town ever came to it was in manufacturing materials for the war effort. But I read comic books that chronicled the war and the heroes, and I knew my uncle Frank was out there being brave. He probably should have been featured in the comic books, and if the war lasted long enough I knew he would be.

Since uncle Frank was not married, we, and his parents, were his most immediate family and the recipients of souvenirs from wherever he happened to be at the time. My dad received a pipe from Wales and my mom became greatly excited when the postman brought a box filled with Irish lace and wool from Scotland. He never forgot me, in fact from England he sent me what he called a Toby mug. It was a caricature of Winston Churchill and I loved it, in fact, I still have it although I am afraid to use it too much now for fear I will drop it.

Uncle Frank flew on his bomber missions into early 1945. On what turned out to be his final mission to drop bombs far into Germany, he was unlucky enough, or the enemy was lucky enough to embed a machine gun shell into his shoulder, which ended his flying into harms way and sent him home. We received many letters that affirmed he was well, with no scars from the wound except some stiffness when it got cold, which he was sure he would have to live with forever. But my mom would not be assured until she saw him.

After the adults got through hugging and kissing and asking a thousand questions and things quieted down, in fact my dad fell asleep in his chair, uncle Frank came into my room and sat on the bed beside me. He put his arm around me and told me a little of what he had to do, and why it was the right thing to do. Then he asked me if there was anything I wanted to know? The cat had my tongue and I stammered and stuttered, until he told me to think of him as my big brother and ask him anything, anything at all. At last I had the big brother I always wanted and the questions just flew out of me, until we both were exhausted, laid back on the bed, and fell into a contented sleep.

I have grown old now, and just returned from burying my uncle Frank. He had a military funeral with a bugler playing taps. His family and I cried unashamedly for the man who will always be twenty-five years old to me, and the hero of my childhood.

2008-12-13T12:49:00.000-08:00

Who doesn't like a good movie. I know I do. Five of my top picks are movies from the forties and not surprisingly, in black and white. My prime requisite of 'a good movie' is one that I could watch again and again. These five qualify easily. The first is a comedy with Cary Grant which brings laughs from me every time I watch it. Here is an example of what is now classic funny. Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House:

A movie that is filled with classic character actors, one better than the other, and Henry Fonda to boot. The situation is so bad during the depression. It is frightening to even think of losing absolutely every thing, having no money and no prospects and wondering where today's meal will come from. I cringe from their dilemma each time I look at the movie.

2008-12-10T05:14:00.000-08:00

The 1940's was served by two Democratic presidents who history has judged to be two of the best.

2008-12-09T05:36:00.000-08:00

A clip from the movie SWING SHIFT. Goldie Hawn, married to sailor Ed Harris has not exactly been sitting under the apple tree as the song goes, waiting for Ed to come home.

2008-12-06T06:47:00.000-08:00

THE BEGINNING

The day the Japanese became the Japs.

The Japanese war lords were rampaging across Asia, making their intention to control the continent evident. The Americans knew what they were up to, but the country was divided into preparing for war and/or staying out of it and hoping it would go away. In December 1941 the politics of non-intervention still held sway, even though Roosevelt saw the inevitability of it all.

On December 6, Admiral Nogumo, the task force commander of the invading force, opened a top secret message that said 'climb mount niitaka', the coded message that set into motion the attack on December 7, 1941 upon Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian islands.

On December 7 the attack that decimated the American fleet of battle ships commenced at 7:55 in the morning and was completed 110 minutes later. It filled the American people with a hate that continued until August 1945 when President Truman authorized two atomic bombs to be dropped on Hiroshima first, and then Nagasaki, which ended the second world war.

It took arguably decades for the American people to revert to the more polite term of Japanese so deep was their hatred. But the war that started in violence against an unprepared country, ended with violence against the hostile Japanese from a previously unknown weapon. The age of the atom was born.

WWII deaths suffered by the nation of Japan-2,700,000
WWII deaths suffered by the nation of USA-418,500

War is an abomination, and a last resort for civilized peoples.

THE END

2008-09-04T04:28:00.000-07:00

My grandparents were among the immigrants who came to this country in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century's from Austria-Hungary. They settled in the Midwest in a small industrial town, in the east end of town, with other immigrants. I came along as the second generation American born part of the family.

I loved my grandmother and used to love staying overnight whenever I could. On my grandma's street was a butcher shop which we would seem to visit each time I was there. Everybody spoke German except not to me. I remember fondly that the butcher would give me a hot dog. It was great, they were great in my remembrances.

Meat markets were a very forties thing, and are still around here and there, but have mostly evolved into supermarkets as we all know.

2008-09-01T16:33:00.000-07:00

This picture from SHORPY.COM was taken in 1943. She is boiling the diapers. The people writing in were aghast about the baby laying there with no restraints, and other baby dangers in the kitchen. It also goes on to say that the lady had eight kids, and later ran for state legislature from Montana.

2007-08-13T07:09:00.000-07:00

Scenes from Woody Allen's film RADIO DAYS about his reminescences of growing up in the forties. It is a funny film. I've seen it a couple times.

2007-08-13T06:31:00.000-07:00

This is a promo for a set of video discs, but it shows some scenes of forties America.

2007-08-06T09:10:00.001-07:00

2007-07-19T10:21:00.001-07:00

Check all the actors from A to Z

I was wondering the other day about how many actors served during the second world war. I knew some of them, but didn't know about all of these. Check out the url provided and see all the rest. A good site to visit.

They Also Served:
Actors with WWII Military Records
This is a page started on the Combat! web site on January 8, 2002. As I build this, I hope this to be a reference of actors and other entertainers who served in uniform in WWII, with details about their war records. It started with just two detailed biographies. Others to follow. If you have verified information about an actor's war record, please contact me and I'd love to include it on the site. Full credit and bylines for all authored works.

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

A

Don Adams - USMC, Contracted malaria on Guadalcanal [Source: Internet Movie Database]
John Agar - US Army Air Corps, Sergeant.
(He appeared in the Combat! episode "The Mockingbird.")
Gene Autry - Flight Officer, Air Transport Command, 1942-1946 [Source: Internet Movie Database]
Eddie Albert - US Navy. Drove Amtracks in several Pacific invasions. He served in the landings at Saipan in 1943, where he rescued wounded and stranded Marines from the beachhead. At Tarawa, he was wounded and lost most of his hearing and earned the Bronze Star.
(He appeared in the Combat! episode "Doughboy")
James Arness - US Army, Wounded at Anzio. Purple Heart and Bronze Star [Source: Internet Movie Database]

B

2007-07-17T12:37:00.000-07:00

I can't really believe it was fun even though the lady has this ultra modern washing machine. I remember the klutz that I was, getting my arm caught in the wringers. I don't remember the exact scenerio about how I was extricated, but my mother was close by and she must have saved the day.

2007-07-17T05:14:00.001-07:00

Woolworths was certainly a fixture in the forties. This article is from American Heritage. Com. I mostly miss the lunch counters they and some drug store chains provided in their heydays.

Why Woolworth Had to Die
By Joshua Zeitz

Ten years ago today, on July 17, 1997, F. W. Woolworth announced that it was closing the last 400 of its “five-and-ten-cent” stores, laying off 9,200 workers and drawing to a close 117 years as the flagship retailer of downtown America. “Woolworth was 100 years ago what Wal-Mart is today,” the historian Robert Sobel pointed out to The New York Times. It had once seemed to be a store that would last forever.

Frank Woolworth opened his first dry-goods store in 1879, in Utica, New York. His first sale was a five-cent shovel—the most expensive item he had. Later that year he opened a larger store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and with business booming, in 1880 he raised his price ceiling to ten cents, thus ushering the term “five-and-ten” into the American lexicon. In 1910 the Woolworth lunch counter made its debut, at the 14th Street store in Manhattan, and in 1912 the fast-growing business subsumed five competing chains to build an empire of 596 stores nationwide, with $53 million in annual sales (equal to $1.1 billion today).

Woolworth, who died a very rich man in 1919, wasn’t the only entrepreneur to build a retail empire as America urbanized and gained wealth. By the turn of the century, with work hours on the decline and real wages rising, millions of ordinary people were patronizing not only Woolworth but also department stores such as Macy’s and Filene’s, where they could find a wide variety of goods at low prices. Even farm families remote from cities and towns came to rely on the stores. Rural free delivery and parcel post, two services introduced in 1896 and 1913 respectively, enabled anyone to purchase by mail order.

But fundamentally, the rise of chain stores like Woolworth took place in cities. On the eve of the Civil War, less than 20 percent of Americans qualified as “urban,” a category that then included all persons living in towns with a population of at least 2,500. By 1920 more than half of all Americans lived in towns or cities, and the number of people living in cities of at least 8,000 had jumped from 6.2 million to 54.3 million. In this new environment, Woolworth became an anchor of the downtown business district.

It didn’t happen overnight, though. As late as 1930, working-class city dwellers still did most of their shopping at corner groceries and mom-and-pop stores, where they often were allowed generous credit. A survey in 1926 revealed that chains accounted for 53 percent of grocery stores in the upscale Oak Park suburb of Chicago but just one percent of stores in the working-class towns of Joliet and Gary. The Depression changed all that, as mom-and-pops found it harder to extend credit and customers found the lower prices at chains like Woolworth impossible to resist. A survey in 1939 showed that 91 percent of lower-income shoppers were now paying cash for their purchases, having evidently abandoned the old neighborhood store for the cheaper, cash-only chains. Woolworth was a prime beneficiary.

Yet even as the downtown chains spread, the groundwork was being laid for their slow but steady death. In the 1950s and 1960s America’s suburban population grew by more than 40 million, led out of the cities by cheap, quality housing and a massive federal highway construction program. By 2000, shortly after Woolworth boarded up its last stores, an outright majority of Americans were suburbanites. Firms like Woolworth had trouble adapting their cut-rate downtown model to the new suburban shopping centers that sprang up around the country. The company stuck to an updated version of the old five-and-ten even as postwar affluence brought a higher standard of living to many of its customers. So it couldn’t compete with new outlets designed for the shopping centers and malls, like Kmart, Target and Wal-Mart, all three of which came into being in 1962 and offered more household goods at bargain prices. By 1970 those “big-box” budget retailers, to be joined later by new discount franchises like Toys “R” Us, Circuit City, T. J. Maxx, Office Depot, and Best Buy, outsold traditional department stores as well as five-and-tens and rang a final death knell for the downtown business districts that Woolworth had long dominated.

In 1993 Woolworth retrenched, closing 1,000 of its stores. The company shifted resources to its more competitive franchises, like Foot Locker and Champs Sports, and gave the Smithsonian its most valuable piece of memorabilia, the lunch counter where four black students in Greensboro, North Carolina, had staged a landmark civil rights sit-in in 1960. The writing was on the wall. “Closing of the Woolworth stores is long overdue,” a retail consultant remarked in 1997. “Today’s Woolworth store was just not viable.” By then, the company was losing as much as $31.5 million per quarter.

Several weeks after its 1997 announcement, Woolworth auctioned off all its display cases, store fixtures, soda fountains, and furniture. It was the end of an era.

Two Different Worlds in the Forties.

2007-07-13T06:57:00.000-07:00

HOLLYWOOD 1946
AMSTERDAM 1947

2007-07-12T18:43:00.000-07:00

2007-07-10T08:58:00.000-07:00

A great bit of nostalgia featuring Carol Burnett and Steve Lawrence recreating a tribute to Glenn Miller. It's about seven minutes and you'll enjoy it.

2007-07-09T17:24:00.001-07:00

I used to love listening to the Fat Man when I was a kid, I was born in the thirties so I heard an awful lot of radio when it was still in it's heyday. I listened to all the normal things a kid would listen to, the serials when I got home from school, and whatever was on the radio when it was time for me to hit the sack. My mother ruled the clock and she said when that time was. I remember also THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD. I wasn't very religious even then, but I remember getting chills sometimes when God spoke. A heavenly choir accompanied his words, pretty cool huh?

I got this information about the Fat Man from the Wiki encyclopedia and noticed that a bonus came along with it, 29 Fat Man stories and also the list of hundreds of other OTR shows. Be sure to listen to as many as you want, if you aren't an OTR (Old Time Radio) fan, you will be after listening to several of the shows. I also noticed a link to Bill Crider. Check him out, he seems to be a kind man and carries my Public Reader as a link on his page.

The Fat Man (radio)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Fat Man, a popular radio show during the 1940s and early 1950s was a detective drama based on characters by Dashiell Hammett. It starred J. Scott Smart in the title role.
Broadcast from the studios of WJZ in New York, the series premiered on the ABC Radio Network on Monday, January 21, 1946, at 8:30pm, as part of a block of four new programs (I Deal in Crime, Forever Tops, and Jimmy Gleason's Diner). Based on Dashiell Hammett's fiction, The Fat Man was further developed by producer, E.J. ("Mannie") Rosenberg. The program was directed by Clark Andrews, creator of Big Town, and Charles Powers. The main writer was Richard Ellington, with other scripts by Robert Sloane and Lawrence Klee.

The veteran character actor Ed Begley co-starred as Sgt. O'Hara, and the supporting cast included Betty Garde, Paul Stewart, Linda Watkins, Mary Patton as Lila North and Vicki Vola, who was also the female lead in Mr. District Attorney. Amzie Strickland played Runyon's girlfriend Cathy Evans, and Nell Harrison was Runyon's mother during the early episodes. The cast also included Dan Ocko, Rolly Bester (wife of science fiction writer Alfred Bester) and Robert Dryden. An 11-piece orchestra was directed by Bernard Green, who also wrote the program's theme. The sound effects were by Ed Blaney, and the announcers were Charles Irving and sportscaster Gene Kirby (1909-1985).

The success of the radio series led to a movie, The Fat Man (1951), directed by William Castle with a flashback-within-a-flashback storyline. Smart retained his role as detective Brad Runyon, investigating the murder of a Los Angeles dentist with an assist from Bill Norton (Clinton Sundberg). One of the suspects is portrayed by famed Barnum & Bailey clown Emmett Kelly in his screen debut as an actor. Also in the cast are Rock Hudson, Julie London, Parley Baer (uncredited) and Jayne Meadows.

Listen to
Internet Archive: The Fat Man (29 episodes)

External links
Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine: "Dashiell Hammett's The Fat Man"
Jerry Haendiges Vintage Radio Logs: The Fat Man
National Film and Sound Archive: The Fat Man
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fat_Man_(radio)"
Category: American radio drama

2007-07-06T05:40:00.000-07:00

It wasn't all serious times during the forties. There was still time to enjoy jokes and just plain nonsense, like for instance this lyric from a popular song of the day.

DOES THE SPEARMINT LOSE ITS FLAVOR ON THE BEDPOST OVER NIGHT by Rose, Bloom, and Breuer as sung by Billy Jones & Ernest Hare

Oh me, oh my, oh you.
I don't know what to do.
Hallelujah, the question is peculiar.
It's got me on the go
I'd give a lot of dough
If someone here would tell me, is it yes or is it no:
Does the spearmint lose its flavor on the bedpost over night?
If you chew it in the morning will it be too hard to bite?
Can't you see I'm going crazy? Won't somebody put me right?
Does the spearmint lose its flavor on the bedpost over night?
The nation rose as one
And sent it's favorite son
To the white house, this mighty country's light-house.
He saw the president
He said that I've been sent
To solve the burning question that involves the continent:
Does the spearmint lose its flavor on the bedpost over night?
Would you use it on your collar when your button's not in sight?
Put your hand beneath your seat
And you will find it there all right.
Does the spearmint lose its flavor on the bedpost over night?
Does the spearmint lose its flavor on the bedpost over night?
If your teacher tells you not to chew it, swallow it for spite.
Could you grab it with your tonsils
And then swing it left and right?
Does the spearmint lose its flavor on the bedpost over night?
Here comes the blushing bride
The groom right at her side
To the altar, as steady as Gibraltar.
The bridegroom has the ring
It's such a pretty thing
He puts it on her finger and the choir begins to sing:
Does the spearmint lose its flavor on the bedpost over night?
Always paste it on your napkin if you want to be polite.
Could you get a job as typist if you couldn't chew it right?
Does the spearmint lose its flavor on the bedpost over night?
Does the spearmint lose its flavor on the bedpost over night?
Will it make a fellow shut up when he's dying to recite?
Would you give it to your parrot if he isn't perching right?
Does the spearmint lose its flavor on the bedpost over night?

2007-07-04T05:55:00.000-07:00

Happy Independence Day 2007. America is a great country, freedom abounds. If we lose our beloved country it will not be on the battlefield, but through a politicians ineptness. Know what your representatives stand for, and don't let them get too comfortable in the job.

2007-07-04T05:47:00.000-07:00

My friend, retired sergeant Stilley, donated this old ad that luckily for us does not run anymore. That T zone has been saved from a lot of cancer since most of us have quit the habit.

2007-06-30T06:07:00.000-07:00

An everyday expression that still is in use today is the phrase, 'THE WHOLE NINE YARDS'. This is from a current issue of Readers Digest and it states:

One of the most common sources for this expression is military. During World War II, U.S. fighter planes in the South Pacific were often equipped with machine gun ammunition belts. These belts, when stretched out on the ground, measured approximately 27 feet. If a pilot fired all his ammo at a target, he was said to have given "the whole nine yards."

Ernie Pyle

2007-06-28T13:56:00.000-07:00

March 11, 1945, still going strong.

2007-06-26T06:08:00.000-07:00

2007-06-23T04:29:00.000-07:00

Ran across this picture of model airplanes hanging from the ceiling of Union Station in Chicago in 1943. They hung them as a patriotic gesture. I noticed some P38's in the mix.

2007-06-22T14:21:00.000-07:00

You Tube isn't all bad. There is great stuff being put on there everyday. This video, of this gentleman relating his experiences on entering the service reminds me greatly of interviews by Studs Terkel. Studs would stick a microphone in front of a guy or gal and let them talk, and what came out was illuminating and wonderful. This gentleman had two other videos, but it was requested they not be embedded, so you will have to find them yourself on youtube.

2007-06-13T05:36:00.001-07:00

1 9 4 0

F I C T I O N

1. How Green Was My Valley, Richard Llewellyn

2. Kitty Foyle, Christopher Morley

3. Mrs. Miniver, Jan Struther

4. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

5. The Nazarene, Sholem Asch

6. Stars on the Sea, F. van Wyck Mason

7. Oliver Wiswell, Kenneth Roberts

8. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

9. Night in Bombay, Louis Bromfield

10. The Family, Nina Fedorova

N O N F I C T I O N

1. I Married Adventure, Osa Johnson

2. How to Read a Book, Mortimer Adler

3. A Smattering of Ignorance, Oscar Levant

4. Country Squire in the White House, John T. Flynn

5. Land Below the Wind, Agnes Newton Keith

6. American White Paper, Joseph W. Alsop Jr. and Robert Kintnor

7. New England: Indian Summer, Van Wyck Brooks

8. As I Remember Him, Hans Zinsser

9. Days of Our Years, Pierre van Paassen

10. Bet It's a Boy, Betty B. Blunt

2007-06-11T12:18:00.000-07:00

This video titled AMERICA 1940, can give us a feel for what America looked like in those days. It was still depression time which would remain until Japan put an end to it at the end of 1941. America looked like small southern towns, a little sleepy, and little slow moving. This video will give that feel. America 1940

2007-06-11T05:53:00.000-07:00

The war had started, the Japanese had struck the first blow. How did people react the day after? Listen to what some people were saying on December 8, 1941.

THE DAY AFTER

2007-06-10T10:19:00.000-07:00

2007-06-10T10:18:00.001-07:00

And then it started. The Japanese hit the U.S. navy hard at Pearl Harbor. Franklin Roosevelt unable to come to the aid of Britain because of the isolationist attitudes, and it complete unpreparedness declared war against Germany on December 8, 1941. The Japanese made one big mistake at Pearl Harbor that would have made the attack much more grave. They did not bomb to any extent our reserves of oil in Hawaii.

2007-06-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

Smoking was omnipresent in the forties. Wherever you went people smoked. Smoked a lot. It's a wonder we all weren't tanned and dried out like a ham in a smokehouse. Looking at movies from the forties almost makes my chest start hurting like it did before I quit in 1976. I found this spot about Lucky Strikes from this blog: History 101

I sure don't know the statistics, but I bet about every other man in those days lit up with a sure fire Zippo lighter, maybe engraved with his name, or group affiliation. I just had a plain gray/chrome? type.

2007-06-10T07:09:00.001-07:00

One of the first great movies produced in the forties was THE GRAPES OF WRATH. Great performances were all over the place. Henry Fonda was great as usual, but Jane Darwell as Ma, the character Muley, and John Caradine as the fallen reverend were standouts. This scene pretty much puts a cap on the depression years and is a good lead in to the forties.

2007-06-09T06:00:00.000-07:00

When the forties began, the country was still in the clutches of the Great Depression. It was easing, but still hanging on. It would hang on until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and America was thrust into World War II. To appreciate how energenically the American people performed on the homefront of the forties, it is perhaps helpful to at least have a feel for what they had just gone through in the thirties.

The Great Depression: A Brief Overview

America's "Great Depression" began with the dramatic crash of the stock market on "Black Thursday", October 24, 1929 when 16 million shares of stock were quickly sold by panicking investors who had lost faith in the American economy. At the height of the Depression in 1933, nearly 25% of the Nation's total work force, 12,830,000 people, were unemployed.

Wage income for workers who were lucky enough to have kept their jobs fell almost 43% between 1929 and 1933. It was the worst economic disaster in American history. Farm prices fell so drastically that many farmers lost their homes and land. Many went hungry.

Faced with this disaster, families split up or migrated from their homes in search of work. "Hoovervilles" (named after President Hoover -- as an insult), shanty towns constructed of packing crates, abandoned cars and other cast off scraps sprung up across the Nation. Gangs of youths, whose families could no longer support them, rode the rails in box cars like so many hoboes, hoping to find a job. "Okies", victims of the drought and dust storms in the Great Plains, left their farms and headed for California, the new land of "milk and honey" where they believed all one had to do was reach out and pluck food from the trees. America's unemployed were on the move, but there was really nowhere to go. Industry was badly shaken by the Depression. Factories closed; mills and mines were abandoned; fortunes were lost. American business and labor were both in serious trouble.

Unable to help themselves the American public looked to the Federal Government. Dissatisfied with President Herbert Hoover's economic programs, the people elected Franklin D. Roosevelt as their president in 1932. Roosevelt was a bold experimenter and a man of action. Early on in his administration he assembled the best minds in the country to advise him. This group of men were known as the "Brain Trust." Within one hundred days the President, his advisors and the U.S. Congress passed into law a package of legislation designed to help lift the troubled Nation out of the Depression .

Roosevelt's program was called the "New Deal." The words "New Deal" signified a new relationship between the American people and their government. This new relationship included the creation of several new federal agencies, called "alphabet agencies" because of their use of acronyms. A few of the more significant of these New Deal programs was the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) which gave jobs to unemployed youths and to improve the environment, the WPA (Works Progress Administration) gave jobs to thousands of unemployed in everything from construction to the arts, and the NRA (National Recovery Administration) drew up regulations and codes to help revitalize industry. Later on came the creation of the Social Security System, unemployment insurance and more agencies and programs designed to help Americans during times of economic hardship. Under President Roosevelt the federal government took on many new responsibilities for the welfare of the people. The new relationship forged in the New Deal was one of closeness between the government and the people: a closeness which had never existed to such a degree before.

Although Roosevelt and the New Deal were criticized by many both in and out of government, and seriously challenged by the U.S. Supreme Court, they received the overwhelming support of the people. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the only president in U.S. history to be elected for four terms of office.

Despite all the President's efforts and the courage of the American people, the Depression hung on until 1941, when America's involvement in the Second World War resulted in the drafting of young men into military service, and the creation of millions of jobs in defense and war industries.

The Great Depression tested the fabric of American life as it had been seldom tested before or has since. It caused Americans to doubt their abilities and their values. It caused them to despair. But they weathered the test, and as a Nation, emerged stronger than ever, and we are all better today for their strength and their courage.

2007-06-08T12:41:00.000-07:00

A PRIMER OF WHAT'S TO COME

Life in the forties, a little of this and a little of that.

A supposedly insignificant event came at the end of the thirties and ushered in the forties. On October 30, 1938, Halloween eve, Americans were scared out of their wits thinking that alien beings had landed in New Jersey. Orson Wells presented a Halloween special, War of the Worlds, and many Americans who did not have the program tuned in at the very beginning thought it was actually happening. Everything eventually got straightened out. It wasn’t men from Mars. What it did do is make Orson Wells a bigger star than he already was, and cemented radio as a powerful medium.

Radio as a medium was born on that night. It became a huge influence on everyone’s life. It influenced what we ate, what we drove, what we took for pain. But it couldn’t relieve the pain of the world war that was to begin soon after the new decade began. What it could do and what it did was become the medium that became a member of the family and kept everyone up to date on the events that enfolded.

Two movies served as bookends for the end of the thirties through the middle of the forties. GRAPES OF WRATH, a great movie directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell and the patriarch of the Carradine family, father John. I’ve watched it several times and each time it is like the first time all over again. It chronicled the great depression, (was that phrase the first oxymoron of note?) A time when the country collapsed financially. It lasted so long and was so severe that it took a new president and his government programs combined with a world war to get the United States out of it. The actual timeline of the depression was 1929 when the stock market collapsed until 1941 when the Second World War officially began.
The bookend at the other end was the movie THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, a movie that told of the fighting men returning from the war and the troubles with re-adjustment. It was an outstanding movie with Fredric March, Myrna Loy and a double amputee straight from that war, Harold Russell. The depression was over and the world was saved from Fascism and the future looked bright as far ahead as you could see.

Saturday morning, it’s time for the kiddie show if you’re of a certain age in the forties. The local movie theater for twenty cents as I remember presented movies designed for young kids. The current favorites: Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Red Ryder, Wild Bill Eliot and many more excited us. There was always a serial that I don’t ever remember ending. Maybe they never did end.
Fibber McGee, despite all the urgings of his always suffering, but loving wife Molly never did clean out his closet. It was a joke that never got old when he’d open it up with Molly in the background yelling, don’t McGee, Don’t open that closet.

The battle of Midway early on in the war was a miraculous achievement, achieved by the USA breaking the Japanese code and knowing what their plans were. It was a victory nevertheless, one we badly needed. It dealt the Japanese Navy a mortal blow from which they never fully recovered and allowed the US more time to catch up building new ships.

The radio show THE LONE RANGER was one of the most popular radio shows of the days and most of the kids wouldn’t have missed it for anything. In 1941 Earl Graser, who portrayed the ranger was killed in an automobile accident and the show slipped a new ranger, by the name of Brace Beemer into the role and no one knew.

Professional baseball was not untouched by the war, and many of the stars signed up to do what they knew were their duty. Among the stars who gave up two, three, four years of their careers and never griped about it were: Bob Feller, Hank Greenberg, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio.

I remember getting a new bicycle for Christmas during the forties, and on a day when the sun had a little warmth to it, and the snow was starting to melt away, I had to try out my new bike in the slushy streets. I didn’t know how to ride a two-wheeler. My dad held the bike up as I got on and he held the bike up from the back and I started out. I remember yelling ‘hang on’ to my dad, but when I looked back he was standing back close to where we started and I was riding it by myself. I’ll bet this scenario has a familiar ring to a lot of you. I wasn’t able to have any deep thoughts at that age, but I guess that was a big moment and certainly one of the first breaking aways of many to come.

When the men went away to war, women stepped into their jobs at the plants as they were converted to defense plants. Americas war production so out produced the axis powers that it was just a matter of time until the supply lines were filled with every conceivable war product and it was just a matter of time before the enemies were overwhelmed. In 1943, the United States manufactured 29,500 tanks, more in 1 year than Germany produced in the entire war from 1939 to 1945. In all, the United States manufactured 88,430 tanks during World War II versus 24,050 in Germany.

The United States government started a rationing program during World War II; families could buy only so much gas, sugar, meat, and other goods. By rationing food in this way, the government could make sure that adequate supplies of food would be available for the war effort. Families started planting garden plots to provide vegetables for their tables. They were popularly called Victory Gardens.

The war continued until 1945. The end was accomplished by the dropping of the atomic bomb, thus beginning a moral dilemma, of the rights and wrongs of the event, that continues to today. Other wars have been fought since and indeed we are involved in another today. But the bravery of those involved in that war, of any war, is hard to comprehend. The final scorecard is of course in, and that war WWII produced more deaths than any other war to date. Dead in that war was 62 million people, broken down it was 25 million military and 37 million civilians. That figure when I saw it stunned me, 37 million civilians.

The soldiers came home and the baby boom was created. They were able to take advantage of the new GI Bill to go to school or to use as a down payment on a new house. New housing was scarce so was born new housing developments all around the country. New cars were available, and rationing was of course over. Women could buy nylon stockings.

In 1946 the first computer ENIAC, was unveiled, built by John Mauckly and Presper Eckert.
In 1947 William Shockley invented the transistor at Bell Labs.
In 1949 Mao seized power in China.

It was an historic decade that many people thought brought an end to wars. But we were all to see that another war was just around the corner in a little country called Korea. We never learn do we?

© jim kittelberger 2006