by The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Clothing Through American History 1900 to the Present (pdf)
that helped to bring this genre into American households.
Bebop and cool jazz also had their origins in the 1940s. They featured
fast tempos and improvisation. The exploration of harmonies was the ele-
ment that distinguished these genres from popular jazz, which empha-
sized melody instead. Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk emerged as
early leaders. When Miles Davis came to New York in the early 1940s to
attend the Juilliard School, he neglected his studies to seek out his chosen
mentor, Charlie Parker.
Not to be forgotten was the emergence of American folk music as a
more widely accepted genre. Woody Guthrie, the original folk hero, used
the traditional folk ballad as a vehicle for social protest and observation.
Most famous of his hundreds of ballads is ‘ This Land is Your Land.’’
Later, in the 1950s and 1960s, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan shared Guth-
rie’s style of communication to the masses. Bill Monroe established the
Blue Grass Boys and disseminated the sound of Appalachian folk music.
Bluegrass gained popularity, but it did not rise to the mainstream. In the
late 1940s, Clifton Chenier developed zydeco music by updating a form
of Cajun music.
Although American literature is a constant experiment with viewpoint
and form, the majority of works created during the war years remained re-
alistic. Literature was generally believed to represent a common national
essence; thus, American realism was used to describe the 1940s. Ernest
Hemingway wrote of traditionally masculine pursuits, war, and death;
William Faulkner brought southern culture and the sweltering heat of
Mississippi to life in his powerful novels based on southern tradition,
community, family, the land, race, and passion; Sinclair Lewis described
the bourgeois; and playwright Eugene O’Neill brought the finality of
tragedy to the simple lives built on dreams of fancy.
The end of WWII and beginning of the Cold War provided prime
material for grim naturalism without glorifying combat. During the
1940s, novelists looked to European instead of American writers for
inspiration. Norman Mailer wrote The Naked and the Dead, and Irwin
Shaw wrote The Young Lions during this time period. Arthur Miller and
Tennessee Williams emerged as the ‘ new blood’ on the literary scene and
focused on the balance between personal growth and responsibility to
family and community. T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound dominated the literary
scene in poetry, introducing modernism and giving poetry a connection to
contemporary life.
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ART AND ENTERTAINMENT
As Americans sought escape from the war, comic books became popu-
lar. They were a cheap and exciting form of entertainment. Although they
are commonly associated with children, comic books in the 1940s were
avidly read by adults, too. The superheroes such as Superman, Captain
America, and Batman provided inspiring stories about the triumph of
good over evil when America needed those stories most. The first Ameri-
can paperback imprint, Pocket Books, was formed in 1939 and quickly
became popular as an affordable format for the masses. Literary classics
were reprinted as paperbacks, and the format helped popularize Western
and detective fiction.
THEATER AND MOVIES
The forties, often referred to as the Golden Age of Hollywood, was a
heyday for movies. Sales of movie tickets soared to 3.5 billion a year as
movies reinforced the values important to the country (Kaledin 2000, 31).
The Office of War declared movies an essential industry for morale and
propaganda. This helped to boost the movie industry to become the sixth
largest industry in the United States by 1941. The government worked
with Hollywood studios to produce newsreels sending patriotic messages
across the home front. Patriotism shown by the movie industry through
their commitment to the war effort helped educate soldiers and civilians
alike.
Most movie plots appealed to American patriotism and concerned
some aspect of the war-torn world between 1941 and 1945. Americans’
fear and hatred of the Germans and Japanese intensified when the plots
depicted them as villains. Even Walt Disney helped the war effort
with Donald Gets Drafted, Out of the Frying Pan into the Firing Line, and
Der Fuehrer’s Face released in 1942. Disney Studios produced more than
90 percent of its footage during the 1940s for the government (Marc
1993).
The 1940s was one of Disney Studios’ most productive and successful
periods. In 1940, it released Pinocchio and Fantasia. Dumbo was released
in 1941, and throughout the decade the studio produced popular Mickey
Mouse shorts that aired before feature films.
Most Hollywood war-focused films had a fairly narrow and predict-
able set of morals: the valiant Americans had to overcome the evil Japa-
nese and Germans. These films were designed to maintain the morale of
Americans. Leading actors such as Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart,
Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Joan
Crawford, Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers, Jimmy Stewart, and Lana
The 1940s
83
Turner helped to keep morale high in Casablanca, Above Suspicion, Wake
Island, and Guadalcanal. These films never depicted the actual harsh
realities of battle but engaged patriotism as they romanticized war.
The other job of the entertainment industry was to take minds off of
the tensions of war. Classic musicals such as State Fair, Meet Me in St.
Louis, Easter Parade, and Anchors Aweigh were immensely popular. Abbott
and Costello comedies were well liked, and there were many popular
comedy shorts, including Laurel and Hardy, Our Gang, and The Three
Stooges. Serials were another popular movie format. Moviegoers came back
each week to see the next installment in the exciting serial adventures,
such as The Adventures of Captain Marvel and Dick Tracy vs. Crime Inc.
The films of the 1940s were not all simply propaganda and comedies.
Many critically lauded, classical dramas emerged from this era. Orson
Welles’ Citizen Kane criticized the life of William Randolph Hearst. Gas-
light featured one of Ingrid Bergman’s finest performances. The Lost Week-
end, Mildred Pierce, Twelve O’Clock High, and The Best Years of Our Lives
vied for Academy Awards and remain atop critics’ lists of the best films
and performances of all time.
Hollywood continued to capitalize on world events after the war by
replacing Japanese and Nazi villains with Communists as America’s ene-
mies. The Iron Curtain (1948) and I Married a Communist (1949)
reminded Americans that the Soviets were now the enemy in the Cold
War. Drive-in movie theaters began a new trend in movie going as pro-
duction of commercial cars resumed and Americans could afford to buy
them.
RADIO AND TELEVISION
Radio was the lifeline for Americans in the 1940s, providing news, music,
and entertainment. Roosevelt continued his fireside chats from the 1930s,
and Americans received nearly up-to-the-minute ne
ws about the war.
People would gather around the radio to listen to their favorite programs,
and, by 1942, some estimates put the American radio audience at 40 mil-
lion people (Gould 1942).
Classical music, provided by the New York Metropolitan Opera and
the NBC Symphony Orchestra, was popular. Listeners would hear big
bands in special remote broadcasts of their performances. Musicians of all
sorts were popular on variety shows, and this type of show would often
feature a regular vocalist.
Programming included soap operas, quiz shows, children’s hours, mys-
tery stories, fine drama, and sports. Kate Smith and Arthur Godfrey were
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ART AND ENTERTAINMENT
popular radio hosts. Popular comedies included Burns and Allen, Our Miss
Brooks, and The Aldrich Family. The popularity of serialized radio shows
paralleled serialized movies. Each week, listeners would tune in to hear
the latest adventures from The Cisco Kid, Captain Midnight, and The Tom
Mix Ralston Straight Shooters. These serials often featured gimmicks that
encouraged listeners to write in to get badges, decoders, or special rings.
Dramas, such as Escape and Suspense, and detective stories, such as Boston
Blackie and The Shadow, were popular, too. Many of the most popular ra-
dio shows continued on in television, including The Adventures of Ozzie
and Harriet, The Lone Ranger, Jack Benny, and Truth or Consequences.
Everyone was concerned with keeping up morale of the troops over-
seas, and the government established the Armed Forces Radio Services
(AFRS). The service was heard by servicemen overseas, not by people in
the United States. Originally, the AFRS recorded existing radio programs
and removed the commercials. The programs were recorded on transcrip-
tion disks and sent overseas to the troops. Eventually, the AFRS created
original programming designed specifically for servicemen. By 1945, the
service was creating twenty hours of original programming each week,
including Mail Call, G. I. Journal, and Jubilee (Christman 1992, 60).
Television provided a new opportunity for Americans to actually see
much of what they had been hearing about on radio for many years. At the
end of the decade, the percentage of homes with television shot up from
0.4 percent in 1948 to 9.0 percent in 1950 (Baughman 2006, 41). In 1946,
The Hour Glass became the first regularly scheduled variety show on televi-
sion. In 1947, television reached its first mass audience when 3 million
viewers tuned in to watch the 1947 World Series (Von Schilling 2003, 95).
As more Americans owned sets, the demand for programming grew, which
added opportunity for advertisers. Most programming in the early days was
sponsored by corporate giants, such as Texaco. It sponsored Texaco Star
Theater, which launched the first television star: Milton Berle. As the
Golden Age of Television began in 1949, radio soon faded in popularity.
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4
Daily Life
Daily life in the United States shifted from a dependence on servants and
strict class distinctions to a more democratic, self-sufficient way of life.
During the first decade of the century, many Americans moved from
farms into cities in search of jobs. Upward mobility was a possibility for
most Americans and was idealized in much of the literature of the time.
Class distinctions were a significant component of early twentieth-cen-
tury living. Upper-class families had several servants, and even middle-class
families often had cooks, housekeepers, and nannies. In contrast, lower-
class families were responsible for all of their own housekeeping, cooking,
and child care.
Socialization followed class lines, too. Middle- and upper-class women
followed a rigidly structured series of visits to their friends during the day.
Each visit had to be scheduled, and the visitor would be presented to the
hostess. Lower-class women visited their friends in a much more informal
format.
Health was precarious during the 1900s. Medical science was still
primitive, and urbanites often lived with the threat of cholera epidemics.
Injuries, such as broken bones or deep cuts, frequently became infected
and could result in death. Within the next decades, medical advances
would curtail diseases and allow doctors to prevent and treat infections.
Although sports would gain popularity later in the century, in the
1900s, bicycling was extremely popular. Upper-class
Americans enjoyed
87
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DAILY LIFE
tennis, golf, and lawn games such as croquet and badminton. Travel, espe-
cially European travel, was enjoyed by affluent Americans.
During the 1910s, World War I dominated the daily life of Americans.
As men went to war, women went to work to alleviate the labor shortage.
They also assisted the war effort by selling war bonds and helping aid
organizations.
The world of Americans, especially those in rural locales, was shrink-
ing and changing. Newspapers, magazines, and catalogs brought the out-
side world and factory-made products to people through the United
States. Electricity expanded the daylight hours, leaving people with more
usable leisure time. After the war, women refocused on the debates over
women’s suffrage and birth control.
Life expectancy increased during the 1910s, although many Americans
perished after contracting the Spanish flu in 1918. The government began
to take a tougher stance on drugs. In 1914, the Harrison Narcotics Act
outlawed the use of opium and cocaine, two drugs that had experienced a
surge in popularity.
The 1920s is sometimes characterized by wild parties and loose
morals. Social occasions were frequent. People got together over teas, lun-
cheons, at horse races, and at night clubs. Theme parties were common,
and alcohol and cigarettes were in plentiful supply.
Prohibition went into effect during this decade, but this did not keep
people from drinking. Upper- and middle-class people frequented speak-
easies to imbibe, whereas lower-class people found cheap, often low-quality
alternatives. In urban environments, prohibition received scorn, because
drinking establishments were often an integral part of communities.
Americans’ health and leisure activities became strikingly modern dur-
ing the 1920s. Many women ate low-calorie diets to attain and keep the
slim, boyish figure that was in fashion. Americans became more aware of
nutrients in their foods, as several new vitamins were discovered. Fewer
servants meant that more women cooked the family’s food. There was a
surge of interest in sports during the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, and
dancing continued to be a popular pastime. The proliferation of automo-
biles made car travel a common activity.
