Excerpts Chapters 1 - 4

CHAPTER 1: LIFESTYLE:
Uptight Conformity to “Let it all Hang Out”

I lived on a farm when I was a boy in the thirties, and one thing I especially didn’t like about it was there wasn’t any bathroom. That meant we didn’t have a bathtub, so every Saturday night my mom would heat buckets of water on the wood-burning stove, and fill up this huge tin tub. It took forever to get that ugly thing full of water. Then each of the six kids had to take turns getting into it and getting bathed. Of course the water never got changed, so you didn’t want to be the last one in! On the other hand, we didn’t have the consciousness about hygiene that people have now and, being kids, how dirty the water was didn’t make much difference to us. What was more important, was how cold it was by that time!

– Billy Joe Simpson, born 1940, Atlanta

THE GREAT WORLD WAR: BOMBS, BOGART AND BUTTER

The war years were a time of parties and glamour, where men wore tuxedoes to the theater, and woman twisted their hair into a French roll and wore full-length satin and velvet dresses. Ballroom dancing was in fashion, and Vogue magazine featured evening gowns appropriate for showing off on the dance floor. People tried to counter the anxiety and distress of the war by living for the moment, and many a marriage was quickly arranged between men and women overseas, or on their way.

Bob Hope with American Troops
Courtesy Library of Congress

The war popularized cocktail lounges and restaurants with jukeboxes where, for a nickel, one could listen to "The White Cliffs of Dover” or "You'd be so Nice to Come Home To." Cocktail parties became fashionable in the forties where, instead of being invited to a sit-down dinner party, large groups of people stood around drinking martinis, smoking, and trying to be charming. People came and went at no set time, and bounced around from person to person. It was usually very superficial.

World War II also brought restrictions: sugar, soap, milk and steaks were hard to get. Many states introduced rationing for commodities which were in short supply, and gave people a certain number of coupons, based on the number of people in their family. Gasoline was rationed in 1942, but that wasn’t much of a hardship because few people had a car. The garishness of the nineteenth century was replaced by the simplicity imposed by the war’s restrictions, and the new word in decorating was “modern,” which meant no ornate frills like they had in the past.

We got coupons for meat during the war, and of course there were never enough for a family of six. My mom managed to get some nylon stockings where she worked, and she'd take a couple of pairs down to the butcher and he'd give her a few steaks in exchange. We had chicken every Sunday, but it was only one chicken divided up between mom and dad and four little kids. I’m amazed my mom made it go around. I supplemented by eating lots of bread and peanut butter later in the evening. Milk was rationed too; in fact the first summer job I had as a teenager was counting the milk coupons collected by Acme Farmers Dairy. Once your coupons were used up, that was it for the week, so needless to say we didn't drink too much of it.

- Sara Humphrey, former history teacher, born 1934, Toronto

When nylon stockings first appeared, women rushed to the stores to get them. Before that we had silk stockings for those who could afford them. In 1945 they were $4 a pair, out of the financial reach of most women, so we wore rayon or cotton ones which were thick and ugly, but they weren’t nearly as bad as the horrible Lyle ones I had to wear to school back in the thirties. Because nylons were in short supply, if we got a run we would sew it up with matching thread with as tiny and neat a stitch as we could make. Eventually, when they had two or three prominent stitched runs, we had to throw them out. They also had a dark seam down the back and that was a big pest because you were forever tugging at it trying to keep it in a straight line down your legs. I don’t know what the point of that was. We had only begun wearing them when the war broke out, and we had to give them up for cotton stockings because nylon was needed for parachutes.

-Angela Corelli, homemaker, born 1928 in Detroit, MI

CHAPTER 2: SEX AND SOCIAL MORES:
From Victorian Prudishness to Personal Vibrators

During the prudish fifties, movie producer Howard Hughes shocked the nation’s conscience by seductively posing Jane Russell leaning against a haystack to advertise his movie “The Outlaw.” Jane’s large breasts were prominently displayed in a tight-fitting blouse. The picture caused quite a stir and was deemed indecent.

Jane Russell, 1941

The Morals Police

In 1930 the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America announced the adoption of the “Motion Picture Code” which was designed to clean up the movie business. The Code forbade the use of words such as “damn, hell, S.O.B, Jesus Christ, (used as a swearword), virgin, seduce, pregnant, bitch, bastard, chippy, broad and pansy.” Abortion could be covertly referred to, but the word itself was never to be mentioned. An exception to “The Code” was made when Rhett Butler was allowed to tell Scarlett: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Even that benign remark shocked some people at the time.

In 1934 the Roman Catholic Church announced the formation of the Legion of Decency to fight for purer motion pictures, and promised to boycott films it found offensive. Each week churches gave parishioners a copy of what was called “The X List,” and good Catholics kept away from movies on the list of the damned.

My mother was a devout Catholic and she did everything the Church dictated. I remember when I was a kid there was a movie called “The Moon Is Blue.” I think that was the title. Anyway, we were forbidden to see it because it was on the Church’s “X” list. The reason it made the list was because the heroine told her date she was still a virgin. Such intimate revelations weren’t allowed then; after all, every unmarried female was supposed to be a virgin, so it was unnecessary to verbalize it, especially to a date. Those years were so puritanical even married people couldn’t be shown in bed together in movies, they had to be side-by-side in twin beds, usually with a nightstand separating them. And they could never kiss in bed, unless they were dying and it was obvious they weren’t about to have sex. A woman had to wear a full slip in a movie, she could never appear in a half-slip and bra. Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut on the screen, you never saw anyone shoving their tongue down someone else’s throat like they do now. Somehow the old way seemed much more romantic.

- Josephine Blondell, born 1934, Buffalo

When I graduated from high school in 1954 I decided to move out, primarily because I wanted to bring girls home, and maybe talk them into staying overnight with me, and that was impossible in my parent’s house. Unmarried people didn’t live together in the fifties, that was considered sinful and shameful. In 1955 I rented an upstairs flat in a family’s home for nine dollars a week. It had a little kitchenette, but the bathroom was down the hall, shared by other tenants. I never went downstairs except to go in and out the front door, and give them the rent. Of course we didn’t have TV then, so you didn’t share the living room with your landlord and watch a television program together. The homeowner said I couldn’t have a woman stay overnight in my room, but I managed to sneak one in sometimes when he and his wife went to bed, but I had to get her out before morning.

- Mario Angelino, bartender, born 1935, Toronto

CHAPTER 3: HOUSEHOLD:
Wives Don’t Wear Aprons Anymore

The emblem of domesticity and femininity in the early part of the century was the ever-present apron. It symbolized the housewife’s secondary role when women were defined by their ability to run a household and how well they took care of their family. Before the ‘60s a good wife was one who kept a clean house and knew how to make a dry martini and a great cup of coffee.

As a kid it was my reluctant chore to help mother do the washing every Saturday morning. We had what was considered a modern machine back in the thirties; after all, some housewives were still using wash boards, or they boiled the clothes in a big pot and then hung them out to dry. The “thing” was down in the basement, standing tall on spindley foot-long legs, which meant it wasn’t firmly set on the floor, so it would shimmy and shake while it was doing the wash. It wasn’t capable of also squeezing the water out of the clothes when they were clean, but it had a set of rollers sitting on top through which we had to take each piece of soaking wet clothing, and pull it through the wringers to squeeze out the water. This had to be done two or three times on each piece. I would turn the rollers with a hand crank while my mother pushed and pulled the clothing through them. Because there were six people in our family, this ordeal usually took most of the day. Of course we didn’t have an electric dryer, the sun was it, so we dragged it all outside and hung it up on the line. In the wintertime, we had to hang it on the line in the cellar, and it took forever to dry. What a chore! I hated wash day and would try all kinds of tricks to get out of it, usually to no avail.

-June Pannaza, high school teacher, born 1930, Newark

When I was about twenty years old and had my first job I used to eat lunch at the Automat in New York. It was on the west side of Broadway near Times Square. It was really quite chic with white marble tabletops, and a white tile floor. The best thing was the convenience! I used to try to go home from the office for lunch, but that was always a hassle. Now I could just walk a couple of blocks, put a few nickels in the slot, and choose from a wonderful array of food presented in individual glass compartments stacked up like little mailboxes. Seventy-five cents could buy a three-course dinner of macaroni and cheese or beef pot pie with cole slaw, a roll, a glass of milk, and a slice of lemon meringue pie. It was quite a bargain during the Depression. Local business people would go there for lunch, and soon even actors and other celebrities began frequenting it. By 1939 there were forty Automats in New York, serving about 800,000 meals a day. I don’t know why they disappeared, but I suppose it was because of the emergence of fast-food chains that soon took over.

- Gary Albright, retired librarian, born 1916, Manhattan

CHAPTER 4: THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT!

Going to a movie at the drive-in was always my favorite place to take a date, because being in the dark in the privacy of your own car made it easy to smooch. I always picked a romantic movie that I hoped would turn the girl on, and it usually worked. Of course in the fifties it wasn’t easy to have sex with a girl, but we did plenty of kissing, touching, feeling and groping. When I finally got married and had kids, the drive-in was still the best place to go because we didn’t have to pay a baby-sitter, we could bring our own popcorn, and we didn’t have to search for a place to park. We’d put the kids in their pajamas so if they fell asleep all we had to do was toss them into bed when we got home. It was a lot cheaper too if you had a large family, and you could make all the comments you wanted about the movie and it didn’t bother anybody. Now we rent videos and have all the comforts of home --snacks, a handy bathroom, privacy, and casual clothing, but I really miss the drive-ins because there was something exciting about exploring ‘forbidden fruit’ in the back seat of the old jalopy. It was a Saturday night ritual that I really enjoyed.

-Jason Higgenbottom, mechanic, born 1941

Movies and the lyrics of certain songs are often connected with significant events in our lives, and evoke memories of times gone by. As we look back at some of the most popular songs and movies of the century, they serve as reminders of special years: places we lived at the time, friends we associated with then, perhaps nostalgic memories of sharing a movie with a lover of yesteryear, and reaching out in the dark to shyly hold a hand. Enshrined in our memories and captured forever on a piece of tape, these sometimes great, sometimes humorous, sometimes emotional works of art, and the people who made them, live on. Movies are a treasure trove of the history of the twentieth century; the only century that has had its life and thought preserved forever.

When my brothers and I were little, mom would send us to the Sheas’ Theater on Saturday afternoons. There was only one theater in town, and it showed a different movie every two weeks, so there wasn’t a lot of choice. We walked there of course, a distance of about a half mile, and no one worried about our safety. It was during World War II, and the show cost a dime, but you could get in free if you brought some metal, such as pots and pans, or a piece of silverware which was melted down and used for making machinery. There were posters in the lobby warning people to keep quiet, not because of disturbing other patrons, but because ‘The enemy may be listening,’ and ‘Loose Lips Sink Ships.’ The show always began with the news of the world; the newsreel took about fifteen minutes and we would see moving pictures of the allies at war overseas. The action had taken place about a week before, and was shown in black and white. Other than the newspaper, that's how we found out what was happening in the world. Or, more precisely: what had happened.

- Howard Yates, retired fire fighter, born 1925

The last glamorous child-star of the thirties is the stunningly beautiful Elizabeth Taylor. Born in London, England in 1932, her impassioned acting and violet-eyed beauty has made her a legend. Plagued by life-long health problems, including a benign brain tumor in 1997, Ms. Taylor has survived many tragedies. She first achieved fame in 1934 at the age of twelve when she played the leading role in National Velvet, opposite Mickey Rooney. In 1956 she appeared in the hit Giant, with James Dean, and in Raintree County with Montgomery Clift. She finally won an Oscar in 1960 for her flawless performance as a call-girl in Butterfield 8. She’s famous not only for her acting, but also for her many husbands. In 1963, Elizabeth starred in Cleopatra, and her salary was said to be a whopping one million dollars. During this film she fell in love with Richard Burton, and quickly divorced Eddie Fisher, who had divorced Debbie Reynolds in 1959 in order to marry Liz. She managed to survive the scorn which was heaped upon her from a disapproving society, and later received plaudits for her performance, along side Richard, in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Now in her older years, she devotes herself to causes such as The AIDS Foundation.

On May 6, 1950, Liz Taylor wed hotel magnate Conrad Hilton.

Continue to Chapters 5 - 8