New York's Broadway theater scene during World War II:
"Show people will never forget the year 1944. Thousands of men and women from the legitimate theater were overseas in uniform -actors and actresses, writers, scene designers, stage hands - and all looked back in wonderment at what war had done to the business... Letters and newspapers from home told the story. On Broadway even bad shows were packing them in..."
Click here to read a 1946 article about post-war Broadway.
Attached is a 1945 article written for the many homesick GIs who wondered what musical treats they were missing in their absence. All the great performers are cataloged as well as a list of many of the most popular home front hits from the top forty. "Popular music back home hasn't changed much. The same familiar bands play the new hit tunes." Would you like to read a 1941 article about Boogie-Woogie?
The attached article is a swell piece of journalism that truly catches the spirit of home front America. You will read about the war-weary Hollywood that existed between the years 1941-1945 and the movie shortages, the hair-pin rationing, the rise of the independent producers and the ascent of Van Johnson (4-F slacker) and Lauren Becall: "Lauren, a Warner Brothers property, is a blonde-haired chick with a tall, hippy figure, a voice that sounds like a sexy foghorn and a pair of so-what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it eyes"
"...you think it's easy for a guy my age not to be in the Army? You think I'm having a good time? Every place I go people spit on me..."
So spake one of the 4-F men interviewed for this magazine article when asked what it was like to be a twenty-year-old excused from military service during World War Two. This article makes clear the resentment experienced at the deepest levels by all other manner of men forced to soldier-on in uniform; and so Yank had one of their writers stand on a street corner to ask the "slackers" what it was like to wear "civies" during wartime.
Read about the 4-F guy who creamed three obnoxious GIs.
Click here to read an article about a World War Two draft board. By the end of 1944 Congressional heads all turned when it was brought to their attention that the fees charged by hairstylists and barbers had soared 25% above the 1941 levels. New Dealers sought to burden the trade with a price freeze. As a result of the generous "proxy-marriage" laws allowed by the citizens of Kansas City, Kansas, many young women, feeling the urge to marry their beaus residing so far afield as a result of the Second World War, would board buses and trains and head to that far-distant burg with one name on their lips: Finnegan. This is the story of Mr. Thomas H. Finnegan, a successful lawyer back in the day who saw fit to do his patriotic duty by standing-in for all those G.I.s who were unable to attend their own weddings.
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