The Girl is...thinking about fashion of the forties

At the beginning of The Girl is Murder, Iris is thrust into the world of public school, where not only does she have to deal with going to school side by side with boys for the first time, but she’s no longer able to disappear into the comfortable anonymity of a school uniform. And you know what that means: agonizing about what she's going to wear each day.

So what did young women wear in the forties?

Keep in mind that shopping options weren’t what they are today. You could buy off the rack, but it would cost you, especially during the war when the options were severely limited by restrictions on cloth. Your wardrobe tended to be small, and much of it was probably home-sewn, or passed down from an older sibling and adapted to look a little bit more modern (raise the hem, change the buttons, add a belt).

For girls, clean and tailored was the look, whether young or old. Shirt and blouses were tucked in, clothes were fitted, never too big, (clothing rationing, to the joy of men everywhere, meant shorter skirts and tighter sweaters). The exception was the sloppy joe sweater, which was long and loose fitting. For school, you most likely would’ve worn dresses and skirts cut to knee length, and a blazer or a cardigan. 

        

For casual wear, teen girls often wore baggy blue jeans that were often rolled up just below the knee (and sometimes they’d embellish their pants with paint and drawings). In fact, teens were encouraged to wear more pants than in past years, especially girls who got wartime jobs, where clothing (and long hair!) could present a real danger. Plus, pants had the added advantage of being good hand me downs since they weren’t gender specific (of course, try convincing your little brother of that).

Hair tended toward more elaborate for adolescent girls since clothing was so heavily rationed. So if you wanted to express your individuality, you did it by twisting, curling, and teasing your locks like your favorite Hollywood stars, especially Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable. Similarly, hats were a great way to express yourself and they weren’t rationed the way other pieces of clothing were.

Shoes were flat unless you were going swing dancing. Girls would wear loafers, oxfords, or saddle shoes with short, cotton socks. Shoes were heavily rationed too (more on that in a future blog) so odds were good that you didn’t have a lot of pairs to rotate through.

Since nylons were also being rationed, if you didn’t wear socks, you went barelegged. Young women who didn’t like the casualness of this look (which also meant – gasp – having to shave) would put makeup on their legs to mimic the effect of stockings, and draw seams up the backs of the legs to create the illusion that they were fully dressed.

Oh, and as for bras and underwear? They were formidable -- all about creating shape, not ensuring comfort. If you couldn't afford to buy one, or -- gulp -- receive one as a hand me down, yours may have also been home sewn using parachutes or old wedding dresses to provide the silk.

 

The Girl is...thinking about swing dancing

In The Girl is Murder, Iris is indoctrinated into the world of swing dancing when she visits a Harlem dance club with her new friend Suze. There she is schooled on this type of dancing that is synonymous with jazz and other musical styles from the 1940s.

So what is swing dancing? It originates a lot earlier than World War II, earlier than even jazz of the 1920s. It began in African American communities and really flourished there, though it was adopted by all aspects of society. There are a lot of different named dances that are considered swing, the best known of which are the Lindy Hop and the Jitterbug. When we think of swing dancing, we tend to think of the “swing out” – a move where whomever is leading the dance leaves a closed position with their partner and moves into an open position. It sounds simple and dainty, but swing has evolved this move so that often times the swing out involves feats of athleticism, daring gymnastics, and even what reads to an audience like brutality toward one’s partner (there’s definitely a sense that the dancers are often trying to top one another). Like Jazz, one of the key elements to swing is that it involves improvisation, even though there are a lot of key steps that are considered standard during the dances, and a relaxed sense of timing that gives the best performances a sense that they’re being done with a lot more ease than could be possible.

But the best way to understand swing, is to watch it. This is one of my favorite clips, from the 1941 film “Hellzapoppin,” in which the dancers are doing the Lindy Hop:

Keep in mind these folks were the best of the best; most average joe’s performed a much more staid version of this dance, as demonstrated in MGM’s short “Groovie Movie,” which attempts to demystify the jitterbug:

Music is of course key to swing dancing (and a subject for another day) but there is also a whole culture that springs up around it. As in The Girl is Murder, swing dancers, and jazz musicians, had their own lingo from which terms like “hep cat” gave rise, and they had their own fashion. Zoot suits became associated with swing, though their roots were elsewhere, and women donned dresses with bias cut skirts that could fan full out when they twirled, often revealing whatever they had on beneath it. The goal was to be fashionable, but able to maintain a full range of movement.

Just a reminder that the launch party for The Girl is Murder is tomorrow (Saturday!) at 2:00 at Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont, PA. I hope to see you there!

The Girl is...thinking about young adult books

We interrupt our normal blog about World War II popular culture, for this brief commercial: I have books. Beautiful, shiny new books. And next Saturday, you can have one too, if you join me for the launch of The Girl is Murder at Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont, PA at 2:00 PM. We’ll be celebrating with locally brewed root beer and cream soda, and other assorted treats.

Here’s a quick blurb for those of you who aren’t familiar with my spanking new series:

It's the Fall of 1942 and Iris's world is rapidly changing. Her Pop is back from the war with a missing leg, limiting his ability to do the physically grueling part of his detective work. Iris is dying to help, especially when she discovers that one of Pop's cases involves a boy at her school. Now, instead of sitting at home watching Deanna Durbin movies, Iris is sneaking out of the house, double crossing her friends, and dancing at the Savoy till all hours of the night. There's certainly never a dull moment in the private eye business.

And here’s a little praise:

“What makes this such a standout is the cast. Sounding like they’re right out of the 1940s (well, a 1940’s movie, anyway), the characters, young and old, pop off the pages. Iris, intriguing and infuriating, captures the tension inherent in the teenage years, no matter what the decade. This joint is jumping.” —Booklist, Starred Review

I know what you’re thinking: I’m a grown up. Why would I buy a young adult book unless I was getting it as a gift for a young adult?

Allow me to dispel a few misconceptions about what Young Adult means in the book world:

1.     Young Adult books are only for young adults. While you can be too young to read young adult (see picture at right), you can never be too old. If Harry Potter and The Hunger Games have taught us nothing else, it’s that good stories transcend age.

2.     Young adult means vampires and other supernatural beasties. Look, I know that certain books containing sparkly, moody vampires have been enormously popular and have done much to get previously reluctant readers to turn to books for their entertainment. I don’t begrudge them a bit. But if you’ve avoiding reading YA because you think that’s all young adult fiction has to offer, fear not – there are a lot of amazing stories out there with nary a hint of the supernatural.

3.     Young adult means rudimentary writing. Now there are some fighting words! Some of the most exquisite writing I’ve encountered has been in the YA world. Sure, the writing tends to be more compact, the stories more immediate, but that’s hardly a flaw.

4.     Young adult means preachy morals and sanitized plots. Maybe back in the day when Go Ask Alice was all the rage (and even then, while there was a preachy plot, there was hardly a sanitized one – sex and drugs – oh my!), but today’s young adult novels are far from heavy-handed morality tales. Sure, some of the best contain a takeaway for the reader, but that’s hardly the only thing they contain. And the stories are much more sophisticated than you might believe. It’s not all brooding high school students worried about what to wear to the prom. The best characters emulate real people – with all their flaws, naughty words, and bad decisions firmly intact. 

5.     People will judge me for reading kids books. Um, no. Just no. And if you’re that concerned about what the nameless, faceless masses think, get a kindle (it’s harder to figure out what someone’s reading when there’s no cover) or remove the dustcover from another book and disguise it with that.  I recommend War and Peace. What could sound more adult than that?

Look, YA might not be for you and that’s okay. But keep in mind that like most divisions in the publishing world, the YA designation can often feel arbitrary, assigned to a book because of the age of the characters rather than because of their level of sophistication.

Got a YA recommendation to get someone started? Hit the comments!

The Girl is....watching movies

When I was a kid, my mom bombarded my sister and me with films from the 1930s and ‘40s (with an occasional one from the ‘50s and ‘60s). I think, in her mind, it was a way of keeping us from the sex and violence of more contemporary movies, although truth be told there was just as much sex and violence, it just tended to start onscreen and quickly move off. Too poor for cable, I was initially reluctant to enjoy these Friday night black and white Blockbuster picks (couldn’t we at least get a movie in…gasp…color?), but I eventually fell in love with them. There’s something about the clothes, the dialogue, the music, the everything that made these films so much more of a fantasy than things being released in the ‘80s and ‘90s. I yearned to talk like the women who populated these films, to move with their slinky grace and assurance, to express emotion with a raised eyebrow, a flick of  a cigarette, and a single tear that fell without making my face red and my nose run.

Yeah, they had style. They had grace. 

And now that I have access to AMC and TCM I get to indulge in my love of all things Old Hollywood whenever I want. Here are a few of my favorites:

Stage Door (1937). Katharine Hepburn, Lucille Ball, Ginger Rogers. A group of girls inhabit a boarding house for actresses in New York and go through the trials and tribulations of becoming stars. Katharine Hepburn as the rich girl playing poor lured me in, but it’s Ginger Rogers with her fast patter and fantastic dance steps that makes me keep coming back to this movie. The dialogue zings, but as funny of a movie as it is, it’s got an emotional one-two punch at its center. This is the movie that inspired my Rosie Winter mystery series set among (you guessed it) actresses living in a New York boarding house.

Philadelphia Story (1940). It’s my namesake, Katharine Hepburn again, this time paired with Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant. More razor sharp dialogue (both Stage Door and Philadelphia Story were originally plays and it shows) as Hepburn’s Tracy Lord gets ready to remarry despite unresolved feelings for her ex, Cary Grant. While the three top billed stars are amazing, it’s the supporting cast I love in this film, especially Virginia Weidler as precocious Dinah Lord and acerbic Ruth Hussey as a love-lorn, wise-cracking photographer.

His Girl Friday (1940). The plot is similar to Philadelphia Story, but this time its Rosalind Russell’s fast-talking reporter that Cary Grant is trying to keep from remarrying, while she gets roped into the biggest story of her career. Another play turned film, what’s intriguing isn’t just the marvelous, quotable dialogue but the fact that Russell’s part (in the play, The Front Page) was originally written for a man and the romance angle wasn’t added until this film. 

All About Eve (1950). This time it’s Bette Davis in the lead in a film about an up and coming actress (Anne Baxter) who’s trying to usurp the career of one of theater’s grande dames. Witty, gut-wrenching, agonizingly frustrating, this is the movie that made me finally understand why Bette Davis was a star. Bonus points: it was Marilyn Monroe’s first film.

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). This is my sole World War II entry (thought there’s a lot of other films I could list), but this is the one that really got me thinking about the war and its impact on the homefront and those who were left behind. The movie follows three vets as they return home and find their lives irreparably changed. Harold Russell, a real vet who lost both his hands in the South Pacific, won an Oscar for this, his film debut. It’s one of the few films that deals with what came after the war and how difficult it was for the returning vets to slip back into the lives they’d left four years before.

How ‘bout you? Got a favorite old movie you’d like to suggest?

The Girl is....interviewing Beverly Pollock

This is the first of what I hope will be a regular feature, interviewing folks who grew up during World War II about what their experiences. If you or someone you know would like be interviewed, let me know!

About Beverly Pollock: 

Bev (second from left -- hubba! hubba!) during the war.

Beverly Pollock (second from left) is a retired Director of Communications for the United Jewish Federation.  An accomplished writer, she authored “Quoth the Maven,” the national column that originated in the Jewish Chronicle, and the “Slightly Irreverent” column in the Monroeville Times-Express.  Her play Looking for Magic was workshopped at the Pitt Theatre, University of Pittsburgh and her full-length play It's Business, inspired in part on her experiences during World War II, had a staged reading at the Pittsburgh JCC in 2008.  With Shirley Katz she co-wrote and co-hosted a daily radio show "Those Two," for the average American housewife and the ordinary, everyday nuclear physicist.  Their “Will the Real Economy-Size Package Please Stand Up?” was performed throughout North America and recognized by President Lyndon Johnson at his signing of the Truth-in-Packaging Bill.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette honored her with the Community Champion Award because of her work in the AIDS Community. As a tribute to two precious sons who died of AIDS, Robert in 1991 and Larry in 1995, she and her late husband Mel founded Jews with AIDS in the Family with the support of Jewish Family and Children’s Service and the UJF.  Today she continues to volunteer at the Shepherd Wellness Community, the only AIDS Community Center in Western PA.   

What year did you graduate from high school?  

1941.

Where was your high school?  

Girls High School in Atlanta, GA.

How did you get to and from school?  

Street car.  Had to transfer mid way.  That's how you met your girl friends from over the city and gabbed all the way to school.  Sometimes I got car sick if I didn't eat breakfast first.  Often I had to stand all the way.

What did you wear to school each day?  

Skirt, shirt, bobby sox, saddle shoes.  Sometimes you wore a ribbon in the back of your hair.  The night after a prom, you would wear the flowers in your hair, on the side.

What was your typical school day like?  Who were your closest friends?  

Took French and Latin.  Hated geometry, algebra.  Wrote a skit for some kind of yearly school day... Loved to pun.  Lillian  Rosenberg and Rose Reisman were my closest friends along with Sarah Spiegelman, who actually had classes with me.  Mother thought my friend Lillian must be wild because her folks gave her a car for her 16th birthday, an unheard of thing.    

Were you allowed to date?  

Yes.  My first big crush was on Leon Rocamora, who was a senior at GA Tech when I was a senior at Girls High.  We met when I was emcee of a party my club (the Cardozians, named after Supreme Justice Cardozo) gave.  Most of my remarks were puns and he got up and started making puns too (even though he was with another girl and I another boy).  I remember his line: "Let's Beverly the hatchet!"  I can remember a fraternity party he took me to, how carefully I did my hair, etc.  And we double dated with his friend who rented a Model T.  We sat in the open back rumble seat and my hair just flew in the breeze.  But he didn't seem to mind!  I met Mel the summer after I graduated from High School.

What did you do for fun on Friday and Saturday nights?  

Movies (I saw the opening night festivities of "Gone with the Wind" on Peachtree Street (which was closed off) near the Fox Theatre in 1939 and saw in person Clark Gable, Carole Lombard (his wife), Vivien Leigh, Evelyn Keyes (an Atlanta girl who used to live on the same block as I did when I was in grade school).  We also bowled a lot, except it was with the small pins.  I never saw the larger pins until I moved up Nawth.

Did you have a curfew?  

Not really.  But I had enough sense to call my folks if I'd be out after 11.

Would you consider yourself a good girl or a bad girl?   

By the way, we used the term "wild," not "bad girl."   

In your mind, what sorts of behaviors did bad girls engage in?  

I was a nice girl, as you would expect.  I never really heard of "bad" girls who went all the way.  Every girl was a virgin until she got married.  A wild girl would neck and (gasp) pet with all the guys.  Necking was from the neck up; petting was from the neck down.  You had to be careful of boys with "WHT"  (wandering hand trouble).

What’s your earliest memory of the war?  

I was a freshman, a day student; (today you might call me a commuter) at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA.  Today it is a very fine school, at the top of women's colleges.  In 1941 there were about 500 students.  I remember going to Murphey Candler  Hall to hear the address by President Roosevelt, declaring war.  He was a magnificent speaker.  I confess I was pretty shallow initially.  My main worry was whether my boy friend Mel, who was to come visit me at the end of the month, would still be able to drive down.  He was.

How did the war change life for you?  

The war made us grow up in a hurry.  Mel and I got married May 18, 1944 in New Haven, Ct while he was stationed at Yale.  We went to NYC on weekends and got great tickets at theatres because he was a serviceman.  Usually we would just pay the minimum $1.20 ticket but if there were spaces, the usher would give us the upgraded $2.40 ticket or the prized $3.60 orchestra or loge ticket seat.  We were together for several idyllic months in Augusta GA, while he was in the Air Corps, and then he was sent to a couple places I couldn't go to and then overseas in 1945 to the China/Burma/India Theatre - - in Calcutta for 13 months before he was discharged on March 17, 1946.  I'll always remember St. Paddy's Day with great fondness!  For most of the time I was in Atlanta with my folks and working in our little grocery store.  I can tell you some stories about our war time experiences.  Then I went to Gallitzin the Oct before Mel came home because his father was not well.

Thanks, Bev!

The Girl is...thinking about Deanna Durbin

In The Girl is Murder, teen sleuth, Iris Anderson, and her friends are obsessed with actress Deanna Durbin (born 1921), so much so that Iris belonged to her fan club and her former best friend kept a scrap book of clippings about the actress. So who was Deanna Durbin and why were so many young women drawn to her?

Durbin was a child star known for playing the “ideal teenage daughter” in films like Every Sunday and Three Smart Girls. Like Judy Garland, she was also a singer and frequently sang in her films.  In 1939 she shared the Academy Awards Juvenille Award with Mickey Rooney for ""for their significant contribution in bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth, and as juvenile players, setting high standards of ability and achievement." There was a large variety of merchandise sold to cash in on her, including Deanna Durbin dolls and dresses. In fact, by the time she turned twenty-one, she was the highest-paid woman in the United States and highest-paid female film star in the world.

Take that, Lindsay Lohan.

As Durbin entered the 1940s, she yearned to become a woman on film just as she was becoming a woman in real life, but like many child stars she had a hard-time transitioning into more sophisticated roles since her fans preferred her in light, comedic parts. She ultimately ended up retiring from acting in 1949, when she was only 28 years old. In her only interview after her retirement, granted in 1983, she explained that while she loved performing and working in film,  "What I did find difficult was that this acquired maturity had to be hidden under the childlike personality my films and publicity projected on me.” She also bemoaned the bad quality of the films she was making in exchanging for so much money. You can read the whole interview here.

Durbin inspired one of the largest, most devoted fan clubs in history (and fans are still out there -- just take a look at the comments on the youtube clips featuring her). Among the teenage girls who worshipped her was Anne Frank, who had a picture of the actress hanging in the room where her family hid during World War II. Durbin was also fictionalized in two novels, where the actress was a Nancy Drew-like character. She was also Winston Churchill's favorite actress.

Here's a clip of fifteen year old Deanna singing "I Love to Whistle" in the 1938 film Mad About Music.

The Girl is...thinking about Zoot Suits.

A friend reminded me that today is the anniversary of the Los Angeles Zoot Suit Riots. That seems like an excellent way to kick off my brand spankin’ new blog!

Zoots figure prominently in The Girl is Murder, the first Iris Anderson mystery which comes out in just a few brief weeks. In my case the suits in question are being donned on the East Coast in 1942. 

So what were zoot suits? The large, baggy suits with tapered pants, padded shoulders, and made of loud fabrics (bright colors, huge pinstripes) were worn by youth during the 1930s 1940s and became closely associated with jazz music and swing dancing, since so many of those who donned them also frequented swing clubs (they were also style de riguer for the musicians in these clubs). The majority of those who wore the “zoot” were Mexican-American, African-America, and Italian-American youth, people on the fringe, so to speak, who were looking to express themselves and to remind society that they knew they were outsiders. They spoke in swing slang, wore their watches on long waist chains, and roamed together with like minded peers.

Sounds pretty innocent, right? But the suit wasn’t just a costume. It became a symbol for a lot of complex things. The war changed families. With fathers gone and mothers working, delinquency was on the rise because there was no one at home to monitor young people’s behavior. The zoot became associated with this lawless youth, a new class of criminals committing petty crimes out of boredom. And because these suits were oversized and involved a lot of fabric, which was a luxury during war since fabric needed to be used to make military uniforms, purchasing and wearing the zoot was seen as an act of national defiance, a wasteful way of thumbing your nose at the war effort (in fact, you had to go to a back alley tailor to even get them made). And that’s what ultimately led to the clash between soldiers and the zoot suiters in LA, and similar, riots in other parts of the country. 

And now a musical interlude: