Today is the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
I could write some detailed post about the attack itself, some list of technical specifics that no one will remember five minutes after reading, or focus on trivia, like the fact that the attack crossed the international date line, occurring on Dec. 7 in Hawaii, but on Dec. 8 in Japan.
The reality is that a massive attack off of six Japanese aircraft carriers killed 2,402 Americans, wounded 1,247. Intended as an attack that would scare off Americans from intervening in the Japanese plans for expansion across the southeast Pacific, it had the opposite effect, catapulting the U.S. into declaring war on Japan the next day, and declaring war on Italy and Germany on December 11th.
World War II is now sufficiently removed that those are mostly numbers, dry statistics which don't reflect a time when not just a few people on our behalf, but the entire nation committed to the war, to sacrifice, to a significant change in lifestyle with rationing, with women joining the workforce to take the place of men at rates previously unknown because that many men had left to go to war. The changes in our society and culture from this need to adapt for the war effort led to subsequent changes in a wide variety of areas, from attitudes about contraception, women in the work force and changes in the direction of feminism, to ending segregation, to language. A lot of things changed because of that attack on Pearl Harbor.
Some years ago I came across an old stack of records from that era belonging to my family, the kind that played at speeds of 78, 33, or 45 revolutions per minute, so that you had to look at the label, and then adjust the turntable speed, and in the case of the 45, the central spindle around which it rotated.
The entertainment of the era, everything from movies to music, was part of the war experience, with movie directors like Alfred Hitchcock, and Frank Capra working on propaganda projects - yes, of course our side did propaganda too. Hitchcock for example made two French language short films for the British ministry of information, with English subtitles, to encourage the french resistance: Bon Voyage, about an heroic RAF officer who escapes from a Nazi POW camp, and is aided by brilliant resistance organization. L'Aventure Magache (Madagascar) was the second, about (obviously) the activities of fictional resistance operations in Madagascar against Nazis and collaborators.
One of the records I found from World War II had caught my attention because of the funny title, "Flat Foot Floogie with the Floy Floy". I found a youtube video of it being performed by Fred Astaire; apparently this was very popular as dance music during WW II, including in canteens for soldiers.
From this short excerpt by Astaire, you might think the song was about shoes - given the 'flat foot floogie' part.
It's not.
The song is actually from 1938, and was changed. Floogie was an alteration of Floozie, which at the time was considered far too vulgar for the radio airwaves as a reference to loose women who were either sexually promiscuous or prostitutes, so it was changed to the made-up word Floogie, as a sound-alike that would fit in place of Floozie.
So what the heck was Floy Floy, or Floy doy as it was sometimes substituted? Although it was a bit more obscure as vulgar slang, someone with the 'floy floy' was NOT someone who was unusually attractive, had a stylish flair or confident. Floy floy was slang for having a venereal disease, something our military spent a lot of time and money making educational films and print 'propaganda' for the troops, to prevent, because it had devastating effects on military personnel. Given the frequency with which the words Floy Floy are repeated, I think it is a fair assumption that this was Gaillard laughing at having the vulgar reference completely missed by censors.
According to an article from Mother Jones with the catchy title, "The Enemy in Your Pants", in WWI, 18,000 'doughboys' contracted VD. The MJ article noted that the Navy made a 1942 "training film" with the title "Ship of Shame", and promoted catchy (pardon the pun) phrases referring to condoms as 'put it on before you put it in". So, in addition to handing out condoms, where previously the distribution of them had been illegal, the U.S. and other countries produced things like these for the war efforts:
Another reason that the popular song had to be altered to make it more suitable and acceptable was that the original version was black, and the United States was still a substantially segregated nation. The military was eventually desegregated despite similar outrage from conservatives like the protests against allowing gays to serve openly in our military.
Here is the original, from the amazing black jazz legend Slim Gaillard, who was not only fluent in 8 other languages, and one he constructed himself. Slim was during this time part of a duo with 'Slam' Stewart, appearing as Slim and Slam.
As magnificently talented as Fred Astaire was, he couldn't touch the flair of Cement Mixer Slim, seen here in a bit later footage:
I could write some detailed post about the attack itself, some list of technical specifics that no one will remember five minutes after reading, or focus on trivia, like the fact that the attack crossed the international date line, occurring on Dec. 7 in Hawaii, but on Dec. 8 in Japan.
The reality is that a massive attack off of six Japanese aircraft carriers killed 2,402 Americans, wounded 1,247. Intended as an attack that would scare off Americans from intervening in the Japanese plans for expansion across the southeast Pacific, it had the opposite effect, catapulting the U.S. into declaring war on Japan the next day, and declaring war on Italy and Germany on December 11th.
World War II is now sufficiently removed that those are mostly numbers, dry statistics which don't reflect a time when not just a few people on our behalf, but the entire nation committed to the war, to sacrifice, to a significant change in lifestyle with rationing, with women joining the workforce to take the place of men at rates previously unknown because that many men had left to go to war. The changes in our society and culture from this need to adapt for the war effort led to subsequent changes in a wide variety of areas, from attitudes about contraception, women in the work force and changes in the direction of feminism, to ending segregation, to language. A lot of things changed because of that attack on Pearl Harbor.
Some years ago I came across an old stack of records from that era belonging to my family, the kind that played at speeds of 78, 33, or 45 revolutions per minute, so that you had to look at the label, and then adjust the turntable speed, and in the case of the 45, the central spindle around which it rotated.
The entertainment of the era, everything from movies to music, was part of the war experience, with movie directors like Alfred Hitchcock, and Frank Capra working on propaganda projects - yes, of course our side did propaganda too. Hitchcock for example made two French language short films for the British ministry of information, with English subtitles, to encourage the french resistance: Bon Voyage, about an heroic RAF officer who escapes from a Nazi POW camp, and is aided by brilliant resistance organization. L'Aventure Magache (Madagascar) was the second, about (obviously) the activities of fictional resistance operations in Madagascar against Nazis and collaborators.
One of the records I found from World War II had caught my attention because of the funny title, "Flat Foot Floogie with the Floy Floy". I found a youtube video of it being performed by Fred Astaire; apparently this was very popular as dance music during WW II, including in canteens for soldiers.
From this short excerpt by Astaire, you might think the song was about shoes - given the 'flat foot floogie' part.
It's not.
The song is actually from 1938, and was changed. Floogie was an alteration of Floozie, which at the time was considered far too vulgar for the radio airwaves as a reference to loose women who were either sexually promiscuous or prostitutes, so it was changed to the made-up word Floogie, as a sound-alike that would fit in place of Floozie.
So what the heck was Floy Floy, or Floy doy as it was sometimes substituted? Although it was a bit more obscure as vulgar slang, someone with the 'floy floy' was NOT someone who was unusually attractive, had a stylish flair or confident. Floy floy was slang for having a venereal disease, something our military spent a lot of time and money making educational films and print 'propaganda' for the troops, to prevent, because it had devastating effects on military personnel. Given the frequency with which the words Floy Floy are repeated, I think it is a fair assumption that this was Gaillard laughing at having the vulgar reference completely missed by censors.
According to an article from Mother Jones with the catchy title, "The Enemy in Your Pants", in WWI, 18,000 'doughboys' contracted VD. The MJ article noted that the Navy made a 1942 "training film" with the title "Ship of Shame", and promoted catchy (pardon the pun) phrases referring to condoms as 'put it on before you put it in". So, in addition to handing out condoms, where previously the distribution of them had been illegal, the U.S. and other countries produced things like these for the war efforts:
Another reason that the popular song had to be altered to make it more suitable and acceptable was that the original version was black, and the United States was still a substantially segregated nation. The military was eventually desegregated despite similar outrage from conservatives like the protests against allowing gays to serve openly in our military.
Here is the original, from the amazing black jazz legend Slim Gaillard, who was not only fluent in 8 other languages, and one he constructed himself. Slim was during this time part of a duo with 'Slam' Stewart, appearing as Slim and Slam.
As magnificently talented as Fred Astaire was, he couldn't touch the flair of Cement Mixer Slim, seen here in a bit later footage:
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