12 AMERICAN BLUES THEATER LIFE IN THE 1940S  The 1940s are defined by World War II. The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor shattered US isolationism. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt guided the country at home, General Dwight D. Eisenhower commands the troops in Europe. General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz led them in the Pacific.  Unemployment almost disappears when men are drafted and sent off to war. The government reclassifies 55% of jobs, allowing women and African-Americans to fill them.  Automobile production ceases in 1942, and rationing of food supplies begins in 1943.  Japan surrenders after two atomic bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The United States emerges from World War II as a world super power, challenged only by the USSR.  Radio is the lifeline for Americans in the 1940s providing news, music, and entertainment.  Returning GI’s create the baby boom, and the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (the GI Bill of Rights) entitles returning soldiers to a college education.  When the war and its restrictions end, Christian Dior introduced the “New Look” feminine dresses with long, full skirts, and tight waists. High heels become trendy. Hair was worn to the shoulders.  Television makes its debut at the 1939 World Fair. The war interrupted development. In 1947, commercial television with 13 stations becomes available to the public.  Major works of literature published in the 1940s include For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (1940), The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943), The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams (1944), The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank (1947), Nineteen Eight-Four by George Orwell (1949), and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (1949).  The most popular music style during the 1940s was swing, which prevailed during World War II. In the later periods of the 1940s, less swing was prominent and crooners like Frank Sinatra, along with genres such as bebop and the earliest traces of rock and roll, were the prevalent genre.  Hollywood was instrumental in producing dozens of classic films during the 1940s, including “Casablanca “(1943), “Citizen Kane” (1941), and “The Maltese Falcon” (1941). Also in the 1940s, Disney released some of its most iconic animated feature films: “Pinocchio” (1940), “Dumbo” (1941), and “Bambi” (1941). American soldiers comforting a young girl in France during World War II Christian Dior’s iconic “New Look” (edited from Wikipedia.org)