All day long, whether rain or shine
She’s part of the assembly line
She’s making history, working for victory
Rosie, brrrrrrrr, the riveter
— a song by The Four Vagabonds (1943)
In 1942, as the Second World War was reaching an especially violent pinnacle, Disney Studios released a short film meant to aid the war effort. “Out of the Frying Pan into the Firing Line” opens on a shot of Minnie Mouse frying a mix of bacon and eggs at her stove.
“Tra-la-la, la-la-la-la,” sings Minnie.
Meanwhile, the camera (if that’s the word) pans to Pluto, who is eyeing his bowl of dog food with interminable boredom.
“Pluto!” calls Minnie. “How would you like some delicious hot bacon grease?” Pluto, it turns out, would like it very much; he smiles wide and nods and begins to slobber as Minnie carries the pan his way.
But before he is able to scrape his tongue across the skillet, a loud, disembodied announcer’s voice pierces the action on screen.
“Hey, don’t throw away that bacon grease!” the voice booms, startling both mouse and dog.
“Housewives of America,” the voice continues, “one of the most important things you can do is to save your waste kitchen fats. Bacon grease, meat drippings, frying fats. We and our allies need millions of pounds of fats to help win the war. For fats make glycerin and glycerin makes explosives.”
Every year, the announcer explains, 2 billion pounds of waste kitchen fats are thrown away — enough glycerin for 10 billion rapid-fire cannon shells.
“A skillet of bacon grease is a little munitions factory,” the voice says. Minnie takes a hard look at her pan. “Yes, meat drippings sink Axis war ships. And waste frying fats speed depth charges on their way to crush Axis submarines.”
Pluto, who at the start of the film was none too pleased to have his snack interrupted by a reminder of the war overseas, eventually comes round, and by the film’s end the patriotic puppy is seen selling a can of the household’s collected kitchen fats to the local butcher (who, as was the protocol of the day, would pass it on to an area military liason, who in turn would ensure that the grease made its way, in ballistic form, to the front lines).
UNLIKE the wars the United States has been engaged in for the past decade and a half — acknowledgement of which, increasingly, flies below the radar of national attention — evidence of the fighting overseas during World War II penetrated every corner of life on the homefront.
It was no accident. The War Department made the decision even before the U.S.’s entrance into the conflict to fully engage the instruments of popular culture — not only to inspire patriotic feeling but also to promote war bonds, to encourage rationing, to help reduce the labor shortage. And, less appetizing to the views of posterity, to warn Americans to view with suspicion their German and Japanese neighbors.
From Disney cartoons to literary magazines to the movies (directors like Frank Capra and John Huston and John Ford opted to give up the seductions of Hollywood for the chance to make training videos for soldiers preparing for battle), the gears of the American propaganda machine were churning fast.
Examples of perhaps the most effective medium of the day were on display at the Iola Public Library Tuesday night, when librarian Roger Carswell unveiled, for the first time to the general public, the institution’s collection of original war posters.
“Why posters?” mused Carswell. “It was a medium that could reach everywhere. You could produce them cheaply. You were able to combine graphics that could grab people’s attention with a short message worded in a clever way.
“The government used every means it could to get people to hew to the things that needed to be done in order to really focus on winning the war. Those of us who weren’t alive or old enough at the time have a difficult time understanding how completely everything at that time was geared toward the war. … Back then, every single thing was affected by the war. What you did, where you worked, your ability to travel, your cooking — everything.
“You’ve heard the phrase ‘homefront,’ I’m sure, which can just mean everything that’s going on back within our borders. But what we don’t remember is how much the war truly was won within the boundaries of our country by our production and by our conservation of resources….
“There was the Pacific theater, there was the European theater, then there was the homefront. Frankly, I don’t know which was most important.”
A group of about 15 turned out for Carswell’s talk Tuesday, many with war memories of their own.
“I was 7 years old when the war started,” recalled a white-haired man in the crowd. “It’s true. Everybody was impacted by it. You know, the boy next door, I played catch with him and next thing I knew he was killed in Europe. The kid across the street was wounded in Iwo Jima. A boy across the road flew off a flattop in the Pacific. Everybody knew somebody.”
