Flying
Circuses – World War I Nose Art
With
the outbreak of World War I in 1914, manned flight was still in
its infancy, but this would quickly change as military strategists
discovered that aircraft made the perfect tool for reconnaissance.
Soon it was found that aircraft also made the perfect platform
to mount machine guns – the reign of the fighter had begun.
Pilots of the new fighter units were looked upon as knights of
the air. In keeping with the idea that air combat was chivalrous,
if not deadly, pilots marked their machines with striking paint
schemes and personal insignia. The German Jagdstaffeln (fighter
units) were some of the first to begin the tradition. In late
1916 and early 1917, British pilots came back from patrols with
tales of brightly colored German planes. One of the best known
is the all red Fokker triplane of Manfred von Richthofen, the
Red Baron. Von Richthofen’s unit, Jasta 11, became known
as the Flying Circus because of its outlandishly painted Fokker
and Albatros fighters.
When
the United States entered the war in 1918, young American pilots
lost no time in creating insignia for their own squadrons, devising
images that reflected the frontier spirit of America – Indian
heads, kicking mules, bison, and Uncle Sam’s top hat. Typical
of the self-assured American spirit, these pilots created and painted
the insignia without official authorization. It was not until a
year after the war was over that the Army finally approved some
of the creations.
The Golden Age – World War II
With
America’s entry into the Second World War, the rigid regulations
that peacetime pilots had lived under were relaxed and nose art
quickly began to spring up on aircraft in all theaters of the
conflict.
A
major inspiration for nose art was pin-up art, especially from
the magazine Esquire. George
Petty, an Esquire artist, was one of the first to find fame
in “girlie art.” A commercial artist by trade, Petty
began drawing for Esquire in the late 1930s. His tenure at the
magazine was brief, however. Underpaid and overworked, Petty quit
Esquire in 1942 to pursue a lucrative advertising career.
Waiting
in the wings to take his place was a little known Peruvian artist
by the name of Alberto
Vargas. Originally hired to duplicate Petty’s work, Vargas,
who signed his work with the less ethnic Varga, quickly outperformed
his predecessor with stunningly lifelike and seductive paintings
of beautiful women. By the end of World War II the pin-up art
of Alberto Vargas was rivaling the popularity of the pin-up photos
of Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable. Pin-up art became so ingrained
in the GI lifestyle that Glenn Miller added a song to his repertoire
when he toured the war zones, “Peggy the Pin-Up Girl.”
The men that flew and serviced these big planes came from all
walks of life, every state in the union, and from every socio-economic
background. They were draftees and enlistees there to do a job
– win the war. Being so far from home and so removed from
the “civilized” world created a climate where nose art
flourished. Primarily a morale booster, nose art was also a way
for the men to identify and separate themselves from other crews
or planes within their unit. In a sense, nose art helped to create
camaraderie within crews, and that camaraderie proved beneficial
since each crew member depended on the other members for survival.
THE PINUPS OF WWII
Morale-boosting
(and sometimes eyebrow-raising) pinup girls — produced both
by illustrators' paintbrushes and photographers' cameras —
were a poignant symbol of the all-American good life that front-line
GIs were fighting for. On one level, the pinup was promoted to
encourage heterosexuality among the military. On the human level,
they represented home. And where else to start but with Betty
Grable. Grable's pictures graced lockers of GIs all around the
world during World War II, reminding men what they were fighting
for. While pinups have existed for as long as there have been
photographs and printing presses, Betty Grable in many ways stands
at the beginning of the history of the pinup.
What the guys in combat wanted as a reminder of one of the things
they were fighting for — God, country, and family —
was the idealized female of their dreams. The pictures, photos,
and illustrations of women that they pinned on barracks walls
and painted on the noses of their airplanes and bomber jackets
served to remind them of the girl back home — or at least
the girl they fantasized about. Today, to the small or narrow-minded,
it may seem sexist or politically incorrect, but those pictures
helped keep airmen focused on the often grotesque job of killing
the other guy before he killed them. Looking at pictures of bosomy
women with inviting smiles was somehow able to help snap combatants
back into a quasi-reality that helped them through the terrors
of war and gave them a dangling carrot that empowered them to
fight through the sheer Hell of combat to get back home.
Bob
Hope, the quintessential GI entertainer, knew what it was all
about. When he toured, he was always accompanied by good-looking,
good-sport female entertainers to let the troops know that they
were not forgotten by the folks back home. Traveling around the
world, he always brought a songstress or actress who drew wolf whistles
from the assembled GIs. To the troops, it seemed these were the
"girls back home" who magically appeared on lonely, strife-torn
Pacific islands in the mid-'40s, often not very far from where shells
were tearing up terrain and troops.
A pinup can represent whatever we love, want to love, or want to
have. Any printed image that can be hung on a wall could conceivably
be regarded as a pinup, and in common usage the term extends even
further — to pinup images, for example, on playing cards, key
chains, drinking glasses, cigarette lighters, and other objects
that never reach the wall. (In World War II, pinups frequently adorned
the sides of tanks and aircraft as mascots or good-luck talismans.)
Thus, despite the literal meaning of the term, it is clear that
the essence of a pinup is not so much its physical form as its quality
of image, the image most commonly being that of a person —
particularly a sexually alluring woman.
The classic pinup genre — cheesecake — fulfills our
definition perfectly. Cheesecake (which Webster defines as "photography
displaying especially female comeliness and shapeliness")
is said to have gotten its name when, in September 1915, a newspaper
photographer, George Miller, noticed a visiting Russian diva,
Elvira Amaazar, just as she was debarking from her ship in New
York. Miller asked the opera signer to hike up her skirt a little
for the sake of his picture. Later, the photographer's editor,
something of a gourmet, is supposed to have exclaimed, "Why,
this is better than cheesecake!" The story, apocryphal or
not, dates from an era that saw the birth of an international
mode in illustration that still teases the eye, the libido, and
the wallet of most men. It continues to thrive in the worlds of
entertainment, publishing, and advertising and is used to sell
almost everything, from ball bearings to ideas.
The cheesecake image is based on notions of teasing and allure
— and frequently humor as well. But other styles of pinups
have been used in association with a vast array of emotions, attitudes,
pursuits, subjects, mediums: violence, satire, romance, eroticism,
purity, fetishism, dance, drama, burlesque, aspiring stardom,
sports, cartoons, comic strips, advertisements, domesticity, nature,
nationalism, pacifism. Yet overall, erotic fantasy is the key
to understanding all styles of the pinup. Although the pinup depends
for its success on a sexually evocative image, it should not be
confused, for instance, with original nude or erotic art. The
pinup is a printed form, intended for general distribution to
a large audience. An erotic painting or drawing may be, and often
is, reproduced. Many pinups do originate as drawings or paintings
— for example, the Gibson
Girl, Petty
Girl , and Varga
Girl - and innumerable calendar subjects. These images are
pinups simply because they are intended to be pinups — to
be mass produced for the purpose of arousing sexual fantasy.
The classic cheesecake pinup shows a curvy woman, sumptuous breasts
exposed (or nearly exposed), posing coquettishly in a predictable,
stylized setting — a bedroom, perhaps, or a studio, beach,
or theatrical environment. There are in cheesecake endless variations
of setting, pose, and anatomical emphasis. Cheesecake is the type
of pinup found most frequently in girlie magazines.
It is well recognized that everyone has, and must deal with, erotic
fantasies. Although most of these drive from social experiences,
especially in childhood, many other stimuli condition our thoughts
and feelings. Without question, pinup images are a strong source
of erotic fantasy. The submissive poses of George
Hurrell's Esquire pinups were tailor-made for bunkside, barracks
walls all over the world.
The pinup for its own sake did not begin to emerge until the latter
part of the 19th Century. It took two major forms: magazine photographs
of renowned, even notorious actresses and dancing girls; and the
Gibson Girl, who represented the first conscious effort to create
a popular ideal of femininity. Thus, even in the early period,
one discerns different social levels of pinups. The Gibson Girl
at the turn of the century was the world's image of the American
beauty. Although she had universal appeal, she was distinctly
"high class". She was a status symbol for the masses.
Over the years as we have seen, girlie magazines took on various
guises — "studio" photography, burlesque, theater
— in order to present pinups. Only by exception in the first
thirty years of the 20th Century, were any of these magazines
not aimed at a mass audience on the lowest socio-economic levels.
Not until Esquire began (1933) was the pinup aimed exclusively
at readers of a higher social status. Esquire featured, from the
start, articles and pictorials in the finest tradition of literary
and esthetic magazines. Its pinups by Petty, Vargas, and other
artists maintained the aura of "good taste." The pinups,
many of which were two- and three-page foldouts, showed comic,
sex-oriented situations reflecting the sophistication of the urban
upper classes. Photographer George Hurrell also contributed heavily
to the WW II pinup mill that Esquire
was the foundation of, with color portraits of Hollywood starlets,
many in "ready-to-ravish" poses (a la a young Judy Garland).
During World War II, painted pinups first emerged from the fine
airbrushed art of Alberto Vargas, whose images were the most sought-after
section of Esquire. With thousands of airplanes droning off to
war, nose art emerged as the aviator's unique calling card.
Although the Army Air Force attempted to ban and censor nose art
on several occasions, ultimately, the art would remain. Its value
in terms of morale was unquestioned. It would be an understatement
to call most of the clothing on pinup girls (as they were called)
"painted on." Most examples show all too well that the
clothing was not meant to hide very much at all.
Many aircrews even paid their artists to make sure that even this
little bit of clothing was removed. Some planes were even named
accordingly, "O-O Nothing!", "Off We Go",
"Surprise Attack", "Over Exposed", "Tantalizing
Takeoff", and dozens of others were popular double-entendres.
Hedy
Lamarr, one of Hollywood's prettiest stars, found herself
memorialized on many a warbird.
Some poster art of the era used pinup-inspired imagery of women,
often in military clothes. This type of art was most often used
for War Bond drives and morale boosters on the home front. Industry
often played a part, putting up posters in company cafeterias
and at the clock where you got your card punched at the beginning
and end of each day.
The Pacific War against Japan involved long-range missions and
hours of miserable heat, rain, and mud. The Hawaiian pinup, complete
with a lei, could only serve to remind the airmen and ground crews
of their time back east.
The "girl next door" look was always popular, even if,
well ... she wasn't quite the girl who lived next door. Pinup
artists of the day always tried to capture that innocent look,
even if the clothes and pose were anything but.
A few of the pinups were so sexy and provocative that they could
only be called bombshells. Some were Hollywood starlets, some
were imaginary. Almost all of them were proportioned beyond mere
genetics.
It was no mystery why this artwork ended up in dozens of variations
on so many airplanes. It reminded the airmen of home and of better
times. And in a day when death could be just hours away, it gave
them something else to think about.
The finest pinups were torn from the pages of Esquire magazine.
Each was published with a poem by Phil Stack. These poems were
designed to rhyme and present without much subtlety, again using
the double-entendre to effect. One went simply, "I'm learning
some commando tricks. For keeping fit, they're dandy, And when
you men come home again, They're apt to come in handy!"
If
anything, the pinups that inspired a generation of soldiers, sailors,
and airmen were quite practical. Some were exotic, to be sure,
but virtually all were posed in positions that seemed quite acceptable
to the gentleman's view of the era. Most were women who you could
go home to, if you lived to go home at all. And that is why they
formed such a central place at the frontlines of the air war.
They represented hope and home. "Good luck, chum", they
would whisper, "my dreams are riding with you". And
they were everywhere: writing kits, matchbooks, blotters, calendars,
playing cards, arcade cards, in the pages of YANK, on Christmas
cards, postcards, and just about anything that you could print
on.
In the end, the pinup emerged as a defining element of the era,
gracing everything from the noses of airplanes, to leather jackets,
to the walls of barracks huts and O-Clubs across Europe and the
Pacific.
