Stand Up and Cheer (1934)

Stand Up and Cheer (1934) is a morale-boosting movie about…morale boosting…during the worst years of the Great Depression.  Whether it actually succeeded in spreading optimism could certainly be doubted, but it likely was successful as, at least, a diversion.  The thin plot of a new government office being created to bolster good feeling during the hard times was the framework for a lineup of vaudeville acts and musical numbers that carries us through the end of the movie and the fictional end of the Depression.

Warner Baxter, a driven, hard-working producer (not too unlike the character he played in 42^nd Street the year before), is summoned by the President (who does not sound like FDR) to take over a new cabinet position, Secretary of Amusement (which reminds one, less cheerfully, of the “Secretary of Morale” position grifter and sellout to fascists Andy Griffith was given in A Face in the Crowd – 1957 – which we covered here).  Mr. Baxter arrives at the Capitol Building in an autogyro, a 1920s and 1930s precursor to the modern helicopter.  Someday I’d like to take a look at autogyros in movies and cartoons of that period.

Unlike the role Griffith played, however, Mr. Baxter is no megalomaniac, just a driven workaholic with a passion for the entertainment industry.  He calls for entertainers of all types: circus acts, ballet, vaudevillians, but apparently no “boop-a-doop singers.”  The Roaring Twenties are behind us, and flappers are passé (it’s all about autogyros now).  He calls for auditions from all 48 states, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, which at that time was still a U.S. territory.

Madge Evans plays an underling in charge of the children’s division.  We last saw her as the tragic and touching female lead in Hallelujah, I’m a Bum! (1933) here.  She will eventually become Baxter’s love interest, though there’s hardly any time for that in the continual stream of acts, sometimes coming at us in unexpected ways.  The first, rather startlingly, is when Baxter and Madge Evans are looking at a newspaper, and punching through the big headlines is Nick Foran (whom you may remember better as Dick Foran, changing his first name the following year) singing in a booming baritone, “I’m laughing.” Despite being out of work and down on his luck, this barrel-chested workingman declares that “I’ve got nothing to laugh about, but if I can laugh and sing and shout, brother, so can you!”  His spirited verse launches a montage of people who’ve got nothing to laugh about either, but they still carry on cheerfully, including a farmer, a woman with many children washing laundry on the roof of a tenement, and, most touchingly, a garment worker at her sewing machine in a sweatshop.  

Her moment in the song is not as rollicking; the tempo has slowed, and she is almost whisper-quiet, singing of dreams and future hopes.

The final verse in this song is taken by Aunt Jemima in what appears to be a church hall.  The actress is actually named Tess Gardella, but the corporate logo – for reasons both racial and monetary – was seemingly deemed to take precedence over a real actress.  Aunt Jemima was one of the oldest and most successful corporate logos in the U.S., dating back to 1889 and the Pearl Milling Company.  Pushing their flour product at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, they hired Nancy Green, a former slave, to cook pancakes, tell stories and sing songs in a kind of cozy folklore embodiment of the home goodness of their flour, and Aunt Jemima became a company trademark.  It was certainly not the first capitalist fantasy ever generated in our culture, but it would last longer than most.

The mammy image went through a few transformations over the years, but most curious was the adoption of the name by performers.  To be sure “Aunt Jemima” began as a minstrel character even before she became a corporate trademark, but though several actresses were hired to portray her in company promotions, Tess Gardella, who originated the role of Queenie in the seminal Show Boat (1927) on Broadway, was billed as “Aunt Jemima,” as this was the stage name she used in vaudeville – though she was not connected with the company that made flour and pancake mix.  (Reportedly, a light-skinned woman, she performed often in blackface.)  You can see her here on this YouTube clip.

Another veteran of Show Boat was Stepin Fetchit, who played Joe in the 1929 “part-talky” version.  His real name was, impressively, Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry.  “Stepin Fetchit” was his own vaudeville creation, “The Laziest Man in the World,” and made him one of the highest-paid performers in vaudeville, and his name in the credits of Stand Up and Cheer is more prominent than most of the rest of the cast.  For all that, the stereotype he embellished brought him no good fortune in later years and fell out of favor.  Though I can admire his success in vaudeville and early 1930s films, I confess I find him one of the most annoying characters in this movie or most other movies he appeared in—not because of the insulting stereotype—Hollywood was full of them—but because of the quality of his speaking voice.  To me, it’s like nails on a chalkboard. 

Stepin Fetchit’s part in this movie is to latch on to Warner Baxter and take a job as a guard to keep out the riffraff.  He stumbles about, has a comic struggle babysitting a penguin, and takes a plunge into a large aquarium. 

Strangely, the penguin is voiced-over, muttering complaints, by an actor doing a Jimmy Durante impersonation, wearing Durante’s trademark hat.  One wonders why Mr. Durante himself isn’t in the movie?  Maybe the penguin had a better agent.

Stepin Fetchit isn’t alone in the physical slapstick department; Jack Durant and Frank Mitchell play a couple of bumbling senators who keep up with a stream of nonsense dialogue about a dam project (“We’ve been together on every dam project!”) while they do acrobatic tumbling and throwing each other around Baxter’s office.  It’s quite funny and rather jaw-dropping.  Literally.

Handsome John Boles, in his romantic tenor days, is dressed in a white Naval uniform and sings a love ballad with Sylvia Froos, he with the rolling “r’s” and she looking a little bored.

Look for little Scotty Becket in a brief, uncredited role as one of the child actors under Madge Evans' tutelage.

Warner Baxter runs into a snag when the big business oligarchs (though the term was not commonly used then) try to scuttle his project with a “campaign of ridicule.”  He nearly quits.

I would expect any film buff worthy of the name knows that the real breakout star of the film was little Shirley Temple, who plays the daughter of hoofer James Dunn.  She is a charming moppet—her own trademark, merchandising to follow—and sings a verse of “Baby, Take a Bow” with Mr. Dunn.  Practically before the director could yell, “CUT!”, little Shirley was whisked away into a new movie called Baby, Take a Bow (along with Mr. Dunn), and became the highest box office draw for the next four years.

So memorable a figure she cut in Stand Up and Cheer, that in the film’s finale, after a rather long salute to hillbilly music “Broadway’s Gone Hillbilly,” (which features the always delightful sight of chorus girls dancing on top of New York City skyscrapers), that Shirley takes a solo bow in the big parade in Washington.

This happens when James Dunn rushes into the despondent Warner Baxter’s office and announces that the Depression is over! 

“Factories are opening up!  Men are going back to work by the thousands, our farm products are being sold the world over, savings accounts are leaping up, the banks are pouring out new loans!  There is no unemployment!  Fear has been banished!  Confidence reborn!  Poverty has been wiped out…We’re out of the red!”

That’s kind of a lot to scream at somebody, using up all those exclamation points like that.  But Dunn is right, the Great Depression has ended, and to celebrate, an NRA-style parade commences with armies of workers, nurses, teachers, military—and little Shirley Temple—all singing “We’re Out of the Red.”

Must be true.  Nick (Dick) Foran is back, dressed as Paul Revere, and his ghostly figure is riding across the sky on a horse, singing it, too.

I can remember watching this movie on TV with my parents when I was a child, and my mother chuckling, “And that’s how the Great Depression ended.”  And my father snorting, “Yeah, just like that.”

Even as young as I was, I could tell they were being sarcastic, but at the same time, the strangely wistful, almost sad smiles told me they wished it could have been like that.  They were the original audience for that movie when they were young teens.  Maybe at that age they really believed the Depression could end like that, any day now.  Maybe seeing the movie again after so many years, they realized they’d been hoodwinked.  Maybe they also realized that the fantasy was needed at the time.  Warner Baxter certainly thought so.

  *******************************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

It is also here in paperback from Ingram.

And here in hardcover from Ingram.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation. 

 

In Memoriam Lest We Forget

Twenty-four years is a generation, and it is yesterday.  We pause to reflect and remember.

Photo Library of Congress collection, public domain.

One Good Turn - 1931

One Good Turn (1931) shows the pluck, the kindness, and the good humor needed to forge on during the Great Depression, all qualities that were abundant in a Laurel and Hardy short—along with several smacks on the head.

Laurel and Hardy, like The Three Stooges, moved from job to job as interesting and humorous scenarios for their exploits.  We mark this Labor Day with one Laurel and Hardy short that not only has them without employment, but actually mentions that their plight is due to the Depression, as we continue our look this year at movies made during the Great Depression that addressed that crisis.

We find our heroes on the side of the road in their rattletrap 1911 Ford open touring car, where they are camped.  Oliver Hardy washes their laundry in a stream resembling more a mud puddle than a brook, and Stan Laurel cooks soup over a campfire, but accidentally burns down their pup tent with all their belongings.  Any trip, slip, or misunderstanding usually leads to catastrophe for the boys, but their personality traits that always have Stan squeakily whimpering and Ollie punctuating his emotions with a side glance at the camera—breaking the fourth wall is part of their schtick—are so well known that we really don’t need complicated plots.  The gags are set up and we have an easy time almost knowing what’s next.

Ollie remarks on their situation, “Our earthly possessions are slowly getting less and less, no place to sleep, and no food.  What could be worse?”  Then they notice their laundry, which includes, of course, a union suit, has shrunk with washing.

The boys stop at a nearby house to beg for food.  Like any practiced hobo, they check to make sure there are no dogs about.  With hat in hand, Ollie smiles charmingly and asks the elderly lady of the house, played by Mary Carr, “Pardon the intrusion, lady, but my friend and I are victims of the Depression.  We haven’t tasted food for three whole days.”

To which Stan remarks, “Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.”

Ollie coyly twists his finger around on his derby hat and requests a piece of buttered toast, but Stan heartily adds, “Would you mind throwing a piece of ham over that?”

The lady is kind and says she is going to “fix them something very nice.”

Ollie, ups the ante, “Is there some little thing we could do to repay your kindness?  We’re willing to work, you know.”

Stan suggests that Ollie chop wood, and Ollie tells him to do it. Eventually, the lady calls them into the kitchen and gives them coffee and sandwiches.  The prolonged taking of one more and then one more sandwich by Stan, completely oblivious to good manners, has Ollie steaming, and after a few tit-for-tat reprisals, they settle down to enjoy their food.

But what’s this?  They overhear the lady in the next room in conversation with a man who says he is going to foreclose on the mortgage, and that she must have $100 by three o’clock or he will throw her out on the street! She pleads with him for more time, discovering that the money she has saved in her sewing basket has been stolen!  He is heartless. 

“I have you in my clutches!”  It sounds like an old-time “mellerdramer,” which it is.  Unbeknownst to the boys, the lady is just rehearsing a play for the local community theatre.  James Finlayson, well known to Laurel and Hardy fans, is the evil banker.  The lady refers to him by his real name, which was perhaps a joke among the cast.  Blink and you miss him Snub Pollard also plays one of the community theatre players.

Our hapless heroes, however, eavesdropping from the kitchen, think it’s real.  Gallantly, Ollie vows to raise the money, and the boys go into town to auction off their car.

Billy Gilbert plays a drunk who places a bid, but then mistakenly puts his wallet into Stan’s coat pocket. After a misunderstanding in the bidding and Ollie pummeling Stan in the car that remains unsold and, in fact, crumbles to pieces in their fight, the wallet is discovered.  Ollie thinks Stan has stolen the old lady’s mortgage money.

Just how he jumps to this unlikely conclusion, we can’t imagine, but the childlike chums are quick to wound (literally) and quick to jump to conclusions.  He muscles Stan back to the old lady’s house to return the money and to confess.  She laughingly tells them it was a play rehearsal they heard, and Ollie, a tad embarrassed, makes the hysterical remark, “I must have made a faux pas.”

Stan, fed up, goes after Ollie with an axe and brings down the old lady’s shed on his head.

The gags and slapstick would have been familiar and fun to the Depression-era audiences, but those audiences were not as blind to the social commentary of the film as we might be today.  People did camp out on the side of the road.  They did live in their cars.  They were removed from their homes when the banks foreclosed.  They and their belongings were thrown out on the street.

Just as is happening more and more today. The felon in the White House has taken measures to criminalize homelessness, institutionalize captured homeless, and, ironically, increase the number of homeless in this country.

May we show as much resilience, heart, and generosity in our troubled time as Laurel and Hardy.  But I somehow think if one of us were knocked repeatedly on the head by chunks of firewood, we might not fare as well as he does. Got to give him that.

  *******************************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

It is also here in paperback from Ingram.

And here in hardcover from Ingram.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation. 

 

 

 

SECOND EDITION - a re-issue of ANN BLYTH: ACTRESS. SINGER. STAR.

Tomorrow, Ann Blyth, one of the last remaining figures from Hollywood's Golden Age, will celebrate her 97th birthday.

Ten years ago, I published a book on her career, Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star., that had its roots in a year-long series of blog posts in 2014 on her work.  As I mentioned a couple months ago, I've been working on putting out a second edition, with some additional material, and making a hardcover version available, as well, for the first time.  

I'm pleased to announce that the book is now out in eBook, paperback, hardcover, and audio.  I guess that covers all bases.

You may purchase the eBook here at my Shopify store,

     or from a variety of online shops, including Barnes & Noble and Apple iTunes here.

The paperback version and the hardcover version are also available from Barnes & Noble here, and the paperback 

from  Walmart here.

You may purchase the paperback from IngramSpark here, 

     and also a hardcover version from IngramSpark here.

At Amazon, you may purchase the eBook, the paperback, the hardcover, or the audiobook here.

You can also purchase both the paperback and the hardcover through Bookshop.org which supports local bookstores.

How delightful it is to celebrate a long career and a happy life.  

Modern Times (1936)

Modern Times (1936) says goodbye to The Little Tramp and hello to a brave new world. Charlie Chaplin takes aim at the horrors of industrialism and the tribulations of the Great Depression, and yet he brings along a nostalgic zest for the earlier twentieth century that is not going gently into that good night.  Inevitably, he presents us with a Valentine.

Continuing our look this year at films from the 1930s that make a social commentary on that decade, as I’ve mentioned before, many filmmakers in this era chose to deliberately comment on social conditions in that challenging time and make “modern times” the backdrop of even silly comedies.  You didn’t have to look far to see a message.   We turn now to a giant (a little giant maybe, but still a giant) in the history of film who does just this, and uses it to give his most famous and beloved character not just a curtain call, but a socially relevant one.

Mr. Chaplin came to realize that The Little Tramp’s era of particular innocence was over, and practically speaking, there was no way to continue his adventures not speaking.  Therefore, this is the last “silent film” made featuring our hapless hero.  However, it is also the first film we hear Chaplin’s voice—later in the movie when he sings a silly song.

The film is mostly silent, with some sound effects and very little dialogue—mostly from the boss of the factory who bellows at his employees via a large television-type screen.  This is not your father’s industrial revolution; in fact, the factory where Chaplin works is almost Buck Rogers futuristic, an Art Deco version of a factory.  It is the 1930s, after all.

The movie starts with a stark title screen and a rather film noir-ish musical theme, threatening and foreboding.   We see the image of a flock of sheep, and then the image of men climbing subway steps in a herd, running to the factory, to suggest that they are sheep.  The title card tells us this is “A story of industry, of individual enterprise—humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness.”

Will humanity succeed in finding happiness?  Maybe only at times.

It doesn’t start well for The Little Tramp and quickly goes downhill from there.  We see him tightening nuts on an assembly line, having trouble keeping up.  The bellowing owner from his omniscient screen observes them and wants more speed.  He is played by Al Ernest Garcia.

Charlie takes a smoke break in the washroom, but he gets yelled at by the face on the screen even in there.  Big Brother is even in the bathroom.

Efficiency experts come to the factory to demonstrate a new machine that will make the workers eat lunch faster—and poor Charlie is chosen to demonstrate.  Strapped into a chair, a revolving, demonic lazy Susan is placed before him, and he is force-fed soup, corn on the cob, and gets the traditional slapstick pie in the face from a mechanical arm, while his face is blotted intermittently with a large office blotter.  It’s a funny skit, and levity helps us—if not Charlie—from going crazy at the imprisonment of his workplace. 

When Charlie is on a break or off the line, he continues to twitch with the motion of tightening nuts with two large wrenches.  Poor Charlie goes berserk from the stress, ends up being threaded through the giant cogs of a machine in the iconic scene.  Afterwards, he takes his large wrenches and attempts to tighten anything—including the large dress buttons strategically placed on the breasts of a passing woman.  This is one of those gags that’s more funny if we are led right up to the moment and then is suddenly cut off, because what we imagine could happen is always funnier.

Playfully and maniacally out of control, Charlie is chased by his co-workers, taken to a hospital, and later, cured of a nervous breakdown, and must start his life over.

He is constantly starting over from square one in this movie, and that, too, is a comment on the modern condition.  We must be prepared to start over.  Always.

In another funny mistake, he falls into a manhole and comes up with a red warning flag, such that construction workers would take on a job, and when he emerges from the manhole with the flag, just at that moment, a protest march by a communist workers’ group is going by and he gets swept up with them.  He is rounded up and taken to the police station. 

Meanwhile, Paulette Goddard plays a poor girl living in a shack by the waterfront with her widowed father and two kid sisters. She is The Gamin. Dad is out of work, heavily burdened by the Depression, and Paulette, with a scrappy survivor’s instinct, steals bananas to feed the family.  Reportedly, one of her little sisters was played by Gloria DeHaven at 10 or 11 years old in her first role.

Charlie is sent to prison, and when cocaine is smuggled to another prisoner via a salt shaker, referred to on our helpful title card as “nose powder,” Charlie inadvertently douses his food with it.  His wide-eyed reaction tells us he is high.  One wonders how that got by the Production Code.  Helpless to control himself, he accidentally foils a plot by revolting prisoners to overtake the guards, and he is rewarded with release.  He doesn’t really want to leave, though.  He is cozy in his cell, with no responsibilities and three squares a day.  It’s a good setup for a guy like Charlie, who loses every job he gets.  When he is freed, he is told, “Now make good.”

The Gamin, meanwhile, gets into trouble when her poor father is shot to death.  The authorities step in and take the two younger girls, but Paulette escapes.  She finally crosses paths with Charlie when he gets fired from a shipbuilding company on the waterfront where she lives, and he accidentally launches a half-built ship. She has stolen bread and runs smack into him.  Gentleman that he is, and out of work besides, he allows himself to be arrested and carted off to the hoosegow once again.  He offers his seat to Paulette in the police van and helps her to escape.  Even eating a big meal in a restaurant without the money to pay for it won’t keep him in jail for long, but when he meets Paulette, Charlie decides it’s better to stay out of jail, and he vows he will get a home for them both, “even if I have to work for it.”

They are two lost souls battling the storms of life, but The Little Tramp is a man-child, and their relationship is as playful as brother and sister.

He takes a job as a night watchman in a department store.  Again, as we’ve seen in this previous post on Employees' Entrance (1933), the multi-story downtown department store has a special place in the Great Depression.  It is the cathedral of commerce, with the promise of good times coming again, despite most people not having enough money to do more than window-shop.

Charlie provides a place for Paulette to sleep on home furnishings floor, and while she luxuriates in a comfortable floor model bed, he runs into a former co-worker from the factory that has now been shut down.  He is Big Bill, played by Stanley “Tiny” Sandford, and he is going to rob the store.  One of his accomplices explains, “We ain’t burglars—we’re hungry.”  

It ends, of course, with Charlie taken off to jail again, but before that we have that stunning scene where he tries out roller skates and nearly plumets to his death on a floor where renovation construction is not finished and he comes very close to falling several stories while cutting a caper with fancy skating moves.  Classic film fans may know this is just a very clever matte shot, and Chaplin was not in danger doing the stunt, but it looks terrific.

When Charlie is released from jail this time, Paulette faithfully waits for him, and provides a tumbledown shack for their home, and she has returned to stealing food. 

The factory where he worked at the beginning of the movie is reopening and he hopes to get a real home for them.  He is assigned as an assistant to a mechanic, played by Chester Conklin.  This time, Chester gets caught in the cogs and Charlie’s not much help.  Paulette, Charlie, and Chester would all reunite in The Great Dictator (1940).

Believe it or not, he has another stay in jail, while Paulette gets a job as a dancer in a café, and she gets him a job as a singing waiter there when he’s out of the lockup.  Here’s where we get to finally hear Charlie Chaplin’s voice.  He cannot remember the words to the song he’s supposed to sing, so he makes up gibberish and we see him dashing about the dancefloor, twisting himself into a frenetic ballet, and singing a song Chaplin wrote called, “Je cherche après titine,” which is a mixture of French and Italian that he roguishly performs as a supposedly risqué song. Have a look here.

But wouldn’t you know, life comes down hard again, and the authorities who have been looking for Paulette all this time have returned.  She and Charlie escape, but scrappy Paulette has finally run out of courage.  They stand on the dusty open road that stretches out miles ahead of them.  Is it promising, or is it bleak?  Perhaps it’s just a matter of viewpoint.

“What’s the use of trying?” she says in tears.

He answers, “Buck up—never say die.  We’ll get along!”  It is the theme of the Great Depression for those who survived it.  I can remember many years ago watching a documentary series on the Great Depression with my father, who was a teenager during those years, and who joined the Civilian Conservation Corps to help send money back to support his widowed mother and kid sisters.  At the time, it was an adventure.  Bad times were shrugged off because if they weren’t, you were done for just by giving up.  But as an old man, looking back, with perhaps less courage than he had when he was a teen, and having acquired a great deal more knowledge about life in the meantime, he muttered, stony-faced at the TV:  “My God, it’s a wonder we ever survived it.”

In the background, while Charlie is comforting Paulette, we hear the music he wrote, which would later gain lyrics and the title “Smile.”  The first to record it supposedly was Nat King Cole, many years later.  You can listen to it here.

There was no single anthem of that generation, but this quiet, hopeful song may have been one of them.

It was a perfect way, as Charlie and Paulette gather their things and walk down the road together to meet head-on whatever happens next, for The Little Tramp to leave us.  I like to think he’s still down the road somewhere, shrugging off mishaps.

  *******************************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

It is also here in paperback from Ingram.

And here in hardcover from Ingram.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation.