Looking back at Life's moments

NORTH HAVEN, Maine

OLD MAGAZINES in a summer house, and the sight of 7- and 8-year-olds learning to sail on a summer's day, got me to thinking of how the world was when I was their age during World War II. What better time machine to take you back to those pre-Internet, pre-television days than Life Magazine - now just a shadow of its former self - but then read by millions for glimpses into the far corners of the world, as well as life in our times. Costing only 10 cents, no website today can compare with the hold Life had on the American public 65 years ago.

War news dominated Life's pages in the spring and summer of 1943, but there were domestic stories, too. President Roosevelt traveled south to put down the "revolt" against the New Deal by southern governors. There was a spread on a skinny new talent from New Jersey, Frank Sinatra, "the voice that makes women swoon," and another on Betty Grable's legs. The July 12 cover showed Roy Rogers on his horse Trigger.

There were articles on stars now forgotten, Veronica Lake, the "Cyclops Cinderella," for the hair she let fall over one eye, and a cover story on an actress named Peggy Lloyd who I have never heard of since.

It was the July article on the fighting in the Solomon Islands, where my father was, that caught my eye, under the politically incorrect headline: "Big Jap base at Rabaul appears to be ultimate goal."

There was a cover story on Igor Sikorsky's "flying windmill," the helicopter, which was still in its infancy in 1943. Life confidently predicted helicopters would some day be "everyman's airplane, the automobile of the future." The jet plane was on the planning board, but waiting to be introduced into combat by the Germans near the war's end. Television had been invented, but not yet available.

That spring the Germans were surrendering in Tunisia under the lenses of Life, and an invasion of Sicily was imminent . I had an uncle who was then already dead in the sands of North Africa by the time that edition went to press.

Life editorialized that after the war "we must find ways to increase the purchasing power of people outside America - an enormous flow of free trade in both directions " as the only way "we can hope to get the full benefits of these inventions of ours." America was going to be the workshop of the world. Nobody foresaw that America would become the world's importer, nor that manufacturing would flee our shores.

The advertisements are all remarkably similar: Look what our company is doing for the war effort, and remember us when we come back to serve your pent-up consumer demand when the war's over.

"Buy War Bonds today. Tomorrow command your own Chris Craft," said an ad featuring a snappy speed boat. "We all want to help end this war in a hurry and get back to normal living again," said another ad. "Then we can have that Hotpoint Electric kitchen we've been counting on. Buy War Bonds, and of course the more money we lay aside now the more labor- saving appliances we'll be able to afford when peace comes."

The war-time ads shared another common theme. A Nash-Kelvinator ad showed a soulful woman promising that when her man comes back he will find "nothing changed . . . The same town, the same job you liked so much . . . the same America you've always known and loved." In reality, of course, everything was changing. In those 1943 ads all the wives and sweethearts are wearing frocks and aprons, while the news photographs showed women on the factory assembly lines as "Rosie the Riveter."

Martin Aircraft's ad showed an artist's conception of the airliner of the future, a giant, propeller-driven sea plane. "Rio with guitars throbbing," the copy reads, "Baghdad where high-laden camels sway through the narrow, latticed streets . . . Via air, the peoples of the world will come to know each other, thus building for a permanent peace."

As Hemingway would have said, it must have been pretty to think so.

H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.