Naked
Page 14
Despite the opposition of Wallace, the New Deal community, and nudists, Dies’s tactics produced the desired results. Dies caught the public’s attention and won political support for his larger campaign against New Deal liberalism.72 His staff received “hundreds of telegrams and letters praising the committee for its courage in fighting ‘crackpotism’ and subversive elements in the government structure.”73 The Washington Post mockingly reported that Dies’s uncovering of a nudist on the Board of Economic Warfare “touched off the first Congressional debate on nudism in the history of American Legislation.”74 Other congressmen repeated Dies’s sexual politics to attack the Roosevelt administration. One Democratic representative from Georgia “wav[ed] copies of Parmelee’s Nudism in Modern Life” as he exclaimed that the illustrations in the book were “filthy and dirty.”75 The congressman added that he regarded the vice president as “one of the cleanest, finest men” he had ever known, even though he regretted Wallace’s “rather bitter attack” on his “colleague from Texas [Dies].”76 Another Democratic representative from Illinois, however, took the attack against Wallace a step further when he declared that “only crackpots would select crackpots to help plan our war program or our post war program.”77
The public took an interest in Dies’s latest cause as much for its potential eroticism as its political drama. Yet Dies’s turn to sexual politics did not necessarily win him legitimacy. Many congressmen took notice of the controversy more because of their curiosity to see nude photos than their serious concern for the moral integrity of the American government. The Washington Post reported that the book circulated widely among representatives, who “avidly scanned” its illustrations.78 While most of the pictures of “pot-bellied men and women cavorting in a manner to cause raucous laughter” proved “disappointing to most of the art seekers,” an image of a “young girl throwing a javelin,” which had previously alarmed Judge Wheat, caught the attention of several congressmen, who thought it was “worthy of a place in a high class saloon.”79 (See figure at the bottom of page 93.)
With congressional concession of the book’s illicit character, Dies successfully forced Parmelee’s resignation from the Board of Economic Warfare on April 19, 1942. This development proved devastating for Parmelee, who desperately appealed to Vice President Wallace and Milo Perkins, the executive director of the Board of Economic Warfare, to keep his job. He also contacted several newspapers and magazines to tell his side of the story. Although Parmelee went on to work as the chief economist of the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board in Chicago (and again came under Dies’s scrutiny), he continued to feel betrayed by “so-called liberals as Henry Wallace.”80 Three days after Parmelee’s dismissal, Congress debated the appropriation of funds to sustain the Dies committee. Unlike previous years, the funding for the House Committee on Un-American Activities did not receive automatic approval from Congress. The Committee on Accounts “received hundreds of letters from all over the United States and also resolutions adopted from various organizations requesting the committee deny any appropriation whatsoever to the Dies Committee.”81
Many liberal congressmen no longer supported Dies. Congressman O’Connor, who had previously favored HUAC, now objected to the unethical tactics of Dies. He specifically took issue with how Dies gave “information to the press and to the public without first giving it to the Department of Justice or to the Vice President of the United States.”82 Other congressmen suggested that Dies’s actions did not justify the committee’s extravagant expense since he actually undermined the war effort by persecuting government agencies.83 Since the committee’s inception on June 9, 1938, Congress appropriated $385,000 for it, “the largest appropriation that any committee of the House has ever had.”84 With the House now voting to grant another $110,000 to sustain the committee through January 3, 1943, many congressmen did not see the need for an agency that chose to focus on progressive subversives rather than fascist agents.85
Dies successfully gained publicity, public support, and congressional allies for his conservative politics by conducting a voyeuristic attack on the nudist movement. Dies’s fear that his political enemies would use the war to discontinue HUAC drove his campaign against Parmelee. This strategy proved victorious when Congress chose to reward Dies’s controversial tactics. Conflating nudism, communism, and the New Deal, the conservative Chicago Daily Tribune reported that the House voted by a wide margin, despite the “vehement objections of left wing congressmen,” to appropriate $110,000 to the Dies committee.86 By presenting nudists as radical subversives and members of a peculiar and marginal group, Dies’s self-serving tactics undermined the health-oriented philosophy and religious values that American nudism had established as its public face during the 1930s. The Parmelee incident both represented a step backward for American nudism and signaled to future senators that private behavior could be used to undermine public authority.
“It Is Good to Be an American; It’s Grand to Be a Nudist”
Nudism answered Martin Dies’s persecution of Maurice Parmelee by adopting a patriotic tone through a sustained commitment to the war effort. The loss of leadership and resources during the Second World War threatened to end organized nudism in the United States. Unwilling to fade away in the face of these challenges, nudists maintained their organization by dedicating themselves to the nation and by appealing to the American soldier.
From individual camp owners to national leaders, the Second World War devastated the core leadership that had emerged over the course of the previous decade. The “absorption of camp owners into the defense program whether in one of the service branches or in industry” had cut the “group leadership virtually to zero.”87 The national organization, also, as a whole, suffered during the war. The previous year, the president of the American Sunbathing Association, Carl Easton Williams, left the organization for national defense work with an “important and confidential . . . West Coast shipbuilding concern.”88 To make matters worse, the personnel at national headquarters was “invaded” when one of their “most valued workers” entered the army, and two others remained in the draft and planned to enter either the army or defense work.89 Without leaders to maintain a still-developing network of camps and a national organization to unify the groups scattered across the country, nudism risked falling into obscurity during the Second World War.
The impact of the war on leisure activities also pushed many nudist camps to close. The “necessary rationing of tires and gas” limited travel and vacationing opportunities across the country and reduced “regular attendance to a minimum” at many camps.90 Scattered over greater distances and requiring long car trips, the camps on the West Coast experienced declining attendance and membership.91 In Oregon, one nudist group, known as the “Hesperians,” “felt compelled to close—perhaps permanently.”92 In Washington State, “The Beavers” continued to operate but with “sharply curtailed activity.”93 In California, “the De Anza Trail” had been taken over by the “local rent control authority.”94 Nudist leaders called for members to provide additional sources of revenue to support these clubs. In Stockholm, New Jersey, “Rock Lodge,” one of the largest and best-equipped camps in the country, faced the possibility that it would be forced to close “unless drastic measures [were] taken.”95 The owners of the camp, Dr. Herman Soshinski and his wife, Katja, who stood out “among the pioneers of American nudism,” needed to raise $3,000 to keep the camp open.96 In Sunshine and Health, the editors pleaded with readers to send in gifts ranging from $5 to $100. The editors felt that “failure in this endeavor would be about as severe a blow as could possibly come to [the] Association at this time.”97 According to them, “every affiliated group would feel the adverse effect” of the closure of Rock Lodge.98
The American Sunbathing Association (ASA), hoping to preserve its national network of clubs, recommended dormancy for struggling camps that might be in a better position to take advantage of potential postwar interest in nudism. Nudist leaders suggested that camp
s maintain a “framework organization” that continued their listings and publicity in Sunshine and Health while also holding the “membership interest” using “‘round Robin’ letters” circulated among the members.99 They also thought group consciousness could be sustained through “visitation and occasional meetings at members’ homes.”100 By maintaining a “skeleton existence throughout our global struggle,” nudist clubs would be “all set for the up-surge of interest in nudism which is most certainly sure to follow the war.”101
War rationing also threatened to adversely impact Sunshine and Health. Paul Hadley, one of the main contributors of photographs to the magazine, reported that the war “threatens to do away with amateur photography, and even threatens professional photography to a great extent.”102 The war had made film and metals scarce and limited the availability of cameras, lights, lamp bulbs, and other photographic apparatus. Hadley feared that photographic studios might be closed for the duration of the war and would limit the “photographic illustrations of [the] movement . . . to pictures made in the past months.”103 By October 1943, Hadley’s fears were realized. In the “Publisher’s Desk” section of Sunshine and Health, the editors reported that limitations placed on “roll films designed for amateur use” had made it virtually impossible to acquire film.104 The shortage of paper also threatened to alter the appearance of the flagship nudist magazine. The editors of Sunshine and Health downgraded to a lesser-quality paper and planned a reduction in the weight of paper to reduce the total tonnage of the magazine.105 They also anticipated reducing the page size used in the magazine and eliminating large photos.106 Like other magazines in the United States, the nudists’ official publication—the lifeline of their organization—faced major alterations.
The difficult circumstances brought about by the Second World War did not deter the nudist movement from contributing to the war effort in a variety of ways. Several clubs, individual members, the national headquarters, and the magazine purchased war bonds.107 Recurring advertisements in Sunshine and Health encouraged readers to buy several thousand-dollar war bonds and updated the amount of funds contributed toward their purchase.108 The editors of Sunshine and Health also suggested that nudists send “our boys in service” postcards, letters, and occasionally gift packages.109 The recording secretary of the national organization even sent an “omnibus newsletter from her town” to nudist soldiers.110 The editors believed these efforts would “maintain a high level of morale among the fellows in uniform.”111 Nudists also joked that their abandonment of clothes would prevent the deterioration of old clothes and aid-rationing efforts. Using a pun, a satirical cartoon featured a naked man and woman reading a newspaper that announced a “wool shortage” on one page and displayed the headline “Nudism Banned” on the other page to question the logic behind antinudist hostility when the movement had so much to offer the war effort.112
During the Second World War, nudists sustained the national organization against political attacks and low club morale by embracing patriotism and by appealing to the American soldier. One illustration used humor to suggest that the movement’s promotion of public nudity would prevent the deterioration of old clothes and would aid rationing efforts. (Sunshine and Health, February 1943, 16; courtesy of the Sunshine and Health Publishing Company)
Nudists also suggested that the adoption of nude sunbathing would create a healthier army. Asserting that a “sick man is always a liability and never an asset” and lamenting the “number of rejections in our fighting forces by reason of physical defects,” nudists boasted that “not a single nudist has been found wanting.”113 Although it was extremely unlikely that Americans would take up nude sunbathing to prepare for military service, the navy actually experimented with the idea of exposing soldiers to the sun to promote their health and prepare them for deployment in the South Pacific. The Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the Army Medical Department’s Bulletin described an “experiment in graduated sun bathing” that occurred on a troopship sailing to the South Pacific.114 Reenacting Rollier’s regimen in “parades” around the ship, soldiers, while always wearing a helmet, exposed the front and back of the body and limbs for “ten minutes on the first three days, for twenty minutes on the next three days, and then for half an hour daily for a week.”115 Tanned men then could sunbathe independently, and after three weeks the “parades were discontinued” and the men were not allowed to “wear more than shorts all day, and helmets were no longer compulsory.”116 The “senior medical officer of the troopship” reported “satisfactory results.” He found “(1) improvement in general health, (2) diminution of . . . skin disorders, (3) low incidence of sun burn and of heat stroke, (4) relief of heavy strain on laundry facilities, and (5) accelerated acclimatization on arrival in a tropical country.”117 Meanwhile, the commanding officer of the troops observed upon landing in India that his “men were sufficiently inured to the sun to take the field at once” and concluded that the “results of this valuable experiment admit of no argument.”118 Nudists took pride in the fact that sunbathing aided troops fighting in the tropics and reprinted the Journal of the American Medical Association article in Sunshine and Health.
The contributions of American nudism and Sunshine and Health to the war effort garnered a favorable response from soldiers. Although many of the soldiers feigned interest in the organization to obtain copies of the magazine, more than one soldier reading Sunshine and Health likely also developed an appreciation for its articles on the moral and physical benefits of going naked. The editors boasted that most of the soldiers’ letters sent to the flagship nudist publication expressed their “convictions that the basic principles of nudism are sound and have their unqualified approval.”119 One “draftee in the army” became an ardent devotee to nudism after he read an article in Sunshine and Health. After experiencing an unhealthy childhood and “other senseless habits” in early adulthood, the soldier declared that his “life’s ambition [was] to be able to live the nudist life and be a worker for the movement.”120 Another soldier attributed his good health to regularly “playing baseball, football, and many other games in the nude.”121 He believed that regularly exposing his body to the outdoors “fortified [his] body against disease” and helped him through his “tough training.”122 Still another soldier professed nudism to be “one of the most worthwhile organizations for health there is.”123 Letter after letter complimented the health benefits of nudism, offered money to become a member of the organization, requested information about clubs in the area where the soldier was stationed, and promised to support the movement when the war ended.
In fact, the Second World War provided an opportunity for nudists to express their patriotism. Alois Knapp, who was elected the president of the American Sunbathing Association in 1943, used his “President’s Message” to state the nudist position on the war: “We believe our country is right; we believe in democracy.”124 Since nudists considered their lifestyle to be the “utmost in freedom and democracy,” they found it unproblematic to support America’s battle against fascism.125 Although the movement certainly struggled to establish itself in the United States, Knapp maintained that nudists remained “intensely patriotic.”126 They believed that their “way of life is inherently guaranteed under a democracy,” while it would be “merely tolerated under some other form of government.”127 Knapp, an Austrian immigrant, concluded his “President’s Message” by declaring, “It is good to be an American; its grand to be a nudist; it’s glorious to be alive and free!”128
“A False Front for Unleashed Passion”
Nudism’s commitment to sexual frankness attracted the attention of lonely troops stationed far away from the moral restraints of their homes and emboldened the nudist movement to display more erotic content in its publications. In the April 1942 issue of Sunshine and Health, the editors claimed, “not since the beginning of the American nudist movement have we witnessed the measure of interest in our program which is manifest today.”12
9 The editors boasted that they received “letters by the thousand from our armed forces scattered throughout the world” and within the past year had added “over a thousand soldiers and sailors” to their mailing list. The editors went on to speculate that “ten times that number” purchased the magazine in “canteens and newsstands.”130 The internal U.S. migration of young men and women into port cities for wartime jobs also exposed Sunshine and Health to an audience that had disposable income and most likely would not have come in contact with the magazine in their hometowns. The editors welcomed the new “enthusiasm” displayed by the “thousands of [people] in no wise connected with the services.”131
Despite many years of promoting the therapeutic and moral benefits of nudism, the changing content and style of Sunshine and Health indicated that Rev. Boone sought to profit from the erotic desires and sexual fantasies of heterosexual soldiers. To capture the attention of soldiers who might be perusing the magazine for its pictures, the editors of Sunshine and Health highlighted a new “Letters from Men Far Afield” section with the silhouette of a naked woman leaning against a globe and standing in front of a large image of the letter V. The silhouette made little effort to mute the eroticism of the female body. It took the shape of a reclining woman with hair back, nipples erect, and arms open and awaiting the embrace of a lover. The editors then made it plain who they believed would be reading the letters, with titles above individual entries such as “With Our Armed Forces,” “With the British Empire Forces,” and “From a Brother in Khaki.”132 Far from objecting to the prurient gaze of the soldier, Boone transformed the style of Sunshine and Health to increase its circulation among soldiers and war workers.