Since the first postings in January I have received the following updates and corrections:
Stacey says that the unidentified ring on Solly’s left hand is probably his High School ring which she has. The ring has SK, his initials, on it as well as a Mermaid and a red stone.
Above, Solly’s rings; Below, Stacey displays the H.S. ring she believes is on Solly’s left hand
2. Eric says the woman with dark hair in the photo below is not Shirley, but Betty, Dave’s younger sister who Eric says lived with them at that time. Eric says she would have been around 12 or 13 when this picture was taken. Still no I.D. on the man to the left of Betty in the same picture.
From left: Unidentified man, Betty, Solly, Eric, Esther
3. Still no I.D. on the two pictures in the Help Identify posting.
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All letters home were screened and censored by the Army. Solly writes about the censors and what he is allowed to say. Later in the letters he writes about his belief that the censors deliberately wiped clean a roll of film he shot. Page 2 of this letter has sections cut out by the censors.
As the letters continue it becomes clear that Solly really grows to admire and like the British. Early on he talks about some of the odd quirks and attitudes of the English but as time goes by he starts to talk about them with great respect. They are brave, forthright, determined and, in particular, Solly is tremendously appreciative of their hospitality. Notice how he begins to pepper his letters with British slang and phrases and much later in the letters, when Solly starts to think about going home, he also talks about returning to England.
Because many servicemen had never been abroad before, and because England was a prominent ally and landing zone for G.I.’s, the War Department issued a specific pamphlet called Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain. The pamphlet was designed to familiarize servicemen with life in Britain-the history, culture, even the slang. The pamphlet also encouraged the men to get along with the British to help defeat Hitler. It is filled with great advice like “Don’t be a show off,” “NEVER criticize the King or Queen,” and “The British don’t know how to make a good cup of coffee. You don’t know how to make a good cup of tea. It’s an even swap.” The pamphlet concludes by telling the servicemen that while in Great Britain, their slogan should be “It is always impolite to criticize your hosts; it is militarily stupid to criticize your allies.”
Solly mentions P.M in the February 9, 1945 letter for the first time, and then later on in the April 19, 1945 letter he talks about receiving his copies, and again a week or so later in the April 27th letter he boasts that he has gotten the major from Brooklyn to start reading P.M. Solly talks about how reading P.M. makes him feel like he is back home, riding the subway, and catching up with news of the world.
P.M. was a very liberal leaning daily newspaper published in New York City by Ralph Ingersoll from June 1940 to June 1948 and financed by Chicago millionaire Marshall Field III. The origin of the name is unknown, although Ingersoll recalled that it probably referred to the fact that the paper appeared in the afternoon; The New Yorker reported that the name had been suggested by Lillian Hellman.
The paper borrowed many elements from weekly news magazines, such as many large photos and at first was bound with staples. In an attempt to be free of pressure from business interests, it did not accept advertising. There were accusations that the paper was Communist-dominated, but the editorial pages of P.M. were frequently critical with the Communist Party’s paper, the Daily Worker.
A page out of P.M., 1944
P.M. was also a highly literary and intellectual read and attracted some of the great writers and political innovators of its time. Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, published more than 400 cartoons on PM‘s editorial page. Crockett Johnson’s comic strip Barnaby debuted in the paper in 1942. Other artists who worked at PM included Ad Reinhardt, one of the founders of Abstract Expressionism, and Joseph LeBoit, who both contributed margin cartoons and drawings.
Coulton Waugh created his short-lived strip, Hank, which began April 30, 1945 in PM. The story of a disabled GI returning to civilian life, Hank had a unique look due to Waugh’s decorative art style, combined with dialogue lettered in upper and lower case rather than the accepted convention of all uppercase lettering in balloons and captions. Some dialogue was displayed with white lettering reversed into black balloons.
The comic strip Hank.
Hank sought to raise questions about the reasons for war, and how it might be prevented by the next generation. Waugh discontinued it at the very end of 1945 because of eyestrain. Cartoonist Jack Sparling created the short-lived comic strip Claire Voyant, which ran from 1943 to 1948 in PM, and which was subsequently syndicated by the Chicago Sun-Times.
Journalist I. F. Stone was the paper’s Washington correspondent. He published an award-winning series on European Jewish refugees attempting to run the British blockade to reach Palestine, later collected and published as Underground to Palestine. Staffers included theater critic Louis Kronenberger and film critic Cecelia Ager. Weegee, Margaret Bourke-White and Arthur Leipzig were the photographers. The sports writers were Tom Meany, Tom O’Reilly and George F. T. Ryall, who covered horse racing. Sophie Smoliar was the New York City reporter working frequently with photographer Arthur Felig (Weegee) submitted by her son and a collection of her original articles. Elizabeth Hawes wrote about fashion, and her sister Charlotte Adams covered food.
Other writers who contributed articles included Erskine Caldwell, Myril Axlerod, McGeorge Bundy, Saul K. Padover, James Wechsler, eventually the paper’s editorial writer, Penn Kimball, later a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Heywood Hale Broun, James Thurber, Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, Eugene Lyons, Earl Conrad; Ben Stolberg, Malcolm Cowley, Tip O’Neill (later Speaker of the United States House of Representatives); and Ben Hecht (playwright and author).
The primary point of my listing all the names of these people who worked at P.M. is to convey how much this short-lived daily represented some of the most progressive and creative thinkers, artists and journalists of its day. Our family was part of a well-informed and intellectually demanding readership. Clearly, this was a newspaper the Kovsky’s could sink their teeth into.
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