The Noir Forties: The American People From Victory to Cold War

by Richard R. Lingeman

From one of our finest cultural historians, The Noir Forties is a vivid reexamination of America's postwar period, that "age of anxiety" characterized by the dissipation of victory dreams, the onset of the Red Scare, and a nascent resistance to the growing Cold War consensus. Richard Lingeman examines a brief but momentous and crowded time, the years between VJ Day and the beginning of the Korean War, describing how we got from there to here. It evokes the social and cultural milieu of the late forties, with the vicissitudes of the New Deal Left and Popular Front culture from the end of one hot war and the beginning of the cold one -- and, longer term, of a cold war that preoccupied the United States for the next fifty years. It traces the attitudes, sentiments, hopes and fears, prejudices, behavior, and collective dreams and nightmares of the times, as reflected in the media, popular culture, political movements, opinion polls, and sociological and psychological studies of mass beliefs and behavior.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, Research, American History

434 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 15, 2011

Reviews

[Joshua Buhs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not good, but weird--which is its own kind of good, I guess.

Lingeman is writing about that forgotten period of American life, the transition from World War II to the Cold War. Americans are notoriously unable to deal with death, and this was a period when the nation had to grapple with death; it was done poorly and, unsurprisingly, has been disappeared down the memory hole. In our cultural memory, there is a jump-cut from VJ Day to Leave it t Beaver. The book wants to excavate this period, dig it up and look at it, consider it.

The controlling metaphor, as the title suggests, is film noir. Lingeman thinks it is a key to the period: the era's unacknowledged emotions channeled into it, away from wartime stories, which were mostly sentimental and propagandistic. Here was existentialism, death, and raw emotion. These were felt on the battlefield, too, of course, but were otherwise considered inadmissible on the domestic side.

The heroes in the account are the non-communistic liberals and dissenters from the mainstream. The villains are most of the politicians and business leaders, who headed off the potentially radical movements, killing them by strangling the New Deal, preparing America for war, shutting down the labor movement, and labeling anyone who did not agree with them as communists. This set the stage for the more stultifying 1950s, as dissent dried up or went underground.

All of which is fine. For all that Lingeman focuses on a usually ignored period, he doesn't really break new ground. This is a tertiary source. I was going to say a serviceable one, but it's not really that.

Unsurprisingly, given his protagonists and antagonists, Lingeman has written for "The Nation" (and this book is put out by its publishing arm.) It's clear that he is more comfortable dealing in short works, and the structure here gets hazy above the level of section--what demarcates one chapter from another, indeed what unites all of the sections into a single chapter, is never quite clear. The book takes on the burden of making several arguments, and none of them quite gel: one is the political description of the period; another is the importance of noir film; a third is the parallel between noir film and the period.

The book also serves as a kind of memoir, with Lingeman describing his own connection to the period in the introduction, conclusion, as well as here and there through the narrative. There is a lot of repetition, the author introducing the same movies and characters repeatedly, often in the same chapter, occasionally in the course of a few pages. The book could easily have been pared down by half, without any loss.

All of which means it's a bit of a mess, not quite history as memoir or memoir as history.

But for someone looking to investigate beyond the tired bromides of "The Greatest Generation" claptrap and willing to sink into the sections without thinking too hard about how the whole book fits together, it's worth a read.

[Jill H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I couldn't make up my mind about this book. There is no doubt that it was interesting and offered a lot of insight into how Americans were reacting immediately after WWII up until Korea. But there were what appeared to me to be weaknesses in the style. First, the author overused source material quotes......from books, speeches, memos, radio broadcast, etc. He barely had to write anything in his own words since the quotes made up the major narrative. Second, he gave film noir a major emphasis. It is true that film was a huge part of the social milieu and people were somewhat influenced by what they saw on the screen but it was the way he tied it together that was a problem to me....or maybe the way he didn't tie it together. It was a continuity problem. The reader would be in the middle of the GI Bill discussion and suddenly the next paragraph would be a dissection of the meaning of the the film The Best Years of our Lives. It was rather disconcerting. But it has enough good information contained in the pages to keep the reader interested.....to a point.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book, but as many reviewers have noted, extremely unven. The author, a journalist and biographer, couldn't seem to decide if he wanted to write a book about film noir, or a history of America in the postwar forties. He split the difference, doing disservice to both themes.

The author begins by describing the immediate aftermath of the end of WWII: after the celebrations wound down, the US government went about the business of returning the remains of fallen servicemen for burial in the US. What follows is a discussion of the way the violence of war was experienced on the home front, and the increasing tension between the phony patriotism of war movies and the reality of violence as it was seen in newsreels and war photography. From there the author moves on to discuss the rootlessness and confusion of the returning vets, and their difficulties returning to civilian life. All of this sets the stage for the rise of film noir, and the author explains well the connection between the subterranean fears and new tolerance for violence in the movie-going public.

One theme the author returns to frequently is that of the reintegration of former soldiers back into civilian culture. He observes that "The postwar crime film managed to flout conventional morality not by condoning murder but by suggesting that inside many an ordinary guy lurks a killer, just as many ordinary guys became soldier-killers during the war."

The author highlights the difference between the common man-centered, anti-business movies of the thirties vs. the very pro-business and pro-authority movies of the forties. The rising fear of and antagonism toward Communism in the later forties made the vaguely socialist movies of the thirties completely unpalatable.

Another aspect of the readjustment to postwar life is the condition of women. "The rise of the femme fatale in films noir reflected male ambivalence and anxiety about WWII women, those Amazons unleashed by the war who worked at men's jobs...and rejected home and motherhood."

Many illuminations of film noir in this book--it's really a shame he didn't stick to that subject.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very good cultural and political look at the American post-WWII period. It offers a lot of explanation towards to the current political and cultural climate of the United States, pointing out some of the origins of a hyper-militaristic state and the demonization of social welfare under the guise of anti-communism - critically. Nowhere does the author come across as supportive of this history. It's informative and also occasionally infuriating, but a good survey on the labor movement in the late 1940s in a post war period, how it suffered and struggled and continued trying to fight in a culture that continued to be swayed by higher ups and big business against it.

It took me longer than expected to get through, but not because it was boring. Admittedly the chapters & sections that tended to focus on cultural & political influences seen in film were harder to get through, but that's probably because I haven't seen many movies from the 30s&40s. There were a few good lines where I just kind of went DAMN SON DRAG THEM. I had a lot of historical background for this era going into this, so I'm not sure if that helped seeing the whole wider picture of this time period. Overall a very solid look at progressivism & leftists struggling against government inspired and sanctioned backlash in the surging era of McCarthyism.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 4 out of 5]

A loosely knit together account of the events between VE / VJ day and the first year of the Korean police action that led the US political system to become, from that era forward, a contest between a right-wing party and a far-right-wing party. [I may have more to say after re-watching some of the key films Lingeman uses as illustrations of social and psychological conditions in the late '40s.] He does make the point that most US critics of the time did not think highly of most of the movies that were not yet known as films noir.

Films discussed:

Detour (postwar loss of direction)
D. O. A. (combat experience of death-in-life)
Double Indemnity (killing in domestic rather than war setting)
Kiss of Death (psychopath - coldly calculated violence akin to war)

Returning Veterans
Blue Skies
The Best Years of Our Lives
Act of Violence
Cornered
The Blue Dahlia
Crossfire
The Lost Weekend
The Long Night (veteran and worker - described at two points in the book with considerable redundancy)

Night and the City (isolation and paranoia of the blacklist)
Force of Evil (Capitalism as crime)

The Big Clock
Scarlet Street
The Black Cat

Women
Mildred Pierce
Phantom Lady
Outrage
Gilda
In a Lonely Place
Laura
Out of the Past

The Naked City (location shooting)
The Dark Corner
The Street with No Name
Side Street

Religion & Psychiatry
Going My Way
The Bells of St. Mary's
The Miracle of the Bells
My Name is Julia Ross
Strange Illusion
Spellbound
The Dark Past
Gun Crazy
The Dark Mirror
The Snake Pit

None Shall Escape
The Third Man
Monsieur Verdoux

The Beginning or the End (a making of the A-Bomb docudrama, not the giant grasshopper movie)
Walk a Crooked Mile
Cloak and Dagger
The Day the Earth Stood Still
High Noon

The Steel Helmet

[Scott Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5 stars) This work looks at the political and social history of the 1940s, particularly how the end of WWII and the start of the Cold War impacted arts and movies in Hollywood. The film noir genre is noted for this dark undertones, where heroes and villains are not as clearly defined and where "right" and "wrong" don't follow any set definitions. This work follows the political and social history of that time, and how that appeared in the creation/shooting/releasing of films during the 1940s, particularly the late 1940s. Perhaps the more interesting part of the work is in the film analysis, noting where real world impacts set the stage for how a movie was shot/portrayed. At times, the work doesn't seem to know if it wants to be a movie history or a political history. The interconnection is vital to the work, but sometimes, especially the ending section of the work, this book loses some of its focus, which is stronger in the earlier sections. Offers some intriguing information/insights into movie making in the 1940s, but it can sometimes fall into the trap of covering well-worn ground. A decent read, but if you have followed this history for some times, it may not offer all that much new.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a good book, though a bit difficult to get through some sections like the labor and political issues. I didn't realize how significant a time period it was in US history in many ways - from Depression to war and the mass mobilization of millions of Americans internally and overseas and then remobilized when the war ended.
I also didn't know the story of Henry Wallace and forgot about the Dixiecrat Party. The reasoning for getting into the Korean War and the propaganda machines at work was also interesting. Given our current times, it is well to remember how and why things happened in the past.
I wish I had asked my parents more about that time.
The author also weaves into the book the movies, music, art and culture which always reflect and affect larger issues to some degree, both large and small.
I wouldn't describe the book as uneven as much as he covers many different areas and some is easier to get through. Overall, it's worth considering.

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I REALLY wanted to like this book. It is one of my favorite time periods in history. The writing is so subpar, however, it took me such a long time to slog through this one. The author also could not make up his mind if he was writing an anthology about how film noir films reflected American discourse during the late 1940s, or if he was writing a by-the-numbers history book about post World War II America. Just so disappointing. My only highlight is that I have learned about a bunch of old film noir films that I want to check out. Besides that, I suggest avoiding this one.

[Rae · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at 37%. I usually don’t bother marking books as DNF, but this was just so incredibly disappointing. A deep-dive exploration into noir as a reflection of America’s post-war anxieties should be a compelling read — it usually is! — but this is at least 30% memoir. The introduction is a rambling, almost fetishistic reflection on the author’s time in Japan, complete with a brief anecdote about sharing a “hostess” with another CIC officer. Things did not get better from there.

[Paige McLoughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Covers the euphoric days after world war two giving way to the dark shadows of the cold war in the second half of the 1940s. From to Noir style of the movies to the red scares in a world rebuilding from the war. An eery growing tension gave way to hysteria and paranoia of the early cold war during Korea. Catches the feel of the times well.

[Tomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but uneven and clearly shows the author’s liberal bias. Lots of information about movies of the time period - I question whether or not the producers/directors seriously made the political and social decisions as they made the movies.

[Sami · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book! While I wish there was some way to actually view the movie while reading, I found this a very interesting and enthralling read. It was written in a very intriguing (and informative, despite not being able to actually view the films) way that made it very easy to want to finish.

[Elon Fischer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lingeman's analysis of 1945-1953 (post-WWII to Korean War) in terms of culture and politics with some useful references to films of that era.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The Noir Forties” promises less than it delivers.

By his own admission, author Richard Lingeman was counseled to shorten his manuscript, but you may find he did not achieve good enough a pruning.

Or, sometimes less is more. The author has an engaging idea about the collective American mind in the years immediately after World War II. Lingeman's proposal is to draw lines linking the particulars of that mind-state and what it projected onto movie screens in late 1940s America.

In films like “D.O.A.”, “Double-Indemnity” “Blue Dahlia,” and others, the writer says, “The war's psychological shocks reverberated through the popular culture, most prominently in the films noir that proliferated in the late '40s....”

Lingeman notes that strikes, a desperate rush for security, continued wartime rationing, the readjustment pains of 14 million veterans, were all moods that, “merged into a vague sense of gloom and pessimism, the reverse image of traditional American optimism and faith in the future. It tempered the victory dreams of postwar abundance, which seemed ephemeral to a generation scarred by the Depression.”

In the book's best moments, the author weaves policy and news both big and small with films noir that serve as literary and cinematic parallels. The fun thing to do is watch the movies as he brings them up for discussion.

Having developed the idea a bit further, perhaps examined a few more films and drawn a more developed argument to completion, Lingeman might have had a sweet, pocket-sized seller that was attractive to a cross section of film fans/students and American politico/cultural buffs.

But it's his book and his call, and the author decided upon a path that winds into the “rouge” fifties of anti-communist propaganda films, the Korean War, and McCarthyism.

Mr. Lingeman served in the Korean War and a lot of what he presents in “Noir” is clearly of personal import to him.

A writer with “The Nation,” his progressive analysis of President Franklin Roosevelt's absent vision for a post-war world, Harry Truman's capitulation to the country's most rancid and conservative forces, and the Red Scare, are all fine and good, especially if you have never delved into such topics in the kind of detail a knowledgeable journalist and political writer would.

Just know that's what your buying, that the focus on film fades (though is not completely abandoned), as the book goes on, replaced in its stead by something closer to a harrowing account of the shabby treatment endured by liberals, veterans, unions, and responsible scientists during what was, for many including the author, a kind of dark age.

[Ted Hunt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has some interesting aspects, but I cannot figure out what it was intended to be. A memoir? (That is what the first and last chapters are.) An analysis of the causes of the Cold War? (The blame is placed on Truman.) A discussion of Henry Wallace and the presidential election of 1948? A description of the culture, especially the movies, of the late 1940's? (This is what I was hoping for when I picked up the book.) It tries to do all of these things and, not surprisingly, does not do any of them in a particularly satisfying fashion. I did appreciate the author's insights about the Film Noir genre and its relation to the events of the era, but at times the narrative bogged down as he felt the need to provide analysis of dozens of movies, rather than a representative few. It was clear right from the beginning of the book that the author was not a big fan of Truman, but in pigeon-holing him as a conservative, he gives little emphasis to some actions of the president, including the civil rights plank in the 1948 Democratic platform, and his veto of the Taft-Hartley Act. (And if these actions are dismissed as "political", that would make Truman different from exactly zero presidents.) The author criticizes Truman for allowing his Cold War policies to blindly follow popular sentiment, but he says virtually nothing about the episode where the president ignored popular opinion: when he fired MacArthur. I also have a few complaints about some of the "logistics" of the book. There are numerous factual errors: "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" was about Alabama, not Tennessee; "The Feminine Mystique" was published in 1963, not 1965; the first peacetime draft in American history was in 1940, not 1948. There were others as well, which always causes one to ask just how intensive the author's fact-checking was (and how many more errors are in the narrative). I also was disappointed that quite a few of his "editorial" comments had no evidence cited in his endnotes. In the end, if one wants a scholarly treatment on the origins of the Cold War (from any vantage point concerning who was responsible for it), there are plenty of other works. I also believe that there must be studies of the Film Noir movies that don't necessitate navigating through a lot of extraneous material about the geopolitics of the early Cold War.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have developed a fascination with the 40's that carries on unabated. This book starts out with the noir crime genre of the 40's and early 50's. Lingeman digs into the mind set of the post war that helped make the films so popular and evocative of that era. He explains the various problems of readjustment that followed such an intense experience at WWII. Then the cold war was started Lingeman expressed the belief that it was basically the generals in charge of the defense of our country that encouraged the belief that we had to be war ready at all times. McCarthyism was an expression of the fear that the atomic bomb instilled in everyone that had experiences the bombing of Japan.
The last chapter is the most compelling and noir chapter in the book. Lingemans'visit to Nagasaki is heartfelt and heartbreaking.

[Joel Rauber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting take on the politics of the US segueing from the end of the end of WWII to the end of the Korean conflict. The book uses the metaphor of the development of the noir style in cinema and its evolution over the same time period as a frame in which to view changing politics in the US as it evolves from "New Deal" progressivism to the failure of the "Fair Deal" to continue the Roosevelt legacy. It charts the beginnings of the current ascendent non-progressive conservatism that predominates in the US even to this day. I recently finished "Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power" which provides an interesting reference point in its description of an era that encompasses that of the Noir Forties.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unique View on under-told story!

Have to give Richard Lingeman his due he focuses on an era that is often underrepresented in histories and combined a unique film study. Best of all it seems to work! He uses the experience of society to give some context into how the great Film Noir of the first years after WW2 came about. This is balanced with a unique understanding of how the first years after the war set the match that became the social change of the 1960s. Rather than being the defining moment, the 1950s were the eye of the storm if you follow Lingeman's thought process. The story of the dissolution of the far-left elements of the

This is a unique and interesting view of history and I recommend it for that reason!

[Domenic Boscariol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to say what to make of this book: I suppose I was expecting the book to relate more between the events and politics of the postwar and noir films, which it does but to a much lesser degree than I would have liked. Other criticisms are that the detail of the political campaigns of Truman and Wallace could have done with extensive editing, and the material's connection with "noir" can only be characterized as tenuous. Finally it is somewhat unclear how the author's experiences in military intelligence in Japan after the time period about which he writes, while interesting in its own right, relates to the book's stated subject matter.

[David Wrubel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting take on that strange interim period between WW2 and Korea. I found the organization of the book to be somewhat scattered, but the treatment of the subjects is outstanding. His discussion of how soldiers killed in battle were transported home and buried, and the impact this had on families, was fascinating...and something I'd never thought about. Lingeman also does a great job describing the antecedents of rock music and the development of the blues, "race music," country and western in a way that clearly points to the emergence of Elvis and rock and roll.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not the ideal audience for this book, as I've read histories of the era and Lingeman doesn't give me much that Halberstam's The Fifties didn't already cover. Another problem is that his movie analysis has too many errors (Them is NOT a film about alien invaders) and I don't agree with many of his interpretations, so his trying to see America reflected in a movie lens doesn't work either.

[Ray Saron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just starting to read this. The photo from the movie D.O.A.leads
off the chapter of the same name. However, the actors name is wrong. It is Edmond O'Brien. Seems to be a big slip in editing. Otherwise, I'm enjoying the book.

[Christopher Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those who love movies and history, and want to learn about the big issues from art.

[Sally · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting discussions of movies and the times in which they were made. Also fine summaries of other arts. Lots of free floating information.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting at parts. Good on reaction to WWII deaths. Little too much on films.

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's an uneven book, as some reviewers have noted, but it captures the essence of an uneven decade.