Growing up in Louisa – Black & White
Weekly feature . . . by Mike Coburn
I remember once that one of my childhood friends asked me if I dreamed in color or in black and white. I didn’t have an answer at the time, but I imagined that they were like the movies and TV shows of the time; black and white. You see, when I grew up the culture of the time was far different than the high definition world we know today. I am talking about the colorless environment that was reflected in the technology known to us at the time. Color film could be purchased for our ‘brownie’ cameras at a higher cost, and with the higher cost we paid for developing the pictures, but in my family that was restricted to very special occasions, at least at first.
In thinking about the subject I remembered that it wasn’t just the movies, or early TV, but the lack of color was prevalent in nearly everything around us. The very clothing we wore was dictated by what was considered correct and 
appropriate dress. We thought nothing of the myriads workers that in the day wore uniforms, almost always in white. For example, when I was watching one of my favorite (color) movies the other day, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, I saw Arnold Stang portraying a ‘filling station’ attendant. He and his partner both wore a white uniform complete with a white service cap. It was so common in those days for service workers to dress in attires that set them apart from their customers and told us at once who was who. I once wrote an article about my lifelong friend’s father, Eddie Boggs, wherein I posted a picture of him in his white uniform that he wore as a dairy worker. I think he delivered milk and milk products, but I’m really not sure. He may have worked in the dairy.
I also remember the waitresses at Rip’s wearing white uniforms and caps with matching aprons. Nurses in those days didn’t wear scrubs like many do today, but a white dress and appropriate cap showing that they were Registered Nurses. Those even went so far that the nylon hose they wore had a white tint. Doctors and druggists wore white at work, if only a lab coat. It’s only recently that they started wearing scrums with colors that indicate whether they worked in surgery vs maternity wards (we don’t say that anymore). Now it is one color for surgeons, another for the ER, still another in OBE, ICU, or the white pantsuit worn by snack bar attendants. Ha! They should hand out color charts so dumb visitors like me will know with whom they are speaking.
Except for a few movies that came out in color, or partly in color, most films of my day were still filmed in black and white. I understand it was because the color technology was new and very expensive. Many of those old black and white movies have been ‘colorized’ today, like It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart. I remember him once talking about that in an interview on TV. He made it clear that he preferred to see it the way it was filmed. TV was black and white right up to the time I graduated. Color was affordable only after a few years of debugging and growing inventories.
Many famous names that we know by one name are associated in the black and white days. People like Bogart, Garbo, Bacall, Gable, Dietrich. They signed and gave away countless studio photos, all in black and white, but wonderful works of art. My mom would write off to Hollywood and they would send her a autographed picture.
Saturday matinees were easily understood because the good cowboys always wore those tall, white Stetson’s, while the ‘bad guys’ (hiss-hiss) wore black. It wasn’t until the 50’s that they produced most movies in Technicolor. The expense was saved for a few ‘block buster’ movies and box office stars. Roy and Dale were still black and white for a time, as was Gene Autry, Lash LaRue, and Hopalong Cassidy. The weekly serials with Rocket Man, the Invisible Man, Captain Marvel, Flash Gordon, The Phantom, the Cisco Kid, Green Hornet, Batman, and Superman were all low budget and filmed in black and white.
As a young man I remember that IBM and other big name employers had rules that employees had to wear suits with white dress shirts. Nothing else was acceptable. For a time when I worked for Sears they had the same rule, but when they started stocking pastel shirts in the men’s department they lightened up and their sales staff to wear those. IBM didn’t for at least another ten years. Bankers, too, had strong rules about wearing only white dress shirts as best representing a conservative image they believed to build trust with their customers. White was simply perceived to be a sign of conservatism and proper business wear.
You will remember that it was a time when women wore dresses and men wore suits, or slacks in some cases. In many of the businesses the older men and women on staff would dress every day and shake their heads when they spotted anything less formal. Understanding the rules of dress was actually taught in schools, and those failing to make the grade was sometime ridiculed or whispered about as uncultured. Sadly, some couldn’t afford even the most conservative fashions and were hurt in the fallout. Dress separated the classes to the point it became a barrier for success.
Color was lacking even in home appliances. The newer ones such as ranges, refrigerators, cabinets, mixers, and the like were white, at least at first. Color wasn’t an option until a little later, but when it changed, it changed the world. We suddenly had yellow kitchens, blue bathrooms, and two-tone cars. Kitchens had green appliances, or rust, or yellow. I still see houses decorated in those colors of the mid-fifties.
Henry Ford is said to have remarked that when buying a Ford, you could have any color so long as it was black. After the war that changed. Detroit then allowed buyers to pick from an array of colors. I remember when cars actually came out in ‘two tone!’ Some of my friends had those. Trains went from the old black iron steam engines to the fancy streamliners with flashy shades of blue or orange stripes. The army drab-green of the train cars moved to bright aluminum and colors to match the fancier engine.
Today, we still see airline hostesses in uniforms, and sometimes cafeteria workers, bartenders, ball players, candy stripers, cooks and chefs, and an ice cream shop worker, dressed in white, or at least some traditional outfit, but this is a fading practice. Even wedding dresses are adding color now and then. I read of one that used our old school colors of red and black. I’m not sure about the message.
There are more examples, but in this great land of liberty people have exercised freedom and in some ways the world is more beautiful. Maybe in some ways we are more relaxed, too. When I look back in one of my albums, I recall another simpler, black and white day.
