In the Beginning
My earliest recollection of the word 'America' was probably when I was about four years old (1943)—the middle of the 2nd World War. Mum and dad were talking about 'America becoming involved—though I didn't know any 'America' and didn't understand who or what he she or it was involved with, or what he she or it was involved in.
Another memory— now about six years old—of smashing films: Westerns, with Tom Mix, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy (my favourite) and his horse, Topper; Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney in all sorts of horror films.
Mid-day matinees on a Saturday where, at the end of the film the hero was hanging by his finger-tips from a cliff, and we were told to return next week to see what happened—i.e. the original "cliff hanger". Then there were Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin, Ben Turpin, Harold Lloyd—and the guy with the dead-pan face, Buster Keaton—all of them marvellous. I saw every one.
It cost two, 2lb jam jars, to enter the village cinema for the First House of the evening. (Cinema was not the right word for the Welfare Hall; it was more commonly referred to as 'Billy's Bug House'). Two of our very scarce pennies paid for the late evening performance.
Oh, how I loved these films; and then, when colour came some years later and John Wayne strutted about, surrounded by the beauty of Arizona—'wow, that was something else'—as we learned to say.
We became good at copying a speech that was so new to us. '
The Wizard of Oz'; Disney's 'Fantasia' and 'Snow White'; 'Gone with the Wind'—yes, this was America; and I don't think my juvenile view of what was the real United States of America—courtesy of Hollywood— has ever really changed. Well, maybe it has—a little.
You see, all this adoration was not that of a kid actually living in the United States, it was taking place thousands of miles away from America. I and my comrades lived in the scattered villages that populated 'the badlands' of Scotland's central belt; among the slag-heaps, surrounded by the pock-marked landscape of the coalfields.
We young ruffians would imitate our heroes, like Jimmy Cagney, with his rapid-fire speech: 'You dirty rat, bang, bang.' (I know, I know, he didn't really say it). Pat O'Brian's tired-faced detective, and his equally rapid-fire returns, made us goggle then imitate. Did people really talk like that, we wondered?
It would have made no difference where we kids lived in Scotland, however, because American films and comics dominated everyone's imagination—adults as well. Cowboys and Indians, bows and arrows, tomahawks and Bowie knives; these vied with beautiful chorus girls, and brassy, gum-chewing 'broads'.
This tidal wave of American culture made certain that scenarios, such as the musicals these girls decorated—and the music that brought it all to life—would live in our hearts forever.
Why was this so, you may ask? It was a question easily answered by anyone you spoke to in Britain, during and immediately after the war.
Britain had become just as dependent upon America, in a cultural sense, as she was in material things. Sure, the Marshall Plan was probably the saving of us—even as young school kids some of us knew that—but it was the enriching picture of life in America, seen in these films, that enthralled.
You should have seen mum's face when she first came across washing machines, and 'hoovers' that cleaned the floor—labour-saving devices of every kind. What an effect all that had!
Unquestionably, they talked funny, these Americans, but were easy to listen to and understand—more like us than these 'pesky' Continentals, who gabbled away, making some sort of noise we couldn't make out.
The connection was most definitely transatlantic; there were huge gulfs between us and the Europeans, more than just the language problem.
Also, the fact that the Germans, who had been our enemies for so long, were Europeans was something that kept being presented to us in films, newspapers, classrooms and general chatter. They were still the foe unfortunately, in what remained of the 1940s and early 1950s.
Then there was another factor that came into play that favoured the Americans. They didn't particularly like the English either!
We Scots knew who our traditional enemy was. Didn't we win at Bannockburn; show them how to play football (soccer) and beat them consistently, even though they outnumbered us 10:1.
It rankled that BBC radio (no TV then) consistently 'spoke down' to us in Received Pronounciation; in fact they did so to anyone who was not of the 'Home Counties' or a 'London gel'.
Similar to the 'provincial' English, who were shown in a servile light as well, we Scots were presented as of a sub-culture and always in some menial position.
To many in power in Southern England, we had no class or breeding. A Scot was used to portray almost every scene of drunkeness in films.
Had the English never understood the satire in the film 'Whisky Galore'?
Another good thing about 'The Yanks' was that they were having none of this 'class' stuff that dominated English life ('I know my place, Sur!')—and neither were we.
'Yankee Doodle Dandy' seemed to march quite happily alongside 'Wha' Dare Meddle Wi' Me'.
We liked the Yanks - well, at least the ones portrayed on film. We still didn't really know the real America.
[To be continued]
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