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Reviewed by:
  • The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter
  • Melissa Dollman (bio)
The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter; DVD distributed by Clarity Educational Productions, 2007

Borrow or rent a 16mm projector. . . . Check that it works properly and its take-up reel is big enough to accommodate the film. The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter requires a 1200-foot take-up reel. Have a spare projector bulb handy, too. To locate equipment, look under “film equipment rentals” in the yellow pages.—Educator’s edition of The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter: The Story of Three Million Working Women during World War II

(1982)

Whether for an appreciation of the veiled aspects of our nation’s history, an interest in women’s studies, or a general lust for World War II–era archival films and ephemera, if you have never seen filmmaker Connie Field’s The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, you should. Through interviews with a sample of five women defense workers employed in foundries, welding shops, and shipyards, in New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, we [End Page 178] gain insight into the lives of the much larger group of women collectively known as Rosie the Riveters. Members of this “hidden army,” which grew to over three million over the course of the war, formulate a three-dimensional view that fleshes out the famous red kerchief–sporting, muscle-flexing poster girl for Westinghouse who informed them they could do it! The irony is that all five of the women featured in the film—Wanita Allen, Gladys Belcher, Lyn Childs, Lola Weixel, and Margaret Wright—had already been working outside the home at such backbreaking jobs as farming, factory work, and domestic service. They were not unique. In fact, two-thirds of female defense workers had been wage earners prior to the war.1 The Rosies that Connie Field assembles—a group of three black and two white former Rosies—discuss their decisions to join the war effort; the training they were encouraged to receive; the discrimination they faced based on gender, race, or both; camaraderie; workplace safety; day care; and ultimately, the mixed messages given by the US government’s propaganda arm regarding women’s roles during both war and peacetime. Through filmed oral histories, contemporaneous newsreels, music, voice-over audio, and advertising stills, the filmmaker offers a fuller picture of the wartime workforce and cultural attitudes delivered to the public by the mass media.

As a way to chronicle this film’s rich history, I start with the book that has accompanied the film since 1982. Originally distributed to groups who rented or purchased the film in 16mm format, a 130-plus-page hardcover educator’s edition provided fundamental advice to the organizer of a screening (see epigraph). Cowriters Miriam Frank, Marilyn Ziebarth, and Connie Field supplied suggestions for leading discussions, sample posters to photocopy and distribute, publicity ideas, and specific instructions on how to safely return the film print to the distributor. Those days are gone, but the 112-page reader’s edition is available in an updated, downloadable PDF file on the DVD (note that I am reviewing the 2007 release by Clarity Educational Productions).2 The text continues to supplement and examine the social, political, and historical background by employing archival materials such as photographs, sheet music, and more advertisements, which expand the narrative beyond the film’s sixty-five minutes.3

Through funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Field has maintained primary distributorship of the film. Although the film was initially intended for screenings in schools and to labor, women’s, and community groups as an educational feature, as Field noted in a 1980 interview, “it turned out [to] be funnier than anyone thought.”4 Reviewers agreed. The film was screened in 1980 at, among other places, the New York Film Festival and the San Francisco International Film Festival; it was later distributed for theatrical release by First Run Pictures; and eventually, it was broadcast on domestic and foreign television. On its release, the film was favorably reviewed in Village Voice, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco...

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