Martha Hill and the Making of American Dance

War Years and Recovery, 1943–1947

War Years and Recovery, 1943–1947 By 1943, the horrors of war permeated every aspect of life in the United States. The government had transferred more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans from the West Coast to inland detention camps. Despite reports, few believed that the Nazis were gassing thousands of Jews a day in concentration camps. (More were horrified at the news that 487 had died in a fire in Boston’s Coconut Grove nightclub, trapped by doors that opened inward.) Coffee was now added to the growing list of rationed goods. That summer at Bennington, Hortie said to Teddy, “Did you know that they are going to take women in the Navy? Will you apply with me? ‘Sure, I’ll do it.’ So we went into town and filled out applications. We had a cursory physical exam and mailed them in.” Teddy remembered the day Mary Jo was called away from the dining room to answer a long-distance call from prizefighter Gene Tunney, the head of training for the men of the navy. He wanted Mary Jo to take over for the women. “She kept saying no, and he kept calling.” When he came up to Bennington in person, Mary Jo finally agreed to do it. Armed with her ability to administrate a dance camp, Mary Jo packed her bags, and put her best effort into creating a woman’s militia. As a lieutenant commander in the Women’s Naval Reserve in charge of Physical Training and Drill, she was among the first dozen commissioned women in the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services). Within a month Mary Jo became assistant to Mildred McFee as director of training of the navy, in charge of the education programs and the expansion of the WAVES’ training. (She saw to it that Teddy, too, rose to become a lieutenant commander, and director of emplacement for the WAVES in San Diego.)1 Helen Knight, who also had signed up, recalled her arrival at the University of Wisconsin where a girls’ dormitory was given over to the WAVES: “Mary Jo said, ‘The next time I see you, you will be in Enid, Oklahoma . . . putting little Wavelettes to bed and getting them up in the morning.’ ‘No way,’ I answered: ‘I gave the Navy a song and dance and joined the American Red Cross [instead].’”2 Thinking back to the fall of 1943, Hazel said, “I know Martha missed Mary Jo. I didn’t realize until then how much of the organization work Mary Jo had done at Bennington.” It was clear to her that when Mary Jo, “a very calm, organized , and matter-of-fact, very attractive woman moved out of the picture, everything was left to Martha. And Martha was always dreaming up ideas, getting people together to do this and do that. I could see that was her métier.” Martha herself explained, “I wasn’t by nature the kind to put on a uniform, but I did want to help with the war effort.” That spring she traveled to New Orleans to address the 1942 convention of the American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation on the war’s implications for dance. She told her audience, “Fighting a modern war is not done just with the body. Physical fitness is too narrow a conception. The ‘X’ factor in war, call it morale or what you will, takes a great many forms and applies equally to the civilian, the defense worker, and the soldier.” She goes on, “In this connection it would be foolish to ignore such an old, deeply rooted, and anciently useful medium as dancing, which has served people before in times of stress and can again in this critical time of ours.”3 Helen Tamiris stopped the show as “Porterhouse Lucy” when she toured neighborhood theaters with the American Theater Wing’s production of It’s Up To You; in contrast, Martha withdrew behind her academic profile.4 But she did fulfill a request from the U.S. Office of Education to write the dance section for the manual, Physical Fitness through Physical Education for the Victory Corps. “They even gave me an artist to sketch for the project. It was to contain simple movement that might help in hospital rehabilitation programs.” Eager to contribute, Martha created dance exercises “with skips and slides as well as things for the least able,” but soon hit a snag. “We can’t use the word ‘dance,’” the editor told...