Rosie the Riveter

The image of Rosie the Riveter is one of the indelible Norman Rockwell covers. The issue of the Saturday Evening Post dated May 29,1943 had her, in overalls and bandana, sleeve rolled up, flexing her arm: "We can Do it!" talking about women in the workplace, talking about women in defense plants, taking the place of men who were now in the armed forces and making a dent in the wartime labor shortage. In 1943, women made up 65% of the aircraft industry work force, compared to less than 1% before the war.

Rockwell didn't invent Rosie. She was the invention of a Pittsburgh artist named J. Howard Miller. Complete with slogan, he used her on a recruiting poster for Westinghouse.

All of which has little to do with this movie. Oh, Jane Frazee and Vera Vague work in an aircraft plant, but that makes up two shots and a total of about two minutes. The movie is about wartime housing shortages, like the better remembered THE MORE THE MERRIER. Rosie and Vera show up at Maude Eburne's house, where they have each paid for a room. So do Frank Albertson and Frank Jenks. This Solomonic baby is cut in twain by the girls having the room in the evening, while the men, who are on the swing shift, have it during the day.

This wartime Cox & Box routine is eked out by the usual sputtering romantic comedy between Rosie, who has a wet blanket of a fiance, and Albertson, a couple of musical numbers, and the sort of comedy that goes on in a household, including a teen-ager who feels if she doesn't have three dates every evening, her life will be ruined, a married daughter who moves back in every three weeks, complete with piano, and a nicely rendered variation of the Stateroom scene from A NIGHT AT THE OPERA.

With high urban housing costs, this may have some connection to a young modern audience, but while it is a nicely performed comedy under the direction of the under-rated Joseph Santley, it is a thing of its time. Fans of old movies will enjoy it, but the lack of any remembered star will limit its nostalgic value to those who appreciate great character comedians of the period, like Lloyd Corrigan, 'Alfalfa' Switzer, and Tom Kennedy as a piano mover who has been in and out of that house with that piano so often, he's learned to play the instrument.