I’m working on a 1937 historical novel and am amazed at the things I’ve been learning. It’s funny how much went on in 1937. I wanted my heroine to have hidden some type of cookies in her underwear drawer and I googled 1937 cookies. Guess what? The Toll House Cookie was invented in 1937 when a woman named Ruth Graves Wakefield. She owned a restaurant in Massachusetts and was baking. She ran out of baker’s chocolate and broke up some semi-sweet chocolate pieces and inserted them in the batter. She thought they would melt into the batter and blend into the cookies. They didn’t melt and a happy surprise was in store for her. Her restaurant was named Toll House Inn. She later sold the recipe to Nestle’s.
I looked up some movies made in 1937 as well. I wanted Myrna Loy to be in a magazine that my heroine’s sister was reading and she had two films out in 1937. I chose the one that wasn’t about Ireland and its fight for freedom. I thought that would be too much as I have a book already written about the Irish fight for freedom and the heroine in this book is Irish as well.
I also wanted to know what a man’s bathing suit would look like in 1937. I had a general idea of the tanktop, tight bottom suit but imagine my delight when I looked it up and found that 1937 was the first year that men could bare their chests on the beach. It seems there was a law called “bathing suit regulations” that came into effect in 1917 that said men couldn’t be topless on public beaches (this was a change from times past when men swam in their skivvies or naked in unmixed company). In the 1930s, Johnny Weissmuller, Tarzan, started a trend with the tank top type bathing suit for men. He was the model for BVD suits. In 1933, men could show their chests but couldn’t go topless. They had suits with the tank top look (that could be removed- but when there were men arrested in America for indecent exposure when they took off the tops). 1937 was the first year that men could go topless on public beaches in swim trunks without being arrested. This is excellent for my purposes as my hero wants very badly to bed the heroine. She’s gonna get to see his chest at the pool on board the Queen Mary and it’s going to work to his advantage. LOL!
I also researched nylons as I wanted my heroine to wear nylon stockings as opposed to silk. Herein was the rub. Nylon itself was invented in 1934 and patented in 1935 by the Dupont firm. It was not commercially marketed until 1939, so I’m 2 years too early for that. So, she shall be wearing silk stockings. The man that came up with the formula, Wallace Carothers, died in 1937. It has been fun to learn about the breakthroughs of various things/inventions in the 1930s, especially 1937.
Today, I’m also over at Over the Backyard Fence blog reviewing a book by Heather Graham. http://llblog2010.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/book-review-home-in-time-for-christmas-by-heather-graham/
Jillian Chantal 