Rosie the Riveter hits the headlines
The iconic image debuts on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post
At the beginning of 1943, a jaunty new song seized the imagination of the #merican people. (rom the traʛc cops in the streets of Chicago to the shoeshine boys at New York’s Grand Central station, everybody was whistling it. And thousands of women working in factories across the United States knew every word of every line. After all, they were in it.
The song was ‘Rosie the Riveter’, by the Four Vagabonds. It tells the story of a girl called Rosie, working on the assembly line to build planes for the US Air Force. Her boyfriend, Charlie, is away with the Marines. But she is determined to do her bit. Wiping the grease from her sweating brow, she’s “making history, working for victory”.
‘Rosie the Riveter’ was the sensation of the season. Soon it was surging up the sales charts, and to mark the moment The Saturday Evening Post asked the nation’s most popular artist, Norman Rockwell, to design a special Rosie the Riveter cover. (Not to be mistaken for the 1942 ‘We Can Do It’ poster, also featuring a female riveter.)
Rockwell based his Rosie on a real person: a 19-year-old telephone operator, Mary Doyle. For inspiration, Rockwell turned to Michelangelo’s painting of the prophet Isaiah, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In place of the prophet, his picture shows Rosie munching a sandwich, her arms bulging with muscles. Her blue work shirt is covered with badges: an army production award, a V for Victory badge, even a Red Cross blood donor’s badge. Her foot rests scornfully on a copy of Mein -ampf. Behind her flies the #merican flag.
Rockwell’s cover became a symbol of a great national crusade, uniting millions of men and women against the tyrants of Germany and Japan. The only person who didn’t like it was Mary Doyle, who was rather slimmer than Rockwell’s Rosie.