It feels wonderful to be go back to the 1940s and recreate the whole era through my clothes, voice and body language. I am tired of playing the larger-than-life hero.
England in the late 1940s was famously grim. As I remember it, London back then was a very dirty place, from coal dust and smoke, from the grit stirred up every day by the jackhammers still clearing out rubble from the Blitz.
The cure until the late 1940s, when there was an antibiotic discovered for tuberculosis, was basically rest. It was fresh, cold air, lots of food - five meals a day, lots of sleep, not very much talking, and for some people, complete stillness.
We are working to understand and regulate per- and polyfluoroalkyl synthetic chemicals, known as PFAS and PFOS, used to make water-repellent fabrics and non-stick products. These chemicals have been in prevalent use since the 1940s, but we need to learn more about their potential effects on human health and the environment.
The American Catholic Church made statements on racism as far back as the 1940s and '50s. 'Colored' Catholic girls could not live in the dorms at Catholic University - the bishops' university - up into the 1940s.
I get quite excited about things other people have worn. I went through a phase as a student when I wore a lot of 1940s tea dresses.
In the middle 1940s... I heard everyone live. Painting, the theater; everything was happening. It was an exciting time when New York was the place to be.
My parents had us very young. We lived in a modest house. We built forts, we hiked, we went camping and they wanted us to be independent. It's how children grew up in the 1940s and 50s: outside all the time, playing in the dirt, riding your bike around.
My grandfather was born in Mexico. And when he was a young man, he crossed the Rio Grande. After that, he served in our military and became a U.S. citizen. He ended up in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and that's where my father was born. That was the beginning of my Mexican-American family, where they settled in Las Vegas in the early 1940s.
During the late 1940s, Europe was a pretty bleak place.
