Haha, Hornography!

@projectbway  event 04: free week   —   bandstand

What

Would 

Jimmy 

Thank you so much! I’m always happy to hear that people like my blog and that the posts I make are helpful and informative.

So, much like with the Newsies post I made on this topic (which can be found here for anyone who hasn’t read it yet and would like to) this is a complicated question that there is no one easy answer to. However, I will do my best to examine as many angles as possible when answering this to provide you with as clear a picture as possible of how history relates to the show canon in regards to LGBTQ+ people and their rights.

The LGBTQ+ community in the 1940s was still a long way away from being accepted by most of society. Being gay was illegal, and would remain so until the 1960s when individual states began to legalize it (although being gay was not legalized in all 50 states until 2003). However, some strides forward were being made in the name of gay rights at the time.

In 1924, The Society for Human Rights was founded by Henry Gerber in Chicago. It was the first documented gay rights organization in the United States and marked a big step forward for the LGBTQ+ community as a whole. By the 1940s, many cities had gay bars and thriving (if hidden) gay communities were beginning to take shape. Cleveland’s first gay bar, The Cadillac Lounge, was opened in the 1940s. These bars were subjected to frequent raids, and so were by no means perfectly safe, but the fact that they existed in relatively large numbers across the country is a testament to the slowly changing opinions of people at the time.

World War II marked even more changes within the LGBTQ+ community. Due to a variety of factors, a community of gay people began to take shape under the surface of the US military. At one point during the war the Women’s Army Corps contained such a large number of lesbians that when the army tried to kick them out, they found that doing so would result in the majority of their staff being fired and so were forced to back down (you can read more about that remarkable instance here). This is probably one of the main reasons why Donny seems so accepting of Jimmy in the cut scene you referenced- as a member of the US Amry during WWII it’s highly likely that he came into contact with a least a couple of gay people before meeting Jimmy (he could also be some form of LGBTQ+ himself, although that, of course, depends on your own personal headcanons).

With that very brief history out of the way, let’s now get into what the other members of the Donny Nova Band might have thought about gay rights and gay people in the 1940s. Please note, however, that this is all pure conjecture on my part and that you can really headcanon anything you want in regards to this (one of the perks of Bandstand being a fictional show).

As I said before, Donny, Johnny, Nick, Wayne, and Davy would have probably met at least one or two gay people before during their service (and possibly in their civilian lives as well), and so Jimmy being gay wouldn’t be as big a shock for them as it might be for someone else. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they would be completely accepting of Jimmy, of course, but it does make it a bit more likely that they would be. In my personal opinion, homophobia usually comes from a place of ignorance, and the guys in the band wouldn’t be as ignorant about the LGBTQ+ community as some other people at the time might have been.

This brings us to Julia. She would probably be to most sheltered and ignorant of LGBTQ+ people, given that she never served and grew up Catholic (and as I’m sure many people know, the Catholic church doesn’t exactly have a favorable opinion of LGBTQ+ people, even today). Taking this into consideration, it would probably be the hardest for her to come to terms with Jimmy being gay at first. That being said, she clearly does eventually come to terms with it in some way since she writes and sings as openly as she can about him and the trauma he experienced related to his boyfriend being killed in the song Welcome Home, and I doubt she would have done that had she been harboring any kind of ill-will towards Jimmy with regards to his sexuality.

To summarize my very long-winded response (I’m oftentimes incapable of giving short answers, my apologies): Based on both historical facts and the musical canon, it is very likely that Jimmy would face homophobia from the outside world, but not from the members of the band themselves. This isn’t to say that the members would be perfectly understanding of him at all times, but rather that they clearly value him as a person regardless of his sexuality and are willing to look past whatever homophobic values they might have been raised with in order to accept him.

I hope that this answered your question! Again, this is a hard topic to talk about in any kind of definitive way, and so I welcome anyone else to chime in with their own opinions on this.

Sources:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_in_the_United_States#

https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/19/us/lgbt-rights-milestones-fast-facts/index.html

Thank you so much for asking! It’s been ages since I’ve had an excuse to research things related to Bandstand, and I was very happy to do it. Here is a list of interesting facts about WWII and the Donny Nova Band that I haven’t yet covered on this blog.

The headline in the Cleveland Plain Dealer morning edition on December 8th, 1941 (the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor) was “Japs War On U.S., Britain; Bomb Hawaii, Phillippines; Congress To Hear F.D.R.”

Men in the 37th Infantry Division (Donny and Michael’s division) were assigned companies based on their hometowns, the idea being that this would foster an important sense of community for them. This is likely how Donny and Michael ended up meeting and serving so closely together.

Here is a link to a recording of the MBS News Bulletin announcing the surrender of Japan on September 14th, 1945. I love this recording because you can hear people in the newsroom running around and generally freaking out while the announcement is being read, and it features some very fun 1940s swing music. This recording is also part of a big collection of WWII-related sound clips from 1945, so have fun listening!

In 1946 a movie called Deception came out. It is about a piano teacher who believes that her fiance was killed on the battlefield during WWII, so she starts dating a wealthy composer. However, everything is thrown into turmoil when her former fiance miraculously returns from the dead. You can find its IMDb page here. Do with this information what you will.

The Cadillac Lounge was Cleveland’s first gay bar. It opened in the 1940s (although I was unable to find an exact year).

I hope that you found these facts interesting! I will also link a few of the other posts I’ve made about Bandstand below, in case anyone wants to give those another look, and if you or anyone else has any other questions then feel free to send them in!

Dressing Julia Trojan

Davy Zlatic’s Military Division

Alright! These are some facts which I thought pertained to Bandstand that I’ve come across in my research and that I found interesting.

The USS Reid (Jimmy’s ship) was sunk by kamikaze pilots in only two minutes, following a period where the crew was only able to sleep for two hours at a time at most before being called to their battle stations. Jimmy likely would have barely had time to register what was happening before it was all over, and he was in the water.

The Women’s Army Corps (WAC) had a relatively significant number of lesbians enlisted during World War II (I’m not saying that Jo was a member of the WAC during the war, but Jo was a member of the WAC during the war).

In some military canteens, a soldier could record a message on a record to be sent home to their family. I headcanon that Michael did this for Julia.

This has more to do with the Bandstand touring cast, where the actor playing Jimmy (Rob Clove) is POC, but before 1942, the only position in the United States Navy open to African American servicemen was mess hall attendant. In 1942 enlisted ratings opened to all qualified personnel, but the Navy still remained widely racially segregated.

Johnny’s pain pills were likely some form of opioid, one of the only major prescription painkillers available at the time, making them highly addictive.

The Cleveland Limited was an overnight train. According to its timetable in June of 1950, it left the Cleveland Union Terminal at 8:35 PM and arrived in New York City at the Grand Central Terminal at 7:45 AM. It stopped off at East Cleveland, Ohio, Syracuse, New York, Albany, New York, and Harmon, New York on the way.

The movie Donny references seeing in Right This Way which features Robert Walker and Judy Garland was a real movie. It was called The Clock and it was first released on May 25th, 1945. It is about a soldier named Joe Allen (played by Robert Walker) who meets a young woman named Alice Mayberry (played by Judy Garland) while he’s on a 48-hour leave.

This doesn’t have much to do with Bandstand itself, but Donny, Julia, Michael, and everyone else would have been alive and (probably) living in Cleveland when the Cleveland Torso Murders took place.

Here are some pictures of something Johnny would have driven

Here’s a smaller jeep which is probably not what he was driving but is a vehicle in service. 

This is what he would have driven. This is without the roof pulled up as you can see there’s not much there to keep him strapped in. 

Here’s with the roof on.