40s era "Homefront" tells it the way it was

By Andy Meisler Entertainment News Service

AMAZING, but true: In 1940s America, most people didn't spend all day dancing the jitterbug, slurping root beer floats at the malt shop or listening to Ted Mack and Fibber McGee on the radio.

A lot more of their time, it seems, was taken up with hashing out labor-management problems. And wrestling with guilt feelings about sex and procreation. And calculating veterans' benefits. And dealing with - or, perhaps, meting out - class and racial injustices.

And then, of course, there were those newfangled contact lenses to deal with.

''Yes. I was really surprised to discover that, too,'' says Deborah Mack, an in-house researcher for the Thursday-night ABC series ''Homefront.'' In her Burbank, Calif., office are shelves of old books and piles of old magazines; in one 1946 article she's recently read, there is a glowing account of this great advance in optical technology.

''Contacts had just been invented. They were being given out very selectively, but they were available. I thought it was significant,'' she says.

Mack photocopied the article and circulated it among the show's writers; this season, a major character on the show - an hour-long drama set in fictional River Run, Ohio, circa 1946 - just might throw away his horn rims and pop in a pair. Also, largely due to Mack, the cast members will dress in historically correct clothes, speak in historically correct language, and interact with - as much as is creatively and budgetarily possible - a historically correct 1946 world.

It is Mack's job to strip the myths and wishful historical thinking from ''Homefront.'' To ensure that, she combs through archives and old newspaper files, stays in cont act with historians around the country and interviews interesting individuals who've lived through the era ''Homefront'' encompasses.

Says Mack, a 1984 Yale graduate with a degree in history: ''Anything you see on the show that has a historical basis has been researched.''

Says her boss, ''Homefront'' executive producer Bernard Lechowick: ''We don't believe in nostalgia.''

In other words, he adds, his series doesn't pander to 1990s sensibilities. On the one hand, ''Homefront'' characters (like young lovebirds Jeff and Ginger, middle-aged lovebirds Anne and Al, troubled vet Hank and cuckolded union stalwart Charlie) wrestle with timeless personal problems. On the other, characters use such time-specific phrases as ''swell'' and ''good lord'' without irony. Adults puff away on cigarettes without a qualm; white bosses treat their black employees with open contempt and condescension.

''I see each script in its first draft,'' Mack says; her producers, she says, are ''very committed'' to total accuracy.

While examining last season's scripts, Mack turned up some interesting anomalies. For instance? ''At weddings of that period, people didn't throw loose rice. They [tied] it in little net bags,'' she says.

Major-league ballplayers of that era - shocking as it sounds today - packed their own suitcases. And if you were run over by a streetcar, chances are the vehicle that would take you to the hospital would be . . . a hearse. ''A lot of them did double-duty,'' she says. ''Smaller cities like River Run didn't really have ambulances until the '50s.''

Most interestingly, perhaps, Mack ensures a more comprehensive accuracy by doing free-form research on major issues of the times.

''Homefront's'' writers and producers receive dossiers on such wide-ranging subjects as post-World War II housing, sports, health and birth control. ''One of the big topics that I dealt with last season had to do with the labor movement, and strikes. I made some good contacts at the Walter Reuther Archives in Detroit. And, actually, I found out that 1945 was when labor was really at a high point in terms of its dominance in American society.''

Since ''Homefront'' features eight to nine major female characters, Mack has spent much of her time delving into the status of women in 1946. Since it also features a black family, the Davises, she's researched thoroughly the topic of racial discrimination. ''Most of the magazine articles I've read depict women as homemakers. There are lots of recipes and pieces like 'How to Catch a Man.' ''

But that picture of Totally Happy Homemaking, she adds, isn't entirely accurate. ''Through one of my contacts, a historian, I came across a magazine of the time called 'Independent Woman.' It dealt with women who worked, who had careers, who owned their own businesses.''

The status of blacks in 1946 was similarly complex. Though they were grudgingly allowed to hold jobs formerly held only by whites, Mack discovered that they were still openly insulted, even in Northern cities like River Run, and forced to use separate facilities in such places as public hospitals.

All of which could bring one to the conclusion that - nostalgia be damned - we're better off watching 1946 on TV than we would be living through it. No indeed. ''For instance, last season,'' she says, ''the Davises wanted a loan to start a business. So I looked into topics like neighborhood redlining. I talked with family friends who owned banks and savings and loans that were predominantly black. I talked with experts at Howard University.

''And you know, not that much has really changed.''

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