When the United States Air Force sent forces to Britain at the peak of the cold war, it was assumed by many that this process would continue. But the present contingent is minute compared to the millions of Americans who moved through Britain during World War II. Moreover, its members are more professional. They do not have the opportunity or the inclination for close contact with British homes. They want what professional soldiers want the world over: a bellyful of beer and a girl. They get both.
The senior officers of the United States Air Force units in Britain and well-intentioned Britons, zealous for the improvement of relations between the countries, spend a great deal of time worrying about the behavior of the airmen and their treatment by British civilians. The time is ill spent. It is the nature of young men far from home, in or out of uniform, to drink, to wench, and to fight. Here and there they may encounter tradesmen eager to make an extra shilling out of the foreigner. But such profiteering does not seem to be on the same scale as that practiced by the good people of Florida or Texas or Kansas upon their own countrymen in uniform during World War II.
In many superficial respects Britain is more Americanized than before the war. There are hamburger joints near Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, and the American tourist can buy a Coke in most big towns. A pedestrian in London sees windows full of "Hollywood models" and "Broadway styles." In the years immediately after the war, working-class youth copied the kaleidoscopic ties and broad-shouldered, double-breasted plumage of the American male. Today, still following styles set in America, he is adopting the more sober appearance of the Ivy League, and the button-down shirt has made its appearance in High Holborn. This is a curious example of styles traveling west and then east across the Atlantic, for the Ivy League dresses as it believes—or, rather, as its tailors believe—English gentlemen dress. Now the working-class young man in Britain is imitating "new" American styles that are themselves an imitation of the styles followed by his own upper class. Whatever the fashion in the United States, this class clings manfully to the dark suit, the starched collar, and the derby in London, and to tweeds in the country.
Obviously the movies made in America have had an enormous effect on the British way of life. For a number of reasons the effect has not been altogether good. Accuracy in portraying the American scene is not one of Hollywood's strong points. A couple of generations of young Britons matured nursing an idealistic view of the United States as a wonderland where hippy stenographers lived in high-ceilinged houses, wore luxurious clothes, drove big, powerful cars, and loved big, powerful men. There was almost invariably a happy ending to the minor difficulties that beset hero and heroine of an American film.
Realism was restored to some extent by the advent of the American soldier. Very few of the GI's resembled Mr. Robert Taylor, and their backgrounds were quite different from those portrayed on the screen. There were, of course, some fast talkers who could and did make a pig farm in Secaucus sound like a ranch in California, but, on the whole, the American soldiers came from civilian surroundings no more exciting than Leeds or Bristol. The movie-going public now views pictures about home life in America with a more skeptical eye.
The series of American films about juvenile delinquency, drug addiction, dipsomania, and other social evils created a problem for those interested in presenting a balanced view of the United States to Britons. Great efforts were made by the United States Information Service to demonstrate that the ordinary American did not begin the day with a shot of heroin or send his boy to a school that would make Dotheboys Hall seem like a kindergarten.
These efforts were inspired to some extent by the manner in which the Communists exploited such films as genuine reflections of life in the United States. Both the comrades and the USIS were wasting their time. The British public can be agonizingly apathetic, but it is not stupid. I never met anyone who thought these films represented the real America or who believed the Communist contention that they did. The fact is that the ability of the United States to make and show such pictures testifies to the strength of America. When the Russians produce an epic about the slave labor that built the White Sea-Baltic canal or an exposé of the corruption that riddled Soviet industry in the war and immediate post-war years, we can begin to worry.
The theater since the war has exercised an important influence in bringing America to Britain. Starting with Oklahoma, a series of Broadway musical shows dominated the London stage for a decade. One of the minor occupations of British critics is grumbling about the shortage of "real" British musicals. But even the grumpiest have been won over by the music of Richard Rodgers and Irving Berlin and the lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II.
British taste is not always in accord with our own. South Pacific was not the critical success in London that it was in New York. The British loved Guys and Dolls—they had lost their hearts to the late Damon Runyon in the thirties—but they did not like Pal Joey, in which John O'Hara gave a much more realistic picture of the seamy side of American life.
But the accent has been on musicals. Very few serious American plays have successfully invaded London. In this field the traffic seems to be the other way.