Gold Diggers and Midcentury Domesticity

Abstract

The gold digger figure of the 1940s and 50s revolved around a fragile sense of masculinity. Chapter Three examines the gold digger during World War II and the postwar economic expansion. During World War II, journalists and military officials highlighted the threat from so-called “Allotment Annies,” women who married multiple service men for their military allotment check. Stories of war brides abusing the allotment system constructed the gold digger as a national security menace. Yet, suspicions about wartime gold diggers far exceeded the actual harm that they caused. In the postwar period, the gold digger revolved around, and attempted to resolve, contradictions about 1950s white domesticity. Gold diggers exploited cracks in the postwar gender order. The sensational divorce trial of Billy Rose and Eleanor Holm revealed the high stakes of marital discord and the limits of postwar domestic compromises. Gold digger imagery during the 1950s depicted deceptive and manipulative women who threatened white masculinity and endangered the assumed quietude of postwar life.