1942 - Everyday Life

Everyday Life

President Roosevelt institutes year-round daylight saving time ("War Time") beginning February 2 (see 1918). It will continue until September 30, 1945 (see 1966).

Chess master José Raul Capablanca suffers a stroke while watching a game at the Manhattan Chess Club March 7 and dies the next day at age 53.

The WAVES wear uniforms designed by Mainbocher, who moved to New York 2 years ago. The WACS wear uniforms designed by Hattie Carnegie (see 1919), who has modified her "little Carnegie suit."

Claire McCardell designs stretch leotards to provide an extra layer of warmth for college girls living in dormitories that are chilly because of wartime fuel shortages (see 1938). She will promote the use of ballet slippers for street wear to counter shoe rationing and will soon design a denim wraparound housedress (she will call it the "popover") intended for women whose servants have left for jobs in war plants.

French designer Pauline Trigère, 29, goes into business with her brother and sister at New York, where she has worked since her arrival from Paris in 1937. She will become famous for the understated look of her long wool dinner sheaths and short-sleeved coats while favoring for her own attire a leopard-skin coat with leopard-skin skirt.

Fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert establishes the Coty American Fashion Critics' Awards, having married New York Journal-American publisher Seymour Berkson in 1936 and founded the International Best Dressed List in 1940; the first award goes to designer Norman Norell, who was fired by Hattie Carnegie after creating the costumes for the 1941 musical Lady in the Dark and teamed up with Seventh Avenue garment maker Anthony Traina to create Traina-Norell; he will work with Traina until 1960 to make the Seventh Avenue garment industry rival pre-war Paris as a fashion center.

Flames engulf Boston's Cocoanut Grove nightclub on Saturday night, November 28. Its exits have been bolted since Prohibition days, when it was a speakeasy, either to protect it from police raids or to keep patrons from leaving without having paid their tabs; nearly 1,000 patrons pack the club, 492 die of burns or smoke inhalation in 8 to 10 minutes, and 270 are injured in the worst such incident since the Iroquois Theater fire of 1903 (see Natchez fire, 1940). The dead include Vincennes, Ind.-born cowboy film star Buck Jones (originally Charles Gebhardt), 43, and more than 50 servicemen who have been enjoying the club's $1.50 dinner, dance band, and drinks (no cover charge). The horror will lead to the passage and enforcement of stricter safety laws for restaurants and nightclubs.

U.S. marriage rates increase dramatically as women wed men of draft age (some of whom marry in hopes of getting deferment); wives of GIs receive $50 allotment checks and $10,000 life-insurance policies.

The U.S. Supreme Court rules 7 to 2 December 21 in Williams v. State of North Carolina that Nevada divorces are valid throughout the United States.