Who created Rosie the Riveter?
791407#27
Norman Rockwell's image of "Rosie the Riveter" received mass distribution on the cover of the "Saturday Evening Post" on Memorial Day, May 29, 1943. Rockwell's illustration features a brawny woman taking her lunch break with a rivet gun on her lap and beneath her penny loafer a copy of Adolf Hitler's manifesto, "Mein Kampf". Her lunch box reads "Rosie"; viewers quickly recognized that to be "Rosie the Riveter" from the familiar song. Rockwell, America's best-known popular illustrator of the day, based the pose of his 'Rosie' on that of Michelangelo's 1509 painting "Prophet Isaiah" from the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Rosie is holding a ham sandwich in her left hand, and her blue overalls are adorned with badges and buttons: a Red Cross blood donor button, a white "V for Victory" button, a Blue Star Mothers pin, an Army-Navy E Service production award pin, two bronze civilian service awards, and her personal identity badge. Rockwell's model was a Vermont resident, 19-year-old Mary Doyle, who was a telephone operator near where Rockwell lived, not a riveter. Rockwell painted his "Rosie" as a larger woman than his model, and he later phoned to apologize. In a post interview, Mary explained that she was actually holding a sandwich while posing for the poster and that the rivet-gun she was holding was fake, she never saw Hitler's copy of Mein Kampf, and she did have a white handkerchief in her pocket like the picture depicts. The "Post"s cover image proved hugely popular, and the magazine loaned it to the U.S. Treasury Department for the duration of the war, for use in war bond drives.
Rosie the Riveter
31191514#0
The West Virginia Rosie the Riveter Project is an ongoing effort created by Thanks! Plain and Simple, Inc. (“Thanks!”), a nonprofit organization founded in 2005. “Thanks” developed the project to involve women who worked throughout America during World War II on “men’s jobs” (most notably riveting airplanes and welding ships, but including a broad range of defense industry employment), which was critical to shortening and winning World War II.
The West Virginia Rosie the Riveter Project
791407#0
Rosie the Riveter is a cultural icon of World War II, representing the women who worked in factories and shipyards during World War II, many of whom produced munitions and war supplies. These women sometimes took entirely new jobs replacing the male workers who joined the military. Rosie the Riveter is used as a symbol of American feminism and women's economic power. Similar images of women war workers appeared in other countries such as Britain and Australia. Images of women workers were widespread in the media as government posters, and commercial advertising was heavily used by the government to encourage women to volunteer for wartime service in factories. "Rosie the Riveter" became the subject and title of a song and a Hollywood movie during WWII.
Rosie the Riveter
31191514#4
Today, “Thanks!” has: 1) produced a documentary film (funded, in part, by the West Virginia Humanities Council); 2) created the first model Rosie the Riveter Community in America (funded, in part, by the Greater Kanawaha Valley Foundation); 3) created tools such as music, art, curriculum, written procedures for other communities to use to find and honor living “Rosies,” 4) partnered with various groups (arts, labor, history, schools), and 5) held events where emissaries from allied nations (Belgium in 2009 and Britain in 2010) formally thanked American “Rosies” for their contributions.
The West Virginia Rosie the Riveter Project
791407#4
The term "Rosie the Riveter" was first used in 1942 in a song of the same name written by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb. The song was recorded by numerous artists, including the popular big band leader Kay Kyser, and it became a national hit. The song portrays "Rosie" as a tireless assembly line worker, who earned a "Production E" doing her part to help the American war effort. The name is said to be a nickname for Rosie Bonavita who was working for Convair in San Diego, California. The idea of Rosie resembled Veronica Foster, a real person who in 1941 was Canada's poster girl for women in the war effort in "Ronnie, the Bren Gun Girl."
Rosie the Riveter
791407#20
"The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter" by Connie Field is a 65-minute documentary from 1980 that tells the story of women's entrance into "men's work" during WWII. "Rosies of the North" is a 1999 National Film Board of Canada documentary film about Canadian "Rosies," who built fighter and bomber aircraft at the Canadian Car and Foundry, where Elsie MacGill was also the Chief Aeronautical Engineer.
Rosie the Riveter
791407#25
The Rose City Riveters is the fan "Army" of supporters for the Portland Thorns Football Club, a National Women's Soccer League team in Portland, Oregon, a.k.a. The Rose City. These modern-day "Rosies" have taken their inspiration (and their name) from more than 30,000 Rosies who worked in the Portland shipyards in Portland during World War II.. The Riveters have activated the fan base and made the Thorns FC "...the most well-supported women's club team in the world...currently averaging over 17,000 fans per game," in 2017.
Rosie the Riveter
791407#16
The 2013 picture book Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty, features Rosie as "Great Great Aunt Rose" who "Worked building aeroplanes a long time ago". She inspires Rosie Revere, the young subject of the book, to continue striving to be a great engineer despite early failures. Rose is shown wielding a walking stick made from riveted aircraft aluminum.
Rosie the Riveter
19276243#7
"Rosie the Riveter: Women Working on The Home Front In World War" II is an illustrated social history of the lives and contributions of women workers during World War II written by Penny Colman. There are more than sixty archival black-and-white photographs (including one of Norma Jeane Baker Dougherty, who later changed her name to Marilyn Monroe), famous posters, advertisements, and cartoons. The author explains the origins of the phrase “Rosie the Riveter.” There are a Select List of Women’s Wartime Jobs, Facts & Figures about Women War Workers, Chronology, and an extensive bibliography. Rosie the Riveter received the Orbis Pictus Honor Award for Outstanding Nonfiction and an International Reading Association’s Teachers’ Choice and Young Adult Choice.
Penny Colman
791407#6
Rosie the Riveter became most closely associated with another real woman, Rose Will Monroe, who was born in Pulaski County, Kentucky in 1920 and moved to Michigan during World War II. She worked as a riveter at the Willow Run Aircraft Factory in Ypsilanti, Michigan, building B-24 bombers for the U.S. Army Air Forces. Monroe was asked to star in a promotional film about the war effort at home. The song "Rosie the Riveter" was popular at the time, and Monroe happened to best fit the description of the worker depicted in the song. "Rosie" went on to become perhaps the most widely recognized icon of that era. The films and posters she appeared in were used to encourage women to go to work in support of the war effort. At the age of 50, Monroe realized her dream of flying when she obtained a pilot's license. In 1978, she crashed in her small propeller plane when the engine failed during takeoff. The accident resulted in the loss of one kidney and the sight in her left eye, and ended her flying career. She died from kidney failure on May 31, 1997, in Clarksville, Indiana where she was a resident, at the age of 77.
Rosie the Riveter