HOW much more nostalgia can America take? The compulsion to paw and moon over the good old days extends far beyond Broadway; without question, the most popular pastime of the year is looking back. Sometimes it seems as if half the country would like to be dancing cheek to cheek with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in a great ballroom of the '30s. The other half yearns to join Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman on a back-lot Casablanca of the '40s to whisper: "Play it, Sam. Play As Time Goes By." We seem to be not so much entering the new decade as backing away from it full steam astern.
After the first moon landings, it might have been expected that the lords of fashion would try to dress us in shiny vinyl astronaut suits. Instead, today's with-it woman often looks as if she is dashing off to the U.S.O. or to wrap bundles for Britain. The well-dressed man, newly attired in his double-breasted suit, could be off to vote for Roosevelt or Landon. Back in style are shoulder bags, wedgies, wrap-around fox scarves, and curly hairdos—all part of what Designer Bill Blass terms "the sexy vulgarity" of the '40s. Hot pants? You might have been arrested for calling them that, but there they were 30 years ago. "Most of the styles you see today I've worn already," remarks Rita Hayworth, who once helped make famous a garment called "shorts."
The sense of dejd vu is everywhere. Chelsea House has sold 50,000 copies of the adventures of Buck Rogers and 27,000 copies of the famous cases of Dick Tracy. Twenty First Century Communications has revived Liberty, which died in 1950, as "the nostalgia magazine." Columbia and Decca report exuberant sales of their re-releases of rare old recordings, from Bessie Smith to Alice Faye. More than 300 radio stations have brought back the serials of the '30s and '40s, morality plays for two generations of American children. Once again Lament Cranston, the Shadow, knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men, and once again the Green Hornet, accompanied by his faithful Filipino valet Kato, buzzes off in the Black Beauty to "hunt the biggest of all game: public enemies who try to destroy our America!" -
Clearly, nostalgia means money. But does it mean anything else? No, says Writer Gore Vidal, one of the many skeptics. "It's all made up by the media. It's this year's thing to write about."
Without too much exaggeration, a historian could sum up 2,000 years of Western culture as A History of Nostalgia. The Romans regarded the Greeks as paradigms, the Renaissance looked back to the grandeur that was Rome, the PreRaphaelites discovered their ideal in the Middle Ages. Like everything else, however, the cycle of revivals has quickened in the 20th century. The '40s seem far away and romantic to people growing up in the '70s, while the '20s and '30s are already shrouded in the mists of legend. Viewing them, those who are under 30 might as well be with Petrarch or Leonardo, peering through the murk of a millennium at the wonders of the Caesars.