This is the Army and Captain America

I am amazed to learn that in WWII the American army had a fundraising/morale boosting show written by Irving Berlin – “This is the Army!*. It did Broadway and was made into a movie starring Ronald Reagan.


Actual members of the armed services performed it all over Europe and the Pacific for the course of the war. AIt featured lots of drag acts. The army decided that it WACs and WAVEs should not contribute, so all the female roles were played by men. Cough. What an odd decision.

Linking it back to my current obsession with Captain America – This sounds like basically his show, except that in the fictional universe Steve is backed by dancing girls. This is certainly much easier to imagine than what is described in *Coming Out Under Fire* which includes details on how bull dozers built giant fox holes that served as theatres and a description from one drag queen of how they were strafed mid-performance and he had to leap down into the fox hole with the regularly dressed soldiers.

Also, there was a version for the segregated African-American troops called.... I can barely bring myself to type the words... *Uncle Sambo*.