Swinging 40s

The 1940s was a decade of contrasts. It contained humankind's deadliest war and ushered in its biggest baby boom. European powers nursed their war wounds, the United States and Soviet Union rose as superpowers, and the first stirrings of decolonization inspired millions to seek independence and the right to self-governance. All of this occurred as swing music and the first jukeboxes played in the background, and technological advancements brought space travel, the atomic bomb, and Tupperware.

This month's challenge focuses on the decade that both contained the first teen crooners and saw literature and film turn to noir. Prompts come from the 1940s, and you are welcome to choose any from the list below. As usual, you can use any part of the prompt—dig deep into a novel or film or the lyrics of a song if you want, or use the title, book cover, or movie poster—anything goes! We welcome you to combine prompts and interpret them as creatively as your imagination requires.

Thank you to Pages for this month's stamps!

This challenge opened in July 2025 .

Prompts

Choose your prompt from the collection below.

View Prompts

Music

• We’ll Meet Again—Vera Lynn
• Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy—the Andrews Sisters
• La Vie en Rose—Edith Piaf
• La Mer—Charles Trenet
• I’ll Never Smile Again—Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra (with Frank Sinatra)
• White Christmas—Bing Crosby
• Comin’ In On A Wing And A Prayer—The Song Spinners
• I’ll Walk Alone—Dinah Shore
• ‘Till Then—The Mills Brothers
• ‘Til the End of Time—Perry Como
• Pistol Packin’ Mama—Al Dexter
• Shanghai Night (夜上海)—Zhou Xian
• Why Don’t You Do Right?—Peggy Lee
• Moonlight Cocktail—Glenn Miller
• My Dreams Are Getting Better All The Time—Les Brown & Doris Day
• (I Love You) for Sentimental Reasons—The King Cole Trio
• It’s Been a Long, Long Time—Bing Crosby
• I’m Making Believe—Ella Fitzgerald & The Ink Spots
• Do Nothing till You Hear From Me—Duke Ellington & his Famous Orchestra
• Ration Blues—Louis Jordan & his Tympany Five
• Baby, It’s Cold Outside—Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Jordan
• "G.I Jive"—Johnny Mercer or Louis Jordan
• Open The Door, Richard—Count Basie
• I Want To Be Loved (But Only By You)—Savannah Churchill
• (Opportunity Knocks But Once) Snatch and Grab It—Julie Lee and her Boy Friends
• All She Wants to Do Is Rock—Wynonie Harris
• Baby Get Lost—Dinah Washington
• Ain’t Nobody’s Business—Jimmy Witherspoon
• You’ll Never Walk Alone—Rodgers & Hammerstein
• Boogie Chillen—John Lee Hooker
• I Can’t Be Satisfied—Muddy Waters
• Miss Martha King—BB King
• Every Day I Have The Blues—Memphis Slim
• Blues After Hours—Pee Wee Crayton
• Round About Midnight—Thelonius Monk
• Ornithology—Charlie Parker
• Verdad Amarga—Consuelo Velasquez
• Solamente una vez—José Mojica y Ana María González
• Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra—Benjamin Brittin
• Sonata for a Solo Violin—Bela Bartok
• The Woody Woodpecker Song
• Jimmy Dorsey
• Charlie Parker
• Dizzy Gillespie
• Seven Great Singing Stars
• Ravi Shankar’s career begins

Movies

• It’s a Wonderful Life
• Citizen Kane
• The Great Dictator
• Rebecca
• How Green Was My Valley
• The Maltese Falcon
• The Philadelphia Story
• Meet Me In St. Louis
• For Whom The Bell Tolls
• Casablanca
• Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
• Going My Way
• Cowboy and the Senorita
• To Have and Have Not
• Anchors Aweigh
• The Bells of St Mary’s
• National Velvet
• Spellbound
• The Lost Weekend
• Gilda
• The Best Years of Our Lives
• Gentleman’s Agreement
• Miracle on 34th Street
• The Big Sleep
• The Thief of Baghdad
• The Three Musketeers
• Hamlet (Olivier)
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
• Little Women
• Passport to Pimlico
• All The King’s Men
• Oliver Twist
• Black Narcissus
• Mrs. Miniver
• 49th Parallel
• The 47 Ronin
• Drunken Angel
• Ladri di biciclette
• Les Enfants du Paradis
• Roma città aperta
• Pinocchio
• Dumbo
• Fantasia
• Bambi
• The Friendly Ghost
• African Jim/Jim Comes to Jo’burg

Comics and Cartoons

• Tom and Jerry
• Woody Woodpecker
• Superman

Literature

• Реквием or Requiem (Anna Akhmatova)
• For Whom The Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway)
• L'Étrange or The Stranger (Albert Camus)
• The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
• Huis clos or No Exit (Jean-Paul Satre)
• Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell)
• Tri gaštanové kone or Three Chestnut Horses (Margita Figuli)
• Death of A Salesman (Arthur Miller)
• The Body in the Library (Agatha Christie)
• The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers)
• Het Achterhuis. Dagboekbrieven 14 Juni 1942 – 1 Augustus 1944 or The Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank)
• The Ministry of Fear (Graham Greene)
• An Béal Bocht or The Poor Mouth (Flann O’Brien)
• The Glass Menagerie (Tennessee Williams)
• Das Glasperlenspiel or The Glass Bead Game (Hermann Hesse)
• Animal Farm (George Orwell)
• Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh)
• Ficciones or Fictions (Jorge Luis Borges)
• Lark Rise To Candleford (Flora Thompson)
• The Iceman Cometh (Eugene O’Neill)
• The Screwtape Letters (C.S. Lewis)
• A Curtain of Green (Eudora Welty)
• Das siebte Kreuz or The Seventh Cross (Anna Seghers)
• Kamienie na szaniec or Stones for the Rampart (Aleksander Kaminski)
• Gigi (Colette)
• Βίος και Πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά or Zorba the Greek (Nikos Kazantzakis)
• Native Son (Richard Wright)
• शेखर: एक जीवनी Shekhar: Ek Jivani or Shekhar: A Life (Agyeya)
• Streetcar Named Desire (Tennesee Williams)
• Seraph on the Suwanee (Zora Neale Hurston)
• Der gute Mensch von Sezuan or The Good Person of Sechuan (Bertolt Brecht)
• Doctor Faustus (Thomas Mann)
• Kürk Mantolu Madonna or Madonna in a Fur Coat (Sabahattin Ali)
• The Heart of the Matter (Graham Greene)
• Friday’s Child (Georgette Heyer)
• Le Deuxième Sexe or The Second Sex (Simone de Beauvoir)
• I Capture The Castle (Dodie Smith)
• Thieves in the Night: Chronicle of an Experiment (Arthur Koestler)
• The Living Is Easy (Dorothy West)
• De avonden: Een winterverhaal or The Evenings: A Winter’s Tale (Gerard Reve)
• Sinuhe egyptiläinen or The Egyptian (Mika Waltari)
• The Pearl (John Steinbeck)
• Feðgar á ferð or The Old Man and His Sons (Heðin Brú)
• Under a Glass Bell (Anaïs Nin)
• El Señor Presidente or Mister President (Miguel Ángel Asturias)
• The English Teacher (R.K. Narayan)
• Les Grandes Vacances or The Long Holiday (Francis Ambrière)
• 雪国 or Snow Country (Yasunari Kawabata)
• La invención de Morel or The Invention of Morel (Adolfo Bioy Casares)
• Rocket Ship Galileo (Robert Heinlein)
• Dvärgen or The Dwarf (Pär Lagerkvist)
• ബാല്യകാലസഖി Balyakalasakhi or Childhood Companion (Vaikom Muhammed Basheer) 
• Dark Carnival (Ray Bradbury)
• Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno or The Path to the Nest of Spiders (Italo Calvino)
• Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder or Mother Courage And Her Children (Bertolt Brecht)
• Napoli milionaria or Millionaire Naples (Eduardo De Filippo)
• Der Zug war pünktlich or The Train Was On Time (Heinrich Böll)
• Die Toten Bleiben Jung or The Dead Stay Young (Anna Seghers)
• Red Planet (Robert Heinlein)
• சிவகாமியின் சபதம் Sivagamiyin Sapatham or The Vow of Sivagami (Kalki Kishnamurthy)
• 呼蘭河傳 Hulanhe zhuan or Tales of the Hulan River (Xiao Hong)

Children’s Literature

• The Heroes of Chelm (Shlomo Simon)
• Pippi Långstrump (Astrid Lindgren)
• Curious George (H.A. and Margaret Rey)
• Five on A Treasure Island (Enid Blighton)
• Le Petit Prince or The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)
• Horton Hatches The Egg (Dr. Seuss)
• Make Way For Ducklings (Robert McCloskey)
• Erik of het klein insectenboek (Godfried Bomans)
• The Poky Little Puppy (Janette Sebring Lowrey)
• Pat the Bunny (Dorothy Kunhardt)
• Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen or The Moomins and the Great Flood (Tove Jansson)
• Stuart Little (E.B. White)
• Strawberry Girl (Lois Lenski)
• Thomas The Tank Engine (Wilbert Awdry)
• Goodnight Moon (Margaret Wise Brown)
• Pitschi (Hans Fischer)
• Das doppelte Lottchen or The Parent Trap (Erich Kästner)

Science, Tech, and Discoveries

• Color TV
• Kidney dialysis machine
• Transistor
• Atomic bomb
• Radar
• Jet aircraft
• Velcro
• Tupperware
• Computers
• Jeep
• Jukebox
• First animal in space
• First photo of Earth from space

Television

• First commercials
• Televised news programs
• First television coverage of the Olympics
• First soap opera
• BBC Television service resumes service by reshowing Mickey’s Gala Premiere
• First Year Flashbacks
• Kaleidoscope
• Café Continental
• Come Dancing
• Howdy Doody
• Meet the Press
• Ed Sullivan Show
• The Lone Ranger
• Hopalong Cassidy
• Bozo the Clown
• Truth or Consequences
• Candid Camera
• Muffin the Mule
• Kukla, Fran and Ollie

Architecture and Style

• Baker House (Alvar Aalto)
• Biblioteca Cantonale in Lugano (Rino & Carlo Tami)
• Casa Luis Barragán (Luis Barragán)
• Chamberlain Cottage (Marcel Breuer & Walter Gropius)
• Kauffman Desert House (Richard Neutra)
• National Naval Medical Center
• The Pentagon (George Bergstrom)
• Walthamstow Town Hall
• Bridge House (Amancio Williams)
• Eames House (Ray and Charles Eames)
• James B Christie House (Frank Lloyd Wright)
• The Glass House (Philip Johnson)
• Haines Shoe House (Fred J. Rempp)
• Hiroshima World Peace Memorial Cathedral (Togo Murano)
• Googies Coffee Shop (John Lautner)
• Morannedd Cafe (Clough Williams-Ellis)
• 75 Rockefeller Plaza
• VC Morris Gift Shop (Frank Lloyd Wright)
• Willow Run Bomber Plant (Albert Kahn)
• Zushi Temple (Li Meishu)
• Construction of Hallgrímskirkja begun
• BISF houses (UK)
• Eames Lounge Chair
• Noguchi Coffee Table
• Saarinen Womb Chair
• Aalto Lounge Chair 406

Fashion

• Floral prints
• Utilitarian clothing (fabric rationing)
• Atomic prints
• Khaki
• Nylon
• Remaking men’s clothing for women
• Shirtdresses
• Snoods & headscarves
• Bikini

Food and Drink

• SPAM
• Meatloaf
• Sloppy Joes
• Macaroni and cheese
• Tuna noodle casserole
• Beef stroganoff
• Jell-O salads
• Zebra cake (Chocolate wafer icebox cake)
• Corn dogs
• Dried eggs
• National Loaf
• Potato Peel Pie
• Parsnip Pudding
• Mock Banana
• War Cake/Victory Cake
• Rationing
• Victory gardens
• The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks
• Daiquiri
• Jack Rose
• Manhattan
• Martini
• Old Fashioned
• Sidecar

Fun and Games

• Frisbee
• Slinky
• Magic 8 Ball
• LEGO
• ViewMaster
• Scrabble
• Chutes and Ladders
• Candy Land
• Clue
• Labyrinth
• Game of the States
• Rich Uncle

Headlines

• Pearl Harbor
• Bengal Famine
• D-Day
• VE Day
• VJ Day
• Nuremberg Trials
• Partition of India
• Berlin Airlift
• Founding of the United Nations
• End of Chinese Civil War
• Beginning of Greek Civil War
• French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon dissolved
• Assassination of Gandhi
• Philippines declare independence

Quotes

• Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. 
  ~ Casablanca
• Remember, George: no man is a failure who has friends. 
  ~ It’s a Wonderful Life
• The time to make up your mind about people is never. 
  ~ The Philadelphia Story
• Keep calm and carry on.
• Nuts! 
  ~ General Anthony McAuliffe, in response to a demand that his completely surrounded division surrender 
  What does that mean? ... Is this affirmative or negative? 
  ~ the German officer receiving the reply to carry back to his commander
• This is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure. 
  ~ Winston Churchill
• The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. 
  ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• You will be judged by what you succeed at, gentlemen, not by what you attempt. 
  ~ Clement Atlee
• In this shrinking world, it is futile to seek safety behind geographical barriers. Real security will be found only in law and in justice. 
  ~ Harry Truman
• And yet fear builds its phantoms which are more fearsome than reality itself, and reality, when calmly analysed and its consequences willingly accepted, loses much of its terror. 
  ~ Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India
• It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err. 
  ~ Mohandas Gandhi, Harijan
• History is written by the winners. 
  ~ George Orwell, As I Please
• I am condemned to be free. 
  ~ Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
• It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eyes. 
  ~ Antoine de Saint-Expeury, The Little Prince
• The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. 
  ~ Ernest Hemingway, For Whom The Bell Tolls
• Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater. 
  ~ Albert Einstein
• Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. 
  ~ Anais Nin
• Do what you feel in your heart to be right — for you'll be criticized anyway. 
  ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
• There are no atheists in the foxholes. 
  ~ Wake Island
• I don’t care to belong to any club that will accept me as a member. 
  ~ Groucho Marx
• This cruel age has deflected me, 
  like a river from this course. 
  Strayed from its familiar shores, 
  my changeling life has flowed 
  into a sister channel. 
  ~ Anna Akhmatova,
• Fortunate the man who, at the right moment meets the right friend; fortunate also the man who at the right moment meets the right enemy. 
  ~ T.S. Eliot
• Very luckily for you and me,the uncivilized sun mysteriously shines on "good" and "bad" alike. 
  ~ e. e. cummings
• Freedom’s not just to be won Over There. It means Freedom at home, too - Now - right here! 
  ~ Langston Hughes “How About It, Dixie”
• The history of liberty has largely been the history of observance of procedural safeguards. 
  ~ Felix Frankfurter, McNabb v United States
• We shared a common tongue, but my language was a different language from theirs. 
  ~ Richard Wright, Black Boy
• This has always been a man’s world, and none of the reasons hitherto brought forward in explanation of this fact seem adequate. 
  ~ Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
• Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. 
  ~ Alfred Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
• I have been in Sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and a sword in my hands. 
  ~ Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road