100 PHOTOGRAPHS 19
Helen of Troy, the mythic Greek demigod who sparked
the Trojan War and “launch’d a thousand ships,” had
nothing on Betty Grable of St. Louis. For that platinum
blond, blue-eyed Hollywood starlet had a set of gams that
inspired American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines to
set forth to save civilization from the Axis powers. And un-
like Helen, Betty represented the flesh-and-blood “girl back
home,” patiently keeping the fires burning. Frank Powolny
brought Betty to the troops by accident. A photographer
for 20th Century Fox, he was taking publicity pictures of
the actress for the 1943 film Sweet Rosie O’Grady when she
agreed to a “back shot.” The studio turned the coy pose into
one of the earliest pinups, and soon troops were requesting
50,000 copies every month. The men took Betty wherever
they went, tacking her poster to barrack walls, painting her
on bomber fuselages and fastening 2-by-3 prints of her next
to their hearts. Before Marilyn Monroe, Betty’s smile and
legs—said to be insured for a million bucks with Lloyd’s
of London—rallied countless homesick young men in the
fight of their lives (including a young Hugh Hefner, who
cited her as an inspiration for Playboy). “I’ve got to be an
enlisted man’s girl,” said Grable, who signed hundreds of
her pinups each month during the war. “Just like this has
got to be an enlisted man’s war.”BETTY GRABLE Frank Powolny, 1943