Figure 1.--Ben Bolt's young friend Andy is put into the care of Ben's beloved Aunt Martha who immediately buy a new suit for him which she believes is suitable for the family's social status. When asked how he thinks Andy looks, he diplomatically tells here "... different." |
The prevalence of short pants appears to have been influenced by social status. More affluent American boys would often have a short pants suit for dress occasions, but rarely for boys over 11 or 12. Boys from less affluent families were much less likely to wear shorts. Many affluent boys went sent to exclusive private schools, often based on the English model, with short pants uniforms. Other HBC readers have reported similar observations. HBC has, however, little documentation to confirm this.
A HBC reader writes, "I've been trying to find out how an upper class boy in the Eastern United States, born in say 1939, would dress and wear his hair at the ages of 10-14, that is in the late 1940s and early 50s. This would be a kid attending private schools
in New York and New England." He points out that accounts on HBC say that by the mid-1950s, short pants had died out for boys over, say 7-years of age, except among boy from well-to-do families attending certain Eastern Schools. The reader writes, "My memory is that this that
up the social scale boys wore shorts more often and at later ages. But my contact with that world was fleeting." He asks, "My question is how many of these schools required
short pants and until what age? Are there pictures, are there rules of dress? Were there places (other than one or two notorious examples) where American boys over, say, 11 or so wore shorts?"
HBC believes that the above reader has summarized it well. By the mid-1950s I think few American boys beyond the 1st and 2nd graders wore shors to school. Regionally boys may have more commonly worn shorts, but the general pattern is how you sketch it out. Now as to boys from more affluent families, my guess is that the upper limit for short pants suits for dress wear was 11 and 12 years of age. Perhaps some boys at 13 but probably much smaller numbers. The schools probably followed the same pattern. However, at this time HBC can not really substantiate this with documented or photographic evidence. While we have received some reports from English readers, we have not recived similar cntribution from American readers. Nor does HBC have much information on the schools.
HBC has received only a few reports that provide actual information.
HBC can report at about 1960, as a teenager seeing boys of about 11 years old attending the theater during the winter with their parents in black short pants suits. The fact that boys that age were being taken to the theater (live teater not the movies) and that they wore garberdine overcaots suggests that they were from an affluent family. Also the boys of Bobby Kennedy during the late 1950s and eraly 60s were photographed in black and grey short pants suits with kneesocks to about age 10. This had become much less common by the 1970s. HBC does remember Bing Crosby Christmas specials in which his boys appeared in blazers, shorts and kneesocks.
An HBC reader remembers "... being part of 600-700 11 and 12 year old Boston Latin School boys in 1955 and that maybe as little as 5 percent, and not I think anything like 10 percent showed up on the first day in shorts. And almost none of them still wore them
by the second week. And that was pretty much the last that was seen of shorts among urban middle class boys." [HBC note: Boston Latin was a rare academically selective public school] As Boston Latin was a selective school, it would genenerally have primarily, but not exclusively, drawn boys primarily from comfortably middle class families, but not affluent families who could afford private schools.
A HBC reader remembers at the age of 10 or 11, which would be 1954-55, being at a concert at, I think, Phillips Exeter and seeing what I identified as much older boys in shorts. But that could have meant they were about 12 years old. AnotherHBC reader mentiions photos from prep schools like Phillips Exeter Academy and Andover from this era also show
students dressed in charcoal gray, dark blue, and brown suits. Brown and other earth tones seem to have been popular in many color schemes from this time. There were also coordinated jackets and long trousers.HBC remembers seeing some boys in Washington attending private school in shorts at about 1964.
While HBC still has limited information on this subject, some information is available from media sources suggesting that in the popular mind, short pants suits were associated with spoiled boys from wealthy families. Some images appeared every where, on television, the movies, comic strips and elese where.
Many period movies showed boys during the post-World War II era (1945-69) wearing short pants suits. Usually they were boys from affluent families or attending private schools. Often the children just have small parts. Much rarer are the films in which the boys in short pants suits have major roles. In part this was because films about boys rarely dealt with boys from rich comfortable families. By the 1970s, however, American boys are almost never seem in short pamts suits.
Television first appeared in American homes in the late 1940s. It was not until the early 1950s, however, that it took off. TV depictions in the 1950s clearly showed that boys did not wear short pants suits to school and they were often depicted a being worn by spoiled rich kids. What most American boys in the 1950s thought about wearing short pants suits and kneesocks was show cased on Leave it to Beaver. Another media examole, for an rich older boy, was show on Disney's Spin and Marty.
The subject was touched upon in many comic strips. One example was Big Ben Bolt. The strip appeared in September 1963 and the rich couple who adopt an orphan send him off to his new private school in a short pants suit, only the school has changed.
HBC had thought that hair styles during the post-war era were fairly uniform, cutting accross class lines. HBC remembers generally short hair and by the 1950s crewcuts. HBC readers have provided more detailed and somewhay different assessments.
A HBC reader reports,"My memory is that boys 7-13 or so from wealthy families sometimes wore bangs in the English manner. Not long hair but cut somewhat longer in the front. And they didn't wear crewcuts nearly as often as kids from the middle and lower classes. On average their hair was longer. This would be in the early and middle 1950s. In the late 1950s when a lot of teenage boys grew longer hair, prep school boys never did. So their hair was shorter on average."
Crewcuts (and for that matter any garb that smacked of a military look) seem to have been disdained by the upper classes. The "doughboy" look of early U.S. Boy Scout uniforms for instance didn't appeal to wealthy parents at all. They thought, it seems, that the
military was for the poor and lower classes. One comment an HBC reader sent along, that U.S. boys began growing longer hair in the late 1950s drew my attention. After the World War II and the Korean War, men and boys did grow tired of very short hair, and "regular" haircuts or "long regular" (like the pre-Army Elvis Presley) haircuts were popular. From
about the very late 1950s until the very early 60s flat tops and other short cuts were popular with some boys and teenagers. For about a year or so before the Beatles invasion in 1964, photos from the time show that a little longer hair was coming back, influenced
perhaps by President Kennedy. My relections are secondhand--an early TV and film watcher born in 1952, in the South, and certainly not wealthy!
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