P.G. Wodehouse: World War II Broadcasts

A small error in judgment can haunt someone for the rest of their lives. Is it fair? No. But it happened to P.G. Wodehouse.

When World War II started, Wodehouse was living in Le Touquet, France, among a number of other British expats. He was almost 58 years old and as naïve as a schoolboy. His first mistake was his conviction that there would be no war. Then, as war raged nearby, he waited too long to leave France.

When the Germans occupied the area, they rounded up all of the British male expats under sixty, and the 58-year-old Wodehouse spent the next eleven months as a civilian prisoner. Conditions were bad, but Wodehouse’s sense of humor got him through.

Internees were rountinely released when they turned sixty, so Wodehouse wasn’t particularly surprised when they let him out three months before his birthday. He didn’t know that the Germans had a plan and that he was a pawn in it.

In the beginning, the plan may have been fairly benign. America was still neutral, and Wodehouse’s American fans were clamboring for new of him. So the German Foreign Office though that it could gain favor with America—and convince it to remain neutral—by having Wodehouse record a series of radio spots broadcast by German radio for an American audience. As part of the plan, they released him early and planted the idea in his mind to use the radio to reassure his American fans.

Wodehouse recorded five innocuous broadcasts about his incarceration, all told with his usual humor. The transcripts certainly don’t portray him as a German sympathiser. In fact, he took some mild shots at the Germans. So if it had ended, as originally planned, with the broadcasts to America, Wodehouse might have been able to return to his normal life after the war.

But it didn’t end there. The German Propaganda Ministry had its own plan, and it broadcast the spots in Britain about a month later. Since they were recorded rather than live, Wodehouse couldn’t stop it. And in the general hysteria surrounding the war, British journalists branded Wodehouse as a traitor.

Those broadcasts haunted Wodehouse for the rest of his life. He was afraid to return to England, where his grandchildren lived, for fear that he would be arrested and tried for treason. And although he was able to see the humor in every other episode in his life, including his time as a civilian prisoner, he never could find anything except sorrow in the events surrounding the broadcasts. He admitted that he had made a mistake broadcasting for German radio, but he died believing that the broadcasts were his idea and that his early release was unrelated to anything except his approaching birthday.

You can read the transcripts for yourself at this link: http://www.pgwodehousesociety.org.uk/wartime.html.

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The photo of Wodehouse was taken around 1904, long before his German radio broadcasts. However, photos from those years are not yet in the public domain.

P.G. Wodehouse: Lyricist

Whenever I hear the name P.G. Wodehouse (pronounced Woodhouse), I think of Bertie Wooster and his butler Jeeves, the protagonists of many Wodehouse novels. Or I think of his other equally humorous books. But I never thought of him as a Broadway lyricist.

Then I started reading P.G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters, edited by Sophie Ratcliffe, and I learned several things that surprised me. One is that Wodehouse wrote book and lyrics for numerous Broadway shows. His most successful musicals were collaborations with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton during the late 19-teens and the early 1920s and include Miss Springtime; Leave It to Jane; O, Boy; and Oh, Lady! Lady! Although his association with Jerome Kern ended in the 1920s, his working relationship with Guy Bolton lasted into the 1950s and their friendship lasted until Wodehouse’s death in 1974.

Wodehouse also worked with the Gershwin brothers (and Guy Bolton) on the successful musical, Rosalie, which was first produced in 1928.

During his Broadway days, Wodehouse continued writing short stories and humorous novels and often had three or four projects going at once. And yet he also found time to exercise daily, to socialize with friends, and to write letter after letter after letter. That’s my kind of work ethic.

Most of the shows Wodehouse worked on are little-known today, and his lyrics have followed them into near-obscurity. His best-known is the song “Bill,” which he wrote for Oh, Lady! Lady! but was cut before the show opened. As was often the case in those days, a song that was cut from one musical might later show up in another, and “Bill” ended up in Show Boat. Oscar Hammerstein II revised the lyrics somewhat, but Hammerstein made sure Wodehouse received credit during the 1946 revival, which occurred while many considered him a traitor.

That’s the subject of next week’s post.

Conventionality or Creativity?

This year I moved up to the advanced photography category at the Lake County Fair and faced much tougher competition than in the past. So I wouldn’t have been surprised to walk away without any ribbons and was gratified to win second place in the Domestic Animals Color class.  But I was surprised at which photo won. That’s because it was my most conventional, and therefore least favorite, entry.

I take photos because I enjoy it, not to win competitions or even for the sake of art. But I do think that creativity should play a role in photography competitions. My biggest disappointment with the judging at the Lake County Fair was that—with some exceptions such as the insect category—the judging seemed to emphasize conventionality over creativity.

The floral category is a good example. The winners were all beautiful pictures, but they were also similar—conventional rather than creative. I don’t have any of those photos, but this one I took years ago is typical of the conventional style.

My entries were more unusual. I’m not saying they should have won. There were other equally distinct entries that were probably worthier of a ribbon than mine. Still, it would have been nice to see creativity win out over conventionality. And just so you can see what I mean by creativity, I have included my entries (color and black & white) below.

Art is in the eye of the beholder, so I can’t really fault the judges.

But I wish they had given more weight to creativity.

Art is in the Eye of the Artist

We’ve all heart the saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That’s also true of art. But I also believe that beauty and art are in the eye of the artist. I look at an alligator and think it’s ugly, but its Creator sees something beautiful.

Not everyone has the same taste, and that’s okay. If you are writing or taking photographs for public consumption, then you should keep your specific audience in mind and try to please it. But the person you have to please the most is yourself.

For the last three years, I’ve entered photographs at the Lake County Fair. The first two years I competed in the beginners’ section. In 2015 I entered four photos, and “Water Under the Bridge” (the photo above), won second place for Scenic Nature B&W. In 2016 I entered seven photos and won third place in the Architecture B&W category for “Boarding School Escape” (the photo below).

This year I entered twelve photos in the advanced section. More about that next week.

As I wander around and look at the other entries, I often wonder, “Why did that one win when I like that one better?” But that’s the wrong question. Part of it is the science—there are breakable “rules” designed to add interest to photographs and draw your eyes to the main focal point. But most of it should be the art, and art—like beauty—is in the eye of the beholder.

It’s interesting that my 2015 and 2016 winners were both black and white, but maybe it’s just that there were fewer entries in those categories. Still, it does take some skill (or art) to know what looks good in black and white and what doesn’t.

Maybe the more important point is that I consider myself best at landscape and architectural photography, and those are the categories for my winning entries from the past two years.

But as long as I’m happy with my art, winning or losing is secondary.