Vintage Exercises of the 1940s and 50s

Note: Please consult your physician or medical professional before attempting any of the exercises or vintage advice found below. This article is for informational purposes only.  

Vintage Exercise

I’m so excited to share this article with you today!  I’ve spent the last several years studying the exercise regimes performed by old Hollywood actresses and American housewives alike, and acquired a large collection of rare, mid-century books and magazines on the subject.  As a child, I grew up in rigorous ballet training for many years. As a result, I’ve had a life-long fascination with exercise, movement, and stretching, and have practiced a wide range of exercise methods in adulthood.  I am not a professional by any means, but I’ve had enough experience over the last 25 years to have a well-rounded perspective on the subject. So let’s get started!

Exercise terminology has changed a bit since the 1940s, so here are a few phrases I’ve translated into 21st century jargon:

“Setting Up” Exercise = Toning, Firming Exercises

“Reduce” = To lose weight, To diet for the purpose of losing weight

“Limber Up” = To Warm Up, Loosen Up

Vintage Exercise & Calorie Philosophy

To really start our journey back to the mid-century American home, we should first understand that people in the 40s and 50s saw exercise quite differently than we do today.  Today it is assumed that the only way to keep from putting on weight is to workout on a regular basis. For many people I know, their daily trek to the gym to lift weights is as much a part of their day as eating breakfast! It is almost incomprehensible to some that one could not have a gym membership and yet be perfectly healthy and fit.

But wind the clock back seventy years, and you will find statements such as these popping out of beauty books and television shows:

“If you are overweight, you are overeating. Exercise alone will not make you lose, but it tightens and tones your muscles and can change proportions of your figure.” – Anita Colby’s Beauty Book (1952)

“Exercise is fine. It’s very important, but it’s not enough.  It’s the calories that count.” The Donna Reed Show – Season 3, Episode 15 – “The Lean & Hungry Look”

This ideology could be harmful, of course, if overdone.  I am not advocating the idea, but rather explaining the cultural norms so we can understand why their exercises were so much easier than ours today.

Active Lifestyles

It goes without saying that folks in the 1940s and 50s were much more active than we are.  Children may have walked to school, Mom walked to the local shops and markets on her errands, and kids walked to each other’s houses to play.  If a family had a car, it was likely only one – and Dad almost certainly drove it to work.

“Mrs. 1950s Housewife” also burned a large number of calories doing her housework. In 1955, it was estimated that, “The average American woman takes about 15,000 steps every day just keeping house…” (Mrs. America Homemaker’s Guide). That comes out to a whopping 5.5 miles each day, just from housework!

Fresh Air, & Exercise as a Recreation

In addition, people were also much more used to fresh air than we are today.  Kids couldn’t wait till it was spring so they could spend hours flying kites, playing ball, roller skating, jumping rope, and chasing each other outside.  It was what they did for fun, prior to having video games and other modern distractions.

Women often hung their clothes to dry outside in the breeze as most families did not have an automatic dryer by 1950.  And even though they had so many responsibilities, they were still encouraged in beauty books to take up a sport for fun – tennis, biking, etc.  Being outside and walking to the market or dry cleaner’s would have been a welcome change from the daily routine of indoor housework, assuming the weather was pleasant.  It was also much more common in the 1950s to “go dancing” as adults at a respectable formal dance, and teenagers frequently held dance parties in their living rooms.  All the while they were burning calories.

Old Fashioned Exercise Routines

Since we’ve adequately looked at the active lifestyles of the efficient women from the 40s and 50s, we now come to the point of the exercise routines they performed.  (Yes, most of them *did* do specific stretches and movements to “set up” or tone certain areas.)  These exercises are not particularly difficult on their own. But if performed with proper muscle activation every day, they certainly would have made a difference over time.  The stretches shown in the video below are not at all unlike ballet warmups today, though the girls who performed them had rather poor, “floppy” form.

 

 

 

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A post shared by Edelweiss Patterns (@edelweisspatterns) on Mar 8, 2018 at 8:49am PSTb

Vintage Beauty Books

I have a number of publications which all show their own version of a remarkably similar workout routine for women. The pattern is as follows –

1. Begin with stretches reaching up as high as you can, and then touching the ground.
2. “Limber up” your whole body & you’re ready to begin with spot reducing exercises.
3. Choose specific areas to target for your individual figure, depending on whether you want to add or “reduce” inches.  The target areas include waist, hips, legs, knees, chest, and upper arms.

So let’s take a look at a sample workout from each publication! 

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“101 Hints for a Glamorous Figure ” (Wartime Abridged Edition of the Home Health Library, 1945)

“The time of day selected for your exercise is a matter that should be determined according to the hour at which you seem to secure the greatest pleasure and benefit from it…”

Joan Leslie’s Exericse Hints

Here is actress Joan Leslie (a favorite of mine for her role in the 1941 Sergeant York), demonstrating several stretches which are actually harder to perform than they appear at first glance.

“Anita Colby’s Beauty Book” -1952

Anita Colby was a famous model, author, and early television host who also had charge of Paramount Studio’s new talent in the 1940s. When young actresses would join the studio, it was Anita’s job to ensure that they were getting a healthy diet, customized beauty advice, and plenty of exercise. In 1952 she wrote this manual for the average American woman, sharing with them the techniques used by actresses to stay healthy and trim on set and off.

“If we could just learn and keep – KEEP EVERY MINUTE – correct posture, that would be the finest physical culturing we could do. So many of the best Hollywood actresses have only a few exercises to tone up muscles and distribute weight.”  “Do [your exercises] every day – only 10 minutes for all of them, but be faithful about it.”

“Westmore Beauty Book” – 1956

“Start your exercise period as a ten-minute session.  Work up to 30 minutes – no longer. When you are tired, stop and rest, then continue.”

The Debbie Drake Show

But if a woman grew weary of exercising on her own, there were a number of radio and television programs for just this reason! One such was the popular weekday “Debbie Drake Show“.  Debbie’s exercises were most akin to Pilates by today’s standards, but if done properly they could definitely work your ab muscles and slim down the hips and legs over time. In addition to this show, she also created exercise records to be played on the record player.  At first glance Miss Drake appeared to be a bit underweight to me, but she claimed to have eaten an average of 1,500 – 1,800 calories a day while appearing as a guest on the show “To Tell the Truth” in 1960.  So she may have just had a naturally tall & lean figure. You can see a surviving video of her television exercise program here on Youtube. 

Weights and Exercise Equipment

Of course, there were some alternate forms of exercise besides what we’ve discussed above.  Women lifting weights was still a fairly new concept in the 40s and 50s, and most ladies would not have done so on a regular basis.  They did occasionally use light dumbbells (4 lbs. each) to increase the effectiveness of a targeted stretch they were performing, but not with the goal of actually lifting a specific weight. (Below, from the Westmore Beauty Book.)

Other popular equipment of the day included rowing machines, stretching bands, ankle weights, and more.  The Healthways Corporation was a large proponent of such paraphanelia, as was Jack LaLanne who was an early pioneer of the fitness movement.  The Sears catalog sold home workout options as well.

Nothing New Under the Sun

There were, as in any decade, some slightly ridiculous contraptions and pills that promised to take inches off your figure.  The “Slenderella” chain of salons claimed you could lose inches by simply relaxing on their electronic rotating beds, while Aids sold “vitamins” to speed up the reducing process.  In recent years, the internet has had a grand time mocking some surviving machines that were supposed to slim you down by using a moving belt to “melt” away fat. Treadmill-like in appearance, they probably did little except perhaps improve circulation.  No time period seems to be without these silly marketing concepts, and we certainly have far too many of our own “miracle” pills, weight loss shakes, and questionable supplements on the market today to look back on the 1950s and say we’ve outgrown the propensity to fall for anything that might help us “reduce”! 😉

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But I sometimes wonder, when I’m driving by a gym full of stressed and tired people, if we could learn something from our grandparent’s generation when it comes to common sense, good food, and exercise…  If maybe by slowing down, eating well-planned nutritious meals, and being fonder of fresh air and the great outdoors, we might find that our bodies were just waiting for us to stop pushing them to the limit.  If riding your bike for the sheer fun of it on a sunny Saturday afternoon wouldn’t do more good for body and soul than straining through that sweaty indoor spin class complete with blaring music and chanting instructors. Humanity existed for thousands of years with such philosophies – active lifestyle, healthy food, and moderate exercise.  While our modern age has given us more fitness expectations than ever, the corresponding stressful & unhealthy lifestyles have led to worse health than we’ve had in decades. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this jaunt into the days of vintage workouts, and I hope you’ll join me next week as I share some vintage articles specifically about 1950s post-partum exercise!

Till next time,

Katrina Holte

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