You might not expect America’s largest veterans organization to be a steadfast purveyor of pranks and gags fit for April Fools’ Day. But the annual convention of the American Legion was once as much a testing ground for practical jokes as it was a venue for serious conversation.
The 1947 meeting was held in New York City, five years after the organization, founded following WWI, voted to expand membership to WWII veterans. Knowing that the group had great clout, high-ranking military officials and politicians—senators, governors, even General Eisenhower himself—scrambled to get in front of the 41,000 members of the New York chapter.
But before the stumping began, shenanigans ruled the day. Pedestrians passed convention-goers at the risk of running into a dangling dead fish or getting drenched by squirt guns. They may not have been wildly inventive or carefully orchestrated, but the veterans seemed to accept tomfoolery as their solemn duty, even the least committed of them, as LIFE wrote, “carrying on the ancient horseplay … because it was expected of them.”
Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.
Caption from LIFE. Dead fish, dangled over crowd by humorist, wafts aromatically past spectator. Leonard McCombe—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Trapped girl screams in protest as she receives a squirting at close range.Leonard McCombe—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Subtle humorist accosts passerby with a glass of beer and a chamber pot.Leonard McCombe—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Paunch pinched, the biggest member, Doug Roos, takes snapshot from jeep.Leonard McCombe—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Unsuspecting victim gives photographer a motherly smile while the athletic officer of the Perth Amboy, N.J. Legion post sneaks up on her with a loaded squirt gun.Leonard McCombe—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Stalked by a band of legionnaires happily firing grease guns filled with water, an unhappy pedestrian hops down Broadway. Most satisfying targets for the squirt-gun squares were girls who wore leg make-up.Leonard McCombe—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Lady bugler sees little of what goes on. Jokers kept pulling her shako down.Leonard McCombe—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Chaplain, who has been using squirt gun, gets eyeful from another legionnaire.Leonard McCombe—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Visitor from Paris where Legion was founded, is bug-eyed at antics.Leonard McCombe—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Aboard a bucking steed rearing in the air some 40's-and 8'ers from Lawerenceburg, Ind. parade happily down New York City's Eighth Avenue.Leonard McCombe—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
