Ready for V-Day?

A blizzard of confetti, ticker tape and torn newspapers fell dizzily through the afternoon sun into Manhattan’s Rockefeller Plaza. The crowd wept happily.

They cheered all speakers impartially; they laughed, jumped up & down, fluttered the Tricolor and the Cross of Lorraine.

The Metropolitan Opera’s tiny Lily Pons, in her U.S.O. overseas uniform, stood up with clenched fists and sang the Marseillaise. The crowd that heard her was motley but united on one thing: cheers for Paris. Paris was free.

It did not matter much that an over-zealous press last week flashed the news prematurely by some 48 hours.* The U.S. had been tensely waiting the good word too long to care. Even Washington, whose normal reaction to a victory is a stern lecture on overoptimism, caught the mood.

Said Franklin Roosevelt: “Joy . . . entered . . . hearts.” General John J. Pershing reminisced on: “. . . the heart of France.” Correct old Cordell Hull unbended to sum up: “Heartening. . . .”

All the U.S. felt it. Radio dance orchestras announced as many tunes as possible by French titles (Parlez Moi d’Amour). Manhattan’s Hildegarde, a songstress who worked in Paris cafes in the ‘303 went on plugging the sentimental melody which she had helped to make No. 1 on the Hit Parade: I’ll Be Seeing You (in “all the old familiar places” of Paris, the lyrics imply). Milliner Lilli Dache (whose newest creation is a hat composed of a single pink garter) and Dressmaker Hattie Carnegie announced they would take the first possible boat to Paris. In San Francisco, Department Storekeeper Paul Verdier closed his doors and broke out champagne for his 600 employes. In Hollywood, husky-voiced Tallulah Bankhead, who had vowed not to take a drink until complete Allied victory, was rumored to have fallen off the wagon at an Elsa Maxwell Paris celebration party.

Portland to Pottsville. The fall of Paris gave another puff to the giant balloon of U.S. optimism. The cheering over Paris was the merest rehearsal for the most important date now on U.S. minds: the day Germany gives up. From Hollywood to Manhattan, U.S. communities were perfecting solemn, nervous or frivolous plans for V-day—and almost all city & state officials seemed to be going ahead on the assumption that the citizenry would get roaring drunk. Many citizens, suspecting that the officials might be right, were laying away extra quarts of blended spirits.

Merchants in big, medium-sized and small cities have made plans for closing their stores on V-day. V-day instructions are either complete or imminent in Manhattan, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, Kansas City, Dallas, Helena, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Des Moines, Portland, Richmond, Indianapolis, Detroit, etc., etc.

Mayor Claude A. Lord of Pottsville, Pa. (pop. 24,530) boasted of the “first comprehensive plan for Victory Day.” Sample: “The signal is the ringing of all church bells and the tying down of whistles and sirens for a continuous signal.. . . Plans have been made by the Mayor to start a big parade. . . . This will act as an outlet for people’s enthusiasm . . .”

Georgia will close all State liquor stores, not only on V-day, but for two days thereafter. In Raleigh, N.C., the Allied

Temperance Forces have stuffed mailboxes with an appeal: “Many people have the notion that the best way to demonstrate is to get ‘tight’. . .. . Will we and our children in years to come look back on the celebration with pride or disgust. . .?” In Denver, where the happy-go-lucky Western tradition will not force saloons to close, Joe Hindeck, owner of Sloppy Joe’s, thinks he will stay open.

A Manhattan flag manufacturer has despaired of filling all his back orders for

V-day parade flags. Recalling 1918, when a few excited office boys threw bonds out of skyscraper windows, Wall Street advised all “responsible executives” to grab the cash and securities and lock the safe when the bells start ringing. Milwaukee beauty-parlor operators have been asked to stick with their customers until they are fit to appear on the street.

In Santa Fe, James Gervos ran a newspaper ad: $10 will be awarded to the first newsboy to reach him with the Santa Fe New Mexican announcing the fall of Germany. And in Idaho, the Farragut Naval Training Center News vowed: “Every woman in Coeur d’Alene, Spokane, Sandpoint and intervening points between the ages of ten and 90 not under armed guard will be kissed by sailors before sunset.”

*LIFE Photographer Frank Scherschel cabled his office: “Paris was liberated on the radio [yes terday] but whoever liberated it forgot to tell the German anti-aircraft batteries. I flew over with Lightnings at 6 p.m. and we had heavy flak. We postponed our flight around the Eiffel Tower.”