The Fleet's In

In 1934, at the age of 29, [Paul Cadmus] painted The Fleet's In! while working for the Public Works of Art Project of the WPA. This painting, which featured carousing sailors and women, included a stereotypical homosexual solicitation and erotic exaggeration of clinging pants seats and bulging crotches. It was the subject of a public outcry led by Admiral Hugh Rodman, who protested to Secretary of the Navy Claude A. Swanson, saying, "It represents a most disgraceful, sordid, disreputable, drunken brawl."[4] Secretary Swanson stated that the painting was "right artistic" but "not true to the Navy." The painting was removed from exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery by Henry L. Roosevelt, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy at the time, and kept in his home until Roosevelt's death in 1936. The publicity helped to launch Cadmus’s career, and he stated at the time, "I had no intention of offending the Navy. Sailors are no worse than anybody else. In my picture I merely commented on them – I didn't criticize." The painting, which after Roosevelt's death hung over a mantel at the Alibi Club in Washington for more than half a century, was kept from public view until 1981, temporarily displayed at the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami, and eventually found a home at the Naval Historical Center. -- Wikipedia

The photo below of Paul Cadmus appeared in the Roanoke Rapids North Carolina Herald in May of 1934, in an article entitled "Painting Rejected." Read the article here.



The painting shows sailors cavorting with floozies.



and a stereotyped homosexual man offering a cigarette to a sailor and …





A scandalized by-stander and her dog.