Before The War on Cancer

AbstractThis paper explores how gangsters and cancers came to be metaphors of bodily and social disorder, beginning in a media world dominated by print, radio and film and ending in a world where television had come to displace older forms of mass communication. It is a study of the continuities and discontinuities between concerns about television and earlier forms of mass media, and how they shaped the trajectories of the two metaphors of cancer and the gangster. Indeed, I suggest that in the case of these metaphors, anxieties about whether print, film, and radio were polluting or purifying were later extended and adapted to television, and may have contributed to the different fates of the two metaphors. The metaphor of the gangster as applied to cancer faded from public view in the 1970s, while the metaphor of cancer applied to gangsterism seems to have had a longer life.KEYWORDS: Gangsterscancertelevisionfilmmetaphor AcknowledgementsEarly versions of this paper were presented at two meetings: ‘The Visual Culture of Medicine and its Objects,’ held at the Riggs Library, Georgetown University, 23 September 2014 and ‘Locating Medical Television. The Televisual Spaces of Medicine and Health in the 20th Century,’ held online, 11–13 November 2020. I thank participants at these meetings and Philipp Stiasny, Alex Mold, and the anonymous referee for their helpful comments on later drafts.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Douglas, Purity and Danger.2 For a portrayal of cancer as a sign of the moral corruption of the gangster: Shadoian, Dreams & Dead Ends, 162 and 207.3 Agnew, “Ecologies of Cancer Rhetoric.” See also Bourke, Fear, 300. Aronowitz, Unnatural History, 163.4 This paper has relied on a variety of digital and paper sources to identify the life of the metaphors of cancer and the gangster. Digital sources include various databases of historical newspapers, books, and television programs that allow word searches for variants of ‘gang’ and ‘cancer.’ These have been supplemented with searches in traditional archives, especially those of cancer organizations, and corpuses of cancer educational and gangster films. A full list of these archives and databases is available from the author.5 “Public Enemy Number 2.” “Public Enemy No. 2.” Facts Forum News. 5, no. 12, December 1956: 14–15 and 44–6. “Public Enemy Number 1.” Rock Island Lines News Digest. 7, no. 4, April 1948: 10. “The Scratchpad Man.” “Zanesville Fights Cancer.” The Rotarian, 73, no. 5, November 1948: 32–3, 32.6 Exceptions prior to 1930 include Edwin Newdick, “The Gang Factories.” New York Tribune, August 31, 1913: B1–B2 at B2; Hadley, Sinister Shadows, 321. McKinley, Crime and the Civic Cancer. For the post-1930s see: W.A.S. Douglas, “Chicago Crime Parley Called by Civic Group.” Baltimore Sun, June 15, 1930: 1.; “Russell’s Fate Up to ‘Big 4’.” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 15, 1930: 1 and 10, 10; “Dinner Honors Union Chieftain. Predicts Labor Will Rid itself of Gang Cancer.” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 17, 1940: 5; “Mayor Leads Drive to Rid City of Gangs That Prey on Trade.” New York Times, June 26, 1931: 1 and 4 at 4; “Federal Men Get Results.” New York Times, August 23, 1931: 2.7 Osgood Nichols, “Sleuths Track Their Man.” Washington Post, September 16, 1934: SM5 and SM18 at SM5.8 “Hitler and Stalin Likened to Capone and Pendergast.” Los Angeles Times. November 3, 1939: 3. See also Hadley, Sinister Shadows, 321.9 “Charges Cancer Body Gangster.” Spokane Daily Chronicle, November 16, 1931: 7.10 Powers, G-Men.11 Sklar, City Boys, 8.12 “Intelligence”; “Is Cancer Education Effective?”; Bluestone, “Importance of Cancer Education”; Lakeman, “Cancer Education”; Little, “How to Educate Women”; Rigney, “Does Medical Publicity Work.”13 Muriel Fleming, “Demonstration Health Talk.” The Ministry 17, no. 1, January 1944: 32–3. “Cancer, ‘Gangster’ of Disease, Can Be Cured, Is Message.” Milwaukee News-Sentinel, 13, April 1941: 10-A; Time Is Life; Battle Against Cancer. On films see Cantor, “Choosing to Live.”14 Ruth, Inventing the Public Enemy, 2–3.15 Isaac F. Marcosson, “Cancer the Fifth Column Disease.” New Yorker 16, no. 2, 1940: 9.16 Adair, “Science Mobilizes,” 678.17 Novak, “Cancer,” 820.18 Clarence C. Little, “Milking the Public. A General of the Cancer Fighters Answers the March Article on Milk.” Coronet Magazine, May 2, 1937: 23–9 at 23.19 Proctor, Cancer Wars.20 Marcosson, “Cancer the Fifth Column Disease,” 9.21 Mrs. John F. Tims, Jr., in Mobilization of World's Cancer Experts, 112.22 Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes, 144.23 Krahn, Educational Film Guide, 425. For the uses of the “Traitor Within” metaphor see Woglom, “Critique of Tumor Resistance,” 284; and National Broadcasting Company, The Traitor Within.24 Hazam, “Stop that Gangster,” 5.25 Martinez, Man in Nature, 45.26 Ibid., 299.27 Cantor, “Before Survivorship”; Cantor, “Choosing to Live.”28 Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage; Graebner, Coming of Age in Buffalo.29 Alton L. Blakeslee, “Story of Cancer Fight Told in Biological ‘Gangster’ Film.” Oakland Tribune. April 2, 1950: 22-A.30 Pickett, “Where Do We Stand with Cancer?” 22.31 Spencer, “The Problems,” 509.32 Spencer, “Meaning of Cancer Research,” 1362. See also Johnson, Facing the Facts, 6.33 “Color TV Destroys Reading Like Cancer Wastes a Body.” Lincoln Journal Star (Nebraska), December 29, 1975: 9.34 United States. Congress. Senate. 83rd Congress, A368–9 at A369. More generally on Italian American responses to the ethnic portrayal of gangsters see Bernstein, Greatest Menace.35 Kefauver, Crime in America, 2.36 Boddy, “Approaching ‘The Untouchables’”; Vahimagi, The Untouchables; Wilson, “Gang Busters”; Bernstein, The Greatest Menace, 61–83.37 American Cancer Society, Annual Report 1950, 15.38 On The Traitor Within, 1946 see “Philadelphia Cancer Television Programs.” Cancer News, May 1947: 12. “Cancer Movie Televised Recently in Chicago by AMA and Illinois Group.” Cancer News, February 1948: 11; “How to Tell Neighbors.” For other television plays see “Volunteer Actors … ” “‘Variety’”; American Cancer Society, Annual Report 1956, 27; “Cancer Quackery.” Signals. [ACS] Public Education Newsletter. 1, no. 1. August 1957: 4; “The Charlatan.” Signals. [ACS] Public Education Newsletter, 1, no. 1. August 1957: 4.39 Emil Corwin, “Tactic.” Cancer News 13, no. 3, Summer 1959: 9–12.40 “Television ‘Eyes’.”41 “Radio and TV Material.”42 The Man on the Other Side of the Desk.43 Combating Heart Disease, 255.44 Bernstein, Greatest Menace; Allsop, The Bootleggers, 379.45 James W. Barton, “How Breast Cancer Spreads.” The News (Newport, R. I.), January 31, 1956: 13.46 Davenport and Lloyd, How Public Policy Became War.47 For an introduction to the vast literature on The Godfather see Browne, Francis Ford Coppola’s.48 Howell, History of Street Gangs.Additional informationNotes on contributorsDavid CantorDavid Cantor, Centro de Investigaciones Sociales (CIS), Instituto de Desarrollo Económico y Social (IDES), Aráoz 2838, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires C1425 DGT, Argentina; School of Public Health, University of Maryland, 4200 Valley Drive, Suite 2242, College Park, MD 20742-2611, USA. E-mail: djcantor@hotmail.com