The Irreverent Psychologist: It's Only a Paper Moon

"It's Only A Paper Moon"

It is only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn't be make believe
If you believed in me

Yes, it's only a canvas sky
Hangin' over a muslin tree
But it wouldn't be make believe
If you believed in me

Without your love
It's a honky tonk parade
Without your love
It's a melody played in a penny arcade

It's a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn't be make believe
If you believed in me

Without your love
It's a honky tonk parade
Without your love
It's a melody played in a penny arcade

It's a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn't be make believe
If you believed in me

Images of men on a paper moon keep coming up in my search through vintage images. None of them can be traced back to a specific story, yet all depict a moment of intimacy between men that was witnessed by a camera nearly a century ago. I love them and the hints they give us about the moments people shared together in another era.

No one seems to know where the paper moon came from.

The first reference to a paper moon in a failed Broadway play called The Great Magoo. The song, with music written by Harold Arlen with lyrics by E. Y. Harburg and Billy Rose, was eventually used in the 1933 movie Take A Chance. In World War II the song was reprised by Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole. Since that time scores of artists have remade this jazz standard.

It seems however that by the time Ella and Nat were singing It's Only a Paper Moon, the pictures were already started to disappear. Few pictures of World War II era soldiers can be found with this backdrop. The vast majority of the images seem to come from the 1900s into the 1930s.

Photography became available to the mass market in 1901 when Kodak released the Brownie. Freed from the need to cary around bulky equipment and toxic chemicals, the average person was able to document their experiences in the world for about a dollar (the cost of the first Brownie). In a book called the Artistic Secrets of the Kodak, Austrian architectural critic Joseph August Lux wrote that the inexpensive cameras allowed people to "photograph and document their surroundings and thus produce a type of stability in the ebb and flow of the modern world."

Perhaps the paper moon pictures were an effort to preserve the fleeting moments of joy and pleasure between friends at carnivals, festivals, and parties in turn of the century America?

Perhaps the fascination with the paper moon came from a general sense of awe of the heavens above? In 1910 Halley's Comet made it's pass through our skies. Using the new science of spectroscopy, astronomers analyized the Morehouse Comet in 1908. They identified the presence of poisonous cyanogen gas in the comet's tail. When astronomers calculated that the Earth would pass through the tail of Halley's Comet, there was predictibaly mass hysteria.

The image on the right, selling anti-comet pills, was popular. With some scientists and hucksters predicting that the gas would saturate the skies and kill ever living thing, snake oils were a popular tool for profit and calming fear.

There were also gas masks and comet protecting umbrellas for sale.

Many images of people in the moon prominently feature a shooting star or comet. Perhaps these images were tools for people to discharge their anxieties about the unknown threats from the skies?

The following video offers some examples of photos depicting a moment of friendship between men, captured on the moon. For more examples visit my Pinterest board or follow me on Tumblr.