ABSTRACT
Beginning with the Second World War years of the 1940s and extending through the 1950s, “home” stood for the utopian myth of a coherent, homogeneous popular culture. Road films made in these two decades thus project a different set of values for the road than one finds during the Great Depression or, more dramatically, after Easy Rider (1969). Films from this era equate “America” with popular entertainment, the nation’s traveling showbiz culture that brought “home” to the road, as best exemplified by the USO shows during the war.
