The first-class public room nearest the stern on the promenade deck was the movie theater. By placing the large room at the rear, Gibbs & Cox eliminated the typical specialty restaurant or outdoor café that held this space on older ships. Conferring with interior architects Eggers & Higgins, Gibbs concluded that American travelers would much rather watch first-run movies than have another sitting area. It was meant to be the finest cinema afloat: “Since the ship is expected to carry many stage and screen stars, as well as discriminating patrons of the arts, between Europe and America,” a shipyard agent asserted, “all theater equipment and accoutrements were chosen to rival the finest motion picture installations in any of the world’s large metropolitan centers.”26 Unlike makeshift cinemas aboard other liners, the space was as close as possible to its land-based equivalents: a sloping floor for better viewing, two aisles, and the best audio and visual equipment then available. As on Normandie, United States’ theater had a stage for lectures and modest live performances.
The first-class dining room on A Deck (four decks below the other large first-class public rooms) was also placed near the ship’s center of gravity to minimize motion. Vast in size, it spanned the full width of the ship. But as with the other public rooms, Marckwald wanted to make sure that the room remained spacious, airy, and welcoming rather than cluttering it up with ornamentation. The vaulted center section was two decks in height, but because of Navy structural requirements, the remainder of the space would still look chopped-up compared to first-class dining rooms aboard older liners. The room’s stanchions, pillars, and size restrictions limited seating capacity to about four hundred, which meant that the 894 first-class passengers would have to dine in two sittings, grouped in tables for two, four, six, and eight diners. Having two meal seatings was a major drawback compared to the Queen s, which could accommodate all their first-class passengers at once, allowing them to dine at their leisure.
Marckwald also made the room seem as spacious as possible by using bright and cheery colors. She accentuated the space with simplified classical cornices, and called for lots of indirect lighting, especially in the ceiling. There were no chandeliers or traditional sconces. The plush chairs would be upholstered in vibrant red fabric that complemented the oyster-colored walls and snow-white table linens, while the curtains were woven out of Dynel fabric and threads of real silver and gold. Spotlights were nestled in the corners and cornices, as well as below the sculptures, to bring them into relief.27 As on America, a musicians’ gallery was placed on the second level so that a Meyer Davis Orchestra could serenade passengers during dinner with light classics and popular show tunes.
First-class dining rooms also tended to have a large central decorative element that loomed over the captain’s table. On Normandie, it was a towering, gilded statue of Peace (La Paix). On Queen Mary, it was a great Art Deco mural depicting the Atlantic Ocean, in which a miniature model of the ship would trace the vessel’s actual progress along her route. Marckwald was determined to have such a work of art as the visual focus of the first-class dining room. She asked sculptress Gwen Lux to produce a piece that would be hung at the forward end of the room. Lux’s creation, titled Expressions of Freedom, would consist of four stylized figures representing the “Four Freedoms.” Each figure would stand just over four feet high. If cast in plaster, each figure would weigh about two hundred pounds.
William Francis Gibbs ordered her to find something lighter.
Lux proposed to mold her four figures out of “foam glass.” Consisting of crushed glass bound together by carbon or limestone, the material was most commonly used as thermal insulation or a cork substitute, not a sculpture medium. Lux promised that her sculpture would be not only fireproof, but also extremely lightweight, with each figure weighing only forty pounds. They were so light, in fact, they could float. Lux also produced forty-eight foam glass state seals that would be placed around the perimeter of the dining room.28
First-class staterooms were spread out on the sun, upper, and main decks. Out of 1,962 total passenger berths, first class would get almost half: 894. General Franklin hoped these top-tier berths would be popular with the wealthy: movie stars, socialites, business tycoons, and European royalty. The postwar boom and the depletion of first-class berths during the war led Franklin and Frederic Gibbs to predict that there would be more than enough people who lived on New York’s Park Avenue, Philadelphia’s Main Line, and Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive willing to pay $585 per person (equal to about $4,800 in 2012) for a standard, outside first-class cabin with a tub bath and trunk room during the 1952 peak summer season. First-class fares began at $370 for a basic inside stateroom, and a two-bedroom special suite went for $930 and up.
Although restrained in décor, the first-class cabins were extremely spacious compared to those in older ships—the largest double stateroom boasted 364 square feet of living space.29 The wall treatments were light in color, usually cream or sky blue. Patterned and brightly colored curtains and bedspreads would give an airy cheeriness to the simple wall treatment and glass-and-aluminum furniture. Sleek aluminum lamps and sconces gave the staterooms a warm, yellow glow by night. In addition to individually controlled thermostats, electricians placed dimmers in each of the cabins—another touch of luxury unheard-of aboard other liners.
To please the ship’s wealthiest passengers, Marckwald came up with special decorative schemes for fourteen first-class suites on the upper and main decks. The largest of them consisted of two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and an extremely large sitting room. The suites were so spacious that a reclusive millionaire could spend an entire five-day crossing in comfort, privately entertaining a select group of friends without having to set foot in any of the public rooms. A bellboy could deliver full meals, direct from the first-class kitchen, at a moment’s notice.30
Yet compared to older ships, the suites aboard United States were relatively simple in layout, a concession to a more informal, American way of postwar living. This attitude was reflected in the names of the suites, which came from the American natural and nautical decorative motifs Marckwald had woven into the bedspreads, draperies, and upholstery: the “Seashell Suite,” the “Butterfly Suite,” the “Tree Suite,” and most exquisite of all, the “Duck Suite.”
Like most transatlantic liners of her time, United States had no outdoor pool—the indoor one was located deep in the stern section of the vessel and used by first- and cabin-class passengers at different times of the day. Those wanting to use the pool would take an elevator down to C Deck. The pool was not overly large, but the walls were decorated cheerfully by J. Scott Williams, who created enamel signal flags that spelled out “Come on in, the water’s fine!” The pool itself was constructed of monel, a corrosion-resistant nickel alloy used for the spike of New York’s Chrysler Building. A good-sized gymnasium, complete with stationary bicycles, punching bags, and weights, was located a deck above.