Be smart, act dumb! is a 1942 loose-talk poster drawn by O. Soglow and distributed by the British and American Ambulance Corps, Inc., of New York to raise money for ambulances. A blank-faced man in hat and bow tie stands between two huge scowling profiles with oversized ears (NAID 513932).
The joke
The poster works like a cartoon. The archive describes a man with an empty expression, in a hat and a bow tie, squeezed between two oversized profile caricatures of enemy figures who lean in, scowling, with very large ears. Yellow bands carry the second line. The advice is to look as if you know nothing.
BE SMART
ACT DUMB!
LOOSE TALK
CAN COST LIVES
[signature:] O. SOGLOW
[imprint:] ©1942
[imprint:] DISTRIBUTED IN THE INTEREST OF NATIONAL DEFENSE, AND AS A MEANS OF OBTAINING FUNDS FOR AMBULANCES WHEREVER NEEDED. BRITISH AND AMERICAN AMBULANCE CORPS, INC., 420 LEXINGTON AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY
[imprint:] LITHO. IN U.S.A.
A charity's poster
No government office is named. The imprint says the sheet was "DISTRIBUTED IN THE INTEREST OF NATIONAL DEFENSE" and also to raise money for ambulances, by the British and American Ambulance Corps, Inc., at 420 Lexington Avenue in New York. The record calls the issuer an NGO and the purpose "Warn or inform." Its rights line reads "Public domain (U.S. government work)," which does not match a privately printed sheet with a 1942 copyright mark; this page reports the line as recorded. The National Archives keeps the copy in Record Group 44.
The archive holds several more loose-talk sheets from the same corps. Most are by other artists, among them C. C. Beall, William Steig and Adolph Treidler; Soglow also drew "Button your lip!" for the series. This page covers "Be smart, act dumb!" alone.
Silence as a skill
The archive files the poster as a fear appeal: the ears are listening, and the cost is counted in lives. Humor softens it. The enemy figures are drawn as grotesques, but the man in the middle is the one the viewer is meant to copy, and he is safe because he looks blank.
As advice, "act dumb" is narrow. It asks a person to keep his own counsel, which any citizen can choose to do, and it does not ask him to report his neighbors. What it shares with the rest of the genre is a cost that is asserted, not shown. The poster gives no example of a word that cost a life.
Compare the House of Seagram's loose lips sheet, also privately printed in 1942, Koerner's Someone Talked!, and the OWI's A Careless Word... A Needless Sinking, which paints the cost as a lifeboat.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Be smart, act dumb! Loose talk can cost lives, 1942. British and American Ambulance Corps, Inc. (artist O. Soglow). Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-462, NAID 513932, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.
