Content note: Cartoon strip with a partly dressed dancer and a hospital patient drawn with exaggerated features. This object is shown as it was published. Why
It's worth repeating: Really, you shouldn't!
Six-panel comic strip for sailors: a woman drops a handkerchief, a sailor follows her past a nightclub and a $1 rooms sign while onlookers whisper 'Really, you shouldn't!', and the last panel shows him in a hospital bed under a medical officer's pointing finger. The fear-appeal tell is the final hospital panel with a falling chart.
Propaganda techniques used in this poster
- Date
- 1944
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- U.S. Navy, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (artist Gene Hazelton)
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- Military
- Regime
- Roosevelt Administration
- Leader
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Audience
- Own forces
- Purpose
- Warn or inform
- Themes
- Health, War and the military
- Event
- World War II
- Regime
- Roosevelt administration
- Leader
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, retrieved October 4, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (U.S. government work)
U.S. Navy, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-1135 (NAID 514662).
Text on the object
IT'S WORTH REPEATING REALLY, YOU SHOULDN'T! REALLY - YOU SHOULDN'T ! REALLY - YOU SHOULDN'T ! ROOMS $1.00 a Night P-S-S-S-T-- REALLY YOU SHOULDN'T !! REALLY, YOU SHOULDN'T! I GUESS - I REALLY SHOULDN'T !!! [signature: GENE HAZELTON] NAVMED VP-6 Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, United States Navy [imprint: U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1944—O—568270] Prepared in cooperation with the Fleet Service Schools, United States Naval Repair Base, San Diego, Calif.
