Rosie the Riveter's Sisters In D.C.

Florence Orbach remembers hunkering down in her bathtub in her one-room efficiency on U Street in Northwest Washington during World War II. She wasn't worried about German bombs. She had a roommate problem.

"She turned out to be a pathological liar and a nymphomaniac," says Orbach, now 81. "I ended up having to sleep in the bathtub when she'd bring a sailor home. It was a little bit crazy."

Orbach, a Silver Spring resident, whose maiden name was Simon, is one of several women featured in "Government Girls of World War II," a locally made documentary about the women who flocked to Washington from towns big and small, to help in the war effort. The film premieres today at the Museum of the City of Washington and will air on WETA on July 1.

Working in steno pools, factories and at top-secret decoding assignments, these women answered the call to fill jobs during the war. Those years in Washington helped inspire a revolution. Before the war, about 22 percent of women worked outside the home, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today, the figure stands at 56 percent.

"They were sort of the first wave of women who entered the workforce in numbers and made things possible for women like me, and women younger than me, to have economic opportunity they would not have otherwise had," says Leslie Sewell, 61, who produced the 60-minute film for about $150,000.

It is Sewell's first documentary, two years in the making. She previously worked 15 years as a producer for "NBC Nightly News" and before that as the Washington bureau chief for National Public Radio.

"I like to do stories about people whose stories don't get told that often," she says. "When I was at NBC covering Congress, I'd done a lot of pieces on politicians, people whose stuff gets told all the time."

The film mixes talking heads with archival footage showing women working, dancing with servicemen and shopping downtown. "They walked four abreast in the streets," a narrator in the film says, reading from a 1942 New York Times article. "They chatter like magpies in the streetcars and buses. Most of them smoke cigarettes, lots of them like a cocktail. They like their jobs."

The film recounts what it was like for women living with several roommates and paying about $40 a month rent. Nearly 10,000 were housed in 10 buildings on the 104-acre Arlington Farms complex near the Pentagon, nicknamed "Girl Town."

The "government girls" altered the workplace and opened doors, changing the social fiber of America, the film argues. But as grateful as the country was for their efforts in the war, some men felt threatened.

"It's okay now, but what about after the war," one man laments on camera. "The woman will have all the jobs."

For many of the women, Washington was an eye opener, full of life and opportunity; but it had its downside.

"I discovered the ugly side of Washington," Orbach says. She was particularly struck by the way blacks were treated at People's drugstores in downtown Washington.

Orbach, who is white, says, "People's was not very nice to people. What they had was a long counter. White people could sit on the stools, and up to a point, then the stools disappeared and the black people had to stand and order the food or stand and eat there. I thought, 'That's horrible.' "