Trivia Answers - Women in Men's Jammies

I'm impressed by how you folks notice the little things, and especially to our Caftan Woman, who certainly knows her PJs like nobody's business.  The answers to Monday's pictorial trivia are:

A - Jean Arthur, checking herself out in the full-length mirror as Ronald Colman watches.  They're his pajamas, and this is "The Talk of the Town" (1942).

B - Alexis Smith donning Bing Crosby's pajamas for a wrestling lesson in "Here Comes the Groom" (1951).  We talked about this movie a few weeks ago, and that's when the idea for this stupid trivia post occurred to me.

C - Patricia Ellis, wearing Oliver Hardy's jammies, but still maintaining her lady-like demeanor by not taking off her hat, in "The Block-Heads" (1938).  I have to hand it to you here, Caftan Woman, I thought this would be a difficult one.

D - Finally, we have Claudette Colbert in Clark Gable's pajamas from "It Happened One Night" (1934).  She's off to use the showers "and things".

What's a Rich Girl to Do? - prelude

For the next couple of posts, beginning on Thursday and concluding next Monday, we’ll be discussing a peculiar predicament of wealthy women in the movies. They are either married for their money, or murdered for the same.

Since most of us don’t have to worry about these extra burdens of extreme inherited wealth, this scenario is one of fantasy, as fanciful as the “madcap heiresses” whose lives were also impossible to identify with, but who we might accept more affably as equals simply because they were so fun and so goofy.

What happened to those other rich girls, the freewheeling spoiled brats who charmed us with their irresponsibility? The wonderful Carole Lombard in “My Man Godfrey” (1936) or Claudette Colbert in “It Happened One Night” (1934), those two madcap heiresses with moxie whose silliness got us through the hard knock life of the Great Depression, they are gone.

They grew up, and grew serious, or perhaps we shrugged them off when we finally learned the value of money ourselves, now that we had a little, in the post-War years. The films we’ll use to examine the plight of the rich girl who is pursued for her fortune are “The Heiress” (1949) and “Invitation” (1952), and both give us an interesting twist on the empowerment of women, both economically and emotionally, who are otherwise vulnerable in mirror reflections of society one hundred years apart.

Then we’ll examine the rich wives whom their husbands intend to murder with the films “Dial M for Murder” (1954) and its remake “A Perfect Murder” (1998). Though usually for purposes of this blog, anything that happened after 1960 didn’t happen, a brief foray into the 1990s will make an interesting contrast to show what has changed in film audiences' expectations for rich girls in the decades between then and now.

Some things, clearly, have not changed much for the rich girl. In the post-war tradition of the movies, she’s still a meal ticket, dead or alive.

Hollywood Sets the Trend

Hollywood reflecting the fashion of its day or inspiring the fashion of its day is rather like a chicken/egg scenario. It’s sometimes difficult to know what came first.

In some cases, Hollywood ruled the day, as in the famous “It Happened One Night” (1932) example where Clark Gable removed his shirt when undressing for bed and ta-daa! Gasp! He wasn’t wearing an undershirt! Manufacturers and retailers of men’s underwear shuddered as sales dropped for undershirts.



We can also point to Sonja Henie and her fabulous white skates. White boots for girls’ figure skates is so standard now that we may forget that when ice skates made that first amazing transformation from just the kind you clamp onto your shoe to the kind that has its own built-in boot, they were all brown or black no matter if the skate was for a male or a female. Sonja Henie’s white skates, her trademark, changed the industry and fashion for skates.



Women’s pants were made acceptable by the Hollywood stars which adopted them in private life, even if they were not seen in many films.

Reportedly, colored shirts for men in public was the result of John Gilbert’s attending a party without changing the shirt he wore for shooting at the studio that day, which was blue. Photographers and graphic artists out there will know that light blue photographs lighter and softer than white in black and white photography. A white shirt will cause more glare from the lights, but a soft blue absorbs the glare and photographs as white. Apparently if John Gilbert can wear a colored shirt to a party, it must be the thing to do.

A Tale of Two Road Trips - Part 2

We see auto camps in “The Grapes of Wrath” as well, but they are more like concentration camps and Hoovervilles. In one desperate transient camp, the Joad family eats meager stew with guilt, while hungry children outside the tent watch them. Tom Joad, played by Henry Fonda, chases them away, but Ma Joad, played by Jane Darwell, lets them scrape the pot with sticks.

The extended Joad family leaves their foreclosed farm in Oklahoma for a possible better future in California. Their ramshackle farm truck is loaded to the gills with mattresses furniture, tied up with ropes. Wash tubs and suitcases dangle from ropes like Christmas tree ornaments. Like the boy and the mother on the bus in “It Happened One Night” they are dealing with a reality more desperate than running away from a rich father.

Their vehicle becomes their home. “Think it’ll hold?” Fonda asks, and the preacher, played by John Carradine replies, “If it does, it’ll be a miracle out of Scripture.” As desperate as they are, they invite the preacher, who is homeless himself, to join them.

We see Jane Darwell’s stricken, proud face through the windshield. We see a montage of highway city limit signs. Both grandparents die along the side of the road, held and comforted until they do.

The Joads pay 50 cents for a space at an auto camp. The meet (and sometimes flirt) with other travelers like them.

Mr. Malcolm, in his book on Route 1 notes, “The Romans, it has been noted, used roads to spread their culture. For Americans, it often seems, roads are their culture: tacky and beautiful, narrow and wide, straight and curvy, crowded and vacant, smoothed and potholed, scenic and cluttered.” We see America as it was in a bleak period, but where not everything is entirely bleak. Humanity is present even here.

The Joads’ route takes them to remote diners where a kindly short order cook allows them to buy a loaf of bread for 10 cents. A brassy waitress sells 10 cents worth of stick candy for two cents to them, and a couple of truckers leave her a big tip to reward her generosity.

They pass through harsh and beautiful desert country, by pueblos and Southwest Indians herding sheep. At a gas station, two uniformed attendants remark to each other, “Them Oakies ain’t got no sense and no feelings. They ain’t human. No human being would live the way they do. Human beings couldn’t stand to be so miserable.”

We see our old friend Ward Bond in this film, too. Not a surly bus driver this time, he is a friendly traffic cop, a fellow Oklahoman, who, with regret and embarrassment, must sharply warn them to keep moving through his town or they will be arrested.

The Joads’ trials are never-ending it seems, but they eventually come to a government-run auto camp that is clean and safe, and the showers “and things” are outside. The Joad children are thunderstruck by their first encounter with a flush toilet.

Though their struggles are far from over, there is still hopefulness at the end. These two films show the humanity of their adventures, vicariously our adventures, on these road trips. It is a world without cruise control. They have very little control at all.

Still, Ma Joad exclaims, “We’re the people that live. They can’t wipe us out. They can’t lick us. We’ll go on forever, Pa, ‘cause we’re the people.” Once or twice the Joad family, and Gable and Colbert may glance in the rear view mirror, but they don’t dwell on what’s behind them.

That's all for this week. Have a great weekend. See you Monday.

A Tale of Two Road Trips - Part 1

Two very different road trips were taken in the Great Depression. One was comic, one was tragic. They are depicted in the films “It Happened One Night” (1934) and “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940). In each case the road means escape from what is behind and pursuit to a desired destiny ahead, and each occurred on two great and historic thoroughfares in this country. “The Grapes of Wrath” of course featured Route 66 westward from Oklahoma to California. The route taken in “It Happened One Night” from Miami, Florida northward to New York City is not named, but in all likelihood if the trip had been taken, it would been on Route 1.

We Americans have, it is said, an automobile culture. Yet before the massive interstate construction of the Eisenhower administration, the US was a loose mesh of two-lane highways, one going and one coming, which thinned out to dirt roads the farther one got from town. Perhaps because of this, there weren’t too many “road movies” in Hollywood’s heyday. People took the train for adventure or for business.

In his introduction to his book, “US 1 - America’s Original Main Street” (St. Martin’s Press, 1991), author Andrew H. Malcolm notes, “Today, most long-distance travelers who choose to stay ground-bound opt for the Interstates, those efficient, high-speed cocoons of concrete copied from Hitler’s autobahns that consume forty-five acres of land in every mile.”

These two movies show an America before the Interstate. The two journeys are as difficult and eventful as Homer’s Odyssey was for him. “It Happened One Night” takes place mostly on a bus. Spoiled rich girl Claudette Colbert runs away from her father on the “Night bus to New York.” Fired smart-aleck reporter Clark Cable shares a seat with her. Ward Bond is the surly driver, who’s first snippy encounter with Mr. Gable draws the oh, so combative remark, “Oh, yeah?”
“Now that’s a brilliant answer, why didn’t I think of that?” Gable rejoins, “Our conversation could have been over long ago.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“If you keep that up, we’re not going to get anywhere.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“You got me. Yeah!”

It is a long, uncomfortable ride on narrow, straight-backed seats but the passengers share companionable inconvenience better than we would today. It is world less comfortable and more courteous. It is a world of pencil-thin mustaches and pencil-thin eyebrows.

They get a 15-minute rest stop at remote greasy spoons. They get 30 minutes for breakfast in Jacksonville, Florida the following morning (it has taken them all night to get from Miami to Jacksonville).

Gable and Colbert then catch a different bus on the same route, and the driver calls his passengers together by announcing the cities that lie ahead of them, Savanna, Charleston, Columbia, Greensboro, Richmond, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and finally, New York.

On this leg of the journey a smarmy salesman named Shapeley, played with panache by Roscoe Karns, annoys Miss Colbert with the snappy pickup line, “Hi, Sister, all alone?” He is fast talking and comically boorish, “Shapeley’s the name, and that’s the way I like ‘em.”

We see rain on the bus windows, and when a bridge is washed out, they stay the night at an “auto camp” cabin, forerunner of today’s motels. It is $2 a night, and here we have the famous “Walls of Jericho” scene. In the morning, Gable informs Miss Colbert that the showers “and things” are outside.

Back on the bus we have group sing-alongs and a talent show of sorts with individuals taking turns at verses in “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.” No need for a DVD shown on a TV mounted on the ceiling of the bus. They make their own entertainment.

We are shaken from the innocent fun, literally, by a slight accident, and a woman has fainted. Her sobbing son, comforted by Gable, confesses they have not eaten and did not guess the trip to New York, where she hopes a job will be waiting for her, would cost so much. Colbert and Gable give him their last couple of dollars. Dreams and desperation are their companions on the bus, and the Great Depression goes along for the ride.

The trip continues for Colbert and Gable as they proceed on foot, hitchhiking with scam artist Alan Hale, who sings wonderful operatic-style nonsense exclamations in his excellent signing voice, “Young people in love are VERY SELDOM HUNGRY!” (Mr. Hale once hoped to be an opera singer.) Gable ends up stealing his car. Eventually they get to New York City, separately, and choices have to be made. Though they have fallen in love with each other by the end of the trip, it is essentially a “buddy” movie, one of the few with a man and a woman. Another that comes to mind is “Sullivan’s Travels,” but that’s a journey for another time.

Tomorrow, more on A Tale of Two Road Trips.

Emma Tansey

Emma Tansey was in her mid 40s when she began her film career as a character actress in 1914. She was still at it when she died in 1942 in her 70s. Most of her time spent on film was as “Old Woman” or “Sweet Old Lady” or most often just “Old Lady.”

She played Mrs. Delaney in “Meet John Doe” (1941) and kisses Gary Cooper’s hand in gratitude. She was a peasant woman in “Les Miserables” (1935), and bought a bus ticket for the incognito Claudette Colbert in “It Happened One Night” (1934). In “The Bank Dick” (1940) she was Old Woman on Bench.

Mrs. Tansey’s three sons also became film actors, and writers and directors, mostly in B-westerns. She played in a fair amount of westerns herself, but went on to appear in modern films as well. She was one of the many character actresses who took the crumbs from the opulent table of Hollywood’s dream factory. One imagines her few scenes in these films paid some bills and kept her alive. One hopes her work gave her pleasure as well. Hers is a face I love picking out in a crowd scene.