Drive-In Restaurants and Singing Carhops

Above we have Fred MacMurray pausing in the middle of his work day to have a beer at a drive-in restaurant in “Double Indemnity” (1944). Oh, the glamorous life of an insurance salesman.

The earliest depiction of a drive-in restaurant I can think of is “Moon Over Miami” from 1941 (covered here on this post from May 2008). Betty Grable and Carole Landis are singing carhops at Texas Tommy's in a rousing opening number dressed in cowgirl outfits. All their customers appear to be men driving convertibles, which is convenient because it lets us see the cowgirl outfits without obstruction. Think maybe that was what the director was thinking? Or just a coinkydink?

Just the thing you want to see come at you when you want a burger, apparently. Below we have a few more singing carhops in this 1950s short with scantily clad waitresses and leering male customers.


By the time “American Graffiti” (1973) came along, the drive-in restaurant carhop seemed to have become a symbol of the 1950s in movies and TV, yet we really don’t see them in too many movies of the era. Here’s a link to the opening scene of “American Graffiti which takes place at a drive-in restaurant in 1962. I don’t really know how common waitresses on roller skates were. That must have been difficult. Lots of customers accidentally covered in mustard and milkshakes, I imagine.

Evidently, at some point the clientele of drive-in restaurants seems to have switched from world-weary insurance salesmen plotting murders, and leering businessmen, to aimless teens pigging out on French fries and shakes in between drag races.

Below in this cartoon from 1956, “Rocket Squad”, which is a parody of “Dragnet”, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig tail a crime suspect in this futuristic space world to “Elsa’s Blast-Inn”. The push-button menu lists oleo as one of the sandwich condiments. Anybody remember squishing the capsule of yellow food coloring to turn the margarine from unappetizing white to faux-butter?


As long as we’re in the realm of cartoons, but shifting to TV for a minute, you might recall Fred and Barney bought a drive-in restaurant on a 1960 episode of “The Flintstones.” Also with singing carhops. “Here we come on the run with a burger on a bun….”

Some carhops skate, others dance and sing.

The A&W chain still featured drive-in style restaurants when I was young, but I think they’ve dropped them now. I don’t recall any of the waitresses either skating or singing. Just plunking the metal tray on the car door. Which was good enough when all I really wanted was my “Baby Burger” and my little mug of root beer.

What drive-ins do you remember? What other movies can you recall that featured scenes with drive-in restaurants?

The Wearing of the Grin (1951)

“The Wearing of the Grin” (1951) serves as our nod to St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow, and gives us not only a funny, and a bit scary, vehicle for Porky Pig, but treats us to a riotous parody of “The Red Shoes”, both the Hans Christian Andersen story and most especially the 1948 movie with Moira Shearer. I can’t help wondering if director Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese were aiming for Moira more than Hans Christian. I think they were going after Moira.

Columbus Day Cartoons

Columbus Day, a product of late 19th century America and promoted with statues and celebrations by Italian-American organizations since that time, has experienced a curious evolution through the years.

First an ethnic festival, then a holiday intended to promote American cohesiveness, later on the man Columbus and the holiday both derided and protested against for the more ghastly aspects of colonization that Columbus has come to represent.

Today in New England it’s the prime foliage weekend, so it’s become synonymous with apple picking, leaf-peeping and pumpkin buying. And perhaps tags sales. Neither ethnic pride nor celebrating circumnavigation are so much a part of the picture.

But back when American history was taught as part fact and part myth (Washington and that cherry tree incident being only one of the colorful and utterly false tales we learned), the myth was enhanced by mirth. Here are two cartoons which use Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the New World not as a history lesson, but as fodder for sight gags.


Here is “Kristopher Kolumbus, Jr.” (1939), a black and white cartoon with Porky Pig in the Columbus role. Directed by Robert Clampett, the action is zany. His famous gag of throwing the baseball around the earth to prove the earth is round, and it’s returning to him with luggage stickers from all over the world, was so simple and nutty, that it was used again in another parody of the Columbus tale with Bugs Bunny.

“Hare We Go” (1951), directed by Robert McKimson, features Bugs as the mascot on board Columbus’ ship. Queen Isabella is depicted as something like Mae West, and Mel Blanc must have had a ball voicing the emotional, irascible Christopher Columbus. Annoyed that he must prove to the Queen that the world is round to get money for his voyage, he angrily shouts, “Ravioli! Alla time prove! Prove, schmoov! She’s a round!”

Bugs’ problem is avoiding being killed by the crew, who all think he is bad luck. One of the more clever gags is when Bugs holds up a postcard of the New York City skyline in front of a spyglass to show they are close to land. We see that Bugs Bunny has actually discovered America and Columbus only took the credit. Now, that’s a myth I can somehow believe.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) looks as fun and lusty a good time as people could have overthrowing a corrupt government while wearing tights, swinging from trees, and eating chunks of meat with their hands. 

Famous for making Errol Flynn into a star, a man who truly looked the romantic hero and so natural in his 12th century costume and pageboy haircut, that he seems to look out of place in his modern-day films. Basil Rathbone is the brooding Sir Guy who wants Flynn dead and who just plain wants Olivia de Havilland, who plays Lady Marion. Claude Rains is the devious and deliciously effete Prince John, who has usurped his brother’s throne. 

The well-known legends of Robin Hood are given a light but jubilant telling in this early Technicolor film, and what really makes it are the reliable character actors of the day: Alan Hale, Sr. as Little John, Eugene Pallette (who looks good with a sword) as Friar Tuck, Una O’Connor as the easily flattered giddy servant to Lady Marion, and a collection of Warner Brothers stand-bys. Most of the film is shot outdoors and this gives it an authenticity that is sometimes lacking in studio sets when conjuring history. 

However, the castle set is particularly impressive, and the final great swordfight between Rathbone and Flynn all over the great hall, stairs, and pillars of this set is especially memorable. The shadow of them thrown on the stone wall from the firelight has become iconic. There is another scene of the duplicitous Abbot, Sir Guy, and Prince John plotting, with the roaring fire between them and the camera.

Technicolor must have been invented just for fire. From the moment we see Flynn enter the castle with a killed stag across his shoulders and he plunks it on the table in front of Claude Rains, we know this is going to be a hearty tale of knightly courtliness, but no table manners. Swordsmanship, but dirty tricks. Honor, but treachery. Stolen riches, and stolen kisses. It is a 12-year-old boy’s best scenario: lots of fighting and not too much mushy stuff. We are told in the prologue that King Richard is off in the Holy Land to drive off the infidels. Loaded words today, and the fight between the ruling Normans and suppressed Saxons is a very old story in the course of history. Only the names need be changed to see the same struggles happening over and over again, all over the world. It seems it is difficult to escape even in an escapist film. 

We are told by authors Christopher Finch and Linda Rosenkrantz in Gone Hollywood (Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1979), that Howard Hill, who was the archery consultant on the film and taught the actors for the great archery contest, was actually the person who shot Robin’s arrows dead-center on the target. We may still be impressed, however, by Flynn’s sword fighting, as well as his and Hale’s masterful fight with quarterstaffs. 

It is difficult to watch this heroic battle without being reminded of Daffy Duck’s less heroic battle with his “buck and a quarter quarterstaff” with Porky Pig as the Friar in Robin Hood Daffy (1958), made, of course, by the same studio, Warner Brothers. Though Flynn was never heard to have uttered “Yoiks and away!” as Daffy does for his rallying cry, perhaps he should have. It is the only thing that the film is missing. It has just about everything else. Another cartoon tribute comes in Rabbit Hood (1949) when Bugs Bunny’s Sherwood Forrest adventure is capped by a visit from the man himself, as the live-action film clip from Robin Hood is tacked onto the end of the cartoon with Errol Flynn welcoming Bugs to Sherwood. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, clearly Flynn’s “Robin Hood” became a classic even in its own time.

Gower Gulch

Gower Gulch was the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street. Hollywood attracted many newcomers in the 1930s hoping for a career in film, and a lot of them came here. It was also called Poverty Row, illustrating that dreams of success would remain only dreams for most of them.

As early as before the First World War, there was a film studio here, and later on in the Depression the nearby studios of Paramount, Columbia, Republic and RKO made the spot the focus of real cowboys trying for parts in B-westerns, with would-be actors coming right off the ranch.

Gower Gulch has been parodied in a few films, and has a special tribute in the 1951 Warner Brothers cartoon “Drip-Along Daffy” where Daffy Duck plays a “western-type hero” whose noble white horse has an exaggerated mane, and Porky Pig plays his “comedy relief” sidekick looking less heroic on a tiny burro. As they ride along what appears to be a cartoon version of Monument Valley, Porky strums a guitar and sings a cowboy song about Minerva, the “Flower of Gower Gulch,” who is a cowpuncher’s sweetheart true even though “her looks don’t amount to much, ‘cause one of her eyes is blue/She’s got skin just like prairie dog leather. She cooks nothin’ but chuck wagon stew….”

You probably know the rest.

There is a shopping plaza in Gower Gulch now, with a western town façade, but if you want to see traces of what was, mosey on up to the Autry Museum of the American West up in Griffith Park. A terrific exhibit of Southwest history is on display, and in a corner of the impressive reality of the West, there is a small tribute to the movie cowboy and the poignant legacy of imagination and heart, and even parody, he has left to us.