At the Beach

As summer dwindles, let us go to the beach. We had discussed some beach scenes in this post from 2007, and some readers responded with favorite beach scenes. I hope you can come up with some more. Above we have Dorothy McGuire and Guy Madison in “Till the End of Time” (1946), a movie which deserves its own discussion some time or other, but for now, the beach scene will be enough. I think it rivals the famous Deborah Kerr-Burt Lancaster “From Here to Eternity” (1953) scene both in terms passion and pushing the censors’ buttons.



Now, here is a look at some fully-clothed, family style fun in “The Crowd” (1928) with Eleanor Boardman. Few people actually enter the water in this interesting beach scene; it’s really more like a town picnic with an ocean as a backdrop.



Back to McGuire and Madison. One of the things I love about this scene is the continuous movement. They are constantly rolling over each other, touching, and managing a continuous stream of dialogue as they change position in a natural-looking exploration of each other. Perhaps because the dialogue never stops and they never linger in one grasp for long is the only reason I can think of the censors allowed some of this.


Ah, humanity in all its half-dressed glory. Here is a crowd shot (had to have been a real crowd on a real beach), in “The Devil and Miss Jones” (1941), one of many films to be shot with New York’s Coney Island as a setting.










O-kay, we seem to be intruding now. Let’s just walk away quietly and try not to kick any sand. We’ll come back in a minute, and when we do, we’ll clear our throats very loudly so they’ll know we’re here.


Back to “The Devil and Miss Jones” and the sand-covered beach blanket of Spring Byington, Charles Coburn, Jean Arthur, and Bob Cummings. And more extras than you can shake a stick at. One of my favorite beach scenes for its claustrophobic camaraderie.


Jeez-Louise, they’re still at it. AHEM! AHEM! Hello! H-e-l-l-O-O-O-O! Forget it. Let’s go back to Coney Island.


Ah, so telling a gesture, Charles Coburn sifting sand through his fingers, like the sands of time quickly leaving his grasp as he ponders his own lonely life against the passionate young love of Miss Arthur and Mr. Cummings. And he looks great in his saggy woolen rented bathing suit. By the way, have a look here at a fun post on women’s beach fashions over at Allure.



Oh, now see, this is nice. She’s brushing her lips on his arm. Very nice. Am I staring? I’m sorry. Anyone want anything from the snack bar? Some fried clams, maybe? Lobster roll?



Bogie at the beach, with Gloria Grahame in “In a Lonely Place” (1950). More moonlit beach snuggling, but something’s going to set him off any minute in a rage. No baggy rented suit, no snorkel. No boogie board. Or Bogie board. Bogart doesn’t seem to be much fun at the beach. He doesn't even take his clothes off.



Oh, she’s finally stopping to play a record. Aren’t wind-up Victrola’s wonderful? You can take them anywhere, and with a little cranking, you can listen to “Yes, We Have No Bananas” all day long.


Right, now we’re down to the pillow talk pose. Won’t last long, though, this beach encounter, like Bogie’s, ends with an argument, too. Nothing lasts for ever, not snuggling on the beach, not the song on your 78rpm record, and not summer. The older you get, the shorter summer gets.

Make the most of the rest of your summer. In the meantime, have a look here at the beach scene in “From Here to Eternity.”

Working in the Movies

It may have started the day Charlie Chaplin noticed a HELP WANTED placard in the window of a shop or a restaurant. I don’t recall the name of the film, for this scenario was repeated by him and others. He takes the sign and carries it in to the proprietor. Being a silent film, he points to the sign he holds, and then points to himself, placing his index finger imploringly against his chest, tapping his sternum a couple times. The gruff proprietor looks him up and down, and hires him.

There is no mention of requiring a resume or CV. There is no scheduling of first, let alone second interviews, and no references. No human resources director asks him, “If you were an ingredient in a salad, what would you be?” Or asks him any other question as inane as it is insulting, meant to delve into his psychology and ability to become a Team Member. It is a different world of being hired for a job. But then, when the unlucky Chaplin or Keaton, or Lloyd is discharged from employment, it’s often with a boot to the backside, so firing was a different game then, too.

In the early years of motion pictures, quite a lot of films used the workplace as the scene, and even the device which drove the plot of the story. The store, the factory assembly line, the office, the construction jobsite. This was the hard reality playground in the otherwise fanciful world of movie make-believe. Perhaps it was the Great Depression, when one-quarter of this country’s population was out of work in the worst years that changed the focus of the setting and story line of popular films. The little world, this all-consuming focus of the common worker faded like the disintegrating nitrate film on which it was recorded.

The big stars of the 1930s did not seem to play the guy who swept the floor. Character actors now took over the mundane jobs in the background, getting another keg of beer from the cellar while the star sang on stage. The star did not deliver ice anymore. The star was a roving reporter, or a private detective, or soldier of fortune. The star was an heiress or a princess, or the owner of the factory. Once in a while we might see Jean Arthur and co-workers in “The Devil and Miss Jones” (1941) but mostly the idealized proletariat we saw emblazoned in the WPA-sponsored post office murals was not what greeted us in the movie theater. Escape was the order of the day, escape from our troubles of not having a job, or else, the trouble and bother of having one to earn one’s living at all.

A generation later after The Little Tramp’s job hunt, we have the charming film “In the Good Old Summertime” (1949) with Buster Keaton, who used to play the worker as hero, now relegated to a minor role of just worker in a little shop selling musical instruments, a remake of “The Shop Around the Corner” (1940). Of course, the film’s stars, Van Johnson and Judy Garland are also salespeople in the store, but soon the focus shifts from the day-to-day mundane matter of being salespeople and turns into a love story. The film is a musical and a romantic comedy about finding one’s true love. Always a comforting message, but we know how it’s going to turn out. They will find true love. That’s what we paid for.

But possibly more fascinating, more gripping is what will happen to them if they lose their jobs? What if Spring Byington does not marry shop owner S.Z. Sakall? She is approaching her retirement years; will she be able to afford to retire on her salary? Retirement in those days for spinster shop ladies usually meant poverty.

Will Van Johnson ever be able to marry if he does not get a promotion and more money? People used to consider finances first and then commitment. Will he be a bachelor all his life if he cannot get ahead in the workplace?

When harried Judy Garland complains to Johnson, “When I came here I was a very enthusiastic girl. Now look at me!” we can commiserate because how many of us have felt frazzled by our jobs?

When boss Sakall makes them work overtime and take inventory, we see their frustration at having their personal plans for the evening thwarted, their lives thrown off kilter by the need to please their employer. All this stuff of the workplace is fraught with dramatic tension. While it is not as lovely as the quest for true love, it is what most of us can identify with because work takes up most of our lives.

We spend a lot of time at work. Yet even on television, where for decades the workplace was the setting for dramas and sitcoms, quite of lot of the storylines and action does not center on work. Rather, it focuses on the private lives of the characters and their personal relationships. We don’t really see much work being done. Ninety years ago all it took was a HELP WANTED sign to set the ball rolling for the plot to thicken, and the fun to begin, and the springboard for dreams to come true. Have a look at this clip from “Modern Times” below, and Happy Labor Day.

Seven Chances (1925)

“Seven Chances” (1925) is remembered for one of Buster Keaton’s most elaborate ending chase scenes, which includes paper-maiche boulders and a sea of angry women.

This is a modern piece, and Keaton plays that ultimate 1920s hero, the stockbroker, but despite his elegant three-piece suit and country club surroundings, the film does not have the same kind of 1920s stamp on it that a Harold Lloyd film does. Buster’s gags are more timeless, his character less witty and flippant. Keaton’s dead-pan character, suffering slings and arrows and circumstances, could exist in any era. It is our good fortune that he existed in the era of silent films, as that is where he thrived best.

Jean Arthur’s era was sound films, which is why when she appears briefly as the telephone switchboard operator, with her short dark bob, we have no idea it is the same comedienne with the sweet squeaky voice of “The Devil and Miss Jones”, etc. Here, unfortunately, she has no voice.

She is one of the many young ladies Mr. Keaton, whose shyness prevents him from proposing so long to his girlfriend, must now rashly give out emergency proposals of marriage to keep the inheritance his grandfather left him. He must marry by the end of this day or lose millions.

A misunderstanding with his longtime girlfriend forces him to propose to anybody for the time being, and he is roundly rejected by the smart set at his country club, who all laugh at him and take him for a loony. One scene has him proposing on the grounds outside, only to have a group of golfers for an audience, who stop their game to watch him. He is continually embarrassed, and no one will accept him. His business partner desperately tries to find more women for him, and his lawyer, played with good humor by Snitz Edwards, who you may remember as Florine Papillion in “The Phantom of the Opera” (1925), and who evidently had no problem exploiting and making fun of his less-than-matinee-idol looks.

“Who bats next?” Buster asks his partner with the list of ladies, but none will have him. Finally Buster takes to the streets, proposing in his open roadster to a lady driver in the car next to his, only to drive into a tree. His girlfriend, who really does want to marry him, sends a note by their handy man, played by Jules Cowles. One wonders at the choice of having him play in blackface, which by the late 1920s should have gone out with D. W. Griffith, especially when there are other African-American actors in the film. One man dressed in a suit at the country club bumps into Buster. Later, Buster chases a woman down the street with the intention of proposing, to discover she is a black lady. Later she will turn up as one of the countless throng of women who show up, demanding to be his bride.

One girl to whom he proposes does not understand him, and then continues reading her newspaper printed in Hebrew. Another woman, a stage actress, turns out to be Julian Eltinge, who was at that time a famous female impersonator.

Finally, Buster’s partner gets a newspaper story printed announcing his desperate plight, and hundreds of women, young and old, show up at the church for a chance to marry a millionaire. One can pick out many examples of days-gone-bye props in this film, from the candlestick telephones to the trolley cars, but how interesting that one must include the afternoon paper as one of them. Fewer afternoon editions are printed anymore, as most of the large newspapers in the US these days are morning papers.

When the brides show up, they arrive by car, trolley, and roller skates. When Buster tries to run away, they chase him, a massive throng of women in makeshift bridal veils made from ripped up sheets and towels to what look like tablecloths. They spill out of side streets and chase him down the main thoroughfares. Mr. Keaton shows his impressive athletic ability by hanging from the hook suspended off the end of a crane, by leaping, falling, and always running at breakneck speed. He runs through rail yards and cornfields, and marshland, where after a swim across a river, a turtle attaches himself to Buster’s tie.

We follow him out to hill country, where he leaps over a gorge, and tumbles down a sand embankment like an Olympic gymnast, only he doesn’t stick the landing. Then the famous scene with the avalanche of rocks. Reportedly, a preview audience laughed when he kicked some stones inadvertently and they tumbled after him. Buster went back and embellished the scene by having boulders of various sizes chase him down the hill.

The film is less sophisticated than some others of the era, including his own, but for a breathtaking and funny chase, this is one of the best.

It may be that we are less sympathetic with Buster in this one because he is already a well-dress stockbroker and will be wealthy if gets married in time, so there is less pathos. We inevitably feel for the underdog more than the lucky stiff.

Florence Bates

Florence Bates played small, though sometimes memorable roles, as a character actress in films and on television until her death in the mid-1950s. She was the bullying, vainglorious and vulgar Mrs. Van Hopper in “Rebecca” (1940). A career portraying unpleasant society women with sharp tongues was probably not what she intended when she became the first female lawyer in the state of Texas in 1914 at the age of 26.

Miss Bates practiced law at least until the middle 1930s, when something induced her to become involved with the Pasadena Playhouse. Her first film role came in 1937, a brief, non-credited part. However, she zoomed to fame as Mrs. Van Hopper in her second film, and from then on perhaps law looked a little dull.

Not all her roles were as pivotal to the story of the film; she played a lot of walk-on parts as shoppers in various movies that took place in stores, like “Kitty Foyle” (1940) and “The Devil and Miss Jones” (1941). She reprises her nastiness as the sour landlady Mrs. Jekes in “Portrait of Jennie” (1949), and plays a kinder, gentler society dame in “I Remember Mama” (1948) as the famous writer Irene Dunne approaches on behalf of her daughter to ask advice on writing. Miss Dunne, judging by Miss Bates’ girth, surmises that this famous writer is also a famous eater, and bribes her with a Norwegian delicacy.

Apparently, Miss Bates did not mind portraying stereotyped heavy eaters anymore than she minded playing bossy women, as she has a very brief scene on the train in “Since You Went Away” (1944) complaining about not getting enough to eat on trains these days while gobbling corn on the cob.

You’ll know her when you see her, in this and many other films even though her role may be small. She had a big screen personality.

Beach Scene 1941

Now that we’re nearing the end of summer, a nod to my favorite beach scene in the movies. This is in “The Devil and Miss Jones” (1941) where Jean Arthur, Robert Cummings, Charles Coburn, and Spring Byington share a picnic lunch on the crowded beach of Coney Island. Rented bathing suits and a lesson on how the masses live are the order of the day for the wealthy Coburn incognito as a worker in his own store. Miss Arthur, Mr. Cummings, and Miss Byington are his unwitting employees who befriend him and show him the ropes.

This film deserves its own essay at another time, but for now, the scene at the crowded beach is enough to invoke a sense of quickly fading summer. It is not a beach of teenagers twitching to the twang of electric guitars as in a future era. There is no surfing by privileged middle class youngsters, but only a stolen moment for the Depression-era laboring classes on the weekend to try to snatch some essence of the good life. Not easy in the elbow-to-elbow mob on that beach. But, like all working people everywhere, as Mr. Coburn learns, you take what you can get, and make the most of it.

What are your favorite beach scenes?

That’s all for this week. See you Monday. Hope some of you can get to the beach.