Before reviewing a movie, I usually put my thoughts down first and only after that take a look at the reviews of professional critics. That is how I planned on proceeding with McLintock! (1963).  Otherwise, I might conclude that others have already said all that can be said on the subject and that there is nothing for me to add.  Also, there is the problem of inadvertent plagiarism.  Try as I might, I am likely to find their opinions mingling with my own.  And so it was that I fully intended to avoid doing any research until I had exhausted my own thoughts about that movie.

One of the things about McLintock! that caught my attention was its movie poster, where we see John Wayne spanking Maureen O’Hara, who is over his knee in her underwear, with the tagline, “Wallops the daylight out of every Western you’ve ever seen.” Although there are a lot of movies in which women are spanked, it is unusual to see it displayed on a movie poster.

I suppose it is appropriate at this point to distinguish between a spanking and a single pat on a woman’s derrière.  In The Americanization of Emily (1964), for instance, there is a scene where James Garner gives Julie Andrews such a pat on her behind, and she turns around and slaps his face.  On the other hand, in The Dentist (1932), W.C. Fields walks into the kitchen where his daughter is bent over, her head in the icebox, while she looks for something.  He gives her a pat on the fanny, and she says, “Fifty pounds, please, and chop it fine.”

Regardless of how the woman reacts to such a pat, this is to be distinguished from a spanking, in which the man puts the woman over his knee and repeatedly whaps her on her butt.  In movies up to and including McLintock! at least, such scenes are played for laughs, the spanking is what the woman needs, and it facilitates their romantic relationship.

However, before writing anything, I decided to do just a little research first. Big mistake!  The first thing I came across was an essay by Andrew Heisel, “‘I Don’t Know Whether to Kiss You or Spank You’:  A Half Century of Fear of an Unspanked Woman.”  By the time I had finished reading it, I knew there was no point in trying to write anything original on the subject myself.  Heisel had said it all.

The quotation in that title, by the way, is from Tumbling Tumbleweeds (1935).  A clip from that movie can be seen as part of a compilation of spanking scenes in the movies at this YouTube link.

Apparently, it all began with Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.  Or maybe not.  Heisel did his own research, which led him, and ultimately me, to an article on what he calls a “fetish site,” although the author of that article takes exception to that pejorative expression.  I am referring to the essay “There Isn’t a Spanking Scene in…  The Taming of the Shrew.”  Long story short, the author argues that there is no spanking scene indicated in Shakespeare’s play, and there is good reason to believe that including such a scene in performances of that play is strictly a recent phenomenon. For example, in the movie version with Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, made in 1929, there is no spanking scene.

McLintock! is said to be a loose adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew, in which Maureen O’Hara plays Katherine, corresponding to Katherina in the play. However, there is no way John Wayne would have a name like Petruchio, so he is just G.W. McLintock.  In any event, in line with the title of Heisel’s essay, Katherine is a much feared, unspanked woman, at least until the end of the movie, where she is rendered submissive and obedient.  The spanking that produces this taming of her, however, was inspired not directly by Shakespeare’s play, but rather by an earlier movie in which there is such a spanking.

That movie would be Kiss Me Kate (1953), which also has a movie poster displaying the spanking that Howard Keel gives to Katheryn Grayson. Essentially, this is a movie about putting on a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew.  It finesses the spanking issue by having Howard Keel as Fred Graham spank Katheryn Grayson as Lilli Vanessi during a performance on stage, rather than having Keel as Petruchio spank Grayson as Katherine.

I certainly learned a lot from the essays referred to above, but the result is that I am incapable writing my own review on the subject.  All that is left is for me to recommend those essays, which I am pleased to do.

Reviewing The Graduate in 1967, Roger Ebert gave the movie four stars, which seemed appropriate, given all the nominations and awards received by this movie. In 1997, however, Ebert gave the movie only three stars, while reflecting on how his appreciation of it had changed thirty years later.  It is commonly remarked by other critics reviewing that movie, both before and since Ebert’s revision, that the movie is dated.

Though it is regrettable that a movie that seemed so good when first released is now dated, yet such a characterization does invite us to ask why this is so.  I suppose we might begin by noting that what it means to be a college graduate today is not the same as it was back then.

There is a scene in the movie where Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) is in bed in a hotel room with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), the older, married woman with whom he has been having an affair.  They have been having sex for some time, but without conversation, other than the minimum necessary to make arrangements.  Finally, Benjamin expresses a desire to get to know her better, insisting that they have a conversation and that she pick the topic.  Impatient with the whole business, she suggests art, but then denies having any interest in the subject.  Benjamin keeps at it, finally asking her what her major was in college. She says, “Art.”  This is funny, in a sad sort of way, for as Benjamin concludes, “I guess you kind of lost interest in it over the years then.”

There was more freedom for students to major in what interested them in those days, without undue concern for whether they were being practical.  Back then, the mere existence of a college degree, even if the major was one of the liberal or fine arts, proved that one had ability.  While many students were practical right from the start of their freshman year, others felt no need to be so.  I drifted from one major to another, trying to find something that suited my fancy, until I finally settled on philosophy.  My best friend majored in psychology, and I had a girlfriend who majored in French. There was the sense that once you had a college degree, you had it made.

Although Mrs. Robinson never had to work for a living, her pregnancy having forced her to get married and occupy the housewife role, her sex would have been more of an obstacle to finding employment than her major, given that she would presumably have been in college in the late 1940s.

As for Benjamin, we don’t know what he majored in.  We learn that he was on the track team, that he edited the college newspaper, and that he received the Helpingham Award, whatever that is, but nothing is said about his major.  This omission is a little strange, but not much.  As noted above, what really counted back then was the fact that one was a college graduate.  When Mr. McGuire dramatically tells Benjamin that he has just one word to say to him, which turns out to be “Plastics,” suggesting that he seek employment in this field, someone watching this movie for the first time today might be excused for wondering if Benjamin had a degree in chemistry. Otherwise, what would qualify him for getting a job with a corporation for which plastics is an important product? But that would not have been necessary back then.  Even if Benjamin had a Bachelor of Arts, that would not have prevented him from going to work for Plastics, Inc.

In short, the title of this movie had a significance in 1967 that it would not have today.  If The Graduate had never been made, and someone produced a movie with that title today, I would anticipate a story about a recent graduate struggling to find a job where he could make enough money to pay off his student debt.

It has often been said that the Baby Boom generation, beginning with those born in 1946, had a tremendous influence as they moved through life.  The oldest members of that generation, of which I am one, were just one year away from graduating when this movie came out.  As such, this movie had a meaning for us that was especially relevant.  Needless to say, we all identified with Benjamin.

With Mrs. Robinson, we can understand how she has lost interest in art over the years.  Having to get married on account of being pregnant, being a housewife, married to a man she no longer loves, if she ever did, would naturally sap the enthusiasms of her youth.  With Benjamin, he’s already there. We don’t find out what he majored in because we can’t imagine his being enthusiastic about anything.  But at least he was comfortable being a student.  Now that he has graduated, the world is starting to become real for him.  He just wants to be alone in his room while he worries about his future.  In other words, it’s time for him to go out and get a job, but he doesn’t want to do that.

Actually, the real future that someone like Benjamin would have had to worry about back then was being drafted.  Having used up his college deferment, he would have had to face the prospect of being inducted into the Army.  From watching this movie, however, you would never know that there had been such a thing as the Vietnam War.  Paradoxically, this is one way in which the passage of time works in this movie’s favor.  Someone watching this movie today might not notice the way it overlooked the threat that war posed for anyone graduating in 1967.  For those of us watching it when it first came out, dreading the possibility of being killed or maimed in a pointless war, this was a glaring omission.

Mr. Braddock, Benjamin’s father, is played by William Daniels, who often plays a character that must have things exactly his way, according to his rigid schedule, as in A Thousand Clowns (1965) and Two for the Road (1967), so he is perfect for his part here. Without consulting Benjamin, he arranges a party for his homecoming and later insists that he demonstrate a scuba-diving outfit that Benjamin never wanted. However, there is a simple solution for all that.  All Benjamin needs to do is get a job and move into his own apartment.  But he would rather stay in his room and worry about his future.

Roger Ebert was not a member of the Baby Boom generation, having been born in 1942, but he would still have been a young man when this movie came out, as were a lot of the critics that now say this movie is dated.  Being young, there would be a tendency for them to sympathize with Benjamin, as opposed to the older people in this movie.  That Benjamin’s parents are pushy to the point of being caricatures was not recognized as such back then.  But as Ebert and other critics have aged, they have begun to lose patience with Benjamin.

While at the homecoming party, Mrs. Robinson coerces a reluctant Benjamin into giving her a ride home.  Once there, after some heavy flirtation on her part, she gets completely naked and tells him she is available for sex.  It scares Benjamin away, but after thinking about her naked body for a while, he calls her up, and they meet at a hotel, where they get a room.  He is so nervous and awkward that she asks if it is his first time.  He bristles at her suggestion that he might feel inadequate and be afraid, which spurs him to action.  Well, different things work for different people. I hate to think how inadequate I might have been in his situation.  In any event, we can’t help but agree with Mrs. Robinson that this really is his first time.

On the night they had that discussion about art and how she had to get married because she was pregnant with her daughter Elaine (Katherine Ross), Mrs. Robinson becomes furious at the mere suggestion that Benjamin might ask Elaine out when she comes home from Berkeley.  Seeing her reaction, he promises he won’t.  Unfortunately, his parents, and even Mr. Robinson, put pressure on him to ask her out. So, he does.  He promises an angry Mrs. Robinson that he will take Elaine out to dinner, have a drink, and bring her back home.

But he doesn’t.  Instead, he drives recklessly, making Elaine nervous, until they get to a strip club. When they get there, he walks in front of her as she struggles to keep up. When they are shown to a table, he sits down without getting her seated first.  Then, as she stands there, he says, “Sit down.” He smokes a cigarette while wearing sunglasses in the darkly lit club. He reminds me of the obnoxious Buddy Love in The Nutty Professor (1963), and his taking her to this strip joint reminds me of Robert De Niro taking Cybill Shepherd to a porno movie theater in Taxi Driver (1976).  When the woman doing the striptease twirls some tassels around that are attached to her nipple pasties, Benjamin asks Elaine if she can do that.  What kind of creep would do this to a girl?

And it is as unnecessary as it is crude.  He could have taken her to dinner and spent a pleasant evening with her, chatting about one thing or another.  He wouldn’t have had to ask her out again.  Nor would she have felt slighted, for she soon returns to Berkeley where she already has a boyfriend.

Anyway, he finally realizes that he has overdone it when the tassels are being twirled around right over Elaine’s head.  They leave the place, and he starts apologizing for his behavior.  After they spend some more time together, on what would now seem to be a normal date, he tells her, “You’re … the first person I could stand to be with.”

Seriously?  Except for her, there has never been anyone in his entire life that he could stand to be with?  The movie would have us take that as an indication that she is the right woman for him, soon to be the love of his life.  Instead, it made me think of “The Parable of the Two Villages.”  If this were real life, Elaine should never go out with him again, for if she did, she would eventually become the next person he cannot stand to be with.

Nevertheless, she agrees to see him again the next day.  When Mrs. Robinson finds out, she threatens to tell Elaine all about her affair with Benjamin.  He manages to tell Elaine first, but it is no good.  Elaine never wants to see him again.

After sitting alone in his room for a while, Benjamin decides to go to Berkeley, where Elaine is still taking classes, determined to marry her.  When I saw this movie in 1967, I accepted this, possibly because men did stuff like that in the movies.  It was an indication of how much he loved her.  Back then, if a man in a movie truly loved a woman, that settled it.  She was supposed to accept his love, and if she did not, she was wrongheaded.

Now, it’s one thing to watch an old movie and note with amusement that what was acceptable back then no longer is so, perhaps even smiling when we see people smoking in public places.  But when I watched this movie again recently, the way Benjamin stalks Elaine made my flesh crawl. Moreover, when he persists in sexually harassing her, he does so in a loud voice while other people are around, thereby humiliating her.

To up the melodrama, Mr. Robinson now knows about the affair and is getting a divorce.  He is also determined not to let Benjamin get anywhere near Elaine, having pulled her out of school.  Benjamin breaks into the Robinson house looking for Elaine, finding only Mrs. Robinson, who calls the police, reporting what she calls a “burglary,” but is really a home invasion.  He runs off when he hears the police car driving up.

Elaine has agreed to marry a guy named Carl, who smokes a pipe.  (When a young man in a movie smokes a pipe, that should give us pause.)  Benjamin asks Carl’s fraternity brothers where the wedding is to take place.  They all kid around about it being a shotgun wedding, about Carl’s being the Make Out King, with one guy saying to tell Carl to “save of piece for me,” then adding, “of the wedding cake.”

As a general rule, if someone in a movie belongs to a fraternity, we are not supposed to like him. (We have no doubt that Benjamin never joined a fraternity.) In addition, this locker-room talk is supposed to make us dislike Carl, but as the lesser of two evils, she would be better off with him than with Benjamin. Much better would be for her not to marry either one of them, but that possibility never occurs to her because when this movie was made, women were supposed to get married to somebody.  If this movie were made today, she would be free to remain single, and we would be happy if she did so.

Benjamin gets enough information to get him on his way to Santa Barbara, but he has to stop at a filling station to make a phone call to Carl’s father to find out which church it is that will be having the ceremony.  In searching through the phonebook to get the number, he tears out several pages that are in his way. Perhaps this is not as bad as the other stuff he has already done, but it does reinforce just how inconsiderate he is.

After this there comes the classic scene at the church.  Benjamin arrives right after Carl and Elaine have been pronounced man and wife.  He beats on the glass until she realizes that Benjamin is the man she really loves and runs off with him, Benjamin using a cross to lock people in the church.

Mrs. Robinson is furious, so I doubt she’ll be dropping the charge of burglary she has already filed against Benjamin.  And I’m sure that locking people in a building against their will must be a crime of some sort, so that charge will be added as well, probably by Elaine’s husband.

Benjamin and Elaine get on a bus, and we see the two of them with alternating looks of happiness and doubt, already having second thoughts.  It is obvious what misgivings Elaine might be having.  As for Benjamin, it is probably dawning on him that he will now have to go out and get a job, once he gets out of jail, that is.  It will probably be something in plastics.

Lady for a Day is a 1933 comedy directed by Frank Capra.  In trying to make sense of this movie, I discovered that the absurdity of its premise was completely unnecessary, for a perfectly reasonable alternative was available but deliberately rejected.  To see what I mean, we must begin with the basic story as we find it in the movie.

Apple Annie, as the name indicates, peddles apples on the streets of New York. She is an alcoholic old woman, played by May Robson, who was about 75 years old at the time this movie was made. She has a daughter named Louise, who is just coming of age.  She is played by Jean Parker, who was about 18 years old when this movie was made.  So, assuming that the age of the characters is that of the actresses, that means that Apple Annie was around 57 years old when she gave birth to Louise. A woman of that age might reasonably expect to be past the point of getting pregnant, so Annie probably thought she could have sex without fear of ending up as an unwed mother, but so she did.

All we are told is that Louise has been raised in a convent in Spain ever since she was a baby.  Annie writes her letters on stationery she steals from a fancy hotel, pretending to live there so that Louise will believe Annie is a wealthy woman in high society.  She has led Louise to believe that her father passed away and that she has remarried, her present husband being Mr. E. Worthington Manville, who is rich and aristocratic.  She explains that she is still unable to come to Spain for a visit on account of her health.

Louise is in love with a young man named Carlos, son of Count Alfonso Romero. The Count wants to meet Louise’s parents before giving his consent, so the Count, Carlos, and Louise are sailing to New York for that purpose. When Annie finds out about this, she is in a panic, for that means her daughter will find out the truth.

Dave the Dude (Warren William) has been buying apples from Annie for years because they bring him good luck.  Fearing that he might lose his luck if anything happens to Annie, he decides to help her pretend to be a rich woman of high society.  Things get more and more complicated, involving more and more people, until over a dozen of the Dude’s acquaintances are preparing to play various roles of the upper class.

Reporters start snooping around, so the Dude kidnaps three of them, intending to lock them in a room until the charade is over.  However, the police are under political pressure to find the reporters, and eventually the Dude is arrested.  He admits to the mayor, the governor, and other important people what is going on.  They all decide to help out, so instead of the Dude’s friends pretending to be high society at a reception, the real high society shows up instead.  The Count is satisfied and gives his consent.  Carlos and Louise will be able to marry and live happily ever after.

__________

All right, now let’s back this up.  A convent in Spain?  This is mentioned only once, and I guess we are supposed to accept it without question.  Well, I couldn’t accept it, so while watching this movie, I kept trying to make sense of it.  What follows is the best I can do:

Annie has a baby in a Catholic hospital.  She tells a priest that she is not married.  The priest says that she can give the baby up for adoption.  But Annie wants to remain the baby’s mother, so she asks if the baby could be raised in a convent instead.  The priest says there is a convent right there in New York that would take the baby.

Annie says that will never do because when Louise grows up, she will find out that she is the bastard daughter of a woman who sells apples on the streets of New York. Annie wants to stay in touch with Louise as her mother, but only at a distance, so that their only communication with each other will be by mail.  To that end, Annie asks if her baby can be sent out of the country instead.  The priest checks into it, and the next day tells her there is a convent in Spain that will raise her baby.  So, the baby is put on a ship and sent on her way.  

As the years pass, Annie writes letters in which she lies about how she and her husband, Louise’s father, are wealthy members of New York’s finest.  To keep Louise from wondering why her father never writes her a letter, Annie tells her that he passed away.  But eventually Annie says she has remarried, to another man of equal wealth and social prominence.

When Louise comes of age, she and Carlos fall in love and want to get married.  He tells his father, asking him for his consent.  They have the following conversation:

Count Romero:  Since Louise’s mother is a rich woman, why didn’t she raise Louise herself instead of sticking her in a convent?

Carlos:  I don’t know.  She writes Louise letters telling her how much she loves her.

Count Romero:  If she loves her so much, why didn’t she want her around?

Carlos:  I never asked Louise how she feels about that.

Count Romero:  Doesn’t she resent the fact that her mother abandoned her? Her mother didn’t even want a convent in New York to raise her, where her mother could at least go over once a month for a little visit, telling Louise to stop complaining about the food and just do whatever the nuns tell her to do. But even that would be too much trouble, I suppose, so her mother sends her over here. Then for eighteen years she uses that lame excuse about her health to avoid having to come over for a visit.

Carlos:  So, will you give your consent?

Count Romero:  I don’t think I want you marrying into a family like that, but just to be fair, I guess we could all go over to America for a visit, and maybe I can get some answers to my questions.

__________

The movie is based on a short story, “Madame La Gimp,” by Damon Runyon. So, I decided to read it to see if there is anything about a convent in that story. There isn’t.  Madame La Gimp corresponds to Apple Annie in the movie. Her home country is Spain.  After coming to America, she became a Spanish dancer of some note on Broadway.  And as we later find out, she married a man who was also from Spain.  They had a daughter, Eulalie, corresponding to Louise. Madame La Gimp felt she could not properly raise a daughter while working as a dancer, but her sister, who lives in Spain, was happy to raise Eulalie instead.

One day Madame La Gimp met with an accident, causing her to walk with a limp, hence the epithet, which put an end to her career as a dancer.  She took to drink, her marriage broke up, and she became a peddler.  Not wanting her daughter to know to what depths she had fallen, she lied about her situation in letters to her, pretending to be well off.

In other words, it all makes sense now.  Frank Capra had this perfectly reasonable explanation for Annie’s situation available to him, but he chose not to use it, preferring instead the illogical business about a convent.  Even when he remade this movie as Pocketful of Miracles (1961), after he had time to reflect on it, he still kept the business about a convent instead of letting Annie’s sister raise her, as in the short story.  Perhaps Capra wanted Louise to be raised in a convent because he was a Catholic, and he felt this change in the story gave it the proper religious tone.

There are a couple of other differences between the short story and the movie that might as well be noted, as long as we are here.  First of all, in the short story, the friends of the Dude are the ones that pass themselves off as high society, satisfying the Spanish nobleman whose son wants to marry Eulalie. But the son and Eulalie elope, so his consent becomes moot anyway.  There is nothing about kidnapping reporters, and the real members of the New York upper class are not involved.  Had the movie stayed with the short story, allowing the Dude’s friends to pass themselves off as the fashionable elite, that would have allowed for more humorous situations.  By having actual members of the upper class be at the reception, the possibilities for humor are forgone in favor of sentimentalism, or what film critics refer to as Capra-corn.

Second, the Dude’s interest in Annie’s problem seems to be completely selfish, in that he is only concerned about the good luck her apples provide him and not in Annie herself.  In the short story, the Dude is referred to as kindhearted. He helps Madame La Gimp simply because he feels sorry for her.

Why this change in motive?  Some people have a hard time accepting the fact that it is only human nature to care about others.  They cannot be satisfied unless they can sniff out some underlying motive of selfishness in every apparent act of altruism:  the need to feel superior, a desire to impress others with a show of generosity, an attempt to curry favor with God in hopes of getting into Heaven, or just silly superstition, as in this case with the apples. Maybe Capra was of this sort.  But for Damon Runyon, there was nothing problematic about the Dude’s kindness at all, no further explanation being needed than a genuine feeling of sympathy.

Finally, we are used to seeing queer flashes in Pre-Code movies, but the one in this movie is unique. In order to pass Annie off as upper class, the Dude knows that she will need a complete makeover, consisting of a hairdo, makeup, and a whole new wardrobe.  To that end, Missouri Martin (Glenda Farrell) and several other women take Annie into a bedroom.  A man named Pierre starts to go in with them. Since Annie may end up having all of her clothes removed to make way for new stuff, including her underwear presumably, the Dude tells Pierre he can’t go in there.  Pierre turns around and gestures effeminately, while Missouri Martin assures the Dude that it is all right.  The Dude shrugs, now realizing that Pierre is a homosexual.  As such, Pierre is permitted to go into the bedroom with the women, the idea being that his lack of interest in women sexually means that his viewing Annie’s naked body will not infringe on her modesty.

Conservatives worried about transgender women in the ladies’ room take note.

Movies that were popular when they were made tell us something about the culture that produced them, but sometimes it is hard know whether the movies depict things as they really were or only as the way the audience wanted them to be.  This is especially so for the movie Made for Each Other, in which one cannot help but wonder what the attitude of the audience was toward love, God, and housewives in 1939.

The movie starts off as a comedy, drifts into drama, plunges into melodrama, and then closes as a comedy, the overall result being uneven and unsatisfying, especially since the parts of the movie that count as comedy are not all that funny.  It begins by announcing in a prologue that of all the people in New York, John Mason (James Stewart) is one of the least important.  We see a hand flipping through a telephone book until it finds the name John Mason, followed by the abbreviation “atty,” indicating that he is an attorney.  Given this, it is hard to avoid the implication that the measure of a person’s importance is his occupation.  Now, this movie was made during the Great Depression when a lot of people didn’t even have a job.  And of those who did have employment, most would not have had a college education, let alone have had the luxury of obtaining an advanced degree, such as by going to law school.  In other words, most of those in the audience would have been “less important” in this sense than John Mason, and yet the people that made this movie must have assumed, perhaps rightly, that the audience would accept this evaluation of John as one of the least important people in New York are perfectly reasonable.

Anyway, he works for a law firm, and while on a brief trip to Boston to get a deposition for an upcoming case, Higgins versus Higgins, he met a woman named Jane (Carol Lombard) and married her.  It really is amazing, looking back now from the vantage point of the twenty-first century, how unthinkable that would be today.  Of course, even in 1939, when this movie was made, marrying a woman after having known her for only a few days would have been exceptional.  But people did fall in love and get married in those days far more quickly than now.  That is not surprising, considering that before the sexual revolution, a lot of people never had sex until they got married, and so couples were often in a hurry to tie the knot.

But it is not simply that people could not wait to have sex with each other.  Rather, there was a widespread belief at that time that marriages were made in Heaven.  This belief is expressed in the title of the movie.  So, once you met the person you were made for, there was no reason to hesitate.  Today, few people still believe this sort of thing.  We fall in love and have sex, not necessarily in that order, and then we fall out of love and break up.  We do this a few times with a few different people, and maybe when we find someone we really seem to get along with, we finally decide to get married, usually after living together for a while.  And then, as often as not, we end up getting divorced anyway.  And thus it is that today we look upon the notion that people are “made for each other” with a jaundiced eye.

Be that as it may, when John returns to the office, Carter, his chief rival for being made the next junior partner of the firm, suggests that senior partner Judge Doolittle (Charles Coburn) might be displeased with the news, owing to the expectation that John would marry Doolittle’s daughter Eunice.  John dismisses that as just a rumor.  But he is embarrassed and hesitant about telling Doolittle, so we have to wonder.  It is never clear what John’s relationship with Eunice really amounted to, whether they even ever went out on a date.

John and Jane prepare to go on their honeymoon by taking a ship to Europe.  In their cabin, there is a small bed, which is just barely big enough for the two of them.  They get on the bed and try it out.  A lot of people believe that in old movies, if a man and woman got on the same bed, at least one of them had to have one foot on the floor.  There is nothing about that in the Production Code, and this is one of several movies that prove that the rule never existed, such as Fallen Angel (1945) and The 39 Steps (1935), in the latter of which the couple are not even married.  The honeymoon, however, is called off when John has to go back to the office, because the continuance he thought he had for Higgins v. Higgins has been rescinded, with the trial scheduled for the next Monday.  He gets no sympathy from Doolittle, who is contemptuous of honeymoons.

Somewhat later, with John’s mother Harriet living with him and Jane, they have Doolittle, Carter, and Eunice over for dinner.  John thought he was being groomed for being made a partner, but Doolittle announces that the new partner will be Carter, owing to the recommendation made by Eunice, presumably because she is a woman scorned.  Having your boss over for dinner, who then picks that time to let you know, in front of your wife and other guests, that you have been passed over for the promotion you were hoping for would certainly make you feel as though you were one of the least important people in New York.

Jane has a baby, after which there follows a lot of helpless-husband and interfering mother-in-law routines that are supposed to be funny.  Maybe they were funny in 1939.  As I noted above, things were very different back then from the way they are now.  And one way in which they are different apparently is in the status of a housewife.  For some time now, it has been deemed inappropriate to ask a married woman if she works.  The implication of such a question is that housewives do not work, when in fact they do a lot of work, raising children, cleaning house, cooking, and so forth.  Well, that may be the way things are today, but judging by this movie, one has to wonder how things were back then.

From the beginning of their marriage, John and Jane have had a cook.  That is breathtaking all by itself.  How many people do you know have a full-time cook?  Anyway, the cook tells Jane that her job is to prepare meals, and that Jane can wash the diapers herself.  Jane is devastated.  She tells the cook she is fired.  Of course, she immediately hires another one, presumably someone who will wash the diapers as well as cook the meals (Ew!), and from what we can glean later in the movie, someone who will clean house as well.  In other words, this apartment has two women in it, John’s wife and mother, neither of whom has a job, and between the two of them, they cannot cook their own meals, wash the baby’s diapers, or keep house in general.  Well, maybe housewives today “work,” but I am not so sure about the ones in the 1930s, if this movie is any indication.  However, this may be a piece with the notion that a lawyer could be one of the least important people in New York.  That is, if the audience could believe this about John, perhaps the audience could accept the idea that it was perfectly appropriate for Jane to have a cook, even if those in the audience were doing good just to put food on the table.

John despairs about the fact that he was not promoted and given a raise, making it a bit of a struggle to pay the bills.  Jane tells John he should just barge into Doolittle’s office and demand a raise, saying Doolittle cannot do without him.  That makes me cringe.  One should never ask for a raise with that attitude.  One should always assume that the boss will say no, and be prepared for that.  Anyway, Jane pumps John up enough to do it, but before John can demand his raise, Doolittle tells him that business is off and everyone will have to take a twenty-five percent cut in pay, and that he himself will be making a substantial reduction in his drawing account.  As John leaves the office, we hear Doolittle talking to a commissioner on the phone, saying that he wants to buy that house on Park Avenue.

John goes out and gets drunk, coming home at two in the morning.  He drops a bottle of milk, waking up the new cook Lily (Louise Beavers).  All right, just a darn minute.  Now they have a live-in cook?  Well, maybe cooks have to live in the house for which they prepare the meals.  How would I know?  In any event, as we see in the next scene, she is also a nanny, because she is taking care of the baby in the park.  This is the fifteenth woman that Jane has hired, although it is the first one we have seen that is African American.  Perhaps it is on account of Lily’s black wisdom that Jane values her so much, as when Lily says, “Never let the seeds stop you from enjoying the watermelon.”

Because of the cut in pay, the Mason family starts going into debt, even to the point of having collection agencies being sicced on them.  Jane looks for a job, but cannot find one.  Finally, she is so desperate, she has to let go of Lily.  Now she will have to work in the home, just like a modern housewife.  In fact, John gets so depressed that he has turned his wife into a “household drudge” that he decides that they should get a divorce so that she won’t be married to a failure.  In other words, whereas today, a housewife may take umbrage at the suggestion that she does not work, back when this movie was made, if a housewife actually had to do housework, that was something to be ashamed of.

In the course of lamenting their marriage, John even says that maybe they should not have had the baby.  Uh-oh!  You know what that means.  It’s punishment time.  While they are at a night club being miserable with each other on New Year’s Eve, Jane calls home and finds out that the baby is sick.  He is rushed to the hospital, where he is diagnosed with an infection so severe that unless they can obtain some of the new, experimental serum, the baby will die.  John goes to Doolittle’s house, wakes him up in the middle of the night, and makes him put on his hearing aid.  Presumably, this hearing aid represents the fact that Doolittle often does not listen, figuratively speaking, to the needs of others.  John tells him that on account of the cut in pay, his baby has had to sleep in the dining room, causing him to get pneumonia.  Doolittle agrees to pay for the cost to get the serum.  Unfortunately, it will have to be flown in from another state during a blizzard.  Chances are, the pilot will not make it.  Communication with the pilot is lost, and it is beginning to look hopeless.

While watching over the baby, Jane bemoans the fact that there is nothing she can do.  The nurse, who is also a nun, is standing behind her with a knowing, almost smug look on her face.  She tells Jane there is one more thing she can do.  She leads her to the chapel, where Jane prays to a statue of Jesus.  I would have given anything for that scene to be followed by one in which we see the plane crash into the side of a mountain.  Well, that didn’t happen, of course.  The pilot bails out of the plane and crawls to a farmhouse, and the farmer calls the hospital.  The serum gets there on time, and the baby is saved.

It is interesting to note that we no longer see scenes like this in mainstream movies.  They still make religious movies, of course, in which people pray and God answers those prayers.  But if no mention is made of religion for most of a movie, a scene right at the end where somebody prays, bringing about a miracle, never happens any more.  It is a scene like that which spoils Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man (1956), at least for those of us watching it today.  But people must have been more open to the idea of divine intervention back in those days, accepting it casually as something that happens all the time.

After the baby is saved, we see the pilot and Doolittle having drinks in the bar.  Four rounds were bought, none paid for by Doolittle.  When the pilot comments on this, Doolittle indicates that he can’t hear him on account of his hearing aid.  This scene is followed by one in which John has been made a junior partner, with no reason given whatsoever.  From the juxtaposition of these scenes, we can only conclude that the one is the cause of the other, that John was made a partner because Doolittle has suddenly become all sentimental about the baby.  Either that, or because he was impressed by John’s nerve when John barged into his house the night the baby got sick.  Right after getting his promotion, John gives an angry lecture to all the other partners, from Carter on up to Doolittle, loudly asserting that there will have to be changes made at the law firm, and demanding that these changes be implemented immediately.  All the partners listen submissively.  Apparently John is now one of the most important people in New York.

What does it all mean?  A fair amount of emphasis was given to the scene where Jane prays to God to save the baby, so perhaps the idea is this.  John tells Jane they should get divorced, and he wishes that they had not had the baby.  God punishes John by making the baby sick.  Jane prays to God, who then relents and allows the baby to be saved.  Through this miracle, John and Jane are reconciled, and Doolittle’s heart is melted, leading him to give John a promotion.  And this is all in accordance with God’s plan.

Or maybe not.  Even in the old days, movies did not require divine intervention for there to be a narrative rupture arising out of an unbelievable change in character in the final reel.  How much the audience of 1939 would have seen the hand of God in all this is hard to say from our present, less credulous perspective.

In any event, given this promotion, there can be little doubt that Jane has hired Lily back to be a live-in cook, maid, and nanny again.  Now she doesn’t have to work in any sense of the word.