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All weekend, I can be your secret
I have been thinking about a passage in John Van Druten's The Voice of the Turtle (1943) for the last few days. It's a small, sincere, and sophisticated play that feels as though it has dated very little since its snapshot of the dating scene of WWII-era NYC, since it concerns a pair of strangers who over the course of a weekend find themselves trying to decide if the sex they had on short acquaintance and strong attraction is the foundation of a relationship and if so, what kind. Both have been hurt by former partners—dumped by her married lover for introducing sentiment into their affair, the heroine is trying to convince herself of the attractions of celibacy, while the hero has tried to protect himself since his similar jilting by letting himself be taken for granted as a booty call; neither tactic is generating much happiness for either of them, but the prospect of emotional as well as physical intimacy is terrifying. Their conversations are poignantly frank that women can feel sexual desire and men want love and commitment, however counter these facts run to their supposed societal roles. Since people haven't stopped wondering whether it might not be safer to break up than get their hearts broken, the conclusion has not turned saccharine with time. But there's a scene early in the first act, where the heroine is questioning her sexual normality, specifically her ability to engage in premarital sex at all, which got my attention:
"Well, do ordinary girls? I was raised to think they didn't. Didn't even want to. And what I want to know is—don't they? They don't in movies. Oh, I know that's censorship . . . but . . . the people who go and see the movies . . . are they like that too? Or don't they notice that it's all false?"
I've encountered internal references to censorship in Code-era movies, my favorite being The Gang's All Here (1943)'s magnificently metatextual "If you don't cut that out, the censors will!" It's not like no one noticed at the time. James Agee was constantly complaining about the limitations of what could be treated maturely or even just half-realistically on the screen and I imagine anyone who had paid attention through the Code transition felt similarly. It is nonetheless useful for me to receive these periodic reminders that even as I am continually parsing the world as it was strained through Hollywood from the world as inhabited by people who went to the movies, those same people were giving equally serious thought to the relationship of their pop culture to reality and the measurable distortions thereof. I am mildly, morbidly curious whether this speech survived into the chastified 1947 film, in which I am otherwise desperately uninterested; to add insult to injury, it stars Ronald Reagan. The heroine, incidentally, feels terrific object empathy for telephones that no one answers and radios no one is listening to, which hasn't dated in the least, either.
"Well, do ordinary girls? I was raised to think they didn't. Didn't even want to. And what I want to know is—don't they? They don't in movies. Oh, I know that's censorship . . . but . . . the people who go and see the movies . . . are they like that too? Or don't they notice that it's all false?"
I've encountered internal references to censorship in Code-era movies, my favorite being The Gang's All Here (1943)'s magnificently metatextual "If you don't cut that out, the censors will!" It's not like no one noticed at the time. James Agee was constantly complaining about the limitations of what could be treated maturely or even just half-realistically on the screen and I imagine anyone who had paid attention through the Code transition felt similarly. It is nonetheless useful for me to receive these periodic reminders that even as I am continually parsing the world as it was strained through Hollywood from the world as inhabited by people who went to the movies, those same people were giving equally serious thought to the relationship of their pop culture to reality and the measurable distortions thereof. I am mildly, morbidly curious whether this speech survived into the chastified 1947 film, in which I am otherwise desperately uninterested; to add insult to injury, it stars Ronald Reagan. The heroine, incidentally, feels terrific object empathy for telephones that no one answers and radios no one is listening to, which hasn't dated in the least, either.
no subject
That quote you highlighted is great. About many things--not just sexual mores--I came to the conclusion that people just lied/didn't share their reality. Not out of a desire to deceive others, just because the loudly proclaimed societal norms don't match lived experience.
to add insult to injury, it stars Ronald Reagan --I laughed.
The heroine, incidentally, feels terrific object empathy for telephones that no one answers and radios no one is listening to, which hasn't dated in the least, either. --SO TRUE. And a lovely detail. And reminds me of this tweet.
no subject
It was a long-running critical and commercial success—it was still on Broadway when the film came out and there was a London transfer with two out of three of the opening night cast—so it would have been an irrestistible property to the movies, but, I know, right? As soon as the order of operations has been reversed from sex → relationship or even sex → love, the play just ceases to exist as itself. It would have made a superb pre-Code, except it wouldn't have been written without the war.
if the main points of the movie aren't to be talked about (not that extramarital sex is the main point, but women's sexual desire and the fact that desires for sex and commitment don't infallibly break along genital lines).
The play is very non-judgmental about unmarried sex! The characters talk about double standards. They talk about the weirdness of running into a former lover and realizing that aching limerent leap just isn't there anymore. The ending is explicitly not a proposal of marriage or even of permanence—although the subject can't fail to come up—but a commitment to see what happens if they stay together rather than preemptively separating or trying to maintain the relationship on an artificially casual level. They might get hurt. It might not last. (Neither of them mentions it, probably because neither of them needs to, but it's wartime; he might die.) But the apartment is full of spring flowers and they are sitting down to a dinner from the restaurant which in two nights has already become theirs and they are very definitely going to spend another night together and you like to think there will be many more. I love the moment before their first time when the heroine asserts gravely that "there's a beast in me, too." Per the AFI Catalog, Breen wouldn't approve the film for production unless it was "affirmatively" established that "there has been no illicit sex affair between Bill and Sally." I hope Van Druten took the money and ran like hell.
About many things--not just sexual mores--I came to the conclusion that people just lied/didn't share their reality. Not out of a desire to deceive others, just because the loudly proclaimed societal norms don't match lived experience.
It's one of the reasons I am always so interested when lived experience seems to slip in between the cracks of popular representation. It's so interesting to see a play from 1943 where the male character is the one the morning after a potential one-night stand wanting to be reassured that it meant something.
--SO TRUE. And a lovely detail. And reminds me of this tweet.
That entire thread is very good, but the part about the roomba is really true.
no subject
This reminds me of the TV edit of the 1980 film Little Darlings. The premise of the film is that two teenage girls make a bet on who can lose her virginity first. The TV version changes the bet to which girl can get a guy to fall in love with her first. It's almost as if television of a certain era tried to resurrect the Code.
no subject
Yikes, yeah, no.
It's almost as if television of a certain era tried to resurrect the Code.
"I have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane!"
no subject
My all-time favorite is in the TV version of Diary of a Mad Housewife, in which they spliced some dialogue from another part of the film so that Richard Benjamin could mutter "Carr's Water Biscuit" instead of "goddamn it."
no subject
But I think my favorite TV-edit was in Young Frankenstein, where Teri Garr's line "He must have an enormous schwanstucker" is badly dubbed (and I suspect the obvious dubbing was deliberate) to "He must have an enormous personality".
no subject
I regret deeply that this euphemism never seems to have caught on.