Canthook

Barbara Stanwyck is a journalist, with a newspaper column and a weekly radio show. Clark Gable is a race car driver. The year is 1950; the movie was To Please A Lady (later reissued as Red Hot Wheels). It failed at the box office, causing Clark Gable to fall out of the Top Ten Box Office Draws, but I've seen worse. (It also featured Joie Chitwood Thrill Drivers stunt cars, which I fondly remember seeing in person, back in the 1950s.)

She can't forget the fact that two other drivers are dead. She saw him refuse to give way on the track for one, and she heard about the other. And then a guy she's hounding, claiming that he's committing fraud, gets sentenced to 25 years, and rather than face prison, he commits suicide. They've been romantic, off and on, and well, there's a half hour left on the TiVO, I pretty well know how it's going to turn out, and you do, too.

Barbara Had A Long Run

Most of us know Barbara best from 112 episodes of The Big Valley, filmed between 1965 and 1969, but she had already made about 100 films by that time. Her career, longer than most actresses, started in as an uncredited fan dancer in 1927 (age 20) in Broadway Nights and ran until her 24 appearances in The Colbys in 1985-1986, when she was 80. Seems like these days, an actor has to act, and those that can, have fairly long careers, but actresses don't act; they just take their clothes off - and so like most of the other props in any given movie, they're abandoned after one or two movies.

There are exceptions, of course, women whose acting careers last a long time, but most actresses complain that there are no good roles for older women. That's not entirely true, but it's close enough. What they don't admit, is that there aren't very many roles for younger actresses, either, only jobs taking their clothes off. And it sounds like I object to women taking their clothes off. I don't. It's just that I don't want that to replace good acting.

How To Make A Modern Movie

Toss together a young shapely woman, make her a stripper or a streetwalker, with a man, make him a detective. Add a chase scene, or two or three - it works best if there's a car chase, with lots of damage to street vendors and plate glass windows, followed by guys running through a neighborhood, climbing fences, and jumping from rooftop to rooftop. Add a few scenes of people selling drugs. Kill somebody, and make sure there's a big pool of blood that their head is lying in. Actually, you need two men who are partners, or perhaps the cops are a man and a sexy woman. You need a babe that would be hot if she tried, but she doesn't try, because she's a lab tech for the cops. Yep, that's your average movie today.

And it's not just movies. If it's not a "reality show" or a sitcom, that's pretty much what television shows are all about these days. If you're taking your squeeze to the drive-in, that makes a fairly good movie, because you don't have to (or want to) pay attention, and you can canoodle a lot. And you can hope that the scenes where the actress is taking off her clothes will get your date hot. (I have a secret for you, fellas. If she's not interested, it won't make her hot - and if she IS interested, the movie is unnecessary. But if you want to use it as an excuse, go ahead.)

What's Missing? A Script

One of the things that made the old teledrama series so compelling was that they had fully-fleshed-out characters. You knew who Perry Mason was, and Paul Drake and Della Street, and that made it a lot easier to write scripts. These days, sitcoms don't have believable characters, and they don't try to make the characters' actions make sense; they just stand up and deliver punchline after punchline. They aren't really situation comedies; they're standup. One of the reasons why Seinfeld succeeded was that the characters, as bizarre as they were, remained true to their character; it was the situation, where they were hauling deposit pop bottles to the midwest in a stolen postal vehicle, that was the source of the humor.

And Cheers didn't need much in the way of a script because it wasn't really a situation comedy, as a situation heartwarm show. The bar was a place where everyone knew your name, and you had a bunch of friends over for a half hour. You don't expect your friends to perform for you; it's sufficient that they come over, and be of good cheer, and everyone has a good time together.

It Didn't Used To Be That Way

In the early days of television, they actually had stories for their shows. Even Jack Benny, which was somewhat a variety show, had a story line each week with Jack and Rochester. There was a challenge each week for young Doctor Kildare, and even bad comedies like Our Miss Brooks had stories.

Because they don't have stories any more, they don't need actresses. It's OK for young actresses to take their clothes off, and increasingly, that's happening on television, not just the movies, but older actresses need stories. That's because older men, who have developed better taste in women, prefer older actresses, but their wives get jealous if they watch older women disrobe. There's not a 55-year-old woman in Lancaster that figures she is expected to compete with Paris Hilton, but Rene Russo or Susan Sarandon or Kathy Bates? When older actresses doff their duds, and husbands drool, wives start to feel inadequate, I think.

In The Big Valley, the star was Barbara Stanwyck, but there was a young ingenue that had some later success (in Dynasty). Linda Evans has disappeared from view, while Barbara Stanwyck was on the old movies channel earlier today, and on my TiVO tonight. She just didn't have the staying power.

Harry And Bess

I think it's a mistake for older women to be jealous of older actresses. There's a story about President Truman and his wife, who visited a chicken farm when he was president.

On a chicken farm, you'll find a lot of hens, but only a few roosters. The farmer leading the president and first lady around explained that a rooster may sometimes couple as many as eighty times a way.

Bess Truman raised her eyebrows. "Eighty times?" she questioned the farmer, and the farmer assured her that she had heard correctly. "Would you please inform the president of that?"

Harry was listening to all this, and turned to the farmer, "Same hen every time?" The farmer said, no, it was almost always a different hen. "Would you please inform the first lady of that?"

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Barbara Stanwyck - Bess Truman - Cheers - chickens - Clark Gable - Della Street - Doctor Kildare - Harry Truman - Jack Benny - Joie Chitwood - Paul Drake - Perry Mason