Fasten your seatbelts
I searched for the following movie clip because I was thinking of including it in a post about Trump vs. DeSantis. It didn’t quite fit, but I became fascinated with the scene for other reasons.
First of all, of course, there’s Bette Davis’ famous line about fastening your seatbelts. Boy, they don’t make them like Davis anymore. Then there’s Marilyn Monroe in a bit part, upstaging just about everyone by just standing there and saying a few lines.
But the thing that really got me were the fashions. They took me back – boy, did they take me back! The movie was made in 1950, and I doubt I remember fashions from that year, but the styles were popular for a few more years, and very similar to what my mother used to wear to parties. So elegant and stylized. I think it was called “The New Look,” when after WWII there was suddenly a lot more material available for clothing and skirts got longer. And the jewelry! My mother had a pin something like the one on Davis’ dress here (my mother smoked, too, although unlike Davis she quit when she was in her 40s), and also had two matching rhinestone clips like the ones the woman in the background on the right is wearing at 0:38 to 0:43. I still have those two clips, although I have never worn them. And here they are:
I don’t have a dress that they would work well with. Actually, I don’t have any dressy cocktail-party type occasions anymore, nor did I ever have all that many to begin with (sigh).
And let me add that the moment I downloaded that photo to my computer, up popped an ad for costume jewelry.
Here’s the movie scene:
ADDENDUM:
For the curious:
I’ll add that I just noticed that my dress clips are slightly asymmetrical.
Gosh I would wear those clips whenever I felt like it. Especially with a mink (or other fur) coat or jacket and jeans on a December day out shopping or picking up dry cleaning.
Don’t you wish they still made movies like that?
Neo says, ” . . . the styles were popular for a few more years, and very similar to what my mother used to wear to parties. So elegant and stylized. I think it was called ‘The New Look,’ when after WWII there was suddenly a lot more material available for clothing and skirts got longer. And the jewelry!”
In the early to mid-1950s, the Queen and Princess Margaret welcomed American film stars to the annual Royal Film Performance– everyone dressed to look as elegant as possible. Here’s a clip of Elizabeth II greeting– but of course!– Marilyn Monroe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyW25LWld6Y&ab_channel=UCLAFilm%26TelevisionArchive
As for jewelry, the Duchess of Windsor was famous from the 1930s onward for her extensive collection of expensive jewelry– no costume stuff for her. Here’s a short video about Sotheby’s 2013 sale of both Windsors’ treasures:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDvb8AWpJAE&ab_channel=Sotheby%27s
(As an aside: am I the only one who senses something Bidenesque in George Sanders’ attention to the ladies’ shoulders in the film clip?)
You need to add an ad-blocking extension to your browser. No reason or excuse for you having to put up with unwanted ads on your computer.
When you’ve been poor, the natural/simple look is what you’ve had and what you don’t want. I recently spent several weeks in Eastern Europe (they like the term Middle Europe, Russia is Eastern Europe). Noticeable difference between there and Vienna.
“Fasten Your Seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night…”
I’ve little doubt that those words will apply for the foreseeable future.
What a lot of very fine Actors and Actresses in the movie. I think people now forget just how beautiful Marilyn was. Her look at Davis is priceless I think. Sizing her up but at the same time in awe of a Living Legend. The end of the clip had Thema Ritter as the maid I believe. I recognized faces but names eluded me. George Sanders was so good, yet troubled enough to commit sucide.
I loved that movie. The late great Kathy Shaidle at the Mark Steyn Club wrote a great review of it a few years ago. I miss the Saturday night movie reviews she used to write. You could see that Marilyn Monroe would shortly be a big star after stealing every scene she was in.
Nice post. My parents attended and gave a sizeable number of parties & in the 60’s it was usually a well dressed affair. Great movie.
A few years later Anne Baxter and Monroe were to appear together in “Niagara” but Baxter withdrew and was replaced by Jean Peters who is lovely in it. Most people don’t care for Niagara probably because none of the characters are appealing except for Peters’ character. There is a shallowness to the other characters which is partly social commentary, but it also elevates Peters’ character as a more all-seeing observer of her surroundings and more compassionate. And then you care a bit more when the calamitous ending comes.
Michael W Towns:
I have ad-blocker. Some sites I unblock, however, because it’s the only way to see them. Those ads for the jewelry were in response to a photo I took of the dress clips and then sent the photo from my phone to my regular email so it would be easy to put on the blog. Somehow in that process the ads came up.
To file under “Huh, didn’t know that! Go figure!”: it says here that Anne Baxter was the granddaughter of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Amen re Kathy Shaidle. Funny, feisty, sharp, sui generis. And taken too soon.
It’s quite a shame that neither people, nor fashion nor movies like that are made anymore. We are much poorer for it.
Davis did a Perry Mason episode once in her later years, I assume because Raymond Burr was temporarily unavailable and the weekly series timetable brooked no slack, which also featured a very young Michael Parks. The camera work undoubtedly helped but the way she dominated her scenes, even while portraying a low intensity character constrained by whomever the series writers were, was interesting.
“The New Look” was a Christian Dior collection that debuted in 1947. The biggest splash supposedly was the Bar Dress, but another Y-line dress also made a big impact. Amount of fabric was definitely a part of it, but another part was lowering hemlines (which actually resulted in protests from women who didn’t want to change out their wardrobe).
https://synapse.ucsf.edu/articles/2020/11/14/new-look-dior
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/christian-dior-the-new-look-the-metropolitan-museum-of-art/kwWhkHJ-Ok8UIg?hl=en
This brings to mind the gold and diamond clip that I purchased for my mother at a jewelry store on the Ponte Vecchio on a trip my late mother kindly financed. Then again in those days you really could do Europe on 5 dollars a day.
I’ve seen this movie half a dozen times. The repartee is precious, in the best way, and only once, maybe, fails to be both dramatic and believable at its own high standard. If this clip continued to the end, I’d probably watch it all!
If there was ever a sequel, it should be “All about Miss Casswell.” Monroe doesn’t even have to act—she seems truly in awe of appearing in the center of the screen opposite Bette Davis—until she prepares herself to gladden the heart of the ‘unhappy rabbit,’ our pal, Max Fabian. (I suppose she had rehearsed and performed that smile and that walk a few times, with various producers and directors, to get where she was. So meta, as the kids say.)
Bette Davis lived in Laguna Beach CA and contributed a lot to the Laguna Playhouse when Harrison Ford was working there as a carpenter. Hard to believe he is 82.
Davis did a Perry Mason episode once in her later years, I assume because Raymond Burr was temporarily unavailable and the weekly series timetable brooked no slack,
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0673171/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_i882
ABC news is rejoicing, + saying something like: [in 2023, Mr. Hakeem Jeffries will be the head of the Democrats in The House, making him- the first Black person to lead a political party, in Congress].
Well Michael Steele, in 2009, became the first African-American person to head [The Republican National Committee], so- I guess Mr. Jefferies can go over to Mr. Steele’s office, + Mr. Steele will say: Welcome aboard.
I would have picked blackwell instead steele has spoiled in the last years
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2022/12/an-inexplicable-dislike.html
That’s true. I think Blackwell would be good at helping the Government.
Neo, you still should not have to put up those ads. There are other extensions out there that can fine tune the blocking process, let you still access the sites you want, while filtering out all the garbage.
I often send photos through email, via my phone, as well, and I don’t have ads pop up because I cut those hydras off completely. There are ways to have near-total commercial privacy online.
Of course, it might be annoying to deal with fixing it. Maybe the activation energy is too high. I totally get that, too.
Hey, I’m just mansplaining over here. 🙂