So the parents had two single beds, but they also had two daughters. Did the stork drop off those daughters on the balcony, or outside the front door, when the daughters were born?
The parents should have been shown getting up from a double/queen/king bed.
Excellent movie, by the way!
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Jim Hutton: talented gorgeous hot hunk; adorable as ElleryQueen; SEXIEST ACTOR EVER
Alas, such was the custom back in the days of yore, to depict on the silver screen married couples sleeping in separate beds - never together in one big bed. I guess it can only be chalked up to some sort of code of decency and/or modesty thunked up by Hollywood "Puritans" of the day. lol
Interstingly enough, this married people in separate beds "code" lasted until the mid-60's, when apparently the TV show "Bewitched" broke custom and was the first television show to depict a married couple in the same bed. From the trivia section of "Bewitched":
This series ["Bewitched"] marked the first time that a married couple, played by unmarried actors, was seen in the same bed together in a live-action television show. Prior to this, most shows featured married couples in separate beds (the only known exception being "Mary Kay and Johnny", a late 1940's sitcom featuring a real-life couple playing themselves). The Munsters which premiered one week after this show, became the second TV show to feature a conjugal couple when Lily (Yvonne De Carlo) joined Herman (Fred Gwynne) in a double bed.
I know. My post was a bit tongue-in-cheek.
Thanks for the info about "Bewitched".
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Jim Hutton: talented gorgeous hot hunk; adorable as ElleryQueen; SEXIEST ACTOR EVER
It's amazing - some of the things films got away with before the Hays Code. Then films got irrational. I remember the main character and the love interest in Fury with Spencer Tracy looking over a bedroom set they wanted to purchase once married. Twin beds. Oooh baby.
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Roads? Where we're going we don't need. . . roads.
In some ways, the Code really made the filmmakers work hard, because they couldn't rely on sex and/or bathroom humor the way today's filmmakers do. They also had to find subtle ways of getting their points across.
At the same time, the Code also resulted in a lot of forced endings (especially the crime/mystery movies) and unrealistic scenes (ex. the one in Fury which you described).
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Jim Hutton: talented gorgeous hot hunk; adorable as ElleryQueen; SEXIEST ACTOR EVER
Fury also serves as an example for the forced endings. The quick reconciliation no harm, no foul ending wasn't what Fritz Lang intended. Almost Hitchcockian in it's abrupt change of tone and sudden, wink wink ending. The compromises made to appease the Code may not have been true to life (in the case of separate beds, of course not), but the movies of today don't shoot for realism either. Scriptwriters and directors from this era of filmmaking believe every problem can be solved with more boobs and more gore. It would be nice if a balance could be found. Not gonna happen while directors like Michael Bay are around.
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Roads? Where we're going we don't need. . . roads.
I don't remember the ending of "Fury". In fact, I don't remember the movie at all, though I did see it.
I remember one rather stupid ending. I forget which movie it was...some film noir of the 1940s. It was about some guy who was cheating on his wife & he was involved in some other illegal activities or something. He was found to be not guilty, but just before the verdict was announced, he suddenly leaped through a window and killed himself. Now there's a fake ending if there ever was one. Definitely a Code ending!
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Jim Hutton: talented gorgeous hot hunk; adorable as ElleryQueen; SEXIEST ACTOR EVER
I saw that movie you're talking about, MEQ. It was this one: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039896/
Now, getting back to beds... I recall I watched this film from the early thirties, some sort of racy lurid film (I think it had to do with either drug addiction or prostitution, or both), where one girl chides her girlfriend who wanted to take a nap after work, telling her "Beds are for action, not relaxin'". Now I can't remember what film it was (I remember it was in the public domain, I think I watched it on YouTube).
Thanks for the link. That's probably the one I saw. I just can't remember.
The movie from the early 30s you mentioned sounds interesting. I haven't seen it. I'm sure that TCM has it on sale as part of their pre-Code collection.
Another one that is quite ahead of its time is the late 20s silent movie "Doomsday". That movie has some scenes and comments which wouldn't have been acceptable in movies from the forties and fifties.
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Jim Hutton: talented gorgeous hot hunk; adorable as ElleryQueen; SEXIEST ACTOR EVER
I know the movie you mentioned:
It's a 1948 film with Robert Young called, "They Won't Believe Me".
Thanks! Yes, I have had someone else give me that title, and I should have written it down at the time...
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JimHutton (1934-79) & ElleryQueen
I'm sure Mrs Queen like me you'll have appreciated the scene where Jim and Muriel have a tiff in their new house, make up with a big embrace and passionate kiss, (after the girls have gone to bed of course) and then they primly climb into their twin beds, roll over and turn off the light.
No TV, no excuse! (Although Jim does have to get up early for the 6:15 am train).
Exactly..... [laugh]
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[cheers] JimHutton (1934-79) and ElleryQueen [cheers]
And yet I just saw a post-Code movie the other day - Too Many Husbands, with Jean Arthur, Fred MacMurray and Melvyn Douglas, from 1940 - where the married couple sleeps in a double bed. Perhaps it was not a hard-and-fast rule in movies, whereas TV was more strict. (American television was extremely prudish before the 70s, far more so than movies, even movies from the late 30s and 40s.)
shareOh yes, some films show a double bed, but I think the rule back then was that at least one of the characters had to have both feet on the floor if the other character was already in bed. Something like that...
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[cheers] JimHutton (1934-79) and ElleryQueen [cheers]
I know you're probably kidding but...
Why was it such a big deal that they had two beds? Do we really need to see the couple getting into or out of a single bed? What does it mean; that they're having more sex because they share a bed?
I suspect it wasn't as big a deal when these movies were made as it seems to be today. These days we seem to lack imagination or the ability to think critically. We seem quick to accept whatever is put in front of us and what's not obvious must not exist.
That's little baby behavior. Until they reach a certain developmental stage, a baby's whole world consists of what they see. They could be happily playing with a toy but if you put it behind your back, while they're watching, that toy ceases to exist. They don't know they can look for it. Well, that's how a lot of us have become; clueless. I suspect it's because so much is being fed to us; everything is so explicit, we almost don't feel we have to think for ourselves. As a result, some of us don't.
I love babies in every stage but I sure don't want to go through life being a clean slate; totally unaware of what's going on unless it's specifically spelled out.
Woman, man! That's the way it should be Tarzan. [Tarzan and his mate]
Oh geez....the comments in the opening post were meant to be tongue-in-cheek remarks.
Maybe I'm clueless, but at least I still know how to joke around from time to time.
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Jim Hutton (1934-79) and Ellery Queen =
My parents, who were married in 1953, slept in two twin beds, separated by a night stand, until the late 1960s when they switched to sharing a king-size bed. Twin beds were common for married couples. Intimate relations for recreational/reproductive purposes were accomplished during trans-nightstand visits.
shareThat's interesting. I've not heard of a married couple actually sleeping in two beds like that and thought it was purely an invention for the movies.
Honestly I don't hate the idea. Sometimes it can be nice to just have your own space when trying to sleep.
And yet the film also showed the wife taking a shower with Cary Grant in the bathroom shaving. He even comes over and opens the shower door to hand her something IIRC. Audiences must’ve known he saw her naked in that scenario
share