I think that in today’s society, a story about a middle-aged man who marries a 17-year-old would be picketed and protested. Now, imagine that in mid 1950’s such an older man with a younger woman would be unheard of. Yet, according to the commentator on TCM, the film did not receive any protests whatsoever. Interesting.
Dwacon
http://dwacon.blogspot.com/
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Today, the average age of marriage is 26. In the '50s, the _average_ woman was married by the time she was 20. Which means many of them married even earlier, in their teens. It was typical for a women to marry immediately after high school, and in fact people might have considered her an "old maid" if she waited much longer.
Why? Several practical reasons. First, bear in mind that most women at the time were housewives and didn't work (outside of the home), so their need for formal secondary education & training was far less than it is today. Most women didn't go to college (and many of those who did majored in Home Economics and went mainly to land the husband that they had failed to find while in High School).
As a result, with their formal education finished with high school, they were considered full adults and were expected to assume the role of an adult woman (which, at the time, meant getting married and having children).
In today's world, where making a good living demands at least 16 years of formal education, we have basically postponed true adulthood until people are economically prepared to fend for themelves. An 18-year old, once considered an adult, is now looked upon almost as a child, since he or she is unprepared for the current demands of the workplace.
Second, remember that it was not socially acceptable at the time for unmarried couples to live together (it was called "living in sin"). The lack of birth control meant that most girls would get pregnant soon after beginning to have sex. Most people can't go without sex until their late 20's, so as soon as they found a serious partner with whom they wanted to have sex, many of them married to keep things respectable (and to keep the resulting babies "legitimate"). This encouraged early marriages as well.
With the coming of birth control, the stigma of premarital sex faded, and unmarried couples are now free to cohabitate, meaning that they can delay formal marriage indefinitely (or at least until they have finished their education and found meaningful employment).
As a result, today, we have basically redefined what constitutes an adult. While it may be socially practical to do so today, it is an unrealistic definition by any meaningful biological or historical standard.
As for the "older man" aspect, women marrying men older than themselves is a practice which dates back to pre-history. In part, it stems from the outdated notion of the husband as a paternal figure. (In past marriages, when the actual father "gave" his daughter away, the husband was expected to assume the same basic paternal role as protector and authority figure. Note the fact that on the '50s sitcom "I Love Lucy", Lucy calls her husband "Sir", is expected to follow his commands, and is actually spanked by him more than once when she disobeys).
While everyone at the time would have denounced an older man attempting to seduce & abandon a younger woman, no one would have objected to him doing the honorable thing and marrying her. In fact, unless he was truly ancient, the older man probably would have been considered a better catch for her, since he would already be established in business and would have accumulated some savings & experience on which to base a married life.
It's not that marrying an older man was typical, it wasn't. Most women married men close to their own age, just as they do now. It's just that there wasn't a stigma associated with such marriages, because at the time society didn't regard young women in their late teens as unfit for marriage.
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My grandmother married at 17. Granted this was in 1895, but her marriage only ended with the death of my grandfather in 1951. They had ten children.
Born a couple of years after the end of world War II, I married at 25 years of age. Several of my friends commented that they "thought I would never get around to it." My wife was 23 when we married and most of the girls she grew up with had been married for years. Many of our friends were Catholics who obeyed the Pope on birth control but not on premarital sex. The age of consent for women in Australia is 16. 17 year old brides have never been out of the ordinary.
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I agree it's the combination of things that makes this a little less G rated than most comedies of the era. I'm not a movie scholar and can't think of any movies in the last ten years with an older man and a teenaged girl but there surely must be some. Of course both Reynolds and Powell were older than what they were portraying so that skews the reactions of the audience. And in the final scene Reynolds points out that she is just four months shy of being 18 and has learned a lot since he was away while he is pointing out the drawbacks.
Sabrina, also from 1954, has a similar relationship with Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart of similar ages to Reynolds and Powell. I believe the line in the movie is, "Joe College with arthritis." I didn't see this type of issue about the scandalous nature of the film on the Sabrina board.
Typically, in America, people get married when they get out of school. If they only go to high school they tend to get married younger. Undoubtedly the increased number of college goers in the past 50 years has raised the age level for marriage, along with the shift in idea that a woman should have a career and that childbearing can wait until a woman is in her 30s or even 40s, although that may take a great deal of intervention by medical science that might not have been necessary at 18 or 21. If she is more interested in being a mother and homemaker, she probably wouldn't wait and would marry a fellow she met in school.
It makes sense that a girl who had such a difficult background WOULD marry a much older man--a stable, mature, father figure. You see that all the time. And the guy wasn't made of stone so he was flattered and turned on by her attention, and felt protective towards her which could ripen into love. Not hard to figure. It didn't work for Charles and Diana but he had Camilla on the side. That's not to say it wouldn't work for a man who has already sown his wild oats and a woman who was ready to nest.
I agree with everything you say....except Lucy called Ricky "sir?" I think you have some 'splainin' to do.
shareWatch any scene in which Lucy has been caught misbehaving by Desi, when he is angry with her and she is worried about being punished. She usually reverts to the "Yes, sir", "No, sir" dialogue.
Check the comments on this page for a brief mention of exactly that: http://thestir.cafemom.com/entertainment/124184/behold_the_i_love_lucy
So a story portrayed in uptight Victorian white bread 1950's
would be scandalous in the year 2010? Something strange is going on here.
Well for one thing , Debbie Reynolds was not 17 when this movie was made she was 22 and Powell was 50. big deal
"So, a thought crossed your mind? Must have been a long and lonely journey"share
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What? Where in the world do you get that? Good lord, Woody Allen has made a career on older men with younger women movies. Shanghai Kiss (2007) features a 16-year-old Adelaide (Hayden Panettiere) in a relationship with 33-year-old Liam (Ken Leung). Pineapple Express has 30-something Dale Denton in a relationship with his 18-year-old girlfriend Angie (Amber Heard). Not to mention the new production of Jane Eyre, which features a 17-year-old girl marrying a middle-aged-man. Productions of Jane Eyre have been made since 1914 and I've heard of no picketing or protesting.
"...nothing is left of me, each time I see her..." - Catullus
The point is he was supposed to be 35 which would have helped had a 35-year old actor been cast in the part, but Dick Powell was 50 and looked evry bit of that.
So it was creepy-ish to me.
I may be wrong, but I thought Dick Powell's character was suppose to be 29; at one point, Debbie Renyolds said to Dick Powell something like 'I am 17, almost 18' and he said 'and I am 29 almost 30'. They then went back and forth on when he is one age, she will be this age. Wish I had paid more attention! It was at this point though, when I logged onto IMDB to see their ages in real life when this movie was made.
"To err is human, to forgive, canine." - Unknown
TO lesnmike:
When Debbie Reynolds' character said to Mark that her mother was OLD over breakfast on the terrace she explained her mother was 34. Her mother was seventeen when she gave birth to Susan and Susan was 17 years old. Dick Powell's character was taken aback when Susan described her mother as OLD because he was older, by one year; he admitted to being 35 years old. I bit far fetched in casting I feel since he was actually 50 years old.
Dick Powell played “juvenile lead” parts in musicals until he was in his forties, but his problem in “Susan Slept Here,” was with whomever did his makeup. They made him look like an aging Kewpie doll.
Then, there’s 1947’s “The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer,” starring a 43-year-old Cary Grant forced to romance a 19-year-old Shirley Temple, but of course Shirley had been following older men around since she was six.
well, you gotta remember he WAS 50, they could only do so much with his makeup to make him look younger..... but to get back to the OP, I wouldn't say that the much older man/younger woman was so much unheard of that it would inspire protests.... I'd have to assume that the age of consent in CA at the time would have made the marriage in the movie legal (could be wrong, of course), so what really would there be to protest??.... not to mention that this story actually takes place within the movie industry, where such things were always a little more permissive than on the "outside".... :-)
shareI thought it was creepy and he was unattractive. Not worth protesting about, though.