In those scenes where Tom and Betsy Rath (Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones) are talking in their bedroom, do they have one bed or two? I thought I saw two beds, but I could be mistaken.
Two beds would fit in with the Leave-It-To-Beaver, 1950s worldview. However, in a film that deals with such issues as extramarital affairs and illegitimate children, two beds for a married couple would seem absurdly quaint.
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jg Hollywood had a strick code back then that in the movies that husbands and wives had to be shown in separate beds (quite a difference from reality of course). They only way they could have been in the same bed would have been if they had in real life been husband and wife and I think even then there were restrictions. William Holden had the same thing happen to his bedroom scenes with Grace Kelly in The Bridges at Toko-Ri. He said that it would have been a great scene if they could have been in the same bed.
sharejg Hollywood had a strick code back then that in the movies that husbands and wives had to be shown in separate beds (quite a difference from reality of course). They only way they could have been in the same bed would have been if they had in real life been husband and wife and I think even then there were restrictions. William Holden had the same thing happen to his bedroom scenes with Grace Kelly in The Bridges at Toko-Ri. He said that it would have been a great scene if they could have been in the same bed.
shareMy aunt and uncle have been married now for over 60 years and they always had separate beds. They were side by side but separate.
shareSeparate beds for Tom and Betsy doesn't sound "absurdly quaint" to me at all.
Sure times were different when this film was made (1956), and hollywood standards and the production code may have been a factor.
But you know what? This may come as a suprise to some of you youngsters out there, but after 10 years of marriage and 3 kids, getting a good nights' sleep becomes more important than snuggling and cuddling every night.
It isn't at all unusual for "mature" partners and couples to want to sleep in separate beds. It makes complete sense, allowing each person to have their own space to read, surf the net, or finish-up office paper work, without one disturbing the other. It also dispenses with problems of people hogging the blankets and stretching out and rolling on top of each other during the night, disturbing the other person's sleep.
And separate beds doesn't necessarily mean the thrill is gone; a couple can usually make time and space for a little romance under any circumstances.
It's not a Leave-it-to-Beaver world view at all, it's simply being realistic.
Watched the film Saturday night. They had separate beds.
"We're fighting for this woman's honor, which is more than she ever did."
I wish we had a guest room so that when my husband is snoring up a storm I had somewhere to go besides the couch. As long as he's the main breadwinner (I'm a stay-at-home Mom), he gets the bed. When the kids were really little, I could have just snuggled in with one of them.
shareSo completely absurd. If there is one form of sexual intimacy that has been acceptable in all places and times, it is that of man and wife in marriage. Why it should have been required to have the pretense that they slept in separate beds is beyond me. I remember as a child I saw an episode of I Love Lucy (where of course, both the Ricardos and the Mertzes slept in separate beds) where Lucy and Ethel had to sneak out at night. Fred Mertz suddently appears to foil whatever hair-brained scheme they were up to, and Ethel asked Fred how he knew she was gone. "You stopped nudging me to move over", was his answer. Naturally, we had lready seen the set of their bedroom with two separate beds, so although the line was funny and made perfect sense, it didn't fit with the two bed scenario.
shareThis was the standard for Hollywood back then. In fact, it wasn't until 1969 when all the movie codes were loosened that people were in the same bed together. The first television show that showed a married couple in the same was the Brady Bunch.
shareNope. Herman and Lily Munster shared a bed, as did Fred and Wilma Flintstone. Yes, the Flintstones were a cartoon, but they were a primetime tv show. But neither of these two shows were the first. A 15 minute show in 1947 on the Dumont network, Mary Kay and Johnny, was the first tv show to show a married couple sharing a bed. It was also the first sitcom.
shareTwo single beds was quite common at the time and moree comfortable than a regular full bed, especially for a tall man like Peck. It is certainly not quaint, nor absurdly quaint.
shareI noticed that too. And I remember laughing at how on The Dick Van Dyke show, Rob and Laura slept in twin beds. Mary Tyler Moore was pretty sexy back then and I doubt they'd have slept in twin beds. But back then Hollywood was much too conservative to be realistic about sexual matters. Now, they've gone too far completely the other way. Nothing is off limits nowadays. Most people's sex lives are nothing like what was portrayed back then or what is portrayed now.
shareIt had nothing to do with the whether the studios' world view was liberal or conservative, but a restrictive code of censorship, the Hays Code. It became strictly enforced in 1934, and the pre-Code movies were quite different from the sanitized version of life portrayed on TV and movie screens between 1934 and 1968.
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