Tag: Hair

Movies and Conduct

Source: ‘Female, 15, white, high-school sophomore’, quoted in Herbert Blumer, Movies and Conduct (New York: Macmillan, 1933), p. 37

Text: I have attempted to imitate the manners of several actresses, but I have never received any satisfactory results. I bobbed my hair when I was only eight years old, as a result of seeing someone in the movies doing likewise. I try to walk and move with ease and grace, but I find that it is a little difficult to act like others if I can’t see how I look. I remember one movie star, Mabel Normand, who had large eyes, and from the admiring of them I gradually began to stare at others with wide eyes. My friends thought there was something wrong with my eyes because I did this, and perhaps I did acquire poor eyesight as a result. At other times I curled my hair, manicured my fingernails, and dressed like my favorite stars. Of course my attempts never brought any pleasing results, so I abandoned my imitations and became original. Sometimes I posed for hours at a time before my dressing table mirror, posing with my hands about my face, and moving my arms as gracefully as I could. In the movies, it always seems that the innocent, wide-eyed girls have the most suitors, and that shyness promotes respect and adoration on the part of the opposite sex. When I went to parties I tried to be a meek little maid, but it proved to be a failure in attracting sweethearts; only gay and vivid types are wanted by the modern generation.

Comment: American sociologist Herbert Blumer’s Movies and Conduct presents twelve studies of the influence of motion pictures upon the young, made by the Committee on Educational Research of the Payne Fund, at the request of the National Committee for the Study of Social Values in Motion Pictures. The study solicited autobiographical essays, mostly from undergraduate students of the University of Chicago, and presented extracts from this evidence in the text. Most of the evidence relates to picturegoing in the 1920s. The interview above comes from the chapter ‘Imitation by Adolescents’.

Links: Copy on Internet Archive

Minnie at the Movies

Source: Marian Bowlan, ‘Minnie at the Movies’, from City Types: A Book of Monologues Sketching the City Woman (Chicago: T.S. Denison, 1916 – copyright date of original piece 1913), pp. 231-235

Text: Minnie at the Movies

Character:
MINNIE MURRAY, an independent and emotional follower of the film drama.

SCENE — A neighborhood nickel theater.

MINNIE MURRAY charges down the aisle and expounds:

Go on down in front, Tillie, and never mind raspin’ about where that fly usher plants yu. Well, if there ain’t that sassy bunch o’ kids with Jimmie Casey from the flat below us amonopolizin’ the front row!

(Seating herself) What’s the name o’ the reel that’s on now? Oh, ya-ah, Elmer’s Fall! Jimmie Casey, you turn right around and the very next time you holler “Archer Avenue (or name local street of corresponding type) Belle” at me when I’m leavin’ for a dance, I’ll report yu to the station.

(To Tillie.) Ain’t it funny you never see any kids in real life like the children in the movin’ pitchers? Look at them two little boys in sailor suits asingin’ hymns on their mother’s knees in the twilight. One of ’em is hung in the last act? Don’t you get fresh and stuff me, Jimmie Casey, like the way you was tryin’ last week to tell me them western injun and cowboy pitchers was taken in Evingston (name local suburban town.)

Whatyuthink Gus and me did Sunday, Tillie? We took in all the fi’cent theeayters between (two widely separated streets embracing neighborhood of Archer Avenue type.) Honest! And the next mornin’ when I shows up to work, the Boss says what’s the matter with my eyes and before I got a chanct to answer that flip bookkeeper speaks up and says, Who, Min? Oh, she’s got the movin’ pitcher squint!”

What’s the name o’ this fillum? The Drama Of The Dessert Say, I wonder if A-rabs always wears white; the laundries must work overtime. Say, Til, how’dju like to wear a veil over your jaw like that there A-rab lady? — though there is some girls of my aquaintance [sic] that does need a gag for the mouth and no mistake. Ruby Clancy, fer instance. She’s sore because I met Gus at her house and he’s been just about livin’ at our flat ever since. There’s not a mornin’ I gets to the office but what Ruby dislocates her neck alampin’ my lef’ hand. Gus is in a awful unusual business. He makes costumes for circuses and has always got his pockets full o’ samples o’ dazzling red and green. Gus says he in’t acomin’ to the nickel show no more cause he’s gettin’ knock-kneed from fallin’ over the baby carriages out front.

I gotta yawn. These pitchers they got on now — a ancient ruined city it says — are turr’ble dry. The music is good, though; that’s the Chicle Rag. But who wants to look at a pile o’ old stones? My brother’n-law works in a quarry.

Here comes that swell baritone with all the diamonds, Tillie. Don’t his vest glitter, though? I’m just crazy about the way he sings Red, Red, Roses. Ya-ah, he rolls his eyes sump’n grand in the chorus. (Flustered.) He’s lookin’ straight at us. Til. (Nudging her.) Ain’t he, huh? Whatyu gettin’ so embarrassed about?

That fellah at the snare drum works in a boiler factory daytimes. He has awful pow’rful arms; the man’ger o’ the show is crazy about him because there’s the elevated and the night freight and the river tugs has to be drowned out while the show is goin’ on. I usta know the fella that played the coronet. He was a gen’lman — give me and Ma passes twice ever’ evenin’.

That girl at the piano remin’s me o’ the new girl who’s moved into the flat acrost the hall from us. She’s turr’ble entertainin’. Til. She’s a waitress, u-huh, a waitress in a restaurant. And say, some o’ the things she can tell about the way they cook in those swell places! Her advice to everybody that’s partic’lar is: “Cut out hash, don’t think o’ stew, and for heaven’s sake never touch a chicken croquette. “No,” she sez, “far better a cheese sandwich and a egg nog at home; you know what you’re gettin.”

This one is the big fillum that they’ve got them thrillin’ blue and yellow pitchers of outside, the Horse Thief’s Revenge. That’s it. There’s the hero-een with the long braid down her back. Ain’t she sweet? The girl’s brother is plotting against the cowboy because he seen him stealin’ the horse out of the coral. The cowboy- — ain’t he handsome in a dress suit? — is goin’ for a ride up the mountain and I bechu anything the bonehead brother’ull waylay him. I seen him on his hands and feet around them rocks a minute ago. Look at the dagger, will yu! (Covers face with hands.) Did they stab him, Tillie? (Muffled.) Did they? Oh, I wisht I was home! Is they blood comin’? (Taking hands down from face.)

Part II! She’s goin’ to him — the girl’s goin’ to him. Ain’t you crazy about the way she fixes her hair? I’m goin’ to try mine that way when I get home. Look at her horse goin’ licketycut. Yu can hear the hoofbeats just as plain. Do yu think she’ll get there in time? Say, Til, do yu? She does. Gee, I’m glad.

But it ain’t all over yet. There comes that half-breed sneakin’ out from those trees. He draws a gun. Look, Til, he’s goin’ to shoot. (She covers her face with her hands.) Gosh, I swallowed my gum! And the hero knocks the gun out o’ the half-breed’s hands. Then my gum went for nothin’.

(Rising.) That last reel just took ever’thing out of me. My forehead is wringin’ wet. Ever’time I come to this nickel show I gotta be almost carried to the drug store across the street. The man there allus expects me now. I feel it so. Now, I just imagined I was that girl in The Horse Thief’s Revenge. It’s awful.

(Starting for exit.) I sez to Gus ….. at the movies…… (exit).

Comment: This is a comic monologue designed for theatrical performance. Archer Avenue runs through Chicago (the reference to the elevated train further confirms the location). The Drama of the Desert and The Horse Thief’s Revenge are imaginary film titles.

Links:
Available from the Internet Archive

Sociology of Film

Source: J.P. Mayer, Sociology of Film: Studies and Documents (London: Faber and Faber, 1946), pp. 219-221

Text: Miss…

In regard to your request for information as regards the average film audience I am writing the following examples of how some films have influenced my conduct, hoping they may be of some use to you.

1. Until five years ago I took an average interest in music, but never listened to it seriously. I liked the effect of incidental music in films. While seeing The Great Lie I was entranced by the music, but I thought, ‘Oh its [sic] incidental music. It was beautiful, but I shall never hear it again, because incidental music is very rarely published.’

Later I discovered that the music in the film was actually Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor. Because of the effect made on me by the beauty of this music, I gradually came to take an interest in symphonic and classical music in general. Nowadays one of my regular joys is listening to the symphony concerts featured by the B.B.C. on Sundays. I don’t think many of the highly emotional films would have nearly so much effect without incidental music, but I suppose there are hundreds of people who disagree with me on this point. Sometimes I try to memorise the incidental music in films and write a rough sketch of it for piano. It seems such a waste of beautiful music, that you hear it in a film and then it is so quickly forgotten. Such films as All This and Heaven Too, Marie Walewska, Juarez, Lady Hamilton, and Elizabeth and Essex, have made me read a good deal about the characters represented in films.

People and events in the past come vividly to mind on seeing the films and reading the books, and give me immense pleasure.

I always go to see films on my own. After seeing a really good dramatic film I like to go off on my own for a walk, and think the various scenes over. I don;t like to come in contact with people. They seem to intrude on my enjoyment of bringing to mind the excellent acting I had just seen.

Films such as Dark Victory, Now Voyager and Watch on the Rhine, among many others, affected me in this way, and later I wrote out the dialogue as near as I could remember it. And now if I wish to relive the scenes in any of the films, all I have to do is read over my writing.

The greatest wish of my life is to meet Bette Davis. It was on seeing her in The Sisters in 1939 that made me take an interest in films.

In my estimation, acting such as hers is beyond all praise, but if I could ever meet her, and try to tell her even a little about how much her acting means to me, I should be the happiest person in the world.

The fashions in films have no effect on me, because they are usually specially concocted for use in the studios, and are for everyday use, quite unsuitable. Hairstyles need constant professional attention if they are anything like the elaborate affairs featured by stars in some films.

2. I have never dreamed about films, but I have dreamed about individual personalities in films.

Age – 18 years. Sex – Female. Nationality – British (Scotch). Profession – Cashier. Profession of Mother – Housewife. Father is dead.

Comment: J.P. (Jacob Peter) Mayer was a German sociologist at the London School of Economics. His Sociology of Film draws on a large amount of evidence gathered through questionnaires and submissions received through invitations published in Picturegoer magazine. The above response comes from the section ‘The Adult and the Cinema’, for which responses were sought via Picturegoer in February 1945 to two questions: Have films ever influenced you with regard to personal decisions or behaviour? and Have films ever appeared in your dreams? The films mentioned are The Great Lie (USA 1941), Conquest (aka Marie Walewska) (USA 1937), Juarez (USA 1939), That Hamilton Woman (aka Lady Hamilton) (USA 1941), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (USA 1939), Dark Victory (USA 1939), Now Voyager (USA 1942), Watch on the Rhine (USA 1943) and The Sisters (USA 1938).