Constructing Femininity in Post-War Era

1. Lecture 03:Constructing Femininity in the Post War Era

2. Lesson 03 Agenda The Philadelphia Story (Cukor, 1940) The Donna Reed Show (ABC, 1958-60) • Last Time on FMS 300… • Industrial Climate • Mediated Femininity • Pre-War (Screwball) • War Time (Rosie & the Pin-Up) • Post War Womanhood (The Femme Fatale, The Bombshell, The Transitional Woman and The Girl & The Madonna Next Door) • All About Mom (It’s Really About Dad) • Cult of Motherhood: Wylie on Momism • The Crisis of Masculinity: Whyte on The Organization Man • Let’s Watch Some TV! • I Love Lucy & • The Martha Raye Show • The Donna Reed Show • Queen for A Day

3. Last Week on FMS 300: • Theoretical Term Alert • Culture • Ideology • Cultural Hegemony • Resetting US Cultural Mindset • Habermas: Legitimation Crisis • Lipsitz: Embourgeoisiement of the working class • The Rise & Fall of the Ethnicom

4. Section 1: Industrial Climate(abbreviated version) Shooting at the club set on I Love Lucy

5. Section 1:Industrial Climate: The Rise of the Telefilm • 1st Phase 1946-50/51 • Indie Producers :Poverty Row • Hal Roach, Jerry Fairbanks, Frederick Ziv (Little Rascals/True Father of 3-Camera/Father of Syndication) • 2nd Phase 1951-52/53 • Minor Studio (Screen Gems) • B List Stars also Producers: Desilu/Jack Webb/Roy Rogers • 3rd Phase 1954-55 • Prestige Programming • Anthology Drama • Independent Producers: David O. Selznick, Walt Disney SHIFT IN CONSTRUCTING STARDOM ON TV: THEY’RE JUST LIKE US.

6. Section 2: Mediated Femininity Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch (Hawks, 1934)(Wilder, 1955) Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy (CBS 1951-57) Betty Grable: Famous WWII Pin-Up Barbara Billingsley in Leave it to Beaver Costume Shot for Sweet Rosie O’Grady (CBS 1957-63) (Cummings, 1943)

7. Pre-War Femininity • The Screwball Heroine, whether a runaway heiress, a plucky newspaper woman or a “girl” with a plan, has spunk, moxie, and a high degree of agency. She drives the comedy, the relationship and the narrative agenda. We like her—because of andin spite of her privileges. • Cinema: The Screwball Heroine Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable in what is, arguably, the first screwball comedy, It Happened One Night (Capra 1934)

8. The War Years: Rosie & The Pin Up • Rosie the Riveter: • Inpired by a real woman, Rose Will Monroe (b. Kentucky 1920) • Moved to Michigan during WWII, worked as a riveter at the Willow Run Aircraft Factory (Ypsilanti, MI), Built B-29 and B-24 bombers. • “All the day long/ Whether rain or shine/She’s was part of the assembly line./She’s making history/ Working for victory/ Rosie the Riveter” (If you’re interested, check out a great little video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CQ0M0wx00s) • The Pin Up: • Became symbols of what soldiers were fighting for • Sweet & sexy wartime beauties (in photos or drawings) • Pinned up near a soldier or sailor’s bunk, • Decorating the side of a bomber

9. Post War Womanhood • Cinema: The Femme Fatale • Definition: deadly woman. • The Femme Fatale is alluring and mysterious with great seductive charm; she leads men into compromising or dangerous situations. • Case Study: Barbara Stanwyck • As Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (Wilder 1944) • Not easily contained: knowledge of the world & her sexual power What was their appeal to Post War audiences?

10. Post War Womanhood • Cinema: The Bombshell 1.0 • Definition: term used to describe “a sexy woman outside of the home” since the 1930s. • Racier Pin Up girl images made their way onto Bombers. Bob Landry’s Famous 1941 Portrait of Hayworth for Life magazine. Hayworth in Gilda • Case Study: Rita Hayworth . • 1946: Hayworth’s image on first nuclear bombs tested Post War (Bikini Atoll) • As Gilda in Gilda (Vidor,1946) & as Elsa Bannister in Lady from Shanghai (Welles, 1948): pin up + femme fatale

11. Post War Womanhood • Cinema: The Bombshell 2.0 • Definition: Pin up + girl next door + explosive sexuality = Marilyn Monroe • Longs for the comfort of a stable relationship with a “good guy” inside the home. • Bombshell 2.0= object lesson “all good girls want to be married.” • Case Study: Marilyn Monroe • As “The Girl” in The Seven Year Itch (Wilder 1955) or Sugar Kane in Some Like It Hot (Wilder 1959) • As sexy but less threatening with childlike sweetness, • Questionable understanding of overwhelming physical appeal • As Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Hawks 1953) • Understands her sex appeal (power) & sacrifices it to get the “gold ring.” As Sugar Kane in Some Like It Hot As Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

12. Post War Womanhood • Television: The Transitional Woman • Definition: the Everywoman (married or single) represented television’s negotiation between sirens of the big screen & the everyday woman. • She wanted a stable relationship with a “good guy” inside the home but also wanted to be of the world and in the world. • TV stars made big enough for the small screen: “just like us.” • Raye and Ball helped rework audience (middle-class housewives’) relationships with stars.

13. Post War Womanhood • Case Study: Martha Raye, single girl • She’s single (and strange) but we ALL know she’s a good gal. • USO pedigree: Iconic Gal for the boys. • mugging for the camera—old vaudeville technique • the broadness of the performance becomes a manner of direct address. • She is winking at us, we are in on the joke—but, she is the butt of the joke Raye as model for the autograph hound in Disney cartoon (1939). Entertaining the Troops in North Africa (1943). Mugging during a rehearsal for her TV Show (1954).

14. Post War Womanhood Glamour Shot (circa 1944) Pin Up in Yank, the Army Weekly (1945) • Case Study: Lucy, Married Lady • Object lessons on what happens when unruly women don’t act the way they should. • “Frumping” Up Lucy: The De-Glamorization Process • Transitional Women knew that “all good girls want to be married.” • Also knew pursuit of their dreams/scheme to be futile • Did not stop them from trying—until Little Ricky. Another Scheme isn’t coming together in I Love Lucy [Desi Arnaz (l), Ball, holding money, (r)]

15. Post War Womanhood • Television: The Girl & The Madonna Next Door • Definition: the Girl Next Door—the decidedly innocent version of the pin up (the purity of budding womanhood). • TV stars made big enough for the small screen: “just like us”—Donna Reed, Loretta Young, etc.—but better (more idealized) • Case Study: Donna Reed • As Mary Bailey (Good Girl to Good Wife) in It’s A Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946) • Lorene Burke (Good Time Girl) in Here to Eternity (Zinnemann, 1953) • Donna Stone in The Donna Reed Show.

16. The State of the Post War Project • The Myth of Suburban Nirvana • Mid 50s: TV entrenched in rhetoric of middle class domesticity and suburban bliss (Father Knows Best, Leave It To Beaver and The Donna Reed Show). • Ideally gendered domestic bliss existed alongside frenzied tirades about the quantification of good parenting (read: mothering) and a crisis of masculinity in the Post War era. The Andersons of Father Knows Best (CBS, NBC, CBS 1954-1960)

17. Section 3All About Mom?(It’s Really About Dad) The Family Stone of The Donna Reed Show (ABC 1958-66)

19. All About Mom? • Is Mom the Problem? “While popular magazines such as Good Housekeeping and Ladies Home Journal extolled the virtues of motherhood, the importance of maintaining the home, and the necessity of being a good wife, there was another, oppositional voice straining to be heard, a voice which hinted at an anti-maternalistic ethic that seemed to find its loudest popular expression in cinematic family melodramas and in television domestic comedies.” Nina Liebman Living Room Lectures

21. All About Momism! • The Curse of Mom She is her own fault first of all and she is dangerous. But she is also everybody's fault. When we and our culture and our religions agreed to hold woman the inferior sex, cursed, unclean and sinful--we made her mom. And when we agreed upon the American Ideal Woman, the Dream Girl of National Adolescence, the Queen of Bedpan Week, the Pin-up, the Glamour Puss--we insulted women and disenfranchised millions from love. We thus made mom. Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers (1955)

22. The Crisis of MasculinityHow can Father Know Best when He is a faceless cog in the mechanism of corporate America.

24. Section 4: Let’s Watch Some TV! Download Reading/Screening Sheet 3 from Learning Tasks “Lucy Does A Commercial” on I Love Lucy.

25. For Your Viewing Pleasure: I Love Lucy • From Sassy Ingénue to Zany Wife • Carrying the Comedy, Hiding the Power • The Lack of Controversy over Loving Desi • Pause Lecture • & Watch Episdoe Philip Morris sponsored opening credits cartoon, I Love Lucy. Lucy & Ethel Get a Job. The Happy Couple

26. In The Episode • Everybody Loves Lucy • She Succeeds because She Fails • Lucy & Ricky vs. Ralph & Alice • Television Icon & Regular Mom • Extratextual Lucy • In The Age of the Expert • Scientific Cures (Miracle Elixir/Mother’s Little Helper)

27. For Your Viewing Pleasure:The Martha Raye Show • Martha Raye: USO MVP but no (onscreen) MRS. • Mugging, Beauty & Belting Pause Lecture & Watch Raye rehearses with this week’s guest star.

28. In The Episode • Acceptable Femininity • Physicality & Sexuality • Agedly Ageless • Consumerism • And now a word from Hazel Bishop (seriously?) • Working class Heroine (never quite wins) • Conformity • She Can’t & She Doesn’t • Happy Endings…Sort of

29. For Your Viewing Pleasure:The Donna Reed Show • The Huxtables of the 1950s • Living Happily Every After • The Seeds of Discontent? • Lecture & Watch Episode Donna Stone : The Happy Homemaker The Family Stone:: group shots

30. In The Episode • The Power of Naming • The Housewife’s Crusade • Don’t Want To Start A Revolution • The Three C’s • Comfortable Discomfort (Each in their role) • Money can’t buy me…Reassurance • All’s well that ends • The Recuperation of Father • The Origins of the Generation Gap • For The Love of Jeff • What About Mary?

31. And, finally…Queen For A Day • Pathos on Parade • Early Reality Programming • What A Woman Wants Pause Lecture & Watch Episode

32. In The Episode • Social Mobility • Consumerism • Happy Homemakers • Give the silent martyr a hand. • Does Anyone Want to be Queen for A Day? • Class, Reality Programming & Schadenfreude • Rewarding Femininity (really Maternity) • Non-Moms need not apply

33. Final Thoughts The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban housewife struggled with it alone. … she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question: ''Is this all?” Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963) • What relationship does this quotation have to anything we’ve seen in this lesson • Do the transitions in women’s representation between the thirties and the fifties signify progress? • What is the archetypal representations of womanhood today? • How will they be viewed in the next decade, the next 20 years, the next century?

34. End of Lecture 03 Next Lecture: Liveness, Spectatorship & Commerce in TV’s First Golden Age Walt Disney in Disneyland ( ABC, 1954-61) Nancy Marchand & Rod Steiger in Marty (Goodyear Television Playhouse NBC, 1953)