Dinner for Eight

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kimball455

kimball455

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A woman’s work is easily done in Mrs. Mortimer Jones Prepares “Dinner for Eight”, the second live-action short film released in three-strip Technicolor. Commissioned by Southern California Edison, the largest electric utility in the region, Dinner for Eight showcases a new color process in order to promote domestic electric appliances.

Enjoy ...

Harry

http://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/screening-room/dinner-for-eight-1934
 
This video is a great insight into what modern technology looked like in 1934. Notice that the stove sits on the lower kitchen cabinet, this must be one of the first, if not the first slide in range. If I were to be lucky enough to find a home with a kitchen like this, and could afford it, I wouldn't do a thing to it, except maybe look for either a second vintage 1934 refrigerator or a larger 1934 model fridge. Thanks for sharing this.
 
The narration is

a hoot!

Mort was doing very well if she had those electrical goodies.

The tomato soup cake is pretty good, I've had it more than once, and have made it a couple of times.

Lawrence/Maytagbear
 
Mrs. Jones

I hope she had a great time at the theater. She must have hands of steel to touch those hot oven racks, but oh well. I loved this walk back into time. Gary
 
Thank You! for posting .

Mrs. Jones was lucky to have that side of beef in the refrigerator.  I bet she was the Valedictorian of one of those "Mona Lisa Smile" colleges.  Beautifully restored vintage film!
 
Really fun film, and I like the kitchen, too.

One of my neighbors makes the cake with soup occasionally, and I like it pretty well.

The film quality is fantastic, too. Very good that they kept the Technicolor negatives to make new transfers from. The color is likely better than what it would have been if the film had been made 30 years later, as most films made in later processes are subject to severe fading and color shift.
 
Very cool... Thanks for sharing it ...

Would never have found it otherwise.

Interesting the comments about "Mr Edison" who had been dead for almost 4 years I think.

Also, did I see the Hotpoint logo on the dial for the range timer? Who knew they had auto stop start so early?

Also, what make of dishwasher was it - if it was the GE of that time, I think she would have had to work the controls to manage the process since the early ones had no automatic timer - any idea when they added timers to dishwashers?

I also am curious about the brand of soap/detergent she used. The few dishwasher videos of that era never show that.

Sorry for the long post - but i am full of questions tonight! :-)
 
 
Entertaining clip.  I noticed the glitches immediately -- handling hot surfaces, considerable waste via not scraping.  I have made a tomato soup chocolate cake ... it has an interesting bit of tanginess.
 
I could spend days on end watching old films like this. Thanks so much for the link.
The channel is set to Turner Classic Movies 99% of the time at my house and I noticed immediately they patterned the title card "Dinner For Eight" after the famous 1933 film "Dinner At Eight" starring John & Lionel Barrymore, Jean Harlow, Wally Beery and several other big-name actors.

I'll admit I cringed every time she touched the racks or pans in what were were told was a hot oven, LOL!

frigilux++7-1-2015-10-59-53.jpg
 
I couldn't get this video to play when originally posted but it works fine now. Funny how you notice things like failing to scrape bowls. I remember a segment from the old Martha Stewart daytime show where she and some ditzy starlet were cooking. When the girl poured cake batter (or something) from a bowl and then sat it down Martha said "wait a minute, scrape that bowl, you young people are so wasteful!" Of course people of all ages can be like that but her point was well taken.
 
A while back quite by accident I ran across a couple of GE promotional films on YouTube that featured Bette Davis. Both were made in the early 30's. The first one was only about a min. long and showed Bette and Ruth Donnelly doing dishes in Bette's new GE in counter dishwasher. The second one is about 4 mins long and this one has Bette entertaining a few Warner Bros. co workers in her new GE electric kitchen. I believe that they were both made at the same time. If I knew how I would try to post the links, but this is beyond my tech challenged capacity. I did however manage to find the shorter version by just doing a YouTube search for Bette Davis with dishwasher. By the way, I'm a real fan of TCM too, I watch it at least once everyday and have since it first went on the air. It's the best thing on TV! As far as the bowl scraping, I think that Mrs.Jones did scrap after a fashion, she just didn't use a rubber spatula. She was clearly well to do, so even during the Depression waste didn't seem to matter to her, my Grandparents would have been outraged at the waste.
Eddie
 
Wow Alistair, you sure managed to to get those 3 videos posted quickly! Thanks for finding them, especially the 3rd one, I'd never seen that one before. Looks like their GE laundry was a twin tub setup.
Eddie
 
In "Just Around the Corner"...

I realize that film was done to highlight electric appliances, but I wish Joan Blondell had a larger part. She was always a favorite. Her sister Gloria made a lasting impression as Lucy's neighbor Grace Foster who was "running away with the milkman and her husband doesn't suspect anything."

 

"I can save you 20%"

 

twintubdexter-2015070120195608766_1.jpg
 
I too really liked Joan Blondell. Recently, while watching her in "Nightmare Alley" with Tyrone Power I looked her up on IMD and Wikipedia. She really had a very interesting life. One thing that I found particularly interesting was that she was marrired to Mike Todd at one time, a marriage that was unhappy and he gambled away all of her money. It is said that when she learned of his death in a plane crash she was purported to have said, " I hope he screamed all the way down". When I read this I could just hear her saying it!
Eddie
 

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