Movies with Appliances Being Used

Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

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jakeseacrest

jakeseacrest

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Mostly dishwashers and garbage disposals. Off the top of my head:

The Incredible Shrinking Woman: Lily Tomlin falls into the garbage disposal
The War of the Roses: Kathleen Turner loads a Jenn Air reverse rack and uses a disposal
Ordinary People: Mary Tyler Moore uses a disposal
The Last Married Couple in America: Natalie Wood loads a KDS-18
The Courtship of Eddie's Father: A Frigidaire spin tube gets loaded
Mirror Mirror: Karen Black loses her hand in a disposal
The Ice Storm: Joan Allen loads a KDI-15
Bachelor In Paradise: Bob Hope loses a battle with the disposal
Ghost in the Machine: A kid sticks his hand in the disposal and later the dishwasher kills the babysitter
Drop Dead Fred: Marsha Mason loads a Whirlpool dishwasher

Any others to add?
 
Critters: Dee Wallace uses a disposal after dinner
Amityville the Evil Escapes: a guy loses his hand trying to unjam a disposal
E.T.: Dee Wallace puts plates in a Caloric dishwasher
 
"The Birds"

In Alfred Hitchcock's, "The Birds" (1963), Lydia Brenner (Jessica Tandy) loads a built-in dishwasher (a Whirlpool??)

In "Bye Bye Byrdie (1963) Mama Mae Peterson (Maureen Stapleton) tries to asphyxiate herself in the oven of a range, only to have Paul Lynde inform her, "It's electric."
 
one more....

In "Who's Minding the Store" (1963),

Norman Pfiffer (Jerry Lewis) is attempting to repair a Hoover Convertible vacuum cleaner while a chagrinned Agnes Moorehead watches. the setting is in the appliance department of the department store Norman is working at. In the background are many home appliances (washers, dryers, disposals, etc.) including a row of beautiful RCA Whirlpool portable dishwashers.
 
Natalie Wood stuck her head into a gas oven in "Inside Daisy Clover."  I was a a teenager when I saw it and couldn't tell you anything about its brand or age, but I suspect it would have been an old stove for its day.

 

 
 
In 1936’s “Follow the Fleet”

Harriet Hillard aka Harriet Nelson of 1950’s TV “Ozzie and Harriet”, mom of Ricky and David Nelson,  cooks for Randolph Scott on  what appears to be a brand new electric stove, I believe it was a GE in she and her sisters (Ginger Rogers) tricked out San Francisco apartment.

 

BTW this is a pretty good 30’s RKO dancing musical with Fred Astaire also in the cast and Lucille Ball has a bit part too.

 

And on the “Ozzie and Harriet Show” their sponsor was Hotpoint and her kitchen had all Hotpoint appliances and she also did many of the Hotpoint commercials as well.

 

Eddie
 
"The Birds" dishwasher

Was a Whirlpool - the 'telephone-dial' model no less!  Found one a couple of years ago but still haven't used it...

 

And let's not forget the Westy slant-front washer being emptied in a frenzy when the grid shuts down in "The Day The Earth Stood Still".
 
Here’s a GE Promotional Film from 1933

with Bette Davis showing how to do the dishes in her new GE in the counter dishwasher.  Her whole kitchen is a wonderland of the latest GE appliances.  Her friend is character actress Ruth Donnelly.

 

Eddie

 

 
Here's a cringe-inducing film for us laundry nerds:

The scene in "The Accidental Tourist (1988)" where William Hurt's character gets a load of wash going in a Whirlpool Imperial (looks to be a 1986 model), then starts up the basement stairs. As he's going, the washer shifts into spin-dry, goes out of balance, bangs loudly, *AND A BUZZER SOUNDS*. This freaks out his dog, who trips up our hero, causing him to topple down the stairs leaving him laid up with an injury so that he's not able to do his job writing travel guides.

Um...what now? Possibly I'm wrong, but I never knew Whirlpools to have OOB buzzers.

One of the sound engineers apparently went home and recorded their Kenmore and used that in the soundtrack, I suppose? It's as nerve wracking for me as those '70s TV shows where we hear the same Chrysler starter motor canned sound effect in any scene where a car engine is being cranked, regardless of the car's manufacture.
 
 
No WP old-style belt-drives had OOB switches far as I know, unless maybe very early 1950s.  1986 is at the tail-end of production.

Whirlpool direct-drive Catalyst has an OOB because of the catalyst spin treatment, but no other WP or KA DD model that I'm aware.  I recall mention that some KM direct-drive models (other than the Catalyst) had OOBs.
 
TV Shows:
In the episode of Gimme A Break "Katie's Corner" Jonathan buys and tries to install an Insinkerator Model 77.

In an episode of Valerie the boys give Valerie a Badger 5
 
The washer and dryer in the basement of Home Alone was a Frigidaire, actually all the appliances in the house were Frigidaire. In Home Alone 2 the house under renovation had a Maytag center dial washer in the basement. In the movie Uncle Buck they had a Kitchen Aid washer and dryer. The movie The Birdcage there was a beautiful Coldspot bottom freezer refrigerator and there was also a nice vintage Kenmore washer and dryer. The movie She Devil, RoseAnn was cooking in a Caloric Eye Level gas range and later blew up the house by putting iron and other things in her copper tone 1967 GE filter Flo washer, the same movie later shows Meryl Streep breaking her nail closing the lid of a Hotpoint rim flow washer.
 

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