classiccaprice
Well-known member
Did anyone else want to scream at the screen when they saw the KD-20 dishwasher in '1959'?
the movie Hitchcock... maybe the wrong forum
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danemodsandy
Well-known member
I'm Still Reeling....
....From Mommie Dearest, where the set decorator set two Kenmore combos up as a washer and dryer.
What gets me about such anachronisms is that someone took home a very substantial paycheck for not knowing what they were doing.
....From Mommie Dearest, where the set decorator set two Kenmore combos up as a washer and dryer.
What gets me about such anachronisms is that someone took home a very substantial paycheck for not knowing what they were doing.
The two Kenmore combos
were the only reason I watched Mommie Dearest. A friend at work saw the movie and told me I might be interested in it because of the laundry scene. My brother had seen it and told me not to see it because it would be too upsetting; we, too, had an irrational mother which is putting it mildly. I did watch it when it came on TV and instantly recognized the combos; I had one downstairs, but given the time period, it is conceivable that she would have had a front loading automatic washer. It is a shame that they could not find some early Bendix or Westinghouse machines, but continuity in movies is a big, but often imperfectly executed task. One thing about the combos was that they had control panels could easily be hidden to present a very generic appearance and they were, so only the most appliance savy people would notice.
I saw both the stage play and the movie Driving Miss Daisy which contained more mind games with which I am familiar. In the play, when she came in bundled up in robes and carrying a candle, I said to my friend, "ice storm" and sure enough it was. In the play, Hoke brings coffee, saying he figured her stove was out. They used the same line in the movie when there was a gas Chambers in the kitchen. I wrote the Zanucks that they could have changed the line to "coffee pot."
were the only reason I watched Mommie Dearest. A friend at work saw the movie and told me I might be interested in it because of the laundry scene. My brother had seen it and told me not to see it because it would be too upsetting; we, too, had an irrational mother which is putting it mildly. I did watch it when it came on TV and instantly recognized the combos; I had one downstairs, but given the time period, it is conceivable that she would have had a front loading automatic washer. It is a shame that they could not find some early Bendix or Westinghouse machines, but continuity in movies is a big, but often imperfectly executed task. One thing about the combos was that they had control panels could easily be hidden to present a very generic appearance and they were, so only the most appliance savy people would notice.
I saw both the stage play and the movie Driving Miss Daisy which contained more mind games with which I am familiar. In the play, when she came in bundled up in robes and carrying a candle, I said to my friend, "ice storm" and sure enough it was. In the play, Hoke brings coffee, saying he figured her stove was out. They used the same line in the movie when there was a gas Chambers in the kitchen. I wrote the Zanucks that they could have changed the line to "coffee pot."
I wondered about those machines too...
and yet with Crawford's obsessive-compulsive behavior when it came to cleaning and housekeeping it is more than conceivable that somebody who researched the story reported that she had two separate identical washer/dryer combos for whatever rationale that damaged psyche required. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if one was restricted only for her clothing.
A friend of the family went to her co-op to photograph her in the Sixities and reported back to us that he was required to remove his shoes in the hallway outside of the apartment (nothing unusual there) because the entire apartment was carpeted in white, STARK WHITE, broadloom so Ms. Crawford would be aware if there was an errant speck of dirt inside her home. This was the apartment that was referred to in the movie ("Let's tear down that BITCH of a bearing wall and put a window where one ought to be"); Crawford insisted on a custom-made kitchen with banks of round cabinetry and counters which were, back then, outrageously expensive. Glad nobody in the family owned any PepsiCo shares. I must confess I never liked her as an actress, and after Christina's book was released I wasn't too surprised. She's not the first hateful bitch to achieve extreme success and won't be the last. I still remember a quotation attributed to Helen Hayes, "Joan was good at a lot of things; motherhood wasn't one of them". I have no sympathy for people who abuse children.
and yet with Crawford's obsessive-compulsive behavior when it came to cleaning and housekeeping it is more than conceivable that somebody who researched the story reported that she had two separate identical washer/dryer combos for whatever rationale that damaged psyche required. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if one was restricted only for her clothing.
A friend of the family went to her co-op to photograph her in the Sixities and reported back to us that he was required to remove his shoes in the hallway outside of the apartment (nothing unusual there) because the entire apartment was carpeted in white, STARK WHITE, broadloom so Ms. Crawford would be aware if there was an errant speck of dirt inside her home. This was the apartment that was referred to in the movie ("Let's tear down that BITCH of a bearing wall and put a window where one ought to be"); Crawford insisted on a custom-made kitchen with banks of round cabinetry and counters which were, back then, outrageously expensive. Glad nobody in the family owned any PepsiCo shares. I must confess I never liked her as an actress, and after Christina's book was released I wasn't too surprised. She's not the first hateful bitch to achieve extreme success and won't be the last. I still remember a quotation attributed to Helen Hayes, "Joan was good at a lot of things; motherhood wasn't one of them". I have no sympathy for people who abuse children.
danemodsandy
Well-known member
Ken:
There are two sides to every story, and some folks in a position to know held that Joan had been not been treated with complete fairness.
Betty Barker, who was Joan's secretary for decades, said many times that Christina was a handful: "Oh, Joan was willful, and Christina was willful, and they just clashed."
Myrna Loy, who toured in Butterflies are Free with Christina playing the ingenue role, was very vocal about Christina's ego, lack of professionalism and disruptive behavior.
And Christina's tale somehow glosses over the enormous professional damage her behavior - and Christopher's - inflicted, or could have inflicted, on an aging star who was struggling to stay in the game in a Hollywood nearly shipwrecked by the advent of TV. Christina's complaints about her stay with the nuns are heartrending - but Joan put her into the convent because she was caught in a sexually compromising situation with a boy. This would have made for highly damaging publicity in the world of the early '50s. Christopher's runnings-away and juvenile charges did make the tabloids and did do damage.
I do not say - have never said - that Joan behaved perfectly, nor that there were not abusive incidents. But Christina's adoptive sisters, Cindy and Cathy, were always working to tell the other side of the story - that the Joan Crawford they had known was a good mother to them. It is a matter of record that Christina and Christopher were very difficult children. And that can - most unfortunately - sometimes drive the best-intentioned parent to do things they know they shouldn't.
There are two sides to every story, and some folks in a position to know held that Joan had been not been treated with complete fairness.
Betty Barker, who was Joan's secretary for decades, said many times that Christina was a handful: "Oh, Joan was willful, and Christina was willful, and they just clashed."
Myrna Loy, who toured in Butterflies are Free with Christina playing the ingenue role, was very vocal about Christina's ego, lack of professionalism and disruptive behavior.
And Christina's tale somehow glosses over the enormous professional damage her behavior - and Christopher's - inflicted, or could have inflicted, on an aging star who was struggling to stay in the game in a Hollywood nearly shipwrecked by the advent of TV. Christina's complaints about her stay with the nuns are heartrending - but Joan put her into the convent because she was caught in a sexually compromising situation with a boy. This would have made for highly damaging publicity in the world of the early '50s. Christopher's runnings-away and juvenile charges did make the tabloids and did do damage.
I do not say - have never said - that Joan behaved perfectly, nor that there were not abusive incidents. But Christina's adoptive sisters, Cindy and Cathy, were always working to tell the other side of the story - that the Joan Crawford they had known was a good mother to them. It is a matter of record that Christina and Christopher were very difficult children. And that can - most unfortunately - sometimes drive the best-intentioned parent to do things they know they shouldn't.
Back to Hitchcock
That KitchenAid made me cringe. As far as I could tell, everything else was correct, but....
Lawrence/Maytagbear
That KitchenAid made me cringe. As far as I could tell, everything else was correct, but....
Lawrence/Maytagbear
But Christina's adoptive sisters
Zesser tatenu, how many kids did they let that psycho bitch have? I don't think I would trust the word of a secretary who clearly saw children being mistreated and did not report it to the authorities to protect her position. She sounds like another heartless witch like her boss. It is sad that just because of who she was she was allowed to adopt children with no further checking; such is star power. Both a cousin and his wife and a friend and his wife adopted children with pathologies about which they were not told and, after much unsuccessful therapy, the children were able to be returned to the institution from which they were adopted. Joan could have done that with both of the children she adopted who gave her trouble except for her pride. It would be better to be raised in an orphanage than in that house of horrors. Christina did not even get anything in the will. I hope she does not miss a chance to visit her "mother's" grave and desecrate it. I, if caught in a similar position, would have killed or seriously wounded the bitch. There are ways even a child can do it.
Ken, what do you mean by round cabinetry and counters?
Zesser tatenu, how many kids did they let that psycho bitch have? I don't think I would trust the word of a secretary who clearly saw children being mistreated and did not report it to the authorities to protect her position. She sounds like another heartless witch like her boss. It is sad that just because of who she was she was allowed to adopt children with no further checking; such is star power. Both a cousin and his wife and a friend and his wife adopted children with pathologies about which they were not told and, after much unsuccessful therapy, the children were able to be returned to the institution from which they were adopted. Joan could have done that with both of the children she adopted who gave her trouble except for her pride. It would be better to be raised in an orphanage than in that house of horrors. Christina did not even get anything in the will. I hope she does not miss a chance to visit her "mother's" grave and desecrate it. I, if caught in a similar position, would have killed or seriously wounded the bitch. There are ways even a child can do it.
Ken, what do you mean by round cabinetry and counters?
danemodsandy
Well-known member
Tom:
Please accept that there are two sides to this story. Joan's grandson, Casey Lalonde, has worked for years to get more of the other side out.
The Fifties were not today. Children - including Yours Truly - were chattels, objects, things that parents could do with as they wished; the experience of being a child then was as different to today's as Mars is to the Earth. At fourteen, I had the experience of finding out - quite accidentally - that the man I knew as "Dad" was not actually my father, that I was the product of a first marriage about which I had known nothing. It had all happened when I was quite young, and everyone reasoned I was too little to remember anything, and that it was best to sweep the whole thing under the carpet. My right to know my own origins had been of no importance compared to the emotional convenience of the adults involved. And I am here to tell you - by the Lord God Almighty, that hurt.
But - when I located him, my birth father turned out to be a ne'er-do-well, a womanizer and alcoholic who got into such constant trouble he died before he was forty from his excesses (I "found" him through burial records). My stepfather, on the other hand, was the one who kept a roof over my head, food in my belly and taught me how to read at age two - the beginning of the literacy that spawned my career as a writer. My stepfather participated in that long-ago deception, and it was a terrible thing to do to a child. But that deception was not all there was to him, nor to our relationship, and while I can't condone the sin, I do love the sinner.
Most of Joan Crawford's movies were black-and-white. This world isn't.
Please accept that there are two sides to this story. Joan's grandson, Casey Lalonde, has worked for years to get more of the other side out.
The Fifties were not today. Children - including Yours Truly - were chattels, objects, things that parents could do with as they wished; the experience of being a child then was as different to today's as Mars is to the Earth. At fourteen, I had the experience of finding out - quite accidentally - that the man I knew as "Dad" was not actually my father, that I was the product of a first marriage about which I had known nothing. It had all happened when I was quite young, and everyone reasoned I was too little to remember anything, and that it was best to sweep the whole thing under the carpet. My right to know my own origins had been of no importance compared to the emotional convenience of the adults involved. And I am here to tell you - by the Lord God Almighty, that hurt.
But - when I located him, my birth father turned out to be a ne'er-do-well, a womanizer and alcoholic who got into such constant trouble he died before he was forty from his excesses (I "found" him through burial records). My stepfather, on the other hand, was the one who kept a roof over my head, food in my belly and taught me how to read at age two - the beginning of the literacy that spawned my career as a writer. My stepfather participated in that long-ago deception, and it was a terrible thing to do to a child. But that deception was not all there was to him, nor to our relationship, and while I can't condone the sin, I do love the sinner.
Most of Joan Crawford's movies were black-and-white. This world isn't.
danemodsandy
Well-known member
Les:
There's an archived thread on the Baby Jane AMP, here:
www.automaticwasher.org
There's an archived thread on the Baby Jane AMP, here:
Baby Jane Hudson's
...washer- I watched this movie over the weekend & caught glimpse of what looked like a very old Maytag toploader- am I correct? I was also wondering if Blanch lived or died- maybe the police got her to the hospitol in time!
www.automaticwasher.org
Sandy, I am sorry for the hurt you suffered as a child, just as I am sorry for the hurt suffered by any child, but you know, at least we have not visited that hurt on any children and for that we get points. Have you ever burned your skin, whether by the sun or actual heat? If so, do you remember for how long that area remained super sensitive to exposure to even normal sources of heat, how warm water felt hotter, even after it looked healed? That is the way it is with children who are abused, whether physically or emotionally. I was shocked, as I got older, at just how many of my classmates were abused one way or another. We all looked to be within the range of normal in school. No one saw the pain behind our faces, but there was a lot of it. There were the boys who turned to bullying and violence and the girls who turned to sex of course, but only as some of us got older and connected in other ways, did the, at first cautious, sharing of secrets begin. Parents who were pillars of the community mistreated their children. Some of these things were not discussed until we were in our 50s. But it was and is horrible and you are right, children were nothing in many people's lives. That is why I am so grateful for the adults who took an interest and noticed even the most superficial layers of bad situations and tried to make life better for us, to give us respite from poisonous home situations. I hope they have many stars in their jewelled crowns in heaven. In spite of anything else they did on earth, I hope they are richly rewarded for what they did to help other people's children. I think that is part of the reason that Christina's book and the movie from it hit home with so many people. We could sympathize with her because just like the burned area of skin, any instance of abuse causes us more pain than it does to those who were not abused. Like Ken, I have no sympathy for those who mistreat children and I don't care if her grandson shouts until he turns blue and dies, the image of an abusive and probably borderline insane woman, mother and wife (poor Mr. Steele, whose death she probably hastened) will probably never be erased from the mind of anyone who hears the name of Joan Crawford. She was not the only person driven by demons, there's Hitler, Stalin and the Koch brothers to name a few, but if even part of the abuse in Christina's book happened, I am glad as hell it was reported and that it put a blot on Joan Crawford's life as permanent as a big old grape juice stain on her precious white carpet.
I never saw it myself, but I heard about it from many source
All of the casework was curved to make two semi-circular banks of cabinetry. None of the doors were flat, everything had to be custom-fabricated, custom-welded etc. I worked for a kitchen company on Madison Avenue in the late Seventies called Elgot and the Kitchen guys who worked there, Anthony Noto and Walter Bell knew details of the job which was talked about for years because it was so unusual, it was for a famous movie star and it was so expensive. And these guys did a lot of custom installations for a lot of rich New York bitches. Joan's kitchen was one for the records. For a woman who was reportedly so stingy with her family, she spared no expense when it came to her appetite for ridiculous and excessive luxury.
I'm sure the truth about Crawford isn't what Christina presents us, but don't tell me that difficult children are the cause and excuse for bad parents. Not buying it. Lots of people have difficulties in their careers; you make the decision to be a parent, don't blame your problems on your children. We were lucky enough one summer to spend some time in Cap Ferrat in the South of France with some friends of my parents who were later convicted of stock fraud but were living the high life at the time. Their next-door neighbor was Gregory Peck and we heard, and yes, this is second-hand information, that his son Tony was a victim of extreme abuse from Mr. Peck. This was crushing news, because I had always admired the man and though very highly of his work. I think the combination of extreme wealth and celebrity can make for nightmarish circumstances for their children. They are protected by wealth, legal power and the isolation of security. It's not like the next-door neighbors are going to hear the screaming and calling child protective agencies.
All of the casework was curved to make two semi-circular banks of cabinetry. None of the doors were flat, everything had to be custom-fabricated, custom-welded etc. I worked for a kitchen company on Madison Avenue in the late Seventies called Elgot and the Kitchen guys who worked there, Anthony Noto and Walter Bell knew details of the job which was talked about for years because it was so unusual, it was for a famous movie star and it was so expensive. And these guys did a lot of custom installations for a lot of rich New York bitches. Joan's kitchen was one for the records. For a woman who was reportedly so stingy with her family, she spared no expense when it came to her appetite for ridiculous and excessive luxury.
I'm sure the truth about Crawford isn't what Christina presents us, but don't tell me that difficult children are the cause and excuse for bad parents. Not buying it. Lots of people have difficulties in their careers; you make the decision to be a parent, don't blame your problems on your children. We were lucky enough one summer to spend some time in Cap Ferrat in the South of France with some friends of my parents who were later convicted of stock fraud but were living the high life at the time. Their next-door neighbor was Gregory Peck and we heard, and yes, this is second-hand information, that his son Tony was a victim of extreme abuse from Mr. Peck. This was crushing news, because I had always admired the man and though very highly of his work. I think the combination of extreme wealth and celebrity can make for nightmarish circumstances for their children. They are protected by wealth, legal power and the isolation of security. It's not like the next-door neighbors are going to hear the screaming and calling child protective agencies.
danemodsandy
Well-known member
I Am Bowing Out
Of this thread.
It is obvious that nothing I can contribute will be construed as food for thought, only as grounds for argument.
Of this thread.
It is obvious that nothing I can contribute will be construed as food for thought, only as grounds for argument.
tecnopolis
Well-known member
Remember fellas, She's not mad at you, just the dirt! Now, about Pepsi Co.
