Filmed in glorious Metrocolor, MGM’s CinemaScope beach party exposes the hypocrisy and double standards of the sexual revolution.
Trigger warning: sexual assault
It seems fitting that Where the Boys Are was released the very same year that the FDA approved the sale of Enovid (the first brand of “the pill”) for use as an oral contraceptive. “It touched on all these subjects that were sort of taboo for that time,” actress Paula Prentiss, who plays Tuggle, said of the film, “and then the 60s exploded.” Unfortunately, the Pill was restricted to married women until 1972, so the college-aged heroines of Where the Boys Are couldn’t yet benefit from it. But that didn’t mean that they weren’t thinking about, talking about, and yes, sometimes having sex.
The film opens on a snowy midwestern university campus, where a Courtship and Marriage class is taking place. The teacher, the ironically named Dr. Raunch, is discussing the “problems of interpersonal relationships”, specifically “random dating among college freshmen and premature emotional involvement.” She calls on Merritt (Dolores Hart), who, with her sleek sweater-set, is the epitome of the mid-century college co-ed. Merritt’s prim and proper appearance belies her progressive thinking, however: “In this day and age, if a girl doesn’t become a little ’emotionally involved’ on the first date, it’s gonna be her last — with that man, anyhow,” she says, turning the tables on – and schooling – her archaic teacher. “Honestly doctor, if a girl doesn’t make out with a man once in a while, she might as well leave campus; she’s considered practically anti-social.” Affronted, Dr. Raunch indignantly asks Merritt to explain to the class what ‘making out’ means. “I think they already know,” Merritt replies, to giggles from her classmates. “Making out is what used to be called ‘necking’. Before that, it was ‘petting’. Going back to early American days, it was known as ‘bundling’. It’s all the same game…Well, we’re supposed to be intelligent so why don’t we get down to the giant jackpot issue: should a girl, or should she not, under any circumstances, play house before marriage? My opinion,” Merritt continues, as the other girls look on in shock, “is yes.“
That look on the face of the blonde in the blue striped shirt is priceless.
“Play house” is, of course, just a polite pre-Betty Friedan way of saying “have sex” and it’s enough to get Merritt kicked out of class and sent to the Dean who asks her if she’s “overly concerned with the problem of sex.” “I’d say there are probably half a million co-eds in this country. I’d imagine ninety-eight percent of them are ‘overly concerned’ with that problem,” Merritt cheekily replies.
With the theory portion of our “interpersonal lesson”, out of the way, Merritt and her friends — the no-nonsense, marriage-minded Tuggle (Paula Prentiss); romantic, starry-eyed Melanie (Yvette Mimieux) and fun loving Angie (Connie Francis, in her film debut) — are about to put Merritt’s ideas into practice as they head to Fort Lauderdale for spring break with one goal: “TO MEET BOYS!!!”
Hey Leo, can’t you see Greta Garbo wants to be alone?
When I was in my early twenties, a student at the fashion design school where I worked told me that I reminded him of a cat. “It’s the way you walk”, he said, “like you aren’t afraid of anything. Like you don’t care what other people think”. This is not true: I am afraid of a great many things and I care too much about what other people think of me (way more than I should). Still, being a cat person, I took the compliment as high praise. After all, the cat is everything that we humans want to be: beautiful, confident, independent: the cat suffers no fools. The cat is both beauty and the beast. Or, to paraphrase the Counting Crows, we all wanna be big, big cats but we’ve got different reasons for that.
In the 1981 movie Roar, then-married couple Noel Marshall and Tippi Hedren take our obsession with big cats to shocking extremes. “For over a decade, Noel Marshall, Tippi Hedren and their family lived with 150 untrained wild animals to create what became the most dangerous movie ever made,” the 2015 Drafthouse Films trailer explains. “No animals were harmed in the making of this film. 70 members of the cast and crew were.”
“They’re not trained pets. They’re just friends”. Screenshots of Roar (1981)
When I first watched Roar, it was with a sense of uneasiness. Those are real lions, I said to myself. Those are real people interacting with lions. That’s real blood.
When I was in my late twenties, I worked in a small office with a large window facing Islington subway station. Sometimes I would see an older woman sitting on the grounds outside the building across the street, a building which we used to call “the ship center.” The woman wore her grey hair in pigtails and was always dressed in blue jeans and a matching button-up jean shirt. Her face, free of makeup, was as softly wrinkled as a silk bedsheet after a lovers’ tryst. She was usually reading a book; sometimes she wrote in a journal.
My boss’s friends, who were all divorced and in their sixties, were obsessed with the woman with the grey pigtails, but in an unflattering, unromantic way: they speculated about her upbringing, her housing situation, her family life and, most of all, if she had any children (their overall assumption was that she didn’t). One of them called her “the beggar lady”, although there was no evidence of her ever “begging” anyone for anything.
These men spent their days and nights drinking and gambling at the various pubs that populated Bloor Street West at the time. They were about the same age as the woman with the grey pigtails, except they didn’t look as good as she did. Who were they to judge this pretty woman who read books and wrote in journals? The anxiety that bubbled under the surface of their mockery was palpable: here was a woman who didn’t need them – or anyone, it seemed. A woman who was not looking for their approval. A woman who did not ask for their validation. Here was a woman who felt free to simply sit on the ground and read a book.
She scared the living sh*t out of them.
I am reminded of the woman with the grey pigtails this year – a year that began with my partner and I having to defend our relationship at a NYE get-together (how dare we be happily unmarried for over a decade!); a year in which I received abusive e-mails from a bitter, hate-filled old man attacking me for being both working class and a writer (how dare a self-educated woman from a blue collar family call herself a writer – I should know my place!). During a year when we are witnessing the fierce uprising of “the childless cat ladies”, I remember the woman with the grey pigtails.
Although the Soda Fountain’s focus is on film and pop culture of the 1920s and 30s, we do occasionally review movies made during other parts of the 20th century. So put on your best pair of tight jeans, shake up that can of Aqua Net and crack open a box of Dipps granola bars because we’re reviewing the ultimate Canadian teen movie of the 1990s: Degrassi’s School’s Out!
If the name Joey Jeremiah means anything to you, you’re probably A) Canadian and B) Gen X. With his trademark fedora, Joey (played by the charismatic Pat Mastroianni) was the cocky but good-hearted troublemaker of the OG Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High television series’, the Canadian franchise which undoubtedly, for better or for worse, left its mark on a generation of Canadian teens who came of age in the 1980s and early 90s. Although Degrassi was made up of an ensemble cast and didn’t allow for star billing, Joey undoubtedly became the star anyway. Can we call him the Canadian Cagney? Or maybe the Canadian Ferris Bueller? The only difference being that unlike Ferris, Joey always got caught. And in School’s Out (1992), the made-for-TV movie that marked the end of the original series, boy does he ever get caught.
That’s because Degrassi wasn’t just entertainment; it was educational entertainment. Every episode was a “very special” one: the show tackled heavy topics such as AIDS, teenage pregnancy, abortion, alcoholism and death, as well as lighter fare like first date jitters, unrequited crushes and trying to get into a strip club when all you have is a crappy fake ID and barely enough dollar bills for a glass of Coca Cola. Degrassi addressed these issues head on with an often unflinching eye, yet it was never quite as edgy as it clearly thought itself to be. The series had much in common with the “hygiene films” or “social guidance films” shown in classrooms during the 1950s and 60s: there was always a lesson to be learned and parents (usually) knew best. In grade eight, we had a “Guidance” class which consisted of nothing more than our teacher playing VHS tapes of Degrassi Junior High while at the same time making snide remarks about the appearance of the cast (“With hair like that, no wonder they have problems!” he’d cackle).
In spite of the fact that I had to watch it at school, I chose to watch Degrassi at home too. Although the show sometimes looks a little cheesy to me today, it didn’t then: my sister and I would make jokes about other teen-oriented TV shows, such as Saved by the Bell and 90210, but, unlike my Guidance teacher, we never made fun of Degrassi. There was a certain authentic grittiness to this Canadian show that was missing from the American programs. For one thing, unlike 90210, the kids in Degrassi were actually kids: with pimples, frizzy hair and all. Joey and his best pals Snake (Stefan Brogren) and Wheels (Neil Hope) even formed a Ramones-esque band called The Zit Remedy. Also, the show was Canadian and in the 1980s and early 90s, that was a big deal: most of the pop culture we consumed was American so it was kind of a thrill to watch a TV show set in our home city of Toronto, and one that never pretended to be American at that. I remember being really excited whenever they’d show Canadian dollar bills and how proud I was when the New York based Sassy magazine mentioned Degrassi in an issue. So when School’s Out debuted on CBC television on January 5th, 1992 when I was in ninth grade, it was a huge deal and not just for me: the movie attracted 2.3 million viewers. In an era long before streaming, we all pretty much watched the same thing and School’s Out was the talk of my high school the day after its premiere. There are a few very important reasons for this: one involves a banana and the other involves an F-bomb. But more on that later.
“Francie held one of the doll’s hands tightly. A nerve in her thumb throbbed and she thought the doll’s hand twitched. She almost believed the doll was real.” – from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (1943)
On Halloween night 1989, I did two things that I had never done before: I stayed home while my sister went trick-or-treating and I watched my first genuine horror movie. The movie was Child’s Play (1988), about Chucky, a carrot-topped Corky-style talking-doll possessed by the spirit of a serial killer, and I was instantly transfixed. I don’t know what it was about this movie that fascinated me but I do think it’s interesting that I discovered it just after I had stopped playing with dolls myself. Not that I had wanted to put away my beloved Barbie and Jem dolls: at twelve years old however, it was what was expected of me. Up until then, I had lived in two worlds: my drab real life one and the exciting, colorful, “grownup” world of my glamourous dolls. Perhaps that’s why Child’s Play appealed to me: I liked the idea of one of my dolls coming to life, even if it was inhabited by the ghost of a deranged psychopath.
As children, we are encouraged to use our dolls to channel our hopes, dreams and ambitions – this is especially true when it comes to the marketing of Barbie. Infused with so much of our emotional energy, it’s not impossible to imagine a doll becoming sentient. In fact, one of the most famous doll makers of the first half of the 20th century, Madame Beatrice Alexander, was described by a journalist for the World Telegram thusly: “Not only does (she) put soles on her dolls, but she puts souls into them!”
“Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place.”
“This film is about the birth of Venus in Australia.”
Helen Morse (actor, Mademoiselle de Poitiers in Picnic at Hanging Rock)
Perhaps it is when we are young that we are the closest to being our dream selves. Once lost, a dream – like youth – can never be found.
I had these thoughts while watching Peter Weir’s ethereal Picnic at Hanging Rock, a film that can be described as “a mystery that remains a mystery”. Based upon the 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay (who reportedly said that the novel came to her in a dream), Picnic at Hanging Rock opens with a title card informing us of the following:
On Saturday 14th February 1900 a party of schoolgirls from Appleyard College picnicked at Hanging Rock near Mt. Macedon in the state of Victoria. During the afternoon several members of the party disappeared without trace…
The film begins with girls in white nightgowns: long haired maidens washing their pretty faces in basins of pink roses; tightening each other’s corsets; counting Valentine cards; breathlessly reciting poetry; pressing flowers into booklets; gossiping and giggling; the mirrors on walls and vanity tables capturing themselves, capturing each other. “You must learn to love someone else, apart from me, Sarah,” the Venus-like Miranda gently admonishes her quiet, sensitive friend as she runs a brush through her long blonde mane before a looking glass. “I won’t be here much longer.”
Like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, Miranda will disappear. Unlike Alice, she won’t come back.
Lee Duncan & Rin Tin TinDiesel vom Burgimwald & John Reardonof Hudson & Rex
For almost fourteen years, I lived without television. It was less out of any kind of wannabe-intellectual snobbery and more due to the fact that when I moved into my first apartment, I just never got around to getting a TV hooked up. After my second move, it no longer seemed necessary; I’d already gotten along well without one and besides, I reasoned, I had probably already had my fill of “the boob tube” as a kid: in an attempt to escape drama at home and bullies at school, I crawled into the TV set as a child and stayed there, preferring the scripted scenarios and happy endings to a confusing and unhappy reality.
My TV-abstinence ended on Christmas of 2020 when my partner, Neil, gifted me with a digital antenna. Due to the location of my apartment unit, I’m only able to pick up a handful of channels: a few stations from Buffalo, sometimes PBS and TVO and usually CITYTV. In other words…
“There’s nothing on except Hudson & Rex!”
This was my lament during those early days of winter Covid-lockdowns, referring to Citytv’s homegrown show about two handsome detectives (one of whom happens to be a German shepherd). It hurts to admit it now, but at first I approached Hudson & Rex with a cynical eye (Canadians tend to be skeptical about our own talent). It wasn’t long however before I was admonishing Neil not to change the channel:
Rex does more than just take the bad guys down in slo-mo. In addition to sniffing out clues and solving crimes, he also comes to the aid of victims and the bereaved: carrying boxes of tissues and offering cuddles of comfort. One of my favorite moments happens in a recent episode in which the team finds out that a physiotherapist, whose murder they are attempting to solve, was also a sexual predator. Rex senses that Sarah, the team’s Chief of Forensics, is triggered by this news and he’s instantly at her side. “Our big furry empathy bomb,” Sarah calls him affectionately. This is why I love the show: as someone who struggles with PTSD, Rex is a comfort to me too.
“The dog embodies a rich, mythic sort of heroism, an empathy that is broader and deeper and more pure than what an ordinary human would be capable of,” author Susan Orlean writes in Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend. My love of Hudson & Rex inspired me to pick up Orlean’s impeccably researched and immensely entertaining book, thus taking a deep dive into the history of dogs in movies and television.
The first movie to star a dog was the 1905 British smash hit Rescued by Rover, an early narrative film about a collie who saves a kidnapped baby. The movie was so popular that the name “Rover” (which was not a typical dog’s name prior to the film), became synonymous with “dog”. Studios quickly realized that movies with dogs “fetched” big bucks at the box office: there was collie superstar Jean the Vitagraph Dog and then Strongheart, the German shepherd with the sad, beautiful eyes who had a dog food named after him; Charlie Chaplin got a doggy sidekick and so did Harold Lloyd. Pete the Pup joined Our Gang in 1927 and even badass George Bancroft had a canine companion in the 1929 gangster movie Thunderbolt. One of my favorite on-screen dogs from the silent era is in the Nell Shipman Canadian adventure film Back to God’s Country (1919): a Great Dane named “Wapi the Killer”; an abused dog who is described by the title cards as “an alien without friends, hating the men who understand nothing of the magic of kindness and love, but whose law is the law of the whip and the club.” Only after he is rescued from these brutes by Shipman’s heroine does Wapi experience “a new miracle of understanding roused by the touch of a woman’s hand.” In Back to God’s Country, dog and woman rescue one another, thus fulfilling their shared dream of freedom.
In her book, Susan Orlean interestingly connects our affection for animals with the rise of industrialization:
“The invention of cinema came at the moment when animals were starting to recede from a central role in human civilization; from that moment forward, they began to be sentimental — a soft memento of another time, consolation for the cost of modernity.”
Susan Orlean, Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend
Woman’s Best Friend: Nell Shipman in Back to God’s Country (1919)
But of all the canine cinema superstars of the silent era, not one was more beloved, influential or enduring than Rin Tin Tin.
Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934)
Editor’s Note: Jeff Cottrill is a talented writer and spoken word artist. We met over a decade ago, as youngsters making our way in Toronto’s open mic scene. A fellow film buff, Jeff is one of my favorite people to talk movies with. So when he approached me about writing a guest post for the Soda Fountain, I knew it would be a great fit. Jeff’s debut novel Hate Story is being released from Dragonfly Publishing (Australia) in March 2022 and I was honored to read an ARC. Hate Story is a fresh, funny and original telling of the dark side of social media and internet shaming. Its heroine happens to be a movie blogger so the novel is sprinkled with lots of great references to classic and contemporary films. Read on for Jeff’s essay “Frank Capra: A Master of Comedy and Social Awareness”.
I wouldn’t give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn’t have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness. And a little lookin’ out for the other fella too.
James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
When many people hear the name Frank Capra today, chances are the only title they think of is It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). This movie is a timeless holiday favourite, but it’s a shame its reputation now outshines the rest of Capra’s filmmaking career – especially his pre-World War II movies, which are arguably better. Capra had a streak unmatched by any other director in the 1930s, winning three Academy Awards while helming classics like Lady for a Day (1933), It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Lost Horizon (1937), You Can’t Take It with You (1938) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939).
Frank Capra is my favourite director from this era – or maybe tied with Charlie Chaplin. There are two important traits Capra and Chaplin have in common: their impeccable comedic timing, and their passionate social conscience. Many critics have dismissed Capra as a corny sentimentalist, but it’s really the comedy that brings his work to life, propped up by the wit of screenwriter Robert Riskin and the sharp delivery of actors like Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Thomas Mitchell, Lionel Barrymore and many others.
Take the whip-smart repartee that Gable and Colbert lob at each other in It Happened One Night. As Gable’s cynical reporter buses and hitchhikes across America with Colbert’s spoiled runaway heiress, the pair bicker and debate hilariously about everything from dunking donuts to piggybacking, with a speed and timing that surely influenced later romcoms. On the surface, the characters have nothing in common – but the energy they devote to each other reveals a deep connection, one of shared intelligent sarcasm, and you can’t help rooting for them to hook up.
Arthur and Stewart play off each other in a similar way in You Can’t Take It with You and Mr. Smith, and Arthur had a knack for portraying jaded professional women with a hidden compassionate side. In both Mr. Deeds and Mr. Smith, Arthur’s character starts off mocking and patronizing the naive title hero – but once she gets to know him, she not only falls in love with his sincerity, but also becomes his number-one supporter. It sounds like an implausible fantasy, yet Arthur makes it work by staying smart, funny, fast-talking and worldly even while yielding to her inner sentiment. She’s no pushover; she thinks for herself and owns full agency over her decisions, in a way that may surprise modern viewers who expect dated sexism.
All Capra’s best movies centre on the theme of an ordinary man (the “Little Guy”) winning out against the big guns of the establishment. This theme was especially potent during the poverty and social upheaval of the Great Depression, but I think it’s even more relevant now – in the wake of the recent Occupy movement, and in an era of high wealth gaps and billionaires playing space tourism. Every Capra classic features a relatable lone hero who stands up for bedrock moral values against the corruption, egotism and greed around him – the kind of hero people wished for in the ’30s, and the kind we could use now.
The sleek, white plastic tube of flame-orange wax called out to me from the bowels of the Zellers’ cosmetic aisle.
The year was 1988 and I was ten years old. At home, a large poster of Madonna, in character for Who’s That Girl (1987), hung over my bed: clad in fishnets, a leather jacket and fingerless gloves. More intimidating than the revolver in her hands was the stark red lipstick on her face. Fierce. Fabulous. I didn’t understand why the other girls at my school didn’t like her. I didn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to wear lipstick too.
Every Saturday, my mother would go grocery shopping at the Kipling Queensway Mall and my dad would give my sister and I a dollar each to buy either trash or a treat at the mall’s dollar store or Zellers. But this Saturday, I didn’t feel like a chocolate bar or a bag of chips. I didn’t need another whoopee cushion or copy of Tiger Beat magazine.
I wanted that lipstick.
It didn’t matter that it cost a little more than the dollar my dad had given me. To my ten-year-old mind, that was an unfairness that could be easily corrected. And so, taking advantage of my then-mousy invisibility, I quietly slipped the coveted tube into the pocket of my Levi’s. I don’t remember feeling nervous or even giddy about it and I certainly didn’t feel guilty – that red lipstick belonged to me. It was mine. I did however make the colossal mistake of boasting to my sister about the steal, in proud whispers, on the ride home.
“Hey Daaaa-dddd,” she called out smugly. “Heather stole a lipstick!“
And so, before I knew it, I was back in the Zellers department store, handing over my swag and stammering out an apology to the bored teenage clerk whose only response to my foray into crime was a glassy-eyed shrug.
Meet Me at the Soda Fountain 
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