The Automat: Thirty Day Princess

The Movie

   The consensus:  screenwriting credits by Preston Sturgess make a formulaic plot enjoyable, and top talent helps the cause.  The set-up:  Thirty Day Princess (1934, directed by Marion Gering) is set smack in the middle of the Depression and stars Cary Grant as Porter Madison III, a newspaper editor out to take down fat cat bankers.  When he hears word that the Princess of Tyronia is coming to New York as an introductory tour in hopes of securing an international loan arranged by one of those bankers, he becomes suspicious and sets out to investigate.  On the other side, the Princess Catterina (Sylvia Sidney) has contracted mumps and cannot fulfill her public duties.  The fat cat banker (Edward Arnold) looks for and finds a ringer in Nancy Lane (also Sylvia Sidney), a down-on-her-luck actress who takes the part of the Princess.
   I find the opening few sequences where the King of Tyronia meets the banker pretty interesting.  The King, who cannot even afford to give his daughter money for the movies, says he would like to give the peasants of his country electric lights and heat.  The banker asks the King how much he would need.  "Oh, about 5 million," says the King.  "No, no!" replies the banker, "50 million!"  Ring any bells?

The Automat

   An automat is an extinct type of restaurant first brought to the U.S. in the early 1900s, modeled after a Berlin restaurant, the Quisisana Automat.  Automats had been in Europe since the late 1800s.  In this type of eatery, one would get change from the cashier, then pay for meal items by inserting nickels and drawing the items one selected out from behind small glass-and-chrome doors.  Trays were available to carry the food, and, much like a cafeteria, a tray-slider was in place below the food cases, so that one could move down the rows, looking at options.  The kitchen was located behind the 'wall' and slots were refilled from the kitchen.  Food included items such as Salisbury steak, chicken pot pie, creamed spinach, rice pudding, baked beans, blueberry pie and many others, all of which were subject to high quality control standards.  Spigots were provided for coffee and other drinks.  Seating was also cafeteria-style, with a group of tables and chairs in the middle.  Side note:  the automat or studio set featured in Thirty Day Princess seems to be the same one where the great food fight scene in Easy Living was shot.

   Horn and Hardart were the entrepreneurs who brought the European model to the U.S., opening the first restaurant in Philadelphia in 1902.  From there on it was expansion time, and many Horn and Hardart automats would open up in Philadelphia and New York.  Competitors, who could see how well the H&H model worked, would open up other restaurants as well.  Drive-in restaurants struck a blow to the automat model of business in the 50s and 60s, and by the 1980s, with fast food becoming commonplace nationwide, the few automats that were left were hanging on by a thread.  Since the last Horn and Hardarts shut down in 1991, there have been several attempts at revival, but none have been successful in the long term

A kiss on the hand may be quite continental

but diamonds are a girl's best friend.

A kiss may be grand, but it won't pay the rental

on your humble flat, or help you at the automat...

                                     -Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Links and Sources

Automat, Wikipedia
Meet Me At the Automat, Smithsonian
The Automat
European Automats, Victualling
An East Coast Oasis, Victualling
A book about the Automat by one of the descendants of Hardart:  The Automat (M. Hardart & L. Diehl)

Sun Tanning: The Awful Truth

The Movie

   If adults acting a bit like children is something you like in movies, then The Awful Truth (1937, directed by Leo McCarey) is a great movie for you.  It's definitely something I'm fond of in my movies, so I'm happy to be reviewing this - another all-time favorite.  In the midst of witty one-liners, Cary Grant (Jerry) and Irene Dunne (Lucy) struggle to get a divorce without falling back in love with each other, even with the distracting enticement of Okie tycoons, bubble dancers and socialites.  Ralph Bellamy plays the Ralph Bellamy type of dim second-tier suitor, Cecil Cunningham plays Aunt Betsy as the aunt everyone would love to have, and Asta of The Thin Man fame plays Mr. Smith as the dog worth a custody battle.

Tan for Deception

   The catalyst for divorce in The Awful Truth is Jerry's trip to Florida -- that he actually doesn't take, preferring to have a good time around the town instead while his wife thinks he's down south.  The day he's due home, he heads over to his club to get a quick Florida tan.  He does become (amazingly) tan, but unfortunately for him, the basket of fruit he has supposedly brought his wife from Florida has oranges marked 'California'.  Jerry gets his tan with a sun lamp that resembles a giant hairdryer.  I remember being surprised on first seeing this movie that such a thing was available -- surely people weren't so frivolous in the good-old-days!

Tan for Health
    Maybe they were, and maybe they weren't.  Sun lamps advertised in Life magazine at around the time this movie came out (below right) were advertised as a way to get a tan; other advertisements emphasized the healthful aspects of light exposure.  Use of light as a health treatment began in the late 1800s and 1903 a Nobel Prize was given to Niels Ryberg Finsen in recognition of his work using light therapy to cure lupus vulgaris.  The first sun bed was invented by J.H. Kellogg of cereal fame as a health device and used by Edward VII of England and others who could afford to have access.  In modern times, light therapy is used as a treatment for many skin disorders, as well as for pain management and seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

 The Fad for Tan

    Nearly everyone wants to be rich, or at least look rich, so the lower classes ape the upper crust, even when it comes to skin tone. Back in the days when most of the populace worked in agriculture, lighter skin meant that the person had the means to stay indoors away from the fields, and fair skin was in vogue.  Nowadays when tanning is synonymous with skin cancer, it's hard to believe that staying pale could be deadly, but the lead-based white powder once in vogue in ancient Greece and Rome could eventually cause death by lead poisoning.  Later, arsenic-based face powder was considered an improvement.

   Once industry became a major part of the economy and many lower class workers toiled in mills, offices and factories, a tan meant the person had the means to be unchained enough from their job to enjoy the great outdoors.  Coco Chanel is widely credited with jump-starting the trend of tan as a fashionable look when she returned to Paris after a long yachting vacation.  The popularity of Josephine Baker, the famous black entertainer, is also cited as a reason for the rise in popularity of the tan in the 1920s.  Sun-tanning remained popular until the later 1980s, when the information about the link between sun exposure and skin cancer began to be widely distributed to the public.  The rise in availability of self-tanning agents has meant that sunless tanning has become a popular alternative (although the resulting color may not be a pleasant tan, but instead something more...).

Links and Sources

A History of Tanning, Times Online
The Look: A History of Tanning
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Sun Tanning, Livestrong
Lupus vulgaris, Wikipedia
Light therapy, Wikipedia
Sun Tanning, Wikipedia