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Jan. 1st, 2019 01:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI've been desperately impatient for Yuletide reveals this year because ever since remembering the existence of The Talk of the Town (1942) and then rewatching it for Yuletide canon review I have been dying to tell everyone about it, and I had to WAIT and it was EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING.
Okay, so: The Talk of the Town. It stars Cary Grant as a labor organizer who gets falsely accused of murder and arson and has to hide out in the house of the local schoolteacher while avoiding detection by her subletter, a Supreme Court nominee.
It is, of course, a screwball comedy.
SUPREME COURT NOMINEE RONALD COLEMAN: The law is built on reason and principle
FUGITIVE LABOR ORGANIZER CARY GRANT, FORGETTING THAT HE IS SUPPOSED TO BE IN HIDING, AND EMERGING FROM THE BUSHES IN RIGHTEOUS ANARCHIST DISDAIN: The law is a gun pointed at somebody's head!
STRESSED-OUT SCHOOLTEACHER JEAN ARTHUR: ... so this is .... Joseph the anarchist gardener???
And then the next half hour of the movie is just all of them living in a house together arguing about legal ethics and falling in love while attempting to make sure that Supreme Court Nominee Ronald Coleman doesn't notice that his new favorite radical gardener is actually a fugitive on the lam?
Actual quotes, from this actual movie:
JEAN ARTHUR: That professor's got a mind like a steel trap. And sometimes he seems like such a little boy, I feel like kissing him.
CARY GRANT: Not a bad idea.
RONALD COLEMAN: We must get some [borscht] for Joseph.
JEAN ARTHUR: We haven't the time.
RONALD COLEMAN: But think of his face, the ecstasy.
RONALD COLEMAN: Leopold, what a fine fellow. I've been thinking, Nora, that if someone took his hand and said, "Leopold, my reckless friend, here's love and companionship forever." Well, some day that man would... You see what I mean, Nora?
Guys, it's good. It's SO good. It's so VERY good that the studios were so indecisive about what the actual endgame was supposed to be that they filmed two whole different heterosexual endings and just kind of threw one at the screen at random, and the ending they picked doesn't actually read any less like a threesome, so well done, team!
Anyway all this is to say that my primary Yuletide assignment was Labor Relations for Talk of the Town; my recipient asked for threesome fluff, which is the absolute correct thing to ask for out of this film, and I instead ended up spending several hours researching major union-related Supreme Court cases of the thirties and forties because unfortunately sometimes I cannot be stopped.
(I had a blast writing for this movie in several directions, but the real personal giveaway here was the minor plot point involving obsolete recording technologies.)
Okay, so: The Talk of the Town. It stars Cary Grant as a labor organizer who gets falsely accused of murder and arson and has to hide out in the house of the local schoolteacher while avoiding detection by her subletter, a Supreme Court nominee.
It is, of course, a screwball comedy.
SUPREME COURT NOMINEE RONALD COLEMAN: The law is built on reason and principle
FUGITIVE LABOR ORGANIZER CARY GRANT, FORGETTING THAT HE IS SUPPOSED TO BE IN HIDING, AND EMERGING FROM THE BUSHES IN RIGHTEOUS ANARCHIST DISDAIN: The law is a gun pointed at somebody's head!
STRESSED-OUT SCHOOLTEACHER JEAN ARTHUR: ... so this is .... Joseph the anarchist gardener???
And then the next half hour of the movie is just all of them living in a house together arguing about legal ethics and falling in love while attempting to make sure that Supreme Court Nominee Ronald Coleman doesn't notice that his new favorite radical gardener is actually a fugitive on the lam?
Actual quotes, from this actual movie:
JEAN ARTHUR: That professor's got a mind like a steel trap. And sometimes he seems like such a little boy, I feel like kissing him.
CARY GRANT: Not a bad idea.
RONALD COLEMAN: We must get some [borscht] for Joseph.
JEAN ARTHUR: We haven't the time.
RONALD COLEMAN: But think of his face, the ecstasy.
RONALD COLEMAN: Leopold, what a fine fellow. I've been thinking, Nora, that if someone took his hand and said, "Leopold, my reckless friend, here's love and companionship forever." Well, some day that man would... You see what I mean, Nora?
Guys, it's good. It's SO good. It's so VERY good that the studios were so indecisive about what the actual endgame was supposed to be that they filmed two whole different heterosexual endings and just kind of threw one at the screen at random, and the ending they picked doesn't actually read any less like a threesome, so well done, team!
Anyway all this is to say that my primary Yuletide assignment was Labor Relations for Talk of the Town; my recipient asked for threesome fluff, which is the absolute correct thing to ask for out of this film, and I instead ended up spending several hours researching major union-related Supreme Court cases of the thirties and forties because unfortunately sometimes I cannot be stopped.
(I had a blast writing for this movie in several directions, but the real personal giveaway here was the minor plot point involving obsolete recording technologies.)
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Date: 2019-01-03 02:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-04 04:09 am (UTC)