Hollywood, Killer of the Dream
Gladstone, Gabriel
The American Dream enjoins limitless social mobility. Class barriers don't exist for it, or if they do they are so fluid as to be virtually without meaning. "From each according to his...
...Earlier our credulity has been courted by superficial evocations of reality: Webb's office is located in 99 Park Avenue, and in one scene the camera takes us on a rapid car-view tour down Fifth Avenue...
...In her most dramatic scene with MacMurray, when she assures him that even if he is chosen as general manager she will "stick," she adds, "I'll look good in black": punishment for daring to reach the top will be death...
...The movie tells us this isn'tso...
...could really stand as its motto, with the corollary that in America only the shiftless go unrewarded...
...If they have sex it must be only occasionally and with a certain amount of indifference...
...she believes she's married a pauper...
...I'm not reaching for the moon," shesays, "the moon is reaching for me," asit is only fitting it should because, thoughpoor, she is so chock full of "x-plus," shewould sparkle in a slum...
...It is immediately apparent, though, that we are not in Klein's at all but in Dante's Inferno: greed is rampant...
...And even he, Bogart, ends up chasing her—she early stops pursuing wealth...
...In "How to Marry a Millionaire" for example, Lauren Bacall, whohas set out singlemindedly to marrymoney, does in fact hook a tycoon...
...And if you won't, we will do our best to break you...
...Before the glass shower doors so much as open, a butler stands waiting, robe in hand —a stock scene in nearly all musical comedies—to drape Van Johnson...
...On all sides there is strife and theft and vandalism: dresses are torn to shreds or stolen from under averted eyes...
...Wealth the hero usually possesses, though he never lifted a finger to acquire it, and the feeling is always inescapable that it never really was acquired...
...He has risen too fast, too hungrily, one gathers, with an excessive determination to succeed...
...She believes him to be "fast," that is, sexual, mobile, only to learn that, so far from being an upstart, he actually comes from "family...
...She must pack up and leave...
...So in a very brief scene he informs his wife that he has been trying to save their marriage for years—it is the first the audience has heard about it—and that he cannot...
...and it is the same with tickets to a fight or a play or a night club...
...To find the right man for the job, he invites three regional sales managers and their wives to New York...
...What exactly, asks Webb, is "x-plus...
...Though he was not always so, the hero, since meeting the heroine, is superior to sex, too...
...The death he is threatened with is one of total personal disintegration...
...though it cannot be acquired, the ruling class to a man always possesses it...
...His wife must learn to stop belching at parties and he must learn to be a hypocrite...
...In his ageless past, the hero has been everywhere, done everything...
...How can you compare to these extra-human wielders of power, replete with apt phrases and countless skills, who desire nothing, ask for nothing and yet have everything, these people in whose company you would only squirm...
...Of one thing he is sure, however: all success167 ful leaders have it...
...169 plane, a secretary picks up a phone and in the next scene they are in the air...
...I used to be at the bottom," he says, "and I was happy then...
...His wife presents Heflin with the only obstacle to the job that is waiting to find him...
...They will have to leave Kansas City, their home, and move to New York, identified as the city of homelessness...
...of the three contenders he alone consistently speaks his mind, tells Webb just what he thinks...
...At ease everywhere, his all-encompassing sophistication is of a piece with his wealth: he was born with it, and the point about it is that it is impossible of emulation.* "Look on these works, ye masses, and despair...
...Our social system, Hollywood is perfectly willing toconcede, does occasionally make mistakes, as in the case of Sabrina, who obviouslydeserves to be on top...
...Why, you don't deserve to be there—take our word for it...
...His wife, Lauren Bacall, carries the moral burden of the film...
...Look at yourselves, greedy, full of human appetites, addicted to hunger, ambition and sex, limited in experience...
...She alone of the three wives is invested with sex appeal, for if Hollywood demands passivity on a social level, it also demands impotence on a sexual...
...The film is "It's a Woman's World...
...WHAT, THEN, ARE THE QUALIFICATIONS for success in Hollywood...
...Earlier, when Heflin's wife tried to wheedle out of him with a kiss a prom168 ise that he would select her husband, he was able disdainfully to wipe her lipstick off his mouth, demonstrating his possession of "x-plus," his imperviousness to desire...
...If they want tickets on an air * Occasionally, the grasping hero (orheroine) does seem to reach the top, butonly after he has renounced his "graspingness...
...Cornel Wilde, who also wants the job, though not as badly as MacMurray, is threatened with death of a sort, too...
...They are formulated by Van Heflin, the victorious contender...
...But what of those who possess no "x-plus" at all...
...Eisenhower has it,"* he declares...
...His patience, obviously, is inexhaustable, while she has nothing but contempt for the notion that in the end merit is always discovered...
...of the three men, he wants the job the most and consequently he is out of the running almost from the start...
...Almost every Hollywood production is an attempt to annihilate mobility as an ideal...
...It is about an automobile magnate, Clifton Webb, who is planning to promote an executive from within his organization to the rank of general manager at a salary of $125,000 a year...
...THOSE WITHOUT "X-PLUS" are delineated in the only farcical scene in the film...
...The answer is that it is completely indescribable, incapable of logical analysis or definition...
...Within this Inferno they occupy an island...
...Even dressing is no problem to them...
...If the message were precisely articulated, it would run something like this: "You try to succeed only at your shame and your peril...
...that is his virtue in Webb's eyes, his sin in hers...
...Wilde's virtue is honesty...
...In some mystical way, he is especially qualified to be president...
...It must therefore be exorcised, and the job of exorcism is performed by the organs of mass media, particularly the movies...
...From each according to his abilities...
...In other words, she is rewarded only aftershe has renounced success, that is money, as a goal...
...In "It's a Woman's World," two women haggling over a dress in the Inferno scene begin by addressing each other verydaintily only to descend to degenerateBrooklynese...
...We will do our best to kill you and to kill your dream...
...MacMurray introduces one of the main themes of the film...
...With the rapidity of castration he sheds his sex and guarantees his elevation to the job that is seeking him...
...Now he is miserable, his marriage on the verge of collapse...
...The scene takes place in the bargain basement of a large clothing store, presumably Klein's, where Lauren Bacall has taken June Allyson to buy a dress...
...It is she who personifies the American Dream with its stress on ambition and the boundlessness of opportunity...
...Heflin, who ultimately succeeds, is almost disqualified, too, because of his wife, Arlene Dahl, the villain of the film...
...To be successful at acquiring anything, it is best to walk within a circumambient beatitude...
...She at first does not know this...
...Hollywood is saying...
...And how, Webb asks him, can you recognize someone who has "x-plus...
...In opposition to the dynamism of the American Dream, Hollywood preaches an ideal of passivity...
...Though Heflin, as evidenced by his final castration, is the - prime possessor of "x-plus," even Wilde and MacMurray possess some, because after all they are managers...
...or John Payne, who has demonstrated on dozens of occasions his delicate ability to tuck his shirt into his trousers without unzipping his fly...
...More passive than MacMurray yet eager for the job, Wilde is eliminated from the running, too...
...Edison had it...
...Sooner or later the moon reaches for all worthy people...
...Let us take a recent Hollywood film as an example, a bad film, because it is primarily in bad films that the message is most explicit...
...She apparently wants sex and wants others to want it, too...
...170...
...without raising their voices or elbowing a soul out of the way, they find the finest dress in the store...
...He is the only one of the three men who never expresses any desire to have the job which finally is offered him...
...These are: Fred MacMurray - Lauren Bacall, Cornel Wilde - June Allyson, Van Heflin - Arlene Dahl...
...You are at home in Klein's, on dirty crowded beaches, in subways...
...Obviously, "It's a Woman's World" is intended to be a representation of life as it really is in New York, stripped of sen timentality and distortion...
...Its origin is alluded to cryptically, in a word or two—"oil", "steel"—and buried so deeply in the past as to constitute a primordial blessing...
...to wear a perpetual sneer as the badge of her fatal dissatisfaction...
...In one scene, however, the movie abandons all pretense to realism and resorts to farce...
...The favored of Hollywood are those who want nothing, not even, or especially not, sex...
...As a reward for her unregenerate commitment to the American Dream she is depicted as totally evil, and is made * Certainly one possible inference fromthe career of Eisenhower is that the American Dream always was telling thetruth: in America anybody can become president...
...A few minutes Iater he is informed by Webb that he has been chosen because only he possesses "x-plus...
...Her husband is modest...
...Each event in the evolution of the hero's history is a rebuke to those with out "x-plus," the masses who visit public beaches, ride subways or bargain hunt in Klein's...
...You had a handicap," remarks Webb, referring to his wife, "but you got rid of it...
...I'll reach the top," Heflin tells her, "but I'll reach it on my own...
...Clearly, if he is to be chosen, he must first purge himself of sex and emerge as passive sexually as he is socially...
...While in the American Dream lack of ambition is the only sin, in Hollywood it is the only real virtue, just as mobility, social climbing is the only real crime...
...We are, of course, in the presence of the masses, as we have been in their presence before in innumerable Hollywood movies—on beaches at Coney Island, in every subway scene we have ever watched...
...IF HOLLYWOOD DRAMAS INCULCATE the notion that it is fatal to attempt to acquire "x-plus," their musical and light comedies suggest that it is insane even to try.* The heroes of these films are superior to life in every respect...
...The heroes of Hollywood do not grapple with life...
...Heflin - Dahl, on the other hand, are never shown in separate beds, as a matter of fact their bedroom isn't shown at all...
...And it is the same with "Sabrina," the chauffeur's daughter...
...When they choose —and they seldom do—those with "xplus" can beat those without it at their own game, and without ever resorting to methods which are at once cause and effect of the latter's condition...
...Once they stand hugging on the threshhold of their bedroom—there, unmistakably, one bed awaits them both and they enjoy the love they make...
...To reach the top," he tells Webb, you must possess "xplus...
...The hero treats his body as Richard Baxter, a seventeenth century divine, exhorted good Christians to treat their wealth, as a light cloak which can be set aside at any moment...
...And his success will mean not only his personal ruination, but the ruination of his family as well...
...Whatever he touches he excels at: he swims, he rides horses, he speaks all languages...
...If he is to become general manager, he soon realizes, his honesty must come to an end...
...MacMurray - Bacall, Wilde - Allysonall are seen to sleep in separate beds...
...The first sight that greets us is one of hideous, semi-nude, fat female flesh, and the first sound the shrill cry of "Moitle," the conventional stigma of perpetual inferiority...
...Imagine yourselves in the drawing room of a mansion...
...Once you are inscrutably elected for leadership, through no efforts on your own behalf, you may be sure that you possess "x-plus" and deserve to rule, just as those above and alongside you possess "x-plus" and deserve to rule too...
...The point is thesemistakes can be rectified by—patience...
...Her virtue consists in scorning his ambition and in emphasizing, rather menacingly, the identity of ambition and death...
...He alone has risen from the ranks, from factory worker to salesman to manager, and his rise is portrayed as a tragedy: he has picked up an ulcer along the way, not an ordinary ulcer, it is soon clear, but one that will probably kill him unless he stops wanting to succeed, trying to climb...
...It is his wife who does everything to promote him because she knows he has no interest in promoting himself...
...In short, the proof of "x-plus" is ex post facto...
...He is portrayed as the only integrated character in the film, happily married, an image which is concretized here as in countless other Hollywood films by having his wife fling a pillow at him...
...The villain of Hollywood is the man who takes the American Dream seriously...
...She, too, marries a millionaire, but not theone she originally had her eye on, notHolden, portrayed as the quintessence ofsex, but Bogart, paternal, affectionate, throughout the film an old hot water bag...
...She is evil in yet another way...
...in their preternatural passivity they glide through it...
...Very possibly, at one time he was interested in sex—as he enters a night club with the heroine, a torrid beauty, presumably an old flame, greets him avidly—but his sex is really part of his inviolable worldliness and can be dispensed with in a moment, as he is presently to prove to the heroine...
...Subscribed to by nearly all Americans, the American Dream represents a constant threat to the realities of the American class structure...
...If you have it," replies Heflin, "you'll recognize it...
...If "God helps those who help themselves" is the slogan of the American Dream, the rival slogan of 166 Hollywood is "All things come to those who wait...
...Onlyshe doesn't know it till after she's married...
...They were never meant tobury their roots and if they ever attemptto do so they will assuredly collapse disgracefully under pressure...
...In contrast to the other two women, her dresses are cut startlingly low...
...These are the manipulators of the universe, the people who deserve to rule, whose example we must revere but not presume to try to copy...
...The inference is plain: all leaders, all employers have it...
...Bacall and Allyson are compelled briefly to inhabit this Inferno in order thoroughly to expose it...
Vol. 2 • April 1955 • No. 2
