Sunday, April 14, 2013

Of Mammaries and the Movies, or My Take on Tits




At no point in the classic Hitchcock film “Northwest by Northwest” do we witness star Gary Grant’s bare butt writhing and thrusting on top of a naked Eva Marie Saint as he caresses her undulating breasts.

That's because “North by Northwest” was made in the 1950's, before people began having sex.

Or at least began having sex in the movies.

What the audience sees instead is the train they’re traveling on roar into a tunnel, the sight of which impelled me to beg my parents for years to take me on train trips that included lots of tunnels.
  
Back in the 50's and early 60’s, the epitome of celluloid sex was a profile shot of the rapidly maturing Mouseketeer Annette Funicello turning sideways or a glimpse of Barbara Eden's navel on a day the “I Dream of Jeanie” makeup man ran out of putty.

Nowadays I know every square inch of Anne Hathaway's anatomy almost as well as does the Jewish guy she married!  

It was 1968 when naked boobs first came to neighborhood movie screens. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw what looked like eyes when a hot young blonde nonchalantly peeled off her top in the movie “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.”

I raced home and threw my entire collection of National Geographics in the trash.

Boobs thereupon began bouncing abundantly anywhere and everywhere on the silver screen.

Nowadays everything goes in the movies including any sense of propriety.  It's a rare film that doesn't feature Mark Ruffalo hammering Julianne MooreNatalie Portman switching teams with Mila Kunis, or Paul Reubens responding in kind in the audience.

But these days except when either the film - or my mood - truly calls for sex, I’d just as soon watch “Frozen.”

No, I'm not suggesting we return to the days of Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint acting like saints until the rapid approach of a well-timed tunnel. There were layers of reality and story-telling lost due to the sensitivities of the times. But there was also something discrete and respectful that’s missing today that helped make many of the older films classics.

It has never been my burning passion to turn on Turner Classic Movies and see Ethel Barrymore or Margaret Hamilton frolicking nude on a beach. The great screwball comedies starring the likes of Gary Grant and Katherine Hepburn are better without the alternate connotations of “screw” and “ball.”

And as for classics like “Casablanca?” 

"Did you leave me for Lazlo because he had a bigger penis?"

"No, Rick, I left you because Victor Lazlo is my husband.  Because he’s a great man and a great leader of our cause. And he has a bigger penis."

Nah, gimme my film classics straight - unabridged, crotch-less, boob-free and with a minimum of writhing.

I'm glad I got to
see Isabella Rossellini's tits in “Blue Velvet.”

But I'm even gladder I never got to see her mom's.
  
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10 comments:

Anne Flournoy said...

Oh GAWD. Too funny. "It's a rare movie or an animated one that doesn't feature Mark Ruffalo hammering Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman switching teams with Mila Kunis, or Fred Willard and Paul Reubens responding in kind in the audience."

Thanks for the short paragraphs!!

muddlavoie@gmail.com said...

Thanks to Anne Flournoy for directing me here. Great HILARIOUS post... and so true. You flashback-ed me to my youth... to reading between the lines and seeing between the scenes. LOVE it!

Perry Block said...

A great honor to be visited by the creator of The Louise Logs and yes, the paragraphs go short before the name goes on. Now I finally understand the type of topic I need to focus on to command your attention.

By the way, don't miss my next blog post,"John Kenneth Galbraith, Keynesian Economics, and Boobs." I think you'll find it enlightening.

Thanks for commenting!

Perry Block said...

Je vous en prie, Ms. Mudd!

Here's a post I hope you'll like: "Rhinoceros Impoceros," which makes a bit more use of my very limited francais ... http://bit.ly/YH5EbX

Recruiting Animal said...

I think it's good that nudity etc is not taboo but at the same time I regret that if your son or daughter wants to be an actor or actress they pretty well have to sign on to be a porno star as well. I guess you can't have it both ways but I'd like to.

Perry Block said...

Totally agree, Animal. And thank goodness I don't have a daughter!

Anonymous said...

A lot of the old widows down at the nursing have been yammering about a Fred Willard nude scene. Their rockers zipped up to warp speed when I told them Perry Block was available for wheelchair dances. I can keep you pretty well booked, and at 40% of the take, you'll be making more money than you ever dreamed of.

Perry Block said...

I find a wheelchair dance by me to be at best intrusive and at worst inappropriate, pandering, and yes, even distasteful.

I'll do it, Russell!

norm cowie said...

My wife and two adult daughters get really uncomfortable ... which makes me uncomfortable ... when we're in the same room watching a film with nudity. So I agree, there's a time and a place.

Perry Block said...

Thanks, Norm, that really is the point. Sometimes I'm in the mood for porno, though not as much when I was 18 and would have liked to have been on a steady drip of it. But when you want that kind of stuff, anything goes!

But when I want to see a movie, I want to see acting and a story and sex only if it's appropriate, which usually it's not. A cut-away will make the point just as well. And I'm glad I never had to look at Humphrey Bogart's gyrating tush!