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 Moore, Natalie 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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There's Always a Hitch

It was an unusually warm but otherwise quite typical day in early December.  

That new movie about Alfred Hitchcock had just opened and as he was one of my favorite directors I put on a pair of slacks and a button down shirt and headed out the door for a pleasant afternoon at the movies. 

Two men in dark gray suits quickly walked up beside me.

"Come with us, Mr. Kaplan."

"What is this about?" I said. "I'm not your Mr. Kaplan."

The two men flung me into the back seat of the car and sped away. Before long, though, I noticed the rear car door was open, made a lunge for it, and tumbled out onto the roadside.

"Mr. Kaplan, don't you want us to take you to Sid's Mufflers to pick up your car?" said one of the men. "It's a free service."

"You moron," said the other, "I told you his name is Mr. Block, not Mr. Kaplan. What, you think all Jews look alike?"

I tumbled onto a corn field and there up above was a crop dusting plane headed right at me, firing real live bullets.  I ran for my life! 

"Don't kill me, I'm not from the EPA!"  I shouted.  "Please, use all the pesticides you like!"

"Sorry, buddy, not shooting at you," the pilot hollered back, "we find rapid machine gun fire the best way to get rid of aphids."

I flung myself onto a passing train and as I stood up in the section between two cars, a nattily dressed middle aged man approached me.

"Hello, Charlie," he said.

"My name isn't Charlie."

"I call everyone Charlie. You can call me Charlie."

Charlie then lunged at my throat!

"Charlie, why are you choking me?! By your count, there are at least seven billion other Charlies you could be choking! "

"I'm not choking you, Charlie, I'm straightening your collar!  Have you  just been chased through a corn field by a machine gun firing crop duster or something?"

I fell off the train into the middle of a busy city street.  

"Scottie, I let you change me because I love you," said an enigmatic blonde woman in a gray tailored suit. 

"But... but ... I'm not Scot... " I stammered.

A black terrier ran in front of us and headed off towards a nearby tower.

"I walk you every morning at 6:00 AM now, Scottie, and I used to be a night person!" 

Exhausted and with my leg hurting, I checked into the nearest hotel where  through a big picture window I could see all the hotel guests in the atrium. A burly gray haired man with glasses stared up at me with an air of ignorance and contempt almost as though I were a vagina and he a member of the Republican Party.

In a moment he was at the door, entering my hotel room!

"What do you want of me?"

In terror, I fell backwards into a chair, my injured leg extending straight before me.

"What do you want of me?"  he repeated. "I'm an Amway Distributor;  want any cleanser, detergent.  Need Amway's knock off of Depends?"

As I wasn't interested, he left and I went to take a shower to relax.  As the warm water cascaded pleasantly about me,  I  saw a dark shadow appear through the shower curtain. The curtain parted and there was a man dressed as a woman brandishing a long sharp knife!

"Forgot to tell you I also sell this 6-in-1 paring knife. Great for salads.  Dressed up like a women to show you how much the chicks love it!"

Throwing on pants and shirt, I ran out of the hotel. Up ahead was the theater where  Hitchcock was playing.  If only I could make it there, everything would be all right!

Then something pelted me on the head.  Then I was hit again.  Soon I was being pelted again and again all over my body!

Frankly, however, this happens to me every day. 

As I reached the theater,  I grabbed hold of the back of a gentleman standing by the door and implored him to see me safely into the confines of the humble destination I had so innocently sought such a seemingly long time ago.   

"Good Evening," 

he turned around and said. 

"Mr. Hitchcock!  What is this all about?"

"Knowing  you wanted to see this movie, Mr. Block, I thought you might appreciate the full Hitchcock experience."

"But, sir, you've put me though the most chilling parts of  just about every great movie you ever made:  North by Northwest, Shadow of a Doubt, Vertigo,  Rear Window,  Psycho, and The Birds.

"Not exactly.  From what I know of you, Mr. Block,  I had to leave one out." 

"Which was it? Lifeboat? Notorious? Dial M for Murder?"

"No, not one of those."

"Which one then?"

"The Man Who Knew Too Much."

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On second thought, maybe I will take some cleanser.