I have a little film I can see in my head, it’s Bogart washing up at a sink, not in a bathroom, just a sink out in another room. It was probably either Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. He washes his hands and maybe splashes water on his face, then he picks up a little folded white towel, dries his face and hands, wipes down the sink, and then tosses the towel down off-camera.
I’ve been assuming that he wasn’t throwing the towel on the floor, but into a bin of some kind. I’ve further been assuming that, as part of his rent in either his apartment or his office, whichever place it is, there is included this towel service specifically for that sink, where the management supplies clean towels and collects the used ones for laundry. The towels are probably too small and perhaps flimsy to stand more than one use between launderings. There is probably a maximum number of towels to be laundered per week.
Does anyone know about this? Was this a common thing in the 40’s? Can you recall any other movies that have little white towel services like this? Or have I got the complete wrong end of the stick?
Are you sure this isn’t from To Have and Have Not? IIRC, this is the movie in which he’s staying in a hotel somewhere in the Caribbean, and Lauren Bacall (the maid, I guess) brings him a stack of clean towels. Romance ensues,
I believe it’s also the one in which she utters her trademark line: “You know how to whistle, don’t you? Just put your lips together and blow.”
(Be advised that I saw this movie some time ago and could be fuzzy on the details.)
I have the impression that sending out laundry to be cleaned was much more common in the '40s. For instance, “Fibber McGee and Molly” would regularly have jokes about how they couldn’t get clothes back from the laundry on time. I imagine it would go double for a single man. Can you imagine Bogie slaving away over a hot tub of suds?
The rise of modern paper towels came in the 1930s so even in the 40s it wouldn’t be surprising to see any workplace using a towel service, but I’m not sure if small offices would have their own bathrooms or any water service at all. It does sound more like a hotel as @terentii suggested. If he doesn’t hang it or fold it up himself is a strong indication that there’s a laundry service, and if he throws it on the floor then it’s kind of a dick move, and he’s probably not paying for the service directly.
I don’t really know this, but I imagine a small private office might hire a cleaner who would also clean towels. I think laundry pickup and delivery services were also common at the time for clothing and probably did towels as well.
I am sure that the towels would not be flimsy and only good for one use. What kind of cloth towel would be? And certainly not the towels used by a laundry service.
I doubt he’s throwing towels into the trash or onto the floor. It wouldn’t be unusual to have a small hamper in a washroom, regardless of who does the laundry.
My clothes hamper is right next to my bathroom door. When I take a shower, I just toss my dirty clothes into it. I do the same when I have towels and washrags to launder,
You may be right about the movie (and it does make more sense to have a towel service in a hotel), but Lauren Bacall was no-one’s maid. In fact I don’t remember anyone coming in with towels anywhere in the movie, but of course that’s just my memory. I’ll have to watch for this scene the next time these movies come on TV.
Whatever movie it’s from, I remember that scene from a clip in an interview with Bacall, in which she said Bogart taught her some of the fundamental aspects of acting. He asked her what she had been thinking of just before she entered, and then said something like “You should have been thinking about the towels.”
This had to have been very early in their collaboratioin, and THaHN was the first picture they made together.
I recall Sam Spade washing at a sink in his office in The Maltese Falcon, but can’t remember any specific usage of towels. It was either right after his first meeting with Joel Cairo, or a scene with Effie standing nearby.
Come to think of it, the last workplace I visited with cloth towels in the lavatory (i.e., in the 21st century) had a long roll wound up inside a dispenser (not individual towels), so it was impossible to drop anything on the floor (though the dispenser did have a tendency to fail to take up the used towel and then there would be a long length hanging out). That did not strike me as a particularly newfangled arrangement?
I seem to remember him throwing cold water in his face after he wakes up from being drugged by Sydney Greenstreet. I think it was in Sydney’s apartment.
Many of us have visited a fancy private club or luxury hotel restroom, one that had individual cloth hand towels in a stack on the counter. There’s a hamper nearby for used towels. Even a high-end motel room will often have three or four hand towels, meaning an overnight guest need not reuse one.
Now transfer that experience to the big city residential hotel of the 1930s and 40s, the kind where unmarried people of at least some means often lived. Most offered maid, laundry, and valet service. So it’s not too tough to imagine Bogie throwing a hand towel—as expected of a polite guest—into the hamper in one of those places. In a two-room office, not so much.