The phenomenon of couples sleeping in separated double beds was certainly real. I knew couples who did (including relatives). Alan Sherman wrote about it in his book **The Rape of the APE****, where he points out that the mere fact of the beds being separated makes it into a bargaining tactic for sex (who comes over to whose bed?)
I haven’t the slightest idea why such a ridiculous fashion started – large beds are more comfortable, and you can snuggle, and there’s no Sherman-like negotiating. But it certainly was real. Maybe the designer’s spouse hogged the covers, or the bed, and this was a way to retaliate.
APE = American Puritan Ethic. Sherman wasn’t writing about simian sexual abuse.
My parents had separate beds, my dad needed a rock hard mattress, and my mom needed a soft fluffy one. She had the double bed =)
I think my dad also had issues sharing a bed with someone - he spent so much time away from home and was always a very light sleeper [army] so he may have had issues with waking up if mom moved around in the bed.
In the historic houses I’ve visited, I remember seeing separate bedrooms in several of them. (I can’t remember any one in particular at the moment but it was the sort of thing that struck me as weird even as a child.)
Oh, yeah, that’s a good point – when we did the mansion tour in Newport, Rhode Island (where the Boston robber barons had their estates) I think they pretty much all had not only separate beds, but separate bedrooms.
Herman & Lily Munster slept in the same bed. In modern times an episode of King of the Hill revealed that Hank & Peggy’s bed was actually two twin beds pushed together. Unlike Ricky & Lucy they put queen sized sheets and blankets over both of them so they looked like one bed.
It frightens me that the next item is stuck in my head…
When I was a kid, my mother subscribed to Reader’s Digest (it was the “bathroom literature”), and I always used to read all the “amusing anecdotes”. I remember one written in by a couple who had separate beds. The husband would come to bed every evening wearing his hat, and, when they turned the lights off, he would toss his hat to his wife. If she threw it back to him, the answer was “not tonight”. If she brought it back to him, nookie ensued…
In Biltmore House (Asheville, NC) the owners also had separate, large, exquisite bedrooms. They don’t mention on the tour whether they actually routinely slept in separate rooms.
I recall reading that royals, aristocrats, and other rich people used this arrangement in order to facilitate their own infidelities. It was fairly common for people marry for reasons other than love and devotion.
If you recall on the episode of “I Love Lucy,” where they travel to California, the Ricardos and the Mertzes stop off in Ohio for the night and Fred and Ethal sleep in the same bed. It’s not much of a bed, but it is one bed.
Fred and Wilma would vary between twin beds and sleeping in one bed.
I think that may be based on an old Irish custom, at least according to Empty Hats. The man comes home late from the pub, a bit tipsy, and throws his hat inside the house. If it stays there, all is well. If it comes back, that means the wife has tossed it back out and he’s sleeping in the barn.
Of course, in the song, the wife comes to the barn wearing nothing *but *the hat, so I guess a third option is available.
Ozzie and Harriet Nelson always insisted they slept in the same bed (Ozzie had negotiated a pay or play contract for the show that gave him pretty much complete creative control). Since they were married in real life, and since the show had been on radio for years before it moved to TV, I guess the network censors didn’t think it was worth a fight. This clipat about the 11:45 mark definitely shows them sharing a bed in a 1957 episode. Ozzie even gives Harriet a chaste little goodnight kiss while in bed.
Of course if you watch the full clip, you’ll see that Ozzie wears his pajamas buttoned all the way up to the neck, so it’s unlikely he (the character, at least) was particularly freaky.
Are you sure the undies were leather? Maybe they were lacey silks.
My grandparents started sleeping in separate beds as soon as my dad moved out and his room was free. (My aunts had the two attic bedrooms.) My grandfather sounds like a lumberyard.
Add my mom’s parents (married in the mid '30s) to the separate beds list (this was in the in the early 80s when I was old enough to take notice of this). Never asked Mom why or when they started sleeping separately though. But I’m fairly certain they slept in the same bed when they spent their winters down in Florida in a rental condo.
