# Drunks in 20th Century Movies/Lit **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 10, 2006, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunks-in-20th-century-movies-lit/347837 "2006-03-10T15:58:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Humble\_Servant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/47e85d/32.png) [@Humble\_Servant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humble_Servant)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunks-in-20th-century-movies-lit/347837/1 "2006-03-10T15:58:27Z")
From this pit thread: [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=362280](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=362280) > [@](#): > > It seems like 50 years ago, the travails of drinking were seen as just part of doing business. Old movies are full of people who are hung over, or who spend a night in jail, or have other booze-related problems that I can’t think of right now, and it’s presented as relatively normal. A guy who blew all his money on booze was no better or worse than one who blew all his money on expensive cars, and one who acted like an ass from drinking was no worse than one who acted like an ass because he stressed out too much over his job. Man, I love the cocktails and banter of movies like The Thin Man, Philadelphia Story and To Have and Have Not. Based, generally, on a lot of hard-boiled likker-steeped 20th century American lit by authors like Raymond Chandler, Fitzgerald, Hemingway and John O’Hara. (I’ve also recently run through Brideshead Revisited and a couple of other English country house novels where I was struck by the pervasiveness of alcohol. Plus Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis–best description of a hangover I’ve ever read–something about your head being an egg where the yolk has broken open inside the shell.) A couple of questions to ponder: 1. While there are plenty of jokes about drunks in Shakespeare and classic lit, was there any serious lit that was _about_ alchohol pre the 20th century? 2. Were the hard-boiled American writers of the early 20th century mostly reacting to Prohibition? Should we expect to see the alcohol novel fade away once the glamor of Prohibition is erased? In other words, are these novels more about Prohibition as a failed attempted restraint of human nature (with the neat chance to deal with the underworld as a metaphor for the underbelly of society/alienation from law abiding citizens) or are they actually stealth support for Temperance (since lots of the hard drinkers do come to bad ends due to the drinking)? 3. Philadelphia Story is one movie _about_ alcohol which is not depressing–any other examples? ---
**Author:** ![jackelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@jackelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackelope)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunks-in-20th-century-movies-lit/347837/2 "2006-03-10T16:53:36Z")
> [@Humble Servant](#): > > Plus Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis–best description of a hangover I’ve ever read–something about your head being an egg where the yolk has broken open inside the shell. It’s been years since I read _Lucky Jim_, but I think this was in _The Bonfire of the Vanities_, when Peter Fallow is introduced. Wolfe describes Fallow’s hangover as being like an egg yolk of mercury sliding around in his skull. It was a brilliant description; I feel a slight sympathetic hangover just thinking about it. Re. your questions: 1. No idea. I have heard (no cite; I think my dad told me this) that back in the 1800s-1900s most people drank pretty much constantly. They’d wake up and have “an eye-opener.” I can see how it wouldn’t be considered as big a deal back then as now; it’s not like you can get drunk and drive your horse off a cliff. 2. I recall reading somewhere (again, no cite) that the astonishing amount of boozing in the _Thin Man_ movies was a reaction to Prohibition being repealed. 3. J. P. Donleavy’s novels all feature lots of heavy, heavy drinking. They’re comic novels, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, but they’re rather depressing too; things don’t usually end well, but we have a big, bawdy, drunken time in the handbasket along the way. _The Ginger Man_ would be Exhibit A. ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunks-in-20th-century-movies-lit/347837/3 "2006-03-10T17:09:52Z")
1. I do know that gin hit the cities of England kind of like crack, heroin and crystal meth combined, in the late 18th century. The historical Sweeney Todd was abandoned by his alcoholic parents, who either died or just left him. 2. The writers of the early 20th century were, I think, reflecting the way people drank. I remember when just about everyone (at least in my world) drank every day. 3. I would have a hard time coming up with a drinking movie that isn’t depressing, because I find that level of drinking depressing by itself. If you don’t, though, _How to Murder Your Wife_ would be a good comedy. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunks-in-20th-century-movies-lit/347837/4 "2006-03-10T17:51:46Z")
> [@Humble Servant](#): > > 1. While there are plenty of jokes about drunks in Shakespeare and classic lit, was there any serious lit that was _about_ alchohol pre the 20th century? Well, serious 19th Century literature of often about temperance; a lecture against the evils of alcohol was standard in the sentimental novel of the time (which, though pretty amusing by current standards, was considered the higest of literary standards in the 19th century). > [@](#): > > 1. Were the hard-boiled American writers of the early 20th century mostly reacting to Prohibition? Should we expect to see the alcohol novel fade away once the glamor of Prohibition is erased? In other words, are these novels more about Prohibition as a failed attempted restraint of human nature (with the neat chance to deal with the underworld as a metaphor for the underbelly of society/alienation from law abiding citizens) or are they actually stealth support for Temperance (since lots of the hard drinkers do come to bad ends due to the drinking)? Probably. Prohibition made drinking glamorous and something that ladies and the upper classes could do; essentially, Prohibition ended the prohibition movement as the guiding social force in US society (though it is coming back). But the drinking is often just a sideline – part of the culture of the time and no more meaningful than than any other element portraying the time. > [@](#): > > 1. Philadelphia Story is one movie _about_ alcohol which is not depressing–any other examples? **Arthur Whiskey Galore (Tight Little Island) City Lights** (though sad, the sadness has nothing to do with alcoholism, which is the basis for the flower girl’s cure) **Sideways** **One AM** (Chaplin again). **Lover Come Back** (Rock Hudson/Doris Day comedy) ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunks-in-20th-century-movies-lit/347837/5 "2006-03-10T18:14:49Z")
> [@Humble Servant](#): > > The Thin Man I opened this thread just to mention that one, and you beat me to it. Don’t forget how important escapism was to the movies back then. You paid your nickel to sit in the dark for 90 minutes thinking “gosh, wouldn’t it be nice if I (were rich, could dance like Fred Astaire, had endless cocktail parties with my witty friends).” In reality, those people would have been face down in the gutter by the third reel. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunks-in-20th-century-movies-lit/347837/6 "2006-03-10T18:23:18Z")
**The Bank Dick** (WC Fields) ---
**Author:** ![Humble\_Servant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/47e85d/32.png) [@Humble\_Servant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humble_Servant)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunks-in-20th-century-movies-lit/347837/7 "2006-03-10T19:32:59Z")
> [@jackelope](#): > > It’s been years since I read _Lucky Jim_, but I think this was in _The Bonfire of the Vanities_, when Peter Fallow is introduced. Wolfe describes Fallow’s hangover as being like an egg yolk of mercury sliding around in his skull. It was a brilliant description; I feel a slight sympathetic hangover just thinking about it. Uh oh, I may be conflating–I’ve read both and, yeah, my head hurts thinking about it. Okay (thinking in particular about John O’Hara and Appointment in Samarra here, but there are plenty of other examples): where a whole book is about how the life of a superficially normal guy (but maybe a smug country club type whom you come to see the author hates) spirals out of control, and every one of the problems is fueled by overdrinking, a book that really is about alcohol, is it really a condemnation of drinking? O’Hara drank like a fish himself, so it doesn’t seem like a condemnation so much as self-hatred. **RealityChuck** : the moralizations against alcohol from the 19th centruy (Water Babies, I’m thinking of) were about alcohol, but in such a preachy and unattractive way–the crowd in the 20th century gave us emotional knowledge (knew whereof they wrote) and often in a very attractive way. They were much better at it, so to speak. I suppose in Falstaff and Prince Hal we do see a couple of characters drawn with some sympathy and a real (rather than a suffragette’s) knowlege of drink. What’s that work about a German Prince on holiday and in disguise who goes and drinks muchly? It got made into a musical with the “Drink, Drink, Drink!” song. ---
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunks-in-20th-century-movies-lit/347837/8 "2006-03-10T19:46:07Z")
**Humble Servant** - The movie you’re talking about is “The Student Prince”, with tenor Mario Lanza in the title role. Most of the movie takes place at a student tavern with Mario falling in love with the barmaid, but not able to marry her because of the differences in their stations. StG ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunks-in-20th-century-movies-lit/347837/9 "2006-03-10T19:46:07Z")
> [@Humble Servant](#): > > Philadelphia Story is one movie _about_ alcohol which is not depressing–any other examples? Well, there is _Strange Brew_, the Bob and Doug McKenzie movie from the early 1980s. About those two lovable drunken hosers, eh? And while it’s not specifically about alcohol, there is no doubt that much of the mayhem in _Animal House_ is alcohol-fueled. I don’t know if you can just limit your premise to writers of the early twentieth century. Looking at popular novels of the 60s, for example, we can find plenty of examples of people drinking, sometimes to excess. Think authors like Arthur Hailey, Jacquelynn Susann, and Harold Robbins–their characters drank, smoked, and (in Susann’s novels, at least) did various drugs; in a time period a long way from Prohibition. In Hailey’s _Hotel_, for example, one character manages to get out of a situation dangerous to him by portraying a confused drunk. I saw the Pit thread you’re referring to, and it brought back a lot of memories. Not in the way that you may be thinking of, but I well remember being young in the 1960s; and trust me, everybody’s parents had a well-stocked liquor cabinet. Note I said “liquor.” Wine was for dinner on special occasions, and beer was for after mowing the lawn or washing the car. When you had people over, you served them liquor. Guests, at least at our house, routinely asked for martinis or manhattans, and my Dad would routinely make them. If it _seems_ normal in those old movies, it’s because it _was_ normal, at least in my experience. But times have changed, it seems, and so have attitudes. I myself would like to experience the “cocktail culture” that I was too young to back in those days, but given current attitudes, I don’t think we’ll see a return to it any time soon. At least we have the books and movies, though. ---
**Author:** ![jackelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@jackelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackelope)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunks-in-20th-century-movies-lit/347837/10 "2006-03-10T19:52:38Z")
> [@Humble Servant](#): > > where a whole book is about how the life of a superficially normal guy (but maybe a smug country club type whom you come to see the author hates) spirals out of control, and every one of the problems is fueled by overdrinking, a book that really is about alcohol, is it really a condemnation of drinking? It seems like these usually play out as a condemnation of the character’s moral weakness, rather than of drinking per se. Or if not condemnation, than in a more modernist vein the (anti-)hero gets his “victory” by gaining greater self-knowledge. Here’s an article from [salon.com](http://salon.com) from about six years ago that seems relevant: [Loser Lit](http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2000/07/06/loser/index.html) (Arthur Neresian’s awesomely-titled novel _The Fuck-Up_, mentioned in that piece, is a really fun read, by the way.) ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunks-in-20th-century-movies-lit/347837/11 "2006-03-10T19:53:48Z")
I’m thinking back over the earlier movies I’ve seen, and it occurs to me that in most of them, people who drank didn’t tend to get very drunk. If they did get drunk, they were either (a) happy drunks, if they were the good guys, or (b) mean drunks, if they were the bad guys. Most people could seem to have been drinking for long periods of time without getting drunk, though. Nowadays, if you see a character having more than a couple drinks in a movie, he’s _plastered,_ and even the nicest of characters can be portrayed as a mean drunk, because the pendulum is swinging back to alcohol = bad. Re: not-so-depressing movies in which alcohol plays a major part… _African Queen Smokey and the Bandit_ (to be fair, nobody actually _drank_ any of it…) I remember seeing a movie about a freighter that ran aground in a storm off the Irish Coast, and the people of the town went to herculean efforts to save the cargo… ---
**Author:** ![neutron\_star](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/51bf81/32.png) [@neutron\_star](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/neutron_star)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunks-in-20th-century-movies-lit/347837/12 "2006-03-10T20:05:40Z")
> [@Humble Servant](#): > > the moralizations against alcohol from the 19th centruy (Water Babies, I’m thinking of) were about alcohol, but in such a preachy and unattractive way–the crowd in the 20th century gave us emotional knowledge (knew whereof they wrote) and often in a very attractive way. They were much better at it, so to speak. That may be true if you’re only looking to American authors, but there are examples of complex and true-to-life alcoholic characters in 19th century literature from abroad. Check out the characters of Marmeladov from Dostoevsky’s _Crime and Punishment_, and General Ivolgin from _The Idiot_. ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunks-in-20th-century-movies-lit/347837/13 "2006-03-10T20:14:32Z")
> [@StGermain](#): > > **Humble Servant** - The movie you’re talking about is “The Student Prince”, with tenor Mario Lanza in the title role. Most of the movie takes place at a student tavern with Mario falling in love with the barmaid, but not able to marry her because of the differences in their stations. > > StG I believe that was also a silent movie, from the early 20s. ---
**Author:** ![ddgryphon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8c91f0/32.png) [@ddgryphon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ddgryphon)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunks-in-20th-century-movies-lit/347837/14 "2006-03-10T20:25:26Z")
Thorne Smith [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ref=pd\_sim\_b\_1/104-7185424-2702314?\_encoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Thorne%20Smith](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ref=pd_sim_b_1/104-7185424-2702314?%5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Thorne%20Smith) Was apparently the master of the drunken protagonist novel: I can vouch for The Glorius Pool (which reads like some 60’s LSD trip) The Stray Lamb And The Passionate Witch (made into the movie “I Married a Witch” starring Veronica “hubba hubba” Lake and Fredrick March) Interesting stuff – He also wrote the Topper series. Apparently Drunkeness is a major plot device for him. ---
**Author:** ![Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boulter_s_Canary)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drunks-in-20th-century-movies-lit/347837/15 "2006-03-10T23:14:13Z")
> [@Humble Servant](#): > > Philadelphia Story is one movie _about_ alcohol which is not depressing–any other examples? **Harvey**