First, society news. In a number of old films about reporters, you get the impression that the news of the upper crust was considered VERY important, and must have appealed to the general readership. The best known film of this type is probably It Happened One Night, in which Clark Gable plays paparrazo to Carole Lombard’s fleeing socialite. Philadelphia Story is somewhat similar in this respect, concerning journalists who want to photograph and write up a society wedding. Even the Three Stooges had one or two short films about this basic idea. So, was this actually true? Today I can’t imagine a big city newspaper working up a huge feature about a “society” wedding, unless the participants happen to be political leaders at the national level.
Next, coffeepots in the 1950s. I’ve noticed that when people offer somebody coffee in a move of that time, it’s likely to be instant. Were people in the 1950s so enamored of new products, especially “instant this” or “instant that”, that they actually thought instant coffee was really neat?
And now, the larch. (Just kidding! :D)
As far as the coffee is concerned, it’s two things. One, people did drink instant coffee a lot in those times. It was quick and easy, especially since the alternative was a percolator* which was slow and difficult to clean. You might serve perked coffee to guests, but for everyday use, instant was the choice. You could boil water in a couple of minutes, but perking took more time.
Second, in films, watching people perk coffee did nothing to advance the plot, so filmmakers used instant to get on with the scene.
*Yes, there were other methods – I remember the vacuum coffee makers, which still mystify me (somehow all the water bubbled up into the top and then dripped down), but percolators were the most comon.
I can explain this one, having been to a coffeehouse where they actually use these. It’s a fascinating procedure to watch. The barista puts the water into the lower vessel, then grinds the coffee fairly coarsely, and puts it into the top part. The top vessel has a tube at the bottom that protrudes into the lower. This allows the free passage of liquid, but there’s a filter element to stop the grounds from leaving the upper vessel. Anyway, at this coffeehouse, they would then light a candle underneath the bottom vessel, and soon the water would begin to simmer; meanwhile, the heat would cause the air in the lower vessel to expand, and push the water up through the tube where it would mix with the coffee. After a time, the air in the lower vessel would cool down again and contract, which would suck the now coffee-goodness laden water from the top vessel back down into the lower vessel. Then the coffee would be served out of that. It’s the best cup of coffee I ever tasted.
In India, instant coffee in a restraunt is more expensive than other forms of coffee. I’m told this is because instant coffee is considered new and artificial and therefore better than drinking stuff that grows out of the ground.
To answer the other half of the question, yes, the society pages once were extremely important and prominent. The vast majority of female “reporters” were actually hired to write society news.
Remember that today’s celebrity culture is almost brand new. Hollywood stars were celebrities even then, but their every appearance in the press was carefully controlled publicity by the studios. Sports figures were far less numerous and just as carefully portrayed by fawning reporters. Politicians weren’t celebrities in the modern sense. Radio was in its infancy, and its stars were faceless, and the recording industry had famous names but no national culture comparable to today. A few magazines traded in gossip even back then, but paparazzi were unimaginable.
But the rich and their doings were always good fodder for the masses long before Paris Hilton was born or her father or his father before him. Reporting on the rich became popular news as far back as the 19th century. By the 1930s it was a well-developed specialty.
World War II killed it dead for the most part, although vestiges could be found long after.
WRT the instant coffee, my dad who was born in the thirties usually drinks instant coffee at home. When I told him I found it to be inferior to brewed he said in a slightly hurt tone: “Well, it was thought to be quite an innovation when it first came out!” My reply was “Well, yeah Dad, but so was Fascism!”
I don’t know anything about coffee, but the New York Times today treats weddings and obituaries pretty much that way. Most big-city newspapers have largely converted wedding and death notices to paid advertising, and smaller papers might still run them as community news. But you have to be “somebody” to have your wedding or your demise mentioned in the New York Times, and conversely, having it mentioned in the Times is black-and-white proof that you are somebody.
My grandparents drank instant coffee exclusively (and Postum, which is not coffee; it’s chicory). I think they had a percolator, but I never saw it used; there was always just instant coffee and Postum. I always thought this was because they had grown accustomed to instant coffee and coffee substitutes during WW2 and never bothered to start making coffee afterwards. If percolators are really hard to use, though, that might explain it. Also, if real coffee was more expensive than instant coffee in the post-war era (or even in the 80s and 90s), that would explain it.
Spectre of Pithecanthropus: I winced when I saw ‘barista’, thinking the term could well be an invention of Starbucks’ marketing agency. Apparently it’s not, and is used in Italy to describe anyone who is trained in making espresso.
Percolators weren’t hard to use – you filled the basket with coffee, and put it into the water-filled percolator. Plug it in (if electric) and let it work.
But it did take time – longer than modern filter machines. And when you were done, you had a basket filled with grounds to deal with and to wash. Also most percolators were good-sized – designed to make 10-12 cups of coffee at a time. It was tricky making them work for smaller amounts, so if a couple each wanted a cup of coffee in the morning, you had coffee left over. They weren’t usually designed to keep the coffee warm after they finished perking, either. So you could end up with extra coffee that was growing cold.
Instant was much easier.
Once filter coffeemakers were introduced (in the 60s, IIRC), making regular coffee became a lot quicker, and cleanup was easier. Then, when Mr. Coffee was introduce you could get good coffee nearly as fast as instant and could easily make one or two cups.
Drip coffee was INTRODUCED in the 1960s? Mellita Bentz was selling coffee filters in 1908 – that and a funnel will get you drip coffee. I can’t imagine why anyone used (or uses) a percolator after that.
Again, this would presumably be contingent on the amount of coffee desired. If you wanted a whole pot, a percolator was the way to go. The filter and funnel is only good for a cup or two.
Actually, Postum was/is made from roasted grain (wheat, I believe) and molasses. While chicory was also used as a substitute for coffee, it predates C.W. Post’s creation of Postum by quite a bit, and is a different beast entirely.
Though, as you note, gossipy reporting never died, it just shifted from “society” to showbusiness figures. A glance at what’s displayed at a supermarket checkout line shows that this specialty is much more popular now than ever.
The Bunn home brewer contains 10 cups of really hot water. Put the amount of ground coffee in the filter basker, pour cold water in the top. The cold water goes to the bottoms of the heater/storage tank displacing the same amount of hot water to the filter and into the carafe read to drink in 1 to 2 minutes!
Bushwah. I have not seen a 1908 filter coffee setup, but a circle of blotter can be made any size, as can a funnel. I’ve used some filter/funnel setups that could handle gallons – surely a quart isn’t that big a deal (I remember my mother’s funnel and filters could handle half a kettle, and so we’d refill it once; the proceeds filled an eight-cup glass carafe.
Barista just means bartender/barman in Italy (although it’s true that Italian bars are a strange hybrid between cocktail bars and coffee shops and you can get a pastry and a whisky at the same place - very convenient). So I would say that since making espresso doesn’t require any special training and a barista is a barman, you can keep on wincing !
Society news is now a small part of what’s called in many American newspapers the Life or Style or Lifestyle section. (Sometimes the section is called something like Life/Arts.) Basically, it’s everything that doesn’t constitute national or international news which goes into the front section (which also seems to contain science and medical reporting), or local politics which goes into the City or Metropolitan section, or sports (in the Sports section, of course), or business (in the Business section, of course).
I’ve heard it claimed that this sort of newspaper section was invented by Ben Bradlee at The Washington Post in the 1960’s when he put together the Style section by combining the Women’s Page with the various arts reviews. The Women’s Page was mostly society gossip. The fact that it was called the Women’s Page and was what most female reporters worked on pretty much shows you the attitude toward women in those days. Nowdays the only remains of the society news in The Washington Post is the column The Reliable Source in the Style section, which often reports on society charity functions, and the local wedding and funeral announcements, which actually are found in the Metropolitan section.