Are there really any movies out there where in a guy slaps a hysterical woman whereupon she basically responds with “Oh thank you. I needed that.”
Was male on female violence considered a non issue in movies back in those days?
Sure. For one that is in color even, and does this, watch The Quiet Man starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.
It wasn’t really considered violence back then. It was more like she took leave of her senses, and needed to be jolted back to reality . . . oh yes, “for her own good.”
Right. You never hit a woman. Unless she needed a firm man’s hand to guide her.
Hysteria was one situation. Spanking was another. The Internet makes it easy to find spanking scenes, for some reason that fails me for a moment. But it didn’t take long to dig up Claudette Colbert in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife; Ginger Rogers in Professional Sweetheart; Edith Fellows in She Married Her Boss; Mimi Chandler and Diana Lynn over the same lap in And The Angels Sing; Betty Hutton in that one and a bunch of other movies.
Except for Professional Sweetheart, 1933, all the others are in the post-Code enforcement era too.
Violence against women? Not exactly. It took exactly zero time for the writers to realize that with sexual displays outlawed, violence could be safely substituted in topsy-turvy Puritan America. Every argument, every shouting match, every threat of violence (probably ten threats of spanking for every spanking scene), every spanking, and every slap screamed SEX. These were two people doing it, or just on the verge of doing it. IT couldn’t be shown. A metaphor could. And the women often connived to put themselves into that position because women happen to like IT as well.
A lot of man-on-man violence was a metaphor for SEX too. Some of it has been identified as homoerotic, which is undoubtedly true, but I take a larger view. For Americans, there is nothing like violence to set the hormones a-pumping. It is foreplay at the very least, or porn in a more literal sense.
You cannot ever separate out sex and violence. It is motherhood and cherry pie.
The consequences of this? What are you, some sort of commie, hippie, foreign, limp-wristed, milktoast momma’s boy?
Let us not forget *McLintock!, *which featured two spankings (mother and daughter), for their own good, of course.
and Maureen O’Hara and John Wayne in both “McLintock” and “The Quite Man”
Yep, pardner, John Wayne was quite a man. But it didn’t often say so in the title.
I can recall seeing slapping to “bring the hysterical woman to her senses”, but I don’t recall any of the recipients thanking the slapper.
And while it is not an old B&W movie, the classic parody of this meme is in the movie Airplane.
Well, there was the one time the Doctor punched Sarah Jane in the face, but she was under the influence of Eldrad the silicon based life form, so it was okay.
“Hand of Fear” Doctor Who. God, the things I clutter up my brain with.
Ronald Reagan did some fine wimmen-hittin’ in THE KILLERS.
Remember when UPN did a WWF crossover with all its Tuesday night shows, including Star Trek: Voyager, and The Rock (in an appropriate latex mask that allowed him to do his trademark alternating eyebrow raise) beat on 7 of 9 in that alien sci-fi wrestling/boxing/hit-the-lasertag-esque-target-on-the-chest-harness-to-cause-pain match?
Wait, Dwayne Johnson beat on Jeri Ryan? Yep. Highly stylized, and of course, her character is part-Borg, so can surely take it mild beating from a man. And yeah, its all just acting.
My all-time favorite, from Public Enemy.
Surely an inspiration for this scene.
Does Wayne actually hit O’Hara in “The Quiet Man”? I know he drags her 10 miles across the countryside to return her to her brother for not providing a dowry (“Your custom, not mine”). One old Irish woman gives him “a good strong stick to beat your wife”. I don’t remember him actually hitting her but it’s been a while since I’ve seen it.
Of course we have evolved now to where we have rap records where women are routinely called bitches and 'hos.
Not quite the same (not exactly a slap, she wasn’t hysterical and she didn’t thank him), but here’s the opening scene from A Philadelphia Story. (Great movie by the way)
Also, Airplane.
It is a great movie, and so is THE Philadelphia Story.
I always forget if it’s A or The…I even looked at it before I wrote it (and still got it wrong).
It still is on occasion, and towards men too sometimes. Although the same thing directed at men is often a punch, not a slap.
And don’t forget the pitcher of water in the face, that’s another old favorite for shutting up a move hysteric.
Exactly. Like all of them. Curiously enough, I think Westerns of the 1940s and 1950s have less lady-slapping than a lot of the film noirs and thrillers – lots more man-on-man lady-slapping, though.
Except when a woman is passed out or such – women get the same treatment as men. A good slap in the face passed for medicine in all genres, I think.
Not to be trusted, of course, but that’s just my rough opinion.
Well, he was, at least, impetuous.