High Society, 1956 musical remake of The Philadelphia Story. In this scene, Frank Sinatra (in the Jimmy Stewart role) and Celeste Holm (melodious in the Ruth Hussey part) are remarking on all the gaudy goodies that the intended couple have accumulated for their upcoming nuptials.
Among the silver champagne buckets, caviar spoons, candlesticks and chafing dishes, there is one item which is intentionally mysterious, and I wonder if anyone knows what it really is. Or if they made it up for the gag. It is bulbous, not very large, and has a handle which can come off. It shows up first at 0:38 in the clip, and again at the very end (2:22) for the payoff.
To me it looks like a fancy juicer—cut your orange or grapefruit in half, stick it into the round part, and squeeze. Juice for breakfast, and you don’t even have to leave the table!
It’s too big to be a garlic press, and much too fancy to be a mere potato ricer.
(1956 is “oldish”? Hell, that was just last week!)
Celeste Holm looks great, as did Ruth Hussey in the original 1940 non-musical version!
I don’t see where the object opens, to let either wine or fruit in. Can you see a join?
I’ve been working on a screen shot, but the result is too fuzzy to be much use.
(I think 67 years old qualifies for “oldish” whether for a person or a film. Agreed about Celeste Holm, although she looks like a little, shall we say, constrained by undergarments.)
One of the comments on the YouTube video linked to in the OP suggested it might be a baby rattle, despite appearing too large for a baby and being able to come apart so easily.
Here’s a reddit discussion of it. Of the suggestions there, my guess would be either the ice hammer/corkscrew or just a prop meant to look like some something fancy/expensive enough that the Lords would get as a gift but us regulars wouldn’t even recognize.
I was thinking of something along those lines, but that means that it would always have to be held by someone (like a footman). And I still don’t see where it opens, but I guess there could be a hidden hinge. So far I’m liking this idea the best, because you would want to shut away a finished cigar from polite society.
I was thinking along the lines of some kind of mallet too (ice hammer or nut cracker), but I wouldn’t want to use something that obviously valuable to bash things with.
I like the idea of a cigar receptacle that a servant would bring around to unobtrusively take your butt away.
As an aside, I attended a reception as a college freshman and encountered a silver cheese tool for the first time—the kind with the rectangular notch cut through the blade, where you’re supposed to shave thin rolls off wedges of fromage, like planing a piece of wood. I had no idea what the notch was for, so I just used the tool as a knife.
I clearly was not ready to mingle with the educated elite.
If it’s even that, maybe it’s one of those items that’s more meant to be kept on display (and regularly polished) rather than actually being used on any kind of a regular basis. It might spend the bulk of it’s life sitting in a curio cabinet rather than the back of a junk drawer.
I’m not familiar with the musical, but when Jimmy Stewart was nosing around the house in the movie, it wouldn’t surprise me to see some type of silver/china display or a silver bar set where this would fit right in.
“Ah, I see you’ve noticed our polished silver thingamajig. We’re not quite sure what it’s supposed to be used for, but it was a wedding gift and it looks frightfully expensive, so we’re proud of it and like to keep it on display.”
This might sound stupid, but we lived in NYC when I was very little, and my mother liked to fantasize about when we’d be able to live beyond out current means, and we did a lot of window-shopping at Tiffany’s-- I being 3 & 4 at the time-- but I swear I saw one of those, and not just there, but also at the homes of some of the wealthy people I was very occasionally taken to visit-- department chairs, when my father was a lowly asst. prof., and my mother was ABD.
I enjoy the occasional cigar, and in all my years of visiting tobacconists to obtain them, I’ve seen all kinds of smoking accessories: ashtrays, cigar cutters, lighters, etc., but I’ve never seen anything like that. Neither have I ever heard of any such object in which you put your cigar butt.
You use a cigar ashtray, which tends to be bigger than a cigarette ashtray, and which has bigger grooves in it, because cigars tend to be bigger than cigarettes. And when you’re finished your smoke, you lay the butt down in the ashtray, where it will go out by itself.
At any rate, cigar butts really tend to stink after a while, so you want to get rid of it. I can’t see carrying a stinky butt in a nice silver object. All I do is dump the contents of the ashtray—ashes and the butt—into the toilet and flush.
My guess as to what the object is would be a fancy wine aereator.
It looks to me like the patio version of a “silent butler”. The ANCC in Arlington, VA used to have something similar, but the handle was wooden. The bottom part was bulbous with a small gap for scooping up ash and other small trash. It was occaisionally offered preventatively to a patron whose ash was about to drop.
It was a bit ostentatious to have someone walking around all night just manning this piece of equipment, and it only came out during big celebrations. Sometimes the gentleman also whisked out a tiny broom with a handle of matching length.
It would be like a funnel, with the round part at the top. You want to fill a decanter with the wine, so you pour the wine into the round top, and it runs through the stem, and splashes into the decanter, thus aereating the wine.
I’ve seen this technique used in a couple of high end steakhouses. You order a nice bottle of red wine (e.g. Cabernet Sauvignon), and they bring the bottle and a decanter. After you inspect the label, they uncork it, and you get a small taste. If you approve, the wine bottle is emptied, splashily, into the decanter to aereate the wine. They’re not using anything like the object in question, but the decanter has a wide enough mouth that such an object is unnecessary.
But like I said, this is only a guess. I really don’t know, but it seems like it could be plausible.
Hell, that was just last week!)
