I know this might seem like a strange choice, but I love this movie and it is technically about a writer. Now, please keep in mind I am talking about the 1945 feel-good-while-there’s-a-war-going-on picture NOT the remake that Arnold Schwarzenegger directed.
This is about a woman name Elizabeth Lane, played by the amazing female icon Barbara Stanwyck. She is such an icon that I can spell her name correctly every time, where as every time I’ve typed “Connecticut” in this blog I’ve needed to double check it. Lane writes a wildly popular home and cooking article for a magazine all about her quaint Connecticut farm life with her husband and new baby. She gives detailed recipes that make cooking sound romantic and fun.
The problem is Elizabeth Lane ACTUALLY lives in an urban apartment, dresses in the latest fashions, does not keep house, does not have a husband or baby, and can’t cook. All of her recipes comes from her Uncle Felix (S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall) who owns/runs a top-rated restaurant. Quick soap box side note: The movie is from 1945 so of course all of the main characters are white. However, something I noticed as an adult is how the director inserted a little scene of Felix, a Hungarian man who struggles with English at times, goes to his waiter Sam (played by Emmett Smith, an African American actor who spent most of his career playing train porters and jungle tribesmen) for definitions of words he doesn’t understand. Sam gives him an exact definition and origins of the word and I can’t help feeling like this was a little bit of a screw you to the racist standards of the time. Okay, tangent done! Back to the story.
Lane is forced by her publisher (Sydney Greenstreet) to invite himself and a soldier, named in the tradition of WWII propaganda homespun Americana, Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan) , to her house for Christmas. Feeling like her job and the job of her editor are at stake, Elizabeth finally accepts the marriage proposal of wealthy architect friend, John Sloan (Reginald Gardiner) who REALLY DOES have a farm in Connecticut. And then the usual comedic foibles take place complete with mixed-up borrowed babies, pancakes on the ceiling, and jokes about a cow’s rump. Through all of this, Elizabeth is falling in love with the soldier, but wants her publisher to think she’s married to Sloan (who keeps trying to sneak a judge into the house so they can be legally married before Christmas).
Images belong to Warner Bros.
As writers go, one thing that stands out to me in this is how all of Elizabeth’s fans remember what she wrote in her column better than she does. She writes for a serialized publication and includes details that even she can’t keep track of for her made-up life. I love this as a writing detail, because first is shows an example of fandom and second it show how writer sometimes can’t remember what they wrote.
There is also how she writes about cooking using her uncle’s recipes. She says that someday she’ll learn to cook and Felix tells her that she won’t like it. He points out that she will discover that it’s not the same as how she writes about it and better to stick with cooking on the typewriter. As far as stereotypes of 40s women go, this is important. She is a writer, not a domestic person, and Felix knows this. He doesn’t try to change her or push her to be the good little woman. He knows that’s she should just keep writing, because real cooking would not make her happy. I associate with this because every time I have to cook anything that takes longer than 20 minutes, I think “I could be using this time for writing. Ug. If only I didn’t need to eat to live. What a waste.”
Barbara Stanwyck at her typewriter