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| Red Skelton |
Ever see an old movie where the "parents" seemed more like grandparents? Or an old game show from around 1960? People looked older than they should have looked.
Fewer of us remember Red Skelton. He had a little portion of his variety show devoted to "honoring" grandparents once. His perception of grandparents was probably dated even at the time. Conjured up visions of doddering people with white hair. We "honored" them while at the same time feeling rather sad.
I remember my father commenting on the Skelton skit, how it seemed a little out of whack.
Recently I reviewed the classic movie "The Best Years of Our Lives." The parents of the "Homer" character spring out of the house to greet their son, back from war. Looking at them today, they strike me as seeming more like grandparents than parents.
The grandparents of today, most of the time project vitality no less than what they had when younger. So the upshot is? People take better care of themselves now, better nutrition etc. Man, the days before central heating and refrigerators/freezers must have brought adversity. Premature aging as a consequence?
And typical of the human species, we focus on the present and forget about past hardships. I suppose we can get reminded of the past hardships in sort of an academic, abstract sort of way.
The "ice" industry did not become extinct until the mid-1960s. You know how they kept ice from melting? Sawdust! Far out. The miracle of frozen foods entered our lives. Today we can be less than wowed about the frozen food section of the grocery store.
So people used to age at a faster rate? Seems like a logical conclusion. "Grandma" and "grandpa" do not conjure up images like in past times.
Remember the Andy Williams Christmas TV specials of the 1960s? How absolutely. . .heartwarming? (Liz Morrison once advised me to avoid the word "heartwarming!") Well get out your thesaurus, then. Let's say it's a nostalgic trip today.
A "charming" part of it was Andy's regular "cast" that gave him such a firm identity. Here comes Andy with 1) his brothers, 2) his parents, 3) his wife "Claudine" and 4) the Osmonds! And I bring this up because Andy's "parents" projected the image more of grandparents, from today's perspective. OK they looked "old," totally charming but old. Andy was not so old at the time to have parents looking this way.
We love our elders through any stage of our history. But the popularly accepted image changes, evolves.
Man, I know people of my generation around town who have been grandparents for a long time, and they have little if anything in common with the grandparents of an earlier epoch. Today's grandparents hardly seem distinguished much from their younger selves. They dress in the same way. They move around just as gingerly. Oh, and some play in senior hockey leagues. Hockey! Doesn't raise an eyebrow now.
Compare these elder people to the typical types in the mid and late 20th Century. Red Skelton read a maudlin verse as he paid homage to the "grandparents." Generous with its loving attitude, without a doubt, also a little sad and condescending. Can't blame Mr. Skelton, as he grew up in different times. Even in the '60s, the attitude could strike many as dated, hence my father's concerned reaction as we watched the tube that evening.
The character "Homer" from "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) was disabled, with hooks having replaced his hands. A wartime accident. He offered to pick up his own luggage as they went into the house. This prompted an outbreak of sobbing from his mother. This was a hugely sentimental movie - I will not say "heartwarming." I have long figured that the sentiment delivered a subtle political message.
You may remember the three principal male characters. The movie was their story as they re-adjusted to civilian life. People should have been advised before the movie's release: "If you lost a son in WWII, do not attend!" The three men, regardless of all they went through or the disability that resulted, were at least alive! Even the young man with the "hooks" seemed overall content.
Consider this and then consider all the young men who never made it back. So Homer's mother broke out crying because of the hooks? She should have been joyous without reservation. His parents knew in advance about the disability - we learned this as Homer conversed with his two new buddies in the plane ride back to the fictional "Boone City." So it was a "triumvirate."
Hollywood knows that the number 3 has a magical quality. Hence The Three Stooges.
The subtle message of the movie was this: WWII had a profound effect on the lives of the three men. And the effect was positive. It gave them a sense of pride and self-esteem that would have been denied them otherwise. So they ventured into "The Best Years of Our Lives" - the movie title.
So we're left imagining the routine, mundane, probably boring type of lives they would have had otherwise. All the ennui.
All hail war? Is that the thought that dances through our heads? To be part of this grand victorious military enterprise?
Consider how people so often preach about how a military background is such a wonderful thing, inculcating discipline mostly. Learn to follow your son-of-a-bitch sergeant - that's how my father would have put it.
We absolutely must temper such thoughts. I don't care that WWII spawned "the great American middle class." If that's such a great thing, why could not it have been achieved without such a massively tragic event like WWII? How can we look upon the immense loss of life and suffering in anything but a profoundly sad way? Countless lives of young men just erased, retired to memories.
The movie focused on the living, on the survivors, and suggested these three men had their pride grow by leaps and bounds, just by having been in the service during WWII.
The war may have been necessary. But a pox on anyone who tries to rationalize that it was somehow "good" for the survivors. Think of all the young men not only dying, but dying in a miserable, unthinkable way. By "hitting the beach" etc.
He knew war
"Ike" Eisenhower was no promoter of the military after WWII and when he got into politics. He's the one who warned us about the "military industrial complex." He had seen what war really was. Surely not as a stepping stone to "the best years of our lives."
Maybe Hollywood sent messages about WWII that made Americans more sympathetic than they should have been, to subsequent military ventures. We achieved total "success" in WWII. But could the world's leaders have done more to prevent the circumstances leading up to war? I remember the National Guard commander character from the movie "Taps," trying to get the petulant young naive cadet (Timothy Hutton) straightened out: "War is just one thing, and that's bad."
We reserve our sympathy for the living. So we're transfixed by the three guys in the "Best Years" movie. Think of all the young men whose lives were erased. They could not live to be grandparents.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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