The Class Struggle- With Preston
Sturges’ Christmas In July In Mind
Christmas In July, starring Dick
Powell, directed by Preston Sturges
Scene: A boy from the tenements, the New York City tenements from the high
rise backdrop feel of it, the respectable working poor tenements not the rough-edged
Hell’s Kitchen variety filled with pug uglies and the dregs of society if you
please, is daydreaming, no, night dreaming with his girl about what they would
do if they had some real dough. Real dough in the times we are talking about,
maybe the late1930s early 1940s, being about twenty-five thousand dollar. Nothing
but walking around money today but serious dough back then, especially for boys
and girls who came up the hard way living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
and Spam, or some such variations. And what they dream of coming out of the
Great Depression is not some mansion or Rolls Royce but a little cottage for two
(maybe for more later, after they tie the knot), with a white picket fence out
in, well, out in not New York City tenement land. Maybe a nice Nash Rambler, a few
bucks in the bank after taking care of the extended family and easy street all wrapped
in a bow. Just like today except like I say, today you had better add some
zeros to that easy street number discussed above.
Of course sitting on some
star-crossed tenement rooftop dreaming such dreams does not get you to square
one in the quest for easy street. You have to have an idea, a good idea, and
work your butt off to prove that you are worthy of such easy street luxuries.
And so boy, Dick, and girl, Ellen, just dream the dream and go to their nine to
five prison office jobs and place those aforementioned dreams on hold just like
millions of other in depression times or not. But not so fast. See Dick has an
idea, an idea of himself as a budding Madison Avenue mad man ad man and with just
a break or two, just a little whisper in some hot- shot’s ear might be just the
thing to push him alone. Wouldn’t you know just as Dick is about give up hope he
decides to screw up his courage and walk right in the general manager’s office
with his bag full of ad ideas, good ones too, the ones not so good he left on the
cutting room floor. Ads that will make confirmed tea drinkers cry out in the
night for coffee, that will make housewives who swear by virtues of pure butter
scratch each other’s eyes out getting to the dairy counter for oleomargarine,
and make formerly satisfied Camel smokers turn with nicotine rage until they can
get their hands on a fresh deck of Lucky
Strikes. More than one man, more than one company too, would be willing to pay
a pretty penny for such results if only they were aware that such a budding ad
man existed on the planet.
Dick finally did screw up that courage,
finally did go into the general manager’s office and present his case. And
while the general manager was skeptical about some of Dick’s ad ideas he passed
the material on up the chain of command to the boss man, the owner, who liked many
of his ideas, and thought they had some merit. And as a reward for such good
ideas and the willingness to go to the mat for them Dick moved over from his
thirty- dollar a week desk job along with forty others all arranged in rows of
ten checking invoices to the ad department creating ads at fifty- dollars a
week along with thirty others all arranged in rows of ten. Of course if
somebody had an idea to make a movie of Dick’s’ life (and don’t forget faithful
Ellen) he would have as a result of his pluck been on happy ending easy street
cavorting with the Mayfair swells, working hard on the nightclub circuit and dreaming
with Ellen out in some cozy little suburban cottage. But this is a saga of the
class struggle, not about tinsel town movies and so it goes.
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