Elder Kitsch: The Development of a Comedic and Cultural Trope in Postwar America by Nancy McVittie A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Screen Arts and Cultures) in the University of Michigan 2013 Doctoral Committee: Professor Richard Abel, Chair Professor Caryl Flinn Professor Yeidy M. Rivero Timothy M. Shary Dedication For my family ii Acknowledgements This project would not exist without the support, guidance, and patience of many people. First and foremost, I am profoundly grateful to my dissertation director and advisor for these past five years, Richard Abel. His patience, wisdom, and kindness have been impressive, and I feel privileged to have had this opportunity to work with him. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my committee members, Caryl Flinn, Yeidy Rivero, and Timothy Shary. Their guidance and feedback throughout the various iterations of this project have been insightful and extremely influential on its development and will no doubt continue to be as I take this work beyond the dissertation. Other professors who have also played a part in the development of this project, providing valuable feedback and encouragement throughout my time at the University of Michigan include Gaylyn Studlar, Giorgio Bertellini, Sheila Murphy, Paddy Scannell, Alan Wald, and Mark Kligerman. I also am grateful to the staff of our department, particularly Phil Hallman and Carrie Moore, who have continuously gone above and beyond in providing resources and support. Outside of Michigan, a number of other scholars have provided important guidance and shaped me into the academic I am today, including my mentors at North Carolina State University: Maria Pramaggiore, Marsha Gordon, and Andrea Mensch. Additionally, I wish to thank Bob Self, who took me under his wing at Northern Illinois University and whose enthusiasm for film has remained inspirational and contagious. My colleagues at Northeastern Illinois University have also provided great encouragement and support during the writing phase iii of this dissertation, particularly Tony Adams, Jerry Moreno, Kate Kane, Wilfredo Alvarez, Katrina Bell-Jordan, and Alan Mace. During the research phase of this project, I made extensive use of a number of libraries and archives. In addition to the incredible resources of the University of Michigan libraries, I frequently relied upon the libraries at North Carolina State University and Northeastern Illinois University as well as the Ann Arbor and Chicago Public Libraries. I also wish to thank Kathryn Hodson and the University of Iowa Special Collections, The Film and Television Archive at the University of California Los Angeles, and Joan Miller in the Cinema Archives at Wesleyan University. The resources and the staff at each of these institutions have been invaluable. On a personal note, I am incredibly lucky to have had such supportive family and friends. My parents, Judith and Tom McVittie are responsible in so many ways for who I am and the work that I do. My sister, Nora McVittie, and my brother, Tom McVittie, helped to give me a unique sensibility and perspective on the world for which I am very grateful. My in-laws, Zelina and Paul Brewer, have been tireless cheerleaders throughout my doctoral career and have always been willing to lend a hand. My dear friend, Steven Byrd, got me through many difficult times during this project, and my fellow grad students, Nathan Koob and Courtney Ritter, through many more. I am so very fortunate to have such people in my life. Finally, I wish to thank my husband, Shayne Pepper. Without his patience, love, and encouragement, this project would not exist, and I would not be preparing to embark on this new phase of our lives together. I will never stop marveling at how wonderful it is that we found each other. iv Table of Contents Dedication………………………………………………………………………….……..ii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………….…..iii Introduction…………………………………….…………………………………….......1 Project Overview………………………………………………………………….3 Review of Literature……………………………………………………………....7 Methodology……………………………………………………...………….…..21 A Note on Terminology…………………………………………...……….….....26 Chapter Summaries…………………………………………………….………...28 Pre-History: An Overview of Age in American culture to the 1930s……….…...34 Chapter 1. I Love the Old Folks at Home: Elder Representation in Hollywood, 1936-1946…………………………………………………………………...……..42 Elder Representation During the Great Depression…………………………………...44 Capra as a Case-Study Pre-War………………………………………………………………...51 Old Age in American Postwar Culture……………………………………………………….66 Capra as a Case Study Postwar…………………………………………………………………73 Chapter 2. “Adult Films” for the “Lost AudienCe” of Postwar America…………………………………………………………………………………………………88 An Audience Lost…………………………………………………………………………………….92 The Formation of “Adult Films”………………………………………………………………..98 Competing for the Adult Market……………………………………………………………..107 Adult Pictures and Censorship……………………………………………………………….125 Chapter 3. Blue Hair and the Blue Glow: The Older Star and Early Television…………………………………………………………………………………………....134 An Audience Lost, An Audience Found……………………………………………………138 Realignment of the Stars………………………………………………………………………..146 Primetime Marginalization and the Formation of a Comedic Type…………...159 Chapter 4. Agesploitation: Genre and the Aging Body……...………………………………………………………………………….……………….…163 Melodrama……………………………………………………………………………………………167 Horror…………………………………………………………………………………………………..178 Comedy, Camp, and Kitsch……………………………………………………………………..189 Epilogue: Contemporary Elder Kitsch……………………………………………………………206 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………………………………214 v Introduction In May of 1902, Edison Manufacturing Company released a film entitled Naughty Grandpa and the Field Glass. The AFI catalog description of the film reads: Grandpa is absorbed in a daily paper, near an open window. A spoony bicycle couple dismount down the lane to re-arrange a portion of the lady's toilet and attract the old gentleman's attention. His somewhat impaired eyesight causes him to resort to his trusty field glass in order to better watch the operation. A very apparent improvement in the view affects the old gentleman to such a degree that it is not approved of by his elderly spouse, who appears on the scene at the time and proceeds to demolish the field glass, thus putting an abrupt end to the old gentleman's investigations.1 This film represents what is one of the earliest American comedies to derive humor from the very simple representation of an elder figure behaving in a way or expressing thoughts that are the province of a younger person. “Grandpa” here, in leering at the young woman and her lover and expressing some sense of titillation at the sight, is behaving as a “dirty old man,” a term reserved for an older man whose interest in the opposite sex is deemed inappropriate to his age. In keeping with the mores of the time, the film shows Grandpa promptly punished for this inappropriate behavior (and, with the destruction of the binoculars, prevented from engaging in it again). Thus proper social order is reasserted. 1“Naughty Grandpa and the Field Glass,” American Film Institute Catalog of Feature Films. <afi.chadwyck.co.uk/home> 1 As the Edison film demonstrates, the sight of an older person behaving in the manner of a younger person, operating outside of a socially approved role, has long been considered humorous. But in recent decades, the comedic representation of elder figures speaking and behaving like young people has become far more elaborately developed and prominent, essentially becoming a standard trope frequently employed in American film, television, and advertising. The trope was first extensively exploited by comedian George Burns in the 1970s as he forged a popular second act in his career playing a funny old man on popular youth-oriented programming like The Muppet Show and eventually in his own starring roles in films like Oh, God! (Carl Reiner, 1977) and 18 Again! (Paul Flaherty, 1988). Recent examples of the phenomenon include the popular mascot of the Six Flags amusement park chain, an old man in a tuxedo (in actuality, a young dancer in “old man” make-up) who dances frenetically to party music, acting as a pied piper who leads young people to the amusement park. An ad for Taco Bell that aired during the 2013 Super Bowl features a group of seniors sneaking out of their retirement home at the night to attend a rave, get tattoos, and turn doughnuts in an empty parking lot, all scored to the pop anthem “We Are Young.” In 2012, a television series called Betty White’s Off Their Rockers began airing in primetime on NBC. Hosted by Betty White, the show is a hidden camera program in which senior citizens play pranks on unsuspecting young people. Such representations have become commonplace in contemporary popular culture, but what happened between Edison and George Burns to allow a program like Off Their Rockers to be not only utterly unremarkable but also exist as a popular 2 primetime hit? Why is such behavior no longer beaten back into propriety, as it was in Naughty Grandpa and the Field Glass, and is instead celebrated with applause, laughter, and continuous replication? This project aims to answer these questions by building a history of the media representations, industrial changes, and sociocultural shifts that contributed to the development of this particular comedic and cultural trope. Project Overview This project examines the concept and function of elders in