FAST-TALKING DAMES; by Maria DiBattista; Yale University Press, 365 pages; $27.95.
In today's movies, it is the guy who is expected to talk at the right time, to say the clever thing and to win a woman over with his words. Not so in the 1930s and '40s.
Those were the days when "Fast-Talking Dames" dominated the film world. In fact, the talking style was faster for everyone. Maria DiBattista asserts in her book that "His Girl Friday" (1940), the comedy in which fast talk reached its pinnacle, "reproduced speech at 240 words per minute, compared with the average pace of 100 to 150 words."
But it was also witty, urbane, sophisticated and interesting. Communication in these films carried the story, established conflict and comedy and developed the personalities of the characters. In fact, they demonstrated how important the art of conversation is and how much a person's identity depends on his or her speaking voice.
In many of these films, such as "It Happened One Night" (1934) or "Bringing Up Baby" (1938), the female characters make their living literally out of words — as newspaper reporters, press agents or novelists. Because they have a natural facility with language, they nurture a desire to mold the men they love into articulate companions. And if there is a memorable line, one that elicits a laugh from the audience or that provokes thought, it is always uttered by the heroine.
Unfortunately, DeBattista fails to answer the key question: Why did these clever scripts, which were almost all written by men, give women such a progressive and desirable identity? When women barely had the vote, why did male writers treat women so kindly?
DiBattista argues that the fast-talking female of film was "sexy and smart and high-spirited, yet the pungency and energy of her speech made her an exemplary rather than anomalous figure for democratic culture." The dialogue came so fast that no one watching one of these films could risk daydreaming. The words went by in a flash, "and if you miss them, too bad."
The author's clear favorite is Myrna Loy, who played Nora Charles opposite William Powell's Nick Charles in "The Thin Man" series (1934-47). "No one," says the author, "gives men the eye like Myrna Loy, and she does it without a trace of vulgarity or acquisitiveness." More than any other leading lady of her day, Loy had the ability to blend comfortably with any of the top leading men by improvising and applying her natural charms in interesting ways.
In "Red Dust," (1932), Clark
Gable stars with Jean Harlow and Mary Astor. When Astor says her attraction to Gable is just "one of those excitement-of-the-moment things," Harlow wisecracks, "Well, watch out for the next moment, honey. It's longer than the first."
When linguist Professor Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper) meets fast-talking showgirl Sugarpuss O'Shea (Barbara Stanwyck) in "Ball of Fire" (1941), he inevitably falls for her speaking style. After she showers him with slang, he tells some colleagues that "the language she spoke was so bizarre that his mouth watered. Linguistically, he is in love."
Later, Sugarpuss explains to a friend why she is taken with Potts: "He looks like a giraffe, and I love him. I love him because he's the kind of a guy who gets drunk on a glass of buttermilk, and I love the way he blushes right up over his ears. I love him because he doesn't know how to kiss, the jerk."
She was, she said, "a dizzy dame" who preferred a man wearing "hick shirts" to a man in "monogrammed silk purple pajamas." But she also loves him because she thinks she can mold him to her liking and teach him to talk as creatively as she does.
Such is the fascinating theme that includes plots and sample lines from all of the most popular movies of the day. It is written in a sophisticated, witty style that makes it proper company for its subject.
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com