I like Casablanca as much as the next guy. Not as much as the true nut, but its a fun film. Rick helps the young bride out at the roulette table (#22) so she doesn’t have to sleep with the Nazi that hands out the exit visas. He shoots the German Colonel so Ilsa and Victor can get away on the plane. But he spends a good deal of the film drunk. There’s nothing romantic about it, its a character flaw. I was watching some western the other day, the hero rides into town and meets an old friend, they head to the saloon. The cowboy’s having a bad day he heads to the saloon. The cowboy has a good day he heads to the saloon. How those cows ever got drove is beyond me, they spent most their time in a saloon. They drove drunk.

But Hollywood for their entire history has romanticized drinking. A sober older adult can say what bullshit. But what influence does that have on a young man coming of age? When drinking alcohol is continuously portrayed as ‘cool’? Another movie TCM is in love with is Double Indemnity with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck. These fine people are just so in love with each other that Fred just can’t divorce his wife and hookup with Barbara, oh no. They have to kill his wife and cash in a big insurance policy. That’s rather depraved behavior. But don’t tell TCM. There’s a great real life story concerning this topic and Fred MacMurray. About 1957 he and his family were walking someplace one day when a woman comes up and slaps him then proceeds to chew him out for the immoral movie he made that she had just taken her kids to.

Fred takes the balling out then turns to his wife, “Junes, no more of those.” That’s when he turned out the Disney flicks Flubber and other good family fare. He also made the wholesome My Three Sons for 12 years. That’s what a man is. Hollywood prefers to emphasize the negative.

Hollywood’s glorification of debauchery took out many, many of its own. Richard Burton dead at 58. Ward Bond at 57. John Wayne at 72. Humphrey Bogart 57. Spencer Tracy 67. Peter Sellers 54. Clark Gable 59. Errol Flynn 50. Douglas Fairbanks 56. Tyrone Power 44. Which is not to say all these actors died because of smoking, drinking and drugs, but in a lot of them it sure played a part. I remember the first time I heard someone of note (G. Gordon Liddy) spell it out plain.  He just said, “There’s nothing ‘cool’ about drinking, there’s nothing to be gained from it.”

Hollywood was in love with smoking cigarettes too. A genre on TCM I like for the gritty city scenes is what the call ‘film noir’. It was from the 40s and 50s. They smoked everywhere. Hospitals, gasoline factories, everywhere! Some people like to act like, “Oh we didn’t know smoking was dangerous until the Surgeon General Report in 1964; bullshit. Athletes knew. “Respectable” families knew. There’s a quote from King James of England about 1608 talking about not bringing the tobacco weed back from the colonies as he didn’t want the ill effects on health foisted on the people of England. But Hollywood sure spent decades trying to convince you how cool it was. To kill yourself. People damn well knew smoking wasn’t cool, but there were competing interests, the federal government was making a ton of money off it.

[1/30/21 update: So I’m watching ‘Oh, God!‘ this Saturday afternoon and I’m noticing how cute Teri Garr was when she was 33. I look her up on IMDB and find a very interesting little quote. “Any movie I’ve ever made, the minute you walk on the set they tell you who’s the person to buy it [cocaine] from. Cher said they’re going to make two monuments to us–the two girls who lived through Hollywood and never had cocaine.” I came to that theory on my own awhile back. I was looking at the rampant drug addiction in Hollywood, and it occurred to me that with long hours on the set and their recognizable faces, its not like Hollywood actors with be able to drive around town looking to score some drugs. But the main theory was, producers hate having to pay the incredible wages they do, they’d want to get that money back. How better to do it then being the drug conduit?! Its kind of like in the old days when the mine workers or railroad workers had to buy from the ‘company store’. The owners get their money back!]