The Happiness Myth_ An Expose - Jennifer Hecht [132]
In the twentieth century, the bubble bath became a symbol of pampered female life. Odd, because a bubble bath costs almost nothing. What makes the bath seem luxurious is having the time to take it, and what makes it seem pampering is that (for many people) it works: it makes you feel good. But the suds themselves seemed to hold the luxury, as if the foam were a white fur stole around bare shoulders. The white bath is for women, and the leisure it symbolizes is provided by a man’s wealth. Especially in the movies. It may be that the original cinematic bubble bath was not a bubble bath at all. In The Sign of the Cross (1932), Claudette Colbert, as Nero’s empress, swims around in a lavish pool-sized bathtub filled with donkey’s milk (we are shown the many teams of mares and milkers), and as she cavorts through this pre-code party, she allows glimpses of her naked breasts, lapped by the tide, and orders another pretty woman to strip down and join her. The Hayes Code stopped such things by 1934. The visual memory of all this does not leave one quickly. Especially when, after you invent it and sell it, they make a law that no one is allowed to do it again. It seems the bubble bath, another white cloud of liquid, maintained the milk’s extravagant luxury. In the film The Women (1939), Joan Crawford’s Crystal is a sexy, savvy, bitchy husband-thief (“You noble wives and mothers bore the brains out of me”) and practically lives in her extravagant Art Deco bathroom. The tub has carved waves on the sides, two satin pillows for a backrest, a stand for her magazine, and ample surfaces to support a phone, a mirror, and an ashtray. Her bath is always frothy with bubbles, so people visit her in there—a maid, the young daughter of the first wife, a society friend—and all trade catty remarks. Chided that she’s been in there too long, Crystal lies back, a smoldering cigarette in one hand, a bitten chocolate candy in the other, and barks, “The doctor ordered me to soak in this foam for my nerves.” Love Moods (1952) features burlesque star Lili St. Cyr performing her celebrated bubble-bath routine. The bubbles covered her girl parts. By the time Some Like It Hot came out (1959), the bath as the ultimate in femininity and luxury was a bit of a joke: Tony Curtis uses a bubble bath to hide that he has boy parts. He had been down at the beach seducing Marylyn Monroe’s Sugar, using information he had gleaned in drag as her girl bunkmate. The idea that the bath is more than a slow way to cleanliness continues on through the history of film, revealing the preoccupations of the various decades.
Let’s zero in on a little film from a period trying to hold on to the postwar dream of family while beginning to deal with the fact that women wanted a better role in this bountiful new world. The 1963 film The Thrill of It All, written by Carl Reiner and directed by Norman Jewison, tells its story in three bubble baths. In the first bath scene, Doris Day, as Beverly, gives her daughter a bubble bath while her small, squeaky son looks on. The girl demands use of mother’s new soap, mother relents, and the nice-smelling soap makes the girl happy. Beverly is stuck in the bathroom on her knees this whole long scene, while her kids and her husband (on the phone) markedly annoy and exasperate her. Next, Beverly and her husband, James Garner’s Gerald, arrive at a dinner party at the Fraleighs’ (sounds like “folly”), where Old Tom Fraleigh, his aging sidekick son, and his ad man are all riveted to the television, waiting for a commercial. When it comes, it features a sex kitten of a girl naked in a bubble bath. The girl is daft and luxuriates in the bubbles with starlet camp, cooing: “Find true happiness in your bath. Just you, and a cake of Happy.” Beverly mentions that this was the soap brand that “saved her life” that afternoon and tells about the hassle with her daughter. Old Tom Fraleigh