Laugh, Clown, Laugh

[zekko]

I saw this movie on TCM the other night. It's a silent film from 1928 about a clown who finds an abandoned child, raises her, and falls in love with her when she grows up. It stars Lon Chaney as the clown, who was 45 years old. The girl was played by Loretta Young, who was 14 at the time.
She was also romanced in the film by a count played by Bernard Siegel, who was 30 or 31. The movie was set in Italy if that makes any difference.

I post this because I think it's interesting how much the culture and perceptions have changed. This is one of the most acclaimed silent movies, but today if a 45 year old man entertained the thought of a romance with a 14 year old he would be considered a creep, a pervert, a child molester, and would probably be arrested. The same for the 30 year old, for that matter.

I'm trying to account for what the difference is now, and I'm thinking it probably has to do with women's role in the workforce today. Women today are expected to be able to make a living and support themselves. While back in the 20s they had no such expectations on them - they simply had to be able to have children and keep a household. Maybe that's why women are expected to have a higher level of maturity before entering adulthood today.

 

[Lexington]

Remember until relatively recently, life was a lot harder for the vast majority of people. In Western society today, survival is pretty much taken for granted. Back in 1900, the life expectancy for both men and women was below 50 and that was a dramatic improvement over the past century.

Women didn't really have time to wait until even their mid 20s to have children. Obstetric care wasn't available to deal with complications of pregnancy and childbirth, which occur with much greater frequency in older women. Today, people are much healthier and live much longer, so these differences between younger and older women would have been even more pronounced in the past.

Taking this into consideration, it's not surprising that women (and men) had children almost as soon as it was possible. Also remember that people needed to have more children to assure that at least one of their offspring survived. Men waited a little bit longer because it look them longer to establish themselves and to be able to provide for a family. A few hundred years ago, it was quite commonplace for women to be married by the age of 13!

 

[backbreaker]

i have that movie. good movie. Love TCM

another movie from that era that i find interesting from a male/female standpoint is the Lemon drop kid. I was interested in the movie beucase there is a pretty famous/good race horse named after the movie, so I bought it and watched it. it's about this guy who goes to the track everyday and tries to scheme people out of money, he's a hustler. He is always eating lemon drops which is why they call him the lemon drop kid. anyway, he gets in some trouble, iw as too drunk to remember exactly what happened, anyway, his GF, who is very hot though whose name i cannot remember, had left him at the beginning of the movie he goes and telsl her he will change, he will get a real job and ****, you know the deal, she says okay and she goes back with him and not like 15 minutes he's into some new crap. and the woman is like WHEN WILL YOU EVER GO AND GET AN HONEST JOB or some **** like that and he's basically like, woman, STFU lol. go sing and be cute and ****. actually now that i think about it a pretty famous song came out of that movie though again, i was plastered when i watched it so don't ask me what. oh **** the song was silver bells, the christmas song.

anyway, i remember crying laughing at the end of the movie, and of course she doesn't leave becuase that's who he is he's a hustler. what you see is what you get. today no way in hell.

 

[zekko]

Good points Lex, I hadn't considered that.

I thought you might respond, BB, knowing you're an old movie buff. You're right, it was a good movie, and worth a watch IMO.

I saw The Lemon Drop Kid when I was a youngster, a long time ago. That had Bob Hope in it. I remember talking to some young girls, they had no idea who Bob Hope was, they had never heard of him. I got a kick out of that, because at one time he was so well known, he was a huge star.

 

[Zarky]

The age of consent in Spain is 13. Just sayin'