MovieChat Forums > The Defiant Ones (1958) Discussion > $1.80 an hour? Well boo-f'n-hoo.

$1.80 an hour? Well boo-f'n-hoo.

posted 14 years ago by jgroub
14 replies | jump to latest

Tony Curtis' character complains about making "only" $1.80 an hour. That is a load of sh!t if I ever heard it. $1.80 an hour for a 40-hour work week comes to $72 a week. In the Honeymooners, Ralph Kramden was a bus driver making $62 dollars a week during this exact same time period, and supporting a wife while living in New York City. And although he lived in the lap of poverty, that was because of all his hare-brained money-losing schemes. It was stated in the series that Norton, who was a sewer worker, earned the same as Ralph, and lived very well by comparison, with a nice decorated apartment and a television.

I'd bet that you could live pretty damned well on $72 a week in East Bumf@ck, Kentucky.

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[–] raffi_freak 14 years ago

He never denies that he was making a decent living, but he wanted to be Charlie Potatoes. He'd blow his pay every Saturday on booze and women, and that was how he wanted to live all the time. He was never meant to be portrayed as particularly poor, he just wanted more than a nice decorated apartment and a television.

IITYWYBAD?

[–] 14 years ago

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[–] JLearn 14 years ago

So, Sshelly, at least one of us is confused (or maybe just not getting your joke?) -- it was Curtis' character, Joker Jackson, that was complaining about the $1.80/hr wage.

[–] 14 years ago

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[–] JLearn 14 years ago

Keep in mind that these were 1959 wages we're talking about here. The federal minimum wage then was $1/hr so, as a previous poster noted, he was doing pretty well to make $1.80. I can see that movie viewers in the '50s would not be very sympathetic to his complaint.

There's an interesting graph at this web site (http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html) that shows that, adjusting for inflation, $1/hr was equivalent to more than $7/hr, so $1.80 was like more than $12.60/hr in terms of modern day earning power. That'd be like more than $500/wk for a 40 hr week. He was not going to get rich at that rate, but he wasn't just scraping by either.

[–] 14 years ago

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[–] JLearn 14 years ago

I absolutely agree -- again to refer to that graph on that web site I mentioned, the minimum wage, in terms of earning power peaked in 1969. It has generally been declining ever since. But most people who get paid minimum wage have absolutely no power to bargain for anything better.

Them that's got shall get...

[–] 14 years ago

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[–] vinidici 13 years ago

...hence, the rush by illegal immigrants to fill in those low-paying jobs that nobody else wants (but that still pay better than the kind of work available back in their native country)--except we keep making it hard for those folks to stay around to keep working those jobs! Catch 22 if there ever was one!

BTW, I thought this movie was set during the Great Depression. Buck-eighty an hour would have been pretty-damn-good money in those days!

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[–] jejozi 13 years ago

That's less than $20,000 in today's dollar. Yeah, you can live high on the hog for that much.

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[–] jgroub 13 years ago

Nope; $72 per week for 52 weeks is $3744 per year. Having watched a good deal of Mad Men, 1959 wages are equivalent to about 10 times what they are today, so that's $37 grand per year. That might not be high off the hog, but it's nothing to complain about.

I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.

[–] jejozi 13 years ago

Go to an inflation calculator site and punch in those numbers. Fyi, Mad men is a tv show.

This will be the high point of my day; it's all downhill from here.

[–] jejozi 13 years ago

Also, the movie came out in '58 and he was talking about jobs from his past, so it was more like '55.

This will be the high point of my day; it's all downhill from here.

[–] elisedfr 12 years ago

If I remember correctly, Poitier's character (who was a farmer before being put in jail) actually says something like "nice" or "not bad at all". But Tony wanted to make it really big. Besides, working in a factory is never fun, regardless of the income.

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