I've noticed from watching movies from 30s and 40s, they often show two separate beds in a couple's bedroom like in Marnie. Silly silly question but....do people just make love and then go to their separate beds? No cuddling?!
shareYes I've noticed that too, & apparently it was more common for married people to sleep in separate beds, & rooms even. I read somewhere it was thought to be 'healthier' but I don't know if I believe that. Maybe it was more to do with not wanting to be 'seen' to be sexual/having sex.
shareIn many cases, the production codes of the time required there be two beds, as anything suggestion of possible sexual activity was considered too salacious to pass the censors. This was the case almost through the mid-60s, even on television.
shareFunny how killing and murder was ok in the old days but lovemaking was a no no
shareThe funny thing is, in Marnie's case, the suggestion they had sex was too much, but implied rape was absolutely fine. Which makes me wonder - was the real issue the idea that a woman might actually want to have sex? Perhaps the implied rape was ok because it was 'all him'?
shareSex was considered sinful, so portraying it as something positive was taboo. However, rape scenes didn't portray sex as something positive, so they were much more likely to be allowed.
The same happens nowadays, for example, with slavery scenes. Whites owning slaves is considered sinful, so any scene involving a white slave owner must portray him as some sadist psychopath. Chances are most of them were just normal people and cared about their slaves, but portraying it that way is taboo.
Good point, well made. Thanks.
shareThat is one of those things from bygone days people have trouble understanding today. Separate beds were an absolute requirement, as there could be no suggestion people slept together. Dick Van Dyke once talked about how on his first TV show he and his wife (played by Mary Tyler Moore) had to have separate beds. Not only that, but he said that they were not allowed to even sit on the same bed at the same time, although he may have been joking about that point.
Hitchcok himself dealt with this problem before this. In North By Northwest, the way Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint so openly flirted with one another was considered almost over the line in 1959. (Do note that when Grant talks about making love to a woman, he means to woo or possible flirt with her, not have sex, which meaning would become popular later on). Watch the end of the movie closely. When they are at the top of Mt. Rushmore, he pulls her up which quickly switches to him pulling her up to his bed on the train. He very explicitly calls her Mrs. Thornhill, so that everyone in the audience will know it's okay for them to sleep together. And then Hitchcock ends it with a rather obvious visual metaphor: the train they are riding on enters a tunnel. Oh boy. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes it's not. Incidentally, the same thing was done at the end of Jane Fonda's movie debut, Tall Story (1960). The things movie directors had to do to get around censors.
But this twin bed gimmick had it's best send up in the movie A Guide for the Married Man (1967), which is interesting for several things. In that one, the whole subject of the movie was about infidelity and sleeping around. The husband, played by Walter Mathau, is bored with being middle aged and stuck in a marriage with his wife. His friend encourages him to fool around and offers advice to help. This movie is full of sexual innuendo. When he ends up going to a hotel with a hooker, the hotel room has, you guessed it, two beds. The other thing about this movie is that his wife is played by Inger Stevens, who is a knockout, and is shown taking a shower and even wearing a see through night gown. But that's okay, because they were sure to have the two beds in the bedroom.
It would be interesting to know when a couple was first shown sleeping in the same bed. One of the first was on Alfred Hitchcock's own TV show in 1963, which predates Marnie, although there was an episode of the Twilight Zone in 1962. (In that one, the man was still fully dressed and lying on top of the covers, not under them with his wife. I mean, you can't have them both under the covers.)
Wait - what was the original question?
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Sorry I went on and on. It's what I do.
Valuable info. Thank you very much.
shareMy parents, who were married in 1953, had separate twin beds in their bedroom for about the first decade of their fifty-two-year marriage, then they got a king-size bed. This was not unusual at that time.
sharea king size bed is the only bed that is really big enough for two people to sleep peacefully. me and my girlfriend finally got one and we'd hardly know the other was in the bed, unless we want to. In a smaller mattress it is a problem, and so better to just have two beds. You can always move them together.
shareAnd which is the reason that the two twin sized beds when moved together are the same size as a king sized bed. They also used to make a long pad like think that would fit between the two beds that were pushed together so that the people on the bed wouldn't fall in the crack between them. I even recall as a kid my grandparents had that type of bed and if you crawled under their bed the two frames were clearly separate but had latches that connected the two frames together. Even the head boards of the two twins were bother separate but also designed to be flush as one.
So I don't think this twin beds in the movie was completely out of place, it was probably not correct for a honeymoon suite which would have had either an actual king size bed or had the two twin combined. So in this case the twins apart was a censor requirement.
I also believe that I read somewhere that in I Love Lucy shows the TV censors would require that Lucy had one foot on the floor if they were ever sitting in a bed for a scene. So censors had some odd rules.
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I bet if you look at the realities back then, well, there was indeed the prudish motion picture code ( but then again look at the garbage they have in movies today and I think it was not so bad ), but also back not too long ago mattress and box springs were expensive. It is easier to make two small beds and more utilitarian then one big bed. Mattresses cost a lot, and besides people were and don't really do it like rabbits so much. A good night's sleep is pretty important. But in the honeymoon suite ... you have a point.
shareIt's realistic. My parents were married in 1953 had twin beds until 1967, when they got a king-size bed.
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