THis weekend I caught a bit of a film on TCM “The Country Girl“. It was about this man who was ‘weak’ and this woman who tried to manipulate and control him.

The man was an actor, and this director was trying to give him a comeback. THe director was constantly fighting with the wife for control of the guy. In one of the fights between the director and the wife, she called her husband a “cunning drunkard.”

BOY, he let her have it. That was not the way to call your husband. How could she love him and call him that? She insisted that she loved him, but she loved the truth just as much.

It struck me that this was like some kind of instruction manual on how to behave as a husband and wife. I started paying closer attention to the husband, to see what the fifties thought a weak man looked like.

He didn’t stand up for his wife when the director was pushing on her. He also didn’t stand up to the director when the director was pushing on him. He talked smack about the director when he wasn’t around, and  a little smack about his wife when she wasn’t around.

Naturally, as it turned out, the husband got off the bottle, the play was a huge success, and the director was and had been in love with the wife all along. He begged her to leave the weak husband (who wasn’t looking so weak right then, probably he could stand on his own NOW) and go be with him.

But she couldn’t. No way could a movie like that condone a wife leaving her husband.

Today, I was listening to “The Six Shooter“, an old radio program that i got off itunes. It stars Jimmy Stewart (i’m in love with him) and I got to hear the pilot.

Stewart introduces the show as something he chose to star, and emphasizes that it is a good show for the whole family and wholesome.

It’s impossible not to notice how very prescriptive these nearly fifty-year-old programs were for the masculine and feminine.