Harvey Women

A friend of ours showed us a 1945 movie from her collection called “The Harvey Girls.”  It reminded me of the strategy some modern restaurant chains use to get customers.  The difference is that then, the young ladies were far more “proper” and, with marriage as their only career path, may have done more to win the west than anything else.

As I watched one of the big dance numbers with many dozens of lovely young ladies.  I wondered if they had known any Harvey Weinsteins (#MeToo) back then.

I knew the answer.  Probably all of them.

The title of the movie took on a whole new, dark, theme.

As a student of behavior, I wondered if I could objectively estimate how many of those young women had successfully passed the casting couch exam.

• I knew that some would have the strength to say no.
• I knew that some would be lucky enough to skip the exam.
• And I knew that there may have been some honorable men in the industry hiring a young women based on talent and looks rather than other features.

How do we measure the number?

We look at all the films for that studio, for all the studios.  We figure out how many of those young women made it from film to film.  The more movies in which a young woman appears, the better the chance she’d seen at least one casting couch.

Now, here’s the hard part for those who idolize actors like Judy Garland and Angela Lansbury.  These were young women who became legendary.  But they started out exactly like the other young women.

What are the chances they also passed the couch test?  What are the chances that their experiences led them to having a difficult life later?  Consider what happened to Judy Garland.  Perhaps the demons she was fighting weren’t all personal issues, but more like “personnel” issues.

Sometimes watching an old movie isn’t as much fun as it should be.  That’s the downside of studying behavior, we have to take the light with the dark.

Thanks for reading.

 

Harvey Girls

A friend of ours specializes in the old days, and showed us a 1945 movie from her collection called “The Harvey Girls.”  The title takes on a whole new meaning today, but I’ll talk about that next time.

Judy Garland and Angela Lansbury are fantastic.  Performances by everyone else are equally fun to watch, despite the fact that these actors must all have been working at least a dozen films a year.

The fun thing about this movie is that it’s based on some truth.  As the railroads pressed westward, rough and tumble railroad towns would grow up around them, becoming regular stops.  Some even became cities that we know of today.

A restaurant chain started moving west along with the train.  Their secret ingredient?  Hiring only eligible young women to work the restaurant.  Each town that got a restaurant also got a dose of pretty young women.

The result?  Not so much rough and tumble anymore, but more of the birds and bees, if you know what I mean.  Instead of gunshots at night, they got church bells at noon.  Instead of bar fights they had domestic fights.

The real impact was that these towns became “civilized” as the number of young women came to balance out the young men.

Here’s the fun part.  Know of any other recent restaurant chains who have used young women as a part of their secret recipe for gaining customers?

I wonder what the coming of those young women did for their towns.  And I wonder if they ever saw themselves in comparison to the young women who truly did …

… Win the West.