"Anchor's Aweigh"--Exposing the Boosters

YELLOWS, REDS, blues and oranges lit up against the neon pink sunset.  Street carts selling fruits, handmade dolls, trinkets, skirts, hats lined the cobblestone streets as the scent of tamales wafted through the air.  Dark-haired men wearing sombreros and women wearing big flowing skirts are playing instruments and waiting for the occasional passerby to buy an item from their cart. Gene Kelly, followed by Frank Sinatra, dressed in a blue Navy uniform, walks up to one of these carts and to ask the vendor a question.  Although it may seem like these two famous actors from the 40’s are taking a vacation in Mexico, they are actually just outside of the MGM Studios lot in, none other than, Los Angeles. 

LA was founded upon this false identity forged by its founding boosters. I never realized how prevalent it was until I watched a one of the classics from its time that replicated all these ideals that the boosters promoted. “Anchors Aweigh,” a 1945 movie starring Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly tells the story of two sailors that are on leave in Hollywood, Los Angeles.  The scenes switch between what was then, the MGM studio lot and this little two that was previously described.  This is what the boosters promoted, the mending together of the dreams of fame and the promise of warm weather, in a beautiful town surrounded by Hispanic influence.

At the end of the film, we meet Frank Sinatra’s love match and the illusion of the boosters is broken through.  She is a beautiful blonde from Brooklyn, New York, who, like many, came to Los Angeles because her “nose and the rest of her body were blue.” The allure of the LA weather and the utopian world was the true pull on her to come to the “magical land.” However, as she finds herself working in a Mexican restaurant as a waitress, a true oxymoron of the utopian ideal and truth behind its mask, tells Sinatra’s character, “My nose isn’t blue anymore, but the rest of me is.”  It is still interesting to me that even in a lighthearted film of that time, filmmakers can find the cracks behind the façade.

Like it did for many, Los Angeles  told the false tale that built them up to break them down.

-- Elise Fornaca

Photo: Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh, top; bottom Kelly dances with Sharon McManus

Image via imageshack.us

Paradise (?)

 

 

BELOW YOU'LL  find just a snip from piece from an essay written by  novelist James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity) that the L.A. Times recently reprinted.  If first ran in 1933, and Cain muses on the complexity of living in Southern California. It touches on many of the themes -- Arcadia, Utopia, Boosterism -- that  we discussed last week in class. Here you will see the first traces of the anti-booster sentiment and the subsequent backlash.

"There is no reward for aesthetic virtue here, no punishment for aesthetic crime; nothing but a vast cosmic indifference, and that is the one thing the human imagination cannot stand. It withers, or else, frantic to make itself felt, goes off into feverish and idiotic excursions that have neither reason, rhyme, nor point, and that even fail in their one, purpose, which is to attract notice.


Now, in spite of the foregoing, when you come to consider the life that is encountered here, you have to admit that there is a great deal to be said for it."

 “I shall attempt, in this piece, an appraisal of the civilization of Southern California, but it occurs to me that before I begin I had better give you some idea what the place looks like. If you are like myself before I came here, you have formed, from Sunkist ads, newsreels, movie magazines, railroad folders, and so on, a some¬what false picture of it, and you will have to get rid of this before you can understand what I am trying to say…”

The full piece is in your text, "Writing Los Angeles" but you can also click over to it online here. 

Image: Vintage linen postcard showing view of Mendocino Drive as it winds through Pasadena with palm trees lining both sides of the street and mountains in the distance. Credit: Curt Teich Postcard Archives / Getty Images

(Source: Los Angeles Times)