885: Bless This Mess
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From WB EZ Chicago, it's "This American Life," I'm Emmanuel Berry sitting in for "Ira Glass." As a middle schooler, there was always one channel I wanted to watch, TCM, the Turner Classic Movie Channel, an entire channel dedicated to old movies from Hollywood's Golden Age. I loved these films, The Lady Eve on the Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, shout out to my boy Jimmy Stewart. I was fascinated by the dramatics, the over-the-top slaps, the sultry looks, the glamorous makeup and hairstyles. To my delight, I recently learned that I was not the only black middle schooler spending her spare time glued to this channel. Nicole Hill was also sad. Anything with Betty Davis, I was like, her eyes are so big and she's so bad. And I like need to watch everything that she does. Marlon Brando was my first really big crush. And Guys and Dolls was my obsession, and I used to, like, every Friday night. God bless my mom and my aunt. I would invite them up to my room, and we would do a viewing of Guys and Dolls, like, every single Friday. And I would share new facts that I had learned about, like, what? Okay, so, I mean, this is like a very basic fact. But Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra hated each other, and there's this scene where Frank Sinatra has to eat cheesecake, and he really hates cheesecake. And so Marlon Brando keeps messing up the scene so that Frank Sinatra has to keep eating the cheesecake. And I was like, oh, they are so dramatic. Oh, my God, the behind the scenes. Whenever I talk with Nicole, she always has some fact like this. You mentioned some historical figure, an actor, heck, even a mutual friend, and she'll tell you some obscure detail that you've never heard before. She's always clocking these things. I think it's why, as a kid, she noticed something about these movies that I never did. I remember the first time I noticed that I didn't want to see a black person in the films because of the way they were going to show up, which was Gone with the Wind. And I remember not knowing anything about Hattie McDaniel's history. Hattie McDaniel plays Mammy, an enslaved house servant. I just remember feeling really ashamed of like that's what I would have been. I was going to these movies as a form of escapism. And then whenever black people showed up in the movies, they were always serving. They were always poor. They were always versions of myself that maybe I feared. I was like, "No, no, no, no. I don't want to grow up and be that." Well, that's not the way you want to be out on the town with Marlon Brando. You don't want to be Scarlett O'Hare's maid. Exactly. That's exactly it.
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