By 1957, over 35 million prescriptions for the sedative Miltown had been written, overwhelmingly for American women.

Being a History Guy, and knowing that, it startled me in the midst of watching a 1956 Hitchcock film I otherwise enjoy. This one:


The film scene that brought me up short happens in a Marrakech hotel room, when James Stewart’s Dr. Ben Makenna must disclose to his wife, Doris Day’s Jo, that their young son has been kidnaped. This is how Dr. Ben breaks the news, with the help of Modern Pharmaceuticals:


To her credit, it’s Jo who finally realizes that the man Ben is looking for in London—the lead to their missing son— is not a man named Ambrose Chapell, but a church called Ambrose Chapel. While she runs to the phone to summon the authorities, Ben gets into a manly fight inside the chapel and is cold-cocked by blackjack. Later, in the Albert Hall, Jo gets to scream, throwing off an assassin’s aim, while Ben gets into a manly fight with said assassin, who falls, kerplop! to his death, making a new hole in the Albert Hall. [Sorry. Arcane Beatles reference.]


This scene reminded another 1956 film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which Dr. Miles J. Bennett, played by Kevin McCarthy (Not the funny one. He’s still the House Minority leader.) repeatedly urges his beloved, Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), amid all the poddage, “TAKE TWO OF THESE!” Sometimes they seem to be Miltown or Librium; in one scene I think they’re dexedrine—so Becky can run faster, I suppose. They don’t do her any good—nor Dr. Miles J. Bennett. Becky becomes a 112-pound snow pea. Bennett winds up loony alongside the 101.


A kind of Female Learned Helplessness theme can be seen throughout Fifties films. Creature from the Black Lagoon’s Julie Adams (1956) gets to swim fetchingly and faint a lot, but only the boys have access to the cool stuff, like the lever-action Winchester and what appears to be a Jumbo Economy Size Spear Gun.

The same holds true for the 1954 classic and I think one of the best scifi/horror films ever made, Them! It’s established pretty early on that Joan Weldon’s Dr. Patricia Medford is by far James Arness’s (FBI agent James Graham) intellectual superior, but who goes wandering absent-mindedly through a desert dense with drooling Atomic Ants the size of RVs? Yup, The girl.

Tum-te-tum-te-tum. I wonder what’s under that sagebrush over there?

Arness somehow manages to discourage the ravenous ant with a snub-nosed Detective .38 Special, which I find not convincing at all.

For God’s sake, Agent Graham! He wants the Juicy Fruit in your pocket!

But does Dr. Patricia Medford get to use any weapons? Especially the flamethrowers? Nosirreebob. Those are left to Arness and the unfortunate James Whitmore, who gets squished by Ant Mandibles. Medford gets a half-hug from James Arness.

[Are you beginning to see why I liked Alien’s Ripley so much?]

Aneta Corsault and Steve McQueen; the Blob emerges from the movie theater sliding effortlessly across Main Street thanks to all the popcorn butter he’s consumed. Or, “she.” Let’s be fair.

The one film where the female lead gets something close to Equality in Pluckiness would be in another favorite, 1958’s The Blob, where Steve McQueen and Aneta Corsault get to rush around what seems to be an incredibly obtuse San Joaquin Valley town. Even for the San Joaquin Valley. They’re trying to convince their elders that a huge ball of Olallieberry Jam from Space has eaten an old man, but not his dog, the town doctor and, alas, his nurse and the most of the Class of 1960 at the movie theater. They get a lot of “Crazy kids!” and “They’re just teenagers!” but Aneta doesn’t panic, does her own fair share of rescuing, and just as the Blob is about to eat the diner she and McQueen are sheltering in (Warning to future Blobs: The sheer volume of cheese, hamburger meat and onions stockpiled in a typical 1958 diner is enough to kill most alien life forms), she doesn’t get gypped out of any cool weaponry. McQueen figures out that Blobs don’t like cold and he spritzes it with a fire extinguisher.

Sensibly, Corsault moved from the San Joaquin Valley to Mayberry, North Carolina, where she changed her name to Helen Crump, took a teaching job, and began dating Sheriff Andy Taylor. They will go steady in a noncommittal way for what seems like twenty years until, one season, Miss Crump just up and disappears. I bet she left behind a drawerful of ungraded social studies reports about Our Latin American Neighbors. Except for Paraguay. Nobody ever wants to do a report on Paraguay.

One of Corsault’s contemporary actresses, Nancy Kwan, starred in 1961’s Flower Drum Song, a Rodgers and Hammerstein film so condescending that it reminds me of Quint from Jaws dragging his fingernails down the chalkboard, but for two hours.

She sang a song called “I Enjoy Being a Girl.”

I can’t imagine why.