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A hazy recollection of underskirts
Apr. 28th, 2013 09:45 pmI've spent the last hour trying to figure out which movie a half-forgotten scene came from. So frustrating.
Leslie Howard and the female lead are going to elope. It's a period picture, so they figure her elaborate gown is impractical in the eloping scheme of things, and he starts to undress her. But under the gown is an underskirt, and then another, and then another and another, and the underskirts just go on and on and on (I can perfectly hear his incredulous cry; "Another one?!"), and people are knocking on the door as Howard grows increasingly desperate and the pile of underskirts grows improbably high. It's hilarious.
I thought I'd found it in a 1933 movie called Berkeley Square. Leslie Howard in period costume, check. But then it wasn't.
But that's alright, because Berkeley Square was very memroable on its own: It's about a guy obsessed with history who travels back in time to the Civil War era (Howard plays an American, the oddness just goes on). At first I was less than charmed by the movie because I thought the main character was really unsympathetic (during a minuet he mumbles "Back where I come from people dance like the nig-" and then he checks himself), but then I came to realize the movie agrees with me. All the people from his own time finds him insufferable and creepy, and the Civil War folks find him scary and creepy.
It was a very odd movie. It was remade in 1951 as a Tyrone Power vehicle titled The House in the Square, or: I'll Never Forget You. Might have to give that a watch some day.
ETA: I found out what movie that scene was from! I had the correct year, anyway: The 1933 film Secrets, with Mary Pickford. Even found the first part of the scene on YouTube.
Leslie Howard and the female lead are going to elope. It's a period picture, so they figure her elaborate gown is impractical in the eloping scheme of things, and he starts to undress her. But under the gown is an underskirt, and then another, and then another and another, and the underskirts just go on and on and on (I can perfectly hear his incredulous cry; "Another one?!"), and people are knocking on the door as Howard grows increasingly desperate and the pile of underskirts grows improbably high. It's hilarious.
I thought I'd found it in a 1933 movie called Berkeley Square. Leslie Howard in period costume, check. But then it wasn't.
But that's alright, because Berkeley Square was very memroable on its own: It's about a guy obsessed with history who travels back in time to the Civil War era (Howard plays an American, the oddness just goes on). At first I was less than charmed by the movie because I thought the main character was really unsympathetic (during a minuet he mumbles "Back where I come from people dance like the nig-" and then he checks himself), but then I came to realize the movie agrees with me. All the people from his own time finds him insufferable and creepy, and the Civil War folks find him scary and creepy.
It was a very odd movie. It was remade in 1951 as a Tyrone Power vehicle titled The House in the Square, or: I'll Never Forget You. Might have to give that a watch some day.
ETA: I found out what movie that scene was from! I had the correct year, anyway: The 1933 film Secrets, with Mary Pickford. Even found the first part of the scene on YouTube.
