Miss Stellwagon Scores a Point

In the 1948 film comedy Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Cary Grant’s teenage daughters lecture him that their teacher, Miss Stellwagon, has informed them that advertising is a basically parasitic profession that encourages people to want things they don’t need and can’t afford.

Throughout the movie, Grant’s lucrative Madison Avenue job is in peril because he can’t think of a good slogan for a product called Wham. Finally he comes up with the perfect slogan — by stealing it from his black maid.

I call that a point for Miss Stellwagon.

Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas in "Mr. Blandings"

“Mr. Blandings never seems to have any work to do, apart from thinking up a catchy slogan for Wham, and he has six months to do that in from the time when he finds out that the account has devolved on him,” noted James Bowman of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “For this, the agency pays him $15,000 a year, or the equivalent of between $250,000 and $350,000 today, depending on the equivalency measure you choose. And when he finally does stumble on a slogan, it isn’t even his but that of Gussie, the maid, played as a now cringe-inducing stereotype by Louise Beavers. Rather like the gold-seekers in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the advertising business seems rather buccaneering. Finders keepers and tough luck Gussie, who makes a final appearance in an exaggerated chef's toque and presenting an enormous platter full of Wham above the slogan: ‘If you ain't eatin' Wham, you ain't eatin’ ham’ — a patent falsehood to rank with ‘If you can't sleep at night, it isn't the coffee, it's the bunk.’

“Yet neither question — that of the slogan’s rightful owner or its truthfulness — ever arises in the movie. Its concern isn't with how Jim gets his money but with how he’s going to spend it.”

I can’t help thinking Americans were a lot smarter in 1948 than we are in 2017.