Abstract
During the 1960s, the exhilaration and seductions of skiing (and après ski) were embodied in cinematic narratives that joined European sophistication with Hollywood glamour. This chapter examines how four feature films—Charade (1963), The Pink Panther (1963), Caprice (1967), and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)—utilised skiing as a value-added ingredient to enhance messages of mobility, sexuality, and fashionability. These were crucial themes in a period that saw the emergence of James Bond as an exemplar of masculinity, the autonomous single woman, and an evolving singles industry focused on travel. This chapter examines how ski resorts and skiwear were promoted specifically in Playboy and Cosmopolitan, two magazines that served as “how to” manuals for the nascent and expanding “sexual revolution”.
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Notes
- 1.
Andrew Denning, Skiing into Modernity: A Cultural and Environmental History (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2014), 131–133.
- 2.
Brundage feared the Olympic sport was becoming mired in nationalism, commercialism, and materialism. Denning, Skiing into Modernity, 133–139. In keeping with Brundage’s concerns is Hunter S. Thompson, “The Temptations of Jean-Claude Killy,” Scanlan’s Monthly, March 1970.
- 3.
Hedda Hopper, “Looking at Hollywood: Cary Grant Film Is an Elegant Spy Tale,” Chicago Tribune September 23, 1963, B3.
- 4.
“Feature Reviews: The Pink Panther,” Boxoffice, February 3, 1964, A11.
- 5.
“Looking Ahead,” Boxoffice, April 16, 1963, 130.
- 6.
“‘Caprice’ Will Open Citywide on May 24,” Los Angeles Times, May 15, 1967, D25.
- 7.
Richard Roud, “New Films,” The Guardian and The Observer, May 19, 1967, 9.
- 8.
See, for example, Joseph Gelmis “Why, It’s Doris Day, Girl Spy, Tracking Down Familiar Plot,” Newsday, June 8, 1967, 3A.
- 9.
“Doris Day in ‘Caprice’,” Christian Science Monitor, June 10, 1967, 6.
- 10.
During filming, Lazenby, who prided himself on his athletic abilities, defied the director and took to the slopes, breaking his arm and delaying the production. He appears in one scene with a coat draped over his arm, hiding a sling.
- 11.
James Marks, “What Sex! What Violence! So What Else Is New?” New York Times, February 1, 1970, D19.
- 12.
Joseph Gelmis, “‘Willie Boy’ a First-Rate Western,” Newsday, December 19, 1969, 40A.
- 13.
A.H. Weiler, “Screen: New James Bond,” New York Times, December 19, 1969, 68.
- 14.
Hitchcock’s North by Northwest “predicts certain features of the sleekly commodified James Bond movies that followed in its wake.” James Naremore, An Invention Without a Future: Essays on Cinema (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 2014): 159–160.
- 15.
Naremore invokes Virginia Wexman who writes that Hitchcock was a cultural imperialist and cinematic “tour guide” in ways that anticipated spy films of the 1960s. Naremore, An Invention Without a Future, 168–169. Hitchcock himself reacted to the Bond film genre. See Robert E. Kapsis, “Hitchcock in the James Bond Era,” Studies in Popular Culture 11, no. 1 (1988): 64–79.
- 16.
Matthew Field and Ajay Chowdhury, Some Kind of Hero: The Remarkable Story of the James Bond Films (Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press, 2015): 46. Warwick films featured hallmarks of the Bond series: “full-colour features shot on real locations, packed with ambitious action, filmed on a relatively tight budget, starring international actors and often based on a best-selling contemporary novel.” Warwick was also the first British independent company to shoot in Cinemascope. Field and Chowdhury, Some Kind of Hero, 47. A stock company of actors from Warwick, including Anita Ekberg and Desmond Llewelyn, would also be connected with the Bond series; Ekberg appeared not as an actor but in a poster in From Russia With Love.
- 17.
Field and Chowdhury, Some Kind of Hero, 59.
- 18.
Naremore, An Invention Without a Future, 119.
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
E. Alex Jung, “How Ian Fleming’s James Bond was Born in Jamaica,” http://www.vulture.com/2015/03/ian-fleming-james-bond-jamaica.html
- 21.
Edward Platt, “Fleming is Forever: Why You Should Read the James Bond Books,” Newsweek, October 17, 2015. According to Ian Fleming’s niece, Kate Grimond, Fleming’s mother sent him to a school in Kitzbühel for troubled teenagers and young men in 1926. Ernan Forbes Dennis, whose wife Phyllis Bottome was a novelist, ran this establishment at the Villa Tennerh. “They were very interested in early ideas of psychotherapy. Ian was troubled and having difficulty finding his way in life, so he went to Kitzbühel and it sorted him out. He owed a lot to his stay there, and he was inspired by Phyllis Bottome to write stories when he was there. His introduction to skiing and climbing was in Kitzbühel. I’m sure the skiing and climbing you find in the literature and films were definitely and unquestionably inspired by his time in Kitz.” “Ian Fleming: Nobody Does it Better,” Snow magazine, November 9, 2015 https://thesnowmag.com/ian-fleming-nobody-does-it-better/
- 22.
Jaime Harker, Middlebrow Queer: Christopher Isherwood in America (Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2013): 111–113. Isherwood, however, resented Fleming’s homophobia.
- 23.
Richard Pells, Modernist America: Art, Music, Movies, and the Globalization of American Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012): 292.
- 24.
Kapsis, “Hitchcock in the James Bond Era,” 70.
- 25.
Richard Severo, “Igor Cassini, Hearst Columnist, Dies at 86,” New York Times, January 9, 2002, B8.
- 26.
Logan Bentley, “Nonskier’s Guide to Alpine Ski Resorts,” Harper’s Bazaar, 99, no. 3060, November 1966, 120, 122, 124, 126, 130, 134, 138.
- 27.
Bernadine Morris, “Flight Wear Has International Flair: De la Renta Blends Grace And Skillful Use of Color,” New York Times, September 10, 1964, 38.
- 28.
Denning discusses how ski lifts transformed the ski industry. Denning, Skiing Into Modernity, 155–160.
- 29.
Catherine Breslin, “Snowmen Need Snowgirls,” Cosmopolitan, 173, no. 5, November 1972, 188, 195–198.
- 30.
Gelmis, “Why, It’s Doris Day,” 3A.
- 31.
Edgar J. Driscoll Jr., “‘Caprice’ Pits Doris Day And Spy-Spoof Formula,” Boston Globe, May 25, 1967, 26.
- 32.
“Looking Ahead,” Boxoffice, April 16, 1963, 130.
- 33.
Marjory Adams, “‘Charade’ at Memorial Perfect Entertainment,” Boston Globe, December 26, 1963, 20.
- 34.
Richard Roud, “New Films in London,” The Guardian and The Observer, February 21, 1964, 11.
- 35.
“French Alps Background of ‘Charade’,” Los Angeles Times, November 29, 1963, C30.
- 36.
Jim and Shirley Rose Higgins, “Movie Fan’s Guide to Travel,” Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1970, I26.
- 37.
“Willy Bogner Makes Bond Fly On Skis,” Variety, May 13, 1987, 58, 74.
- 38.
Clifford Terry, “Film ‘Caprice’ Seems to Operate on Whim,” Chicago Tribune, June 30, 1967, 19.
- 39.
Field and Chowdhury, Some Kind of Hero, 70.
- 40.
Priscilla Frank, “50-Year-Old Photos Reveal the Inside of Hugh Hefner’s Notorious Home: Step inside the late Playboy mogul’s James Bond-esque Chicago mansion,” Huffington Post, accessed September 28, 2017 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hugh-hefner-vintage-photos-mansion_us_59cd1835e4b0e005cc573107
- 41.
Bill Osgerby, “The Bachelor Pad as Cultural Icon: Masculinity, Consumption and Interior Design in American Men’s Magazines, 1930–65,” Journal of Design History, 18, no. 1.
- 42.
Benjamin Starr, “What Sort of Man Reads Playboy? This Vintage Campaign Asked Potential Advertisers,” Visual News, https://www.visualnews.com/2016/03/20/sort-man-reads-playboy-vintage-campaign-asked-potential-advertisers/
- 43.
Sharon Ullman, review of Elizabeth Fraterrigo, Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) in Journal of Social History 45:2 (Winter 2011): 517–518.
- 44.
Osgerby, “The Bachelor Pad as Cultural Icon: Masculinity, Consumption and Interior Design in American Men’s Magazines, 1930–65,” 103.
- 45.
Naoko Shibusawa, “The Kinsey Reports,” in Brooke L. Blower, Mark Philip Bradley, eds. The Familiar Made Strange: American Icons and Artifacts After the Transnational Turn (Cornell University Press, 2015): 88.
- 46.
Erdman Palmore, “Published Reactions to the Kinsey Report,” Social Forces, vol. 31, no. 2, December 1952, 165–172.
- 47.
Experts criticised the conservative sexual morality that, at least on a surface level, seemed to dominate the 1950s. Alan Petigny, “Illegitimacy, Postwar Psychology, and the Reperiodization of the Sexual Revolution,” Journal of Social History 38, no. 1 (Autumn, 2004): 63–79. Sexuality scholars explore American culture as “sex obsessed” during the Cold War and concerned about the relationship between sex and citizenship. See Miriam Reumann, American Sexual Character (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005): 44. See also David Allyn, Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History (New York: Little, Brown, 2000).
- 48.
Kathryn McMahon, “The Cosmopolitan Ideology and the Management of Desire,” The Journal of Sex Research, vol. 27, no. 3 (August 1990): 381. McMahon notes several books devoted to the remaking of Cosmopolitan, for example R.E. Wolsely, Understanding Magazines (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1969).
- 49.
Pete Hamill, “Marshall McLuhan? A Drama of the Absurd in Four Acts,” Cosmopolitan 163, no. 6, December 1967, 77, 84–85, 149.
- 50.
Playboy featured an interview with Helen Gurley Brown in its April 1963 issue. To many feminists Brown’s views enhanced men’s lives by making women into “playmates.” See preface, Jennifer Scanlon, Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
- 51.
Julie Berebitsky, “The Joy of Work: Helen Gurley Brown, Gender, and Sexuality in the White-Collar Office,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol, 15, no. 1 (January 2006): 89–127.
- 52.
White women, like white snow at ski resorts, offered exciting sexual possibilities. Wesley Morris, “A Poor Excuse That Says a Lot,” New York Times (Arts and Leisure section), November 5, 2017. For “whiteness” in other ways in the ski resort industry, see Annie Gilbert Coleman, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Skiing,” Pacific Historical Review 65, no. 4 (November 1996): 583–614. Additional articles by Wesley Morris and other writers appearing shortly after Hefner’s death acknowledged and/or critiqued his contribution to a climate of liberated sexuality but also one of sexism and sexual harassment.
- 53.
“Skiing USA: Playboy’s Guide to the finest runs, handsomest hostelries and most beguiling snow bunnies,” Playboy, November 1963, 93. See also note 23 for a possible explanation of Fleming’s own associations to skiing.
- 54.
See “The Playboy Panel: Uses and Abuses of the New Leisure,” Playboy, March 1, 1965, 54. Panelists included, among others, Cleveland Amory, Jean Shepherd, Walter Kerr, Steve Allen, Norman Podhoretz and Terry Southern. Southern also cites a new awareness that physical ‘purity’ for a woman is a con, an illusion.
- 55.
Often there were 70 percent more women on these trips than men. Thomas Meehan “New Industry Built Around Boy Meets Girl” Cosmopolitan 159, no. 3, September 1965, 68–73.
- 56.
Breslin, “Snowmen Need Snowgirls,” 197.
- 57.
Denning describes skiing as a sport for individuals in contrast to nineteenth-century British team sports characterised by camaraderie and team spirit. Denning, Skiing into Modernity, 108–109. As an individual sport skiing lends itself naturally to the “Singles Industry.”
- 58.
Meehan, “New Industry,” 72.
- 59.
Harriet la Barre. Cosmopolitan 164, no. 2, February 1968, 16.
- 60.
Jean Baer, Cosmopolitan 160, no. 6, June 1966, 38, 40. “Travel Single…It’s the Most,” is another article in Cosmopolitan 159, no. 1, July 1965, 26. Even Gail Sheehy was writing about skiing and single women for Cosmopolitan in the 1960s. Gail Sheehy, Cosmopolitan 161, no. 6, December 1966, 68–70, 72–73.
- 61.
Catherine Breslin, “Super Skiing: Upward Mobile on the Downhill Slope,” Cosmopolitan 181, no. 5, November 1966, 242–247, 255.
- 62.
Bernadine Morris, “Actress Has Influential Fashion Role,” New York Times, December 14, 1963, 19.
- 63.
Morris, “Actress,” 19.
- 64.
Morris, “Actress,” 19.
- 65.
Ski magazine began publication in 1936. By 1960 regular features on fashion began appearing in its monthly issues.
- 66.
Bentley, “Nonskier’s Guide,” 130.
- 67.
In fact, his career began with skiwear. A colorful skisuit he designed was photographed by Toni Frissell and featured in Harper’s Bazaar in December 1948.
- 68.
“Capsula of Emilio Pucci,” Harper’s Bazaar, 93, no. 2982, May 1960, 164.
- 69.
Kay Campbell, “H’Wood Fashions’ Boom Year: $12,000,000 in Film Wardrobes,” Variety, October 4, 1967, 5.
- 70.
“Doris Day Pix Mixes Fun And Suspense,” The Chicago Defender, June 24, 1967, 13.
- 71.
“Wholesome Doris Day Turns Nasty (Industrial Espionage) in Her Next,” Variety, April 6, 1966, 25.
- 72.
Bosley Crowther, “Screen: ‘Caprice’ Opens, Doris Day Plays a Spy at Several Houses,” New York Times, June 8, 1967, 52.
- 73.
Bond’s fashion influence has been bidirectional. Labels and brands worn in the films have promoted the association with 007, and his style has been inspirational for designers.
- 74.
Articles in Cosmopolitan such as “How to Get Him to Marry You” are characteristic. W.H. Manville, Cosmopolitan 162, no. 6, June 1967, 78–81, 112. Brown’s book Sex and the Single Girl, a non-fiction guide for the single woman, was published in 1962; the eponymous movie debuted in 1964 bookending The Pink Panther and Charade. Coincidentally, Fran Jeffries was in the film Sex and Single Girl and appeared in a 1971 issue of Playboy.
- 75.
Brown, a contemporary of Betty Friedan, refrained from describing herself as a feminist. See preface to Scanlon, Bad Girls Go Everywhere.
- 76.
For further information on the relationship of women and skiing in terms of the New Woman, see Denning, 100–106. See also Paula Birnbaum and Anna Novakov, eds., Essays on Women’s Artistic and Cultural Contributions, 1919–1959: Expanded Social Roles for the New Woman Following the First World War (Edwin Meilen Press, 2009) and Elizabeth Otto and Vanessa Rocco, eds., with a foreword by Linda Nochlin, The New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film from the 1870s through the 1960s (University of Michigan Press, 2012).
- 77.
For a discussion of the single woman of the 1960s in fashion photography related to Cosmopolitan, see Hilary Radner, “On the Move: Fashion photography and the Single Girl in the 1960s,” Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson, eds., Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis (London and New York: Routledge, 2000): 128–142.
- 78.
Cosmopolitan 160, no. 2, February 1966, 33.
- 79.
Cosmopolitan 167, no. 6, December 1969, 57.
- 80.
Contemporary literary scholarship explores the Bond character as a redefinition of British masculinity in the postwar. See, for example, Praseeda Gopinath, Scarecrows of Chivalry (Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 117–127, 144–164. See note 23.
- 81.
For parody of Cold War espionage in media, see Cyndy Hendershot, Anti-Communism and Popular Culture in Mid-Century America (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2003). She notes how corporate espionage takes over as a nod to growing consumerism which fits analysis here of Caprice.
- 82.
Field and Chowdhury, Some Kind of Hero, 57.
- 83.
In a decade that in its later years will be riven by serious conflicts and events such as the struggle for civil rights, gay rights and anti-Vietnam War protests, and be psychologically devastated by the deaths of Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert F. Kennedy, the Bond figure loses its escapist allure. As James Marks wrote in his response to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, “the formula didn’t make it any more. And it wasn’t merely a question of whether the new Mr. Bond—George Lazenby—was as effective at his bits as Connery had been, or whether the latest Bond thriller was as thrilling as its predecessors. It was essentially a matter of change. But the change was in us and not in 007.” Marks, “What Sex! What Violence! So What Else Is New?” D19.
- 84.
Dave Knickerbocker, “Head Him Off At the Precipice,” Newsday, January 29, 1970, 61.
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Cohen, M., Deihl, N. (2019). Slippery Slopes: Skiing, Fashion, and Intrigue in 1960s Film. In: Strobl, P., Podkalicka, A. (eds) Leisure Cultures and the Making of Modern Ski Resorts. Global Culture and Sport Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92025-2_3
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