1940s

Return to Gallery Directory 

1940s

The Ghost Breakers
The first of two Bob Hope quips (see The Road to Bali). The plot is...well, you can read it here if you're inclined but I think the clip speaks for itself.

Too Many Girls
The movie where Desi Arnez and Lucille Ball met (I think), a light musical comedy based on a Rodgers/Hart play. They're not a romantic couple here, but Arnez plays a great college football player who is recruited with his three pals to keep an eye on Lucille Ball while she's away at college. A number of Vassar jokes dot the first 15 minutes of the film.
Thanks to Naomi Heftler '95 for finding this.


Brother Rat and a Baby
The second of the “Brother Rat” films about military academy cadets (now out in the workplace). In this scene, Ronald Reagan and his friends are discussing the weakness of a proposed football team for the academy. Vassar is again a punchline, here around traditional sex roles. A very similar joke can be found in Trouble Along the Way.
Thanks to E. Kanner for the tip.

Shadow of the Thin Man
This is the fourth in the Thin Man series, the detective series featuring Myrna Loy and William Powell as Nick and Nora—and their terrier, Asta. Effervescent dialogue and lots of comedy were highlights of the series, and our scene is no exception. Vassar is the punchline of a gender-oriented joke.
Thanks to Jim German and Fern Sanford for the tip.

Ride ’em Cowboy
This is an Abbot & Costello western comedy. Lou Abbott is here delighted to find a new, feminine side to himself.
Thanks to Anna Miller ’97 for the tip.

Mission to Moscow
Made in 1943 as a pro-Stalinist film to support our ally in the war, this is something of a travelogue and pedantic visit through the wonders of Russian culture as a group of Americans around the U.S. Ambassador interact with Russian society. A ball brings people together and they discuss some of their past. 


Lady in the Dark
This Kurt Weill/Ira Gershwin musical featured a song with a wonderful, dry joke about Vassar in the lyrics. It treats Vassar as a place for sexually active women—unusual to see that this early. The song itself was also used in the Julie Andrews film, Star! and the 1954 TV production of Lady in the Dark.  The scene is a dream sequence where the lead, Ginger Rogers, is beginning to understand the psychological underpinnings to her indecisiveness. It’s a trial scene set in a circus—and yes, it’s how the musical was really written.


Wonder Man
A ’40s movie musical, the plot of this one’s a little nutsy and not worth describing here. Our scene proffers a slight men-at-Vassar joke, and features the movie’s lead, Danny Kaye.
Thanks to Jason Marin ’95 even though he’s known about this for years and never told me!


Gentlemen’s Agreement
Here’s a great example of another major trope of the collection: Vassar as a class marker. Many of the scenes of this type in the collection aren’t terribly interesting, as the line to identify a character as a Vassar graduate isn’t used humorously. But as a character point, the women so identified are typically wealthy and elegant, well-bred, intelligent, and typically quite proper and demure. Gregory Peck’s love interest in this drama about antisemitism is a Vassar graduate from an upper-crust Protestant New York family who through the course of the movie has trouble reconciling the prejudice she didn’t fully know she had.
Thanks to Arielle Edwards for the tip.

The Naked City
Another clip where Vassar is used as a class marker, and also to note a woman’s independence. This is the movie with the famous line, “There are eight million stories in the naked city.” Our scene finds the intrepid detectives checking in with the wealthy mother of a girl they’re seeking.
Thanks to Jim German for the tip.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game
One of my personal favorites. The song is by Roger Edens, who contributed many songs to the great MGM musicals, with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green.  This song contains a rather dark lyric about Vassar—and they even managed to rhyme “Poughkeepsie.”

Thanks to Bronwen Pardes ’95 and Erika Slutsky ’05 for the tip.

A Letter to Three Wives
A well-regarded melodrama, Linda Darnell here notes that a uniform is a great leveler – no one knows your background or social class. As we see many times through this collection, Vassar here signifies an elite, highborn person.


Inside Story
A gentle story in the vein of It's a Wonderful Life about money from a bank in a small town going missing -- it's actually being circulated in town and doing good all along the way before being returned. Our banker has a heart-to-heart with his daughter early in the movie.


Continue to:
Page One: 1920s & 1930s
Page Three: 1950s
Page Four: 1960s
Page Five: 1970s
Page Six: 1980s
Page Seven: 1990s
Page Eight: 2000–2002
Page Nine: 2003–2005
Page Ten: 2006–2009
Page Eleven: 2010–2012
Page Twelve: 2013–2015
Page Thirteen: 2016–2019
Page Fourteen: 2020–2022
Page Fifteen: 2023–

Genre Index
Star Index

Literature, Plays, and Poems
Music and Radio Broadcasts
Alternative Media