Remembering those wise-cracking, slang-talking, self-sufficient women of film
By: Jeff Milgram
Maria DiBattista, professor of modern literature and film at Princeton University, first learned to appreciate the quintessential fast-talking dame of screwball comedies from the 1930s and ’40s “as a young girl watching the late show when my parents went to sleep.”
She liked these wise-cracking, slang-talking, self-sufficient women far better than the dumb blonde sexpots like Marilyn Monroe.
Professor DiBattista preferred Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers and Barbara Stanwyck so much that she has written a book, “Fast Talking Dames,” which will be published next year. She spoke on the subject Thursday at a meeting of 55Plus, a nondenominational group of retired and semiretired people who meet at the Jewish Center of Princeton.
Fast-talking dames were the creation of the early talkies, and they reveled in the use of language. But not just any kind of language, Professor DiBattista said. It was a uniquely American language that invented words whenever the need arose, she said.
The fast-talking dame came in direct contrast to another movie type — the strong, silent American cowboy, as played by Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda and Princeton alumnus James Stewart.
The fast-talking dame helped ease the American paranoia about words, said Dr. DiBattista. It was often the fast-talking dame who helped teach the laconic, often tongue-tied American male character the power and pleasure of language, she said.
And the fast-talking dame also made the American male take women seriously.
“I always thought women ended at the neck. You sort of start there,” Dr. DiBattista quoted James Stewart as telling Claudette Colbert in the 1939 movie, “It’s a Wonderful World.”
Ms. Colbert is the kind of smart, fast-talking dame Dr. DiBattista likes.
Even the word “dame” has taken on a particularly American twist. No one would confuse an American “dame” with a genteel English “dame.” An American “dame,” said Dr. DiBattista, is unaffected and quick on the uptake, but not necessarily a lady.
“She comes from the working class or the idle rich,” said Dr. DiBattista. “The dame is a city girl at heart.”
One of the best fast-talking dame movies was the 1937 “Stage Door,” starring Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers. Ms. Hepburn played a wealthy young lady who is not yet a dame, while Ms. Rogers played a working girl, said Dr. DiBattista.
It was a classic on-screen conflict.
Ms. Rogers looks at Ms. Hepburn and says, “Fancy clothes, fancy language and everything.”
Ms. Hepburn comes back with, “Unfortunately, I learned to speak English correctly.”
Later on, Ms. Rogers says, “I wish I was born lucky, instead of beautiful and hungry.”
One of the first to notice the ancestors of the fast-talking women was the French writer Alexis deTocqueville, who commented on the “happy boldness” of young American women in his 1831 book “Democracy in America,” Dr. DiBattista said.
Democracy gave women the “chance to speak their own minds,” Dr. DiBattista said.
The fast-talking dame movies lasted about a decade, and died in the 1950 classic “All About Eve,” when Betty Davis’ character renounced her career to get married.
From then on, movie dialogue has not been kind to women, Dr. DiBattista said. Instead of the fast-talking dame, the movies featured dumb blondes.
“I come to you today lamenting her demise,” Dr. DiBattista said of the fast-talking dame.