I saw an advertisement on the television set the other night while I was watching my favorite program, Archie Bunker, for the movie which is called The First Wifes Club. And I was watching the television with my wife, Toots, because she is often laughing at the antics of the wife on that program because she is a wife, too.
So I decided to see the First Wifes Movie to review for you in my column, and I decided to take Toots, because she is my wife, and I thought she might enjoy a night at the pictures.
The pictures! In my day, a night at the pictures with your lady meant a night of romance. But alas, today at the pictures people are too busy watching the violence and the action to be hit by Cupid’s arrow.
When I was a young man of 27 I would go to see the movies with a dame on my arm, and we would sit in the balcony and if I was lucky she would let me reach into her sack of delicious candied figs, which they sold in those days. But today you go to the movies, and all they sell you are expensive foods that are too salty, and they cost you a lot of hard-earned money, too.
I told the fellow at the concessions stand that I should get some free popped corn because I was the critic for the local Gazette, but he just told me that he had never read my column and that I would have to step aside because the lady behind me wanted to buy a Fanta. If that young man only knew of the influence I wield in the town of the movies, Hollywood, he would treat me with more respect, I imagine. But he would never make it in the pictures anyway because he had a face like a sack of yams.
Toots and I went to see the movie called The First Wifes Club because I wanted to review it. So I saw the movie, and then I called my editor and he told me they did not need a review so I threw my review in the garbage but then he called me back to say that they would be able to run my review after all so I went to the garbage and dug my review of The First Wifes Club out of the garbage and the garbage smelled foul and my sportcoat got a coffee stain on it.
So I took my sportcoat to the cleaners and they said the stain might be hard to get out. I will tell you in my next column if they were able to get the stain out. My mother could always clean the stains, even if they were made with jam! So I do not see why the cleaners cannot get a stain out. My mother died in 1947, two years before my father.
So here is my review of The First Wife’s Club:
I went to see the movie called The First Wife’s Club. It is not a very good movie. I went with my wife, Toots, and we were surprised to see that the ladies in question were not wifes at all, but divorced women of questionable moral standing. One of them was played by the actress Goldie Pond, and she was a firebrand!
I do not think that people should take the institution of marriage lightly. Toots and I were married in 1943, and it has not always been smooth sailing but we never got the divorce. Because it is said that divorce goes against the laws of man and God! And when we took our vows we decided to stay together “until death do us part.” And we are still living so we are still married.
These young people today get married, and then they think it is all a big joke and they get a divorce the first time they get in a fight and throw pans at each other.
I have never been in a fight with Toots, but one time she hit me with a rolling pin because she was angry that I was not trying to get a job but I was getting checks from the government so there was no reason for me to get a job and I wanted to stay home and watch the fights. I must admit that my skull hurt for some time afterward.
There was also a scene in The First Wifes Club where they dropped a piano out of a window, and it looked to me to be a waste of a fine piano.
In conclusion, let me just say that The First Wifes Club made me wish I had a club so I could hit myself on the head with the club and then I would not have to watch the movie, because it was a real sleeper, and not very reverent! I will review a movie next month and maybe I will appreciate that one better, but I am not sure.
But there is still no business like show business, like no business I know. Everything about it is appealing, anything the traffic will allow. Nowhere can you get that happy feeling when you are stealing that extra bow. That is a song I once heard.
Until next time, I’ll see you on the Silver Screen.
Mr. Danielson’s column is reprinted from the Butternut Gazette in Butternut, Ohio. It has been edited for the sake of clarity.
