“Marry him, stop running away. Stop living by the opinions, the smiles and frowns of others.”
The central conflict of the drama is situated here. Harvey is a man a little older than Cary. That makes their relationship acceptable within the conventions of society. But Cary has fallen in love with a younger man. A much more virile and physically impressive man. And that is not acceptable within the conventions of society. And therein lies how this melodrama of the 1950’s differs fundamentally from such iconic examples of the genre of the past. The matronly protagonists of those movies were looking for love in the all the wrong places, but expected to give up their own desires as a sacrifice for their children. What is extraordinary is that the character of Harvey is doling out this advice to her; advice which stands in complete opposition to the expected trajectory of the genre.
“All you have to do is turn that dial, and you have all the company you want, right there on the screen. Drama, comedy... life's parade at your fingertips.”
Look closely at the settings of this film and you will eventually notice how many of the surfaces are reflective in some ways. There is the obvious example of mirrors, but even the floors have a waxy sheen that fairly bounces back the lighting. Everything reflects and the central object of this obsession is the brand new television which arrives as a present at Christmas. The above statement entices with its promises that can only be empty and the scene ends with a punctuation mark: the reverse image of the film’s protagonist reflected back at her as she stares as the screen. The woman is old, ancient—she’s 40, for crying out loud—doesn’t she know she is supposed to just sit back and let her old age be consumed by interest in the fictional romances of others? Not hardly!
Ron Kirby: “Mick discovered for himself that he had to make his own decisions, that he had to be a man.”
Cary Scott: “And you want me to be a man?”
Ron Kirby: Only in that one way.
The significance of this quote mentioned here is apart and separate from its significance in the film. Ron Kirby was portrayed by legendary Hollywood figure Rock Hudson. For a pretty long stretch of time covering parts of the 1950’s and 1960’s, Rock Hudson was pretty much the definitive Hollywood male sex symbol in the world. His movies were hugely popular even when not very good and he possessed unusual combination of the good looks to make girls swoon with the easygoing affability to not make their boyfriends and husbands feel threatened. Throughout all that time at the top, American moviegoers were blissfully oblivious of the fact that in real life he was a notoriously promiscuous homosexual, but, of course, it was no secret to those in the business.
As a result, one of the longest-running inside jokes in both film and television was the constant references to Rock Hudson’s status as the ultimate heterosexual symbol. Most of these inside jokes only arrive in the form of committing to the lie and presenting Rock Hudson as exactly what he was sold as. On occasion, however, the inside joke gets turned inside out and seems to slyly intimate at the truth of the situation. Such as the female protagonist’s response to Hudson’s character’s observation here, a reply positively overflowing with hidden meaning of a suggestive nature so explosive that the careers of many others were sacrificed in order to keep the Hudson cash cow flowing by keeping a lid on one of Hollywood’s most potentially incendiary secrets.
