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Why does it so often happen that, within a day or two of the very first time one hears reference to a particular place, person, or thing, one again hears it mentioned?
I was watching Sin Takes a Holiday (1930) the other night, and in it, Basil Rathbone, a well-to-do wolf, was in pursuit of Constance Bennett, who'd recently undertaken a marriage of convenience (convenient for her husband, that is) and was now sailing to Paris.
Her character was a newly bloomed wallflower who knew little of the ways and wiles of the world.
Rathbone asked her where she was staying in Paris, and she said she didn't know. "Is there a Martha Washington hotel in Paris?" she asked.
Which led me to wonder, were there a number of hotels named after Martha Washington that catered to women traveling alone?
A Google search turned up references to such a hotel by that name in New York City, but I was left wondering whether Bennett's character was referring to that particular hotel (it's possible, if it was well enough known) or if, in those days, most cities of a certain size boasted a Martha Washington Hotel for female travelers.
Could a female traveler of that era, upon arriving in any given town, merely catch a taxi at the train station and tell the cabbie, "Martha Washington Hotel, please"?
Or could she only do that in New York?
A day or two later, I was watching another early thirties picture, Murder on the Blackboard (1934), which also had a reference to a Martha Washington Hotel.
A would-be Lothario (would be, that is, if he were twenty years younger, better looking, and not married) with an eye for young women is a suspect in a murder case. He's been picked up at his apartment with his bags packed (he insists it was only because he and his wife had had a fight) and brought to the police station.
The detective in charge of the investigation decides not to hold him (or a couple of other suspects he's brought in) for the moment, so Lothario asks the detective, "Does that mean that we may go?"
The detective responds, "You may. But don't let me catch you trying to register at the Martha Washington."
So, what to make of this? Both movies were set in New York (Bennett's character in the first film lived in NYC before she departed for Paris). So was Gotham's Martha Washington Hotel widely enough known to explain these references? Or were there other hostelries by that name in other towns?
Posted by brett at 01:18 PM | TrackBack