…”Ernst Lubitsch virtually invented, in his own Teutonic-vaudeville way, the movie musical. Today, the new Criterion Eclipse set of early Lubitsch films for Paramount is not only a four-step lesson in how Hollywood was taught by Lubitsch to make a stiff and unforgiving technological handicap into a feather-light form of audio-visual confection; the four movies — “The Love Parade” (1929), “Monte Carlo” (1930), “The Smiling Lieutenant” (1931), and “One Hour With You” (1932) — are also entrancing gray heavens of impish élan, barely disguised sex talk and the toast-dry comic timing Lubitsch had already made famous back home. The goofy songs are secondary, though adorable for their antique joy, and the performers are front and center: In three out of four, Maurice Chevalier could be unctuously dopey when allowed to stage-leer, but watch him do chagrined and exasperated and you see Lubitsch’s fine-tuning at its most essential. (He is substituted rather adroitly by song-and-dance stalwart Jack Buchanan in “Monte Carlo.”)

Also in three out of four (Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins are required to replace her in “The Smiling Lieutenant”) is Lubitsch discovery Jeanette MacDonald, who’s still famous for the enervatingly pious and stuffy musicals she made in the ’30s with Nelson Eddy, but who is a discovery here, ridiculously sexy and game and saucer-eyed. Her bratty grin might’ve been the filthiest in Golden Age Hollywood. The films are variations on the Ruritanian royalty romance template (“One Hour With You” steers clear of fake peerage aristocracy, but it’s also, naturally, the most assured of the bunch), and all are, with their silk nighties and vaguely veiled innuendo, absolutely pre-Code. These were movies made not for some mythical dull-minded Depression-era innocents, but for sexually active grown-ups brimming with spunk and irony and attuned to Lubitsch’s approach, which could suggest entire unshowable scenarios with a shrug or a smirk or a raised eyebrow.

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…”In the first advertisement, published in the January 1941 issue of Esquire magazine, a well-dressed woman is sitting in the driver’s seat of a luxurious convertible. The only other traveler is her groomed poodle riding in the backseat. Underneath this picture, the main image of the advertisement, is a smaller illustration of four people riding in the same car. The woman from the lager image is still driving, and her passengers are now one other woman and two men.

In these images, the woman exercises power and ownership over the vehicle. Not only is the car her personal car, but, as explained by the advertisement’s headline—“Jeanette MacDonald Chooses Plaid for her Beautiful Chrysler Convertible” (italics not mine)—she chose its details completely in accordance with her own taste.

The accompanying text continues, “Jeanette MacDonald…loves sunshine. Therefore her personal car is a convertible.” (italics mine). The image of ownership is emphasized by the presence of the dog, another of the woman’s personal possessions, and so we know that the car belongs exclusively to her. In the smaller image, it is clear that this ownership does not depend on the absence of men, for they are pictured as her passengers.

In the following text, it reads, “Perhaps like Miss MacDonald, you like to drive a car yourself.” This demonstrates that the woman car-owner has mobility. Her ownership of the car allows her to drive wherever she feels compelled to go.

Furthermore, Chrysler is using the image of a woman’s personal relationship with her car to help sell their product. This ad was run in Esquire Men’s Magazine. The image of a woman driver is supposed to entice men to buy the product themselves. Not only does the image illustrate the ownership women had of automobiles during WWII, but that it wasn’t read as specifically a woman’s relationship, but a driver’s relationship.”

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Note: Click on the picture above twice to see the ad at nearly full size.