With the improvement of air travel to a degree where it is not an improbable adventure calling for rugged determination and garments of outdoor construction, the problem of dinner attire will eventually present itself. The precedents in the matter are various. Even the most stylish travelers on the Super Chief and City of San Francisco don't change to long skirts and boiled shirts, although the gesture isn't entirely unheard of. When Boni de Castellane was courting Anna Gould he remarked on the circumstance that aboard the Gould private train an appropriate functionary instructed him that full evening dress was required at dinner, and in the prewar film, Shanghai Express, all the masculine characters appeared throughout its action in British military evening attire complete with battle ribbons and glacé gloves. Similarly on a recent excursion over the narrow gauge rails of the romantic Rio Grande Southern Rail-road in the lonely mountains of south-western Colorado to which this department was courteously bidden by the railroad management, dinner jackets were the rule, to the surprise of the residents of Durango, Dolores and Telluride. In general, however, white ties or even black ones are foreign to the experience of travelers on the high iron.
On shipboard, however, dinner clothes have been the immemorial rule among more politely upholstered tourists and ship's personnel. That the war put no slightest dent in this observance is evidenced by the news photographs of the first run of the “Queen Elizabeth,” where, with the sole exception of the improbable Russians, everyone seemed to insinuate himself into a stiff shirt after six o'clock.
The requirements of air travel are, of course, different from either of these. The bulk and weight of luggage has until now been subject to stringent restrictions, and its availability and the space in which to dress and undress have been non-extant. Now the flying machine companies are optimistically promoting advertising layouts showing spacious lounges and sleeping quarters and a certain amount of hitherto strictly fictitious chic and luxury. The airplane wardrobe to date has been, willy nilly, a utilitarian one since travelers rode, ate, slept and performed all the functions of existence in the same pair of trousers, however great may have been his inclinations to change into the garments of civilization when cocktail time arrived. The advent of polite dining instead of scrounging fodder out of a shoebox which has been inaugurated, appropriately enough by Air France, a line which advertises that you eat for 500 miles, may indeed usher in an era of fashionable clothes and manners at stratospheric altitudes. The air lines have confected planes with two decks and a consequent stairway, or, at least, a companionway for semi-grand entrances. It remains for the patrons to do the rest if they want to.
The persecution of the cash customers of the theater by playwrights and producers so competently begun for the season by Eugene O'Neill was furthered and abetted by Maxwell Anderson, who couldn't say all he wanted to in Joan of Lorraine without requiring the patrons to be on hand at eight o'clock, on pain of being disallowed from hearing his deathless dialogue for another twenty minutes if they were late. It is notable that at the first night of the play in question a substantial number of thoughtful persons whose manners have never been in question, finished their dinner and arrived at the conventional quarter of nine just as though Mr. Anderson's pretensions to their attention were no greater than those of any other dramatist. There may or may not be some debate as to the propriety of late arrival on first nights when a substantial portion of the audience is present in the capacity of guests of the management, but there is none at all on other evenings when a customer has paid for seating space at what passes for entertainment and may occupy it with perfect justification for whatever part of the evening he pleases. If an author is unable to contain his professional devisings within the conventional and established limits of time which, as it stands, are just about as much as audiences can stand anyway, there is no valid reason why a play shouldn't be regarded like opera; something to be walked in and out on at the whim of the individual so long as such exits and entrances do not materially affect the pleasure of the other patrons.
Although there is a great deal to be said for The Razor's Edge as a film, particularly the really wonderful technique of Clifton Webb, whose supposedly incidental role pretty much steals the show, there is practically nothing to be said for the attempt of the producers of that film to introduce to Manhattan the synthesis of spurious celebrities, incredible bad manners, hysteria and self exploitation that passes in Hollywood for a first night. If Daryl Zanuck contrived to put on a pretty good show on the screen, his various pensioners on the other side of the stage apron did nothing more than reaffirm the notion, already almost universally entertained, that what passes currency for chic and good taste in Hollywood Boulevard is nothing more than the spectacle of a posse of baboons scratching themselves in public when the ape farm is let loose in civilized precincts.
Pinterest
