Getting it Wrong
on Film

Some eighty years before Jennifer Coolidge was cast in the roll as “Stifler’s mom” in the 1999 summer movie, American Pie (Summit), the Hollywood directors of the 1920s were prone to casting ancient old biddies to portray the mothers in their stories – but that really didn’t sit well with this one woman who decided to let off some steam in this editorial. To illustrate her point, she recalled a recent event in Chicago where the police, in an effort to restrain the aspiring flappers, passed a curfew law restricting all girls under the ages of 18 from appearing on the streets after 10:00 at night.

“But when the police started to enforce the regulation they got into all kinds of hot water. The ‘flappers’ they stopped and ordered home often turned out to be mothers, and even grandmothers. These gave the police some nasty looks and some very sharp words that flustered them… The law officers had evidently got their ideas of grown-up women at the movies.”