There is probably no drink more popular on the silver screen than beer. No, it's not a leading man or lady and it doesn't have any dialogue, but many times a cold bottle or mug of beer is the focal point of the scene. Need examples of this peculiarity of motion pictures? No problem. Stick around, keep reading and we'll fill your belly with a few classic scenes from motion picture history. In 1933 there was a movie by the name of "What - No Beer?" The movie stared the immortal Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante. Both of these men were comic geniuses. In the movie they played a couple of con men, something both were very good at. They decided they were going to start a brewery the night before prohibition started. The classic lines went like this. Keaton: Can't we make beer in the daylight? Durante: We're making dark beer. You have to see the expression on Jimmy's face as he spoke those lines. Absolutely priceless. This is a movie that is rarely seen today. Also from 1933, there was the great short film by W.C. Fields called "The Fatal Glass Of Beer". The movie itself doesn't really have much to do with beer at all. It's more a morality play on temperance. In the movie Fields sings a song lyric that pretty much shows the theme and color of the movie itself. The lyric was, "They tempted him to drink and they said he was a coward. At last he took the fatal glass of beer". Almost sounds like something out of Hamlet. On a more serious note, in the 1944 classic film "Double Indemnity" which stared Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, the two people who planned and carried out Stanwyck's husband's death, there is a great exchange of lines between the two that went like this. Stanwyck: Would you like some iced tea? MacMurray: Unless you've got a bottle of beer that's not working. Now THAT is some really great writing. They don't make lines like that in today's Hollywood. Many times though, a glass or bottle of beer is placed in a scene because the brewery paid for it to be there. Yes, it's shameless advertising but it works. Think of the movie E.T. when our little friend goes to refrigerator and pulls out a six pack of Coors and plops himself down in front of the TV. If this wasn't an image that sold lots of Coors after the movie was released then people just weren't watching. Of course the funniest part was what the beer did to E.T.'s friend Elliott. Now THAT was a sight to behold. One thing that beer manufacturers are very careful about is how their beer is seen in the movie itself. They never let their brand name be associated with violence and death. This would certainly kill any chances of selling it ever again. Yes, beer is not only a part of real life but it is also a part of our movie history. In some cases, a very big part. |
