Nora Charles goes to rehab: making over Myrna Loy in The Best Years of Our Lives
2021; Routledge; Volume: 14; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/19392397.2021.1943474
ISSN1939-2400
Autores Tópico(s)American and British Literature Analysis
ResumoThis essay examines the gendering of alcohol consumption in The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946) using Myrna Loy’s performance as Nora Charles in The Thin Man (W. S. Van Dyke, 1934) as an intertext. Wyler’s film, by constructing alcoholism as an exclusively male crisis, contributes to a wartime discourse on women and alcohol. This essay contends that, as Milly Stephenson in Best Years, Loy’s face and gestures become an interface through which this gender redefinition occurs – transforming a drinking companion into a caretaker. In Milly, Nora is repeated with a difference, updating Loy’s reputation as ‘the perfect wife,’ via the social act of drinking, for the post-war era.
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