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Star Struck · Revisionist History

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Speaker 1: Pushkin Hello, Hello, Revision's History listeners. I'm excited to announce
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Speaker 1: that this season I'm offering a bunch of perks from
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Speaker 1: Plus on the Revisionist History Show page in Apple Podcasts,
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Speaker 1: or at pushkin dot FM. One summer night in nineteen
0:59
Speaker 1: forty nine, Margaret Mitchell and her husband John Marsh go
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Speaker 1: out to dinner. It's August Atlanta, hot, humid. They walk
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Speaker 1: to a restaurant on Peachtree Street in Midtown, not far
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Speaker 1: from their apartment.
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Speaker 2: They were going out for the evening and they were
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Speaker 2: going to go to to see The Canterbury Tales, a
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Speaker 2: movie at the Atlanta Art Theater, which was located at
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Speaker 2: the corner of Peachtree and Thirteenth Street.
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Speaker 1: So I'm standing in front of the side of the
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Speaker 1: theater with Michael Rose, executive vice president of the Atlanta
1:35
Speaker 1: History Center.
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Speaker 2: And so they had gone to the Woman's Club prior
1:39
Speaker 2: to going to the movie and just cutting across the
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Speaker 2: So she was so yeah, So they simply came out
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Speaker 2: of the Woman's Club and we're going to cross the street.
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Speaker 1: Margaret Mitchell was at that point America's reigning literary celebrity,
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Speaker 1: author of Gone with the Wind, one of the best
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Speaker 1: selling American novels ever. In Atlanta, she was beloved a
2:04
Speaker 1: little pixie of a woman who stood for everything White
2:07
Speaker 1: Southerners of that generation want to stand for beauty, wit, nostalgia.
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Speaker 1: People in Atlanta called her are Peggy Mitchell and her
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Speaker 1: husband leave the Atlanta Women's Club cross Peachtree mid Block
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Speaker 1: and as they do, an off duty taxi driver named
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Speaker 1: Hugh Gravit comes barreling around the bend. His car is
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Speaker 1: heading right for the couple.
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Speaker 2: They were maybe about halfway across. That's when they see
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Speaker 2: the car. He heads one direction, she heads the other door.
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Speaker 2: But it's kind of like the driver I think saw
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Speaker 2: him first. So Veer's in the other direction, which is
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Speaker 2: right at her right.
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Speaker 1: So Gravit is speeding. He's going at least fifty miles
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Speaker 1: an hour down a curving two lane street in the
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Speaker 1: middle of a crowded city. If the driver's going fifty
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Speaker 1: miles an hour in a car from that era, of
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Speaker 1: fifty miles an hour is like going seventy today, it's
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Speaker 1: like it's nuts. Gravit hits Mitchell drags her several yards
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Speaker 1: along the road. She's taken to Grady Hospital, where she
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Speaker 1: lies in a coma. The nation is in shock. President
3:21
Speaker 1: Harry Truman calls down to Atlanta and asks to be
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Speaker 1: updated on her status. Five days after the accident, she
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Speaker 1: dies August sixteenth, nineteen forty nine. My name is Malcolm Gladwell.
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Speaker 1: You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked
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Speaker 1: and misunderstood. This season we're talking about experiments, magic wand experiments,
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Speaker 1: natural experiments, formal experiments, And in this episode, I want
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Speaker 1: to offer up a thought experiment. Margaret Mitchell died in
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Speaker 1: a car accident, but I want you to consider an
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Speaker 1: alternate version of events, a version where we would never
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Speaker 1: have called what happened to her accident. Margaret Mitchell started
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Speaker 1: out as a journalist, living in a first floor apartment
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Speaker 1: in midtown Atlanta with her husband John marsh.
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Speaker 3: It's where Margaret ended up writing most of Gone.
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Speaker 1: With the wends, Jessica van Landide of the Historic Oakland Foundation,
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Speaker 1: is showing us around.
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Speaker 3: She's working and she's writing, and she reaggravates an ankle injury,
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Speaker 3: and she's pretty much what we would consider bed written.
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Speaker 4: Right.
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Speaker 3: She's staying at home and recovering, and the story goes.
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Speaker 3: She read through all of the books in the Atlanta library.
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Speaker 3: She just kept reading through, and John said, as he's
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Speaker 3: bringing these books home one day, he says, you've read
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Speaker 3: all the books there are, why don't you write your own?
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Speaker 3: And so he brings home a Remington typewriter. She sets
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Speaker 3: up kind of a little writing desk and she starts
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Speaker 3: the book.
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Speaker 1: Then one day she attends a lunch for a visiting
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Speaker 1: editor from New York, from the McMillan Publishing House. He's
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Speaker 1: come to Atlanta on a scouting trip.
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Speaker 3: Somebody invites her to kind of come along to the
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Speaker 3: luncheon and they are all kind of offering their books,
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Speaker 3: and it was a little bit of a snide remark
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Speaker 3: made about her, you know, something along the lines of, oh, Margaret,
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Speaker 3: I don't know why you're here. You don't have anything
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Speaker 3: to give them. Anyway, she you know, that probably did
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Speaker 3: for her what it might do for any of us
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Speaker 3: is the scout leaves and she runs home, and she
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Speaker 3: starts gathering up all of her manuscript.
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Speaker 1: Mitchell takes her draft of Gone with the Wind over
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Speaker 1: to the Scout's hotel so he can bring it back
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Speaker 1: with him to New York. There are so many pages
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Speaker 1: he has to buy another suitcase to carry them all.
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Speaker 1: As a writer, one question has been obsessing me. Did
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Speaker 1: she have copies when she if her house burns down,
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Speaker 1: does she lose her book?
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Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, she gives, she gives.
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Speaker 1: Does she give her only copy to the guy from McMillan, Yes,
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Speaker 1: Oh my god, this is caused me so much anxiety
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Speaker 1: and the.
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Speaker 3: Story gives gets on the train and loves it immediately.
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Speaker 3: At that point, she kind of realized that what she
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Speaker 3: had done and was like, oh no, I can I
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Speaker 3: have it back? And he's, you know, too late. He wanted,
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Speaker 3: he wanted the story.
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Speaker 1: Mitchell's manuscript survives and becomes an instant bestseller. A sweeping
6:40
Speaker 1: Gothic historical bodice ripper about a Southern beauty, Scarlett O'Hara,
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Speaker 1: her travails to the Civil War, her epic love affair
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Speaker 1: with a dashing rep Butler. The book wins the Politzer Prize.
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Speaker 1: By the way, if you want to know how Southerners
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Speaker 1: really felt about black people, you should read Gone with
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Speaker 1: the Wind. It's all there. The book gets snapped up
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Speaker 1: by Hollywood, Clark Gable and Vivian Lee, two giant stars
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Speaker 1: in the leading roles, and the result is, to this
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Speaker 1: day the biggest grossing movie of all time, bigger than
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Speaker 1: Star Wars, including what, for generations of moviegoers is the
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Speaker 1: most memorable of Hollywood lines.
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Speaker 5: You go whees, I go watch that do frankly might hear?
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Speaker 6: I don't give a damn.
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Speaker 1: The last words RTT Butler says to Scarlett O'Hara as
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Speaker 1: he prepares to leave her and Atlanta forever. The film
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Speaker 1: is a sensation, and when it opens in Atlanta pandemonium.
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Speaker 6: Three hundred thousand people lined Peachtree Street to watch the
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Speaker 6: motorcade come in from the Candler Airfield carrying the stars
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Speaker 6: Clark Gable, Vivian Lee, Olivia de Havilin.
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Speaker 1: Gary Palmertz, who wrote Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn, A
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Speaker 1: Wonderful History of Atlanta counts. The Gone with the Win
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Speaker 1: movie premiere in Atlanta in nineteen thirty nine as one
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Speaker 1: of the signature moments in the city's history.
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Speaker 6: You know, Mitchell came from an old Atlanta family. Her
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Speaker 6: two grandfathers had fought for the Confederacy. This was all
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Speaker 6: in her, the history of Atlanta, the history of the South.
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Speaker 1: After the showing, all the stars took turns saying a
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Speaker 1: few words into a live microphone to be broadcast far
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Speaker 1: and wide, and then Atlanta's own Margaret Mitchell took the stage,
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Speaker 1: standing up and speaking to America.
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Speaker 3: Ah thee alike.
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Speaker 4: It's felt a very great thing for Georgia.
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Speaker 6: And the South to see our.
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Speaker 4: Old confederates to come back to us. I felt that
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Speaker 4: way on this week, and I would factly given the
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Speaker 4: rev Yale.
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Speaker 5: And nine.
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Speaker 1: Ten years past. Her fame only grows until one August night,
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Speaker 1: while crossing Peachtree Street with her husband, Margaret Mitchell is
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Speaker 1: struck by a car driven by Hugh Gravitt, who is
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Speaker 1: speeding and who it turns out, had spent the afternoon
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Speaker 1: getting trunk. One of the iron laws of celebrity is
9:14
Speaker 1: that what happens to the famous matters more than what
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Speaker 1: happens to the rest of us. Fame magnifies impact A
9:23
Speaker 1: classic example would be what happened back in nineteen eighty
9:25
Speaker 1: five when the Hollywood star Rock Hudson announced that he
9:28
Speaker 1: had AIDS. It was a turning point in the public's
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Speaker 1: attitude about the disease. AIDS up to that point was
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Speaker 1: something that people ignored, or made tasteless jokes about, or
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Speaker 1: looked away in horror.
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Speaker 5: Word of Rock Hudson's death, of course, spread very quickly
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Speaker 5: today through the Hollywood community. Paul Dandridge of our System.
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Speaker 1: Hudson's death changed all that Hollywood stars rallied to the cause.
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Speaker 1: Congress passed a bill allocating hundreds of millions of dollars
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Speaker 1: to AIDS research.
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Speaker 4: The word, of course from mister Hudson's people, is that
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Speaker 4: he does not want flowers. He would rather see the
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Speaker 4: donation center, the American Federation for AIDS Research. That was
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Speaker 4: the organization that he helped out.
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Speaker 1: That wouldn't have happened if Hudson was a minor character actor.
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Speaker 4: He was a professional, He was a gentleman, He was
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Speaker 4: a kind man. The things being said by many people.
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Speaker 1: Margaret Mitchell in her day was a hundred times more
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Speaker 1: famous than Rock Hudson was in nineteen eighty five, she
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Speaker 1: was America's darling and she's hit by a drunk driver
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Speaker 1: while crossing the street. Now you would think, wouldn't you,
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Speaker 1: that the death of the most famous writer in America
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Speaker 1: at the hands of someone who'd been drinking beer all
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Speaker 1: afternoon would change public attitudes towards drunk driving. But it doesn't,
10:40
Speaker 1: and that puzzle deserves its own what if experiment. In
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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven, the legendary Hollywood mogul David O. Selznik
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Speaker 1: released A Star Is Born. I'm almost certain Margaret Mitchell
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Speaker 1: saw it. Everybody did. It was a big hit. David O.
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Speaker 1: Selznik would go on to be the producer who brought
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Speaker 1: Gom with the Win to the big screen. But there
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Speaker 1: is no other connection between Margaret Mitchell and A Star
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Speaker 1: is Born? Except what if there was? What if one
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Speaker 1: of those stories bled into another? That's the thought experiment.
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Speaker 1: You may have seen the version of A Star is
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Speaker 1: Born made in twenty eighteen starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga,
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Speaker 1: which was a massive critical and commercial success. In it
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Speaker 1: hard capean It's so hard.
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Speaker 7: Core the mean land.
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Speaker 6: See you.
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Speaker 7: He's just read then?
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Speaker 6: Now, Yeah, it's pretty good.
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Speaker 1: That version of A Star is Born was actually the
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Speaker 1: movie's fourth go round. A version was made in nineteen
12:02
Speaker 1: seventy six with Chris Christofferson and Barbara Streisand and before that,
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Speaker 1: Judy Garland and James may starred in a nineteen fifty
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Speaker 1: four remake. All the versions follow the same basic plot.
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Speaker 1: A young actress from some distant corner of the country
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Speaker 1: comes to Hollywood in search, of course, a fame and fortune.
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Speaker 1: She happens to catch the eye of a big star
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Speaker 1: named Norman may He gets her cast in one of
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Speaker 1: his movies. She changes her name to Vicky Lester becomes
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Speaker 1: a huge sensation. It's Cinderella, only with a twist. As
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Speaker 1: the startup rises, Norman Mayine falls. Here's the nineteen thirty
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Speaker 1: seven version with Frederick Marsh as Norman Mayine. Does Becky
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Speaker 1: Lester live here?
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Speaker 5: Yes, I got a package for him. I'll signed for it.
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Speaker 1: So who are you?
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Speaker 7: I'm her husband?
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Speaker 5: Oh sure, I'm right here, mister.
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Speaker 1: Lester, mister Lester, Oh my god. In Hollywood slang, the
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Speaker 1: husband of a star actress is called a handbag. Norman
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Speaker 1: Mayne becomes a handbag. When Norman Mane is at his lowest,
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Speaker 1: Vicki offers to sacrifice her own career in order to
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Speaker 1: save his. When Norman realizes that, he swims out into
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Speaker 1: the Malibu surf and takes his own life. A Star
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Speaker 1: Is Born, as I Said, was produced by David o' Salznick.
13:27
Speaker 1: Salznick was a whirlwind, a brilliant talker, a legendary litharia.
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Speaker 1: He smoked forty five packs of cigarettes a day, takes
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Speaker 1: amphetamines by the fistful gambols away his salary at the
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Speaker 1: Clover Club in Hollywood, writes mannic endless memos to his
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Speaker 1: underlings at three in the morning. Starting in the nineteen thirties,
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Speaker 1: Salznick had one of the greatest runs in Hollywood history,
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Speaker 1: won two Best Picture Oscars, does Alfred Hitchcock's first and
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Speaker 1: second American movies, Rebecca and Spellbound, and of course Margaret
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Speaker 1: Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. But back in nineteen thirty seven,
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Speaker 1: he was preoccupied with A Star Is Born.
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Speaker 8: My notion was to tell in terms of a rising star,
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Speaker 8: in order to have the Cinderella element with their path
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Speaker 8: crossing that of a falling star, to get the tragedy
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Speaker 8: of the of the X Star.
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Speaker 1: This is an interview with Salznick from the nineteen fifties.
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Speaker 8: And we created this more or less as we went along.
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Speaker 8: We started without anything more than than a vague idea
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Speaker 8: of where we were going, and it was really a
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Speaker 8: relatively easy script to write. I can say this that
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Speaker 8: ninety five percent of the dialogue in that picture was
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Speaker 8: actually straight out of life and was straight reportage, so
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Speaker 8: to speak.
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Speaker 1: A Star Is Born is a movie on one level
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Speaker 1: about alcohol. Maybe that's too reductive, but the whole plot
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Speaker 1: hinges on the fact that the star character, Norman Maine,
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Speaker 1: cannot control his drinking Salesnick is rumored to have based
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Speaker 1: Norman May on the comedian Frank Faye, who was notorious
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Speaker 1: in Hollywood as a miserable drunk, but Selznick could have
15:16
Speaker 1: just as easily based the character on his own brother,
15:19
Speaker 1: Myron Selznick, one of the biggest agents in Hollywood and
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Speaker 1: a huge alcoholic. Or maybe the bits about drinking, which
15:26
Speaker 1: are easily the best parts of the movie, are as
15:29
Speaker 1: good as they are because one of the screenwriters who
15:31
Speaker 1: worked on the script was Dorothy Parker, the famous wit
15:35
Speaker 1: and New Yorker writer who later drank herself to death.
15:38
Speaker 1: Or maybe they were the work of Parker's co writer
15:40
Speaker 1: and husband Alan Campbell, who would later die of a
15:44
Speaker 1: drug overdose. There were no shortage of addiction case studies
15:48
Speaker 1: in Hollywood in those years, so in a Star is born.
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Speaker 1: Norman Maine marries Vicki, and as her career soars, his
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Speaker 1: drinking gets worse. When Vicki wins an oscar, he crashes
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Speaker 1: the stage. I mean, can you imagine an angry husband
16:03
Speaker 1: crashing the stage at the Oscars?
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Speaker 6: Now?
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Speaker 5: I want to make a speech, gentlemen of the Academy
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Speaker 5: and fellow suckers. I got one of those ones for
16:13
Speaker 5: a best performance. They don't mean a thing. People get
16:16
Speaker 5: him every year. What I want is a special award,
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Speaker 5: something nobody else can get.
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Speaker 1: After that performance, Norman Mayne checks into a sanatorium, cleans
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Speaker 1: himself up. Then he goes to the racetrack, orders a
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Speaker 1: ginger ale, and runs into his old publicist Libby, who
16:34
Speaker 1: taunts him.
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Speaker 8: I don't feel sorry for you.
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Speaker 5: You've fixed yourself nice and comfortable.
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Speaker 6: You can live off your wife. Now she'll buy your
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Speaker 6: drinks and put up with you, even though nobody else will.
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Speaker 1: Norman takes a swing at Libby, a glancing blow. Libby
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Speaker 1: swings back Norman's on the floor, humiliated for you. I'm
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Speaker 1: Norman may Well, that's not my pall.
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Speaker 5: I don't bother to toasts him out.
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Speaker 6: He's harmless, all add mister Levy, if you'll go let
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Speaker 6: him go what you eat to We can't fight any
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Speaker 6: better than he can act.
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Speaker 1: Norman shaken, brushes himself off, picks up his hat, walks
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Speaker 1: painfully over to the bar, and falls off the wagon.
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Speaker 5: Give me a Scotch double. Leave the bottle here.
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Speaker 1: I'm going to read what happens next. After Norman's epic
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Speaker 1: drinking pinge, we see Norman's cars speeding along the Malabu Road.
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Speaker 1: We see Norman at the wheel, very drunk and singing
17:29
Speaker 1: should be coming round the mountain in a loud voice.
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Speaker 1: He comes around the curve much too fast, tires screech.
17:36
Speaker 1: He tries frantically to keep the big roadster on the
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Speaker 1: right side of the road, but can't. It drifts far
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Speaker 1: to the left. Another car appears on the curve, coming
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Speaker 1: in the opposite direction. Norman smashes into it, bounces off,
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Speaker 1: weaves down the road a little way and comes to
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Speaker 1: a stop. The other car pitches off the bank and
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Speaker 1: rolls to the edge of the water. And bursts into flames.
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Speaker 1: We see Norman come weaving up the road from his
18:03
Speaker 1: wrecked car to the edge of the bank. A thick
18:05
Speaker 1: stream of blood is running down the side of his face.
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Speaker 1: The fire illuminates his face brightly as he stands staring
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Speaker 1: down at the wreck. A look of sick horror comes
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Speaker 1: over him. Dorothy Parker and her husband wrote that scene,
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Speaker 1: and in nineteen thirty seven it would have stunned American audiences.
18:28
Speaker 1: Automobiles were really on your generation old at that point.
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Speaker 1: There wasn't yet a moral vocabulary around what happened when
18:36
Speaker 1: an impaired driver killed someone with their car. People in
18:42
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven didn't talk about drunk driving. Prohibition had
18:46
Speaker 1: just ended four years earlier, and attitudes towards drinking had
18:49
Speaker 1: swung hard in the opposite direction. Judges in the nineteen
18:53
Speaker 1: thirties rarely sent people to jail for drunk driving. Prosecutors
18:57
Speaker 1: rarely filed charges. The police officer who caught you drunk
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Speaker 1: driving knew that the likelihood of anything happening was so
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Speaker 1: low it was pointless for him to even arrest you.
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Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty nine, American Medical Association put out guidelines
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Speaker 1: on drunk driving and said that the threshold for criminal
19:14
Speaker 1: conviction should be point one five. Understand that right now
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Speaker 1: most American states have a threshold of half. That point
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Speaker 1: one five is wasted. I'm going to guess that ninety
19:27
Speaker 1: nine percent of you listening to this podcast have never
19:31
Speaker 1: blown point one five, not even on that night in
19:34
Speaker 1: freshman year when you did one too many tequila shots
19:37
Speaker 1: and ended up with a hangover that lasted into the
19:40
Speaker 1: next week.
19:43
Speaker 9: Yeah, it was. It was just passivity throughout the system.
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Speaker 1: I called up Baron Lerner, who teaches at NYU Medical School.
19:50
Speaker 1: He wrote a fascinating history of drunk driving called One
19:53
Speaker 1: for the Road.
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Speaker 9: So that the old line about the judges was, you
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Speaker 9: know that the judges themselves drank and drove, so they
20:02
Speaker 9: didn't want to call attention to the issue. The police
20:04
Speaker 9: were frustrated to thee at least the ones who were
20:07
Speaker 9: devoted to public safety were from frustrated that there was
20:09
Speaker 9: no prosecution.
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Speaker 1: Well, it's more than that word you use right now
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Speaker 1: as passivity, And I was thinking about it seems more
20:17
Speaker 1: than that in a certain sense, because you talk a
20:20
Speaker 1: lot about how there was a feeling that of an
20:23
Speaker 1: accident that happens because the driver is under the influence
20:26
Speaker 1: of alcohol is somehow unintentional that you can't hold the
20:31
Speaker 1: driver responsible in a kind of moral sense for their
20:34
Speaker 1: actions while they were drunk, which is really weird to
20:38
Speaker 1: me because implicit in that is an acknowledgment that they
20:41
Speaker 1: are impaired. So it's not always saying, oh, you can
20:46
Speaker 1: drive just as well drunk as sober. No, they're not
20:50
Speaker 1: saying that. They're saying you absolutely are impaired. It's just
20:52
Speaker 1: that we're not going to hold you responsible for it. Yeah,
20:55
Speaker 1: it's weird.
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Speaker 9: I thought it was weird, but it was so commonplace.
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Speaker 9: And I'm glad you mentioned the word accident. Why if
21:03
Speaker 9: you go and drink too much and you willingly go
21:07
Speaker 9: in your car when you know you're not supposed to,
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Speaker 9: and you crash into someone or something and there's damage
21:12
Speaker 9: and hopefully not death, that's still called an accident. It
21:15
Speaker 9: was called an accident in the nineteen thirties, and it's
21:18
Speaker 9: still too often called an accident, although people now try
21:21
Speaker 9: to get us to use a different word, the other phrase,
21:24
Speaker 9: wrong place, at the wrong time, all these notions that well,
21:29
Speaker 9: just you know, if that person hadn't been crossing the street.
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Speaker 9: Sure the driver was drunk, but you know, if they
21:35
Speaker 9: hadn't been out so late at night and crossing the street,
21:37
Speaker 9: this wouldn't happen. Sort of bad luck for the drunk
21:40
Speaker 9: driver in a contorted sort of way. And some people
21:44
Speaker 9: used to make the analogy. Well, it wasn't like they
21:47
Speaker 9: put a gun in their pocket and went out and
21:50
Speaker 9: then shot someone. They didn't mean to do this. They
21:53
Speaker 9: were just having a couple of drinks at the bar
21:55
Speaker 9: and wanted to get home safe. Well they're actually that's
21:58
Speaker 9: actually wrong. It is like putting a gun in your pocket.
22:09
Speaker 1: If you want to get a sense of how strange
22:11
Speaker 1: attitudes were towards drunk driving in the late nineteen thirties,
22:14
Speaker 1: you should watch Topper. Topper was a big hit in
22:18
Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen thirty seven, a comedy starring a
22:21
Speaker 1: young Carrie Grant as a bon vivon named George. Grant
22:25
Speaker 1: and his wife Marian played by Constance Bennett, are a young,
22:29
Speaker 1: rich couple who spend all their time dancing and drinking.
22:33
Speaker 1: After another of partying, they take a drive much too fast.
22:48
Speaker 1: They crashed the car. George and Marian both die and
22:52
Speaker 1: become ghosts. Stranded on earth because they've done nothing to
22:56
Speaker 1: merit going to heaven. So as ghosts, they make a
22:59
Speaker 1: plan to redeem themselves. They will rescue their friend Topper
23:03
Speaker 1: from his boring life, how by teaching Topper how to drink,
23:08
Speaker 1: which they proceed to do, and then all three of them, George,
23:11
Speaker 1: Marian and Topper have another car crash, and Topper's take
23:15
Speaker 1: home lesson is that he needs to keep living it up.
23:19
Speaker 5: Well, I won't go back why I won't do it,
23:22
Speaker 5: won't do what? I won't go back to the routine.
23:25
Speaker 1: Topper perfectly captures the spirit of the times. The country
23:29
Speaker 1: is in the midst of the depression. A movie was
23:31
Speaker 1: supposed to be in Escape Carry Grant's character wants his
23:35
Speaker 1: friend Topper to drink away his troubles, which is what
23:38
Speaker 1: audiences wanted in nineteen thirty seven. Topper made sense in
23:42
Speaker 1: that context. But then at exactly the same time comes
23:47
Speaker 1: A Star is Born. Drunk drivers do not live happily
23:51
Speaker 1: ever after. In A Star is Born, drunk drivers face
23:54
Speaker 1: consequences for their actions. Actually, let me rephrase that A
23:59
Speaker 1: Star Is Born is almost a tragedy where drunk drivers
24:03
Speaker 1: face consequences for their actions. That scene I read to
24:07
Speaker 1: you earlier, or Norman Mayane drunkenly crashes into another car
24:11
Speaker 1: and looks on in horror as blood streams down his face.
24:15
Speaker 1: That scene, the moral center of the original movie, gets
24:18
Speaker 1: taken out at the last moment. Salsnick was notorious for
24:24
Speaker 1: demanding multiple rewrites of his films, and he was unhappy
24:27
Speaker 1: with the third act of Dorothy Parker's script, the one
24:30
Speaker 1: that had the car crash scene. Salsnick turns to two
24:34
Speaker 1: would be screenwriters on his staff, Bud Schulberg and Ring
24:37
Speaker 1: Lardner junior. Schaalberg is twenty two at the time and
24:41
Speaker 1: working as a script reader, and Lardner is twenty one
24:44
Speaker 1: and working as an intern in the publicity department. Both
24:48
Speaker 1: would go on to win their own Oscars, but at
24:51
Speaker 1: the time they're just kids. Salznick doesn't care. Lardner and
24:55
Speaker 1: Sholberg look over the third act of A Star is
24:58
Speaker 1: Born and writes Selznick a memo one type written sheet
25:02
Speaker 1: about the movie's internal logic and what it demands. Quote.
25:08
Speaker 1: Her proposed sacrifice, overheard by Norman, offers no great temptation
25:13
Speaker 1: to him because there is no possibility of a comeback
25:16
Speaker 1: for him. If he didn't kill himself, he would remain
25:19
Speaker 1: a bomb and probably a jailbird. His suicide would still
25:23
Speaker 1: be that of a hopeless drunk trying to find a
25:26
Speaker 1: way out. Selznik is convinced. On November sixth, he writes
25:31
Speaker 1: his production supervisor, would you please advise the necessary departments
25:36
Speaker 1: that the automobile accident scene is out. In its place
25:41
Speaker 1: we get a very different ending. Norman goes on a
25:45
Speaker 1: bender at the racetrack. Then he disappears for four days.
25:48
Speaker 1: Turns out he's been arrested for drunken driving, crashing his
25:52
Speaker 1: car into a tree, and assaulting a police officer. The
25:56
Speaker 1: judge gives him a tongue lashing.
25:58
Speaker 5: You've come pretty low, haven't you. There isn't a man
26:01
Speaker 5: here who's had the advantages you've had. Look what you've
26:03
Speaker 5: done with him. You're nothing but the nearest possible drunk
26:06
Speaker 5: driving about the streets with the power to inflict ye
26:09
Speaker 5: have for injury on emicent people. I think we'd better
26:12
Speaker 5: deny you that barber a while. Nither days the set
26:15
Speaker 5: of jail.
26:17
Speaker 1: But then Norman's beloved comes running up to the front
26:19
Speaker 1: of the courtroom.
26:21
Speaker 6: Please wait, I'm his wife.
26:24
Speaker 5: Yes, I recognize him as Lester.
26:27
Speaker 6: Please, Judge, I promise you this won't happen again.
26:32
Speaker 5: I'll be responsible for him.
26:35
Speaker 1: The judge relents, suspends Norman's sentence, lets him go free,
26:40
Speaker 1: and we have, in place of the morally revolutionary moment
26:44
Speaker 1: in Dorothy Parker's original script, just another nineteen thirty seven
26:48
Speaker 1: ending where a man drives blind, drunk and hits a tree,
26:53
Speaker 1: where the law makes a half hearted attempt to hold
26:56
Speaker 1: him accountable, only to give up in the face of
26:58
Speaker 1: the celebrity wife saying she can save him, and where
27:02
Speaker 1: the drunk driver faces no consequences for his behavior except
27:06
Speaker 1: a bit of fleeting humiliation, and then he commits suicide.
27:11
Speaker 1: Only it's not an act of shame and moral defeat.
27:14
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate sacrifice for the woman he loves. David O.
27:21
Speaker 1: Selznick brings in two kids from down the hall to
27:24
Speaker 1: fix his picture, and they scale back its ambitions so
27:27
Speaker 1: far that it becomes almost unrecognizable. So the what if experiment,
27:34
Speaker 1: Let's imagine what would have happened if Dorothy Parker's original
27:37
Speaker 1: subversive version had made it to the big screen. The
27:50
Speaker 1: driver who hit Margaret Mitchell, Hugh Gravit spends two years
27:54
Speaker 1: in prison on manslaughter charges. Then he moves to a
27:57
Speaker 1: small town outside Atlanta. He was still living there decades
28:01
Speaker 1: later when the journalist Gary Pomerantz tracked him down.
28:05
Speaker 6: The door opened and there stood you grab it. He
28:10
Speaker 6: was seventy one years old, and he was gaunt, read thin,
28:17
Speaker 6: cloudy eyes, not moving well, smoking a cigarette, and he
28:23
Speaker 6: smiled and said good morning.
28:25
Speaker 1: They sat outside in his yard and talked for a
28:27
Speaker 1: few hours.
28:28
Speaker 6: One of the things that struck me most about him
28:32
Speaker 6: was that it wasn't just that he'd hit someone famous.
28:36
Speaker 6: He repeated several times to me, I hit a woman.
28:42
Speaker 6: I hit a woman, and it was the worst thing
28:45
Speaker 6: he could have imagined. And again he must have said three,
28:49
Speaker 6: four or five times, I'd rather it had been me
28:52
Speaker 6: instead of her.
28:53
Speaker 1: Do you think he was drinking?
28:56
Speaker 6: Oh well, he told me he was drinking. I don't
28:58
Speaker 6: know the amount. Obviously, this is forty two years later.
29:03
Speaker 6: I think he just wanted to get his view out
29:08
Speaker 6: and it wasn't to him. Alcohol wasn't a part of this.
29:13
Speaker 1: Alcohol wasn't a part of this. That's what's so strange
29:17
Speaker 1: about going back through the accounts of markeat Mitchell's death
29:20
Speaker 1: the fact that his drinking might have been the reason
29:23
Speaker 1: he was speeding, somehow didn't seem to occur to many people.
29:26
Speaker 1: A police officer at the scene later testified that he
29:29
Speaker 1: had smelled alcohol on Gravit's breath. Gravit himself did not
29:33
Speaker 1: deny that he had been drinking, but no one gave
29:35
Speaker 1: him a breathalyzer. For goodness sake, the man had over
29:38
Speaker 1: twenty previous traffic citations. Gravit stood for half an hour
29:42
Speaker 1: at the scene before anyone even talked to him. After
29:45
Speaker 1: his arrest, a picture of Gravit runs in all the newspapers.
29:49
Speaker 1: He's standing next to his arresting officers with a big
29:52
Speaker 1: smirk on his face. He's a reckless menace. His license
29:56
Speaker 1: should have been revoked years before, but in the mentality
30:00
Speaker 1: of the time, the driver was irrelevant. He was as
30:04
Speaker 1: unlucky as the victim. An editorial in the Atlanta Journal
30:10
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty nine read quote for Gravit as a person,
30:14
Speaker 1: we have the utmost sympathy. He surely did not intend
30:18
Speaker 1: to kill anyone, and tragedy will haunt him as long
30:21
Speaker 1: as he lives. It was an accident, wasn't it? These
30:25
Speaker 1: things happen.
30:28
Speaker 9: Here's a beloved author, I mean the author have gone
30:30
Speaker 9: with the wind like beloved. Not especially in Atlanta. People
30:35
Speaker 9: were man and frustrated that she died, But there was
30:38
Speaker 9: also sympathy for the driver.
30:40
Speaker 1: This is Baron Lerner again, author of One for the Road.
30:43
Speaker 9: People said he must feel horrible about what he did.
30:47
Speaker 9: He's killed such a famous woman. We need to have
30:50
Speaker 9: sympathy for him. You know, you look at this and
30:53
Speaker 9: you say, what's going on here? Like the tables are reversed.
30:59
Speaker 9: He was completely at fault, speeding, probably drinking, and yet
31:04
Speaker 9: in an odd way, Mitchell partly becomes the blame.
31:10
Speaker 1: Lerner said. The detail from this whole story that stays
31:13
Speaker 1: with him is that Gravitt and his wife came to
31:16
Speaker 1: Grady Hospital with flowers for Mitchell as she lay in
31:19
Speaker 1: a coma.
31:20
Speaker 9: It was seen at the time like, i''re really sorry
31:23
Speaker 9: this happened. We want to give you some flowers that
31:25
Speaker 9: make it better. There was unbelievable tolerance of an activity
31:29
Speaker 9: that shouldn't have been tolerated.
31:31
Speaker 1: It isn't just that he brought flowers. There's an article
31:33
Speaker 1: in one of the local newspapers where a reporter goes
31:36
Speaker 1: to visit Gravit in jail and finds him praying a
31:39
Speaker 1: Bible opened to the Book of Samuel on his bed.
31:42
Speaker 1: Gravit tells the reporter, I wanted to go to her funeral,
31:46
Speaker 1: but that was impossible, And then Gravit says, God knows
31:51
Speaker 1: it was an accident.
31:52
Speaker 9: People also after the fact were saying, with no justification
31:57
Speaker 9: at all, well, Margaret Mitchell would have forgiven him right.
32:01
Speaker 1: How did they know right?
32:03
Speaker 9: But that was the nature of the entity at the time.
32:07
Speaker 1: It would be the nineteen cents, seventies and nineteen eighties
32:10
Speaker 1: before Americans started having real conversations about drinking and driving.
32:14
Speaker 1: In the interim, many people needlessly died. Could A Star
32:18
Speaker 1: Is Born, as originally written, have started that conversation earlier?
32:23
Speaker 1: Maybe that's what movies do at their best. The shocking
32:27
Speaker 1: sight of a drunk man struggling to realize he's just
32:30
Speaker 1: killed people could have been in the public's mind for
32:33
Speaker 1: more than a decade by the time Margaret Mitchell died,
32:36
Speaker 1: And maybe by the time a drunken Hugh Gravit hits
32:39
Speaker 1: the country's most beloved author, America would have been ready
32:42
Speaker 1: to say the man who greens down Peachtree is not
32:46
Speaker 1: a victim. He's a criminal. But we'll never know, of course,
32:51
Speaker 1: because David O. Selznick never gave the film the ending
32:55
Speaker 1: it deserved. Incidentally, Ardner and Schulberg write in their memo
33:04
Speaker 1: to Selznick, whether or not you show them mangled bodies,
33:08
Speaker 1: the death of two innocent people as a step in
33:10
Speaker 1: the downfall of A Star seems a little callous. Sure,
33:15
Speaker 1: let us instead have the blind drunk Norman Mayne hid
33:19
Speaker 1: a tree and be rescued in court by his wife.
33:24
Speaker 1: Hugh Gravitt and Norman Mayne were both tests of our
33:26
Speaker 1: tolerance for drunk driving, and in both cases, society looked
33:31
Speaker 1: at their behavior and shrugged ring. Lardner Junior and Bud
33:35
Speaker 1: Schulberg rewrote another scene in David O. Selznick's A Star
33:39
Speaker 1: Is Born, the very last scene in the movie. For
33:42
Speaker 1: the story to work, Vicky Lester somehow needed to reconcile
33:46
Speaker 1: her own rise with her husband's fall. How should she
33:50
Speaker 1: do that? Lardner and Schilberg's solution was simple, a single line.
33:56
Speaker 1: We see Vicky Lester at the moment of her greatest
33:58
Speaker 1: professional triumph at the premiere of the movie. She has
34:02
Speaker 1: just start in with her new found professional freedom. A
34:05
Speaker 1: reporter puts a microphone in front.
34:07
Speaker 6: Of her ms left.
34:14
Speaker 7: This microphone is on an international hooker throughout the world.
34:18
Speaker 5: Your fans are hoping that you will say a few words.
34:19
Speaker 1: To There's a dramatic pause. The music swells. Vicky looks
34:24
Speaker 1: out at her audience and reveals the bargain she has
34:27
Speaker 1: made with her dead husband's memory. She will stand by
34:31
Speaker 1: her man. She will treat his sacrifice as heroic. She
34:35
Speaker 1: will bury her identity in his.
34:38
Speaker 5: Hello, everybody, this is missus Norman Maine.
34:50
Speaker 1: Frankly, my dear you know the rest Revisionist History is
35:12
Speaker 1: produced by Elouise Linton, Leeman Gestu and Jacob Smith, with
35:16
Speaker 1: Tolly Emlin and Harrison VJ. Choi. Our editor is Julia Bartner.
35:21
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Miila Bell. Original scoring by Luis Karra,
35:26
Speaker 1: mastering by Flon Williams and engineering by Nina Lawrence. Fact
35:30
Speaker 1: checking by Keishaw Williams. Special thanks to the screenwriter Charles Randolph,
35:35
Speaker 1: also close friend of mine who is a big help
35:38
Speaker 1: in framing this episode, with Mike Berbiglia, Virginia Huffern and
35:41
Speaker 1: Angus Fletcher and Baron Lerner, who joined me for our
35:45
Speaker 1: live show on the Star's Board, and also our live
35:48
Speaker 1: show producer Kate Downer.
35:51
Speaker 7: I'm Malcolm Glava, revisionist history listeners. This is Eddie Alterman,
36:12
Speaker 7: host of one of Pushkin's newest shows, Car Show. On
36:16
Speaker 7: our season one finale, Malcolm and I go car shopping
36:19
Speaker 7: for what's affectionately known as a family haller. We crossed
36:24
Speaker 7: test a four hundred and twenty nine horsepower German suv,
36:27
Speaker 7: a beautiful Swedish luxury wagon, and the dreaded Mini van.
36:33
Speaker 7: Malcolm's choice may surprise you or not. He'll just have
36:36
Speaker 7: to listen to find out. Here's a clip from the
36:39
Speaker 7: episode Car Shopping with Malcolm Gladwell.
36:43
Speaker 1: So all I have right now is a twenty fourteen
36:48
Speaker 1: BMWX one And.
36:50
Speaker 7: Now most people would say that's perfectly sufficient, but I
36:53
Speaker 7: wouldn't say that.
36:54
Speaker 1: You would not say that. I have tried it on
37:00
Speaker 1: a airport run for a holiday with my you know,
37:06
Speaker 1: with my new plus one, so three of us, and
37:10
Speaker 1: it was, you know, the amount of I had totally
37:12
Speaker 1: underestimated the amount of stuff that now, I mean, this
37:17
Speaker 1: is not in the last ten years. The amount of
37:19
Speaker 1: stuff must have doubled that you're required to carry with you.
37:22
Speaker 1: And the seats. Car seats are just ginormous.
37:25
Speaker 7: They're huge. Yeah, they're fortress like.
37:28
Speaker 1: They were just like so yeah, so I clearly what
37:31
Speaker 1: I have right now is insufficient.
37:35
Speaker 7: That's me and Malcolm Gladwell a couple of months ago,
37:38
Speaker 7: talking shop, just like we always seem to do. Talking
37:42
Speaker 7: shop is actually how we met. I still remember when
37:46
Speaker 7: I got that first call from him a few years ago.
37:49
Speaker 7: I was sitting at my desk in ann Arbor as
37:52
Speaker 7: editor in chief of Current Driver when my phone rang.
37:56
Speaker 7: I heard the dulcet tones. Malcolm introduced himself as a reader,
38:02
Speaker 7: which I could hardly believe because I was at that
38:06
Speaker 7: very moment breaking apart an oreo with my teeth. There
38:10
Speaker 7: was no way this mental giant red car magazine's. I
38:14
Speaker 7: was also prejudiced to believe that all intellectuals hated driving
38:18
Speaker 7: and thought all cars were yellow with a light on top.
38:22
Speaker 7: But this Canadian kid impressed me. He was talking torque
38:25
Speaker 7: curves and limited slip differentials. He said he was doing
38:29
Speaker 7: a show on unintended acceleration for the first season of
38:32
Speaker 7: his podcast, Revisionist History. Did we at Car and driver
38:36
Speaker 7: want to be featured on it. We sure did.
38:40
Speaker 1: Altamon hits the brakes firmly, smoothly, easily. We'd come to
38:44
Speaker 1: a halt.
38:45
Speaker 7: Throng was open. But now it was my chance to
38:49
Speaker 7: return the favor. Malcolm needed my guidance. He needed to know.
38:55
Speaker 1: How do I effectively move around a young family and
38:59
Speaker 1: all the stuff that comes with it.
39:02
Speaker 7: Malcolm had just become a father and couldn't decide what
39:05
Speaker 7: kind of car to get for his family. His small
39:10
Speaker 7: first generation BMW X one SUV may have been perfect
39:15
Speaker 7: ideal even for a bachelor, but if you're hauling kids
39:18
Speaker 7: in their tackle, a glorified hot hatchback like the X
39:22
Speaker 7: one isn't going to cut it. So I had a
39:25
Speaker 7: pairachute in there. And by parachute, I mean pack my
39:28
Speaker 7: stuff into a mini van in Detroit and drive six
39:31
Speaker 7: hundred miles east to meet Malcolm in Hudson, New York,
39:34
Speaker 7: home to the Pushkin offices, and together we would go
39:37
Speaker 7: on a quest to find Malcolm macarr for the pastoral
39:40
Speaker 7: life with a child, maybe even two eventually. There's a
39:45
Speaker 7: great PGA heroic mind. He says, having one kid is
39:48
Speaker 7: like having a dog. Having two kids is like having
39:51
Speaker 7: a zoo. Yeah, everything's exponentially greater. You have to have
39:57
Speaker 7: way more stuff. And yeah, if you're flying and getting
40:01
Speaker 7: the whole family packed up to go on an airplane,
40:05
Speaker 7: you need your car seat for the plane and for
40:08
Speaker 7: the cab and all that, and you need your stroller,
40:10
Speaker 7: and there's just so much stuff. It's like packing a
40:13
Speaker 7: small army.
40:13
Speaker 1: Here's my worry. My worries are as well. I'm totally
40:16
Speaker 1: spoiled by I love this car to death, my X one. Yeah,
40:21
Speaker 1: it has that beautiful creamium line six, and it has
40:24
Speaker 1: the hydraulic steering. It's got like old school. The steering
40:28
Speaker 1: on this car is so beautiful. And every time I
40:31
Speaker 1: get into any other car, regardless of the price, I
40:35
Speaker 1: don't think it steers as well as my as my
40:37
Speaker 1: ex one. So I'm resigned to the fact I'm surrendering.
40:41
Speaker 7: So that's a hard thing to give up, for sure.
40:45
Speaker 7: But you know, deciding which way to go for a
40:49
Speaker 7: people mover, for a family car, for you know, something
40:52
Speaker 7: that has a lot of space, it's really sort of
40:54
Speaker 7: a deep psychological question.
40:57
Speaker 8: It is.
40:58
Speaker 1: I now, I'm a child, as I'm sure all every
41:01
Speaker 1: member of my generation is. I'm a child of the
41:03
Speaker 1: station wagon. Yeah, I'm sure you were. I was what
41:07
Speaker 1: was what were your family wagons?
41:09
Speaker 4: Uh?
41:10
Speaker 7: Ultomobile custom Cruiser. Uh that was the biggie with the
41:13
Speaker 7: slide out tailgate and the you know, the the rear
41:17
Speaker 7: facing third row where you could put the window down
41:20
Speaker 7: and inhale the exhaust and you could, you know, make
41:23
Speaker 7: faces at the serial killers behind you. So unsafe. And
41:30
Speaker 7: my mom never got a minivan.
41:32
Speaker 1: Our car growing up, our family wagon was a in
41:35
Speaker 1: the beginning was a Poujo four O four.
41:38
Speaker 7: So yeah, I mean our moms drove wagons, our parents
41:40
Speaker 7: drove wagons. But then the minivan revolution came and sort
41:45
Speaker 7: of reordered the family car universe. Now, in one fell swoop,
41:50
Speaker 7: the Chrysler minivan destroyed the station wagon market, but then
41:56
Speaker 7: the station then the minivan market itself got destroyed by
41:59
Speaker 7: the suv. And so that's what we're going to look
42:03
Speaker 7: at today. We're going to look at these three formats,
42:06
Speaker 7: like the evolution of the family car from the station
42:09
Speaker 7: wagon to the minivan to the suv. Which one is
42:13
Speaker 7: best for you? For me?
42:15
Speaker 1: So we have what we have a we have a
42:16
Speaker 1: representative of each class. Yes, we have a no I'm
42:20
Speaker 1: not committing to these particular cars. I'm we're just trying
42:22
Speaker 1: to choose the class.
42:25
Speaker 7: That's right. We're just towing into the frigid waters of
42:28
Speaker 7: automotive responsibility here. It's a tough adjustment for a guy
42:31
Speaker 7: who has an addiction to performance cars and the speeding
42:34
Speaker 7: tickets to prove it. So I used a categorical approach,
42:39
Speaker 7: positioning his options not as specific cars that might be
42:43
Speaker 7: too depressing, but in the abstract the question is cautiously broad.
42:49
Speaker 7: Where on the family car evolutionary ladder will our test subject,
42:53
Speaker 7: Malcolm Land will he go retro and choose a wagon
42:57
Speaker 7: like his parents did, or will he partake of the
43:01
Speaker 7: other options in the marketplace, the minivan or the suv.
43:06
Speaker 7: We have three vehicles for you to check out.
43:09
Speaker 1: Okay, okay.
43:09
Speaker 7: The first is the Kia Carnival. Oh do you know
43:13
Speaker 7: what that is?
43:14
Speaker 1: Yes?
43:14
Speaker 5: I do.
43:14
Speaker 1: I have been looking at them online really.
43:20
Speaker 7: Furtively.
43:21
Speaker 1: For furtively, Well, I like the idea that it doesn't
43:26
Speaker 1: it's a minivan that doesn't look like a minivan, which
43:28
Speaker 1: is you.
43:29
Speaker 7: Know, but it's all minivan. I mean, you're gonna see.
43:33
Speaker 7: I can't wait for your experience with it and your reaction.
43:36
Speaker 7: The second is the wagon, the thing the minivan killed.
43:41
Speaker 7: The wagon that we have is a Volvo V ninety
43:45
Speaker 7: cross Country.
43:47
Speaker 1: Ah, so this is the jacked up one.
43:49
Speaker 6: Yes.
43:49
Speaker 7: Yeah, they're all sort of jacked up. They all want
43:52
Speaker 7: to be SUVs now. They all have kind of exaggerated fenders,
43:57
Speaker 7: higher ride heights. You know, it's interesting because the way
44:02
Speaker 7: that the cargo area is packaged in wagons is usually
44:07
Speaker 7: pretty good for getting kids stuff in there, because it's
44:10
Speaker 7: it's longer, it's generally wider, and it's it's more horizontal
44:15
Speaker 7: than vertical. And then we come to the suv. The
44:20
Speaker 7: vehicle once used for rock crawling and mud bogging has
44:23
Speaker 7: been brought to heal. The modern day suv is the
44:27
Speaker 7: de facto family car for many, but the one we're
44:31
Speaker 7: going to drive today blurs the line between family car
44:34
Speaker 7: and granite bowl. Eyede. It's the Mercedes AMG G L
44:38
Speaker 7: E fifty three, and it is very red, very fast,
44:43
Speaker 7: and very very expensive.
44:46
Speaker 1: I'll give you my pre ranking of what I believe
44:50
Speaker 1: a priori what I believe my preferences will be. The
44:53
Speaker 1: one I'm most dubious of is the overpowered suv. It's
45:01
Speaker 1: mostly for kind of like symbolic sociological reasons perfect. I
45:05
Speaker 1: don't want to be the jackass in the amg AMG Right.
45:10
Speaker 1: I briefly had a Boxter, which was the most beautiful
45:14
Speaker 1: drive I've ever had, and I got rid of it
45:16
Speaker 1: because I was the jackass in the Boxter. I didn't
45:19
Speaker 1: want to be the jackass in the box I understand that,
45:22
Speaker 1: so I worry that jackass factor high. Also, I have
45:27
Speaker 1: run a foul of the police so many times up here,
45:30
Speaker 1: and the temptation to speed in this thing is going
45:33
Speaker 1: to be, I'm guessing overwhelming. Second, I think I'm quite
45:38
Speaker 1: drawn to station Megans. They have great symbolic meaning for me.
45:42
Speaker 1: I think they're immensely practical. I'm a little dubious of
45:46
Speaker 1: these new fangled Volvos. I wouldn't mind something that was
45:49
Speaker 1: just a proper B six or V eight in it.
45:53
Speaker 1: And then I think I'm probably most enthusiastic about the
45:56
Speaker 1: prospect of a Miniat.
45:58
Speaker 7: Interesting because the sort of underlying thing here is that
46:03
Speaker 7: we're going from the emotional to the rational. We're going
46:07
Speaker 7: from you know, this crazy steroidal Mercedes. It's all jacked
46:12
Speaker 7: up and it's got like, you know, nightclub lighting and everything,
46:16
Speaker 7: and it's red through the more rational station wagon, where
46:22
Speaker 7: the cargo package is a little bit more sane and
46:25
Speaker 7: makes a little bit more sense. It's all ower to
46:27
Speaker 7: the ground, but it's still fun to drive to the
46:30
Speaker 7: completely rational, which is the one box minivan. Not fun.
46:34
Speaker 1: I have no kind of status anxiety about driving a miniman.
46:39
Speaker 7: Well here's a really interesting point, and Dan Neil from
46:42
Speaker 7: the Wall Street Journal makes it all the time. He says,
46:45
Speaker 7: minivans are simples of virility. Sports cars are not minivans.
46:51
Speaker 7: Mean you've had kids, you've reproduced?
46:55
Speaker 1: Yes, yes they do.
46:56
Speaker 8: Yes.
46:59
Speaker 7: So that's our baseline. That's those are your pre existing biases.
47:04
Speaker 7: And you think you're a minivanman, I think I might
47:07
Speaker 7: be a minivanman. Yeah. I'm Eddie Alterman, and this is
47:18
Speaker 7: Car Show, my podcast about why we drive what we drive.
47:24
Speaker 7: On today's season finale, we asked the question, when it's
47:27
Speaker 7: time to trade in the fastcar for a family car,
47:30
Speaker 7: which do you choose? SUV, minivan or station wagon, Papa Bear,
47:37
Speaker 7: Mama Bear or baby Bear. After the break, Malcolm and
47:42
Speaker 7: I hit the road with a shit ton of baby
47:44
Speaker 7: stuff in the backseat. Thanks for listening. You can find
47:57
Speaker 7: Car Show with a few more Malcolm cameos, Wherever you
48:01
Speaker 7: like to listen,