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Movie Review: McLintock! (1963) [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-02-15
SPOILER ALERT!
Before reviewing a movie, I usually put my thoughts down first and only after that take a look at the reviews of professional critics. That is how I planned on proceeding with McLintock! (1963). Otherwise, I might conclude that others have already said all that can be said on the subject and that there is nothing for me to add. Also, there is the problem of inadvertent plagiarism. Try as I might, I am likely to find their opinions mingling with my own. And so it was that I fully intended to avoid doing any research until I had exhausted my own thoughts about that movie.
One of the things about McLintock! that caught my attention was its movie poster, where we see John Wayne spanking Maureen O’Hara, who is over his knee in her underwear, with the tagline, “Wallops the daylight out of every Western you’ve ever seen.” Although there are a lot of movies in which women are spanked, it is unusual to see it displayed on a movie poster.
I suppose it is appropriate at this point to distinguish between a spanking and a single pat on a woman’s derrière. In The Americanization of Emily (1964), for instance, there is a scene where James Garner gives Julie Andrews such a pat on her behind, and she turns around and slaps his face. On the other hand, in The Dentist (1932), W.C. Fields walks into the kitchen where his daughter is bent over, her head in the icebox, while she looks for something. He gives her a pat on the fanny, and she says, “Fifty pounds, please, and chop it fine.”
Regardless of how the woman reacts to such a pat, this is to be distinguished from a spanking, in which the man puts the woman over his knee and repeatedly whaps her on her butt. In movies up to and including McLintock! at least, such scenes are played for laughs, the spanking is what the woman needs, and it facilitates their romantic relationship.
However, before writing anything, I decided to do just a little research first. Big mistake! The first thing I came across was an essay by Andrew Heisel, “‘I Don’t Know Whether to Kiss You or Spank You’: A Half Century of Fear of an Unspanked Woman.” By the time I had finished reading it, I knew there was no point in trying to write anything original on the subject myself. Heisel had said it all.
The quotation in that title, by the way, is from Tumbling Tumbleweeds (1935). A clip from that movie can be seen as part of a compilation of spanking scenes in the movies at this YouTube link.
Apparently, it all began with Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Or maybe not. Heisel did his own research, which led him, and ultimately me, to an article on what he calls a “fetish site,” although the author of that article takes exception to that pejorative expression. I am referring to the essay “There Isn’t a Spanking Scene in… The Taming of the Shrew.” Long story short, the author argues that there is no spanking scene indicated in Shakespeare’s play, and there is good reason to believe that including such a scene in performances of that play is strictly a recent phenomenon. For example, in the movie version with Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, made in 1929, there is no spanking scene.
McLintock! is said to be a loose adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew, in which Maureen O’Hara plays Katherine, corresponding to Katherina in the play. However, there is no way John Wayne would have a name like Petruchio, so he is just G.W. McLintock. In any event, in line with the title of Heisel’s essay, Katherine is a much feared, unspanked woman, at least until the end of the movie, where she is rendered submissive and obedient. The spanking that produces this taming of her, however, was inspired not directly by Shakespeare’s play, but rather by an earlier movie in which there is such a spanking.
That movie would be Kiss Me Kate (1953), which also has a movie poster displaying the spanking that Howard Keel gives to Katheryn Grayson. Essentially, this is a movie about putting on a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew. It finesses the spanking issue by having Howard Keel as Fred Graham spank Katheryn Grayson as Lilli Vanessi during a performance on stage, rather than having Keel as Petruchio spank Grayson as Katherine.
I certainly learned a lot from the essays referred to above, but the result is that I am incapable writing my own review on the subject. All that is left is for me to recommend those essays, which I am pleased to do.
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