Apr 25, 2013

Bright Eyes [1934]

Directed by David Butler
Art Direction by Duncan Cramer & Albert Hogsett
Cinematography by Arthur C. Miller
Film Format: 35 mm Aspect Ratio: 1.37:1
Twentieth Century Fox


Shirley Temple spends a lot of time in the white tiled spaciousness of her single mother’s commodious workplace. Though it might otherwise be a place of unremitting labor, the enormous kitchen's gleaming surfaces and multiple points of entry help the uniformed staff serve as a surrogate family, which is what Shirley Temple movies were all about.
 

There is a double-door, "Monitor Top" refrigerator, (the Sub-Zero of its day), two ovens under an 8-burner electric stove, and what appears to be third, larger oven (for birthday cakes perhaps?) with broiler drawer below, two back doors and a water cooler in the pantry. And par for the course in any "aspirational" kitchen, a centrally located table with enough room to walk around.  Who wouldn’t feel safe and happy with cupboards this clean and ceilings this high?  Toiling away in a kitchen like this might even give us Bright Eyes.
 

(Art Director Duncan Cramer would go on to design for the television series My Three Sons, which also set much of its action in the immaculate and well-equipped kitchen of surrogate wife & mother Uncle Charlie to widower Steve Douglas).

 
Pantry slop sink at left
Streamlined servants' bell at upper right

Wall-recessed clock above a (third?) oven or is