{"id":86728,"date":"2015-06-17T11:00:45","date_gmt":"2015-06-17T15:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=86728"},"modified":"2015-06-17T10:53:03","modified_gmt":"2015-06-17T14:53:03","slug":"so-big","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/17\/so-big\/","title":{"rendered":"So Big"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"sobig\"<\/a>

Detail from the poster for So Big<\/i>, Warner Bros., 1953.<\/p><\/div>\n

The other night, as part of their Sterling Hayden festival, Turner Classic Movies aired the 1953 film So Big<\/a><\/em>, an adaptation of Edna Ferber\u2019s Pulitzer-winning\u00a0epic of the same name<\/a>. The movie, like its source, chronicles the struggles of a determined Illinois farm woman (played by Jane Wyman) and her more worldly son. The title is an innocuous reference to the little boy\u2019s childhood nickname\u2014but initially Warner Bros. publicists decided to sex things up a bit. Posters displayed a hunky illustrated Hayden look-alike in a passionate clinch with a smaller woman and the tagline, \u201cHe stood there so big \u2026 she was ready to forget she\u2019d ever been a lady.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no secret that the fifties were a good time for playing fast-and-loose with the classics. In The Seven Year Itch<\/em>, famously, filmmakers had plenty of fun with the idea<\/a>. We see Tom Ewell\u2019s pulp book publisher examining a cover in his office; it\u2019s a paperback edition of Louisa May Alcott\u2019s Little Women <\/em>featuring four busty, well-endowed twentieth-century dames and the tagline \u201cSECRETS OF A GIRLS DORMITORY!<\/small>\u201d Ewell scrutinizes the cover art, produces a pen, and decisively lowers each neckline by three inches. <\/p>\n

Where now we look for the refuge of a Kindle to hide<\/em> a trashy cover, they were, once upon a time, something of a bait and switch; lurid art could fool readers into cracking open a work of serious literature. (Of course, we still get that to some degree in the form of those \u201cNow a Major Motion Picture\u201d tie-in editions, but I can\u2019t imagine the art directors have quite so much fun.) Every title becomes an insinuation, every heroine a temptress. Don\u2019t believe me? Check out this hunky Gatsby<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re all used to the excesses of camp, and the cynicism and fun of midcentury marketing. Heck, the nifty Pulp! The Classics<\/a> imprint has made its name on it. We can\u2019t get enough of this form of accessible irony! But even by jaded modern standards, the vintage pulp cover of For Esm\u00e9 with Love and Squalor <\/em>is shocking.<\/p>\n

If the publisher\u2019s goal was to highlight Salinger\u2019s rumored proclivities\u2014presumably not\u2014they could not have done so more clearly: the Esm\u00e9 of this paperback is a pouty sex kitten. If the story is about the power of innocence\u2014or even its charge\u2014this cover shows us a flat-eyed young woman in charge of her sexuality. It\u2019s not even Dolores Haze; it\u2019s Lolita by that book\u2019s final third.<\/p>\n

But maybe that\u2019s the point? The \u201clittle girl\u201d of Salinger\u2019s story has aged about six years; if this narrator is drawn to the fetching orphan, it\u2019s to a fully-fledged young woman, rather than a forbidden nymphet.<\/p>\n

Well, they probably just hoped people would think there was some sex in there. Those people would enjoy Salinger<\/em>, at any rate. Probably not So Big<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other night, as part of their Sterling Hayden festival, Turner Classic Movies aired the 1953 film So Big, an adaptation of Edna Ferber\u2019s Pulitzer-winning\u00a0epic of the same name. The movie, like its source, chronicles the struggles of a determined Illinois farm woman (played by Jane Wyman) and her more worldly son. The title is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[9899,18469,18471,910,81,747,9397,11982,18470,18468],"class_list":["post-86728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-covers","tag-edna-farber","tag-for-esme-with-love-and-squalor","tag-j-d-salinger","tag-movies","tag-novels","tag-posters","tag-pulp","tag-so-big","tag-sterling-hayden"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBring Back Trashy Covers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein recalls the cynical fun of midcentury art design.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/17\/so-big\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"So Big by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"June 17, 2015 \u2013 The other night, as part of their Sterling Hayden festival, Turner Classic Movies aired the 1953 film So Big, an adaptation of Edna Ferber\u2019s\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/17\/so-big\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-06-17T15:00:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/sobig.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"625\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"479\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sadie Stein\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/17\/so-big\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/17\/so-big\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Sadie Stein\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/a1aef49f81bfc540a37e03590f3bb4d9\"},\"headline\":\"So Big\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-06-17T15:00:45+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/17\/so-big\/\"},\"wordCount\":521,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/17\/so-big\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/sobig.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"covers\",\"Edna Farber\",\"For Esme with Love and Squalor\",\"J. 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