Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 2

November 18, 2025: AmericanStudying Rock (Hudson): The Doris Day Films

[OnNovember 17th, 1925, Roy HaroldScherer Jr.—better known as —was born.His iconic career and complex life open up a lot of American histories, so thisweek I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of them, leading up to a weekend post onother 20C gay celebrities who lived their lives in the closet.]

Oneinteresting AmericanStudies layer to each of the three romantic comedies Hudsonmade with his friendDoris Day.

1)     PillowTalk (1959): The premise of Hudson and Day’s first film together, whichbecame one of the biggest box office hits of the decade, is itself aninteresting window into a fascinating American history: Hudson’s Brad Allen andDay’s Jan Morrow don’t know each other but share a party line,a telephone line shared by multiple customers who have to wait for the line tobe free to make calls. But the more enduring AmericanStudies context for PillowTalk is that its director, MichaelGordon, had spent years on the blacklist due to his membership in theDepression-era GroupTheatre, and this was his first Hollywood film after getting the chance toreturn to the industry (thanks to an invite from influential producer ). Gordon likely sympathizedwith Hudson’s character’s desire to be someone else, a central facet of theromantic comedy’s hijinks.

2)     Lover Come Back (1961): Thesuccess of Pillow Talk almost ensured that there would be a follow-upfilm, and Hudson and Day (who both served as producers on Lover) made doublysure of it. Not surprisingly, the plot of Lover Come Back is strikinglysimilar to that of Pillow Talk, right down to Hudson’s Jerry Webster pretendingto be someone else in his initial interactions with Day’s Carol Templeton. Butwhat I do find very interesting is the profession of both those main characters—theyare two high-powered advertising executives at a pair of rival Madison Avenueagencies. I’m far from thefirst commentator to note that Lover is set in theexact historical moment on which MadMen would focus decades later, makingfor a compelling comparison between Hudson’s womanizing ad exec and Don Draperand colleagues. Even more intriguing is that in the 1961 film Day’s character couldbe a high-powered exec, while the same role took Mad Men’s Peggy Olson many seasons toachieve.

3)     Send Me No Flowers (1964): Thethird Hudson-Day film was also the last, perhaps because it was the leastwell-received and successful (there was talkof a 1980s sequel to Pillow Talk, but unfortunately it didn’t happenbefore Hudson’s illness and passing). Based on NormanBasarch and Carroll Moore’s 1960 play of the same name, Send Me NoFlowers has a pretty odd premise for a romantic comedy: Hudson’s GeorgeKimball is married to Day’s Judy, is a hypochondriac who wrongly believes hehas a terminal illness, and tries to set her up with various other men (withhijinks ensuing, natch). But what’s more interesting to this AmericanStudier isthat the film was directed by Norman Jewison, thegreat social issues filmmaker who just three years later would make thegroundbreaking Inthe Heat of the Night (1967). Directors worked a lot in this era—Jewisonmade 9 films in the 1960s, for example—so it’s not necessarily surprising thattheir output would be quite varied. But I do wonder if revisiting Send Me NoFlowers with an eye for Jewison’s trademark social commentary might yield somethingnew.

Next RockHudson post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Rock Hudson memories or connections you’d share?

November 17, 2025: AmericanStudying Rock (Hudson): Come September

[On November17th, 1925, Roy Harold SchererJr.—better known as —was born. His iconic career and complex life open up a lot of Americanhistories, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of them, leading up to aweekend post on other 20C gay celebrities who lived their lives in the closet.]

[NOTE. Ioriginally shared this post as part of a September 2015 series onSeptember-tastic cultural works. But I think it sets up this week’s topics well,so I wanted to start with it!]

On how biographyadds compelling layers and questions to a forgettable romantic comedy.

I honestly triedto watch the 1961romantic comedy Come Septemberin preparation for writing this post, but after a certain early point Igave up. Even the Wikipediasummary of the film’s plot, and more exactly of who is wooing or leavingwhom at any given moment, is almost impossible to follow; and on watching theopening the film feels more like an advertisement for Italy’sspectacular Ligurian coast than a coherent story. And the part that I didmost fully understand, and that explains the film’s title, is more creepy thanromantic: September is the month when American businessman Robert (Rock Hudson)annually escapes to his Ligurian villa with his Italian mistress Lisa (GinaLollobrigida); but this year his visit is moved up to July instead, and when heinforms Lisa of the change she cancels her imminent wedding to join Robert perusual. The course of true love and all, but not exactly the sweetest way tomeet these two star-crossed lovers.

So not exactly amust-watch classic—but if we delve into the biographies of the film’s stars, ittakes on additional and more interesting layers of meaning. For one thing, thefilm’s two young lovers are played by popular crooner Bobby Darinand up-and-coming ingénue SandraDee, and the story of their connection behind the scenes is by far thefilm’s most romantic: Darin and Dee met for the first time on set, fell inlove, and were married that same year. Portrayed in the recent biopic Beyond the Sea (2004), with Kevin Spacey starring asDarin and Kate Bosworth as Dee, the marriage lasted seven tumultuous years andproduced their son Dodd Mitchell Darin before the couple divorced in 1967. Andno matter what the future held for these two, there’s something fascinatingabout watching two young performers pretending to fall in love while (we know)they were actually falling in love as well, and the romance between these twopopular artists makes for a much more compelling story than anything presentedon screen in Come September.

And then there’sRock Hudson. It would be homophobic, narrow-minded, and just plain dumb for meto suggest that a gay actor couldn’t play a straight character, and of course Hudson’sentire career (much of it as the lead in romanticcomedies) would belie that notion. Yet at the same time (and of course I’mfar from the first to argue this), there’s something inarguably compellingabout the reality that one of the most popular, traditional (that is, starringin the kinds of traditional love stories that were permissible and widespreadin the buttoned-up entertainment culture of the 1950s) romantic leads inHollywood history was throughout his life and career performingthat sexuality, acting the part of a heterosexual sex symbol. SirIan McKellen argued earlier this year that when he finally came out as agay man (at the age of 49), it made him a better actor; “my acting wasdisguise,” he put it, “Now, my acting is about revelation and truth.” Seenthrough that lens, and given that he never came out publicly during his lifetime(although his1985 diagnosis with AIDS led to awareness of his sexuality shortly beforeand then after his death), Hudson’s acting was always a multi-layered, complexfacet of his life, and one that lends another compelling layer to a film like Come September.

Next RockHudson post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Rock Hudson memories or connections you’d share?

November 15-16, 2025: Veterans’ Stories: Three 21C Stories

[ForVeterans Day, I’ve AmericanStudied five examples of texts that can help usremember and engage with veterans’ experiences from five of our defining wars.Leading up to this weekend post on 21st century veterans’ stories!]

Three textsand voices that can help us commemorate 21st century veterans’communities:

1)     Miyoko Hikiji’s memoir AllI Could Be: My Story as a Woman Warrior in Iraq (2013), on which seethat hyperlinked post;

2)     Phil Klay’s short story collection Redeployment(2014), on the stunning and heartbreaking title story of which see thatarticle;

3)     and Ross Caputi, Richard Hil, and DonnaMulhearn’s TheSacking of Fallujah: A People’s History (2019); Ross is an Iraq Warveteran as well as one of my favorite former students, and this projectembodies veterancritical patriotism amazingly well;

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Veterans’ stories and/or texts you’d share?

November 14, 2025: Veterans’ Stories: The Best Years of Our Lives and WWII

[ForVeterans Day, I’ll be AmericanStudying five examples of texts that can help usremember and engage with veterans’ experiences from five of our defining wars.Leading up to a weekend post on 21st century veterans’ stories!]

On the film and performance that capture the spectrum and significance ofveterans’ experiences.

There are no shortage of memorableWorld War II stories in our national narratives—of course there are theoverarching narratives like TheGreatest Generation and Rosie theRiveter; there are the explicitly and centrally celebratory texts, suchas in films like Midway or Saving Private Ryan; the more complex mixtures of celebration andrealism, films like From Here to Eternityor Flags of Our Fathers; and thevery explicitly critical and satirical accounts, as in the novels Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five. Onecould even argue, with some accuracy, that if there is any single event or erathat doesn’t need additional reinforcing in our national consciousness, it isWorld War II. And similarly, one could argue that if there’s any group ofAmerican films that can’t be considered generally under-exposed or –remembered,even if some have waned in popularity or awareness over time, it’d be thosethat won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Well, I guess I like a challenge,because I’m here to argue that a World War II-centered film that in 1947 wonnot only Best Picture but also Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Screenplay,Editing, and Music has become a much too forgotten and underappreciatedAmerican text. [NOTE: I initially wrote this post more than a decade ago, and Ihope and believe that this is no longer as much the case.] That film was TheBest Years of Our Lives, William Wyler’s adaptation of MacKinlayKantor’s 1945 novel Glory for Me about three returning World War IIveterans and theirexperiences attempting to re-adapt to civilian life on thehome front. It’s a far from perfect film, and features some schmaltzy sectionsthat, perhaps, feel especially dated at more than sixty years’ remove and havelikely contributed to its waning appeal. But it also includes some complex andpowerful moments, and a significant number of them can be attributed directlyto Wyler’s most famous and important casting choice: his decision to castformer paratrooper HaroldRussell, an amateur actor who had lost both of his hands in a trainingaccident, in the role of Homer Parrish, a similarly disabled vet with hooksreplacing his hands. Homer’s relationship with theextremely supportive Wilma (played by Cathy O’Donnell) offers its shareof the schmaltz, but in other ways his character and performance are much moredark and complicated, affecting the emotions through their realism andsensitivity rather than just overt heartstring-tugging.

That’s especially true of the scenethat stood out to me most when I watched the film (as a college student in thelate 1990s) and that has stuck with me ever since. Homer, once a star highschool quarterback who was used to being watched and admired by younger boys inthat earlier role, is attempting to work on a project in his garage butstruggling greatly with his prostheses; he knows that a group of neighborhoodboys are spying on him in fascination and horror but tries to ignore theirpresence. He can’t do so, however, and in a burst of anger releases much ofwhat he has been dealing with since his injuries and return, breaking thegarage windows with his hooks and daring the kids to fully engage with who andwhat he has become. The moment, big and emotional as it is, feels as unaffectedas it gets, and manages to do what few of those more well-known World War IIstories can: celebrating and critiquing in equal measure, recognizing thesacrifice and heroism of a Homer while mourning what war does and takes anddestroys. Ultimately the scene, like the film, provides no definite answers, nostraightforward adulation of its veterans nor darkly comic takedown of warmyths, but instead simply asks us to think about what life (in and out of war)has meant and continues to mean for someone like Harold Russell, and all hisveteran peers.

Indeed, Best Years is ultimately about precisely that—the experiences andidentities of the soldiers themselves, at their best, at their worst, andeverywhere in between. On Veteran’s Day, and on every other day as well, Ithink it’d be ideal to focus not on wars at all, horrific and cold andimpersonal and, yes, hellish as they always are, but on remembering thoseAmericans whose lives were and continue to be so impacted by theseexperiences—not least, I have to add, because I think we’d be a lot less cavalierabout starting wars if we did so. Special post this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Veterans’ stories and/or texts you’d share?

PPS. For another take on Best Years, make sure to check out my wife Vaughn Joy's excellent Review Roulette newsletter!

November 13, 2025: Veterans’ Stories: “Returning Soldiers” and WWI

[ForVeterans Day, I’ll be AmericanStudying five examples of texts that can help usremember and engage with veterans’ experiences from five of our defining wars.Leading up to a weekend post on 21st century veterans’ stories!]

On how anunder-remembered community of veterans helps us make national sense of acomplex foreign war.

As part ofa June 2017 centennial series on the U.S. and World War I, I sharedthis post on African American WWI soldiers, including an extendeddiscussion of W.E.B. Du Bois’s May 1919 The Crisis column “ReturningSoldiers.” I’d ask you to check out both that post and that column (thehyperlink in the original post no longer works, but the second one in thisparagraph should) if you would, and then come on back for further thoughts onthat column and community.

Welcomeback! Since I wrote that column, I’ve learned much more about the RedSummer of 1919, a year-long, nationwide orgy of white supremacist violenceand racial terrorism that very consistently targeted African AmericanWWI veterans, often in uniform and/or taking part in commemorative marchesand events. As that second hyperlinked article from the National World War IMuseum and Memorial describes it succinctly and accurately, while the violencewas always—let me say again, always—initiated by white supremacist mobs, “theRed Summer saw Black populations fight back aggressively against racialviolence and intimidation in ways that were not typical before.” Provingprophetic indeed Du Bois’s stirring lines, “we are cowards and jackasses if nowthat the war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn tofight a sterner, longer, more unbending battle against the forces of hell inour own land.”

Those are themost specific and to my mind the most important takeaways from this veterancommunity and Du Bois’s column alike. But I think these histories also frame abroader point, one that has helped me analyze what this complexforeign war—one in which the U.S. got involved very late compared to mostof the rest of the world—meant in and for the U.S.When we take into consideration that 1919 violence targeting veterans, and addin ongoing catastrophic crises in that same year including theinfluenza pandemic and the PalmerRaids (both of which emerged directly out of World War I), it’s fair to saythat for the United States the “wartime” period very fully extended past the November 1918Armistice and into 1919 (if not beyond). Of course that’s always the casefor veterans, as I hope every post in this series makes clear. But in thiscase, I would argue that the entire nation remained in many ways “at war” wellpast the conclusion of the foreign war, and no community better reflects thatreality than African American veterans.

Lastveteran’s story tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Veterans’ stories and/or texts you’d share?

November 12, 2025: Veterans’ Stories: A Fool’s Errand and the Civil War

[ForVeterans Day, I’ll be AmericanStudying five examples of texts that can help usremember and engage with veterans’ experiences from five of our defining wars.Leading up to a weekend post on 21st century veterans’ stories!]

On how theprotagonist’s status as a veteran adds to a novel’s ironies, and why that’s notthe whole story.

Earlierthis year, I dedicated a post inmy April Fool’s series to the great Albion Tourgée’s historical andautobiographical Reconstruction novel A Fool’s Errand, by One of the Fools(1879). I focused there on the novel’s ironies, so would ask you to check outthat prior post and then come on back from some thoughts on how that element canbe connected to veterans’ stories.

Welcomeback! LikeTourgée, the novel’s protagonist Comfort Servosse—the narrator mostly justcalls him The Fool—is a Civil War veteran, with the opening few chapters depictinghis service with the Union army. Although the novel then jumps ahead four yearsto focus on Servosse’s move to North Carolina and time in that state duringReconstruction, that Civil War service thus becomes a foundation for everythingthat follows, on at least two ironic levels. More obviously, Servosse choosesto move his young family and blossoming legal career alike into the heart of enemyterritory, a choice that immediately foreshadows why this might indeed be thetitular “fool’s errand.” And more subtly but even more ironically, that time inthe Reconstruction South will constitute, at least in the novel’s presentationof it, a far more difficult and painful battle than did his Civil War militaryefforts. Given how badly Reconstructionultimately went for AfricanAmericans and their allies, that’s a very telling and bracing irony to besure.

But it’snot the whole story, not of this novel and certainly not of Reconstruction.More exactly, the fact that white supremacists, both in the formerConfederate states and (especially) on thenational stage, successfully managed to sabotage and torpedo Reconstructionand move the country even closer to a whitesupremacist exclusionary state than it had been in the antebellum period, shouldn’tin any way minimize the impressive and inspiring work of African Americans andallies (like AlbionTourgée) in fighting for a more equal and just South and America. While thetortured irony of A Fool’s Errand can be difficult to parse, or at leastto reduce to any single clear point, I would argue that the title itself ismeant ironically as well—that this Reconstruction-era work was genuinely aknight’s errand, the most worthy thing this character and author alike could bepart of at that moment, indeed a fully worthy extension and amplification oftheir Civil War service; and that it was not them but rather all of us who werefools, as much for failing to support those efforts as in all the other ways inthat painful period.

Nextveteran’s story tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Veterans’ stories and/or texts you’d share?

November 11, 2025: Veterans’ Stories: William Apess and the War of 1812

[ForVeterans Day, I’ll be AmericanStudying five examples of texts that can help usremember and engage with veterans’ experiences from five of our defining wars.Leading up to a weekend post on 21st century veterans’ stories!]

On twoways to AmericanStudy the significance of a Native American veteran’sexperiences.

I’vewritten about William Apess, one of my veryfavorite American writers and voices, many times in thisspace and beyond. Most ofthose posts have focused on individualtexts of his, but in this post I wrotemore broadly about the arc of his life (as well as how he traced it in his autobiographicalwriting). I’d ask you to check out that post if you could, and then comeon back for thoughts on Apess’s military service during the War of1812.

As I notein that post, just about every detail of Apess’s life seems hyperbolic; butperhaps the most extreme is captured in this clause: “enlisting in a New Yorkmilitia at the age of 16 and fighting in the War of 1812.” The U.S. did not yethave a standing army at this time, so it reliedon state militias to do the bulk of the fighting (alongside assembledarmies like the amazingly diverse one Andrew Jackson commanded atthe Battle of New Orleans), and I have to imagine that they weren’t great atchecking the ages of their soldiers. But at the same time, I don’t think we canseparate Apess’s extreme experience of military service from the fraught andcomplicated multi-century story of Native Americans service in U.S. wars andconflicts. From CrispusAttucks to IraHayes, the U.S.Army Indian Scouts to the Najavocode talkers, and so many other individuals and communities, NativeAmericans have playeda role in every American conflict, one far exceeding their percentage ofthe overall population. And as we see most potently in Leslie Marmon Silko’s novelCeremony (1977), that service has always affected them profoundlyand too often painfully, something I have to imagine was part of Apess’s storyas well, especially given just how young he was when that service began.

Alongsidesuch negative effects, of course, veterans can also take away meaningful positivesfrom their wartime service, and one positive aftermath in which I’m especiallyinterested is the criticalpatriotic perspective that many veterans express and then act upon. WilliamApess undoubtedly drew his own critical patriotism from a variety of sources,including his faith and his profound understandingof Scripture, his connection to and love for his fellowNative Americans, and more. But I don’t think we can discount the role thatthis teenage military service played in shaping both Apess’s awareness of theworst of America and his desire to continue fighting to push the nation closerto its best—and when he expressed all those perspectives in his best work, “Eulogyon King Philip” (1836), he did so in the heart of Revolutionary-celebrating1830s Boston, an act of aggressive activism that seems likewise to continuewith that youthful fighting spirit.

Nextveteran’s story tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Veterans’ stories and/or texts you’d share?

November 10, 2025: Veterans’ Stories: The Shoemaker and the Tea Party

[For VeteransDay, I’ll be AmericanStudying five examples of texts that can help us remember andengage with veterans’ experiences from five of our defining wars. Leading up toa weekend post on 21st century veterans’ stories!]

On two importantlessons about veterans that we can draw from Alfred F. Young’s book about George Robert Twelves Hewes.

I wrote atlength about Young’s TheShoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution (2000)in this 2012Beach Reads post. I’d ask you to check out that post if you would, and thencome on back for a couple further thoughts about Hewes as a Revolutionary Warveteran.

Welcomeback! In that post I focused mostly on Hewes’s role in and then 1820s memoriesof pre-Revolutionary events like the Boston Tea Party and Boston Massacre,which are also the main focal points of Young’s book. But Hewes did go on to fight inthe American Revolution as well, both as a militiaman and as a privateer,and I think that’s as important part of his story that can also help us engagewith a couple broader layers of veterans’ experiences. For one thing, I wouldsay that we can sometimes focus on veterans’ wartime experiences as if theyexist in a vacuum, or at least as something distinct from the rest of theirstory; but while of course war is its own thing, it’s also always part of a soldier’songoing and larger life story, and more specifically it always follows onwhatever had come before for that individual. While most soldiers likely don’ttake part in events that directly lead up to the war as Hewes did, theycertainly do all live in the society that is experiencing those pre-war eventsand trends, and I have no doubt that for nearly all of them that means they cometo the war with existing perspectives and ideas that have to be considered aspart of their wartime experiences.

Bydefinition, veterans also return from their wartime experiences (something thatis of course far from guaranteed for soldiers serving in a war). Most of ournarratives of returning veterans focus, understandably, on the ways that theycarry the war with them for the rest of their lives, a subject I’ve writtenabout many times inthis space. But what Hewes and The Shoemaker remind us is thatveterans also play a role in shaping our stories, narratives, and collective memoriesof the wars that they take part in. That they don’t generally do so as overtlyas Hewes did through his contributions to 1820s commemorations, or for that matteras overtly as many of the folks and texts I’ll write about in this week’sseries, doesn’t change the fact that every time a veteran talks about wartimeexperiences, tell stories of the war, participates in a meeting or gathering orconversation related to those subjects, and so on, they are helping shape ourcollective memories of that conflict. That can mean many different things in practice,but no matter what it’s a key role that veterans play, and one that theShoemaker helps us remember and think about.   

Next veteran’sstory tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Veterans’ stories and/or texts you’d share?

November 8-9, 2025: 15 Years (!) of AmericanStudying: My Dad

[15 yearsago this week, I started this here public scholarly blog. There have been lotsof twists and turns since, and the best ones have been aided & abetted bywonderful folks. So for my 15th (!) anniversary series, I wanted topay tribute to a handful of those moments and people, leading up to thisspecial weekend tribute to my first and best reader!]

Just overnine months ago, we . I’ve had the chance to paytribute to him in a number of different ways this year, as of course I’vedone onthis blog many times (but never sufficient to express all that hemeant to me). Speaking of this blog, I don’t know that I can put it any moreclearly than this: very soon after I started it he figured out how to become a follower,meaning that he would get each day’s post by email; in our daily emailexchanges he would respond to my posts a very significant percentage of thetime; and to this day, quite literally to the moment that I’m drafting thispost, I still think of him as my first and favorite reader for anything andeverything I write here. I still can’t quite believe that I’ll never get toread his thoughts on a blog post again (I don’t imagine that will ever entirelysink in, and I’m okay with that), but I promise you that for as long as I writehere, and as long as I write and work and teach and parent and love and live,he will be a defining presence. I miss you and love you, Dad.

VeteransDay series starts Monday,                                                 

Ben

PS. Pleasefeel free to say hi and share any blog responses or ideas in comments!

November 7, 2025: 15 Years (!) of AmericanStudying: Vaughn Joy’s Partnership

[15 yearsago this week, I started this here public scholarly blog. There have been lotsof twists and turns since, and the best ones have been aided & abetted bywonderful folks. So for my 15th (!) anniversary series, I wanted topay tribute to a handful of those moments and people, leading up to a specialweekend tribute to my first and best reader!]

Althoughthis post will also still appear on my blogspot page (as my posts will continueto until the end of January), the main home for AmericanStudier for the lastcouple months, and moving forward, is the new public scholarly website Black & White & Read All Over.That site was the brainchild and has been created and designed by my wifeVaughn Joy, and it’s really phenomenal—as a space to host each of ourpublic scholarly writing, as a home for my #ScholarSunday threads, but also andespecially as an expression of communal solidarity and support. You can findthat in the Announcements,the resources like the Pitchablespage, the GuestPosts, and more. So please check out all the layers of our (and especiallyVaughn’s) amazing site, subscribeif you’re interested, and help this blog and our work take these excitingnext steps!

Specialtribute this weekend,

Ben

PS. Pleasefeel free to say hi and share any blog responses or ideas in comments!