“I'd prefer not to”: A research note on resistance to office work in some post World War II American films

References

• For background see Miller Edwin H. Herman Melville New York 1975 262 264
   Google Scholar
• An early account concerning the literature of office work is provided by Mills C. Wright White Collar New York 1951 chap. 9. See also Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1974), chapt. 15.
   Google Scholar
• For background see Tichi Cecelia Shifting Gears Chapel Hill 1986 Steve Lohr, “The Growth of the Global Office,” New York Times, Oct. 18, 1988; “Study Says Computers Are Watching 7 Million U.S. Workers,” New York Times, Sept. 28, 1987; Barbara Garson, The Electronic Sweatshop (New York, 1988); Robert Howard, Brave New Workplace (New York, 1985).
   Google Scholar
• For recent assessments, see Davies Margery Woman's Place is at the Typewriter Philadelphia 1982 Robert A. Waller, “Women and the Typewriter During the first Fifty Years, 1873–1923,” Studies in Popular Culture, 9 (1986), 39–50; Lisa Fine, The Souls of the Skyscraper: Female Clerical Workers in Chicago, 1987–1930 (Philadelphia, 1990); Gary Cross and Peter Shergold, “We Think We Are Oppressed: Gender, White Collar Work and Grievances of Late Nineteenth Century Women,” Labor History, 28 (1987), 23–53; E. J. Rotella, From Home to Office: U.S. Women at Work, 1871–1930 (Ann Arbor, 1981). For earlier business publications on office work, see Office Management (New York, 1919); J. William Schulze, Office Administration (New York, 1919); Percival White, Business Management: An Introduction to Business (New York, 1926); E. E. Purinton, Personal Efficiency (New York, 1919), chapts. 4, 6, 9; Orison Swett Marden, The Exceptional Employee (New York, 1913); W. H. Leffingwell, “The Office, Through a Microscope,” National Efficiency Quarterly, 1 (1919), 85–111.
   Google Scholar
• His Secretary , Vol. 3 , 132 – 133 . Los Angeles : Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science Library . quoted from an updated article located in the Audrey Chamberlain Scrapbook
   Google Scholar
• On Vidor see Durgnat Raymond Simmon Scott King Vidor, American Berkeley 1988 chapt. 4. See the collection of documents on “The Crowd” in the Warner Brothers Collection, Doheny Library, University of Southern California.
   Google Scholar
• Whyte , William H. 1956 . The Organization Man Garden City, NY Theodoro Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality (New York, 1950). See also Douglas Miller and Marion Nowak, The Fifties: The Way We Really Were (Garden City, NY, 1976), chapt. 5.
   Google Scholar
• See Biskind Peter Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb New York 1983 chapt. 2
   Google Scholar
• Lynes is quoted in Siegel Frederick F. Troubled Journey New York 1984 111 111 See Joe Baltke, The Films of Jack Lemmon (Secaucus, NJ, 1977). For a view that accentuates a more complex picture of the era, see Lary May, ed., Recasting America (Chicago, 1989).
   Google Scholar
• Script of “The Apartment,” by Wilder Billy Diamond I.A.L. Theater Arts Library UCLA 60 61
   Google Scholar
• See Ryan Michael Kellner Douglas Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film Bloomington 1988 55 57 307–308; Edward Edelson, Great Movie Spectaculars (New York, 1976), 56–58.
   Google Scholar
• Nine to Five , 4 – 4 . UCLA . script located at Theater Arts Library
   Google Scholar
• Nine to Five , 39 – 41 . UCLA . script located at Theater Arts Library
   Google Scholar
• Mills , Nicholaus . 1990 . Culture in an Age of Money: The Legacy of the 1980s . Dissent , 36 Winter : 16 – 16 . See also Caryn James, “Mike Nichols Surveys the American Dream,” The New York Times, Feb. 25, 1990, Section II, 15.
   Google Scholar
• See Hiebert Ray Courtier to the Crowd Ames, Iowa 1966 and my Lord of Attention: Gerald Stanley Lee and the Crowd Metaphor in Industrializing America (forthcoming from the University of Massachusetts Press).
   Google Scholar
• For background on recent attempts to organize office workers see Costello Cynthia We Are Worth It! Work Culture and Conflict at the Wisconsin Educational Association Insurance Trust Feminist Studies 1985 11 496 518 Mark McCollock, “White Collar Unionism, 1940–1950,” Science and Society, 46 (1982), 405–19; Gail Sansburg, “‘Now What's the Matter With You Girls?’ Clerical Women Organize,” Radical America, 14 (Nov.–Dec., 1980), 67–75.
   Google Scholar