Love, Honor, Obey--and Make Toast

The bridegroom, in top hat and tails, is carrying his beloved straight from the reception to her new kitchen. Can’t wait to show her their gleaming new GE fridge.

“The one you’ve always wanted!” chirps the ad. And, her wide smile tells us, she can’t wait to be a real wife, whipping up three squares a day in her oh-so-modern kitchen.

The year: 1938.

Welcome to Pacific Design Center and “Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines From Home to Office,” a funny and thought-provoking exhibition from Cooper-Hewitt, National Museum of Design, Smithsonian Institution.

The year: 1994.

Here, you revisit a world where washing machines had wringers and women promised to love, honor, obey--and make crisp toast. And they lived for lots of suds and a smiling toilet.

The idea, explains curator Ellen Lupton of Cooper-Hewitt, is “to explore the role of women as the consumers of design” from the 1920s through the 1960s.

“Mechanical Brides” refers both to the women who became wedded to these machines and to the machines themselves, which by advertising and design took on physical and emotional attributes of women. Consider a 1966 RCA ad, which compares a TV set to a woman--both have a beautiful face and dependable backside.

Remember the Princess phone of the ‘60s? Small, pastel and oval--not unlike a reclining nude, some have suggested. As the phone folks caught on that women’s relationship to that instrument went beyond ordering groceries, a utilitarian black object evolved into something downright sexy.

In a ‘50s shampoo ad, a model, sitting in a pink barrel of suds, talks into her pink phone. The spiel: “Pink is for girls.” But the ‘60s gave us “I dreamed I went to work in my Maidenform bra”--and, presumably, spent the day talking on my blue phone.

The mania for pastel appliances gave way in the late ‘60s to--who could forget?--copper, avocado and harvest gold. Today, almond and white are the colors of choice.

Push a button and “Laugh-In’s” Ernestine (Lily Tomlin)--one telephone operator who never subscribed to that old “voice with a smile” bit--complains about her cauliflower ear and switchboard hump. Still, she confides, you can’t beat “the thrill of putting a biggie on hold.”

Because most of “women’s work” has traditionally been secretarial, typewriters were fancied up, all pretty and pastel. Give ‘em a little perk, but not much money. Ads made it clear that he was the thinker, she the office helpmate, sort of an extension of her machine.

In the 20th Century, Lupton observes, women embarked on a romance with technology marked with both rewards and disappoints, “like most mature love affairs.”

Among the disappointments: With all those gadgets, she was expected to keep a cleaner house, not enjoy more free time. “Technology did not transform the social system,” Lupton says. Women going to work did that.

When women took paying jobs, Madison Avenue responded by ever so subtly changing the husband’s role. In a ‘50s ad, he relaxes in his recliner, waiting for his dinner. Or, he’s the helpless male who doesn’t know which end of the baby to burp. By the late ‘60s, he’s doing a few household chores. (Surveys show, though, that working women still do the lion’s share of housework).

Still, you’ve come a long way, baby, since 1946 and this ad showing Dad and daughter leading Mom, blindfolded, to her new Maytag: “Will you be surprised!”

“Mechanical Brides” is open noon-6 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday at the Murray Feldman Gallery, Pacific Design Center, 8687 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, through May 28. Admission is free .

Laugh Till It Heals

Early in 1987, as Gilda Radner battled cancer, she and the Wellness Community found each other. She was to become a regular at the semiannual joke-fests that are part of the community’s therapy for cancer patients.

In her autobiography, “It’s Always Something,” Radner compared these support group gatherings in Santa Monica to “Saturday Night Live” in its early days--”when we had our innocence and we believed in making comedy and making each other laugh.”

Even now, five years after her death, “Gilda and her humor are very often topics of conversation around the Wellness Community,” founder Harold Benjamin says.

So, on a recent Friday evening, the community came together to share jokes--good, bad and inexcusable--and to remember Radner. During her illness, she once told Benjamin, she spent some of her happiest times here.

She missed show business, he says, but here, “making other people laugh, she was home again. Gilda was always funny about cancer. She was funny about everything.”

The joke-fests are a celebration of life, a stress-reducer and just plain fun. Says Benjamin: “Laughter a la Norman Cousins is not the answer to cancer, by any means. But pleasant emotions help enhance the immune system.”

This night, emcee Allen Rabinowitz, a psychotherapist and husband of a community staffer, states the rules right off: “There will be no death jokes.” And no dirty words.

Soon, it’s apparent that we have a roomful of rule-breakers--to the dismay of Benjamin, who begs everyone to keep it clean. (Arts and Entertainment network is also there, filming a Radner bio.)

Betty Hearst’s joke is about the doctor who tells a patient he has six months to live. How can he possibly pay off his bill in such a short time, the patient asks? “OK,” says the doctor. “I’ll give you another six months.”

There are truly tasteless jokes and wince-evoking jokes. Carol Bennett shares the one about the horse that walks into a bar. “So why the long face?” asks the bartender.

There are prizes--a rubber chicken, a whoopee cushion, a set of chattering teeth--and lots of pizza and cake.

For Ethel Gullette, who has been cancer-free for seven years, there are poignant memories of Radner, with whom she shared so much: They were the same age (40) when both were found to have ovarian cancer the same month (October, 1986).

Gullette recalls that Radner declined to compete for joke-fest prizes because she thought it unfair because she was a comedian: “The one time she did, she won.”

But, Gullette said, “She was inspirational to everyone. She brightened the room.”

* This weekly column chronicles the people and small moments that define life in Southern California. Reader suggestions are welcome.