Almanac Music: Why Dating a Married Woman is not a Good Idea in Song and Story.

Why Dating a Married Woman is not a Good Idea in Song and Story.

 

In the 1930s movies ‘It happened one Night’ and ‘The Gay Divorcee’ people get a divorce and get on with their lives, but in the 1940s things changed. Marriage breakdown and incompatibility after World War Two led to the rise of the femme fatale and hard cynical crime stories. Songs and movies about infidelity are staples of music for decades but they suddenly became cautionary tales about fooling around on the side. Saving all my ‘Love for You’ and ‘Me and Mrs Jones’ are songs about infidelity where nothing much happens. This story explores where love goes horribly wrong. If anyone else would like to contribute a song or movie where illicit liaisons lead to disaster, please let me know.

 

If her name is Lucille and your name is Kenny. Kenny Rogers’ song ‘Lucille’ depicts a womaniser picking up a lady at a bar near the depot. What happens next is her husband, a giant farmer, walks in and tells her off. The song doesn’t say explicitly but implies a blazing row between husband and wife. Anyone caught witnessing a row between spouses wishes they were anywhere else, and so it is with the Kenny character. He manages to get Lucille back to his room, but the mood is well and truly killed.  

 

‘LUCILLE’

 

 

If she wears a long black veil. Danger, warning! The protagonist finds himself on a murder charge. He has an alibi; he was in the arms of another man’s wife. Our poor hero chooses not to say anything and is executed. She gets to cry for him where the night winds wail.

 

‘The Long Black Veil’

 

 

 

If Jimi Hendrix immortalises your story. The song ‘Hey Joe’, about a man who shot his faithless wife and ran away to Mexico was the first big hit for Hendrix. Bit of a sad outcome for the wife, not much better for Joe.

 

                         

 

 

If you are ‘Bad Bad Leroy Brown’  Jim Croce’s song about a gangster who makes a move on a married woman ends badly when her husband takes exception and Leroy ends up like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone. Oh dear.

 

 

If your name is Vronsky and your girlfriend’s name is Anna. Poor Count Vronsky, he just wants to go back to join his mates in the army. In Tolstoy’s epic novel his married girlfriend Anna Karenina takes exception to this and throws herself under a train. Vronsky is left with the guilt.

 

‘Anna Karenina’ (1935)

 

 

If your name is Walter Neff the Insurance Guy. The man with the daggiest name in movies meets the deadliest of femme fatales played by Barbara Stanwyck. She persuades him to kill her husband and write up an insurance claim getting double the money hence the name of the movie ‘Double Indemnity’. The whole scheme unravels and daggy Walter, played by Fred MacMurray, faces the death house. Of course there were many more femme fatales, especially in the 1940s, but Barbara was the best. Fred MacMurray’s look of sheer bewilderment was revived many years later in the Disney movie ‘The Shaggy Dog’ when his son turns into a dog!

 

 

‘Double Indemnity’ 1944

 

                                   

 

If you take time off from work and spend your works’ money on a sultry stranger. Married Charlie takes time off work and has an affair with glamorous Audrey played by Melanie Griffith. Turns out all she wanted was to take a decent bloke to her high school reunion. But then her husband turns out to be Ray Liotta. That’s right, the guy from ‘Goodfellas’, and he is much meaner and ornerier than he was in ‘Goodfellas’ or ‘Wild Hogs’. He gives Charlie a terrible time, even invading his house where Charlie kills him in a stroke of sheer luck.

 

‘Something Wild’ 1986    

 

     

 

 

Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale 

 

In the medieval story an apprentice, Nicholas, concocts an elaborate scheme to sleep with his master’s wife, Allison. Unfortunately for Nicholas another young man, Absolom, has a similar idea and ends up burning Nicolas’s bottom with a red-hot poker. The husband, a carpenter, has a similar calamity and falls from a great height in a barrel, breaking his bones.  

 

‘The Canterbury Tales’ (film) 1972

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, these are the cautionary tales about infidelity where something bad happens. If you find yourself in this situation, get a divorce or get out of there!

 

#Click on images to watch You Tube Clip of each song.

 

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