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Same Time, Next Year (1978)
Written by Bernard Slade
Cast:
Ellen Burstyn as Doris
Alan Alda as George
Plot Summary (from IMDB.com):
A man and woman meet by chance at a romantic inn over dinner. Although both are married to others, they find themselves in the same bed the next morning questioning how this could have happened. They agree to meet on the same weekend each year. Originally a stage play, the two are seen changing, years apart, always in the same room in different scenes. Each of them always appears on schedule, but as time goes on each has some personal crisis that the other helps them through, often without both of them understanding what is going on.
Iglehart provides data tables of trends through time. On table focuses on labor-force participation rates of women by marital status. The table shows a gradual increase from 1940 to 1974 of married women with a present husband assimilating into the workforce. Iglehart uses the data collected by Oppenheimer to state that “there has been an increase in the labor-force participation of younger married women, including those with pre-school children” (4). Doris exemplifies this because in with young children she managed to go to college and build up a successful catering service for herself.
Because of the success of Doris’ catering service, she was deemed the provider of the family. Her husband had a difficult time dealing with this and left for four days without notice. Iglehart describes the power struggle between the husband and the wife, “working wives were also thought to pose a threat to marital happiness and satisfaction, because power and authority traditionally held by the husband was thought to be shared with the wife if the husband were no longer the sole family provider” (11). It was unexpected and difficult for Doris’ husband to give up his traditional authority over the finances of the family, but in the end he gave in and went back to his family.
Iglehart adds, “more recent surveys reveal that public attitudes toward working wives are changing. Fewer people are disapproving of a married woman working even if she has a husband capable of supporting her” (24). We can see this change taking place in George. He was questioning Doris’ want to work when he first finds out, but later once he learns that she is selling her catering service he questions her motives for that as well. He had begun to accept Doris as a working woman and wanted her to continue it, but Doris gave a very dignified and business-like answer simply stating, “it was the right offer at the right time.”Why would Doris in Same Time, Next Year decide to enter into the workforce? Bird gives a few answers to this question in The Two-Paycheck Marriage. “Wives are more apt to work when they are young, well educated, and rich” (23). Doris never graduated high school because she got pregnant, and only went back to school to get her GED because she got pregnant again. After getting her GED, she decided to attend college at Berkeley because she wanted to learn more. She was not young or rich, but she was educated. “Schooling was the best predictor of employment. Two-thirds of the wives with college degrees were working” (23). This is evident in Doris’ path of education. Doris’ husband went bankrupt at one time and she managed to salvage the family finances by starting up her own catering service. Bird states that the desire for women to enter the workforce could be broken down into their class rank; “need at the lower level, want at the middle income levels, and self-actualization at the high income level” (24). Doris entered both out of need and out of want.
Bird brings up the idea of the “housewife syndrome,” where housewives in the 1950s and 1960s had poor mental health. But in the late 1960s and early 1970s, housewives seemed to be cured of this syndrome. Bird gives two answers for this. The first is the women’s movement, which made all women feel better about themselves. Doris was an advocate of the women’s movement as evident in her desire to go to college and enter the workforce. The second answer to curing the “housewife syndrome” is that in the 1970s an “increasing proportion of housewives had just quit their jobs or were expecting to go to work in the immediate future” (38). Doris was a housewife who had quit her job in the 1970s, after achieving success in the workforce.In Same Time, Next Year George tells Doris about an incident he had at the doctors getting a rectal exam by a female doctor. His point was that the female doctor thought he was uncomfortable because she was a woman and not a man performing the procedure on him, when in fact he was just uncomfortable due to the actual procedure. This story spurred from George’s reaction to seeing a new Doris. Doris had now become a successful entrepreneur with her own catering business. This was difficult for her husband to handle knowing that he was no longer the primary caregiver of the family, and so he left for four days without telling Doris.
Lynn’s Progressive Women in Conservative Times deals with the issues of feminism. Lynn uses Linda Gordon’s definition of feminism as, “a critique of male supremacy, formed and offered in the light of a will to change it, which in turn assumes a conviction that it is changeable” (111). Lynn also makes the statement, “women were urged to struggle with the contradictions of work and home life on an individual basis rather than through organized campaigns to create social change” (119), which puts into perspective why men like Doris’ husband have a difficult time dealing with their working wives.Lynn also recalls the peace movements during the Vietnam War. “The movement consisted largely of adults, but it had also served to politicize a number of students” (169). This reflects Doris’ years as an adult attending Berkeley. She fits into both categories addressed by Lynn. She was an adult, but also a student at the time of the war, which helped to make her a more believable anti-war demonstrator.
The Vietnam War on Campus
Gilbert breaks up the youth during the Vietnam War into two groups; the ones for freedom and the war in Vietnam verses the Student Libertarian Movement. This reflects the beliefs of both George and Doris. George’s oldest son Michael went to war, it is not clear whether he was drafted or he enlisted, but either way he was killed in Vietnam. George becomes very cynical and cold towards the war. He wants it to end and his solution is to bomb Vietnam. Doris is appalled and later helps George deal with his feelings of grief for his son. Doris and George have an argument over their beliefs. Doris has remained clear on her beliefs, but, because of the death of his son, George has strayed into a strict conservative.
Gilbert also addresses Catholics during the war. Doris was an obvious Irish-Catholic. She even met George every year under the premise that she was attending a religious retreat so her husband would not suspect anything. Gilbert dispels the belief that the majority of Catholics are pro-war. “Frustrated with academics and Hollywood scriptwriters who depicted American Catholics as racist hawks, Father Andrew Greeley, a sociology professor, undertook a series of public-opinion polls. He found that after 1965, Catholic support for the Vietnam War decreased. American Catholics were divided over the war and often regarded the peace movement with suspicion” (90). It would be Doris’ belief that, “under no circumstances would [Catholics] approve of violence directed against federal or corporation representatives, whom they considered to be complicit in supporting an unjust war” (110) and also the statement that “many Catholic peace advocates, ignoring the admonitions of Dorothy Day, believed that church members who did not oppose the war had betrayed God” (111).Through the twenty-six years Doris and George have had this affair in Same Time, Next Year, George lost both his oldest son and his wife. George was forced to deal with the death of two of his immediate family members within five years of each other. His oldest son Michael had been mentioned throughout the course of the affair and it was stated that George had a soft spot for him. Michael died very unexpectedly in Vietnam, sending his father into shock over his death.
In Grief: The Morning After, Sanders goes through the phases of grief and states the first phase as a state of shock, “sudden unexpected death has been found to cause the greater degree of shock in the bereaved than does grief where there is a long preparatory period” (45). George went into shock for months, never shedding a tear for his son. Doris picked up on his state of mind by mentioning that he had gone for pompous to confused. Confusion is part of the shock process. Because George is still in shock, any information he receives from others is not interpreted as it normally would and so he stores it to recall later. This causes George to become easily confused by things once he finally decides to address them.
George tells Doris that he never shed a tear for his son and it had been months. He states, “he was my son. I loved him. And for the life of me I can’t cry for him.” Crying is cathartic for the bereaved, and George has suppressed all of his pent-up emotion. By crying, he allows Doris to comfort him, which is something he had been missing at home. He distracted himself with comforting his wife Helen, but not allowing himself to be comforted, until he finally broke down in Doris’ arms.
The second phase was a state of displaced anger for George. Doris and George got into a fight because he voted for Goldwater. He wanted Goldwater to bomb Vietnam and end the war. He hated the Vietnamese for killing his son and placed all of his anger towards them. He was also angry at the peace movement and anti-war protestors for not thinking as he though. Doris helped give him some clarity once she realized the reason for his anger. Doris was the outlet George needed to grieve for his son.
Not only was Doris a hippie, but George’s son was also a hippie. George was furious that his son’s hair was long and that a Harvard professor was telling his son that the only way to happiness was through drugs. Much of what Partridge discusses in his book The Hippie Ghetto is based on the idea that hippies are the counter-culture that has been alienated by society. “Hippies are disconnected from the larger society in a physical, psychological and social sense” (43). All three can be the result of attending college. Because Doris is attending college at the time, it is easy for the audience to believe she could have assimilated into hippie culture.
At one point George makes a remark about the youth becoming corrupt and in need of guidance. Doris gives George some perspective by stating that a statement like that is a sign of age. Through the two characters, the audience can see the state of America during the times.
Partridge states, “the importance of ‘the quest for self-knowledge’ in the minds of hippie ghetto residents cannot be overemphasis” (64). By deciding to go to college Doris has taken on the quest for self-knowledge, making her easily susceptible to the hippie culture. This lifestyle gives her confidence in herself, enabling her to eventually start her own company. Partridge also mentions sex when stating, “by examining the rate of interaction we learned that hippies value intimacy in social relations. The rite of intensification occurs almost nightly, and participation is mandatory if one is to be part of the group” (65). When Doris enters for the weekend as an obvious hippie, she immediately wants to have sex with very little talk. George, acting as the larger society, turns her down.
The Conservative Sixties
Both Doris and George changed their political stance by the end of the movie. Doris went from liberal to independent and George went from liberal to conservative. Both started in the 1950s and 1960s as liberals, but it was clear in the years between 1966 and 1972 both had drastically changed. Doris seemed to have become an extreme liberal, while George, still dealing with his son’s death, became ultra-conservative. By 1978, Doris was running for a local government office on the independent ticket, while it seems as though George had mellowed in his beliefs and became less conservative. It was discussed that in 1956 both Doris and George were democrats voting for Stevenson, George even worked for Stevenson. So what took place in the 1960s to cause a shift in their political views by 1972?
Farber starts The Conservative Sixties with denouncing the belief that the 1960s were all about protests, social change movements, rebellions, and the “heyday of national liberalism.” Not everyone was involved with the protests and not all were liberals. Though it was the consensus that Republican Barry Goldwater was not favored by the American people or Californians, Republican Ronald Reagan was. “It would take the social tumult of the 1960s to transform the political perspective of enough white- and middle-working class voters for Reagan’s views, and conservatives in general, to find firm footing on the American political landscape” (94). Reagan was the governor of California from 1966 through the 1970s, which is where both Doris and George lived at the time. It seems as though his leadership for the state of California could have been a reason for the shifting of views for both Doris and George. That could be why the director put a still shot of Reagan to show the lapse of time between the years of 1966 and 1972.Same Time, Next Year was originally a play in 1975 starring Ellen Burstyn as Doris and Charles Grodin as George. Ellen Burstyn later reprised her role as Doris in the film version, but with Alan Alda as George. The movie obviously comes from the play with little alterations. It was written, and later produced, by Bernard Slade. When this book was published in 1979, Same Time, Next Year shared ninth place with Arsenic and Old Lace on the chart of longest-running plays. It is arguably “the most successful two-character comedy ever to grace the Broadway stage” (507). It had a run of 1,444 performances. Both the play and the two lead actors were nominated and/or won Tony Awards.
The play got great reviews, by many of New York’s papers. The book mentions The Times considering it “the funniest comedy about love and adultery to come Broadway’s way in years. If that were not enough, it is also touching.” New York Magazine praised it by stating, “I warmly recommend Same Time, Next Year. It is genuinely funny, often moving, and slyly perspicacious throughout.”
The movie was released in 1978 with Bernard Slade writing the screenplay and Ellen Burstyn starring, both of which were nominated for Academy Awards for the film. This was not Bernard Slade’s first success. He had success as a story editor and author of Bewitched, and creator of The Flying Nun and The Partridge Family.Hoffman gives many reasons for the success of Same Time, Next Year in the 1970s. It has characters the audience can identify, while also acting a type of fantasy for the audience. In describing the play he writes, “Its two-character chronologically episodic single set plot seems bittersweet and conventional. George is a variant of the old Expressionist Everyman Mr. Zero, the middle class loser trapped in a system while searching for his soul. Doris’s personal and career growth is charted with suspicious gallantry. The play explores the margins of new sexual openness” (23-4). Hoffman ties in the suggestion that sexual liberation may only be achieved once a year for many people and possibly only at an isolated cottage in California.
During this decade, casual nudity was now accepted, which allowed for certain scenes in Same Time, Next Year. Hoffman also addresses the female characters in the famous plays of the 1970s with regards to women’s issues. He states, “female characters in the plays by male playwrights often appear to have been thoroughly researched in life or books and pre-tested for consumer reaction to the degree that fairness and conscience produces some female characters that are too good to be true” (19). Doris is a female character by Bernard Slade, a male playwright. Doris can be seen as a woman who has achieved so much in her life, when it seemed as though she had little future beyond being a housewife when the play opens. This play allows the audience a view into the “improper social life” of husbands and wives, but also allows some audience members a glimpse of their fantasy acted out on stage and screen.Spigel describes the formation and the need of suburbs during the 1950s. Suburbs came about during the 1950s due to a severe shortage of city housing. The millions of Americans affected by this were mainly young, white, middle-class couples. It was formed in postwar America, causing a need for Americans to feel a sense of belonging, therefore creating close-knit towns and creating suburbs. “The young couples of the middle class participated in the construction of a new community of values; in magazines, in films, and on the airwaves they became the cultural representatives of the good life” (32). It is clear then, that in Same Time, Next Year Doris moves from the city to the suburbs and seems to have encapsulated some of the “social graces” of middle-class suburbia. She seems to have transformed herself; she now has blond hair, seems to be more articulate than before, wears a black cocktail dress that seems to fit perfectly with suburbia, and is now a member of the Book of the Month Club.
Along with suburbanization came television. Doris’ husband was a television salesman, but went bankrupt due to his need to talk people out of things they cannot afford. George makes a comment about it not being possible to go bankrupt selling televisions, without even the though of saturation of the market. “While in 1950 only nine percent of all American homes had a television set, by the end of the decade that number rose to nearly 90 percent, and the average American watched about five hours of television per day. It is only fitting that the still photos to portray the passing of time between the scenes has a shot of the most beloved show of the 1950s, I Love Lucy.