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Pg. 8
BOMBER: I'm talking to you, Goon-face!
MILLIE: You ornery bastard, take that back!
- A goon is an unintelligent person, someone who is violent and often hired to be a henchman. A goon's face is beaten up, ugly, and stupid-looking.
- ornery (adj): difficult, combative, pig-headed, and all-around unpleasant
Pg. 8
BOMBER: Lookit Mrs. Tar-zan! Lookit Mrs. Tar-zan!
- Tarzan movies were very popular in the 1950s. Bomber is mocking Millie by saying that she "cusses like a man" and essentially saying that she isn't feminine. Tarzan, who was raised by apes, is uncivilized, which is what Bomber is saying about Millie by calling her Mrs. Tarzan.
Pg. 8
BOMBER: Hey, Madge, a bunch of us guys are chippin' in on a hot-rod - radio and everything. I get it every Friday night.
MADGE: Im not one of those girls that jump in a hot-rod every time you boys turn a corner and honk.
- In the 1950s, there was an explosion of car ownership, which led to car culture. The phrase "hot-rod" originated in the 1940s, and the popularity of getting cars to modify and tinker around with the engines goes back to the Great Depression. Hot-rodding in the 1950s is about buying cars - often starting with cheaper models - and customizing them. Some hot-rods were built for speed in (illegal, underground) drag races. Others were built for style and regular street driving. Many were built to fulfill both purposes. But Madge is well-behaved and obedient, so she isn't the kind of girl who is impressed by flashy cars or interested in boys who expect girls to come running when they honk their horns in the street.
Pg. 9
BOMBER: I can't send you flowers, Baby - but I can send you!
- He's talking about sex and claiming that he can get her all hot and bothered. The actual effect of this sliminess is to make every woman in the vicinity drier than the Sahara.
Pg. 10
FLO: Is there something you want?
HAL: Just loafin' Mam
- Flo assumes that Hal is there because he's about to do something unsavory, but Hal says that he's "just loafin'," or just sitting around and doing nothing.
Pg. 10
FLO: Tell him they're expecting a big crowd at the park this evening, so he'd better use his father's influence at the City Hall to reserve a table. Oh, and tell him to get one by the river, close to the Dutch oven.
- Getting one of the desirable tables at the picnic is a sign of status Since someone with connections in City Hall can reserve a table, that means it isn't entirely first-come-first-serve.
A Dutch oven is a large, heavy pot with a lid. They can be used in a kitchen, but they can also be suspended over a fire for cooking at an outdoor event. Dominating the cooking at the picnic seems to also be a marker of status. It's also a way for Madge to show off her domestic skills.
Pg. 10
FLO: Has Helen Potts taken in another tramp?
MADGE: I don't see why he's a tramp just because Mrs. Potts gave him breakfast.
- Tramp is a derogatory term for a transient homeless person who wanders from place to place, maybe riding the rails, and lives off of what they can beg or steal from others.
Pg. 11
MADGE: I always wonder, maybe some wonderful person is getting off here, just by accident, and he'll come into the dime store for something and see me behind the counter, and he'll study me very strangely and then decide I'm just the person they're looking for in Washington to carry on an important job in the Espionage Department.
- A dime store is a shop that sells a variety of inexpensive goods and has become synonymous for cheapness. For Madge, it's a dead-end job.
- The Espionage Department isn't an actual government department, but the play takes place in the early years of the Cold War. This means that there is increasing paranoia about Soviet spies. in the United States. Madge is dreaming about being recruited to become a spy, which would be exciting and dangerous, and would probably entail exotic travel to gather intel.
Pg. 12
FLO: Madge, it'd be awfully nice to be married to Alan. You'd have charge accounts at all the stores - automobiles - trips.
Charge accounts are a now largely obsolete form of credit, in which someone could essentially run up a tab at a store to be paid later. In this context, Flo is saying that Madge could be a wife who shops as much as she wants. It's a sign of status and wealth, since the store trusts that the owner of the charge account is established enough that they won't skip town and will value their reputation and pay the bill. No one would give Hal a charge account.
Pg. 13
MILLIE: Like fun I am! You couldn't even pass Miss Sydney's course in shorthand and you have to work in the dime store!
- "Like fun I am" is a kid-friendly way of saying "Like hell I am."
- Shorthand is a skill that is necessary for a secretary or stenographer, which is a popular profession for women in the period. It's a method of quickly taking down notes that are dictated through a system of abbreviations and symbols. As a pretty young girl fresh out of school with no specific ambitions, Madge would have been an ideal candidate to enter the steno pool and become a secretary - IF she could use shorthand. It should be noted that shorthand looks pretty difficult to understand and learn:
Pg. 14
FLO: The night Millie was born, he was with a bunch of his wild friends at the road house.
- A roadhouse is a bar located on the outskirts of town or on a backwoods country road. They became popular as car ownership became more widespread, since reaching a roadhouse requires a vehicle. Since roadhouses are typically away from highly populated areas, the crowd can get rowdier and crazier without anyone complaining or calling the cops.
Pg. 16
ROSEMARY: A nice fellow and a peck of fun, but IO don't have time for any of 'em when they start gettin' serious on me.
A peck is about 2 1/2 gallons or 10-12 pounds. So a peck of fun is a decent amount, but not excessive or impressive.
Pg. 16
ROSEMARY: Ponsella Three-Way Tissue Cream. Makes a good base for your makeup.
[...]
FLO: There was an article in The Reader's Digest about a woman who got skin poisoning from using all those face creams.
ROSEMARY: Harriet Bristol... she's the American History teacher... she got ahold of some of that beauty clay last winter, and it darn near took her skin off. All we girls thought she had leprosy!
- Tissue cream is a deep moisturizer that is usually left on the skin overnight. Rosemary is using it like a primer under her makeup, which is probably because she is hyper-aware of her own aging.
- Reader's Digest is a magazine that began as a periodical that condensed articles from other publications into one monthly volume. It was extremely popular and started including original articles.
- Throughout history, women have been sold beauty products that turn out to be outrageously unsafe. Some beauty products have contained arsenic, mercury, and even radium. Beauty clay is supposed to exfoliate and clean out the pores, but it's easy to see how a faulty clay could take off someone's skin.
Pg. 18
ALAN: Hey, Delilah!
- Alan calls Madge "Delilah" twice, which references the biblical story of "Samson and Delilah" as well as the 1949 Samson and Delilah, a major film released by Cecil B. DeMille and Paramount Pictures.
- Samson is an Israelite hero who is supernaturally strong. He falls in love with the beautiful Delilah, who accepts a bribe and convinces him to reveal the (very secret) source of his strength, which is his hair. She betrays him and cuts his hair, making him vulnerable to his enemies.
- The name "Delilah" has become a synonym for a beautiful, seductive woman who is a temptress and can't be trusted. Madge is certainly not like Delilah, but Alan only sees her for her beauty. He doesn't think that a woman like Madge could really love him, so he doesn't trust her not to destroy him.
Pg. 19
ALAN: What are you reading, Millie?
MILLIE: The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. It's wonderful!
ROSEMARY: Good Lord, Mrs. Owens. You let your daughter read filthy books like that?
- The Ballad of the Sad Cafe is a novella by Carson McCullers and is set in a small town in the American south. It's about a young woman who is strong, independent, and closed-off. She falls in love with a man and begins to change and open up her home and life to the townspeople. But in the end, the man betrays her and destroys everything out of spite. It's definitely a story that would speak to Millie, who is smart and tough but wary of men.
Pg. 20
MADGE: Some of the pictures she has over her bed scare me.
MILLIE: Those pictures are by Picasso, and he's a great artist.
MADGE: A woman with seven eyes. Very pretty.
MILLIE: Pictures don't have to be pretty!
- It isn't clear from text which Picasso painting is hanging over Millie's bed, but it seems likely that it is something in the vein of these works, which all depict women weeping. It's meant to be evocative rather than pretty, redefining the purpose of art just like Millie would like to redefine the purpose of womanhood to transcend superficial ideas of beauty.
Pg. 21
FLO: Helen Potts, you're the limit!
- "You're the limit" is an idiom that can be very insulting, meaning, "You're annoying." But since Flo says this affectionately, it means something closer to: "You're too much."
Pg. 21
ALAN: How's the old outboard motor?
[...]
ALAN: Ahoy, Brothers, who's Winkin', Blinkin' and Stinkin'!
- An outboard motor is an engine that propels a boat, so what they're miming seems to be Alan riding Hal like a boat.
- "Winkin', Blinkin and Stinkin'" is a take-off on "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod," a nursery rhyme about three fishermen who sail off in a wooden shoe. It's some kind of fraternity-brother bonding ridiculousness.
Pg. 22
ALAN: I tried to warn you, Hal. Every year some talent scout promised screen tests to all the big athletes.
[...]
HAL: They took a lotta pictures of me with my shirt off, Real rugged! (He takes a Warner Bros. pose of a he-man). Then they dressed me up like the Foreign Legion. [...] Touche, mug!
- Screen tests are filmed movie auditions to see how an actor comes across onscreen. It makes sense that talent scouts would want to check out the student athletes, who are in peak physical condition, to see if any of them might be able to learn to act.
- The "Foreign Legion" probably refers to the French Foreign Legion, an elite military force that recruits internationally.
- "Touché" is a French word that one says to acknowledge that one's sparring partner (either with words or weapons) has gotten a hit. Hal is probably saying it because he knows it as something said during a sword fight. A "mug" is a stupid person or a fool, and it's slang that originated among thieves.
Possible Warner Bros. Pose:
Foreign Legion:
Pg. 23
HAL: Well, Seymour, I was gonna - but I got rolled.
- rolled: robbed
Pg. 24
HAL: Then I said, "Okay girls, the party's over - let's get goin'." Then this dame on the weed, she sticks a gun in my back. She says, "This party's goin' on till we say it's over, Buck!" You'da thought she was Humphrey Bogart!
- Humphrey Bogart was a major movie star in the first half of the 20th century. He was especially known for playing tough guys.
Pg. 25
HAL: The old lady wouldn't even come across with the dough for the funeral. They had to bury him in Pauper's Row.
ALAN: What about the filling station?
[...]
HAL: This morning, on a freight.
- Pauper's Row is the section of the cemetery where people who are unknown, unclaimed, or too poor to pay for a plot are buried.
- Filling station: a gas station
- Freight: a train that carries cargo. It's not a passenger train, so Hal could only have travelled on it by sneaking aboard.
Pg. 27
CHRISTINE: She's been telling me about all the wicked times she had in New York - and not at Teachers' College, if I may add.
IRMA: Kid, this is Christine Schoenwalder, taking Mabel Fremont's place in Feminine Hygiene.
- In New York, Teachers' College probably refers to the Teachers' College at Columbia University, which was the country's first comprehensive graduate school of education.
- "Feminine Hygiene" is a 1950s version of Sex Ed., which was centered on the idea of "social hygiene." This means that it was less about hygiene in terms of cleanliness and personal habits and more about morals, giving just enough information to push students toward abstinence until marriage.
Pg. 28
IRMA: I went to the Stork Club!
- The Stork Club was an elite nightclub in Manhattan from 1929-1965. There was live music and dancing, and the club was popular with celebrities. Orderly behavior and formal attire was expected, and anyone - including celebrities - who didn't comply with the rules would be banned.
Pg. 31
ALAN: Honestly, Madge, my entire four years I never found a girl I liked.
MADGE: I don't believe that.
ALAN: It's true. They're all so affected, if you wanted a date with them you had to call them a month in advance.
- affected (adj.): pretentious, self-important, and artificial.
Pg. 32
HAL: I wouldn't go on picnics. I was too busy shooting craps or stealing milk bottles.
- Craps is a popular gambling game that involves rolling dice. Although casinos have large, expensive craps tables, craps has often been played as an underground, illegal street game.
- Bottles of milk were delivered to the front door, so when everyone is out at a community picnic, it would be easy to steal the milk on people's doorsteps. Or this just illustrates that Hal is an outsider, stealing milk from the people who don't accept him in order to survive.
Pg. 32
MILLIE: Alan took us into the Hi Ho for cokes and there was a gang of girls in the back booth - Juanita Badger and her gang.
- "Hi Ho" was a brand of soda, and the Hi Ho Club was a soda fountain where kids would go to hang out.
Pg. 36
IRMA: We've brought home your wayward girl, Mrs. Owens!
- Irma says this teasingly, since obviously Rosemary is an adult. A teen or pre-teen is labeled a "wayward girl" if she is misbehaving, acting out, or disobeying her parents. She might be drinking, taking drugs, or having sex, and wayward girls - particularly pregnant ones - were often sent away to homes for wayward girls.
Pg. 37
MADGE: Miss Sidney, would you mind terribly if I used some of your Shalimar?
- Shalimar is a popular perfume with a spicy, amber scent. It's described as seductive and exotic.
Pg. 37-38
MRS. POTTS: It's just like a movie I saw once with Betty Grable... or was it Lana Turner? Anyway, she played the part of a secretary to some very important business man. She wore glasses and did her hair real plain and men didn't pay any notice to her at all. Then one day she took off her glasses and her boss wanted to marry her right away!
- Mrs. Potts is possibly talking about Pin-Up Girl (1944), in which Betty Grable plays a woman who puts on glasses and puts up her hair to work as a secretary by day while leading a double life and hiding her boring job from the man she loves. Of course, it's silly that either of these movie stars could be considered "plain."
Lana Turner
Betty Grable in Pin-Up Girl
Pg. 40
MRS. POTTS: I baked a Lady Baltimore Cake!
- A Lady Baltimore Cake is layered white cake with light, fluffy frosting and filling made of fruit and nuts.
Pg. 41
HAL: What'sa matter, kid? Think I'm snowin' you under?
- Hal, who is complimenting Millie's diving, is asking if Millie thinks he's burying her in false flattery.
Pg. 42
HAL: My old man, he was a corker!
- A "corker" is someone who is amazing or remarkable. Hal is (possibly) being sarcastic.
Pg. 45
ROSEMARY: He's been down to the hotel, buying bootleg whiskey off those good-for-nothing porters!
- Kansas stretched prohibition (the outlawing of alcohol) until 1948, longer than any other state. Even beyond 1948, they had strict laws about selling alcohol. On page 45, Rosemary says that liquor is against the law, which either refers to these strict laws or possibly suggests that the play takes place in the 1940s. Bootleg whiskey is homemade.
- Porters, who were often Black men in the 1950s, were employed by hotels and railroads to carry luggage.
Pg. 47
HOWARD: They tell me every boy in town has been on the make for that since she was old enough to go to Sunday School.
- "On the make" means flirting, hitting on, trying to date or get with. This is gross, not only because Howard is old enough to be Madge's father, but because Sunday School is for children. The oldest that Madge would have been to be Sunday School-aged is about twelve.
Pg. 47
ROSEMARY: If my father had ever caught me showing off in front of a window he'd have tanned me with a razor strap.
- A razor strap is like a leather belt and is used to sharpen razor blades, so Rosemary is basically talking about being beaten with a belt. She is also showing her internalized misogyny by blaming Madge for "showing off" instead of the fully grown men who are obviously gawking at her.
Pg. 49
MILLIE: I feel like Rita Hayworth!
- Rita Hayworth was a glamorous movie star, dancer, and pin-up girl in the 1940s and 50s.
Pg. 52
HOWARD: What'd the little Dickens do? Get herself tight?
[...]
HOWARD: She must have had several good snifters.
- "Dickens" is slang for a "devil." Calling Millie a "little Dickens" is very infantilizing for a teenaged girl. And "tight" means "drunk." Notice how Howard's language places the blame entirely on Millie and not himself for drinking and leaving the bottle where she could drink from it.
- A "snifter" is a type of glass for certain liquors, so "several good snifters" means "several good-sized servings."
Pg. 53
ROSEMARY: Oh, he'd have fed her whiskey and taken his pleasure with the child and then skidaddled!
- "Skidaddled" means running away to escape consequences. Rosemary is also ignoring that it was Howard who brought the liquor and left the bottle out.
Pg. 55
HAL: Look, kid, lemme level with you. When I was fourteen I spent a year in a reform school.
- A reform school was an early version of a juvenile detention center, where minors could be incarcerated without mixing them in with the general adult prison population.
Pg. 59
ROSEMARY: Alvah Jackson can take my place till they get someone new from the agency.
- It was common in the 1950s for employers to fill vacancies by working with a staffing agency. If a job opened up, the agency would place a new employee, even for jobs with niche requirements.
Pg. 63
FLO: I know where he should be - in the penitentiary!
- A penitentiary is a prison.
Pg. 70
HAL: I'll can it to Tulsa in a couple of hours. They give me a job there at the Hotel Mayo, hoppin' bells.
- The Hotel Mayo (pronounced May-Oh, like short for mayonnaise) is a historical hotel in Tulsa. It was the fanciest hotel in town.
- "Hoppin' bells" is a quaint way of saying "bellhopping." A bellhop works at a hotel and carries luggage for guests. They get the name because they would hop to help when they heard the bell. The bulk of their pay came from tips, and they wore a recognizable uniform.
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