daneldorado wrote:Hiya Web-ed... Nice updates this week as usual. But I want to talk about something you have promised for next week.
Now, If I read your synopsis clearly, you say you will be posting a clip of the famous Martin Milner/Diane Baker spanking from Route 66 (1963). In your commentary you describe this scene as "little-known," and I can't resist asking you: by whom? Those of us who collect video spanking scenes have seen this one lots of times, most recently in the latest Cinema Swats 7 video.
But I would like to ask your opinion of that scene. At first glance, a viewer would probably decide that this is a fake spanking, because we do not get to see Diane Baker's face in the clip where she is being spanked. Ergo, a body double actually took the smacks while Ms. Baker watched safely, out of view. But one of the blessings of video is that we can analyze it better each time we run the scene back. To me, it looks as if Milner took Ms. Baker by the hand and led her into a room with a table; then he turned her over that table, and spanked her bottom about, oh, three or four times. The fact that the cameraman did not record the spankee's face in the same shot with the spanking tells us, this is probably a "body double" spanking.
Oh, but wait! If you follow the action from the point where Milner grabs the lady's hand to lead her into the next room, you will see that the whole scene appears to be one shot. If we are right and the bottom on the table really is Diane Baker's, we can admire her for her acquiescence in taking those swats.
The reason I still have questions about that scene is that so far, the only copies we've been able to view, have been blurred third or fourth generation copies. But you say that you have that scene in "a better-quality version," and that makes my heart rejoice! Maybe now, after all these years of wondering, we will be able to see for certain if Diane Baker really did get taken to the woodshed!
Probably you will think I am making too much out of this minor scene, but I have watched many films and videos with Diane Baker in them, and to me she always seemed to play stolid women. She was never (to my knowledge) seen as an excitable, animated woman such as Maureen O'Hara or Ida Lupino. So I wondered how Ms. Baker was ever cast in the role of a woman who gets spanked.
Cheers,
Dan
Why did I describe the scene as "little-known"? The truth is I either must not have ever had a copy of
Cinema Swats vol. 7, although I have seen vols. 1 - 6, or else I forgot about the
Route 66 scene, and when Chross presented it two years ago on his blog, no one seemed to know anything about it - at first even the episode was uncertain. So I figured it was reasonable to describe it as "little-known" to the average contemporary spanko. Remember Dan, you're not exactly average here; few if any other spankos know all the movie and TV spankings you do.
How did
Diane Baker get cast in the role? I can't say, but remember, this is not a "feisty woman gets tamed by strong man" sort of spanking - the kind Maureen O'Hara and Ida Lupino were just perfect for

- this is a pure punishment spanking of a somewhat disturbed troublemaker by a man who has no romantic interest in her.
I believe it is indeed Baker herself who accepts three fairly hard spanks from
Martin Milner, who made a good spanker by the way. As you note, the whole scene from the moment Milner leads Baker by the hand from the living room into the kitchen does indeed seem to be one continuous shot (and the fight in the living room which we clearly hear in the background sounds continuous also). I think you'll be pleased when you see the video is just as I have described it: better then the available 3rd or 4th-generation tape copies, since I recorded this direct to a hard drive in digital format from a superior source. Let's take a look now at some stills I extracted for this discussion:
As Milner leads someone through the kitchen door, it certainly looks like Baker.
You can't see her face any more, but the action has been continuous, and I believe it's still Baker at this point.
Baker goes behind Milner here, making it the one point at which a substitution could conceivably have taken place. But I've examined every frame, and Milner is in continuous motion. Also, Baker's shadow is visible on the lower kitchen cabinet doors (painted white) in subsequent frames, and it's clear no substitution takes place.

It's still Diane Baker being bent over the table to take three good whacks from Milner!
And here we see the advantages of digital technology: 20 years ago we simply couldn't do something like this, and the still frames from spanking scenes we used to examine on VHS tapes were always blurry and you couldn't really pause the tape very long without damaging it. They're still a little blurry, but still frames can be extracted now, which was something else you can't do with VHS, at least not without some special equipment.
So why the awkward positioning (not OTK

) if Baker herself was going to take the swats anyway? I actually address this question in the page itself (which I wrote a couple of months ago so as not to leave it for the last minute), and I speculate that because this scene was filmed in an actual house in Maine, they simply didn't have enough room in the kitchen to do a nice OTK position without moving the table, which would have slowed down the action. (Remember, you've got at least a cameraman, a sound man, an assistant director, and an electrician along with some equipment packed next to the rear wall of that kitchen. In fact, if it hadn't been a good-sized house they probably couldn't have filmed anything at all in the kitchen.)
We're all going to have a chance to get a good look at this scene next week. However, to avoid having CSR shut down for excessive bandwidth usage like the last time I posted a video, I'm probably going to have to use
YouTube at first to handle the initial rush. After the first week, I can update the page to make downloadable copies in MPG format available to everyone. And if anyone wants it, I'll have a WMV version as well. Finally, maybe I can burn a DVD of the entire episode (still on my DVR's hard drive) if anyone wants one really badly - I suspect that might only be you, Dan!
We're also going to have the longest critical commentary I have ever written, at least on a video subject, because I go way beyond the spanking scene (and maybe way beyond the bounds of good sense

) as I analyze the faults of the entire
Route 66 series! But I thoughtfully put the spanking scene near the top of the page so readers can stop there if they wish.