The Endless Legacy of Film Tropes

Cataloging tropes is a job that never ends.  One, two or even three tropes turn up in nearly every film that I come across.  Tropes insistently find their way into scripts much like flood waters flow into every available crevice in their path.   

If there's an image, a word or an action that is guaranteed to make a viewer laugh or cry or tense up, a filmmaker will keep it stored in their bag of tricks and pull it out whenever it can be useful.  Let's take rain for example.  People have an emotional reaction to rain.  It can make them feel sad or happy or anxious.  I addressed this subject once before.  The article can be found at the following link:

https://anthonybalducci.blogspot.com/2021/06/rainy-days-in-hollywood.html

The fact is that it's rarely all sunny weather in a Hollywood film.  

Sources of rain images

Straight Shooting (1917)
The Lady Refuses (1931)   
The Road to Singapore (1931)
Consolation Marriage (1931)
The Devil is Driving (1932)  
One Hour with You (1932)
Private Detective 62 (1932)
Another Language (1933) 
The Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)
Beauty for Sale (1933)
Imitation of Life (1934)
Suzy (1936)
Oh, Mr. Porter! (1937)
Mad About Music (1938) 
Lady with Red Hair (1940)
A Man Betrayed (1941)
Springtime in the Rockies (1942) 
Miss Annie Rooney (1942) 
China (1943)
The More the Merrier (1943)  
The Purple Heart (1944)
The Keys of the Kingdom (1944)
The Green Years (1946) 
The Cockeyed Miracle (1946) 
That Brennan Girl (1946)
The Unsuspected (1947) 
Gangster (1947)
The Egg and I (1947) 
It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)
Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948) 
Two Guys from Texas (1948)
Arch of Triumph (1948)
Blood on the Moon (1948) 
Passport to Pimlico (1949) 
Beyond the Forest (1949)
Morning Departure (1950)
Brandy for the Parson (1952) 
The Heart of the Matter (1953)
The President's Lady (1953)  
The Angel Who Pawned Her Harp (1954) 
An Inspector Calls (1954)
Geordie (1955) 
A Man Called Peter (1955)  
The End of the Affair (1955)
Three Violent People (1956) 
A Town Like Alice (1956)
Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957) 
Gun for a Coward (1957) 
Look Back in Anger (1959)
The Hanging Tree (1959) 
The Facts of Life (1960) 
Home from the Hill (1960) 
Black Zoo (1963)
Move Over, Darling (1963) 
The Americanization of Emily (1964) 
Rio Conchos (1964)  
36 Hours (1965) 
Let's Kill Uncle (1966) 
The Way West (1967)
In the Name of the Italian People (1971)
The War Between Men and Women (1972)
Fear is the Key (1972) 
The Victim (1972)
Sorcerer (1977)
Foul Play (1978)
Bronco Billy (1980) 
Bird on a Wire (1990)
The Secret of Roan Inish (1994) 
The Bridges of Madison County (1995)  
The English Patient (1996)  
Hikers (1997)
Dreamer (2005)
A Shine of Rainbows (2009) 
Starbuck (2011) 
Het Leven Is Vurrukkulluk (2018)

The slap has a great tradition in Hollywood.  I have had very little experience with slaps in my personal life.  Yet, this is something that happens in movies on a frequent basis.  Every third film has a rain scene.  Every fourth film has a slap.  Or, maybe, it's the other way around.  Imagine if Hollywood producers were prohibited from including rain or slapping in their films.  How would they cope?

Let us now turn the other cheek for more slapping fun.

Slaps part 1

Slaps part 2

Slaps part 3

Slaps part 4

Sources of slap scenes

The Lady Refuses (1931)  
Flesh (1932)
Three Wise Girls (1932) 
Blessed Event (1932) 
Blondie of the Follies (1932)
Ladies They Talk (1933) 
She Had to Say Yes (1933) 
Wild Boys of the Road (1933)  
The Personality Kid (1934) 
Forsaking All Others (1934)
The Wedding Night (1935)
Meet the Missus (1937)
The Crowd Roars (1938) 
King of Alcatraz (1938)
Men with Wings (1938)
Jezebel (1938) 
Eternally Yours (1939) 
A Girl Must Live (1939)
Sorority House (1939) 
Gone With The Wind (1939)
Spring Parade (1940)
Remember the Night (1940)
The Long Voyage Home (1940)  
I Wake Up Screaming (1941) 
Swamp Water (1941) 
The Mayor of 44th Street (1942)
This Gun for Hire (1942) 
Alias Boston Blackie (1942) 
Old Acquaintance (1943) 
Hitler's Madman (1943) 
Man of Evil (1944)  
The Curse of the Cat People (1944)
Christmas in Connecticut (1945) 
Dead of Night (1945)   
The Sailor Takes a Wife (1945)
Somewhere in the Night (1946)
Claudia and David (1946) 
Wild Harvest (1947)  
Gangster (1947)
Repeat Performance (1947) 
It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) 
That Wonderful Urge (1948) 
Up in Central Park (1948) 
Stop Press Girl (1949) 
Easy Living (1949)  
Sierra (1949)
His Kind of Woman (1951)
Mystery Junction (1951)
Mandy (1952) 
The Heart of the Matter (1953)
Island in the Sky (1953) 
Kiss Me Kate (1953) 
The President's Lady (1953) 
The Angel Who Pawned Her Harp (1954)  
Man Without a Star (1955)  
Portrait of Alison (1955) 
Women's Prison (1955)  
The Last Hunt (1956) 
Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956)  
Santiago (1956) 
A Town Like Alice (1956)
Foreign Intrigue (1956) 
Three Violent People (1956)  
Chicago Confidential (1957) 
Forty Guns (1957) 
Abandon  Ship! (1957)
Lizzie (1957) 
Marjorie Morningstar (1958)
Good Day for a Hanging (1959)
Rio Bravo (1959) 
The Hanging Tree (1959) 
The Fugitive Kind (1960)
Cimarron (1960)
Conspiracy of Hearts (1960) 
Full Treatment (1960) 
Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962) 
Love with the Proper Stranger (1963) 
Nightmare (1964)
The System (1964)  
The Nanny (1965)
Alfie (1966) 
After The Fox (1966)
Follow Me, Boys (1966) 
The Way West (1967)
El Dorado (1967)  
The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968) 
The Reckoning (1969)
The War Between Men and Women (1972)
Fear is the Key (1972) 
The Laughing Policeman (1973)
Foul Play (1978)
A Little Romance (1979)  
Bronco Billy (1980)  
Rabbit Hole (2010)  

I couldn't decide if it was a slap or a punch in Island in the Sky (1953).

People got upset when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock.  John Carradine upset a few people when he slapped a priest in Hitler's Madman (1943). 

French cinema also makes use of the slap, as indicated by this mass slapping routine in Daddy or Mommy (2015).

In Hollywood's Golden Age, screenwriters never exhausted the varied possibilities for getting a laugh with a hat.  This was a subject that I discussed in my article "The Hat."  I have since come across a few other examples of hat comedy.  A wild, gun-toting cowboy shoots a hat off a man's head in Cowboy from Brooklyn (1938) .  John Wayne loses his hat in an airplane terminal in A Man Betrayed (1941).  A dog sits on an important visitor's hat in The Egg and I (1947).  Wynne Gibson mistakenly sits on Edmund Lowe's hat in The Devil Is Driving (1932).  And, of course, we have a number of hat mix-up and hat try-on routines. 

I no sooner wrote about cattle stampeding into a busy town than I saw this cow show up in town in Puddin’ Head (1941).

Here are other tropes that I have turned up lately.

hat mix-up

Bridal Suite (1939)   
The Doctor Takes a Wife (1940) 
Christmas in July (1940)  
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) 
Big Jake (1971) 
The Strongest Man in the World (1975) 

hat try-on

Marion Davies hat try-on 
My Favorite Wife (1940) 
Father Takes a Wife (1941)  
Kipps (1941)  
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)  
Unfinished Dance (1947)  
The Glass Bottom Boat (1966) 

bridal chase 

The Love Lottery (1954) 

chair

Don't Throw That Knife (1951)
I Love Lucy ("New Neighbors," 1952)  

clones 

The Marrying Kind (1952) 
The Love Lottery (1954)

crowded spaces 

The Last Journey (1935)
The Bride Comes Home (1935)
Family Vacation (1949)
Stop Press Girl (1949)

egg 

Flesh (1932)  
Wild Boys of the Road (1933)  

fleas

That Wonderful Urge (1948) 

home teetering on the edge of a cliff

Don't Make Waves (1967)  

Murphy bed

Vivacious Lady (1938)
The Bride Comes Home (1935)

seltzer bottle

Thunderbolt (1929) 
Three Cheers for the Irish (1940)   
The Heart of the Matter (1953)
The Glass Bottom Boat (1966) 

soap bubbles

The Skipper Surprised His Wife (1950) 
The Trouble with Angels (1966)

unconscious woman 

International Settlement (1938)  
You Can't Take It with You (1938) 
Two Sisters from Boston (1946)  
Folly to Be Wise (1952)  

wet

The Egg and I (1947)  
The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)  

Miracolo A Milano (1951)