$1.80 an hour? Well boo-f'n-hoo.
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — The Defiant Ones
jgroub — 15 years ago(January 31, 2011 10:59 AM)
Tony Curtis' character complains about making "only" $1.80 an hour. That is a load of sh!t if I ever heard it. $1.80 an hour for a 40-hour work week comes to $72 a week. In the Honeymooners, Ralph Kramden was a bus driver making $62 dollars a week during this exact same time period, and supporting a wife while living in New York City. And although he lived in the lap of poverty, that was because of all his hare-brained money-losing schemes. It was stated in the series that Norton, who was a sewer worker, earned the same as Ralph, and lived very well by comparison, with a nice decorated apartment and a television.
I'd bet that you could live pretty damned well on $72 a week in East Bumf@ck, Kentucky.
I asked the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well. -
raffi_freak — 15 years ago(February 27, 2011 04:26 AM)
He never denies that he was making a decent living, but he wanted to be Charlie Potatoes. He'd blow his pay every Saturday on booze and women, and that was how he wanted to live
all
the time. He was never meant to be portrayed as particularly poor, he just wanted more than a nice decorated apartment and a television.
IITYWYBAD? -
JLearn — 15 years ago(March 09, 2011 09:12 AM)
Keep in mind that these were 1959 wages we're talking about here. The federal minimum wage then was $1/hr so, as a previous poster noted, he was doing pretty well to make $1.80. I can see that movie viewers in the '50s would not be very sympathetic to his complaint.
There's an interesting graph at this web site (http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html) that shows that, adjusting for inflation, $1/hr was equivalent to more than $7/hr, so $1.80 was like more than $12.60/hr in terms of modern day earning power. That'd be like more than $500/wk for a 40 hr week. He was not going to get rich at that rate, but he wasn't just scraping by either. -
JLearn — 15 years ago(March 10, 2011 06:28 AM)
I absolutely agree again to refer to that graph on that web site I mentioned, the minimum wage, in terms of earning power peaked in 1969. It has generally been declining ever since. But most people who get paid minimum wage have absolutely no power to bargain for anything better.
Them that's got shall get -
vinidici — 14 years ago(January 16, 2012 07:30 PM)
hence, the rush by illegal immigrants to fill in those low-paying jobs that nobody else wants (but that still pay better than the kind of work available back in their native country)except we keep making it hard for those folks to stay around to keep working those jobs! Catch 22 if there ever was one!
BTW, I thought this movie was set during the Great Depression. Buck-eighty an hour would have been pretty-damn-good money in those days!
Whatever you do, DO NOT read this sigACKKK!!!
TOO LATE!!! -
jgroub — 13 years ago(June 19, 2012 07:16 PM)
Nope; $72 per week for 52 weeks is $3744 per year. Having watched a good deal of Mad Men, 1959 wages are equivalent to about 10 times what they are today, so that's $37 grand per year. That might not be high off the hog, but it's nothing to complain about.
I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well. -
elisedfr — 12 years ago(June 18, 2013 11:07 AM)
If I remember correctly, Poitier's character (who was a farmer before being put in jail) actually says something like "nice" or "not bad at all". But Tony wanted to make it really big. Besides, working in a factory is never fun, regardless of the income.
" You ain't running this place, Bert, WILLIAMS is!" Sgt Harris