LORELAI: Now comes the reason for my phone call. CHRISTOPHER: All your regular 976 numbers are busy.
976 numbers are premium phone numbers on a local level, as opposed to 900 numbers, which are national. Calling such a number will charge you by the minute. They were first used in the early 1970s. Although premium numbers could be used for such things as the time or the weather, they were especially associated with adult entertainment lines, which is what Christopher is implying.
Although the internet has almost killed off the old-fashioned sex line, they are still gamely struggling along.
CHRISTOPHER: Well, did you tell her about Barbara Hutton, Doris Duke, Gloria Vanderbilt? LORELAI: Yes, and she’s perfectly willing to marry Cary Grant, get offed by her crazy butler, and start designing blue jeans as soon as the ball ends.
Barbara Hutton, previously discussed. She was first dubbed the “Poor Little Rich Girl” at her lavish debutante ball in 1930. She married seven times. Her third marriage was to Hollywood actor Cary Grant in 1942; although he genuinely seemed to care for Hutton, they divorced in 1945. Grant did not seek or receive money from her in the divorce settlement. He was probably her best husband.
Doris Duke (1912-1993), billionaire tobacco heiress and socialite, dubbed the “Richest Girl in the World”. She was presented as a debutante in 1930, at a ball at the family home in Newport, Rhode Island. She was widely travelled, with an interest in the arts and horticulture. She was the first non-Hawaiian woman to take up the sport of surfing. A keen philanthropist, she donated money to AIDS research, medicine, and child welfare, including supporting the education of black students in the South. Duke died from a stroke, but rumours persist that she was murdered by her Irish butler, Bernard Lafferty (1945-1996). No charges were ever laid, and Lafferty died in his sleep only three years later. He wasn’t “crazy” so much as an alcoholic.
Gloria Vanderbilt (1924-2019), heiress, socialite, artist, actress, and fashion designer. During the 1930s she was the focus of a scandalous child custody case between her mother and her paternal aunt, Gertrude Whitney, which Gertrude won after Gloria’s mother was declared an unfit parent. Gloria made her debut in 1940. Vanderbilt studied both acting and art, managing to have successful careers in both, as well as becoming an author. A model at 15, she ventured into the fashion industry in the 1970s, and in 1976 launched a line of blue jeans which were an immediate success.
(The picture is Gloria Vanderbilt as a sixteen-year-old debutante).
LORELAI: So I have some shocking news. Rory’s coming out. CHRISTOPHER: Out of what?
Note that this is the exact same joke Lorelai made when Rory announced she was coming out (into society). It shows how much Lorelai and Christopher are on the same wavelength, at least when it comes to banter and kidding around.
CHRISTOPHER: Where are you? LORELAI: Helsinki. CHRISTOPHER: Really. LORELAI: Yeah, I finally got the girl band together and after a week opening stateside, we headed across the Atlantic and now we’re huge with the Nordic set.
Helsinki is the capital of Finland with a population of over 600 000, although the greater Helsinki urban area is over 1.5 million. It is the most northerly metropolitan area with more than a million people, and the most northerly EU capital city. It has one of the world’s highest standards of living, and has been rated among the world’s most livable cities.
Lorelai told Max that her dream was join The Bangles, and this is another reference to Lorelai forming a girl band. The Bangles did tour Scandinavia in 1986, but never played Helsinki.
“The Nordic set” is a media phrase, more common in the early 2000s, for the fashionable Scandinavian crowd (such as Danish supermodel Helena Christensen).
Boston is the capital of, and largest city in, the state of Massachusetts. It was founded by Puritan colonists in 1630. It has a population of more than 600 000 people, is one of the economically most dominant cities in the world, and is known for its diversity of neighbourhoods. It’s about two and a half hours drive from where Stars Hollow would be, so Christopher is significantly closer to them now. It’s also 15 minutes drive from Harvard University ….
Note that Christopher has moved to Boston without letting Lorelai and Rory know, or even giving them the landline number for his new apartment. It seems he hasn’t spoken to them since Lorelai’s bachelorette party, with the excuse that he was giving Lorelai space after she broke her engagement. Which might be reasonable, except he has a daughter, and there’s no excuse for not phoning her. Once again, Rory is an afterthought in Christopher’s relationship with Lorelai, rather than the focal point she should be.
Christopher quickly rattles off a few associations for Boston:
Boston baked beans
Baked beans sweetened with molasses and flavoured with salt pork or bacon. It’s been a speciality of Boston since colonial times, and baked beans with frankfurters is a favourite dish. Boston is sometimes known as Beantown.
Boston cream pie
A sponge cake with custard or cream filling, glazed with chocolate. It’s said to have been created in 1881 at the Parker House Hotel in Boston by a French chef. It’s the official dessert of Massachusetts.
Boston Tea Party
A political protest by the an organisation called the Sons of Liberty in Boston on December 16 1773. It was in protest of the Tea Act, which allowed the British East India Company to sell tea from China in American colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by British parliament. The Sons of Liberty strongly opposed the taxes as a violation of their rights, with the slogan “no taxation without representation”. Protesters destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company, boarding the ships and throwing chests of tea into Boston Harbor. The British government responded harshly, and the episode escalated into the American Revolution. The Tea Party became an iconic event of American history.
Boston Strangler
The name given to the murderer of thirteen women in Boston in the early 1960s; most were sexually assaulted and strangled in their apartments with no signs of forced entry. In 1967 a man named Albert DeSalvo confessed to being the Boston Strangler while serving life imprisonment for a series of rapes; he was found stabbed to death in prison in 1973. Although his confession revealed some details of the crimes unknown to the public, and DNA evidence has linked him with the Strangler’s final victim, doubts remain as to whether he committed all the Boston murders. George Nassar, the prison inmate DeSalvo reportedly confessed to, is the major suspect; he is currently serving life in prison for murder. Several films have been made about the case, most notably The Boston Strangler (1968), starring Tony Curtis.
Christopher’s glib associations for the city bring to mind the way Rory summed up Chicago to Dean as “Windy. Oprah”.
LORELAI: And uh, you’ll need shoes, hose, gloves, some mice, a dog, a pumpkin.
Lorelai is referencing Cinderella, previously discussed. Cinderella’s fairy godmother turned a pumpkin into a coach, and a dog and some mice into attendants so that she could go to the ball in style.
It’s interesting that the last time Lorelai compared Rory’s situation to Cinderella was for her sixteenth birthday party, organised by Emily. This is another formal, dressy occasion they are going to for Emily’s sake, where Rory will be primped and put on display for Hartford society. For both events, Lorelai did her best to help Rory, even though she didn’t fully approve.
Lorelai is casting herself in the role of the fairy godmother, who is going to help Rory transform into a fairy tale princess for one night.
LORELAI: Well, you have a dress. You need a dowry, I guess. There you go.
A dowry is a payment of money or property given by a bride’s family to a groom’s family when the couple get married. It is an ancient custom, with a long history, which probably began with the idea of a dowry helping to give a married woman some level of financial security. It is still practised around the world, but not often in modern western countries.
As Lorelai says this, she passes Rory the pitcher shaped like a cow they have on their kitchen table – in some cultures, and certainly in the past, livestock could be part of a dowry. It’s a joke which is also a reminder that Lorelai doesn’t have much money with which to endow Rory.
The dress that Rory has is the one that Lorelai would have worn to her own debutante ball when she was sixteen, if she hadn’t got pregnant.
(Lorelai and Rory seem to like cow-shaped things – Rory bought Sookie a kitchen timer shaped like a cow which mooed when the time was up for Christmas in 2000).
LORELAI: A debutante ball] is like animals being up for bid at the county fair, except sheep don’t wear hoop skirts.
A hoop skirt is an undergarment designed to hold the skirt of a dress into a fashionable shape. They were particularly popular in the mid nineteenth century. They are still worn today for historical costumes, and formal gowns, such as under a wedding dress.
LORELAI: [A debutante ball] is like animals being up for bid at the county fair
A county fair is an North American term for an agricultural show, with the main focus being on livestock and animal husbandry, although other types of contests and entertainment will usually be on offer also. A county fair is one organised by a particular county, in contrast with a state fair, and will generally be smaller and more rural in character.
LORELAI: Rory, do you know what a coming out party says? RORY: It says I’m a woman now. LORELAI: No. It says, ‘Hi, I’m Rory. I’m of good breeding and marriageable age, and I will now parade around in front of young men of similarly good breeding and marriageable age so they can all take a good long look at me.’
Originally, becoming a debutante was a marker that a young woman was old enough to be married, and part of their purpose was to display her to a select circle of eligible bachelors, with the hope that one of them might marry her.
These days, few expect a teenager to get married – as Rory says, they are usually seen as a celebration that a girl has reached a certain level of maturity, and provide a chance to show off her appearance, style, and accomplishments. (Emily does love to show Rory off, and is given few chances to).
Lorelai is being a bit old-fashioned in her views, although she’s not exactly wrong either, as social events such as a debutante ball do give opportunities to meet people of a similar age and background, which might one day lead to something more. Of course, that could happen at any social function. It’s not as if girls are kept hidden away from the world until they make their debut any more.
Lorelai’s ideas would have been forward-thinking in, say, 1930, but seem a bit quaint for 2001. Her feminism always seems to be a generation or two behind the times.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 