Double Indemnity

This is the movie that Lorelai and Emily watch on TV while Rory is at the dance. Double Indemnity is a 1944 film noir, directed by Billy Wilder, and based on James M. Cain’s 1943 novella of the same name; Raymond Chandler co-wrote the screenplay with Wilder. The original novella was partly based on a true story – a 1927 high-profile murder by a married woman and her lover, in which the criminals were soon arrested and convicted.

The film stars Fred MacMurray as an insurance agent, and Barbara Stanwyck as a flirtatious housewife who wants her husband dead so she can collect the insurance money. Unable to resist her charms, the insurance agent uses his knowledge to make her husband’s murder look like an accident, triggering the “double indemnity” clause so that she will receive double the amount.

Double Indemnity was an immediate hit on release, and had good reviews from critics. Its reputation has grown over the years, and it is now considered one of the greatest in the film noir genre, and is sometimes cited as the first film noir ever made.

Emily mentions that she loves Barbara Stanwyck’s husky voice, and Lorelai says Emily’s voice is somewhat like Stanwyck’s. Lorelai teases that Emily could have gotten Fred MacMurray to kill Richard if she’d really wanted to.

Although Emily usually gets annoyed with Lorelai’s constant jokes, for once she is able to accept the teasing with little complaint – perhaps because it is complimentary for a change.

Mashed banana on toast

Despite Emily’s prickly demeanour, you can see that she just loves this opportunity to nurse Lorelai and mother her – the months that Lorelai was healing from a broken leg and never even told her obviously bothered her a lot. She makes Lorelai tea and heats up her burrito for her, even making the mashed banana on toast that Lorelai apparently liked when she was little, even though they both decide that it actually tastes horrible.

And despite Lorelai’s grouchiness, there is a part of her that enjoys being mothered by Emily too, as her “Thank you, Mommy” comment shows. Mind you, she’s pretty out of it on prescription medication by that stage.

Fade Into You

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This 1993 song by American alternative rock band Mazzy Star is the “slow song” which plays at the dance, the first one that Rory and Dean dance to. During it they have an encounter with Paris and her escort, and a jealous Tristan watches them while they kiss.

The song is from Mazzy Star’s album So Tonight That I Might See. Released as a single, it reached #44 in the US, the band’s only single to get into the Top 100 – it was #3 in the alternative music charts. Although other of their songs gained some mainstream success, none ever did as well as Fade Into You. It has often been used on film and television soundtracks.

“Of the manor born”

LOUISE: Who’s the dish? … He’s not of the manor born, that’s for sure.

Of the manor born means that someone is from an upper class or wealthy family. It is a common mishearing or deliberate pun on To the manner born, which means that someone is familiar from birth with a particular set of customs or behaviours.

The phrase is a quote from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which says, “But to my mind, though I am native here / And to the manner born, it is a custom / More honour’d in the breach than the observance.”

Louise likes to make literary quotes to show her intelligence, but she only chooses the most hackneyed, and in this case doesn’t even use it correctly.

We’re All Light

This 2000 song by English rock band XTC is the song which is playing when Rory and Dean first arrive at the dance and survey the room, lasting all the way through Louise flirting with Dean.

It is another track from their album Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2), earlier discussed. It is at this point that you realise the DJ at the Chilton school dance is, by an astounding coincidence, playing the sort of alternative rock that Rory, schooled in Lorelai’s tastes, most wants to hear. Let’s face it, her earlier guess of 98° was much more realistic.

Baccarat candlesticks

Emily is horrified to discover that the Baccarat candlesticks she bought Lorelai for Christmas in 1999 were exchanged for a lamp decorated with “leering” monkeys holding coconuts.

Baccarat is a French manufacturer of fine crystal glassware, located in the town of Baccarat. The glassworks were founded in 1764 by King Louis XV. An American subsidiary of the company was created in New York City in 1948.

Emily may have bought the candlesticks from Lux Bond and Green, a jewellery store in West Hartford authorised to sell Baccarat products. A classic pair of Baccarat candlesticks (like the ones in the picture) will set you back around $500, but a fancier double candlestick holder would be over $6000.

I doubt that the same store that sells Baccarat also sells the novelty monkey lamp so there probably wasn’t an actual exchange of goods – Lorelai may have simply made a cash exchange, meaning that she pocketed a tidy profit after purchasing the monkey lamp somewhere else.

(The monkey lamp may have been partly inspired by Daniel Palladino’s first gift to Amy Sherman-Palladino when they were courting – the toy game Barrel of Monkeys, a barrel filled with plastic monkeys that can be interlinked together).

“I heard this place is beautiful”

RORY: I heard this place is beautiful though – old and historic.

The scenes at the school dance were filmed at the Wilshire Ebell Women’s Club in Los Angeles. There is a beautiful and historic private women’s club in Hartford too – the Town and County Club, which is in a 19th century mansion. A number of its rooms can be hired out for functions, including the ballroom. It has the gracious staircase which Sookie believes is necessary for Rory.