Canteen Canteen Canteen

[He Ran All the Way (dir. John Berry, 1951). Click for a larger view.]

On their way to the scene of their crime, Norman Lloyd and John Garfield walk right past Canteen Canteen Canteen. Gentlemen, you would have been better off stopping for a snack and exiting the garage. But then, no movie.


[Click for a still larger view.]

The snacks on hand: “Delicious Fresh Nuts,” 1¢; candy, 5¢; gum, price unknown. A Hershey bar stands in the center candy slot; Wrigley’s Spearmint is on the right in the gum offerings.

The same vending-machine triptych can be seen in They Live by Night (1948). I doubt it’s this very set of machines: there, the shiny letters above the mirror are gone, and the stickers on the middle machine differ. And besides, the machines in He Ran All the Way appear to be working in a genuine garage.

Merriam-Webster has a puzzling etymology for canteen :

French cantine bottle case, sutler’s shop, from Italian cantina wine cellar, probably from canto corner, from Latin canthus iron tire.

The Online Etymology Dictionary traces more or less the same history but adds a helpful gloss on the word:

Thus is perhaps another descendant of the many meanings that were attached to Latin canto “corner;” in this case, perhaps “corner for storage.”

If a canteen is, as M-W says, “a small cafeteria or snack bar,” this canteen is a pretty poor one. But wait: Canteen, capitalized, is also the name of a vending-machine company, still vending today. You can see the name on a sticker on the center machine. Here’s a timeline that accounts for the company name and answers a burning question: why do vending machines have mirrors?

As an example of the art of the vending machine, Canteen Canteen Canteen is undeniably impressive.

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