Joan Crawford at the Automat

From Sadie McKee (dir. Clarence Brown, 1934). Alone in the city and down on her luck, Sadie (Joan Crawford) visits the Automat. Click any image for a larger view.

[Unless you have the free time and financial wherewithal to track down an original, this is as close as you’ll ever get to an Automat coffee spigot.]

[Coffee cost a nickel.]

[And the twin spigots dispensed both coffee and cream.]

[Civilization = cup and saucer.]

[I like that lettering. And I like the pedestals. I think that they were still around when I made what I remember as my one and only visit to an Automat, in the early 1980s with my friend Aldo Carrasco.]

This scene comes to a bitter end: Sadie sees a half-eaten piece of pie — food! — and the man who’s leaving it behind crushes out his cigarette in it. Is he nasty, or merely oblivious? Hard to say.


Related reading
All OCA Automat posts (Pinboard)