Fainting Hollywood Style

[mongoII]

While watching "A Place in the Sun" I was impressed with Elizabeth Taylor's fainting scene, after she hears the news about her lover Montgomery Clift. Her drop to the floor was very natural.
A funnier scene occured at the picnic in "The Pajama Game" when character actress Reta Shaw as Mabel fainted and fell on a co-worker after the knife throwing incident.

Any noteworthy fainting scenes come to mind?

[jdb1]

While watching "A Place in the Sun" I was impressed with Elizabeth Taylor's fainting scene, after she hears the news about her lover Montgomery Clift. Her drop to the floor was very natural.
A funnier scene occured at the picnic in "The Pajama Game" when character actress Reta Shaw as Mabel fainted and fell on a co-worker after the knife throwing incident.

Any noteworthy fainting scenes come to mind?

Katharine Hepburn in Little Women trying to teach Joan Bennett how to faint convincingly for the little play they are putting on for friends. Bennett refuses to fall on the floor and looks around for a comfortable place to land in her faint. It rings very true to me - my young friends and I put on many such extravaganzas for each other, each more histrionic than the last. That scene makes me smile every time.

On another note, most movie/TV fainting always bothered my ex-husband, who was an emergency paramedic. He'd always say "You faint forward, not backwards!!!"

[moira finnie]

Isn't it often a sign of an impending visit from the stork when one faints in old movies?

Or a female given to hysteria or a manipulator?

On another note, most movie/TV fainting always bothered my ex-husband, who was an emergency paramedic. He'd always say "You faint forward, not backwards!!!"

Gee, I dunno, Judith. I'm sure that your ex had alot more experience with this than I have, but having had "syncopic episodes" a few times, I can tell you that my memory of it is sort of collapsing both backwards and forwards on occasion--though my perception of it is admittedly dim--it always felt like a string attached to the top of my head from which I was suspended had suddenly been cut and I was dropping like a brick into darkness. A most interesting state, btw, since I'd no perception of the passage of time. When I awoke from these episodes, it was the next instant, not 10 minutes or so later...ah, the mysteries of the human mind.

Of course, having these spells in my medical history did cramp my style a wee bit when I tried out for the jet pilot spot on the Blue Angels team as a plucky lass.

[jdb1]

Can't say for absolute certain about fainting, Moira. I've done plenty of it, having this inner-ear balance problem, and I've always fallen forward, to the best of my recollection. At least, when I regain myself and have to get up, I'm doing it from a prone (as opposed to supine) position.

I think what my ex was fulminating about was the kind of comedy fainting where someone does a stiffbacked backward pratfall (usually upon hearing or seeing something shocking). That's the kind of fainting that does not generally occur in nature. Not that I'm defending the so-and-so, you understand.

It would have been cool for you to be in the Blue Angels, but we would have worried about you a lot.

[moira finnie]

It would have been cool for you to be in the Blue Angels, but we would have worried about you a lot

Thanks Judith! I would've worried about our air national security with me at the controls--I'm a real hotdog at times behind the wheel. That probably comes from being a driver in Beantown, where the drivers are hellions trying to dispatch one another to the next world asap.

I've enjoyed gliders very much since I was a kid, and if I had my druthers, I'd probably like to be a bush pilot of a single engine plane in the Rockies, over the isles of Maine, or in Alaska, Canada or over the Serengeti Plain. All I needed was the opportunity. Next lifetime, I guess.

Hope that your inner ear problem is now okay.

[Vecchiolarry]

Hi,

I once fainted!
It was when I was ill with mononucleosis at university in Heidelburg. I got up out of bed and went for the bathroom down the hall; I remeber that the lights went out and when I came to, I was on my back and the building was going round and round. I remember lying there for several moments (minutes?) and thinking I was in the clouds.
Embarrassingly, water had come out from my eyes, nose and my nether regions. I couldn't get up and thought I had hit my head in the fall.
But, all turned out well; the porter rang for assistance and I was put into a warm bath and then later back to bed.

My ordeal taught me compassion for anyone invalided or incapacitated in any way.

But, to answer your question: I fell backwards!!

Larry

[jdb1]

Maybe we should take a survey, and see what percentage of faints are backwards-falling.

I've experienced fainting spells several times on the subway, and had the frightening experience a few times of being totally ignored. However, once I felt faint on the train and started to perspire and must have looked very pale, because the woman sitting in front of me (I was standing) grabbed me, threw me into her seat, and whipped a bottle of smelling salts out of her purse to waive under my nose! She was one good samaritan. For a long while after that I carried salts myself, but after a while I found that particular round of faints had passed, and the salts make your purse smell like ammonia, anyway.

[mongoII]

By the way, Reta Shaw fell backwards on her co-worker in "The Pajama Game".

Not to forget Laura Hope Crews as Aunt Pittypat in "Gone With the Wind", who is probably the faint queen.

[traceyk]

Never fainted myself, but I remember being in band in high school and they always told us "Never lock your knees when standing at attention." Well, somebody must not have listened because one morning this girl a couple of rows ahead of me keeled over. Stiff as a board and backwards. Wham! She was up in about 2 seconds, but I'll tell you, I made sure never to lock my knees after that.

Tracey

[sandykaypax]

I saw a groomsman faint at a friend's wedding. He must've locked his knees!

Seriously, it was a summer wedding in a non-air-conditioned Greek Orthodox church. The Orthodox service is quite long and I think the heat did him in. I don't remember him falling forwards OR backwards--he just kind of crumpled and the guy next to him caught him.

BTW, it was NOT the famous Greek Orthodox church in Cleveland where the wedding in The Deer Hunter was filmed, St. Theodosius. It was a suburban church named Sts. Constantine and Helen. Always thought it was funny that it was named after TWO saints.

Sandy K

[Vecchiolarry]

Hi Sandy,

Sts. Constantine and Helen were mother and son. And, are probably bound together because Helen went to Jerusalem and reputedly found the true cross in the 4th century.
Her son, Constantine was Emperor of Rome and won a battle after seeing the cross formed in the clouds.
When his mother returned to Rome with the true cross, he became a Christian and legalized the Catholic Church.
That's why we have Christianity today because of these two.

Larry

[sandykaypax]

Larry, thank you for the lovely explanation about Sts. Constantine and Helen!

Constantinople was the first seat of the church. Named after the same Constantine?

Sandy K