Posted 5 days ago
keramikos
(26 items)
Happy Holidays. :-)
The vintage sewing machine seen in 1949's Holiday Affair has intrigued me for close to a year now, judging from the recording date on my satellite TV device.
At a glance, the sewing machine is devoid of obvious maker tells, such as a name stenciled on the arm, or a maker's medallion badge on the pillar, but not so fast -- if you look closer, those details appear to have been literally masked.
The masking on the arm is a bit crude-looking. By contrast, the masking on the pillar looks perfect, albeit a bit large if the masker had done it to protect the medallion badge from a spray-painting of the body.
Why would the film makers do that?
Just dunno, but I do wonder whether this sewing machine might be a Singer model 99.
First, it's a portable. A lot of vintage Singer sewing machines could be bought as or converted to portable, but the model 99, as a three-quarters size machine, was really designed with portability in mind.
It has a forward-facing upper tension assembly, and a lever style stitch length mechanism on the pillar. Especially the specific style of the latter suggests either a later-submodel 66 or 99, possibly the 99-24.
The overall look of the sewing machine body seems a bit too stubby to be a 66, and the shape of the needlebar-containing part looks more like the 99 (hat tip to Nicholas Rain Noe).
Of course, this vintage sewing machine could be another make and model entirely.
Sigh. 'Tis a puzzlement. Marking this as an Unsolved Mystery.
IMAGE CREDITS:
Low-tech screen captures from a recording of the 20240124 showing of 1949's Holiday Affair on Turner Classic Movies.
REFERENCES:
Holiday Affair at Turner Classic Movies:
https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/78191/holiday-affair#overview
Holiday Affair at Internet Movie Database:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041473/
A Visual Guide to Identifying Singers from Crappy Craigslist Photos, Part 5: Is It a 99?:
https://vssmb.blogspot.com/2011/08/visual-guide-to-identifying-singers_16.html
Singer Model 99-24 List of Parts:
https://maritime.org/doc/pdf/singer-99-24-parts.pdf
Happy holidays keramikos
Newfld, Thank you. :-)
Possible explanation for the masking: The sewing machine maker wouldn't pay for the advertisment value.
Golgatha, Interesting take.
Film product placement in the modern era is something product makers desire and for which they'll pay big bucks.
Product placement actually goes way back to the earliest days of film, but some of it seems to have been the result of behind the scenes people having a stake in both the film and the placed product:
https://collider.com/first-product-placement-washing-day-in-switzerland/
More on the history of product placement in film:
https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/product-placement-in-films/
I linked this post over at the Victorian Sweatshop forum to get their ideas:
https://www.victoriansweatshop.com/post/vsms-in-the-media-9694540/