I Just Plain Didn't Know This

Josephine the Plumber was a major child movie star in the '30s and '40s. And lots of people knew this.

I grew up with a TV in the house starting in the infancy of TV in the '50s. I don't remember Show of Shows, but I would guess my memory starts somewhere with whatever was on from 1955 onward. My mother and father were not known to watch TV, and I was an only child.

So when Jane Withers passed away at 95 I was astonished to learn that the woman who played Josephine the Plumber in those Comet cleanser commercials in the '70s had been a contemporary of Shirley Temple and had nearly as big a career in movies, singing, dancing and acting.

My folks never watched the Comet cleanser commercial and told me, "that's Jane Withers, she was a child movie star." None of my friends knew either. No one ever told me.

Of course not knowing was not the worst thing in the world. She never seemed to be a Jeopardy answer. Maybe the producers didn't know either.

No matter. The joy of reading obituaries is learning something you didn't know, even if it's only the identity of the actress who in bib overalls with her name stitched across the top in script was a big deal hawking Comet cleanser as a superior way to get out those stubborn stains in sinks and tubs. Stains are always stubborn.

The advertisers wanted a woman, because who of course was near, or cared about a dirty sink? Certainly not the lug in the living room in a T-shirt slugging a can of beer and watching a ball game. (That was the image a history professor at City College in the '60s tried to convince us was the best example of a human waste of space. I never bought it. Dad?) No, cleaning was woman's work, and a woman knew what to do to get the job done.

Why cast her as a plumber? Then, and even now, you're not going to encounter too many any female plumbers. It's a dirty job that requires you to spend a good deal of your time working upside down staring at supply lines, fixtures and nuts and bolts. Wrenches are heavy.

Through the wonders of YouTube I've now re-watched some of Josephine's commercials. I imagine the Comet people chose a plumber because they were always near dirty porcelain sinks and tubs.

Jane's childhood fame was so endearing that Aljean Harmetz's  NYT obituary tells us FDR had his wife Eleanor personally deliver a teddy bear to the child actress. She received many teddy bears and dolls it turned out.

If you were familiar with Jane as the childhood movie star you would easily recognize her as the plumber. The same chubby cheeks were still with her, the chubby, childish cheeks any grandmother or aunt would pinch and pull when Mom brought you over for a visit and you were told you could have one piece of candy from the dish. Jane was a cutie.

Apparently, in the movies, Jane portrayed a brat who inevitably got spanked at the end of the movie, probably just to prove naughtiness didn't pay, not when in her first, major movie role in 1934 she played a brat who wanted a machine gun for Christmas, and rather than pull legs off spiders, she abused her dolls and sent them to the "hospital." What a toughie.

Most kids of that era wanted a six-shooter, but the girl in Bright Eyes (1934) wanted a machine gun. And she hadn't even seen the Untouchables either.

Jane Withers might no longer be with us, but the cleanser Comet is. It's under our sink, where you might find a plumber—male or female these days.

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