MovieChat Forums > Cimarron Strip (1967) Discussion > What annoys me about Dulcey is

What annoys me about Dulcey is

posted 15 years ago by jgarner136
3 replies | jump to latest

oddly enough, her hair. I can deal with the fact that she is an airhead, and that she expects the frontier to be as clean and civilized as Providence RI. After all, she is just 18. But therein lies the problem. She constantly reminds Marshall Jim Crown that she is a grown woman of "almost nineteen", and pushes for a grown up relationship with him. She runs the Wayfarer's Inn and plays den mother to Francis and MacGregor and any others that wander through. She wants to be taken seriously, and yet she runs around with her hair hanging down her back loose, or at most tied back with a ribbon. Who in the development group did not do their homework? The setting for Cimmaron Strip is the 1880's. A woman of that era put her hair up at 16, yet here is Dulcey at 18, looking like a child. Even cooking, she has her hair hanging down. Often as I watch the show I want to reach through the tv screen with a handful of hairpins and put her hair up. If she wants to be accepted as a grown woman, she should look like one.

Yes, I know it's a minor annoyance, but there it is.

[–] anniebel 15 years ago

Yes that irritated me too. There she is, a grown woman and yet she has a little girls hairstyle. Most young girls in that era couldn't wait for the time when they could wear their hair up as it marked their transition to adulthood. Though Dulcey's fall of golden hair looks wonderful, it is not realistic for the time period.

[–] rk911 14 years ago

speaking of realistic. has anyone noticed the snow capped mountains in the background of the opening credits? not too many of those in oklahoma. but it IS a very good western.

i love the opening credits on some of the old shows. Adam-12 is a great example. i smile when dispatch sends 'em to a "459 in progress" and malloy whips a u-turn. problem is dispatch never gave them an address.

but i digress. i try not to miss a saturday morning episode of CS.

[–] WyldeGoose 13 years ago

I think she was taken seriously. The thing is that she's in a place where women like her would be raped and killed in no time flat if it weren't for Crown. The Cimarron is really no place for her, repeatedly told so by Crown, and it has nothing to do with how she wears her hair or how she dresses. It has to do with the fact that she is a young woman in a place where young women like her are only found in the brothels. If it weren't for Crown, that's precisely where she would end up.

There was another woman who came in with the Houston family that talked and dressed like a man, and for a moment Crown was attracted to her. But, she's a deceiving, conniving woman who would never betray the Houston family, and would do whatever she could to help them gain an advantage over society. Dulcey represents the kind of civilization that the Marshal is fighting for, the kind where decency and honesty are the norm, not the exception.

Dulcey is taken seriously for this reason. She has stuck to her guns, and isn't leaving the Wayfarer Inn. It's her inn, and she's going to make it work. That's guts. But, there are times when someone wants to do something that's clearly out of their league, and it's not a matter of disrespect so much to tell them "No, stay here, Dulcey" but rather an issue of practicality. A woman like her going along with the Marshal somewhere only makes his job doubly hard because now he's got to watch over her and do his job at the same time. That's why he told her to go home when she first got there and found that her father was dead. She's out of her element, in a dangerous place for a woman to be.