CRAIG BROWN: Why do models look like they're sucking lemons?

By CRAIG BROWN, COLUMNIST

Published: 19:37 EST, 8 January 2014 | Updated: 19:38 EST, 8 January 2014

The film Son Of Billy Elliot was all about a ballet dancer whose son wanted to break away from the family profession and work down the mines. Are there any other films along the same lines?

The Empty Monty (1998) is the inspiring story of a group of unemployed male strippers who decide to go it alone and open their own steel mill.

Other movies you may care to explore include Let’s Stop The Show Being Put On Here! (1940), in which Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland play two youngsters who, through sheer pluck, manage to convert a theatre back into a barn.

Jaws tells the story of a brave young shark terrorised by the pampered inhabitants of a seaside resort

At the very last minute, and against all the odds, they somehow prevent the performance of a corny old musical from going ahead.  

In the movie’s final, heart-warming scene, they shoo all the vulgar singers and dancers out of the barn, and triumphantly admit a dignified group of hay-bales.

You may also enjoy a couple of inspiring movies telling of persecuted minorities tackling their persecutors head-on.

Jaws tells the story of a brave young shark terrorised by the pampered inhabitants of a seaside resort, while Titanic chronicles the breathtaking escapades of a lone iceberg as it fights back against the onslaught of a luxury cruise liner.

When was the last recorded instance of a passer-by hearing a car alarm and still imagining that it indicated a theft in progress?

A car alarm is an electronic device installed in a vehicle for the purpose of irritating everyone within a given area.

For a short time after the car alarm came on the market, many people laboured under the misapprehension that it signalled a theft in progress. They would anxiously look over in the direction of the vehicle, wondering whether they should do something about it.

But these days are long gone; nowadays, when the distinctive, shrill ‘whee-whee-whee . . . whee-whee-whee’ alarm sounds, most sensible passers-by simply carry on with their everyday business, whilst secretly harbouring thoughts of violent retribution against the owner of the vehicle.

The last recorded instance of someone believing that a car alarm indicated a theft occurred as long ago as 1984, when trainee police officer Norman Bunyon, 19, went to investigate a car alarm going off in Ditchley Road, Southampton.

‘For almost two minutes, I was convinced there was a robbery under way. But then a senior officer informed me the role of the car alarm was to wind up anyone in the vicinity, so I felt a proper Charlie.’

Why don’t fashion models ever smile on the catwalk?

This is a question that continues to vex sociologists, psychologists and historians around the world.

Some argue that if you turned the faces of models the other way up then they would seem to be smiling; from this evidence, it has been suggested most models are simply trying to appeal to an audience in the Southern Hemisphere.    

Strike a pose: Models seem constantly to wear grim, unsmiling expressions when they hit the catwalk

Others claim that the reason models never smile on the catwalk is that they have only recently checked in the mirror to see what they are wearing.

Is it the models who are to blame for their grim,  unsmiling expressions or the fashion designers?

There are those who maintain that top designers force models to drink a glass of vinegar before stepping on to the catwalk, so as to create a filmy, soft-focus vapour around them.

Who is to blame for thinking popcorn is the perfect snack to be consumed in cinemas?

Nowadays, even in a film¿s most sensitive moments there is the constant sound of the audience munching on popcorn

For the premiere of his silent movie Wagon Train at the Hollywood Gaumont in July 1928, the legendary self-styled King Of The Silent Movies, Hiram V. Washbindle Jr, needed the sound of heavy wagon wheels rolling over thick gravel.

After experimenting with a wide variety of noisy snacks, including cashew nuts and tightly wrapped sweets, Washbindle finally hit upon the idea of distributing free cartons of popcorn to the Gaumont’s 1,500 patrons.

At the appropriate moment, the patrons were ‘cued in’ by a conductor in full evening dress, and began crunching in unison.

‘The effect of all that popcorn being crunched by so many people at the same time was staggering,’ recalled Washbindle.

‘A Native American in the audience was so taken in that he even started hollerin’ and whoopin’ and whirlin’ his tomahawk about his head, in the belief that a real wagon-train was about to pass by.’

But the story has an unhappy ending. Audiences gained such a taste for popcorn that they began to eat it during each and every film, however inappropriate. Nowadays, even in a film’s most sensitive moments — the forbidden kiss, the last farewell, the silent tear — it always sounds as though a wagon train is passing.