Hacker Cinema
The Petrified Forest
1936 · Film · 82 min
Directed by Archie Mayo
Gabby, the waitress in an isolated Arizona diner, dreams of a bigger and better life. One day penniless intellectual Alan drifts into the joint and the two strike up a rapport. Soon enough, notorious killer Duke Mantee takes the diner's inhabitants hostage. Surrounded by miles of desert, the patrons and staff are forced to sit tight with Mantee and his gang overnight.
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5 comments on Hacker News
I think non-Americans need to take a stand against this. Refuse all tipping.
The custom of tipping came to America from Europe after the First World War, and tipping was seen as deeply un-American until the 1950's.
It is sometimes mentioned in films and radio dramas of the period. See the Bettie Davis movie Petrified Forest for one example.
I meant between WWI and II. I wasn't aware of the earlier movement. I first became aware of it watching the 1936 film version of The Petrified Forest, which features anti-tipping as a minor background element, and has a contemporary (to its release) setting—the play it's based on was published in 1934.
Every time tipping comes up on HN, someone chimes in to say what a strange American custom it is, and how nobody ever tips in Europe.
Historically, tipping came to America from Europe in the 1920's and 30's. When it started, it was very divisive and considered un-American. You can see it in the background of certain old films of the era. It is a sub-plot in the Humphrey Bogart movie Petrified Forest.
> I am always baffled when I read about the tip culture in the states. I find it so belittling for workers. It seems to incentivize a mentality of "the customer is always right", with workers putting an extra effort to always smile and be nice in the hope for a fair tip.
There was an early-20th-century movement in the US to end tipping, for that reason. The thinking was that it created too much of a relationship of subservience rather than equals participating in commerce, to be compatible with American ideals of freedom.
You see this sometimes in older media, as in the "Tipping is Un-American" sign in the film The Petrified Forest.
Was watching The Petrified Forest, a 1936 film starring Humphrey Bogart, and part of it takes place in a diner, and on the wall is a sign:
Tipping is un-American
Keep your change
So the idea was alive in some sense even into the 30s.