The Perils of...something or other... to do with props and the 4th Indiana Jones movie...

Over the weekend, Miss Edith and Notarius had occasion to amble down Chapel Street, one of the central retail areas of downtown New Haven. It’s a bit atizzy right now because the 4th Indiana Jones movie is using the area as a set for a few days this week. To this end, a number of storefronts are being reworked and staged.

One such storefront, which is really a newsstand, is dressed up as a little bookstore/newsstand. One of the two window displays is stocked with actual magazines from 1957, the year in which the movie is set. The other window display is books. There are some kids books – old editions of things like Robinson Crusoe, editions that anyone who ever spent time in a used bookstore would recognize – and there’s a Norman Vincent Peale chestnut, but what caught my eye was a copy of Julia Child and Lousiette Bertholle, and Simone Beck’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

This book did not come out until 1961.

This should be a source of embarrassment for the prop supply people, and I hope someone says something before they go to film. I’d say something to someone myself, but I don’t know who to say it to but you, dear reader*.


*I know that the odds that anyone will notice this book, or any other specific book, in this movie are extremely slim. I don’t care. It’s the principle of the thing. All the magazines are obviously there because someone meticulously selected 1957 issues. Could no one check the copyright dates of the books – especially such easily recognized books as Mastering the Art of French Cooking – to make sure that the books actually existed in the year that the film is set? This is just sloppiness, my dears…