The centerpiece of the Baltimore cigarette row house where chubby honey Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Bronski) lives is a prop: her mother Edna’s iron, the housewives’ hearth. Created by set decorator Gordon Sim, SDSA, for the new movie, Hairspray, it’s the early, pre-Civil Rights, pre-feminist sixties and laundress Edna (yes, John Travolta in a fat suit) wields her hot steel like a scepter above the ever-present ironing board in the cluttered middle-class apartment where she reigns as queen, and hubby Christopher Walken is her befuddled Prince Albert. We can almost wake up and smell the spray starch! This is definitely the pre-MS era: before Martha. And typical housewives couldn’t tart up their pads with decorating tips gleaned at the local K-Mart. Coordinating stripes with prints? Natural fibers? Forget it! So we get furniture built for comfort and distance and stain resistance; browns and greens together that wouldn’t even suit a tree. And then there’s that fabulous unnatural fiber built to last beyond a human-race flattening atomic bomb: Naugahyde! Check out dad’s throne: the tweed LaZboy! Half-full candy dishes are everywhere among the kitschy touches, like a nautical occasional table, along with Tracy’s baby shoes and photos. The apartment says loved, overprotected, familiar and, yes, more than a bit claustrophobic for an outgoing tease-haired teen at the dawn of the sixties longing to do the Frug. — Thelma Adams

Wanna learn more about set decorating? Visit setdecorators.org

Thelma Adams is the film critic for Us Weekly, and writes historical fiction. She lives in upstate NY.

Photo by David James for Hairspray

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