NOVA KINO FILMS

Hamburgerology: Rise and Fall of the White Towers

 

            January 25, 1958, two agents from the Bureau of Nostalgia walked into a White Tower hamburger joint on Brand Street, Detroit, around 3:30 in the afternoon. The interior furnishings glistened from the cold fusion austerity of stainless steel seemingly lifted straight out of a submarine. The Space Race was in full tilt mode on account of the Russians having just launched Sputnik into the orbit of American nationalism. Atomic burgers, Astro-shakes, Mars bars, and other rocket-fueled edibles were entering the American fast food landscape, converting cold war paranoia into a capitalist pitch for hot burgers, beverages, and candy bars. Americans were wary of a hostile borscht takeover at the kitchen counter or a withering away of the fancy cocktail state into a single proletarian shot of vodka. The Dictatorship of the Palette was in its initial quest for national domination. The western European belly would be next. Big Macs and Whoppers for the enfants of Marx and Coca-Cola. The post-Soviet bloc would eventually follow. Everything succumbing to Debord’s theoretical spiderweb. "You walk into the Burger King of Warsaw and you are walking into the U.S. Embassy."

       

     They sat down on two stools next to the cashier in the empty restaurant. Cold looks from the staff greeted them in an indifferent manner devoid of today’s corporate howdy-doody. Agent A ordered two cheeseburgers, fries, and a coke: “extra onions” he told the fry cook as the patties hit the grill in a greasy sizzle. B ordered “ham and cheese on rye, lightly toasted… mayo, pickle, a doughnut, and a glass of milk.” “There’s something wrong with your taste buds” – A remarked. “You want coffee?” the waitress interrupted.  “Yeah” B said, pointing back and forth at the two empty cups in front of them. They were edgy; the assignment was vague and convoluted, sent back in time to find out what happened to the American aesthetic. When did things first start to fall apart? From the Nixonian cancer in the White House to the Art Deco masterpieces of the White Tower hamburger chain. Nixon's decline was obvious, but White Tower's? How could a storied American hamburger chain successfully operating since 1929 in elegant, de facto hamburger museums spread across the country literally begin to fall off the planet starting in 1977.   

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     From its original inception in 1929 until the early seventies, White Tower was emblematic of American style and efficiency.  Form and function ran hand in hand at this juncture. The typical White Tower burger outlet was a chef d’oeuvre in Modernist design. The building was the medium, hamburgers the message. “A clean, well-lighted, streamlined, human-scaled structure, capped by an actual white tower often redundantly labeled White Tower.” 'Branding before branding' - paraphrasing the jacket cover notes from MIT Press’s recent re-printing of White Towers by Paul Hirshorn and Steven Izenour:  a beautiful and sublime medium large format book that chronicles the architectural evolution through pictorial and written analysis of yet another emblematic failure of American brilliance. Bit parts of a vortex of architectural icons doomed by the metastasized suburban abandonment of the inner city, resulting in the demise of numerous American cities that hitherto radiated with cosmopolitan culture and style. With a predominately proletarian clientele, White Tower stores were constructed to project “social and gastronomical presence of royalty” juxtaposed by their humble locations near downtown subway stations and mass transit hubs. They appeared as stand alone structures through an architectural device that masked the fact that they were actually wedged in between other buildings.  At night, with large panoramic windows stretching across the bulk of the building that emanated the brightly lit interiors and Hopperesque beauty of the operation, passerbys could witness the movie like aura of a typical White Tower. Incidentally, one of the main producers of White Tower structures over the years, the S. M. Sissel architectural firm, also produced cinemas. The book features numerous selective photographs from the definitive archival collection from the White Tower System Corporation that bare witness to White Tower’s monumental architectural achievement and eventual collapse. Initially a mere imitator of America’s premiere hamburger chain White Castle, until they hired the Architect Charles Johnson, a maverick modernist who launched their franchise into the pantheon of 20th century American design.

 

     In essence, White Tower, the once formidable operation was unable to adapt to the 70’s groundbreaking strategies of the larger hamburger behemoth’s focus on the mediated targeting of pre-adolescences, setting a new stage for a lifetime of burger ingestion. Hooking youngsters on corporate smack from the get-go, they would always keep coming back for more. A strategy diabolically employed to ruthless effect by McDonalds and eventually the rest that followed in the wrath of Ray Kroc’s international wake. White Tower’s straight up original style was good burgers at a good price “a quick nickel instead of a slow quarter.” A strategy that successfully saw them grow from a few stores beginning at the depression into a peak of 230 during the mid-fifties. Once Ronald McDonald as the eternal hamburger Pimp and Pusher entered the scene, their modus operandi was crumbled.         

 

     In its’ heyday, from 1929 – 1960, Female servers wore all white outfits suggesting a Nurses’ like care for service and sanitary conditions. The burgers at White Tower were hand rolled the night before each day shift, guaranteeing freshness, then cooked to order the next day at the customer’s request and served up hot. Comparatively, today’s bovine sandwich is first machine cut at a giant factory, then shipped out like a frozen fish to a local franchise freezer, then thawed, cooked, and eventually re-heated before order. For added digestive pleasure and visual conformity, today’s average belly bomb is jacked up on hormones, cloned DNA, and other mind numbing artificial ingredients. White Tower’s transparent lean and mean approach gave way to more complex marketing strategies and nutritional hodgepodge as 1970’s customers took it for granted that their burgers were fresh and prepared under the strictest sanitary conditions. They were unaware of the seismic super-sizing underway that would transform a society of the world’s fittest to the world’s fattest. (OBESITY) has now become the icon of the hamburger empire and the unofficial bi-product of the American dream. A giant, rumbling, amorphous stain running amok across the entire nation. There was a fork in the road and we took it. The seductively rugged, straight-up style of a transparent burger operation no longer had the were-withal to turn a profit in Ronald McDonalds’ far-out rainbow colored TV Show. The United Kingdom and even the gastronomical giant France are now experiencing the side-effects of a youth weaned on burgers and fries, devouring their way to epic overweight proportions, wreaking havoc on the educational, medical, and social institutions. A system initially designed to give workers nourishment in the shortest amount of time in order to allow the maximum efficiency on the job, is now doing just the opposite - killing them off in a slow-motion, self-implosive gobblefest. A death by burger, effectively fulfilling Marx’s dictum that the Capitalist will sell themselves the rope that hangs them. What lead to this demonic decline in the human species? Agent B- “three words, BUILT IN OBSOLESCENCE.”

 

     "Where was I when the burgers first hit the fan?" In 1999, I began researching the concept for a short film about the history of the hamburger as a Soviet conspiracy. I had read some articles by a Russian history professor, Anton Koslov, who concluded that post-Soviet America was becoming more like Soviet Russia and vice-versa. I started looking at the entire fast food industry through this Sovietized perspective. A monolithic structure spreading its' global power through ruthless supression and propaganda. This

research resulted in a 6 1/2 minute film: "USSA: Secret Manual of the Soviet Politburger." A film that eventually played around the entire globe including Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the outer reaches of Siberia. After a certain screening in St. Petersburg, a member of the Russian audience wanted to know if I thought “that Americans were paranoid and Russians schizophrenic.”  Ironically, I love the old hamburger and will indulge in one every once in a while as long as it’s made under the right conditions. I’m a

cold war kid brought up on the Twilight Zone, Drive-in movies, and non-conformity. My first job out of High School was flipping burgers at a Tallahassee fast food franchise. My sarcasm quickly drew the attention of the obsessive owner who would stand over my shoulder barking out instructions like a marine sergeant. After too many of my jaded retorts, he let me know my days were numbered, unless I “straighten up and join the program.” At this point I felt it was time to hang up the spatula. As for White Tower, it took them over four decades to come to the conclusion: that cooking hamburgers is a raw deal!