Friday Night Flicks – The Women

Over the past few weeks, Friday Night At the Flicks has focused on the passion and the romance of a particular cinematic hero and heroine.

This week we’re going to do something different and focus on The Women.

If your exposure to this wonderful tale of life, love, friendship and emnity has been through the 2008 Diane Lane-helmed remake with Meg Ryan and Annette Benning, then erase that weak and risible rubbish from your mind and go back to the original 1939 classic.

The Women is based on a stage play by author and playwright Clare Boothe Luce who claimed to have been inspired by a conversation she overheard in a lady’s powder room one evening.

And it is the dialogue which makes this film version a treat. I highly recommend that you get this copy of this film because every second is an absolute delight. I guarantee you’ll be rolling back frames to hear that piece of dialogue again.

While some young women resort to physical violence to defeat her rival, the majority use their tongues – sharp, saucy and sometimes evicerating – in order to get the job done.

The Women was an inspiration behind some of the wickedly catty dialogue in my novel Moonstone Obsession.

Boothe Luce puts her female characters in charge of their own destinies – for good and for ill – which always makes for entertaining drama but what makes the film and the play on which it is based, such an original is that it has an all female cast.

And what a castit is –  Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, Marjorie Main,  Ruth Hussey,  Marjorie Main, Butterfly McQueen and even legendary gossip columnist Hedda Hopper has a cameo role.

NOTE: This post does contain spoilers.

Although Norma Shearer is heroine of the film, The Women’s true star is Rosalind Russell who is given some of the best dialogue and some of the most outrageous scenes.

Russell plays Sylvia Fowler, cousin and ‘frenemy’ of the content and happily married Mary Haines. Sylvia learns from her gossipy manicurist that Mary’s husband Steven is stepping out on her with seductive red head Crystal Allen (Joan Crawford) .

 Sylvia Fowler: Ah, you have no idea how it stays on… I get it at Sydney’s, you should go Mary. A wonderful new manicurist, Olga’s her name, she’s marvellous. Isn’t that divine? Jungle red!

Nancy Blake: Looks like you’ve been tearing at somebody’s throat!

Mary, of course does learn about Steven’s affair with perfume counter girl Crystal Allen and is torn by her choice – forgive Steven for the sake of her marriage and the well-being of their daughter Mary as her mother recommends?  Or follow the well-meaning advice of her friends and file for immediate divorce?

Following a humiliating meeting with the mistress at an upmarket boutique, Mary decides on the latter course, finding herself on the train to Nevada to be ‘Reno-vated’ along with the sweet Peggy (Joan Fontain) whose misunderstanding with her husband has been blown out of all proportion (thanks to Sylvia’s meddling). On the journey Mary meets two women who will be pivotal in the second half of the story – The Countess de Lave (Mary Boland) and Miriam Aarons (Paulette Goddard).

Here the stage is set for Sylvia Fowler’s comeuppance through the delightful Miriam who, unbeknownst to everyone, has been having an affair with Sylvia’s husband which triggers the most terrific catfight scene in cinema history – a feat, to my mind that was not equalled until Linda Evans took on Joan Collins in that infamous episode of Dynasty.

Modern day sensibilities would never allow Mary to forgive her husband – and indeed in the 2008 version Mary divorces her husband and takes on solo parenting duties, but in the original it’s the hard-boiled Miriam who gives Mary the advice she needs to fight for husband – especially as she learns that Steven is miserable with Sylvia who is also two-timing him with the Countess’ new husband.

Miriam Aarons: You should have licked that girl where she licked you; in his arms. It’s where you win in the first round and if I know men, it’s still Custer’s Last Stand.

Good girl Mary has learned something about using her feminine wiles (“I’ve had two years to grow claws mother. Jungle red. “) and sets up Crystal Allen for a public humiliation giving Joan Crawford arguably the best line in the film.

The Women is the pinnacle of film movie making with plenty of action (including a terrific Technicolor fashion show sequence), and although long at 133 minutes, it is a film one could happily watch every year with your BFFs.

But remember – keep your friends close and your frenemies even closer.