Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell
“The Women” screens at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, April 12, 2014 in the Durwood Film Vault of the Kansas City Central Library, 14W. 10th St. Admission is free. It’s part of the year-long film series Hollywood’s Greatest Year, featuring movies released in 1939.
No good parts for women?
Not in 1939. That was the year director George Cukor gave us “The Women,” an alternately satiric and heartstring-tugging comedy featuring an all-female cast. (No man is seen on screen…not even depicted in a photo hanging on the wall.)
Our heroine is well-to-do Mary Haines (Norma Shearer), who learns from a gossiping beautician that her husband has been gallivanting with a slutty perfume counter girl (Joan Crawford). As if that wasn’t upsetting enough, the catty rumor monger Sylvia Fowler (Rosalind Russell) is having a field day spreading the news of Mary’s dilemma through the Park Avenue grapevine.
That’s the basic setup, but the film has an endless supply of subplots and supporting characters. Among the actresses you’ll see here are Mary Boland, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, Marjorie Main, Virginia Grey, Ruth Hussey and Hedda Hopper (who was an actress before becoming one of Hollywood’s most power gossip columnists).
The film was based on the hit Broadway play by Clare Booth Luce, who in addition to being an accomplished woman of letters was the wife of the powerful Henry Luce, publisher of Time, Life and Fortune magazines. Later she would be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut and would become a U.S. ambassador.
Luce was a notorious wit whose axioms have entered our common language: “Widowhood is a fringe benefit of marriage.” “A hospital is not the place to be sick.” “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Butler's Cinema Scene 