Clare Boothe was a brilliant woman; she married one of America's most successful men (Henry Luce, founder of Time-Life, Inc.). I've read her autobio. She had privilege, beauty and wealth. And her feet were firmly planted for most of her life. She was ambasadoress to Italy.
In my critique of The Women, it's important to separate today's greater sophistication from 1937 or '38's simpler times. (The Women also had a successful Broadway run.) However, I'm not going to bother following that rule, because it's too restrictive.
Brilliant dialogue, dramas and books long preceded The Women. Writers didn't have to make their points with one-dimensional characters, or near-slapstick hysteria. So why did she write a drama with such shallow, cliché characters? I have no quarrel with the storyline; it's linear in its simplicity: husband strays, wife sues for divorce, goes to Reno to establish residency, meets a gaggle of near-idiot friends, relatives and strangers; returns home to NYC, realizes that her husband is unhappy with the floozie that he married, and fights to gain him back.
Roz Russell should have been locked up, she maintained such a borderline frenzied attitude; the Countess de la Whatever, easily 60 (and looked even older) was straight out of a whorehouse and with the libido of an alley cat; Paulette Goddard (smart enough to have married Charley Chaplin) always passing marital advice on to others, yet has her claws out to cat fight with Roz; Marjorie Maine (astonishingly pretty), housekeeper in Reno who sang at the top of her lungs with a voice like a parrot being strangled. --And, god, who else? Joan Crawford: already getting on some - being bitchy and manipulative.
I didn't like The Women. It thought itself alarmingly funny, when it was more like the Marx bros. in drag. Anita Loos helped with the dialogue. Ms. Loos and Frances Marion were the kingpins of MGM's writers. Deservedly. But not for this over-baked, over-perfumed, heavy-handed romp. Loos gave us Lorili Lee (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), so she was highly capable of complex characters and subtlety. The Women characters were like a clutch of actresses in orgasmic seizures when they delivered their lines. Norma Shearar, widow of Irving Thalberg, and almost always worthy of praise in her contemporary beauty, wasn't as peripatetic as the others, thank goodness. But, oh! that final party scene when the women throw Russell into a closet, then drag her out to confront her nemesis, was so over the top that one wanted to bury oneself under the couch cushion.
In my critique of The Women, it's important to separate today's greater sophistication from 1937 or '38's simpler times. (The Women also had a successful Broadway run.) However, I'm not going to bother following that rule, because it's too restrictive.
Brilliant dialogue, dramas and books long preceded The Women. Writers didn't have to make their points with one-dimensional characters, or near-slapstick hysteria. So why did she write a drama with such shallow, cliché characters? I have no quarrel with the storyline; it's linear in its simplicity: husband strays, wife sues for divorce, goes to Reno to establish residency, meets a gaggle of near-idiot friends, relatives and strangers; returns home to NYC, realizes that her husband is unhappy with the floozie that he married, and fights to gain him back.
Roz Russell should have been locked up, she maintained such a borderline frenzied attitude; the Countess de la Whatever, easily 60 (and looked even older) was straight out of a whorehouse and with the libido of an alley cat; Paulette Goddard (smart enough to have married Charley Chaplin) always passing marital advice on to others, yet has her claws out to cat fight with Roz; Marjorie Maine (astonishingly pretty), housekeeper in Reno who sang at the top of her lungs with a voice like a parrot being strangled. --And, god, who else? Joan Crawford: already getting on some - being bitchy and manipulative.
I didn't like The Women. It thought itself alarmingly funny, when it was more like the Marx bros. in drag. Anita Loos helped with the dialogue. Ms. Loos and Frances Marion were the kingpins of MGM's writers. Deservedly. But not for this over-baked, over-perfumed, heavy-handed romp. Loos gave us Lorili Lee (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), so she was highly capable of complex characters and subtlety. The Women characters were like a clutch of actresses in orgasmic seizures when they delivered their lines. Norma Shearar, widow of Irving Thalberg, and almost always worthy of praise in her contemporary beauty, wasn't as peripatetic as the others, thank goodness. But, oh! that final party scene when the women throw Russell into a closet, then drag her out to confront her nemesis, was so over the top that one wanted to bury oneself under the couch cushion.
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