The Women (1939)

Lyndsay M. Johnson

Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell star in the aptly titled film The Women, directed by George Cukor. This penultimate“woman's film” stars an all-female cast and, although the director is male, the screenplay was penned by two women, Anita Loos and Jane Murfin, and is based on the play by Clare Boothe. The story centers on the dramatic interactions of a group of high society wives and mistresses. Norma Shearer is Mary (Mrs. Stephen Haines), a sweetly devoted mother and wife who learns through the grapevine that her precious husband has been stepping out on her with a perfume salesgirl named Crystal, played by Joan Crawford. Surrounded by her pack of gossiping, back-stabbing, status-obsessed “friends,” Mary struggles to come to terms with her new role as the jilted wife.

The film's tag-line reads “It's all about men!” and it becomes apparent throughout the film that in this all-female cast, men are at the center of the drama. Immediately after we watch Mary rough-house with her equestrian daughter, the focus of this touching scene of female bonding switches to a lengthy discussion of the absent father. Little Mary wants to make sure that daddy loves mommy. In fact, all of the women in the film are concerned not only with which man is loving them, but also with whom their friends' men are loving.

Yet, the movie attempts to paint the wise-cracking socialites, divorcees and mistresses as women who are not driven by love, but by status and greed. Crystal, as Stephen Haine's mistress, is the ultimate gold-digger. She's heartless, artful and just as eager as any of the other women to climb the social ladder by marrying her married lover. The movie makes a moral judgment against not only women like Crystal, but also against the gossiping wives whose husbands end up cheating on them, and against the divorcees on the ranch, who are grotesque caricatures of what a woman becomes without her husband. The end makes every attempt to make it seem like Mary has been the fool for letting Stephen go, making him “vulnerable” to Crystal's claws. Mary comes to the realization that it's her fault that her husband cheated on her. She sets out to get her husband back, using every viperish trick in the book to do so. Though Mary is victorious, and it seems the audience is meant to feel relieved that she and her cheating spouse are back together, and one can't but help feeling disappointed that the only virtuous woman of the bunch has become just another scheming female she-devil.

As a “woman's film,” The Women is jam-packed with almost every stereotypical thing that a woman might enjoy. The wives' days are filled with spa treatments, personal trainers, dirt-dishing manicurists, luncheons, dinner parties, lounging in elegant quarters, maid supervision, shopping, and fashion shows. One suspects that this movie may have actually been a cleverly disguised commercial for the costume designer Adrian, as his fashions are featured in gratuitously long ten-minute runway show sequence, exhibiting some very short skirts. The most stereotypically female thing, however, is the sheer volume of prattle that takes place between these motor-mouthed dames. Comedic one-liners such as, “Your skin makes the Rocky Mountains look like chiffon velvet,” make this movie not only tolerable, but guiltily enjoyable, at times.

This film is best suited for fans of Desperate Housewives, The Real Housewives of D.C. (or New York, New Jersey, Atlanta, O.C., and Beverly Hills), Dallas, and any soap opera ever made.