The Women (1939): Color It “Jungle Red”

Start with one highly seasoned Norma Shearer. Next, add a fairly hard boiled Joan Crawford (she will toughen even more during cooking). Take one second string star, Rosalind Russell, just waiting to blossom. Mix in a couple of fresh faces with fresh figures, preferably Paulette Goddard and Joan Fontaine. Then sprinkle the whole thing with colorful supporting players like Marjorie Main, Mary Boland and Lucile Watson. Serve up with art direction by Cedric Gibbons and couture by Adrian (no last name necessary) and you’ve got a recipe for cinematic success known far and wide simply as, The Women (1939).

With a cast largely consisting of discarded Scarlett O’Hara wannabes, The Women was produced the same year as Gone with the Wind and was second only to that gargantuan film in profits for its studio, MGM, in 1939. Director George Cukor was signed on to tame these lipsticked lionesses after also being discarded as director from the Civil War epic, when the films’ star, Clark Gable, complained that he was giving too much attention to the female leads. Cukor said of The Women: “ At the time it probably wasn’t as silly as it seems now, because it came from a different world. ‘Kept women’ and marital break ups were big moral questions then. Now, of course, everybody would be screwing everybody, and everybody would know about it. Crystal wouldn’t be a kept woman, she’d be carrying on with another girl.” But Cukor’s deft and skillful directing aside, the classic comedy belonged entirely to its title characters.

The plot is indeed as Cukor described it about ‘kept women’ and marital break ups, in a gossipy modern high society circle of “friends” in NYC. Based on the hit Broadway play by Clare Booth Luce, it ran 666 performances on the Great White Way in 1936. In a nutshell, wealthy and elegant socialite Mary Haines (Shearer) goes through her privileged tasteful life in bliss with her handsome, engineer husband, Stephen and their daughter, Little Mary (it must be noted that nary a man steps in front of the camera during the two plus hours of celluloid. They are merely referenced….A LOT!). Her happy existence is threatened big time with the onset of Crystal Allen (Crawford, pictured here with her signature designer Adrian), shopgirl, home wrecker and floosie supreme. Enter Sylvia Fowler (Russell), et al, Mary’s dearest “friends” who verbally and maliciously take her (and each other) apart piece by piece.

Most, if not all, of the movie’s stars were in some sort of career shift. Norma Shearer, whose MGM high-up honcho husband, Irving Thalberg had died two years earlier, was in a state of dated star decline, holding her own basically because she was also holding substantial MGM stock left to her by her dear departed spouse. Joan Crawford was also on the verge of “has been” status after a string of flops at Metro. Pop columnist Sheila Graham noted in early 1939, “After three misses in a row, if Joan Crawford doesn’t come up with a hit picture soon, she will be joining Luise Rainer in the Hall of Forgotten Stars at Metro.” Never any love lost between Shearer and Crawford, the two divas had an long standing feud over who was the female powerhouse at MGM. Crawford always felt that Norma got the choice roles at the studio, merely because she was sleeping with the boss and was fond of calling her “Miss Lotta Miles”, a moniker Shearer had worn back in the 20’s as a model for a tire manufacturer. Their attempts to one up each other on the set were legendary, including Crawford’s clacking knitting needles during many of Shearer’s scenes.

Rosalind Russell had been at MGM for half a decade, relegated to second tier status for most of that time with a few exceptions, most notably on loan out to Columbia for Craig’s Wife (1936). With the success of The Women, Russell’s talents as a comedic gem had been discovered and utilized. Like Russell, both Paulette Goddard and Joan Fontaine were actresses who were just on the verge of stardom. Goddard had actually been a hair’s length away from winning the coveted role of Scarlett in GWTW before losing out to Vivien Leigh. On loan out from producer David O. Selznick for The Women, she would leave the showman’s employ later that year to enter a long term, very successful run at Paramount where her star would shine. Fontaine would also shoot to stardom in 1940, when Alfred Hitchcock cast her as the second Mrs. deWinter in his classic Rebecca. Not as high profile as most of the other females on the Women set, Fontaine had up until that time, fell mostly in the shadow of her more successful, higher profile sister, Olivia de Havilland. In “Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography” the star praises Cukor and most of her cast mates (except Shearer, of course!) with the noted exception of Fontaine. “I think the only one I could have done without was Joan Fontaine. She wasn’t a bitch, she wasn’t nasty - there was just something about her. She had the smallest part of all of us and maybe she was just a little jealous."

Marjorie Main presented a trial run of her Ma Kettle character ten years early and it suited her Lucy character in The Women to a tee. Comedy veteran Mary Boland spouted her faith in “l’amour” throughout the film, cracking many hilarious one-liners along the way and in a small but fun part, luscious Virginia Grey, as one of Crawford’s department store co-workers, makes one wonder why Stephen Haines didn’t sniff around HER end of the perfume counter instead of the world weary Crystal’s.

Above, MGM boss Louis B. Mayer, with Paulette Goddard and director George Cukor at The Women premiere

The Women was an enormous hit. It’s premise was successful enough to warrant not one but two remakes, albeit sad disappointments, both. First in 1956 with The Opposite Sex starring June Allyson and Joan Collins, then again over 50 years later under the original title with Meg Ryan and Annette Benning. Neither even came close to the sparkling wit and vicious bite of the original film. It’s phenomenal ensemble may never be duplicated under such circumstances again.

"The Women" Revisited

Thirty-two years after the debut of the classic comedy The Women, two of its co-stars, silver screen divas Paulette Goddard and Joan Crawford, greet one another at a soiree in 1971. Word has it that Joan and Paulette were much closer on the set than Joan was with MGM rival Norma Shearer.

Joan was already a veteran in Hollywood when The Women was produced, while Paulette was just on the cusp of stardom. By all accounts, director George Cukor had his hands full with his all female ensemble. Could you imagine being a fly on the wall of that set everyday?

Fiddle Dee Dee, I'll Just Star in The Women

I remember watching a TV movie many years ago called The Scarlett O'Hara Wars. It starred Tony Curtis as David O. Selznick and a bevy of not very well known actresses from the 1970's playing a bevy of extremely well known actresses from the 1930's, and as the title indicates, these actresses were all vying for the most coveted role of the decade (some might argue ever!), that of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind.

The teleplay told the legendary story with a comedic, almost campy twist but the segment of the movie that always stuck out in my mind was each Scarlett candidate going to George Cukor during a Hollywood party to lobby for the role of the southern vixen only to be told by the director that he had a perfect part for her in a new project he was starting called The Women. Now whether or not this was the way the classic 1939 film was actually cast, I don't know, but almost every major role in The Women starred an ex-Scarlett wannabe.

Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Joan Fontaine were all in consideration (with varying degrees of seriousness) for the part of Scarlett and Paulette Goddard was the front runner until serious questions about the validity of her marriage to Charlie Chaplin surfaced. Each of these stars (along with Rosalind Russell, Mary Boland, Marjorie Main and others) came together to create one of the cleverest, snappiest, funniest films of its kind. They may not have been perfect as Scarlett but they sure were great as The Women.