This post is part of the Modern Era portion of the Classic Movie History Project Blogathon, sponsored by Aurora of Once Upon A Screen, Ruth of Silver Screenings and Fritzi of Movies, Silently. Previous days are covered here: Silent Era and Golden Age. Thanks to Flicker Alley for sponsoring and promoting this event.
Ever since Mad Men ended, I’ve been wondering about Peggy’s real-life equivalents, from the woman who coined “A Diamond Is Forever,” to those who paid a far greater cost for their romantic missteps than Peggy did. I’ve been curious about ’50s and ’60s movie versions of the career girl as well. Films covered single women in the city from the silent era on, but naturally, I viewed the movie based on the book Don Draper was reading at the start of the show, Rona Jaffe’s The Best of Everything.
Jaffe is an interesting figure in herself; her characters are based on her own experience in publishing, and her friends within it. She earnestly explained to Hugh Hefner (what a choice!) that her goal in writing the book was to normalize and destigmatize the experience of those girls who felt ashamed and alone in their mistakes: their dalliances with married men, the children they bore (or didn’t) as a result.
The controversial film version (1959) quickly lands us in the center of the action in a publishing company, and I was instantly hooked by the drama: the boss (Brian Aherne) who casually pinches his workers’ rears, the secretaries trying to balance social lives and unreasonable work demands, the crowded shared apartments and crammed lunch spots. (The film is given props for fashion, and deserves it. It’s a visual feast throughout.) Right away, we get a sense of what women had to put up with just to get paid, and not well.
First day on the job
Newcomer to the city Caroline (Hope Lange) rooms with coworkers Gregg (supermodel Suzy Parker) and April (Diane Baker) in a miniscule apartment, and the three instantly become tight friends despite having little in common: Gregg is the adventurous bombshell/aspiring actress, April the innocent, and Caroline, the sophisticate who is trying out work until her fiancé returns to the U.S. and marries her.
Single roommates celebrating
Caroline and Gregg talk about lovers with April
The three unite in hatred of Amanda Farrow, the harsh editor who has chosen success over marriage, and scorns the secretaries who didn’t have to go through as much as she did to advance.
She has a smidgen of Miranda Priestly of The Devil Wears Prada in her, but there’s pathos and empathy to Farrow too. She may fail to support her many secretaries’ ambitions, but she tries to save them from her romantic fate, from awful men. And The Best of Everything is full of them.
The Sex and the City ladies might have faced a lot of freaks, but at least they had some personality; the men of The Best of Everything are as interchangeable as the vice presidents in American Psycho. A recent play of the book even used cardboard cutouts of men to emphasize the point.
What’s puzzling is what these interesting women see in these duds. Effervescent April (Baker) falls for a guy who is so obviously a sleaze he might as well be wearing a signboard to announce it. Hope’s fiancé announces he’s married a rich girl instead of her—over the phone—and then expects her to sleep with him afterward. And get this: dazzling Gregg (Parker) falls so hard for a director (Louis Jourdan) that she goes into a crazy, stalking tailspin when he dumps her. (Yes, nothing inspires sexual obsession so much as heartthrob Gigi‘s Gaston. What??)
Since the men are so patently lacking in any redeeming qualities but sleep inducement, the film’s attention to them rather than the workplace and roommate dynamics is disappointing, as the latter, when they’re the focus, are well developed and fascinating. Caroline advances quickly to the rung above secretary (a reader), but is accused by an alcoholic friend, Mike (Stephen Boyd), of faux ambition, just to avoid her romantic life (by the way, this is the love interest we’re rooting for).
Ambitions attacked
Yet between the romantic interludes (and their sad repercussions) are intriguing signs of the second wave of feminism to come: Farrow (Crawford) leaves the marriage she impulsively makes with an old flame, returning to work, and we have the sense that she’s better for it. Caroline is promoted again. Abortion is presented as the fault of men who are careless with the hearts (and bodies) of naïve women—not the deserved end for loose ones. Female solidarity* prevails throughout, as when one of our heroines slaps a faithless boyfriend of the other. (*In one brief, funny exception, the secretaries all try to pass off work on one another.) The workplace even has moments of startling modernity, as with the hilariously painful bonding “picnic,” with its forced fun and workers getting drunk in self-defense. There’s enough worth watching in the film, in short, to get viewers through the unearned suds of these worthless romances.
Single women have fled to New York for all kinds of reasons, in all kinds of ages: post-Civil War belles, without men or funds; rural women leaving farms for factories; aspiring starlets, hoping for a berth at the glamour-girl dorm, The Barbizon Hotel (an upscale Footlights Club, a la Stage Door). These women certainly didn’t find the “best of everything.” But they still managed to live out enough of the excitement of the big city to keep other women coming, to keep dreamers hankering for if not the best of everything, the thrill of aspiring for it.
Great review! I agree – this film IS a visual feast because those fashions are gorgeous.
As for the men in this film… Tsk tsk! I get frustrated with some of these characters because what DO they see in these oafs? However, the film still says a lot of interesting things about careers, marriage, ambition – and friendship.
Thanks for joining the blogathon with a film that deserves more attention than it receives. 🙂
Thanks for such a great blogathon. I’m going to enjoy it now, and come back to it again and again later:)
It does, doesn’t it? And the friendships are well drawn. I thought Gregg was a particularly interesting character–would have liked more time with her.
“The Best of Everything” means more to me now than it did in my youth when it was just a soaper to enjoy with a box of bonbons. It really is a peek into the recent past worth visiting.
While I never think it a bad idea to eat bonbons with a film, I can see why it would mean more now than it did then:)
Love this review!
There’s so much I love about this movie, but couldn’t agree MORE about the worthless nimrods these women love. I am especially confounded by Hope Lange’s character finally ditching her awful married lover for a drunken, burned-out cynic.
Yeah, bet that worked out MUCH better.
Still, there is so much to recommend it. It feels like a transitional film, in between the 50s career-women movies and the feminist films later on.
Thank you! It’s true. That isn’t going to work out much better (possibly much worse), so it’s odd that the film thinks the fact that he didn’t take advantage of her when she was drunk somehow makes him a catch.
I actually revisited this film during my Mad Men obsession. It really is a great peek into the plight of the single woman and how she was treated (and how she treated herself). It is simply gorgeous, but it makes me a little sad. I enjoyed your post very much!
Thank you! Yes, how she treated herself is the roughest to watch. I was intrigued by their independence early on–I just wish we’d seen a character that didn’t lose it so quickly. Isn’t it funny to think of 26 as old to be single??:)
Happy you reviewed this – I’ve been meaning to watch it for a while, having read elsewhere that it’s the female characters that make this work. It’s easy to view films like this as dated, but I really think they must’ve seemed achievable and realistic to women of the time – but it’s a shame that the melodrama element that films like this introduced into ‘women’s pictures’ have never really been overcome.
I’d be interested to read the book this was based on.
Costume note: as much as I love the more glam fashions of stars from earlier eras I appreciate the realism in films like this!
I am thinking about reading the book too. From what I’ve gathered from comments on it, there does seem to be more emphasis on the friendships than in the film. The melodrama really killed the Gregg arc for me, and I think she’s (before that) such an interesting character. I didn’t buy where they took her. I’m always more likely to watch comedies about women for this reason.
Thanks for this excellent review about one of my favorites, Leah! Very insightful and I sure agree about Greg. Such a fascinating character at first–and then?? Have you listened to the DVD audio commentary? It’s excellent and full of background info. Like you and others, I too want to read the book. Remember what Don Draper said about the book? “it’s a lot dirtier than the movie.” (or words to that effect). Glad I discovered your site/blog. Hope you and your readers will have a chance to check out my contribution to the blogathon: http://jimattulgeywood.blogspot.com/2015/06/wondrous-to-see-widescreen-splendor-of.html
Thank you! The DVD I bought had really poor sound quality, so I didn’t have the patience to try the commentary. I will have to get another copy, as I was really intrigued about the story. Glad to hear it’s good! I will definitely check your entry out.
Thank you, Leah! Sorry to hear about the poor quality of the DVD…that’s so frustrating! The audio commentary is well worth seeking out: it’s by Rona Jaffe, who wrote the novel, and film historian Sylvia Stoddard, who is excellent.
That sounds wonderful. Thanks for the recommendation. I enjoyed your post very much, by the way!:) Leah
Hi. I can’t seem to find our last comments regarding the Barrymore blogathon. I’m just wondering if you have decided on a topic yet? I know you were trying to think of one, but I haven’t heard anything since, so I’m just wondering.
Thank you for the reminder! I just requested Charlie’s Angels, with Beau Brummel as a back-up:) Sorry for the delay. I teach at an intensive summer program in July and tend to be unreliable w/my blogging during it!:( Leah