Double Feature

The Women (1939)

Gossip is dished, innuendoes whispered, back-handed compliments slung and reputations ruined in director George Cukor’s politically incorrect bitch fest of female high society swirling round sympathetic Norma Shearer whose hubby has left her for a shopgirl. Catty Rosalind Russell is the conniving, two-faced socialite who loves to tell tales behind her ‘best friend’ Shearer’s back, and Joan Crawford is Shearer’s nemesis, a ruthlessly ambitious working class bombshell intent on clawing her way up the social ladder. Clare Booth Luce’s play, unique for its exclusively female cast of characters (nary a man is glimpsed), was adapted by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin and gets the full blown MGM A-list treatment. Co-starring Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine and Butterfly McQueen. The film was remade several times, including The Opposite Sex (1956) with June Allyson, and (!) Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Women in New York (German TV, 1977). Director Diane English did the latest in 2008 starring Meg Ryan.

“…so marvelous we believe every studio… should make at least one thoroughly nasty picture a year… going and coming to syrupy movies we lose our sense of balance. Happily, Miss Boothe hasn’t. She has dipped her pen in venom and written a comedy that would turn a litmus paper pink… a glorious cat-clawing rampage.” – Frank S. Nugent, The New York Times

Dinner at Eight

Dinner at Eight, a vastly entertaining behind-closed-doors glimpse into the lives of the troubled and troublemaking Who’s Who of people invited to a posh Manhattan party, is served with ample helpings of humor and melodrama. Buoyed by the success of the studio’s multi-starred, multi-storied Grand Hotel the year before, producer David O. Selznick aspired for something grander – and found it in this George Cukor-directed adaptation of the George S. Kaufman/Edna Ferber stage hit. Highlights include Jean Harlow and Wallace Beery’s bitter battle of the sexes, hostess Billie Burke’s tizzy fit and Marie Dressler’s grande dame worldliness. Of course, there’s only one way to catch all the great moments. Dinner at Eight. Don’t be late. (Warner Bros)