Those were the days when woman were pretty and feminine
I remember those days. I used to dress up for work, the high heels and stockings and garter belts, before pantyhose. I like this movie and always try to catch it when it's on TV. I know I'll catch heck for saying this, but I miss those days. During the so called "women's lib" days women were very cruel to other woman who wanted to be married and raise a family. I used to say back to these woman "this is America, we have a choice". Of course I was shouted down so I learned to keep my opinions to myself. Whatever we've gained from "women's lib" (much, much more work, if you ask me and our children are suffering for it)doesn't make up for all we've lost.
A very silly but lovely 1950s soap opera
There are some wonderful reasons to add the newly released-on-DVD "The Best of Everything" to your film library. For one, it is a glittering and colorful glimpse into New York City circa 1959. Fox certainly has done a commendable job with the DVD--the picture quality and sound are both crystal clear. Cinemascope has rarely been this fun to watch, because now one can see it digitally mastered in widescreen with vivid color photography by Deluxe brought to sparkling life.
The film is very, very lush. From the beginning, when the screen fills with a sunny view of the Manhattan skyline to the sounds of Johnny Mathis crooning the Oscar-nominated theme song, you know you are in for grand entertainment. All of the performances are fine, with Crawford a standout.
I think it's funny that although Joan Crawford only has five to ten minutes of screen time in "The Best of Everything," her picture is featured very prominently on the back and front covers of the DVD. The casual watcher may never know that the ultimate movie star had a only a supporting role, yet with that tiny role she managed to steal the entire picture and make it her own! That's star power!
As enjoyable as the film is, it is incredibly flawed. If one was interested in sexist attitudes (concerning men AND women) and how they have changed since the 1950s, there couldn't be a more relevant movie to watch. It is shocking, and sometimes disturbing, how much attitudes have changed.
For example, at one point during the movie, Catherine (played by lovely Hope Lange) is told by David, one of her romantic interests, that once she has proven to herself she can make it in the publishing world (which, in his view, could be the only reason a woman might have some kind of ambition) she should quit it all, get married, and "love happily ever after." Now there is nothing wrong with wanting to be in love happily ever after, but it certainly represents a double-standard. Who would ever tell a man such a thing? Could you imagine Hope Lange telling David that a man's ambition is only him trying to prove himself, and that he should cut it out and love happily ever after? (now I can imagine Joan Crawford saying that to Clark Gable, but there weren't any characters with that kind of will or independence in this film).
So much of the dialogue and morality in the film is dated, and some of it is very disturbing, but there are still some good things about the story. There are some great viewpoints on love, and how casual dating and hookups can hurt people, and my favorite line has to be, "Here's to men, with their clean-shaven faces and their dirty little minds." It's funny to say the least!
OH, YES... TAKE ME BACK TO '59
Yes, please take me back to 1959, to New York in 1959, or even back to Rio de Janeiro, a couple of years before, where I met Rona Jaffe practically every single night at the then world-famous "Sacha's" nightclub, where Rona was already drafting her novel mentally...
When the film started shooting the exteriors in front of the Seagram's building, one could actually walk-up to lovely Suzy Parker and chat with her about how real was the "new morality" of the liberated New York girls in the executive suites, decades before Sex and the City became the post-mortem of the sexual revolution of the Sixties.
At night we had the many parties thrown by Negulesco and his charming wife, while Stephen Boyd was being charming to my wife, Brazilian actress Mariza Woodward, featured in LIFE Magazine as one of the most beautiful gals in Rio.
Oh, yes, take me back!
And if you were not there then, if you were not even born then, do get this DVD and visit New York 1959 and see how charmingly it all started, despite where it eventually ended.
Before he made the classic All About Eve, writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz made this clever story about three wives who spend an afternoon at a children's picnic mulling over a letter all three had just received, from a woman who says she's just run off with one of their husbands. As the wives--a former farm girl (Jeanne Crain), a radio soap opera writer (Ann Sothern), and a social climber from the wrong side of the tracks (Linda Darnell)--mull over the troubles of their marriages, each begins to think that she's the one left behind. A Letter to Three Wives doesn't have the crackling show-biz milieu of Eve, but it has the same mix of snappy dialogue and topnotch performances. The tone ranges from florid sentiment to unblinking cynicism, yet Mankiewicz... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Jeanne Crain - Linda Darnell - Ann Sothern Director(s): Joseph L. Mankiewicz DVD Release Date: Released the 22 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Leave Her to Heaven is one of the most unblinkingly perverse movies ever offered up as a prestige picture by a major studio in the golden age of Hollywood. Gene Tierney, whose lambent eyes, porcelain features, and sweep of healthy-American-girl hair customarily made her a 20th Century Fox icon of purity, scored an Oscar nomination playing a demonically obsessive daughter of privilege with her own monstrous notion of love. By the time she crosses eyebeams with popular novelist Cornel Wilde on a New Mexico-bound train, her jealous manipulations have driven her parents apart and her father to his grave. Well, no, not grave: Wilde soon gets to watch her gallop a glorious palomino across a red-rock horizon as she metronomically sows Dad's ashes to the winds. Mere screen moments later,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Cornel Wilde Director(s): John M. Stahl DVD Release Date: Released the 22 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Beautifully directed by Edmund Goulding, this sumptuous, and prestigious adaptation of Somerset Maugham's novel was made in 1946 to great acclaim. It's a tale of manipulation, greed, unrequited love, and the eternal search for spiritual enlightenment. Larry Darrell the central character - and played in the movie by the startlingly attractive Tyrone Power - searches for life's meaning in a journey that takes him from the high society of Chicago to the coal mines of France and then on to the mountains of the Himalayas.
Larry Darrell (Power) is a frustrated man. Having just returned to Chicago after World War 1, and having seen his best friend killed, he dodges a future as a stockbroker and instead goes to Paris to seek enlightenment, much to the chagrin of his wealthy and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Tyrone Power - Gene Tierney Director(s): Edmund Goulding DVD Release Date: Released the 24 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Poor Charlotte Hollis. She's been shunned by the community for decades, ever since the fateful night in 1927 when her lover was hacked apart with an axe. Her antebellum southern mansion is slated for the bulldozer, as it stands in the way of highway construction. Charlotte's only hope lies in her cousin Miriam (Olivia de Havilland), coming down from up north to help settle things. Miriam, however, has other designs. Together with her boyfriend Drew (Joseph Cotten), she embarks on a scheme to systematically drive Charlotte out of her mind (not a great leap) and get her mitts on the family fortune. From there, things only get more complicated. Charlotte puts the "gothic" in southern gothic, as a great showcase for completely bizarre, overwrought, and out-of-control performances from... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Bette Davis - Olivia de Havilland - Joseph Cotten Director(s): Robert Aldrich DVD Release Date: Released the 09 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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