1
Discussion Questions for Women in Film‐Cleveland Gathering, Tuesday, May 20, 2014:
Focal Film: The Best of Everything (1959; U.S.; Screenplay by Edith Sommer and Mann Rubin, based on the 1958 novel by Rona Jaffe; Cinematography by William C. Mellor (in Cinemascope with color by DeLuxe); Music by Alfred Newman; Directed by Jean Negulesco for 20th Century Fox Pictures)
In The Best of Everything, the principal characters are: * Caroline Bender, an ambitious young college graduate who joins a Manhattan paperback publishing house, Fabian Publishing, as a secretary (played by Hope Lange) * Gregg Adams, a typist at the publishing firm who is also an aspiring stage actress, and who has fallen for director David Savage (played by Suzy Parker) * April Morrison, an innocent young typist at the firm who becomes pregnant (played by Diane Baker) * Amanda Farrow, a frustrated, embittered established editor at the publishing house (played by Joan Crawford) * Mike Rice, an editor at the firm and also an alcoholic (played by Stephen Boyd) * Fred Shalimar, the company “wolf,” an older man who preys on most of the women at the firm (played by Brian Aherne) * David Savage, the stage director who ultimately does not return Gregg’s affections (played by Louis Jourdan) * Barbara Lamont, a secretary at the firm and a divorced mother of a young son (played by Martha Hyer) * Dexter Key, April’s well‐to‐do love interest, who is less than supportive when she becomes pregnant (played by Robert Evans)
The Best of Everything is a “stylish cultural time capsule” that was “far more than a potboiler‐in‐pearls” (Laura Jacobs in Vanity Fair, 2014). The film is a prime example of the small but noted genre of “Three Working Girls” films, popularized in the 1950s via a series of films directed by Jean Negulesco‐‐How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), Woman’s World (1954; actually focusing on three executives’ wives rather than working girls), The Best of Everything (1959), and The Pleasure Seekers (1964). These films shared a focus on young women seeking career success, marriage, or both. And, to quote author Laura Jacobs’ (Vanity Fair, 2004) description of the formula, “one girl wins, one draws, and one dies.” Although there is a formula, the mystery of who it might be is a significant plot driver. And, each of the three women represents a different personality type, offering up a range of career and romantic narrative options (McDonald, 2011).
The Three Working Girls genre may actually be viewed as part of a somewhat larger genre, a generic “Three Girls” genre, which stretches from the 1925 silent Sally, Irene and Mary (with a young Joan Crawford), through such 1930s Hollywood films as Our Blushing Brides (1930, again with Joan Crawford), Three Wise Girls (1932, with Jean Harlow), Three Broadway Girls (1932, a pre‐code film with Joan Blondell), Three on a Match (1932, another pre‐code film with Joan Blondell), The Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), and Three Smart Girls (1936, with Deanna Durbin) to films of the 1960s (e.g., Valley of the Dolls, 1967), the 1980s (e.g., Nine to Five, 1980), the 1990s (e.g., First Wives Club, 1996), and the 2000s (e.g., Dreamgirls, 2006). [Note: The fact that four films—Three Broadway Girls (1932), Three Blind Mice (1938), Moon Over 2
Miami (1941), and How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)—were all based on the novel The Greeks Had a Word for It, by Zoe Akins, indicates that perhaps this novel is the core source material for the Three Girls genre.]
But ostensibly The Best of Everything sprang from a unique source. One day in the 1950s, a young Rona Jaffe was visiting her girlfriend at her job at the Simon and Schuster publishing house. Also visiting was Hollywood producer Jerry Wald, who said that he was “looking for a modern‐day Kitty Foyle—a book about working girls in New York,” she recalls. Jaffe took up the challenge and in five months and five days, wrote The Best of Everything, which was published by Simon and Schuster. And the film adaptation was soon thereafter produced by Jerry Wald. Jaffe claimed the book was based on “interviews with dozens of female office workers and was designed to counter male assumptions about working women” (Katherine Lehman in her book, Those Girls: Single Women in Sixties and Seventies Popular Culture, 2011).
1. The title of the book/film comes from an actual ad that Rona Jaffe saw in the New York Times—a job listing that promised job‐seeking secretaries “the best of everything.” Jaffe viewed the ad and her own use of the phrase as “ironic”—how so?
2. “These are the women who didn’t get married right out of college” says film historian Sylvia Stoddard. A trailer for the film in 1959 included the voiceover: “This is what happens to the women who didn’t marry at 20” (Lehman). So…what does happen to them? Compare and contrast of fates of Caroline, Gregg, and April. And what is Amanda’s fate? What can we conclude from these outcomes?
3. More than the film, the novel shows the female characters’ “process of acculturation into the urban girl subculture” (The Apartment Plot by Pamela Robertson Wojcik, 2010). From what we see in the film, what does this acculturation involve?
4. Rona Jaffe has called Mr. Shalimar’s behavior “sexual harassment, which we never knew it was. It certainly existed, it just didn’t have a name.” Does Shalimar’s behavior evoke a different reaction today than it did in 1959?
5. The “sexualized office” on display in The Best of Everything was part of a trend that culminated in the 1962 non‐fiction book by Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Single Girl. As noted by scholar Julie Berebitsky in the Journal of the History of Sexuality (2006), “By ‘outing’ workplace sexuality, then, Brown hoped to give individual women a measure of the power that men derived from being sexual agents in the office. . . Brown advised women to pursue professional success and sexual pleasure in ways that . . . were not wholly different from their male colleagues. In her view, if some expression of sexuality could help women advance professionally—and she believed it often could—then women should use it.” How does the sexualized office in The Best of Everything reflect changing mores in urban America at the time?
6. As with other “girls” films of the era that were based on books (e.g., Where the Boys Are, 1960), the film version of The Best of Everything was changed in order to conform to the Hays Code standards, in their final years of operation. For example, in the book, April knowingly has the abortion that Dexter wants her to have. However, Rona Jaffe actually thought that the movie version was “so much more amoral” because if April really had jumped out of the car, she would have been crippled and also left to raise her child alone. And in the book, she didn’t meet her next boyfriend, the doctor. Also in the book, the last thing 3
Dexter says to her is at the abortionist’s—“I’ll hold your coat.” Do you agree with Rona Jaffe?—i.e., Which version is more “moral”?
7. In the Bright Lights Film Journal (2014), Lorre Palmer analyzes five American films of the 1950s and 1960s that, she proposes, invite a gay/homosexual reading because they “rupture” gender roles by featuring “the Career Girl as their archetype. She is already in a queer space because she has vacated the dominant culture's notion of traditional femininity by leaving the domestic sphere in favor of the business world, a site occupied (pre‐war) by men.” How do you respond to this analysis as applied to The Best of Everything?
8. Think about the role played by Joan Crawford‐‐Amanda Farrow. Unfortunately for us, Crawford’s best scenes were reportedly cut from the film, including a superbly acted drunk scene. But from what is left, we understand her to be a woman who seems tough on the outside, but through subtle actions is revealed to be someone who is always looking out for young women with potential. Your reactions to this character?
9. As noted by scholar Katherine Lehman, “At the time that The Best of Everything was released, Joan Crawford shared more than a desk in common with Amanda Farrow. Crawford’s husband [Al Steele] had recently died, and she assumed corporate responsibilities. . . becoming the first woman elected to Pepsi Co.’s board.” Do we therefore detect a unique tone in Crawford’s performance here?
10. In a book chapter entitled, “The Best of Everything: The Limits of Being a Working Girl in Mad Men,” authors Kim Akass and Janet McCabe note the similarities between Mad Men’s Peggy Olson and The Best’s Caroline Bender. “Both protagonists start in the typing pool but soon rise through the secretarial ranks. . . Half a century apart, but these women have much in common. Taking initiative, aspiring to be more than just secretaries. Desiring independence, wanting the best of everything, although conflicted by what that might mean. But glass ceilings, entrenched misogyny and casual sexism condition aspirations.” The authors go on to question “why the Mad Man story now?” Why do you think the TV series, with its clear “glance backwards,” has been so popular in recent years?
11. Tamar Jeffers McDonald’s book chapter, “Mad Men and Career Women: The Best of Everything?” (2011), points out even closer connections between the TV series and the film. In an episode of Mad Men (”Babylon”), there is an explicit discussion of the novel The Best of Everything, verifying the emblematic nature of both the novel and the film in representing Manhattan of the 1950s. What about The Best of Everything situates it as a definitive 1950s representation?
12. The film uses a unique motif to indicate the characters’ statuses in the workplace. In the publishing house, the office doors and their transoms are painted a variety of distinctive colors. According to commentary by film historian Sylvia Stoddard, “The brighter the color, the lower the rank.” We note Caroline’s advancement by the changing colors of her office doors. Stoddard also notes the Mondrian‐like look that these rectangles of color give to the film. [Note: Director Jean Negulesco (1900‐1993) started his career as an artist (a painter), studying with modern masters Brancusi and Modigliani in Paris in the 1920s, and then was a stage director before moving to New York in 1927.] What impact do you think this careful use of color might have on our reception of the film?
4
13. The jewelry of the women in the film is also a motif, telling us about each one’s status. Bigger jewelry, or a greater number of strands of pearls, indicates higher status. Again, does this motif have an impact on our reception?
14. The costume designer for the film was Del Palmer, who had been a major costumer at RKO before it ceased feature production in 1957. According to film historian Sylvia Stoddard, the fashions in the film reflect the post‐war embracing of fuller skirts—a reaction to the rationing of cloth during WWII. Correspondingly, in this film, we see clothes that are “more exaggeratedly feminine.” Think about both the office clothes and the ball gowns—what do these fashions tell us about the characters?
15. This film happened to be part of a random sample of films in a content analysis of production techniques for the films of 1959 (Barry Salt, New Review of Film and Television Studies, 2009). It registered as much higher than average for key camera movements—particularly pans and tracking shots with pans/tilts—and these camera movements tended to follow or match the movements of the actors. The average shot length was higher than average, but the number of point‐of‐view shots was lower than average. The rate of continuity edits (42%) was higher than average. All told, these statistics indicate a shooting and editing style that utilizes the full, wide CinemaScope frame, with an emphasis on the objective, and rather theatrical, treatment of multiple characters interacting. Think about both the interiors (sets) and the beautiful exterior shots of Manhattan. This film’s production techniques are not flashy, or attention‐drawing. Did you notice?
16. The music in the film is by Alfred Newman, the most celebrated composer of the Hollywood Studio Era. He was the first in the Newman dynasty of film composers that includes brothers Lionel and Emil, sons David and Thomas, and nephew Randy. Alfred Newman is credited as composer for 229 films total, including The Grapes of Wrath (1940, Green Was My Valley (1941), How the West Was Won (1962). How does the musical score for The Best of Everything contribute to the overall tone of the film? And how about the theme song (music by Alfred Newman, lyrics by Sammy Cahn, and sung by Johnny Mathis)?
Discussion questions by Kim Neuendorf, Ph.D.: [email protected] Archive of Women in Film‐Cleveland discussion questions: http://academic.csuohio.edu/kneuendorf/womeninfilm v. 5/5/14