Mid-Century Moguls

The Best of Everything

Woman’s World

Hello, darling readers, and welcome to another half-baked idea of a film double feature. I hope Taurus season is treating you well, and I hope you’re treating all of the stubborn Tauruses in your life well—for your sake! We’re not even fully into Summer yet, but here in Texas we are, of course, already feeling a bitter, unforgiving heat. And not that you want to hear my sob story, dear reader, but after being laid off from my second bullshit remote tech job a couple months ago and braving the tumultuous job pool day-in and day-out, I tire of the workforce and the notion of work entirely. I’ve never wanted to work, I’ve dreamt of having certain jobs in the past, but they all require too much school, and therefore too much money, and therefore too much anxiety. But being unemployed is just as anxiety-inducing. You pour your heart out into custom-made cover letters, tailor your resume to whatever degree of fictional background is required, and all of your hard work is placed into a complex algorithm that may or may not send your info to be viewed by a human being’s eyes. Now, I’m not one of those white women who dreams of the 1950s, I do not dream of racism or sexism or wartime being commonplace—even though we’re still witnessing this in 2024. What I do dream about, however, is not working. Or, at least, not working a job that I hate. I dream of lounging, chilling, hanging out, having fun, having my most arduous activity be shopping, and while I admire the girlbosses and hustlers that came before me, I long for a time when I am not expected to girlboss or hustle. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a tiktok tradwife or a redscare faux-feminist, I am a modern day woman who knows my power and my intelligence. But I also know how tiring it is to exist in this capitalist, sexist, stifling world where we have been underpaid and undervalued for decades. That brings us to tonight’s double dose of mid-century femme-centric cinema involving women in and around the workplace. As a Mother’s Day pre-game, I asked my mom to pick out two of her favorite femme-centric, mother-centric films for us to watch, and they are not only from the same decade but they have the exact same director: Jean Negulesco. This double Jean Negulesco bill was entirely accidental, but both of tonight’s films proved this director’s interesting and keen eye for feminine roles, and how they may be utilized or taken for granted in this eternally-patriarchal world. Negulesco is perhaps best known for his comedy How to Marry a Millionaire, but tonight we begin with a film of his from 1959 that inhabits the space of comedy and drama: The Best of Everything. This charming dramadey follows three young women in their early twenties in New York City (of course) who are joining the workforce, which, in 1959, exclusively meant secretarial work. Our protagonist, Caroline Bender (Hope Lange), is a recent Radcliffe College graduate who is hired as a secretary at Fabian Publishing Company, and is given the unfortunate task of working for Amanda Farrow (Joan Crawford), the bitter, middle-aged only female editor at this company who can tell that this promising ingenue is coming for her gig. Caroline arrives at this tall, looming building, all dressed up and somewhat terrified and is greeted by a chaotic secretarial pool at the center of this floor of editors. The constant roar of typewriters and chatter, the rollers being removed from hair, the heels being placed in desk drawers and traded for flats—this scene is the most chic an office building has ever looked. Caroline meets makes friends and eventually moves in with fellow secretaries who are not on track to be promoted to editor status: April Morrison (Diane Baker, the senator in Silence of the Lambs, btw) who mostly wishes to be a wife, and, I’m not even joking, Gregg Adams (Suzy Parker), who wishes to be an actress. As my mom noted at the start of our watch, “The most important thing in the 50s is to get married” and whether or not Caroline admits this, she wishes for a husband as well. The troubling, but realistic predicament that The Best of Everything presents to us is that a woman in this time seemingly could not have it all, ie: a family and a career. This is still a troubling predicament for many women today, I would imagine, but back in the 1950s it was really do or die. You either get married and have a family or you wither into nothingness, you are either desirable to the crooked-teethed bald-headed men in your office you’re smart enough to take their job, but don’t you dare think you can have both, and don’t you dare still be single by the time you’re 25, you spinster. It’s, of course, absurd to consider this rigid of a set up in 2024, but The Best of Everything does an excellent job of presenting these predicaments and placing these women into incredibly high stakes. While April dodges the predatory and handsy boss Mr. Shalimar (Brian Aherne) and Gregg (I will literally never get over the fact that this female character’s name is Gregg) is skipping work to go to auditions and thirsting after her director (Louis Jourdan), Caroline is toiling away working for Miss Farrow—who makes it her job to make Caroline miserable. Caroline works her ass off in this cutthroat, competitive office environment, noticing the longing gaze of a superior named Mr. Rice (Stephen Boyd) while still missing her boyfriend overseas, Eddie (Brett Halsey.) Even grabbing a table or a spot at the bar at lunch is cutthroat and brutal, but Caroline starts to get the hang of it—easily completing the tasks requested by Miss Farrow and Mr. Shalimar and successfully enduring the sexual objectification, disrespect, and pressure to be both smart and attractive every single day. The kind, alcoholic Mr. Rice notices Caroline hustling and warns her to just get married, and not end up like the curmudgeonly Miss Farrow, but Caroline is taking it all in stride and eventually gets promoted from typist to reader. (God I wish this job were still an option for an English major like myself.) As dated and old-fashioned as The Best of Everything is, it really perfectly captured the bitterness that working a shitty job will instill in you, as when our trio of leading ladies attend the company picnic, the cheery and optimistic April says “This is lovely, don’t you think?” to which Caroline replies, “I’d rather shoot myself.” There is a great deal of drama in this film, some more heavy-handed and cruel than expected, but for the most part, I was laughing my ass off at how much things have changed and stay the exact same. There’s all this talk about how the higher up you go in a company, the less work you do, and all of these dehumanizing conversations with women, about women, about what is expected of women, how a woman is a perceived when she is no longer desirable to men, and really nothing has changed too much. Perhaps, if there is any positive change since The Best of Everything’s release, there is more of a chance for women to both work and have a thriving personal life with family and friends. But, just because the job landscape has changed, just because women can vote and own credit cards and get aborti—OOPS! Guess we’re still in the 1950s, never mind. The Best of Everything is equal parts tragic as it is fun. It is a fascinating time capsule of mid-century American interests and anxieties, and while things work out for some of the women in this story, it has a refreshingly ambiguous and an open-ended final act for such an otherwise definitive and specific film. I did, however find myself shouting at the tv as if it were a sports spectacle, “Hope Lange, when are you gonna learn that men are terrible???”, but regardless, I did enjoy The Best of Everything. The same simultaneous enjoyment and frustration was experienced when watching tonight’s next film, released just a few years earlier in 1954, Jean Negelusco’s Woman’s World. Even more star-studded of a cast and even more ludicrous of a premise, Woman’s World follows three couples from different parts of America, who’s husbands are all competing for the same position of General Manager of Gifford Motors. The all-important and relentlessly-hilarious Mr. Gifford (Clifton Webb) invites not just the best three district managers of this company to try their hand at general management, but also their wives—because if Mr. Gifford gets to know these wives, he’ll learn to know the men even better, in theory. Woman’s World once again transports us to 1950s New York City, with a dazzling font and a fairly cheesy theme song—as all films were seemingly required to have at the time. Arriving from Texas is the tough Jerry Talbot (Van Heflin) and his sultry and ambitious wife Carol (Arlene Dahl), the humble and sweet Bill (Cornel Wilde) and Katie Baxter (June Allyson) from Kansas City, and the high-society, secretly-estranged couple from Philly: Elizabeth and Sidney Burns (Lauren Bacall and Fred MacMurray.) Elizabeth and Sidney have been separated for quite sometime now, given Sidney’s impossibly stubborn work ethic that has driven him up the ladder and away from his family, undermining his health and his happiness for the sake of progress. But still, Elizabeth understands the importance of this potential, life-changing promotion, just as the other wives do. Elizabeth and Carol are poised, elegant, and well-dressed, though Carol is a bit less gracious than Elizabeth, who quickly becomes friends with the klutzy and socially-awkward Katie. Her cringey antics and perpetual-foot-in-mouth syndrome were equally funny as they were frustrating. Carol is helping her husband Jerry campaign for this role by dressing seductively and effectively flirting with Mr. Gifford whenever she gets a chance, Katie is hoping that Bill doesn’t get the job and uproot their large family from Kansas City to NYC, and Elizabeth, quite frankly, doesn’t give a shit what happens to her neglectful and enterprising husband Sidney. All three couples have distinct and intriguing dynamics, that only becomes more compelling when combined and forced to compete for the same thing. The couples are each set up in exquisitely-decadent rooms and are given a schedule the size of a CVS receipt, occupying the time of both the husbands and the wives. Mr. Gifford carefully observes these wives in the least creepy but still oddest way possible at each dinner and meeting and event, and enlists the help of his nephew and sister to keep a watchful eye as well. Even though Katie doesn’t want her life to change, and even though she can’t help being cringe, she wants desperately for her loving husband to be happy and succeed. Charmed by genuine love in a marriage, Elizabeth begins to help Katie out—taking her shopping and boosting her confidence every chance she can. It is a remarkably sweet and empowering B-plot among this otherwise less-than-empowering premise, and I really enjoyed watching their friendship bloom. What I didn’t love watching was Carol be judged so hard for being sexy and beautiful and cunning. It’s always odd to me, watching these old movies where respectability comes before everything else, and yet so much of the subtext has to do with less-than-respectable topics. For example, The Best of Everything dealt with topics of death, abortion, loneliness, bitterness, aggression, predatory behavior, alcoholism, stalking, and self-hatred, and yet none of these words were uttered—only vaguely eluded to. In Woman’s World, these women are explicitly expected to be representatives for their husbands, they are expected to perform, in a sense, for Mr. Gifford, and yet Carol is seen as a try-hard slut for giving a dedicated performance. This is all to say, if I were alive in the 1950s, I’d be a goner because I could not keep up with all of these unspoken rules. Be a lady (whatever that means) but don’t be too dainty, but don’t be too tough, be emotional but not too emotional, but the perfect wife, but not so perfect that your undermine your husband. If I were to write Woman’s World, a woman would likely end up with the highly-sought after general manager job, but even still, I enjoyed a lot of the 1950s aesthetics here: particularly the cars, the smoky ballrooms, the biting and often-coded shade and sense of humor, and above all else, the FASHION. I mean, capital F Fashion. Between Lauren Bacall and Arlene Dahl, some of the most beautiful garments I’ve ever seen were being sported, and even though they tried to make June Allyson seem homey or even sloppy, she looked just as divine. Much like The Best of Everything, Woman’s World had an undercurrent of dread running beneath its story, constantly making reference to how much one’s day job and career can ruin your life and the lives of your loved ones, it can break your spirit and your heart, and this is unfortunately still the case. Perhaps this is why I’m so obsessed with films like Office Space and Clockwatchers, where the soul-crushing reality that work-life-balance is unattainable and ultimately not worth it is on full display. As depressing as this reality is, I prefer it when this fact is not glamorized or made to seem like the definitive goal in life. I did appreciate that Woman’s World did not glamorize this career-oriented life (though it was plenty glamorous to look at) but it did make it seem as though women had more of a say in what their husbands did, which I’m not sure was actually the case. Yes, men can be obsessed with and ruled by women, but for the most part, they are obsessed with themselves and each other, and maintaining the power they’ve always had. When Carol sighs and says that “it’s a man’s world”, Lauren Bacall remarks proudly that because only women can give men children that it’s actually a woman’s world, and not to discredit Miss Bacall but I’d like to think that we’ve evolved past this limited scope of what a woman’s power and impact can be. Thankfully, it is no longer 1954, and a woman can look and behave any way she wants to (I support women’s rights and wrongs), with or without the permission of or validation from her husband. Woman’s World was surprisingly hilarious and entertaining, but it was also oddly voyeuristic in its portrayal of women. In The Best of Everything, there are not many empowering moments, but there are still some brilliant scenes of the women commiserating and bonding together post-work, that I really would’ve loved to have seen in Woman’s World. As much fun as the hijinks and hyperbole of this kind of storytelling can be, you can see the narrative and tonal changes that took place in the five years between these two Negulesco films, as well as the societal and gender-political shifts. Overall, both of tonight’s mid-century mogul films were fascinating anthropological and sociological studies of a moment in history, in American culture, and feminine perspectives. We’ve come a long way from just being wives and secretaries, but damn, right now I wouldn’t mind being either! Hire me! Marry me! Give me something to pay for my new apartment with! I was really hoping to use some of the deep-voiced wisdom of either Joan Crawford or Lauren Bacall to help me from drowning in the job pool but, I guess I’ll just keep on swimming—because whether or not it’s a woman’s world, it’s still a world where you have to pay rent unfortunately. Thank you for reading along this week, dear readers. Whether you strive to labor or lounge or do something else that has yet to be discovered, I support you and hope you’re surviving in this sick, sad world, that at the very least, has some fun movies in it. Happy almost-weekend, happy birthday to my sister who started this blog with me, and happy mother’s day! Ciao for now!