The Stepford Wives is a 1972 thriller novel by Ira Levin. In it, Joanna Eberhart, her husband Walter, and their two young children move from New York City to the eponymous Connecticut commuter-town. Joanna soon becomes friends with fellow new arrival Bobbie Markowe, as the two of them also become more and more concerned with the behavior and attitudes of the other housewives in Stepford, all of whom seem to be impossibly beautiful, housework-obsessed, and totally submissive towards their husbands, who in turn are all members of the secretive "Men's Association."
The novel was successful enough to be adapted into a 1975 feature film, directed by Bryan Forbes and starring Katharine Ross as Joanna, Peter Masterson as Walter, and Paula Prentiss as Bobbie. The script, by William Goldman, stayed relatively faithful to the original, with the major difference being a much more explicit finale that showed what was happening to the wives. In both versions, the "wives" turned out to be robot duplicates, which replaced the original women after their husbands had them murdered. Both the novel and film also had Downer Endings.
While only a modest hit in theaters, the film subsequently generated a meme in the 1970s, with the term "Stepford Wife" becoming a popular catchphrase to describe female homemakers who were seemingly content to be "sexually repressed and concerned with domestic life, as opposed to being free and liberated women." (Later, "Stepford [Insert Noun Here]" became a generalized term for any people who behave in a repressed, conformist way.)
No theatrical sequels were made, but over the course of two decades the film spawned three made-for-TV "sequels": The Revenge of the Stepford Wives (1980), The Stepford Children (1987), and The Stepford Husbands (1996). The lack of either Levin or Goldman's involvement was painfully obvious.
In 2004, Frank Oz directed a more Black Comedy remake of the original film, starring Nicole Kidman as Joanna, Matthew Broderick as Walter, and Bette Midler as Bobbie. The production suffered from severe behind-the-scenes turmoil, including actors walking off the film and some last-minute reshoots. Many viewers also found the revelations of the resulting finale to come completely out of left field and contradict the rest of the movie.
Works with their own pages on this wiki:
- The Stepford Wives - the original novel
- The Stepford Wives (1975) - the first film adaptation
- 'The Stepford Sequels - the television film adaptations
- The Stepford Wives (2004) - the second film adaptation