"It's all about men!"
—Tagline for the 1939 film version
The Women is a 1936 stage play by Clare Boothe Luce. As its title implies, and contrary to the page quote, it's about women; in fact, there are no men at all in the story.
The story concerns a group of women, led by Mary Haines and Sylvia Fowler, whose lives are disrupted when it's discovered that Mr. Stephen Haines is having an affair. The other woman is Crystal Allen, a perfume saleswoman, and certainly not a decent person. As she heads to a Reno Dude Ranch for a quick divorce, Mary meets a few new friends on the way. A few twists come in when one of the new friends is revealed to be the new Mrs. Fowler and the new husband of another starts an affair with Crystal.
The play was made into a 1939 film directed by George Cukor, with an All-Star Cast of actresses that included Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Mary Boland, and a young Joan Fontaine in one of her first big roles. (As a matter of fact, in the movie there are no males of ANY species. The dogs are all bitches and the horses are all mares.) There were other film adaptations. One, A Musical Adaptation, titled The Opposite Sex, was released in 1956 and actually featured men; the other, also titled The Women and featuring an all-female castnote , came out in 2008.
This play and film features examples of:
- Adaptation Deviation: The 2008 remake attempts to make the 1939's plot beats a bit more palatable to modern viewers: Mary has a hand in the breakdown of her marriage, whereas in the original, she was completely innocent. Her husband merely dates Crystal instead of immediately marrying her, and instead of full reconciliation, she simply agrees to another date. Furthermore, her friends are much less catty and cruel as in the original (where most were constantly working to undermine her and go behind her back) and have sympathetic motivations for their actions, even if they end up hurting Mary. The easiest thing to compare the remake to in tone and intention is a toned down, nicer version of Sex In The City.
- Adaptation Name Change: In the 2008 remake, Stephen is spelled as Steven.
- Adaptational Nice Guy:
- In the 2008 remake, all the girls except for Crystal are revised to be Mary's actual genuine friends, not just high society girls that spy on her and have to associate with her due to the time period. The biggest change is Sylvia, who in the 1939 version actively hates Mary and resents her happy marriage and perfect life, so she intentionally engineers it for Mary to find out about the affair in the messiest possible way. Sylvia does find out in the remake from the gossiping manicurist, but instead of instigating, she's bursting with the conflict of if she should tell Mary or not, eventually confiding in her other friends to decide if they should all tell Mary about the affair. In the remake, Sylvia is genuinely concerned about Mary even though she's a nosy gossip and she thinks Mary should divorce Steven immediately since it's a betrayal of trust and Mary also had worked her ass off to raise her daughter and run their household practically alone since he had recently been out more and more as he cheated on her with Crystal Allen.
- Mary's mother actually comes across slightly less misogynistic in the remake, but it's likely since they took the time to have her not only confess that Mary's father once cheated on her, but she kept her mouth shut and "had a smart mother," but what helps is she explains that while it's a horrid betrayal and she'll never trust him or recover from it, she does note that it's entirely shallow and Steven is a sensible man who will quickly notice how miserable he is carrying the affair and he will end it himself. In the end, she's right; in the remake, Steven does not marry Crystal, but he keeps dating her after Mary separates and quickly realizes he's miserable and dumps her. Mary's newfound confidence after ditching Steven ironically makes her so attractive to him that he begs for her forgiveness and she then eventually agrees to at least have dinner with him to hear him out. In the end, Mary's mother is right in this version that Steven realized his idiotic mistake and came back around as Mary set about remaking herself into the person she's always wanted to be. She's also a little nicer about her generalizations about women, too, so it's a softer role in the remake than the original film.
- Adaptational Jerk Ass: Oddly enough, Mary's daughter in the 2008 remake is a spoiled, snot-nosed brat that's been brainwashed by her own friends to think she's fat (spoiler alert: of course she isn't; she's a perfectly healthy preteen, not even slightly overweight for her age) and she should be wearing skimpy clothes and makeup to get attention from boys (that she and the other girls are not ready for one bit, mind you) and she constantly snipes at her mother's frazzled lifestyle. Fortunately, though, Aunt Sylvia manages to talk sense into the child over time and she mellows out.
- Animal Motifs: The opening credits of the 1939 movie. Notable ones are Crystal as a cheetah, Mary as a doe, Peggy as a lamb, and Edith as a cow.
- Arc Words: The "Jungle Red" shade of nail varnish is mentioned a lot. It even becomes a part of Mary's boast of vengeance.
- Babies Make Everything Better: Peggy arrives in Reno with Mary, hoping to divorce her husband, but after she discovers that she's pregnant, she phones him and calls off the divorce.
- The Baby of the Bunch: Peggy is treated like this, especially by Mary, who is like her Cool Big Sis.
- Be a Whore to Get Your Man: Mary is advised, "You should have licked [Crystal] where she licked you—in his arms."
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Sylvia. She relishes in Mary's marriage rocking after her husband's affair, claims to stand by her, and then is seen being friendly with the mistress Crystal.
- Bland-Name Product: The 1939 movie has Crystal working at "Black's Fifth Avenue." Curiously, they later have another character mention Saks anyway. Possibly to avoid a potentially litigious Saks thinking the film was suggesting that it employed catty homewreckers. The 2008 remake, on the other hand, does have Crystal work at Saks.
- Break the Haughty: The whole point of the film.
- Mary basically is a wealthy socialite with a darling child who doesn't have a care in the world. But her cousin Sylvia, with a strained marriage of her own and semi-envious of Mary's happiness, decides to destroy Mary's life by revealing her husband's adultery and pressuring her to divorce her husband.
- Catchphrase: "Oh l'amour, l'amour!" by the Countess.
- Cat Fight: Sylvia gets into one with Miriam when she learns she's the woman her husband's going to marry. It's complete with hair-pulling, clothes tearing, and even some biting.
- Cheater Gets Cheated On: Welp! What goes around comes around: it turns out that Crystal Allen still isn't satisfied with stealing Mary's husband from her as she starts an affair with Buc Winston on the side and he's not discreet. She has a private phone line installed in her bathroom so she can plan their affair, but she almost gets busted twice when he gets drunk and keeps calling back while she's got company in said bathroom. They mention explicitly that Stephen is miserable after marrying her, but stays with her to keep up appearances and avoid being alone.
- Chromosome Casting: Look at the title, what did you expect? Even all of the animals that appear onscreen are female.
- Comical Angry Face: Sylvia gets a few exaggerated facial expressions, whether angry or not.
- Divorce in Reno: One segment takes place in a Nevada dude ranch where the assorted (female) characters are waiting to establish residency. A newspaper gossip column is quoted: "[one character] is being Reno-vated".
- Fashion Show: Featured in the middle of the film, in full color; the scene was purged from the film for decades due to it being out of place in a black and white film.
- The Friend No One Likes: Pay close attention to how literally everyone in the film reacts to Sylvia. Even the utterly sweet-natured Mary loses her temper with her more than once and she's the only person close to what she'd call a true friend, and even then, it could be argued it's because they're related.
- The Ghost: All the men, but especially Stephen.
- To get across Stephen and Mary's argument, the maid eavesdrops and tells the cook everything she hears. We do, however, hear part of Mary's shouting as the maid sneaks through the house.
- All of the final scene (and Mary's eventual revenge scheme on Crystal and Sylvia) takes place in the extremely large women's dressing room. A major (and violent) conflict between a drunken Buck and Stephen on the dance-floor is told to Mary excitedly by Miriam and a couple of other friends, as a tearful Countess sobs on the sofa.
- Gold Digger: Crystal takes up with the extremely wealthy Stephen, and then starts another affair with the very wealthy Buck, unaware of how fragile the foundation for Buck's fortune is.
- Gosh Darn It to Heck!: Miriam says "all heck's broken loose."
- Good Adultery, Bad Adultery: It's bad if you're a manipulative Gold Digger like Crystal, and okay if you're a Nice Girl like Miriam, especially the wife is a horrible person like Sylvia. Mixed with Stephen, who is noted to have an "ordinary" midlife crisis, which rattles Mary but doesn't particularly bother her mother.
- Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: The movie has Crystal lighting up whenever she's being really evil, like when she's being catty to Mary or when she's flirting with an old boyfriend on the phone after marrying Stephen.
- Gossipy Hens: Sylvia and her manicurist, mostly. Olga hardly lets Mary open her mouth before diving straight into dirty gossip.
- Graceful Loser: Crystal, of all people, concedes when her affair with Buck Winston is revealed, along with the fact that Buck has no money of his own and thereby she's screwed since Stephen is obviously going to divorce her. She calmly expects it's back to the perfume counter for her, but she does get in one snarky comment before she departs.
- Hoist by His Own Petard:
- Sylvia's discovery of Mary's husband having an affair satisfies her because she's having marital issues as well, but then discovers the reason why ... her husband is having an affair with a working-class girl too!
- Crystal brags to Mary that she can keep Steven because she's got Buck Winston, the Countess's latest husband... until she finds out that the company that Buck is the spokesperson for is actually owned by the Countess. She bought it because no one else would hire him, which means he's likely to be fired before or after he leaves the Countess.
- Horrible Judge of Character: The Countess, as her new friends on the train point out. One husband tried to poison her and another pushed her off a mountain in the Alps.
- Good God, Stephen has no ability to see through Crystal's fakeness somehow. It's nearly appalling when you actually see it in practice.
- Hypocritical Humor: The entire initial exchange between Sylvia and Edith.Edith: Somebody ought to shut that manicurist up.Sylvia: A good piece of scandal like that? Not a chance, why that girl never stops talking. You know how those creatures are, babble babble babble babble babble, never let up for a minute, the lot they care whose lives they ruin. It wouldn't be so bad if only Mary's friends knew. We could keep our mouths shut.Edith: I know I never breathe about my friends' husbands.Sylvia: So do I.
- I'm a Man; I Can't Help It: Mary's mother chews her out for being so upset over Stephen's affair because of this — you're just supposed to expect that men of a certain age will have an affair.
- In Love with Love: The Countess. "L'amour, l'amour!" She's had four husbands already and yet she still is eager to remarry.
- Large Ham: The Countess. And Sylvia when she gets into hysterics.
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- Sylvia winds up getting a divorce herself, and then meets the woman her husband is planning on marrying while at Reno.
- Stephen goes through this when he marries Crystal, only to spend the next 18 months completely miserable with her.
- Loved by All: Mary seems to be well-liked by everyone, especially her staff. Her maid is absolutely devastated when she divorces and has to move out of New York and rushes out of the room trying not to cry.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Alex Fisher is quite feminine in the 2008 remake. Being played by Jada Pinkett Smith helps.
- Maybe Ever After: The remake ends with Mary coming into her own as a fashion designer and gaining confidence after separating from Steven. He then realizes without Mary, he's miserable and so he leaves Crystal and asks for Mary to have dinner with him, and the film ends with her agreeing to go to dinner, so it's possible they reconcile in the end, but the film doesn't state if they do.
- Meal Ticket: Stephen and Buc, for Crystal. She's just a perfume girl, so even though it's a high end store, you can infer she probably makes next to nothing, so the only way to enjoy all those high society luxuries was for her to steal Mary's husband.
- Monochrome Casting: Barely averted by Lulu, although she is subjected to racist insults and the actress (Butterfly McQueen) is not credited. Granted, it is a film about the snobbish, gossipy upper crust women of the 1930s, who were almost uniformly white (and few come off particularly well).
- It's possible the remake made one of Mary's friends black (played by Jada Pinkett) to help make up for this actresses' role and lack of credit.
- Nice Girl:
- Mary. She's a loving and devoted wife, and treats her friends well, which isn't always rewarded in kind.
- Mary's daughter (Little) Mary can be snarky, but truly loves her parents and wants her mother to be happy.
- Peggy, Mary's most innocent, gentle, and caring friend, and one of the few who sincerely has no idea about the affair at the beginning of the film, and thus isn't keeping anything from her.
- Miriam, if you take her adultery out of the equation.
- My Beloved Smother: Mary's mother Mrs. Morehead acts as this, always interfering in her affairs and always talking in circles around Mary, even urging her to "make the best" of the infidelity like she had with Mary's father.
- The Obi-Wan: Miriam gives Mary advice on saving her marriage, telling her that Stephen is probably waiting for her to talk to him again and revoke the divorce. She tells Mary a story of how she dated someone who proposed to her, but she refused, later discovering that her ex-lover had married someone else by the time she wanted to reconcile. Mary takes the advice, just as Stephen phones her to let her know that he'd married Crystal the moment the divorce was finalized.
- Old Maid: Hard-nosed Nancy is the only friend with zero romantic prospects but has no qualms with referring to herself as a spinster. Her remake counterpart, on the other hand, is a lesbian, and her ex-girlfriend goes on to date Crystal.
- Ow, My Body Part!:Sylvia: But you know how some women are when they lose their heads... they do things they regret all their lives.(Instructioness grabs Sylvia's leg and forces it into place)Sylvia: Ouch, my [caesarean] scars!
- Pass the Popcorn:
- Invoked. When the Countess learns that Miriam is seeing Sylvia Fowler's husband, and then Sylvia arrives, the Countess makes Miriam stay as they get acquainted just knowing that Sylvia will eventually connect the dots. Lucy has more fun watching the eventual fight but departs to get smelling salts for the loser, but comes back to see Sylvia's breakdown and restrain her.
- Miriam and the rest of Mary's friends rush into the dressing room excitedly, telling her about Stephen and Buck's big fight on the dance-floor. The Countess sobs on the couch throughout.
- Perfumigation: Mary's mother is so overwhelmed by the clashing perfumes worn by Mary's Reno friends that she literally perfumigates the room, spraying Mary's scent into the air to overpower the others.
- Poor Communication Kills: And how. In the final act, Mary divorces Stephen at her friend's urging and after a very nasty fight, and one of her new friends convinces her to undo the divorce and call him up. Stephen does call that exact moment...to tell her he's married Crystal and doesn't want her to find out through the papers. Mary is heartbroken, but lucky for her, Crystal is so awful to Stephen and her daughter that she forms a plan to stick it to Crystal and steal her husband right back when her daughter reveal he still loves her and misses her.
- Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: "I've had two years to grow claws, Mother. Jungle Red!"
- Pretty in Mink: The first couple films have loads of furs.
- Really Gets Around: Crystal Allen. Olga makes it clear that she's a maneater, and Stephen just happens to be the one she successfully stuck her claws into.
- Remarried to the Mistress: In the original, the "lonely" Stephen marries Crystal after divorcing Mary, but it's a sad affair. Her daughter reports he did it to avoid being alone again, but that he is miserable just going through the motions as Crystal is an awful woman who is still cheating, just with yet another man. The marriage doesn't last long and Mary is able to one-up the side chick Crystal in the end and start things over with her husband.
- Rich Bitch: Notably, Sylvia and Edith. Mary's mother, however, seems to think it's the whole of her daughter's gang.
- Screaming Birth: Edith has one in the 2007 film remake, and it is hilarious.
- Splash of Color: As noted above, the fashion-show scene is in Technicolor while the rest of the movie is black-and-white.
- Stupid Evil: Crystal Allen has successfully stolen Mary's husband Stephen, but is that enough for her? Nope! She has a secret phone installed in her private bathroom that she uses to speak to her other affair, Buck Winston. However, he's not discreet and calls her up drunk trying to get her to come over, almost exposing the affair to Mary's daughter, and she ends up having to yell at him to hang up. He still ignores her and calls again, exposing her to Sylvia. Had she picked a less tactless man, she may not have gotten caught.
- Take That!: The entire film can be viewed as a middle finger to gossiping hen culture among women, but especially high society women. The film opens with a montage of high society women engaging in very shallow, shrew-like behavior, until it's so much noise that it does indeed sound like a bunch of chickens clucking. The film explores different archetypes of women and deconstructs each one, showing how their personalities can be problematic, so it's best to only keep people around you that truly support you and want what's best for you, not women that just want to tear you down because their own lives are terrible.
- It's also a good middle finger to side chicks, who are content to steal husbands and smugly parade around town flaunting it, feeling zero remorse and enjoying making other women miserable. In the end, they'll always end up with nothing or if they get what they want, they're just as unhappy as before and they make everyone around them just as unhappy.
- Those Two Girls: Sylvia and Edith. They're shown together fairly often and are both obsessed with gossip and drama.
- Time Skip: Eighteen months pass between Mary's divorce and the scene in Crystal's bathroom. Another six pass between it and the climax.
- The Unfair Sex:
- Averted; the story directs its scorn to Crystal Allen, not the philandering husbands. It does turn out Stephen is miserable being married to Crystal.
- Also of note in regards to Miriam Aarons, no one considers her bad for being with Sylvia's husband and she is far more sympathetic compared to Sylvia.
- Villainous Breakdown: Sylvia, after the fight with Miriam, throws cutlery around screeching "I hate you!" and "I hate everybody!" repeatedly as everyone cowers around her.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: Little Mary is mature enough to understand that her father is miserable with Crystal without the two even needing to speak about it.
- Witch with a Capital "B": One of the most famous alternate versions of the trope with the "kennel" line seen above.
- With Friends Like These...: Sylvia is gleeful over the Haines' marriage troubles, sets Mary up for an appointment with the manicurist to have her hear the rumor of Stephen's affair, and eggs Mary on to confront Crystal and then divorce him rather than reconcile. Sylvia also pals around with Crystal after Crystal marries Stephen. She's not much better with the other friends, constantly making jabs at Nancy for being unmarried and unsuccessful in her career, and she treats Peggy like an idiot.
- World of Snark: Everyone gets a chance to make a snide comment.
- Worst News Judgment Ever: "WIFE K.O'S LOVE THIEF" and pictures of Mary and Crystal take up the entire front page of a New York newspaper.