From 20th Century Fox
Directed by Jean Negulesco
Starring
Hope Lange
Stephen Boyd
Suzy Parker
Martha Hyer
Diane Baker
Robert Evans
Brian Aherne
Brett Halsey
Sue Carson
Donald Harron
Ted Otis
Louis Jourdan
Joan Crawford
After his great success at 20th Century Fox with Peyton Place two years earlier, producer Jerry Wald had been looking for another story with women at the forefront. Wald came across Rona Jaffe's first novel and bought it at once... not only before it was published but before the editing had been completed.
I expect when he was looking around, he didn't use the expression soap opera but the film is usually referred to as such. When dramas are chiefly characterized by tangled, interpersonal situations and melodramatic or sentimental treatment, soap opera is generally how they're labeled. And if women occupy the main roles, it generally becomes an almost certainty.
So, okay, it's a soap opera. So what? I have always regarded The Best of Everything as being among the best of the soapers. I don't think there's another genre that takes as many hits as soap operas but many of us are quite taken with them particularly when they are populated by a cast such as this one.
At the time, most of the leads were under contract to Fox and were thought of as being the next important generation of actors. They were certainly being groomed in that fashion. I can certainly say that the fancy I have for the movie is largely due to its glittering cast. For starters, I was whacked out over Hope Lange and Stephen Boyd.
Jaffe, in the tradition of most novelists, wrote about what she knew. She was at the time of writing the book working for a Manhattan publishing firm. And so are most of the characters in the film.
The film opens with a stunning aerial view of New York and as the credits begin to roll, the unmistakable voice of Johnny Mathis is heard singing the title song, music by Alfred Newman and lyrics by Sammy Cahn. It was a popular song, released shortly before the film and undoubtedly added to the film's appeal.
The novel highlighted the romantic and work lives of five women but it was shortened (actually edited down) to three for the movie. As the credits and song come to an end, there stands Lange looking at an ad for a secretarial job at Fabian Publishing which promises the best of everything.
She is hired the same day as Diane Baker and is doing the work of Suzy Parker who is out for the day. Lange goes to work for stern editor Joan Crawford. She meets Boyd and also Martha Hyer and Donald Harron, two more editors who are having an affair although he is married. We also meet the boss, Brian Aherne, a champion fanny-pincher and proud of it. (Have no fear, we'll get very 2019 before signing off.)
Aherne's predilections notwithstanding, Jaffe and the film's screenwriters have not painted particularly rosy pictures of any of the men. Boyd's character would have to be the best and he's an alcoholic with a reluctance to open up.
For Lange, at first, working at Fabian is just a job... her first in a new city, having just graduated from Massachusetts's Radcliffe College. She is deeply in love with Brett Halsey whom we realize early on is not on the same page with her. She begins a friendship with Boyd who tells her he smells a rat.
Lange moves in to a small, cheapo flat with Baker and Parker. The three couldn't be more different. Lange is smart and one senses she will always land on her feet, despite some setbacks, and get want she wants. She clearly is more focused on a personal life.
Baker's character says she's looking for sophistication. From Colorado she is so fresh-faced and naive that one aches for what The Big Apple is going to do to her. She meets a conceited, selfish playboy (a shoo-in part for brief actor and later mogul, Robert Evans). He tells her anything to get her horizontal and when she winds up pregnant, he gets her all gussied up for their wedding and instead tells her he's driving her to see a special doctor. She jumps out of his sports car in Central Park, loses the baby and after falling in love with the doctor who ministers to her, becomes the film's only true happy ending.
Parker nabbed the most melodramatic role as a desperate, insecure and reckless newbie actress who finally lands a Broadway role and then is demoted to understudy when she can't cut it. The director, Louis Jourdan, who fires her is also sleeping with her as he does with most actresses in his plays. When he tries to let her down gently that their relationship is also over, she suffers a nervous breakdown that ends in her accidental death from a fire escape fall.
When Lange's boyfriend tells her that he has married a wealthy woman and later tells her that their relationship can still continue on the side, she tells him off royally (the kind of scene where audience members clap) and then almost has a breakdown herself. We know she'll survive not only because she's the strongest of the lot but because this character is obviously based on the author herself.
After this scene, Lange throws herself into her work. She wants to be an editor (she has a knack for weeding out bad manuscripts) and she wouldn't mind Crawford's job. Crawford's a tough, rhymes-with-witch biggie who obviously has it in for younger women (just as Crawford did in real life). She is also having an affair with a married man. She's met her match in Lange and their sparring is good fun.
At the end, after a weary day, Lange is out on the street when she runs into Boyd. The scene is wordless but Lange's expression alone conveys there's a chance for this relationship.
The first choice for director was not, in fact, Negulesco... and I sure in the hell don't know why not. He had become Fox's go-to-director when the plot features three women. Earlier in the decade he'd steered trios of actresses in How to Marry a Millionaire, Three Coins in the Fountain and Woman's World. The studio wanted Martin Ritt who had just done No Down Payment (which we just reviewed) but Ritt was not thrilled with this story and was adamant he would not work with Suzy Parker.
Parker was never much of an actress but in some parts I thought she was fine. She is good in the first part of this film but not so much in the latter half where she is plagued by some overwrought dialogue. She was an aloof beauty who was likely mainly hired for just that reason. She not only came from the modeling world but is generally considered to be the first super model.
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| Parker and Jourdan |
Jourdan always had that continental smugness and it greatly serves him here. The way he handled the aggressive Parker always amused me.
Hyer wound up being one of the unhappy cast members because her role was so severely cut that one wonders why they just didn't cut her out completely. She and Sue Carson (as the head of the typing pool) had roles as large as the others in the book and while they filmed more than we see, eventually the over three-hour running time was not going to cut it with theater owners. The same goes for Donald Harron who plays Hyer's married lover.
In only her second film (after The Diary of Anne Frank), Baker made an early career of playing winsome young women who ultimately suffered and she it did well. Her scenes with Evans, being played and disrespected as she is, are sad indeed.
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| Evans and Baker |
Evans made four films at Fox (this was the last) and he was never very good at acting. Behind the scenes on these films someone didn't like him or got angry with him and ultimately no one would hire him. Given that in real life he didn't marry until his 30's and then wed seven times (his marriage to Catherine Oxenberg lasted 10 days) and always considered himself first and foremost a playboy, he did a fine job here.
Englishman Aherne started in films in the 1920's and had a resurgence in the 50's with a spate of popular films such as Titanic, I Confess, The Swan and Susan Slade. He always lent a dapper air to his work. In light of the MeToo movement, the lasciviousness he displays throughout the film with his pinching, unwanted kisses and mauling the office staff is downright uncomfortable to watch.
Halsey, handsome though he was and with his workman-like performances, never made it in Tinseltown. After his Fox contract expired, he unfortunately made a series of C teenage films that finished him off. He slipped off to Europe where he found more success.
Former Fox star Jean Peters was considering coming out of retirement to appear as the tough Amanda Farrow but it is likely her husband, Howard Hughes, put the kibosh to that notion. Crawford, who knew both Negulesco and Wald well, having worked with both earlier, campaigned for the role. She was damned near broke after her husband, Mr. Pepsi Cola, died which may explain why she excepted a supporting role in an all-star cast. Regardless of her circumstances and sporting an odd-looking orange wig, who better to play a wicked, controlling other-woman boss?
Boyd plays an exec who's seen it all in his personal life, some of it has apparently been rough and he drinks too much and bottles things up. While his demons are still within him and despite the boozing, he has still risen above his tragedies and remained a nice guy. Someone just needs to see it and tell him. Someone does.
I loved Boyd in the movie but he clearly looked uncomfortable. What was he doing in what was clearly a woman's picture? Actually he had just completed such a film and the title says it all... Woman Obsessed, with Susan Hayward. And he was about to start filming the most famous movie he'd ever make, Ben-Hur. Still, he more or less supported three actresses in this one... an odd choice when one peruses his résumé but perhaps his presence kept it all from getting too saccharine.
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| Boyd and Lange |
We've left the best til the last. Wonderful, gifted and entertaining though they may all be, The Best of Everything belongs to Hope
Lange. She not only dazzled her home studio with her Oscar-nominated performance in Peyton Place, but she surprised them. In 1959 they wanted to showcase her in another crowd-pleaser, backed by another big cast. Her Caroline Bender actually grows throughout the film and clearly the best words are reserved for her to speak.
It's true that nothing could have kept me from seeing The Best of Everything but the lure was clearly Lange and Boyd. And that was made all the more exciting after I saw them. In 1959 I was still sneaking onto the Fox lot (it was just a few blocks from my home). Shortly after doing so one day, I saw the pair talking to another man (Negulesco?) on a New York street set. While they weren't actually shooting at the moment, they were in costume and I believe it was for the film's final scene.
In addition to Mathis's gorgeous title song, Alfred Newman wrote an equally romantic score.
Again, while I acknowledge its soap opera DNA, this is still a pretty good film and I was entertained from start to finish. It was a true slice of the times... a decade with which I am forever bonded. It's almost a 60's film with its in-your-face themes. It may be about the struggles of the working woman in those times but it's more about relationships, decidedly laid out from a woman's point of view. Sign me up.
Have a look at the trailer if you're so inclined. There may be a slight pause at the beginning... just hang in there.
Next posting:
Someone from this movie
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