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What Mrs. Fowler's Friends Come in For

1/10/2014

The other half of the 1%

The Women (1939)

The funny thing about this movie -- at least for me — is that I always look forward to seeing it (and I've seen it 65 million times) and always forget that there are a staggering number of cringe-worthy moments in it: racist (Butterfly McQueen has to hear some choice anachronisms), sexist, elitist, you name it.

But...

For all its faults, The Women is an infuriatingly well-written story about a bunch of rich, mean-spirited, unhappy white ladies who give horrible relationship advice to one another and treat each other terribly. Honestly. The best/worst character who does this is Sylvia Fowler (Rosalind Russell), the nasty cousin of sweet Mary Haines (Norma Shearer), the beautiful protagonist whose husband (it turns out) is having an affair with scheming shopgirl Crystal Allen (Joan Crawford).

All of New York Society has learned of Mr. Haines's dalliance by way of a gossiping manicurist named Olga (Dennie Moore), who knows the other woman in question: "She's got those eyes that run up and down a man like a searchlight." Unhappily married Sylvia has been sending all her friends to Olga so they can hear the story about how her cousin, whose marriage is considered by all (including Mary) to be idyllic, is living in a "Fool's Paradise." In a moment of spite, Sylvia sends Mary to Olga, where Mary finally learns the truth.

(Sylvia really puts the "Freud" in Schadenfreude.)

The remainder of the picture is about how Mary deals with her husband's infidelity and what the rest of her circle — Nancy, speaker of great lines (Florence Nash); Peggy, simpering, slouching newlywed (Joan Fontaine*); and Edith, bearer of many children (Phyllis Povah) -- do and think about it. Even her mother (Lucile Watson) gets in on the action and tries to explain that men are just funny that way when they reach a certain age. They want to feel young, so they mix it up a bit with other women. Don't take it personally. "I suppose a man could do over his office, but he never thinks of anything so simple," she says. A line I love, but wow.

They're so helpful, Mary winds up on the train to Reno to get a divorce, where she meets more helpful (rich) women: Flora, the Countess DeLave (the best Mary Boland role of all time); and Miriam, the chorus girl (Paulette Goddard). They wind up at the ranch of (not at all rich) Lucy (Marjorie Main), whose husband sounds like an abusive wretch, but she'd never divorce 'im, because she's simple farm folk, I guess.

It all works out in the end and not a man in sight, though as the posters say "It's all about MEN!" Contemporary PR reassurances notwithstanding, the film does pass the Bechdel Test — in letter, if not in spirit.

You could look at this picture a couple of ways: it either glorifies the idle rich and their bored, catty ways, or it sends them up. I am inclined to believe it's the latter. Some of the truest, most realistic expressions of "sisterhood" are between the working class women who serve and pamper these females. And of course, in the character and treatment of Little Mary (the excellent Virginia Weidler), the Haines's young daughter, there is more truth than comedy.

Oh yeah. There's a fashion show.

*I know she just died and everything, but honestly, how did someone with such terrible posture become such a huge movie star?

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Birthday of the Week: Butterfly McQueen

1/5/2014

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Butterfly McQueen, Prissy, Gone with the Wind

Thelma "Butterfly" McQueen: January 7, 1911

Biography

Butterfly McQueen Remembered,
By Stephen Bourne
Scarecrow Press, 2007

Did You Know She Was in the Original Cast of The Wiz?!

I did not know that.

Apparently, when The Wiz opened in Baltimore in 1974, Butterfly McQueen played the Queen of the Field Mice, a part that was cut when the show moved on to Broadway. Particularly crummy, since my sister and I saw that show in New York not long after it opened. How much cooler would it have been to see the much-parodied "Prissy" as a queen?

Neither did I know that Butterfly McQueen was a lifelong atheist. I've spent the morning wondering what it must have been like for her to navigate those rough stereotypes and trying to imagine her saying, in that iconic, sweet, high voice, "As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion." But not, sadly, of the limitations of trying to get a decent part as an African American actor in the 1930s and 40s.

"Butterfly" was born Thelma (a name she hated) McQueen in Tampa, Florida on January 7, 1911. After her parents separated, she and her mother moved to New York, where her mother got work as a cook in Harlem and Butterfly trained as a dancer and actress with Venezuela Jone's Harlem-based Youth Acting Group. Her first performance on Broadway was in George Abbott's production of "Brown Sugar" in 1936 and became a permanent member of the Abbott Acting Company. Her first film appearance was as an uncredited shop assistant in The Women, but her most famous role was as Scarlett O'Hara's maid in Gone With the Wind, the premiere of which she was not allowed to attend, because it was held in a whites-only theatre.*

God bless America.

McQueen quit the movies in 1947, frustrated and tired of playing the same maids and servants, and small wonder. She went back to the New York stage, but also appeared regularly on radio and occasionally on television, and performed in a one-woman show at Carnegie Hall. In leaner times, she worked as a personal companion and sold toys at Macy's. A lifelong student, she eventually earned a bachelor's degree in political science from New York City College at age 64.

Butterfly McQueen died December 22, 1995, of burns sustained when her clothes caught fire while she was lighting a kerosene heater in her home in Augusta, Georgia. She was 84 years old.