Many movie fans consider 1939 the greatest ever in the history
of American filmmaking and it would be hard to argue the point. In
the days before Hollywood degenerated into the trash heap it is
today, one could expect productions that would appeal in some way
to different segments of society while entertaining the whole
family at the same time. And 1939 was the acme and epitome of all
that made up old Hollywood.
There were gallant swashbucklers sure to enliven the dreams of
young boys everywhere like Beau Geste, a tale of mystery,
gallantry and the French Foreign Legion starring the manly Gary
Cooper. And my father’s boyhood favorite, Gunga Din, a
terrific action-adventure movie with golden temples, bloodthirsty
savages, elephants and military glory for the boys, and Cary Grant
and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. for the moms.
Women’s movies, or “weepers” as they were known, also abounded
that year. Bette Davis bravely faced blindness and death in the
arms of George Brent in Dark Victory, while suave Charles
Boyer and the delicious Irene Dunne kicked off the doomed and
oft-remade Love Affair genre. And what woman didn’t long
to fall under the dark yet dreamy allure of Laurence Olivier’s
Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights?
There were epics like Gone With the Wind that
celebrated the bygone glory of the Old South and gems like
Ninotchka whereby Greta Garbo’s stern Soviet title
character is seduced by the charms of Melvyn Douglas, Paris, and
capitalism. Do you think we’ll ever hear a line like this from
Hollywood again: “The last mass trials were a great success. There
are going to be fewer but better Russians.”
John Wayne, future bane of liberals everywhere, made his
starring debut in John Ford’s Stagecoach, which is always
worth watching if for no other reason than to recall how
devastatingly good-looking the Duke was in his heyday. Likewise,
The Wizard of Oz always gets me misty, not because of the
story line, but for the sweet sadness of the sixteen year-old Judy
Garland.
Nineteen Thirty-Nine marked the last of the Ginger Rogers/Fred
Astaire pairings for RKO, The Story of Vernon and Irene
Castle, and the onset of World War II signaled the end of an
era. The Great Depression was over and therefore so was one of the
most treasured of movie gimmicks: lampooning the lives of the idle
rich.
RKO and other studios had made millions filming musicals and
“screwball comedies” which lifted the hearts of suffering
Americans. The plots didn’t much matter when you had screen giants
like Grant and Gable and real movie queens like Rogers, Garbo, and
Hepburn reciting snappy dialogue while dressed to the nines.
One of the last movies to skewer the idle rich was 1939’s
The Women, a torrid romp through two years in the lives of
a group of selfish, pampered, Manhattan socialites. The main
objective of their lives is, of course, to snag a rich husband.
Achieving this, they spend their days shopping, taking exercise
classes, being pampered at health spas, seeing analysts and
gossiping.
The all-female cast boasted an unprecedented lineup of
Hollywood’s elite ladies; Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind
Russell, Paulette Goddard, and Joan Fontaine topped the bill. Based
on a play by Clare Booth Luce and directed by George Cukor, the
script crackled with sparkling dialogue and one-liners tossed off
expertly in a manner unseen in modern movies.
AND SO IT WAS with amusement and dismay that I heard that a remake
of The Women was released this month. It is, as to be
expected, everything the original was not. Where the original
featured spoiled housewives — with the exceptions of gold-digger
perfume clerk Crystal Allen and cynical author and spinster Nancy
Blake — the remake is of course mostly populated with independent
working women. The idea that the lives of these gals hinge on
acquiring and keeping a husband makes the whole premise
worthless.
Where the 1939 flick sizzled with witty repartee, the 2008
trailer alone contains five instances of vulgarism;
that which passes for clever dialogue in modern Hollywood.
Predictably, the cynical author is now gay, negating one of the
original’s best lines: “[I’m] what nature abhors. I am an old maid,
a frozen asset.”
In 1939, nearly all of the major characters in The Women, even
the saintly Mary Haines at the end, were the antithesis of American
womanhood — aggressive, self-centered, catty, materialistic and
vacuous — and therefore, profoundly unhappy. Today, they represent
the aims of the average woman; at least according to Hollywood and
the rest of the media. Indeed, were the 1939 group around today
they would, each and every one of them, have their own talk or
reality shows.
With few disastrous exceptions, most of today’s filmmakers
haven’t dared to tread the sacred waters of the 1939 classics by
sullying them with modern remakes. Do yourself a favor, skip the
remake of The Women and rent the glorious original; a
starkly prescient glimpse into Hollywood’s future.
