The Best of Everything

source: The Best of Everything

WARNING: SPOILERS Priceless. This movie is utterly priceless. The clothes, the hair, the furniture, the cars, the buildings, even the dimple in Stephen Boyd's chin--they're all so picture-perfect. Even the doors at Fabian Publishing have to be seen to be believed. One is bright blue, the next is deep red, the next is dark yellow. Help! We're trapped in a Looney Toon! The bustlines are cantilevered skyward, defying gravity and physics, as only a 1950s actress bustline can. The mens' suits are all conservative but oh-so-perfectly tailored. I would kill for a suit like that. And the dialogue! Stilted, cliched, predictable, and chock full of 1950's goodness. None of the characters are even remotely believable at any point in the movie. And thank heaven for that! It makes it so much easier simply to let this movie wash over you like a tidal wave from the past, a tidal wave of expensive perfume and cheap booze. If you're younger, please don't imagine that the world was ever the way it's depicted here. No air conditioning? Just a good excuse to exhale sharply upward to blow that winsome strand of hair out of your face. Tiny apartment in the big city? Just that much cozier. Long hours on a small salary? That just makes you feel all the more proud of being a big girl and looking after yourself. Queen of the Harpies boss? Her prediction that you will soon take her place is bound to come true. Alcoholic? Don't worry, you never appear drunk, and it has no impact on your life at all. Accidental pregnancy? You can just fling yourself out of your boyfriend's sports car, and marry the handsome doctor instead. Director boyfriend threw you over? Skulk around in a raincoat, for several weeks apparently, until Fate and a cartoonish drunk (wasn't he in an episode of Gomer Pyle, or something?) intervene. GOD...I wish I could come up with this kind of stuff. But all of the movie's plot transgressions are atoned for, and amply, by its impenitent pride in itself, its sheer self-indulgence. This movie is completely without shame and hangs its ridiculous stereotypes out there for you to enjoy. If you don't take the movie seriously, that makes it hugely entertaining. If you do take it seriously...well, you can't, you simply CAN'T, darling!

If your a fan of drama, this movie is for you. Hope Lange stars as Miss Bender, a young woman on the way up out of college after the editor job held by Joan Crawford. The setting is New York Ctity. The project is romance. The industry is office, publishing office. There are several women in this cast who are not well known but who hold their own quite nicely. This 1959 era is sort of out of date with what was coming in the 1960's. This is the rare film that features Stephen Boyd the same year he was doing Ben Hur which won a lot of Oscars this year and Louis Jourdan as powerful men who are after the women in the cast. The best of everything which is the songs title tune, seems to be that these women, within limits, can get everything they want. Being the 1950's, they seem to want love and marriage. Lange's character, Miss Bender, wants a career too. That is a little different for a 1959 setting. That might be the main difference in this film from most films of this period. If you like drama, New York City in the 1950's, or are a fan of Boyd, Jourdan or Hope Lang, this movie is for you. If you like romantic drama, this is your film too. While not a big classic, at least it is a film that tells a story, though a bit outdated today. Its sets look at lot like AMC's Mad Men done years later. In fact, it is story wise.

If this is the best of everything, I'd hate to see the worst! Taking on the premise that being a working girl in NYC in the 1950s is oh so glamorous, three co-workers strike up a friendship and share a cold water flat and drink champagne while dishing dirt on men. Proving that if you work really hard, have a pencil tucked in your hair and stay late, you can succeed quickly and suddenly your boss feels threatened because she's not so young any more, but you are. While Joan looks her militant best, Gregg (one of the three roommates) turns into a stalker and lurks in alleyways while digging in trash cans wearing an overcoat. With Caroline sporting new hairdo's throughout the movie, April her other roommate, becomes pregnant by a philandering playboy and squanders her chances to be successful too. Spoiled goods for sure! Poor Joan sees the writing on the wall and decides that it's best if she leaves with her dignity intact for her one true chance at love. Unfortunately, things don't work out for Miss Farrow and she returns. Still, Caroline gets the big office, and now truly does have the best of everything...new clothes and a way cool office.

The Best of Everything is a fun, if slightly campy time capsule in which to view the working women of 1959. The storyline follows three women working for a publishing company, and their desire to find love and get married. The leader of this troika is Caroline Bender (Lange), who has landed work as a typist and then finds her fiancée has dumped her for another girl. She works with Gregg Adams (Parker), a beautiful aspiring actress who is deeply insecure and April Morrison (Baker), the naive bumpkin from Colorado. Each woman faces a different challenge during the film. Morrison hooks up with a well to do guy named Dexter, but finds what a sleaze he is when she gets pregnant. Gregg falls in love with a stage director, who returns her affections for a time, but then dumps her, leading to Gregg suffering what can only be described as a psychotic break. Also along for the ride is Amanda Farrow, an editor at the publishing house who has a "take no prisoners" style, a lecherous editor named Mr. Shalimar and the office drunk, Mike Rice. The absolute best things about this movie are the costumes and set design, along with the gorgeous scenes filmed in late 1950s Manhattan. The story itself is highly melodramatic and each of the girls seems to lose touch with reality at some point during their respective story lines, whether it be Caroline's ridiculously fast job promotions, Gregg's misadventure by high heel, or April inadvertently using a moving car as a way to land herself a new boyfriend. Joan Crawford is a supporting player here, but she makes one heck of an impression with the limited screen time she gets. This is definitely a good movie. Obviously, the element that these women only think they can find fulfillment by being married to a man is a dated concept, along with the boss who can't stop pinching his female employees, but the performances of nearly all the actors really do shine. And I cannot really overstate just how beautiful the sets and costumes are here. It's an experience not to be missed!

Caroline Bender (Hope Lange) is just killing time getting a job. Her real ambition is to marry Eddie and have a baby. April (Diane Baker) is too innocent to stay that way for long and falls in love too easily, a dangerous combo. Greg (Suzy Parker) is a go-getter and wants to be an actress. All three are doomed for dramatics in 'The Best of Everything', a 1959 soap opera/morality play/sometimes solid movie that is aging by the second. Set in the cut-throat world of paperback publishing, its not as trashy as "Valley of the Dolls" but not as vanilla as "Three Coins in the Fountain." The men in the mix - Brian Aherne, Stephen Boyd, Louis Jourdan and Robert Evans - are slick, well-dressed and no good, for the most part. Aherne is the resident sexual offender - will pinch anything walking by, and makes unwanted advances right and left. His character is offensive as hell, but its not played seriously at all. Harassment hadn't been discovered yet, I guess. Boyd works there, too, although you never see him actually doing anything. He's too busy being older, wiser and drunker. Evans is abroad just so Diane Baker can suffer in style - he's a rich kid who's gotten her in 'trouble' so instead of marrying her, as promised, he's taking her to get an 'operation.' Jourdan is a director who mistakenly has an affair with Parker. They share a fight scene which is fairly no-holds barred, in a movie like this anyway, but the scene is ultimately ruined by Parker's histronics. She ends up nearly stalking him, and she really didn't deserve such a lousy fate, her bad acting notwithstanding. Joan Crawford breathes fire as Amanda Farrow, the resident 'witch' who is automatically rude and dismissive of any of her legion of secretaries. Well they are younger, aren't they? Isn't that sufficient reason to hate a person? Caroline doesn't think so, as she admirably stands up to Miss Farrow every chance she gets. Crawford only gets to let loose once, when she tells her married boyfriend 'you can your rabbit-faced wife can both go to hell' and slams down the phone. You never get to see the poor soul who dare crosses her. Martha Hyer's 'storyline', as it were, is extremely weak, and she is painfully over-the-top as an unmarried mother. Short of wearing a huge "W" (for '*') on her cardigan, she walks around like a pathetic mess for most of her screen time. Even worse, she is not given the courtesy of having it all 'tied up', one way or the other, at the end. It won't matter that much, but still.. Its painfully obvious this all took place in a totally different world. People were nicer to one another for the most part and work was not a drag but something exciting, for a girl from outside NYC anyway. One unconvincing drunk scene aside, Hope Lange helps it seem reasonably real as Caroline, who at least has more than one side to her character. I admire that women are seen having an opinion, a chance and a choice. Not that its not wrapped in a nice bow, but it makes some points for equality. In 1959 that was probably noteworthy and possibly controversial. 7/10.

I just saw this wonderfully filmed movie that captures the essence of high-brow NYC, or any big city of mid-century America. The colors, the cars, the clothes and the coming of the Womens Movement. It reflects the comf-cozy attitudes of relationships between men and women in the corporate world. In some ways, things gave changed and in others, they haven't changed at all. Women still want what men have today, but they now have all sorts of laws and equality mandates to get it for them. In my opinion, beautiful women will still THROW themselves at men in pursuit of thier goals! The laws we have now against harrassment and all, were passed by unattractive women who wanted an equal chance to compete with prettier women who might be getting the positions soley based on thier looks and puting out! The real competition isn't between men and women, but women and women! I liked the look and feel of the movie but the world hasn't changed as far as what real

A classic late 50's film. The superannuated headliners (Joan Crawford and Louis Jordan) are not at their best, but the direction, cinematography, and acting of the younger cast are compelling. In a 50's sense (which I love). The look and feel of the artsy (over-artsy?) contemporary film "Far from heaven" reflects exactly this sort of film (and I suspect this film may be one of the models). A silly plot, of course (hey, it's 1959!), but as a film-- glorious! As a reflection of the society, extremely interesting. And as witness to how Hollywood breaks away from the idealistic portrayal of American sexual mores, fascinating.

The Best of Everything is a high gloss large screen soap opera which follows the careers of four career women, Hope Lange, Suzy Parker, Diane Baker, and Martha Hyer at a New York publishing firm. What's the best for some women is not necessarily the best for all. Presiding over this group of young fillies is wise old mare Joan Crawford who's been around the track a few times on screen and in real life. She looks right at home as the boss lady as well she should have at this point. Around the time she was making The Best of Everything Joan Crawford became a widow when her fourth husband, Alfred Steele died. It was a particularly traumatic event for her, she woke up one morning and found him dead in bed next to her. She inherited all of his stock in Pepsi Cola where he was the board chairman and during the same period as The Best of Everything was being made, she wound up the queen bee at Pepsi Cola. Life does sometimes imitate art. So that authority as she barks out dictation and coffee orders to Hope Lange rings real true. In fact all the women here with the exception of Lange are in for some rough sledding. It's rough for Lange too, but she literally makes the best of everything. What a collection of stinkers the men are in this film. The best of them, Stephen Boyd, is a heavy drinker. The others Louis Jourdan, Robert Evans, and Brett Halsey, are as slimy a collection of rodents as ever gathered for one film. I can't forget Brian Aherne either who's the fanny pinching head of this publishing firm. Half that office would have sexual harassment suits going today. Some nice location shots of New York in the fifties make the film a real treat. Catch it by all means.

I'm sure Rona Jaffe's book examined the lives of working girls a little more seriously and with better intent than THE BEST OF EVERYTHING, which is about as cliché-ridden with ripe dialog as any film in memory, perhaps eclipsed only by VALLEY OF THE DOLLS. On the plus side, there are ravishing shots of bustling New York City in the heart of mid-town Manhattan and the credits open with Johnny Mathis singing "Love Is The Best Of Everything." That's as good as it gets. The story of four office girls considering whether to choose career over marriage (while being stalked by men with raging hormones) is the same old tripe we've seen dozens of times, usually with more finesse. All of the men--STEPHEN BOYD, BRIAN AHERNE, LOUIS JOURDAN and ROBERT EVANS--are depicted as scoundrels just a few steps better than Jack the Ripper or the infamous Don Juan--treating the girls in the typing pool as though they are part of a harem. The girls are the usual blend of disparate types--with SUZY PARKER, HOPE LANGE, and DIANE BAKER being the most conspicuous in having to deal with unscrupulous beaus. And for good measure, we have JOAN CRAWFORD as the female boss from hell in what is little more than a cameo role. Crawford makes the most of it. And so it goes. It's soap-opera, plain and simple, '50s style, but nowhere as accomplished as some of the other pulp fiction of the period that made it to the big screen. Watch at your own risk.