The Women.
by Clare Boothe Luce, Clare Boothe Luce
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Book Summary Information
Author: Clare Boothe LuceEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-01
ISBN: 0822212706
Number of pages: 72
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
Book Reviews of The Women.
Book Review: An Acid-Etched Classic Of Its Kind
Summary: 5 Stars
Although she had a significant literary and later political career, in theatrical circles Clare Boothe Luce is best recalled for THE WOMEN, a play that opened in New York in 1936 with an all-female cast. Critics were not enthusiastic, but the show was a huge hit with audiences, racking up over six hundred performances in its initial run and going on to a wildly successful tour--something almost unheard of for a non-musical. Directed by George Cukor and starring Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, and Rosalind Russell, the 1939 film version was a legendary smash, and the play has been twice revived on Broadway and performed numerous times in regional, academic, and community theatre.
The play concerns Mary Haines, a wealthy and happily married socialite who is friends with Sylvia Fowler--a poisonous gossip who discovers that Mary's husband is having a torrid affair with sexy shop girl Crystal Allen. Mary takes her mother's advice and ignores the affair, hoping it will blow over; Sylvia, however, explodes it into a front-page scandal, and divorce is the result. Along the way we receive portraits of the women of the era: wealthy women, titled women, clerks, secretaries, models, maids, cooks, and, of course, wives, some happy, some unhappy. One divorce follows another; one scandal errupts after another.
THE WOMEN was written in a era in which it was assumed that a woman's only real satisfaction was marriage to a successful man, and it reflects the attitude of the day. Unlike the celebrated film, which focused on acid comedy, the play is as much drama as comedy, moving at a fast clip and taking pot shots at virtually every female stereotype imaginable. It is wickedly funny, yes, but it is also a surprisingly effective argument for feminism in its portrait of a distinctly anti-feministic society.
At some point in the 1960s Luce updated the play slightly, removing many distinctly 1930s references and replacing them with then-contemporary ones. This was a mistake, for the play works best as a period piece, a sharp gaze into what it was like to be a woman in the United States of the late 1930s. Fun to read but best seen in performance, it is a classic of its kind. Recommended.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
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