The Women (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) contains no less than 135 of them, of all ages, shapes, sizes and stages of neurotic disintegration, and the shadow of one man. The man is Stephen Haines. The most important women are his wife Mary (Norma Shearer), her cattish friend Sylvia Fowler (Rosalind Russell), who makes sure that Mary knows about Stephen's carrying on with a perfume salesgirl, and the girl, Crystal Allen (Joan Crawford). Mary's consequent trip to Reno introduces her to many another specimen of her sex, notably a fat U. S. countess (Mary Boland) with a crush on a cowboy named Buck, and Sylvia Fowler's own marital Nemesis, gay but tenacious Show-girl Miriam Aarons (Paulette Goddard). The drama of The Women is the effort of a good woman to adjust herself to a social pattern in which she is as much at a disadvantage as a Pekingese out foraging with a pack of Siberian wolves. Mary does succeed in keeping her happiness, but not until she too has done a little clawing for it.
Although M. G. M. added such embellishments as a misplaced fashion show to the Clare Boothe play that ran 19 months on Broadway in 1936-38,* The Women, like its original, is a mordant, mature description of the social decay of one corner of the U. S. middle classes. Prevented by the nature of the cast from publicizing the picture with a studio romance, M. G. M. pressagents did not discourage the assumption of fan writers that its trio of temperamental stars were engaged in a studio feud. This device worked well recently for Warners', when George Raft and James Cagney were inaccurately rumored to be at each others throats while making Each Dawn I Die, and similar apocryphal stories were circulated about Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins during production of The Old Maid. Prima Donna Shearer, for purely professional reasons, saw to it that she was billed above rival Prima Donna Crawford, stipulated that her name should be advertised in type half as large as the title and twice as large as that of Lesser Luminary Russell. But if this precaution stirred any bad blood, fat, high-voiced Director George Cukor, an understanding specialist in the ways of feminine stars, allowed none to flow on the set.