The Best of Everything (1959) User Reviews

Plush Fluff

[jaxla · 7/10 · 12 June 2005]

This working girls go to hell soap is a time capsule candidate, courtesy of its immaculate physical production, 50s costuming (look at all those bows and pearls), creamy Johnny Mathis theme song and oh-so daring (for its time) sexual attitudes. Rona Jaffe's novel, on which the film was based, keeps on being republished, and just a few years ago Vanity Fair actually devoted an article to this delectable bon bon of a movie. Take a look at the new DVD transfer and you'll know why.

The three leads - Hope Lange, Diane Baker and Suzy Parker - echo the girls from "How to Marry A Millonaire" or Carrie Bradshaw and her friends from "Sex and the City." "Gentlewomen songsters off on a spree..." Their romantic adventures and sexual entanglements are the stuff of paperback passion: empty caramel corn calories, devoid of nutrition, impossible to resist snacking on. Lange is genuinely touching in her neo-Grace Kelly way, Baker is properly dim and idealistic as a timid virgin who gets (gasp) knocked up by a (hiss) cad. It helps that the cad is played by Robert Evans, the throaty voiced, coke snorting film mogul who surely has lead many an innocent young lamb to the slaughter in his Beverly Hills bedroom.

Suzy Parker is fascinating in the first half of the film, all blithe self assurance and knowing remarks. She struts her stuff with the panache of the fashion icon she was in the 50s. Alas, she's not up to where the film sends her: into madness and obsession. But she exudes glamour and savior faire and her acting is at least adequate. One wonders why the critics loathed her, virtually driving her out of movies a few years later. Perhaps an aloof attitude on the part of a good looking woman is just too much to bear. It sank Ali McGraw's career a generation later, and, when you think of it, Ali McGraw and Suzy Parker were basically the same actress.

The film's only major flaw is a weak ending. It pretty much collapses into a romantic swoon at the end, rather than rising to a wham bang melodramatic finish, like the other famous soap opera from producer Jerry Wald, "Peyton Place," which had Lana Turner weeping and gnashing her teeth during a rape trial. Here, Hope Lange wanders out onto the New York sidewalk, spots burly, eternally hung over (but now, of course, sober) Stephen Boyd and they simply walk off together...into the sunset, one presumes. Otherwise, this is pretty much the definition of a guilty pleasure.

Oh Yes...there's also Joan Crawford, breathing fire at all the young girls and smoking cigarettes while she hisses to her married lover over the phone. And the titles are done in hot pink, with ribbon lettering that recalls the department store ads of the late 50s. Don't miss!

What Is Best For Everyone?

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 14 January 2007]

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.

"The Women" with the men this time

[schappe1 · 7/10 · 27 February 2006]

Claire Booth Luce's "The Women" shows relationships with men through a woman's point of view in a play, (and 1939 film that also has Joan Crawford playing a bitch: a character who might have been Amanda Farrow 20 years before), that has no male characters. Here we see the male characters and what a bunch they are. They use women like toys and throw them away, leaving the women to suffer. Ironically, the women in "The Women", perhaps because they are all we see, are shown in a less than favorable light, alternately silly and scheming, with the only "nice" one, (Norma Shearer), growing "claws" by the end. In "The Best of Everything" we see the men for the cads they are while the women are largely innocent and vulnerable.

This is a film about women leaping from things. Diane Baker leaps from a car, (in perhaps the most absurd scene in cinema history, which is not in the book). Suzy Parker falls from a fire escape. The women in the film are leaping into the workplace, looking for success and love at the same time. Women would leap into the future and leave this type of soap opera behind in the next decade. But they would come back to it in the 80's and 90's through the novels of people like Sidney Sheldon and Judith Krantz, (although their trashier works aren't as good as this).

The best thing about this film is the way it looks. I love the glossy cinemascope films of the 50's and 60's. They look so much better than the pixel-challenged home movies we've been making since, especially in the letterboxed version we see on TV, and the DVD, with the picture so clear you could walk into it. The look of the bevy of young beauties in it is also memorable. This film probably has more beautiful women in it than any other. It has a supermodel, (Suzy Parker), a beauty queen, (Myrna Hansen, who was not Miss America 1954 as Rona Jaffe says in the DVD commentary but rather Miss USA 1953, per the IMDb: but so what), and a Playboy playmate, (June Blair, from January 1957). My vote goes to Suzy, one of the astonishing beauties of all time. Her acting here isn't as awful as people pretend: they are just reacting, as people did then, to the sight of a supermodel, (the first, really), trying to act. Nobody seemed to care how well she did. Her role, that of an apparently worldly woman who turns out to be the most vulnerable, is the most complex in the bunch and she does just fine.

The most touching thing about the film now is the age of the female leads at the time. Hope Lange was 27 when they filmed this in the spring of 1959. Diane Baker was 20. Suzy Parker was 26. Hope, who looked to be Grace Kelly's heir, never made it really big and wound up being Mrs. Muir on television and, per the IMDb, wound up living in a home with "crates for coffee tables" because she spent her money on causes she believed in before dying at age 72 in 2003. This film must have seemed a very distant and irrelevant memory to her by then. Baker, always a welcome face in 60's TV, (especially to Richard Kimble), and still active as an actress and acting coach, just turned 67. Parker found "the best of everything" with Bradford Dillman for 40 years before dying at age 70 the same year Lange did. But here they are, young, beautiful and ambitious for success and love, just like their characters.

Very enjoyable and well-produced "trash"

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 12 October 2008]

This is a film that is far more enjoyable than its rating of 7 would suggest. In many ways, it's like a 50s version of VALLEY OF THE DOLLS--with much of the excesses and sleaziness of VALLEY polished up a bit for the audiences of 1959. Like this later film, both are about three young ladies who are on the fast-track to success--though this time it's in the publishing world instead of the entertainment industry (though one of the ladies in THE BEST OF EVERYTHING does have aspirations of Broadway).

The film begins with Hope Lange coming into the company for her first day of work. She's assigned to tough-as-nails boss, Joan Crawford, who is appearing in her first supporting role in decades. Despite how nasty Crawford seems, Lange is determined not to give in--to make it in this job. And, over time, she quickly moves up the ranks from secretary to editor. At the same time, her two new roommates also try to move up the ranks--one through the stage and one through a relationship with a rich playboy. Like VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, all of them have their ups and downs (mostly downs) but by the end of the film there is some hope that at least some of them will make it--battered and bruised, nevertheless.

In this film, men are mostly pigs. The only guy who seems decent is played by Stephen Boyd, so naturally Hope Lange neglects him for a ne'er do well ex-boyfriend. As for the guys played by veteran character actor Brian Ahern and the rest, they are sexist scum and eventually you understand how Crawford became so bitter and nasty.

This film has it all--adultery, premarital sex, abortion, etc. and is certainly NOT an artistic triumph. However, thanks to excellent production values and a juicy script, this one is a joy to watch. Just don't expect Shakespeare!!

People still the same, decades later

[ebert_jr · 30 May 2003]

More equality today, much more, but overall nothing has changed. All the sad, tawdry, pathetic, moving and bitter moments between women and men in the office is just as it is today, less the blatant sexual harassment. Love looking at old pics of nyc and looking in store windows....things seem surprisingly familiar and not dated.

Best Of Drama

[DKosty123 · 7/10 · 11 February 2012]

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.

an underrated film

[wjohnson925 · 7/10 · 22 February 2003]

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.

It's All About the Men!

[tex-42 · 7/10 · 6 September 2010]

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!

A perennial favorite that is always enjoyable to view.

[ericglasby · 10/10 · 31 January 2005]

I first saw this film in 1959 at the Hoyts Double Bay cinema in Sydney when fifteen years old. I loved it then and still do. The ensemble cast is great - in those days the actors acted "naturally" and you "felt" for them in the respective roles. A "glossy" film of the period -the relationships therein still relevant to today's world but now the sexes are on the same level, women would not or should not allow the type of treatment displayed in the past. The soundtrack music is wonderful and it is a delight that Film Score Monthly released the CD in January, 2005. Pity scenes were cut prior to release - even at two hours you want more! I have registered with Amazon for the DVD (they do now have a special page). To view this film in CinemaScope after forty six years of pan and scan will be great. Twentieth Century Fox, please look further into your catalogers of fifties CinemaScope productions for DVD - there IS a large market out there. I await arrival from US of March, 2004 Vanity Fair Special article on the film, which is said to be fifteen pages with many photos on set. Cheers.

The best and then some!!

[eforza915 · 7/10 · 12 December 2005]

Although dated, this film is definitely worth a watch. I saw it about eight times as a teenager when it opened and it changed my life...I just HAD to live in New York. It has great opening shots of the Manhattan skyline with Johnny Mathis crooning "Romance is still...the best of everything..." that rival those of West Side Story. There is a rather stilted performance by the world's REAL first Supermodel, Suzy Parker (sorry about that, Janice D.), but it's great eye-candy! It also offers a bit of insight into late 1950's American mores--our obsession with (and repression of) sex (in the workplace, no less!), romance, and marriage before women's lib. It represents an era in which New York was at it's finest and a super-bitchy performance by Joan Crawford is just the icing on the cake.

Amanda Farrow wears Prada.

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 8 December 2019]

The lives of three girls working in a publishing house in New York overlap here with varying degrees of interest, but the scenery is stolen by the veteran actress who makes good even though she has less screen time. Hope Lange, Suzy Parker and Diane Baker are joined by Joan Crawford who has the supporting but showy role of publishing executive Amanda Farrow, barking orders, offering unsolicited advice and basically trying to tear them down. Her motive? A combination of envy, annoyance and anger towards something missing in her own life which is revealed in a mid film telephone conversation with her unseen married lover whom she tells off in the most hysterical typical Crawford manner. "I do that in all my films" she once said in a cameo as herself in one of her movies, and indeed, somehow she always did have a dramatic tell off seen that either resulted in a slap or a vicious put down. But, for all the insults and nasty demands she makes, she doesn't seem to have a response to the glares of contempt they give her, simply sauntering off rather than making threats like Miranda Priestly in "The Devil Wears Prada" may have. In a sense, that makes her dangerous, because subject of her wrath is then unaware of what her intentions are.

Of the three women, only Hope Lange's story really is interesting, showing her rise in the firm as Farrow falls. Suzy Parker, as a hopeful actress, becomes involved with Broadway producer Louis Jourdan, and Diane Baker finds herself involved with a married man and pregnant withaout the benefits of marriage. the soap opera style story actually did make it to daytime TV a decade later, memorable for casting Hollywood vets Geraldine Fitzgerald and Gale Sondergaard in major parts.

As for the men, they are presented as charming but lecherous, with veteran movie actor Brian aherne the head of the firm and constantly pinching the backsides of the various girls with a seemingly harmless wink. The younger men treat their women like convenient commodities, and Jourdan in particular is quite cold when he runs out of a reason to keep Parker around. This basically is an early less scandalous version of Valley of the Dolls without the excessive drugs and alcohol, and certainly no suicide. Crawford has a great final scene with Lange, giving her a warning that makes you realize that she will make the same mistakes that Crawford did.

Excellent Film!

[km_creations · 9/10 · 28 March 2003]

I feel very strongly that this film was just like Waiting to Exhale with white females in the 1950's. As in Waiting to Exhale, all of the female characters got mixed up with men who were either married or no good. The only difference, besides the obvious, was that there wasn't much humor in this film. I would even say that it was tragic. Only one of the male characters seemed to be kind and sincere (Hope Lange's guy), but even then there was conflict in this relationship.

The story was about three young women who shared an apartment together and who had hopes and dreams of success. Unfortunately for them, romance didn't seem to come easy although they were young, intelligent and attractive. This movie could be called a tearjerker with the saddest part involving Suzy Parker's character whose obsession of an ex-boyfriend leads to tragedy.

This is a must see.

NYC Never Looked Better

[daoldiges · 7/10 · 29 May 2018]

If there's one thing this film does well, its capturing the appeal and allure of New York City. This is a fun time-capsule of a film from this period and it beautifully captures some truly iconic images of midtown Manhattan, and a couple other shots of the city. The beautifully stylized representation of office life, the cloths and apartments of NYC explains why these girls along with millions of others like them dreamed of coming to New York City to achieve their dreams - be it a dream job as a successful executive or a rich husband. As for the story itself, it is a bit cliched and is filled with some stereotypes. Despite some issues I think this film is great fun and worth checking out.

The worst of everything...riddled with clichés...

[Doylenf · 5/10 · 26 August 2006]

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.

What Women's Lib was all about!

[kmk-3 · 12 October 2001]

Meant to be a glossy romance and cautionary tale for girls who dare to think of working Outside The Home, "The Best of Everything" instead is a virtual primer of the root causes of the modern Women's movement: Women (really, girls) can have jobs, but only until they find a man and leave to begin their real lives as homemakers; women are sexual toys, provided to men at work for their amusement; all men are predators and all women are fools; pregnancy is entirely the woman's fault; women who take their jobs seriously are damaged people; women merely exist for the use of men. Sounds like an unremitting screed, and it is -- yet, such is Hollywood's power, the pageant is very watchable (the clothes, the sentimental views of 1959 NYC) and beautiful. A wonderful snapshot of America just a couple of years before "The Feminine Mystique" was published. Must-see for women.

Sex and the City - 1950's style.

[MOscarbradley · 7/10 · 5 June 2008]

A hugely enjoyable screen version of Rona Jaffe's best-selling pot-boiler about the trials and tribulations, (and, naturally, the loves), of a group of women involved in one way or another in the New York publishing business. Directed by Jean Negulesco, fairly fresh from the success of "Three Coins in a Fountain", and the prototype for the likes of "Sex and the City", except that here the sex all takes place off-screen.

The bright young female talents of the day, (Hope Lange, Diane Baker, Suzy Parker, Martha Hyer), are all nicely cast while Joan Crawford pops up as a Queen Bitch of an editor who could probably eat Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly and spit her out; with absolutely no effort at all she steals the movie. The men include Stephen Boyd, Louis Jourdan, (if it wasn't Rossano Brazzi it had to be Louis Jourdan), Robert Evans, (before he decided, wisely, to go behind the camera) and Brian Aherne. There are more suds on display than you will find in your average launderette but if, like me, you enjoy "Desperate Housewives", not to mention Carrie Bradshaw and company then you will probably love this. A very guilty pleasure.

It grows on you

[vincentlynch-moonoi · 7/10 · 17 July 2017]

Yes, after getting off to a rather poor start, this film grows on you. Or at least it grew on me. The beginning, setting the stage, seemed so very cliché, but as the film progresses we see that most of the characters have a fairly interesting story to tell us.

The real treasure here is Hope Lange, whom I remember enjoying in movies and on television quite a bit before she faded in my memory. She's excellent here, an probably the highlight of the film. As the main character, she matures in her character's role from naive secretary to executive...and makes it believable.

On the other hand, Stephen Boyd, whom she eventually appears to fall in love with, does little more than stand around in a few scenes. And in those few scenes he was pretty ineffectual. Surprisingly, he was stunning in his very next film -- "Ben-Hur"! I also wan't very impressed with Suzy Parker as a secretary. Her role is significant, but somehow she just didn't have star quality...other than her looks.

I would like to have seen more of Martha Hyer, a very underrated actress. Her part is not that significant here.

Diane Baker was quite good as another of the secretaries, and significant parts of the film revolve around her affair and later romance.

Brian Aherne is around as an older editor who can't keep his hands off the young secretaries. He's okay, but I was not impressed.

Louis Jourdan is here as a Broadway director, and although his role is not large, it is significant, and he handles it well.

And then we have Joan Crawford. Her present-day image as a witch (or something that rhymes with that)...well, this role helped cement that image. But, her role is my biggest criticism of the film. Almost seems like they sat around saying, "Hey, we need a witch to counteract with a couple of the characters. Maybe we could get that over-the-hill actress Joan Crawford." It almost becomes camp. This was Crawford's last film before she fell into horror pictures.

The acting runs from hot to cold in this film (as described above), and Crawford is little more than a distraction. But there's a lot to like here, as well. It really does have quite a good story line, however, and as previously mentioned, Hope Lange is superb.

Great ideas with some iffy execution

[shaykelliher · 7/10 · 29 August 2018]

"The Best of Everything" is a film I had never even heard of until the day I watched it, which honestly is kind of a shame. This is a really solid movie which is held back by some certain problems.

The three different stories that effect the three main characters of the film are all incredibly interesting in their own rights, and are all grounds for amazing films on their own. However the film is doing a constant juggling act with these three stories and thus the tone of the film is all over the place. In one scene it's a haunting psychological horror with an interesting use of camera angles and shadow, the next it's a melodrama about a careless lover and after that it's a cosy office comedy. It's a bit jarring at times, all the scenes work on their own but when they're put together it has some less-than-excellent results.

Other than that this is a really good movie with a knockout cast. It's just the tonal problems that stop it from being something really special.

Mad Men-esque

[Maliejandra · 6/10 · 28 August 2017]

Caroline Bender (Hope Lange) gets a job at a publishing company staffed almost exclusively by women. She manages to work her way up the company ladder even though her real desire is to marry her sweetheart and settle down. That falls through when he impulsively marries another woman (who has money).

This a very soapy drama that relies heavily on outdated societal expectations, namely among women. All of them want to get married, even the one who gave up the prospect of marriage for career success (Joan Crawford), and will go to extreme lengths to achieve that goal. Some find happiness, others get pregnant out of wedlock, and still others resort to stalking.

In spite of the somewhat ridiculous plot twists, this is an enjoyable and stylish film with a capable and beautiful cast. The sets are reminiscent of Mad Men and they're photographed wonderfully.

The BEST of Everything

[katibee82 · 10/10 · 25 May 2005]

If this is not my favorite movie of all time, it definitely is in the top five. I love this. Everything about this is perfect--the clothes, the set, the lines--yes, they're not how normal people talk, but... Right down to the small scenes, especially at the beginning of the office girls changing their shoes, picking a wedgie, watering the office ivy plant, putting lunch in the fridge... Identical to what us office girls do today in the year 2005. I think all the minor characters are wonderful. If someone like Joan Crawford is over the top, it's all part of the package. If you pick out many things in the movie, it is very evident that this was the beginning of the sixties as women were starting to not "take it lying down," at least not if they didn't want to. As far as characters being contradictory, for instance, Suzy Parker's character acting like she's all for flings, but then getting too attached to Louis Jourdan's character, isn't that what many people are like--contradictory? They mix in real stuff with scenes like Diane Baker's character finding the love of her life after miscarrying her illegitimate baby in an accident--lying in the hospital with a big old bandage around her head. This is part of the package too, it's charm--glossy escapism. I like the mix of real stories pertinent today (the stereotypical career woman who only has affairs with married men, therefore doesn't have a family when she is older) with ones that make you wish, "ah, if only I could fall in love with a doctor and he'll love me even though he knows my sordid past, and saw me all messed up after the scandalous accident!!" Also, I just got the DVD, widescreen, it's yet even more beautiful than full screen... Yay!

Working Girls

[richardchatten · 7/10 · 31 August 2020]

Although Rona Jaffe's original novel has recently seen a revival of interest since it was name-checked in 'Mad Men', the glossy, good-looking film in CinemaScope and DeLuxe Color Jerry Wald made of it tends still to be overlooked.

Made when the word 'pregnant' could be used but abortion was still 'an operation', the men - with the dishonourable exception of Robert Evans in his final film as an actor and Brian Aherne as a bottom-pincher - are a pretty bland bunch.

Joan Crawford's role as the office queen bee apparently suffered badly in the final cut; but Crawford would anyway have been disinclined to convincingly portray a cold-hearted cow as Meryl Streep did in 'The Devil Wears Prada'.

Man bashing without a cause

[toyguy-31519 · 4/10 · 14 September 2021]

The only male character who is not guilty of womanizing is Stephen Boyd but he has to be an alcoholic. Hope Lange doesn't remember if she had sex with him the night before but of course there's no moral question there. The rest of the women sans Martha Hyer are all on the prowl but it's the men who are at fault. No man could have written a reverse view book of what the career man had to go through with these man trapping women and not get persecuted. P,S, Look at Mary Agnes' fiance during the bridal shower. He looks sick to death of the dog and pony show that should not be taking place at work.

Nice cinematography, color and how modern New York looked in the 50's, otherwise a one sided piece of crap.

P. S. I highly recommend that you Don't watch the commentary by Sylvia Stoddard and Rona Jaffe. Stoddard hogs the air time and is wrong so many times regarding facts about this and other movies and the stars in it. She's a man bashing annoyance that just drones on and on constantly contradicting herself.

Good, of its kind

[Boyo-2 · 8/10 · 20 August 2002]

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 'whore') 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.

Cynical soaper carpeted with gloss...

[moonspinner55 · 6/10 · 28 April 2010]

Screenwriters Edith Sommer and Mann Rubin zip through Rona Jaffe's book about love-starved stenographers at a New York City publishing firm at top speed; brought on-board by an employment agency, it only takes a few scenes before Radcliffe girl Hope Lange moves from the typewriters to the manuscripts...and then it's on to editor! Although the film runs a full two hours, it's never boring due to the rapidly-changing scenario (the narrative plays like an adaptation in shorthand). This coupled with Jean Negulesco's penchant for occasionally heartfelt melodrama and "The Best of Everything" quickly becomes the best of all soap opera clichés. There's the fanny-pinching executive, the hard-drinking heartthrob, the female warhorse who let the one man who ever loved her slip through her hands, the cad who specializes in knocking up naïve virgins, et al. The picture looks good and has a few goosey scenes and strong moments, though Lange's rocket-like ride to the top is laughable, as is Suzy Parker's role as an actress (named Gregg!) who becomes obsessed with Broadway director Louis Jourdan (yet another cad). Most of the women are weak-kneed, weak-willed pushovers for a pretty face, while the majority of the men are smooth-talking liars and cheats. Quite a stew for those in the mood. **1/2 from ****

The Worst of Everything

[JamesHitchcock · 5/10 · 29 March 2019]

"The Best of Everything" tells the story of three young women who work as typists for the Fabian Publishing Company, a New York publishing house, and who share an apartment in the city. The three are very different both in personality and in their aspirations. Caroline Bender is an upper-middle-class university graduate who aspires to a management position with the firm. April Morrison is a naive country girl from Colorado whose only ambition is to find the right man. Gregg Adams (her parents must have wanted a boy!) is an aspiring actress who has only taken a typing job while waiting for her big break on Broadway.

This is one of those movies which could be subtitled " All three girls have problems with the men in their lives. Caroline's handsome, hunky fiancé Eddie goes off to study in London and, almost as soon as he arrives, telephones Caroline to say that he has married another woman, an oil heiress whom he met in the boat. This does not prevent him from returning to New York and attempting to resume his relationship with Caroline. She at first mistakenly believes that he intends to get a divorce and make Caroline his second wife, an arrangement she would be happy to accept, but is less enthusiastic when she realises that he wants to stay married and keep her as his mistress.

April meets Dexter Key, a handsome, hunky upper-class financier at his country club and becomes pregnant by him. Dexter proposes marriage to her, but it soon becomes clear that this is only a ruse to try and browbeat her into having an abortion, something to which she is resolutely opposed.

Gregg becomes involved with David Savage, a handsome, hunky playwright and Broadway theatre director, and wins a part in one of his plays on the basis of the "casting couch" principle rather than of any actual talent as an actress. When her lack of talent becomes all too obvious, David is forced to demote her to understudy. This leads to the end of their relationship, although Gregg still cherishes the hope that it can be revived.

Completing this rogues' gallery of the male sex is Fred Shalimar (not particularly handsome or hunky, although he may have been so in his youth), the lecherous middle-aged boss of the firm who cannot keep his wandering hands off any attractive female employee. Not every unpleasant character in the movie is male, however. Caroline's boss Amanda Farrow is portrayed as an embittered spinster whose demanding attitude makes the lives of her subordinates a misery.

The film based on a novel by Rona Jaffe published in 1958, only a year before it was made, and the alacrity with which 20th Century-Fox snapped up the film rights suggests that they had high hopes for the project, as do the high-profile names - Joanne Woodward, Audrey Hepburn, Lauren Bacall, Lee Remick, Jean Peters, Robert Wagner- whom they were hoping would star in it. In the event, however, they were not able to attract any stars of quite this magnitude apart from (in a rare instance of her taking a supporting rather than a starring role) Joan Crawford as Amanda. Apparently she was broke and needed the cash.

In 1959 the film was probably intended as something of a feminist statement, highlighting the various ways in which men exploit or take advantage of women, although from a modern viewpoint there are two factors which tend to undermine its feminist credentials. The first is its treatment of abortion, which here seems less like a woman's right to choose than like another weapon of male dominance. The second is the treatment of the character of Amanda, with its implication that any middle-aged career woman, especially if she is unmarried, is likely to end up hard, embittered and unfulfilled. When Amanda jumps at a proposal of marriage from an old flame, Caroline is promoted to take her place, and the question then arises of whether she can meet the responsibilities of her new role without becoming as hard-bitten and domineering as Amanda.

Given the melodramatic nature of the plot, it struck me while watching the film that it might have worked better as a soap opera. Since watching it I have discovered that Jaffe's novel did in fact form the basis of a soap opera in the late sixties, although it does not seem to be a success. Perhaps it was not well-suited to adaptation into either form. The worst of everything. 5/10