Clare Boothe Luce Movies
Veteran producer/director Diane English (The Lathe of Heaven, Murphy Brown) helms this contemporized remake of George Cukor's beloved proto-feminist comedy drama The Women (1939), an adaptation of Clare Boothe Luce's play. The English version follows the gossip, bitchy wisecracking, and overall disillusionment that erupt among a group of socialite friends when their dearest and most envied learns of her husband's marital infidelity at the hands of a backstabbing shopgirl. The all-female cast is fronted by Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Candice Bergen, with supporting roles inhabited by Bette Midler, Cloris Leachman, and Carrie Fisher. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, (more)
- 1955
Irregularly scheduled on NBC from 1954-1957, Producers' Showcase was a series of lavish, full-color, 90-minute specials, bringing the best of Broadway to the 21-inch screen. One of the more memorable presentations in this anthology was director Vincent Donahue's live staging of Clare Boothe Luce's brilliantly vitriolic 1936 stage comedy, The Women, which had previously been filmed by MGM in 1939. Boasting a stellar all-female cast, The Women centers around the tactics used by the supposedly demure Mary Haines (here played by Ruth Hussey) to win back her husband from predatory shopgirl Crystal Allen (Shelley Winters). Meanwhile, Mary's so-called friends gossip, bicker, and "diss" with bitchy abandon, both in New York and on a Reno "divorce ranch." Mary Boland, who played the much-married Countess DeLage in the 1939 movie, repeats her role in the TV version, while Paulette Goddard, who portrayed mercenary chorus dancer Miriam in the film, is here ironically cast as the malicious Sylvia Fowler, whose husband is stolen away by Miriam (played on this occasion by Valerie Bettis). The Women was adapted for television by Sumner Locke Elliot. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shelley Winters, Paulette Goddard, (more)
- 1949
A Christmastime TV perennial, Come to the Stable is the gentle saga of two French nuns (Celeste Holm with accent, Loretta Young without) who come to America in hopes of raising funds for a children's hospital. Travelling to a small New England town presciently named Bethlehem, the nuns befriend eccentric painter Elsa Lanchester, who allows them to use her studio (actually a stable) for their base of operations. Utterly ingenuous when it comes to American mores and customs (they tear up a parking ticket, assuming it to be an advertisement), the sisters raise money in a variety of amusing fashions. One of their "agents" is outwardly tough gambler Mike Mazurki, who gets his equally raffish pals to invest in the hospital. And towards the end, the nuns even play a little professional tennis to raise money. Careful not to overwhelm the viewer with sentiment and religiosity, Come to the Stable (based on a story by Clare Booth Luce) is ideal holiday film fare. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Loretta Young, Celeste Holm, (more)
