The Best of Everything (1959)

I watched the first few moments on TCM a few years ago but stopped after about 15 minutes. I saw it listed on the schedule at the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto, and I vowed I would make the 40 minute drive. The Stanford is an old fashioned movie house that starts each movie with the curtains still shut Yes, they have curtains. They opened as the Fox logo fanfare began to play. When "The Best of Everything" appeared in huge pink letters spread against the New York City skyline, I knew I was right for waiting.I lapped this movie up. There were so many little moments that added to the look and feel of the movie: When Hope Lange walks into the publishing office for the first time, the titles of the magazines published there are etched on the glass (The Teenager and Elegance); Joan Crawford's swanky apron that she wore so she could serve her guests at her party without mussing her outfit; the way the camera tilted to indicate how crazy Suzy Parker was becoming (it was almost sideways at one point); how Hope Lange kept living at that dumpy flat she shared with the others even though she obviously was making a lot more money than at the beginning of the film (guess it was too scandalous for a single gal to live alone).Hope Lange was so beautiful; so was Suzy Parker. And how about Mark Goddard in a non-speaking role. I fell in love with him when I was a kid watching Lost in Space.Seeing this gem on the big screen prompted me to plan another trek down to the Stanford to see The Old Dark House. Incidentally, I bought a small soda and popcorn at the concession stand, and I was taken aback when the worker asked me for two bucks.

With the decade quickly drawing to a close, director Jean Negulesco realized that subsequent generations would likely revere "Peyton Place" as the ultimate example of 1950s camp, so he hustled this cornball movie out and ended up giving "Peyton Place" quite a run for its money.Actually, "The Best of Everything" is moderately more enjoyable than the other film, if only because it doesn't take itself quite so seriously. A group of young women working in a secretarial pool fight, scheme, fall in love, get jilted, kill themselves and put themselves through all other sorts of histrionics in this hysterical film. I wish my work place was even half as intriguing as the one here. Joan Crawford presides over all with an air of icy menace, her eyebrows arched to the high heavens, sending her latest assistant on impossible errands just for the hell of it. Meanwhile, the syrupy title song warbles on and on in that grating way that only film title songs from the 1950s can warble.Crawford, as usual, brings some dignity to the material and, also as usual, almost makes you care about a movie you know you wouldn't otherwise give a damn about. There are men in the movie -- salacious bosses, preening celebrities, square-jawed hotshots -- but frankly, all of them run together. Though now that I think of it, so do the women, except for Crawford, that tireless workhorse who pulled more than her fair share of stinkers out of the gutter.Grade: C+

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.

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!