The Best of Everything

I sometimes do book "double features" - that's when I read two similar books right in a row. The Group and The Best of Everything = a book double feature that I've done in the past (another example - The Secret History and The Likeness).

Both books are filled with female characters that you sometimes want to throttle - but that's just because they're products of their age. Both books are relatively lengthy and both books didn't really translate well into film form. A recommendation - read The Group or The Best of Everything instead of watching the movie versions. You'll be better off. 

But this post is about the movie version of The Best of Everything (1959).

In my last movie post on Where the Boys Are, I talked about how one of the characters (Melanie) served as a sort of cautionary tale. Almost EVERY character in The Best of Everything serves as a cautionary tale. 

The story focuses on a bunch of secretaries that work at a publishing company - both their work lives and their romantic pursuits. I'll summarize it for you - there's one girl who succeeds at work but sort of fails at love; one girl who quits work and gets engaged; and one girl who fails at work and love (and dies!). Plus - Joan Crawford as the cautionary tale of the cautionary tale - a woman that succeeded and became an editor, but is doomed to forever be a mistress to a married man (one with some non-working wife, no doubt).

Obviously the female editor's door is painted pink.

That's Gregg (aka - the one who dies while spying on her ex-boyfriend).

Hey, Joan. Nice brows.

Ah the "perks" of the workplace - being groped by senior editors. Vom.

The ladies inside their glamourous apartment.

This is right before she finds out that the guy she thought was her boyfriend is engaged to someone else. Harsh. Rough.

As you can tell she went out and got drunk after that call.

Gregg's boyfriend (the one she later ends up stalking) had a crazy apartment.

I've never seen anyone play the ol' roll-an-apple-with-your-forehead game. Have you? Am I missing out on some classic American past time? Something better than a potato sack race? Or bobbing for apples?

Of course I'm obsessed with this red dress. Red dresses forever.

Want to look at another movie post? Go HERE!