CATCH A CLASSIC
Gossip Girls
TCM, beginning at 7 p.m.
Tonight’s double feature highlights two
of the three film versions of Clare Boothe Luce’s 1936 play The Women, a comedy of manners offering biting commentary on the lives of various wealthy women and
with an all-female cast. The first and most famous movie version of the play came just a few years later, in 1939, with The Women
(pictured). While the comedy/drama was directed by a man, George Cukor, its screenplay adaptation was written by two women, Anita Loos and Jane Murfin, and, as with the play, the entire cast (featuring more than 130 speaking roles) was female. Among that cast are plenty of legendary names, including Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Joan
Fontaine, Marjorie Main, Ruth Hussey,
Hedda Hopper and more. Even the dog featured in one scene was female and
was portrayed by Terry, the Cairn terrier who became more famous as Toto in that year’s The Wizard of Oz. Tonight’s second adaptation of The Women is The Opposite
a Golden Globe-nominated romantic musical comedy that serves as a remake of the 1939 movie. Unlike the earlier film, this one does include some men in its cast. The story follows a nightclub singer (June Allyson) who is the last to find out among her circle of gossiping girlfriends that her husband (Leslie Nielsen) is having an affair with a showgirl (Joan Collins). Dolores Gray, Ann Sheridan, Ann Miller, Agnes Moorehead and Joan Blondell also star. —