The women (urspr publ 1936; utgåvan 1937)

The play The Women by Clare Booth Luce is a drama which examines marriage and it's impact on a small group of wealthy socialites in the 1960's. The first scene presents a revelation that sets a domino effect of events that is basically comprised by affairs, gossip and divorce. It paints a pretty grim and hopefully inaccurate picture of women and their "friendships."

This isn't a timeless drama...thankfully. It wasn't all that entertaining or realistic either. Luce's views on men and marriage may have been shocking and groudbreaking at the time, but in 2009 it reads as cliched and uninspired. ( )

Mrs. Luce's second play, a three-act bitchfest that ran for 657 performances on Broadway and was subsequently adapted into a somewhat Production Code-sanitized but still plenty snappy MGM film by screenwriters Anita Loos and Jane Murfin (with an uncredited contribution by F. Scott Fitzgerald!) and director George Cukor, and, much later, became the basis of a pointless Meg Ryan/Annette Bening vehicle. Although it was a hit, the play was not well-reviewed, and in her Foreword to this published text, the author presents an amusing but pointed rebuttal to critics, in the course of which she presents 'a partial list of the descriptive nouns and adjectives applied by the Gentlemen of the Press to the Ladies of the Ensemble.' 78 examples are presented (among them 'odious harpies,' 'zoological freaks,' 'a smelly lot' and 'adder-fanged'), and at the end of the list she drolly notes that these are 'in the aggregate much harsher language than the dialogue [of the play itself].' ( )