1959’s THE BEST OF EVERYTHING

I saw this year's ago. I remember wishing it was better, in the Douglas Sirk mode. Didn't three of the share an apt? Three twin beds in one room? They used to do that in the 40s and 50s movies. I wonder if it was common in real life.

One of my favorite movies. The ending is much misinterpreted by people who haven't read the novel.

Caroline (Lange) has learned from Amanda (Crawford) that love and success don't mix. So Caroline resigns herself to a casual, sex relationship with her fun, alcoholic co-worker (Boyd).

R1 in NY it was common. Liz Smith said that her first Manhattan apartment were one-room deals shared with two other girls. They drew straws to see who got the couch and the other two shared the double bed.

Now you and your rabbit-faced wife can both go to hell!

Suzy Parker, the Revlon Fire and Ice Girl, was in the movie, OP.

I loved it for what it was. It was a vivid time capsule. It was made in those few brief years when it was just presented in color. It was presented in COLOR!!!!!!!.

Ach! You’re right, R5! Shit, I’ll have to stay late typing for that cunt again.

I sing along to the title tune by Johnny Mathis and cry.

Suzy Parker was so cool. She seemed 1970 in this 1959 movie.

Suzy and Robert Evans were beautiful in this! You should all read the book, too.

This was Joan Crawford's last 'normal' movie. In the 1960's she went on to do Baby Jane and a slew of bizarre movies.

^^^ Joan is doing her concerned phone pose LOL

Stephen Boyd was so fine, but I couldn’t understand a word that he was saying. Hot mush mouth.

I love this movie!

Fun trivia from the DVD commentary: The Seagram Building was used for Fabian Publishing and the coffee shop in the movie was actually the legendary Four Seasons restaurant, located in that building.

In the book, Gregg's boyfriend, the playwright was gay....she found letters from his boyfriend in his sock drawer....

Was Stephen Boyd gay? A number of Facebook entries imply such.

DEPRESSING! Watch How To Marry A Millionaire instead.

Did you know that this is one of Amazon's all time best selling DVDS?

Suzy Parker was gorgeous. I read an article in Vanity Fair a few years back about her career and marriage to Bradford Dillman. She was very down to earth and didn't give a fuck about her career.

Suzy was probably the first supermodel . I always add her when the yearly most beautiful women thread comes up.

I've always loved this movie which I actually saw in its original run when I was a kid with my older cousins. It's such a fabulous time capsule of an idealized New York City in 1959.

I eagerly bought a new edition of the paperback a few years ago. Let me tell you, the book is nowhere near as fun as the movie.

Wasn't this film a sort of comeback for Joan Crawford after Alfred Steele's death? It was the first time in decades that she didn't play the female lead and get top billing.

Apparently, she was extremely nervous on the set but comforted by young Diane Baker who Joan repaid a few years later with a costarring role in Straitjacket.

There's one scene where Hope Lange and Diane Baker are walking down Christopher Street in Grenwich Village - and you can see the Stonewall Bar sign. (At the time it was a well respected steak house. )

When this scene appeared at the Castro (SF) Theatre, the queens went nuts.

Hope Lange went on to become one of the great MILFs of '60s and '70s TV.

And Laura Dern's mom in Blue Velvet!

I thought Joan's comeback (return) might have been that movie with Judy Garland, the one about FAS kids.

Hope Lange was gorgeous too. Here's a still form the celebrities home movies thread from a while ago. Everyone was all glammed up at a pool party except Hope. In the home movie she's much prettier than the still might lead you to believe. she's completely natural next to other people overly made up for a pool party and it makes her seem like something really special.

Hope Lange was married to hot Don Murray and they remained extremely close after they divorced and both remarried. They even appeared in a few plays together. I always think that says alot about people.

[quote] Hope Lange was married to hot Don Murray and they remained extremely close after they divorced and both remarried. They even appeared in a few plays together. I always think that says alot about people.

I'm not sure if I admire you.

SID NO!

I told Sid not to get into that fucking Tercel.

R30 Don Murray.

Hope Lange was the poor man's Grace Kelly. Or was that Eva Marie Saint?

I loved Don Murray in "Happy Birthday Wanda June"

I love the setting, the clothes (men and women), everything.

I always say I was born in the wrong time.

Stephen Boyd was not just so masculine and incredibly handsome; he was also sexy as hell. I remember watching Fantastic Voyage as a kid and I couldn't take my eyes off him, whereas my brothers couldn't take their eyes off Racquel Welch. I knew then for sure that I was different.

I don't remember seeing Boyd in anything other than Ben-Hur, which probably led to the gay rumors, and The Best of Everything.

Fun stuff, when he and Hope played drunk.

r37...i SO agree with you....i feel so out of place here....we are definitely in the wrong era/decade. Great movie!

i wanted to post this link.....its wonderful. LOTS of the real Vintage fashion/models.....lots of Suzy P.

it's a nice blog.

R19 Stephen Boyd was impossibly gorgeous back then; it's a tragedy that his face started crumpling up ten years later.

All these rumors about his private life are just RUMORS. But I am hoping someone eventually will come up with something credible about how the handsome eldergay Michael Redgrave picked him up in a Soho bar.

Suzy Parker's sister was the equally famous and lovely model Dorian Leigh.

I don't know. I totally believe Raquel Welch's story about Stephen Boyd not wanting to fuck her which would certainly prove he was gay. He does come off a bit airy-fairy in hindsight in filmed interviews and his What's My Line? appearance. Though maybe that was just his light Irish brogue.

Did his face eventually crumple, r42? I thought his premature death saved him from that fate.

I”m not sure about crumpled, but he aged. Like we all do. This is probably 15 years after of The best of Everything.

This is a fun movie, with the exception of mega-nostriled Suzy Parker, who sucks the oxygen out of every scene she's in. She's the weak link in this, that's for fucking sure.

R45 He looks like death in that picture. I can only imagine cancer was eating him up from inside because he only appeared in trash from 1968.

This is the movie that showed me Diane Baker wasn't actually a boring actress, and reinforced my belief that Hope Lange WAS. (Most of the story's about her, unfortunately.) Suzy Parker is beyond gorgeous, and can't muster much enthusiasm for the proceedings. If she had, she's have had a bigger career.

Kind-of-sleazy producer Robert Evans plays the kind-of-sleazy playboy who wants one of our gals to get an abortion...

...and why butchy La Crawford never played a lez, I'll never know...

Wait - - she's staring at Suzy Parker's tits (??)

If you like The Best of Everything, chances are you'll also like The Group.

Also, you might like "Where The Boys Are"

Doesn’t one of the girls in THE GROUP meet her end in a similar manner to poor Gregg in TBOE? Gregg?!?!?

Women as beautiful as Suzy Parker often have trouble finding a spark for anything. Doesn't matter if it's in front of the camera or in real life. They've just never had to struggle or really do much of anything that creates a lot depth in a person. It's not really their fault it's just the way it is.

Parker may have been a lousy actress but she is so gorgeous you can't keep your eyes off her. She steals ever scene she's in.

Parker on modeling: "I never starved myself either. I remember all the models eating raw hamburgers and living on codeine to keep up their energy. You never met a skinnier, meaner bunch of people."

What's the phallic-looking building in the last shot of the movie?

It's at the end of the street as Mike and Caroline go off to find a bar...

I saw Diane Baker in TBOE, as well as The Diary of Anne Frank and Journey to the Center of the Earth, all IIRC in 1959. It was banner year for her and for me.

TBOE is in the great Hollywood tradition of "The Adventures of 3 Girls" that began in the Silents with titles like Sally, Irene and Mary and into the 1930s with Three on a Match.

Stephen Boyd looking handsome and gay.

I wasn't a drunken junkie yet

Yeah, but you still had no chin.

To get an idea of how good Diane Baker is, watch her in TBOE then watch her as the conniving Lol Mainwaring in Marnie.

Lil not Lol

Damn autocorrect.

r5 It was Suzy's sister, Dorian Leigh, who was Revlon's "Fire and Ice Girl"

Some great posts from DL's "The Official Suzy Parker" thread

Are there any eldergays here who can confirm that life in a NY typing pool was really like that back in 1959?

Suzy Parker fell off a fire escape in BOE and Joanna Petit fell out of a window in The Group which is worth seeing just for Candy Bergin's uptight lesbo, Lakey. And, I'm not sure what typing pools were like back in 1959 but I was in one in the 70's and, sadly, it's very accurate.

I always have had an irrational fear of stiletto heels since I was a gayling. It came from watching Suzy Parker get her heel trapped in the fire escape in The Best of Everything.

Seriously one of my favorite bits of dialog from a movie. It's funny in writing but to see Joan giving it is a true lesson in movie shade.

Amanda Farrow: When you finish the slush files, then you may go. But I want my comments on each. Caroline Bender: Typed? Amanda Farrow: No Miss Bender. Beat it out on a native drum.

Amanda was supposed to be a minor character. By the end, as only Joan can do, she was the star of the fucking thing.

Starting now on the MOVIES network!

Just bought the dvd 2 days ago on Amazon and watched it. Caroline Bender!!! Brett Halsey was so beautiful and he played Ted Carter in the Peyton Place follow up Return To Peyton Place with Tuesday Weld playing the Hope Lange role of Selena Cross.

Don't forget how hot Louis Jourdan was in the movie. He was almost as pretty as Suzy.

I loved Hope Lange.

Wasn’t the whole gay rumour thing about Boyd based op on a lot of wishful thinking - and the story about how - when in Ben her - the director instructed him to play his scenes with Heston as if he and Heston had been lovers when young - but under no circumstances tell Heston that as he’d have freaked outI think it was cited in the celluloid closet or something?

Anyway - when you watch those scenes they have together - you know that’s e a toy how Boyd played them!

Later on tho - too much booze, sun, tobacco..l so many Hollywood stars hit the wall once they hit their forties back then...

To the poster(s) who have read the book...

Please enlighten me.

What was the story / plot line of the character played by Martha Hyer?

I understand that a large part of her role was cut from the film. I've always wondered what that plotline was.

It’s been a while since I read it. She was Barbara the divorcee, right? She had a young child and was working her way up the company ladder while fending off the advances of lecherous old guys. She hooked up with a big (married?) advertiser who helped her career. I think she wound up getting married. I’ll have to find my copy and double-check.

R78

[quote] She was Barbara the divorcee, right?

Barbara Lamont was her name, per imdb.

On Hope Lange's first day, she is told that Hyer's character had had a "quickie" college marriage and was divorced with a small child and lived with her mother. It seemed to me that the subtle implication that she really was an unwed mother. Sounds like she really was a divorcee, after all.

Any information you can find, R78 would be appreciated. I've always wondered about her character.

So r37 and r40, you'd rather live in an era when everyone save heterosexual white men was a second class citizen and when gay men were bashed, entrapped, arrested and their lives ruined on a daily basis?

Suzy Oarket had timeless hair. Always, wavy enough, bouncy, and full bodied without any need for stiff setting or spraying. You could put her 1950's face in any magazine in the 70's 80's 90's and beyond. The only decade she may have looked "dated" in, would have been the sixties, only because hair and clothes were so outrageously inorganic and plastic then (and of course fabulous) that - at least until '68 - no natural look survived.

Oarket >> Parker

If you want out of this typing pool you’ll have to go through me!!!

There was a fun “Vanity Fairl article a few years ago about the film. And the DVD has interesting commentary by Rona Jaffe.

D’oh — “Vanity Fair” article!

Here's to men. Bless their clean-cut faces and dirty little minds!

Rona Jaffe was a one hit wonder.

Jacqueline Susann told Rona Jaffe that BOE was a big influence on another DL classic, Valley of the Dolls.

Thanks very much for the link to that site, R41 -- excellent pictures!

"All those young bitches did all right," Crawford said, "but for some reason or other I'm proud to say I sort of walked off with the film. Perhaps it was the part--I had all the balls--but I think it was a matter of experience, knowing how to make the most of every scene I had."

R79, the book may be available at your local library, or at least through the LINK PLUS inter-library borrowing service if your library subscribes to that. If not, lots of used copies are for sale through Amazon for less than $6.

It was Suzy Parker not Suzy Kendall OP.

R92 see R5.

r93 see r66

r56 this can't be a true quote of parkers if she actually thought.... living on codeine to keep up their energy...... please......codeine will knock you on your ASS. i've had freakin' out of body experiences drinking codeine cough syrup for dogs sake.... she didn't know her ass from a hot rock if she thought it was an upper.

phenergan.w/ codeine. The good stuff back in the decade my doc would write me scripts for it in pint bottles. Dog, I miss the Cough Syrup days.....

[quote]Suzy [Parker] had timeless hair.

Suzy Parker had timeless EVERYTHING : )

1959’s BAE

I had only murder one person

r90: I can't quite see Crawford saying 'bitches' to someone in public. She would have been far more condescending and dismissive, saying something like "starlets" or "hopefuls". But man, she was she right.

R95 I suspect Parker meant Dexedrine, not codeine.

I never understood the girl who would come around and ask for coffee order, and she asked if they wanted it in a cup or a jar. She would then deliver the coffee in little Mason jars with a lid. Who wants to drink coffee out of a Mason jar?

And I could never get over Hope Lange ordering a hamburger with a glass of milk.

Crawford was right. She walked away with the movie. The whole thing was great but Amanda was the standout.

[quote]"...for some reason or other I'm proud to say I sort of walked off with the film...knowing how to make the most of every scene I had."

She's so modest...

Wasn't this also an ABC soap in the late 60's, starring DL sensation Kathy Glass?

LOL it was.

[quote] DL sensation Kathy Glass?

Any relation?

r100......well, who ever said models were smart?

[quote] And I could never get over Hope Lange ordering a hamburger with a glass of milk.

Yes, like hammering it home that she wasn't Jewish.

The two words on every audience members lips: Amanda Farrow.

The three words on every audience members lips: "Rabbit-faced wife".

The ten words on the lips of the viewing public: "I hope they cast Kathy Glass in the TV version".

I'm surprised the TV series wasn't more popular...given Kathy Glass' extraordinarily high Q score.

Kathy was fabulous as Allison MacKenzie in Return to Peyton Place.

Ben HER??

Joan even steals the trailer

I remember when Kathy Glass was replaced by Pamela Shoop on Return to Peyton Place. It was towards the end of Allison's murder trial and really bad timing. I loved Kathy Glass as Allison.

The film would have been much better had they cast Kathy Glass as Gregg, Suzy Parker was beautiful...but limited. Kathy was beautiful AND she had that certain je ne sais quoi that can only be articulated through a Q score.

I'd kill for some footage of Our Miss Kathy in either Peyton Place or The Best of Everything.

I just finished watching Come Fly With Me. It's another in the three girls mode. If you liked The Best of Everything you'll love this. I found Come Fly With Me even more enjoyable. Again lovingly filmed IN COLOR! The TV show Pan Am should have been more like this.

[quote]I just finished watching Come Fly With Me. It's another in the three girls mode.

If you like that, another one you might check out is "Boeing Boeing." Tony Curtis has three separate stewardess girlfriends which he juggles. And the great Thelma Ritter plays his housekeeper, having to change girlfriend pictures in his apartment and makes appropriate snide comments about his arrangement.

Dolores Hart from Come Fly With Me was supposed to be the next Grace Kelly. Until she ran off to the convent.

[quote]I remember when Kathy Glass was replaced by Pamela Shoop on Return to Peyton Place.

They had to refilm a fight scene for a flashback in that oddly 70s look: a short-sleeved sweater over a long-sleeved button-up Oxford type shirt.

[quote]The film would have been much better had they cast Kathy Glass as Gregg,

Katherine Glass would have been 11 when the movie was filmed.

Loving Come Fly With Me. Instead of Joan to add respectability they have Karl Malden. Instead of Stephen Boyd there is a near look alike in Hugh O'Brian. Hugh is just a tad hotter. Maybe it's a tad sexier? Anyway Stephen and Hugh are near duplicates.

OP, are you aware that adult women are not called "girls"?

They were in 1959. So shut up cunt.

Didn’t care for “Three Coins in the Fountain “ in the 3 gal pals movie theme. It didn’t follow the song at all.

[quote]I love the setting, the clothes (men and women), everything. I always say I was born in the wrong time.

Right. 1959 - great time to be gay

1959- great time to buy a car with FINS.

Why wasn't Hope Lange a bigger star? She's was excellent in Best of Everything and Peyton Place, and then her career stalled. I don't understand it.

She was the poor man's Eva Marie Saint, who was the poor man's Grace Kelly.

R104 Surprisingly the daytime soap only lasted six months but included such stars as Geraldine Fitzgerald, Patty McCormack, Susan Sullivan, and Oscar winner Gale Sondergaard in the Crawford role.

The film has some good actors/actresses (and one great actress, Joan Crawford) plus that gorgeous, Deluxe-color look of the 50s, but it's so watered down, compared to the book.

The end of the book (like the end of Valley of The Dolls) is rather downbeat IIRC. In Dolls, Anne's starting her descent into full-blown pill addiction, and at the end of Everything, Caroline's packing for a one-nighter with some asshole comedian.

In the book, Barbara's plain, but sweet, with straight brown hair parted in the middle (her young daughter looks just like her); she looks nothing like Martha Hyer. Also, the April of the book is a gorgeous, but rather dim blonde, not a mousy brunette, as portrayed in the film. Gregg in the book is the most interesting character, a semi-successful young actress with straight blonde hair who's always cast as teenagers in commercials "Gee mom, this tastes like MORE!" Her mental deterioration is genuinely disturbing. When Caroline and April discover the pillowcase full of David Savage's garbage (Gregg's been saving it, so she can go through it and discover more about the woman who's supplanted her in David's affections) they start laughing out of sheer shock, then they realize she's completely lost her mind.