Quando le signore si incontrano

We meet the very successful novelist Mary Howard (Joan Crawford) at a party for the launch of her new book. The party is hosted by her good friend, the much older, wealthy dingbat "Bridgie" Drake in her lovely apartment in New York City. Mary's long-time boyfriend is there too. Jimmy Lee (Robert Taylor) is a journalist and he proposes to Mary there at the party but she blows him off. It becomes clear that her romantic interests have shifted to her publisher, the much older, much less fun (and less attractive) Rogers Woodruf (Herbert Marshall).

There's just one problem ... he's married to Claire (Greer Garson).

Mary's follow-up project is a book called "Gods of Destiny." It's about a woman who falls in love with a married man; and Mary is struggling with the ending. She's desperately trying to make "The Other Woman" into some noble heroine, and she can't get it quite right. Bridgie invites her up to her country estate for the weekend to work on the ending and Mary gets her to invite Rogers as well.

Jimmy gets wind of this; and arranges a way to "drop in" on Bridgie with Claire that weekend after he's found a sneaky way to get Rogers out of the house for a bit.

So, what happens when the ladies meet?

Well, the moment Mary sees Claire across the room she spits her gum out, shakes her shoes off, and hands her earrings to Bridgie - "Hold my gold!" She snatches Claire by the hair and dogwalks her out to the patio where she holds a bottle of champagne by the neck and breaks it over Claire's head, but before she can do any damage to her face Claire pulls a switchblade out of her sock and .....

Wait a minute. No. That's not quite right. Hold on.

It's actually quite civilized. They talk about the situation and about the concept of Love and blah blah blah, and I'm sure you can guess how it all plays out.

Joan is alright here, and Greer is wonderful, but I found the dingbat Bridgie (Spring Byington) and her younger witless and gay gold-digging boyfriend the most entertaining.

Sure, I'd recommend it!

Very seldom is the remake of a film better than the original, but this film is pleasantly one of the few exceptions. First of all, it is unknown to this reviewer why this film was remade so soon. Generally, film remakes are done after a generation of time has passed (20 years), but this film was remade just 8 years after the original in 1933. In addition, the original film cast was led by a cadre of Hall of Fame performers in their own right - Myrna Loy, Alice Brady, Frank Morgan, Ann Harding, and Robert Montgomery. You'd figure with a cast this good, how is any remake going to improve on those performances? Logical question. Yet, remarkably the five leads in this remake, pound for pound, improve on each of the original performances.

Simple story, but some of the acting is marvelous, especially Greer Garson, who literally steals the movie. It was almost embarrassing to watch Joan Crawford try to act next to her. The difference of talent between the two women is unmistakable---Garson is leagues ahead.

Robert Taylor was also excellent, playing the mischievous suitor, comically bent on winning Joan Crawford's Mary Howard. I had previously only seen him melodrama, so watching him play a comedic role was very refreshing.

The story is a bit slow, but it picks up when Crawford and Garson meet towards the end of the picture. The dialog there is smart and thought provoking, and the talent of Garson really shines through.

Not a great movie, but worth a rental to catch some good acting from two of the studio era's greatest stars.

"When Ladies Meet" is the story of a married couple, a lady author and a charming single journalist. Joan Crawford, the author, considers herself a "modern woman" freed from tiresome conventions and moral imperatives. Despite the movie's 1941 date, the author's relativistic attitude toward marriage and fidelity would be right at home in today's left-wing intellectual circles. Her gradual evolution towards a different attitude is the meat of the movie. Mirroring the situation in her book is the situation of the married couple, Greer Garson and Herbert Marshall. The fourth member of the group is Robert Taylor as a journalist whose surface gaiety hides a serious moral foundation.

The four actors make the movie much better than the script. Garson and Crawford strike sparks off each other in every scene they share. Herbert Marshall is suitably smooth and sleazy. But it's Robert Taylor in a role involving physical comedy whose work is the most impressive. As it turns out, he is the person most grounded in reality--and the hidden hand behind everything.

Everything has the expected MGM gloss--extravagant costumes, beautiful sets, excellent photography. Highly recommended.

Two MGM divas get to have at one another in a most civilized, clipped-consonant fashion in this remake of a livelier 1933 comedy-drama, adapted from a hit Rachel Crothers play. Joan Crawford is a best-selling authoress on the brink of an affair with her publisher, Herbert Marshall, who is married to Greer Garson; meantime, Robert Taylor pines, rather inexplicably, after Crawford. I'm sure Joan was an intelligent woman, but playing a New York smart-set intellectual (with a downtown apartment whose garden is the size of a city block), she's unable to project intelligence; you simply can't believe this clothes horse could come up with the smart one-liners Anita Loos puts into her mouth, or that she could pen anything more complex than "The Little Engine That Could." You sense that MGM is building up Greer as it tears down Joan; it's a much more sympathetic part, and though Greer doesn't enter the film till nearly the second half, she dominates it from there on. I find Greer's charms calculated and her acting style obvious, but she has the audience on her side and is more interesting to watch than the ever key-light-seeking Crawford. Why either should pine after the doughy, monotonous Marshall is never clear, and the fadeout is so plainly headed toward a conventional-morality-circa-1941 ending that the drama never runs very high. (For all that, it's resolved quickly and capriciously, and unconvincingly.) But Robert Taylor, at least, is relaxed and unaffected (especially compared to this diphthong-happy trio), and Spring Byington expertly indulges in a ditsy-rich-lady characterization you'd more likely expect from Billie Burke or Alice Brady (who, in fact, played the role in the 1933 version). The real star is the set designer -- I don't know about you, but I want that weekend house of Byington's, with its water wheel and clear lake and Better Homes and Gardens design.