vincentlynch-moonoi Yes, after getting off to a rather poor start, this film grows on you. Or at least it grew on me. The beginning, setting the stage, seemed so very cliché, but as the film progresses we see that most of the characters have a fairly interesting story to tell us.The real treasure here is Hope Lange, whom I remember enjoying in movies and on television quite a bit before she faded in my memory. She's excellent here, an probably the highlight of the film. As the main character, she matures in her character's role from naive secretary to executive...and makes it believable.On the other hand, Stephen Boyd, whom she eventually appears to fall in love with, does little more than stand around in a few scenes. And in those few scenes he was pretty ineffectual. Surprisingly, he was stunning in his very next film -- "Ben-Hur"! I also wan't very impressed with Suzy Parker as a secretary. Her role is significant, but somehow she just didn't have star quality...other than her looks.I would like to have seen more of Martha Hyer, a very underrated actress. Her part is not that significant here.Diane Baker was quite good as another of the secretaries, and significant parts of the film revolve around her affair and later romance.Brian Aherne is around as an older editor who can't keep his hands off the young secretaries. He's okay, but I was not impressed.Louis Jourdan is here as a Broadway director, and although his role is not large, it is significant, and he handles it well.And then we have Joan Crawford. Her present-day image as a witch (or something that rhymes with that)...well, this role helped cement that image. But, her role is my biggest criticism of the film. Almost seems like they sat around saying, "Hey, we need a witch to counteract with a couple of the characters. Maybe we could get that over-the-hill actress Joan Crawford." It almost becomes camp. This was Crawford's last film before she fell into horror pictures.The acting runs from hot to cold in this film (as described above), and Crawford is little more than a distraction. But there's a lot to like here, as well. It really does have quite a good story line, however, and as previously mentioned, Hope Lange is superb.

tex-42 The Best of Everything is a fun, if slightly campy time capsule in which to view the working women of 1959. The storyline follows three women working for a publishing company, and their desire to find love and get married. The leader of this troika is Caroline Bender (Lange), who has landed work as a typist and then finds her fiancée has dumped her for another girl. She works with Gregg Adams (Parker), a beautiful aspiring actress who is deeply insecure and April Morrison (Baker), the naive bumpkin from Colorado. Each woman faces a different challenge during the film. Morrison hooks up with a well to do guy named Dexter, but finds what a sleaze he is when she gets pregnant. Gregg falls in love with a stage director, who returns her affections for a time, but then dumps her, leading to Gregg suffering what can only be described as a psychotic break. Also along for the ride is Amanda Farrow, an editor at the publishing house who has a "take no prisoners" style, a lecherous editor named Mr. Shalimar and the office drunk, Mike Rice.The absolute best things about this movie are the costumes and set design, along with the gorgeous scenes filmed in late 1950s Manhattan. The story itself is highly melodramatic and each of the girls seems to lose touch with reality at some point during their respective story lines, whether it be Caroline's ridiculously fast job promotions, Gregg's misadventure by high heel, or April inadvertently using a moving car as a way to land herself a new boyfriend. Joan Crawford is a supporting player here, but she makes one heck of an impression with the limited screen time she gets.This is definitely a good movie. Obviously, the element that these women only think they can find fulfillment by being married to a man is a dated concept, along with the boss who can't stop pinching his female employees, but the performances of nearly all the actors really do shine. And I cannot really overstate just how beautiful the sets and costumes are here. It's an experience not to be missed!

evanston_dad With the decade quickly drawing to a close, director Jean Negulesco realized that subsequent generations would likely revere "Peyton Place" as the ultimate example of 1950s camp, so he hustled this cornball movie out and ended up giving "Peyton Place" quite a run for its money.Actually, "The Best of Everything" is moderately more enjoyable than the other film, if only because it doesn't take itself quite so seriously. A group of young women working in a secretarial pool fight, scheme, fall in love, get jilted, kill themselves and put themselves through all other sorts of histrionics in this hysterical film. I wish my work place was even half as intriguing as the one here. Joan Crawford presides over all with an air of icy menace, her eyebrows arched to the high heavens, sending her latest assistant on impossible errands just for the hell of it. Meanwhile, the syrupy title song warbles on and on in that grating way that only film title songs from the 1950s can warble.Crawford, as usual, brings some dignity to the material and, also as usual, almost makes you care about a movie you know you wouldn't otherwise give a damn about. There are men in the movie -- salacious bosses, preening celebrities, square-jawed hotshots -- but frankly, all of them run together. Though now that I think of it, so do the women, except for Crawford, that tireless workhorse who pulled more than her fair share of stinkers out of the gutter.Grade: C+

jaxla This working girls go to hell soap is a time capsule candidate, courtesy of its immaculate physical production, 50s costuming (look at all those bows and pearls), creamy Johnny Mathis theme song and oh-so daring (for its time) sexual attitudes. Rona Jaffe's novel, on which the film was based, keeps on being republished, and just a few years ago Vanity Fair actually devoted an article to this delectable bon bon of a movie. Take a look at the new DVD transfer and you'll know why.The three leads - Hope Lange, Diane Baker and Suzy Parker - echo the girls from "How to Marry A Millonaire" or Carrie Bradshaw and her friends from "Sex and the City." "Gentlewomen songsters off on a spree..." Their romantic adventures and sexual entanglements are the stuff of paperback passion: empty caramel corn calories, devoid of nutrition, impossible to resist snacking on. Lange is genuinely touching in her neo-Grace Kelly way, Baker is properly dim and idealistic as a timid virgin who gets (gasp) knocked up by a (hiss) cad. It helps that the cad is played by Robert Evans, the throaty voiced, coke snorting film mogul who surely has lead many an innocent young lamb to the slaughter in his Beverly Hills bedroom.Suzy Parker is fascinating in the first half of the film, all blithe self assurance and knowing remarks. She struts her stuff with the panache of the fashion icon she was in the 50s. Alas, she's not up to where the film sends her: into madness and obsession. But she exudes glamour and savior faire and her acting is at least adequate. One wonders why the critics loathed her, virtually driving her out of movies a few years later. Perhaps an aloof attitude on the part of a good looking woman is just too much to bear. It sank Ali McGraw's career a generation later, and, when you think of it, Ali McGraw and Suzy Parker were basically the same actress.The film's only major flaw is a weak ending. It pretty much collapses into a romantic swoon at the end, rather than rising to a wham bang melodramatic finish, like the other famous soap opera from producer Jerry Wald, "Peyton Place," which had Lana Turner weeping and gnashing her teeth during a rape trial. Here, Hope Lange wanders out onto the New York sidewalk, spots burly, eternally hung over (but now, of course, sober) Stephen Boyd and they simply walk off together...into the sunset, one presumes. Otherwise, this is pretty much the definition of a guilty pleasure.Oh Yes...there's also Joan Crawford, breathing fire at all the young girls and smoking cigarettes while she hisses to her married lover over the phone. And the titles are done in hot pink, with ribbon lettering that recalls the department store ads of the late 50s. Don't miss!