Trivia and Quotes
Quotes
Edith Potter: [Wiping her hands on towel] Oh, cheap Chinese embroidery, you know I`ll bet Peggy gave her these...
Sylvia Fowler: It wouldn`t be so bad if only Mary`s friends knew we could keep our mouths shut.
Edith Potter: I know plenty, I`d never breathe about my friend`s husbands.
Sylvia Fowler: Oh so do I!
[They both turn around and look at each other]
Edith Potter: Well you know I adore Mary!
Sylvia Fowler: I worship her, were not only cousins, She`s my dearest friend in the world, after all we WERE raised together!
[Turns around quickly]
Sylvia Fowler: Oh Edith I forgot to tell you...
[Whispers to Edith]
Mary Haines: Break it up girls! Break it up!
Edith Potter: Darling!
Mary Haines: Hello!
Edith Potter: You`re so slim I could kill you.
Mary Haines: You don`t have to, the diet I`m on is pure poison.
Jane: [Opens the door for Edith] How do you do Mrs. Potter?
Edith Potter: Hello Jane.
Jane: And how are you feeling today?
Edith Potter: Too awful, I wouldn`t wish my woes on my worst friend.
[Looks around the corner]
Edith Potter: Oh Jane, will you tell Mrs. Fowler that I`d like to speak to her out here for just a moment.
Jane: Yes, Mrs. Potter.
Nancy Blake: [Comes around the corner and surprises Edith] How`s the little mother?
Edith Potter: [shouts out to Jane] Jane! Never mind about that...
[to Nancy]
Edith Potter: Hello dear...
Nancy Blake: Spiders in the parlor. Lets go join her.
Crystal Allen: [In tub] Holy mackerel!
[Sarcastically]
Crystal Allen: What a cheerful evening! Oh, I`m so bored!
[Throws sponge and almost hits maid]
Stephen`s maid: [Surprised] Monsieur says that it doesn`t improve madame`s nerves to stay so long in ze water.
Crystal Allen: What`d he mean by that? A crack?
Stephen`s maid: Oh... No he did not say is zat way madame.
Crystal Allen: [Smirks] I thought not... I`ve been Mrs. Stephen Haines for 18 months now without a single squawk.
[laughs softly]
Crystal Allen: That`s some sort of a record for Park Avenue!
[phone rings - says to maid]
Crystal Allen: Get out.
[Loudly and impatiently]
Crystal Allen: Get OUT! Go on! Go on!
Sylvia Fowler: [At the place Crystal Allen works] Well, here we are... Creeping up on her!
Edith Potter: Darling do you think we ought to do this?
Sylvia Fowler: Oh shut up!
Edith Potter: [Spots lady] That`s little Crystal!
Sylvia Fowler: None other...
Ugly saleswoman: [Turns around] May I serve you madam?
Edith Potter: [Surprised] No, thank you!
Sylvia Fowler: [Surprised] Just looking!
[Walking away]
Sylvia Fowler: Oh from the neck up I`d say no...
[Spots other woman]
Sylvia Fowler: Ah, how about baby?
Edith Potter: Of course!
[Walks over to her]
Edith Potter: Mmmm... Couldn`t be anyone else!
[Hears other lady call her "Pat"]
Sylvia Fowler: Pat?
Edith Potter: I still don`t know why he overlooked her.
Sylvia Fowler: I do...
[points to Crystal]
Sylvia Fowler: Pipe.
Lucy: [singing] If the ocean was whiskey, and I was a duck, I`d dive to the bottom, and never come up. Oh baby, oh baby, I`ve told you before, the more I drink whiskey, I love you the more! Oh baby, oh ba...
[gets cut off]
Countess DeLave: [Walks through the door] Oh, l`amour, l`amour!
Crystal Allen: It will be out tomorrow, Mrs. Prowler.
Sylvia Fowler: [Turns around and gives her the evils] FOWLER!
Crystal Allen: [Smiling sarcastically] Oh I`m so sorry...
[corrects herself]
Crystal Allen: Mrs. Fowler.
Miriam Aarons: [to Sylvia, about Sylvia`s husband] I made him pay for what he wanted... you made him pay for what he didn`t want.
Sylvia Fowler: [to Miriam] Why you...!
Countess DeLave: La publicité!
Lulu: Will I find anything in that ice box of yours?
Pat: Yeah, cobwebs and a bottle of gin.
Nurse: One minute more, Mrs. Miller and you can breathe again.
Young girl: [barging in] Oh, I`m sorry. I`m looking for grandma.
[she wanders into the next room]
Young girl: Grandma isn`t in there...
First Mudbath Woman: Well, she isn`t in here... Oh! This tub has worms in it! I know it has worms! I can feel them!
Girl in a bath: They`re probably more afraid of you than you are of them.
Young girl: Well, what`s the matter with a little worm? Why, at Harvard and Yale they eat them...
Saleswoman: That`s all they want from us, the rats!
Corset model: [air-headedly] Well, what else have we got to give?
Mrs. Spencer`s friend: Ooh, look at Sidney`s miniatures.
Mrs. Spencer: Hmmm. Sure sign of a petty mind!
Receptionist: They`ve been waiting half and hour, Mrs. Spencer. Would you mind seeing the art exhibit later?
Mrs. Spencer: All right.
[to her friend]
Mrs. Spencer: Art exhibit my foot!
Exercise instructress: Mrs. Fowler you`ve hardly moved a muscle.
Sylvia Fowler: Whose carcass is this, yours or mine?
Exercise instructress: It`s yours, but I`m paid to exercise it.
Sylvia Fowler: You sound like a horse trainer.
Exercise instructress: No, Mrs. Fowler, but you`re getting warm.
Exercise instructress: Let`s begin with posture. A lady always enters a room erect.
Sylvia Fowler: Most of my friends exit horizontally.
Crystal Allen: [on the telephone] Oh no, Steven, I couldn`t think of your dissarranging your evening. I`ll have another birthday next year.
Pat: You`ll have another one next week!
Crystal Allen: [covering the mouthpiece] Look, so help me, I`m gonna slug you!
Exercise instructress: Arms flat. Crawl slowly up the wall...
Sylvia Fowler: The way you say that makes me feel like vermin.
Exercise instructress: That shouldn`t be much effort. I mean, crawling up the wall.
Sylvia Fowler: Mrs. Haines never listens to any of her friends...
Exercise instructress: [under her breath] How does she avoid it?
Sylvia Fowler: Ohh... What I go through to keep my figure and do I see red when some fat, lazy, dinner partner says: "What do you do with yourself all day Mrs. Fowler?"
Exercise instructress: [instructing Mrs. Fowler in her exercises] Up, over. Up, down. Up, stretch! Up together.
Sylvia Fowler: No more up. This is getting me down.
Exercise instructress: Then rest a moment and relax your diaphram muscles.
[under her breath]
Exercise instructress: If you can.
Tough girl: I still say I`m gonna pull a gun on that guy. Just like I did on Judge McClure.
Sylvia Fowler: Our friend, Mrs. Stephen Haines, simply dotes on this... Her husband picked it out for her... Perhaps you waited on him?
Crystal Allen: I`m afraid I don`t remember. You see, there are so many men who come in here.
Sylvia Fowler: Awfully good looking... I`m sure you wouldn`t overlook him.
Crystal Allen: I`m sorry, but when one`s mind is on one`s own business...
Sylvia Fowler: Of course... And as you say, you have so many men.
Crystal Allen: You noble wives and mothers bore the brains out of me. And I bet you bore your husbands, too.
Mary Haines: You are a hard one.
Crystal Allen: I can be soft on the right occasion.
Corset model: Our new one-piece lace foundation garment. Zips up the back and no bone.
Mrs. Moorehead: I`m an old woman, my dear. I know my sex.
Sylvia Fowler: Did you get her innuendo?
Miriam Aarons: Listen, sister, when are you going to get wise to yourself?
Mrs. Moorehead: Besides, there`s nothing like a good dose of being left alone to make a man appreciate his wife.
Edith Potter: Oh, she can`t help it. It`s just her tough luck that she wasn`t born deaf and dumb.
Maggie: Now don`t that sound just like a husband?
Countess DeLave: Oh, poor creatures. They`ve lost their equilibrium because they`ve lost their faith in love. Oh l`amour, l`amour.
Sylvia Fowler: Why you sly little fox, you.
Crystal Allen: Say, listen, I`ve worked too hard to land this meal ticket to make any false moves now.
Lucy: Them big, strong, red-headed men... they`re fierce!
Miriam Aarons: You`re passing up a swell chance, honey. Where I spit no grass grows ever.
Countess DeLave: Oh, l`amour, l`amour, how it can let you down. Hmm. How it can pick you up again.
Mary Haines: I`ll be doing the cooking so you know what he`ll get.
Little Mary Haines: I know - indigestion.
Miriam Aarons: Any ladle`s sweet that dishes out some gravy.
Woman at party: So he says `I gotta go home on Sunday.` So I says `Why do you got to?` So he says `they always expect me home on Easter Sunday.` So I say, `what do they expect you to do? Lay an egg?`"
Sylvia Fowler: Is that anyway to talk to me after all I`ve done for you?
Crystal Allen: Done what?
Sylvia Fowler: You didn`t know a soul when you married Steven. After all, it wasn`t easy to put you over.
Crystal Allen: And who says you put me over.
Sylvia Fowler: I`ve gotten you into some of our very best homes.
Crystal Allen: Yes, with some of their very best insults.
Peggy Day: He beats you. Lucy, how terrible.
Lucy: Ain`t it. When you think of the lot of women on this ranch who need a beatin` more than I do.
Sylvia Fowler: I`d die before I hurt Edith.
Nancy Blake: [offering Sylvia a tray of nuts] Nuts.
Edith Potter: What are you going to write next, Nancy? Animal stories?
Nancy Blake: [looking at Sylvia Fowler] I wouldn`t have to go to Africa for that.
Edith Potter: When do you go to Africa to shoot, dear?
Nancy Blake: As soon as my book is out.
Sylvia Fowler: I don`t blame you. I`d rather face a tiger any day than the sort of things the critics said about your last book.
Nancy Blake: [looking at Sylvia Fowler`s blouse] Great guns. What are you made up for? The Seeing Eye?
Mrs. Spencer`s friend: [gasp] Good grief! I hate to tell you, dear, but your skin makes the Rocky Mountains look like chiffon velvet!
Miriam Aarons: You should have licked that girl where she licked you; in his arms. It`s where you win in the first round and if I know men, it`s still Custer`s Last Stand.
Crystal Allen: I`m having him dine at my place. It`s about time he found out I was a home girl.
Pat: A home girl? Get her? Why don`t you borrow the quintuplets for the evening?
Crystal Allen: Because I`m all the baby he wants, pet.
Mary Haines: I`ve had two years to grow claws mother. Jungle red.
Miriam Aarons: A woman`s compromised the day she`s born.
Maggie: The first man who can explain how he can be in love with his wife - and another woman - is gonna win that prize they`re always giving out in Sweden.
Sylvia Fowler: Mary Haines, don`t you have any pride?
Mary Haines: No pride at all. That`s a luxury a woman in love can`t afford.
Sylvia Fowler: You simply must see my hairdresser, I DETEST whoever does yours.
Crystal Allen: If you throw a lambchop into a hot oven, what`s gonna keep it from gettin` done?
Olga: She`s got those eyes that run up and down a man like a searchlight.
Mary Haines: I think I got what Mrs. Fowler`s friends come in for.
Crystal Allen: There is a name for you, ladies, but it isn`t used in high society... outside of a kennel.
Sylvia Fowler: Oh, you remember the awful things they said about what`s-her-name before she jumped out the window? There. You see? I can`t even remember her name so who cares?
Crystal Allen: Thanks for the tip. But when anything I wear doesn`t please Stephen, I take it off.
Countess DeLave: Get me a bromide - and put some gin in it.
Mrs. Moorehead: Well, cheer up, Mary; living alone has its compensations. Heaven knows it`s marvelous being able to spread out in bed like a swastika.
Peggy Day: I wish I could make a little money writing the way you do.
Nancy Blake: If you wrote the way I do, that`s just what you`d make.
Sylvia Fowler: What are you, pet?
Nancy Blake: What nature abhors. I am an old maid, a frozen asset.
Maggie: [Regarding men] You can`t trust none of `em no further than I can kick this lemon pie.
Nancy Blake: [to Countess DeLave] Chin up.
Miriam Aarons: Right, both of them.
Crystal Allen: He almost stood me up for his wife.
Beautician at Sydneys #1: [to "Gillingswater"] You don`t look a day over 35!
[walks into room]
Beautician at Sydneys #1: That old gasoline truck, she`s 60 if she`s a minute.
Beautician at Sydneys #2: Who is she?
Beautician at Sydneys #1: Gillingswater.
Beautician at Sydneys #2: Oh, that old bag! One more permanent and she won`t have a hair on her head.
Beautician at Sydneys #1: [taking a puff out of her cigarette] She`s got plenty on her arms baby!
Olive: She sure does shed, don`t she!
Olga: [while giving Mary a manicure] Well this Crystal Allen is a friend of mine, she`s really a terrible man trap, soak it please. She`s behind the perfume counter at Black`s, so was I before I got fired... Uh, left.
Mary Haines: [Introduces them] This is the Countess DeLave... Mrs. Howard Fowler.
Countess DeLave: [Same time] How do you do?
Sylvia Fowler: [Same time] How do you do?
Mary Haines: And Miriam Aarons.
Miriam Aarons: How do you do?
Sylvia Fowler: [Looks Miriam up and down] How do YOU do...
Sylvia Fowler: I don`t need to sit around and act glum, when I think of what I`ve sacrificed for Howard Fowler!
Miriam Aarons: Such as what Mrs. Fowler?
Sylvia Fowler: [Looks at Miriam] I gave him my youth!
Sylvia Fowler: I`m devoted to Edith Potter, but she DOES get me down...
Crystal Allen: [Answering phone] Hello? Oh hello Stephen...
[Surprised]
Crystal Allen: What? Well uh... Don`t worry my sweet, Ofcourse I don`t mind you breaking our engagement... Well that is I mind ofcourse but it`s such good discipline for my selfishness about you...
Pat: Holy mackeral, what a line!
Crystal Allen: [to Pat] Shut up will ya!
[to Stephen]
Crystal Allen: I was going to surprise you tonight darling and cook dinner myself in my little apartment...
[gives a small laugh]
Crystal Allen: Why ofcourse I can cook!
Pat: She thinks because Lulu is dark, he wont be able to see her!
Crystal Allen: [to Pat] SHHH!
[to Stephen]
Crystal Allen: Oh well you dont know half my accomplishments...
Pat: I`ll say he dosen`t!
Crystal Allen: [to Pat] Will you get outta here!
[to Stephen]
Crystal Allen: Oh... Oh well that`s all right Stephen, I`ll save you a piece of the cake... With a candle on it... Oh well I didn`t want to tell you before because I was afraid you might do something extravigant! Oh it is dear of you to want to be with me on my birthday but... I wont be lonley! No honestly I wont! and uh... If this weather lets up my neuralgia will be better
[shaky voiced]
Crystal Allen: and then maybe I can... Oh no
[Pat listens to Crystal and laughs to herself]
Crystal Allen: it`s nothing, it`s just nerves... I had a rather gloomy letter from home today... My little sister, shes not very well...
Pat: What`s wrong with her, she got a hang over?
Crystal Allen: But she`ll be all right... Yes im holding the thought... Oh no Stephen! I couldn`t think of your dissaranging your evening! I`ll have another birthday next year!
Pat: You`ll have another birthday next week!
Crystal Allen: [to Pat] Look so help me I`m gunna slug you!
[back to Stephen]
Crystal Allen: Oh Stephen... If you could drop by for just a few moments and have a glass of sherry to my health... Oh Stephen... Oh I do need you so... Yes dear, yes darling
[excitedly]
Crystal Allen: I`ll meet you on our corner in 5 minutes!
[sends kisses into the phone]
Crystal Allen: Goodbye!
Sylvia Fowler: [Showing her nails to Mary] Mary, how do you like that?
Nancy Blake: Too, too adorable.
Sylvia Fowler: Ah, you have no idea how it stays on... I get it at Sydney`s, you should go Mary. A wonderful new manicurist, Olga`s her name, she`s marvellous. Isn`t that divine? Jungle red!
Nancy Blake: Looks like you`ve been tearing at somebody`s throat!
Sylvia Fowler: [Smacks her hand on the table] I`ll be darned Nancy if I let you ride me anymore!
Mary Haines: Oh Sylvia, Nancy`s only trying to be clever too.
Sylvia Fowler: Well, she takes a crack at everything about me... Even my nails!
Mary Haines: Well I like them, I really do. Sydney`s, Olga`s, jungle red... I`ll remember.
Peggy Day: Oh I wish I could make a little money writing the way you do!
Nancy Blake: If you wrote the way I do that`s just what you`d make.
Sylvia Fowler: Your not a very popular author, are you dear?
Nancy Blake: Not with you.
Edith Potter: Weren`t you going to Africa to shoot Nancy?
Nancy Blake: As soon as my book`s out.
Sylvia Fowler: I don`t blame you, I`d rather face a tiger any day than the sort of things the critics said about your last book.
Countess DeLave: But whither... Whither shall I fly?
Miriam Aarons: To the arms our our pet cowboy, darling!
Countess DeLave: [Gasps] Miriam Aarons!
Miriam Aarons: Why he`s plum loco for you countess! He likes you even better than his horse! And it`s such a blasted big horse too!
Countess DeLave: I never got a sou out of anybody except my first husband, Mr. Strauss. Oh he said the most touching thing in his will, I remember every word of it... He said "To my beloved wife Flora, I leave all my estate... To be administered by executors because she is an A-1 schlemiel."
[Sarcastically]
Countess DeLave: Isn`t that sweet?
Child on train: Mommy, will daddy come to Reno?
Lady on train: No, darling.
Child on train: Mommy, where is daddy?
Lady on train: I don`t know and I don`t care. In the future you`ll please refer to him as "That heel"!
Little Mary Haines: I saw Mrs. Potter at the zoo that day.
Mrs. Moorehead: Who was she visiting with? The snakes?
Mary Haines: Oh, mother.
Little Mary Haines: As a matter a fact she was!
Countess DeLave: This sweet thing is getting her first divorce too! She`s a very dear friend of mine... What did you say your name was again darling?
Miriam Aarons: Miriam Aarons.
Countess DeLave: [Introducing Mary and Miriam] This is Mrs. Haines. You know, yanked the scalp off that Allen woman in the fitting room?
Miriam Aarons: Oh yeah! Good for you! I was afraid you were a wet firecracker, sister. Shake!
Mary Haines: [about Slyvia and the model arguing] Oh it`s just professional jealousy, they`re really very good friends!
Sylvia Fowler: Of course! She adores the Fowler family. Particularly my husband.
Countess Tamara: Are you accusing me of flirting with Howard?
Sylvia Fowler: No, my little pet, but of trying to! I`d like to see Howard bat an eye at another woman!
Countess Tamara: Well I`ve seen him, and she`s not bad either!
Sylvia Fowler: Did you get her innuendo?
Peggy Day: [On the train] Listen to the wheels, don`t they seem to be saying something?
Mary Haines: [Softly] No.
Peggy Day: Don`t they seem to be saying... Go back, go back, go back, go back?
Sylvia Fowler: Well heaven be praised I`m on to my husband, I wouldn`t trust him on Alcatraz, the mouse.
Peggy Day: Sylvia you oughtn`t talk about him like that, why I think it`s disloyal!
Sylvia Fowler: Oh now listen Peggy, do we know how the men talk about us when we`re not around?
Nancy Blake: I`ve heard rumours.
Sylvia Fowler: Exactly... And uh... While we`re on the subject, have either of you wondered whether the master of this maison might not be straying?
Nancy Blake: I haven`t.
Sylvia Fowler: Well, for all you know Mary Haines may be living in a fool`s paradise.
Nancy Blake: You`re so resourcful darling, I ought to go to you for plots.
Sylvia Fowler: You ought to go to someone.
Trivia
As of 2009, Joan Fontaine (Mrs. John Peggy Day) is the film`s last surviving principal cast member.
The beauty salon and spa featured in the film`s opening sequence was based on cosmetics mogul Elizabeth Arden`s parlor in New York City. At the premiere of the film, Arden scoffed that the film`s salon was an exact copy of hers.
"The Women`s" screenwriter Anita Loos who wrote this film`s original 1939 screenplay, started her writing career in 1912 with her first full film screenplay The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) starring Lillian Gish and directed by D.W. Griffith for the American Mutoscope & Biograph Co. which is still in existence today. After writing many scripts for Biograph, Loos went on to write such other films such as Saratoga (1937), Another Thin Man (1939), San Francisco (1936), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953).
The stage actress who originated the role of Sylvia Fowler (Rosalind Russell`s role in the film) was Ilka Chase. She is probably best recognized by today`s audiences as the Stepmother in the original Julie Andrews live TV musical production of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II`s Cinderella (1957) (TV), the kinescope of which was recently rediscovered and released on DVD.
Butterfly McQueen`s film debut.
Re-released in France in May 1974.
George Cukor was fired as director of Gone with the Wind (1939) only a month before The Women (1939) was scheduled to begin filming. Producer Hunt Stromberg enlisted Cukor`s services immediately upon his sudden availability.
In addition to those cast members already listed, Beatrice Cole and Beryl Wallace also appeared in the stage play.
When Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford were called to shoot publicity stills, neither actress would enter the studio first. Instead, they remained in their limousines and circled the parking lot until director George Cukor summoned them and they instantly behaved like best friends.
Although uncredited, F. Scott Fitzgerald contributed to the writing of the screenplay.
The lines Mary reads alone in bed are from "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran: "Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love`s threshing floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears," but MGM omitted the reference to "nakedness" to avoid offending the censors.
Myrna Loy and Greta Garbo were the only top-tier female stars at MGM who did not star in this film, although Loy was considered for the role of Crystal Allen.
According to her autobiography, Rosalind Russell called in sick because Norma Shearer refused to share top billing. She stayed "sick" until Shearer finally relented.
Sydney`s, the beauty salon where the initial action takes place, was named after Sydney Guilaroff, the chief hairstylist at MGM from 1934 to the late 1970s. He was brought to MGM from New York at the request of Joan Crawford.
In addition to its all-female cast, every animal that was used in the film (the many dogs and horses) was female as well. In addition, none of the works of art seen in the backgrounds were representative of the male form.
Though many people view Joan Crawford as the "bad girl" of the movie, Clare Boothe Luce, who wrote (as Clare Boothe) the play that the film was based on, sympathized most with Crystal Allen, Crawford`s character.
There are over 130 roles in this movie, all played by women. Phyllis Povah, Marjorie Main, Mary Cecil and Marjorie Wood originated their roles in the play, which opened on 7 September 1937 and had 666 performances at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York. No doubles were used in the fight sequence where Rosalind Russell bites Paulette Goddard. Despite the permanent scar resulting from the bite, the actresses remained friends.
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