This Joan Crawford Classic Still Has Something to Teach Us About Women—and the Clothes They Wear

Growing up, Illeana Douglas spent a lot of time with her Oscar-winning grandfather in his Upper West Side apartment, where, salon-style, he would regularly host writers like Gore Vidal and screen legends like Myrna Loy. That duality seemed to inform the adult Illeana’s interests. In her twenties, she performed in a sketch comedy group at night, while holding down a day job as a film publicist, working on campaigns for future classics like The Princess Bride, The Untouchables, and Moonstruck.

She entered the ‘90s as one of Hollywood’s most reliable character actresses, stealing scenes in zeitgeist-defining films like Goodfellas and To Die For. “I would always get the part where I'd look through the script, and I’d go, ‘I don’t see any lines here,’” she says. “And they’d say, ‘Well, you'll come up with something brilliant’... So it was writing—but not realizing I was writing.”

In the last decade or so, she’s made a Louise Brooks-like transition to film historian and writer, starting with her memoir I Blame Dennis Hopper: And Other Stories from a Life Lived in and Out of the Movies, later becoming a regular presence on TCM, that beloved haven of old movies, where she presented the Trailblazing Women series.

For her latest book, Jungle Red!: The Making of MGM’s The Women, Douglas tackles a subject she seems almost made for: the making of the 1939 all-female blockbuster that starred Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, and Rosalind Russell; saved director George Cukor’s career; and spawned several fashion trends—not to mention remakes (including the unfortunately feckless 2008 version, starring Meg Ryan and Annette Bening).

Based on a play by the writer and former Vanity Fair managing editor Clare Boothe Luce, The Women follows the romantic and social upheavals of a group of frenemies in Manhattan high society, who circle like vultures when they learn that Norma Shearer’s virtuous socialite Mary Haines is about to lose her husband to Joan Crawford’s fabulously viperous shopgirl Crystal Allen. Told without the participation of a single male actor, The Women turned Hollywood’s all-boys club on its head, becoming a major hit in a year dominated by Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.

By the time the 1960s women’s movement took off, feminists were disavowing the film, pointing out that all the female characters ever talked about were the men. But decades later, it’s startling to see what the film tells us about the women of the era.

By focusing on the battles fought in luxury department stores, fashion shows, high-end spas, nail salons, and the home, the film illustrated just how limited even privileged women’s options were. Those men, in a way, were chess pieces being played in the name of social standing, financial stability, and power. Douglas’ Jungle Red! has a deep appreciation for that and more, elegantly taking us through the soup-to-nuts process of the making of a studio movie during Hollywood’s golden era, while paying homage to the unsung heroes—the pioneering women, the talented gay men—who made movie magic happen.

“I feel that my voice as an actress, I maybe have an ability to maybe see something that straight-up historians are missing because I’ve been in the business,” Douglas says. “I find myself writing—and crying as I’m writing—because I feel like sometimes I’m lifting cobwebs from these people that nobody has been writing about and yet have such great American stories.”

Vogue: The Women is a classic, but a film that, through the years, has had its ups and downs in terms of public perception. Why did you want to write this book? Out of all the films from that period, why was this the one?

Illeana Douglas: I thought that this movie could tell so many stories. This was made in 1939, in between Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz—it was made at the exact same time, and all of the same people were peripherally involved with The Women.

I wanted to tell the story of why The Women was so crucially important in the careers of Joan Crawford, George Cukor, Paulette Goddard, Rosalind Russell, and its importance at MGM, and [the costume designer] Adrian. And also, all the people that were involved—it was like a carousel of characters that all seemed to come together to work on this one movie, from F. Scott Fitzgerald to [screenwriter] Anita Loos, to this producer, Hunt Stromberg, to [Louis B.] Meyer, to [Irving] Thalberg, to even Mickey Rooney. Even my grandfather pops up.

You read all these biographies about George Cukor, Joan Crawford, but it’s funny, every time you get to The Women, they’d just sort of pass over it. And I think it’s so interesting because without The Women, George Cukor’s career would’ve essentially ended after he was fired from Gone with the Wind, and Paulette Goddard’s career would’ve ended if not for getting in The Women after she didn’t get Scarlett O’Hara. And Joan Crawford’s career was on tinder hooks after she had been in this disastrous movie called Ice Follies of 1939. So it was to bring all of these stories together that all happened between 1936 and ’39, and use the movie as a device to really bring you back and to say, “This is what it felt like.”

And then, my feminist point of view is to redefine what The Women is really about, because over the years, women became so afraid of being called a bitch—Oh, it’s a negative thing. And I was so interested that in 1938 and ’39, when they were promoting the movie, they all used the word frivolously. Joan Crawford was like, ‘Oh, I love being a bitch. Everyone should be a bitch.’ And these days when I say that, people sort of go, ‘Ooh, I don’t know. You maybe shouldn’t say that on the air.’ I found that fascinating.

I want people to remember that it’s a social satire. It’s not saying, “These women are bitches.” You’re saying, “These are the roles that society forced them to play.” You’re going to be the old spinster because you’re not good-looking. You’re going to be the dutiful wife or the wise mother or the sexpot. And so I thought it was an interesting topic to talk about. In the 21st century now, where are we as women? How do we define ourselves? I feel like women—just as much as men—are almost afraid to define themselves in any way other than being a sexpot, as if that’s their only avenue. And you have somebody like Clare Boothe Luce, who used her brains and her wit and her sense of style to get ahead. And each woman that is in The Women, whether it’s a writer behind the scenes or the actresses, they use their own special tools in their toolkit to get ahead, to carve her path.

What is acceptable in today’s society is the Real Housewives franchise, where all of these things kind of play out, but almost in caricature. You could say that The Women is the precursor to the Real Housewives franchise because that’s what it’s about—money and power and status and frenemies and all.

The book is so elegantly written and deeply researched. Throughout your work on the book, what was the most surprising thing you learned?

Oh my goodness. I mean, it’s almost endless. I tried to write about the parallels between Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer, these two women who really didn’t like each other, but were so alike because, again, their society—which was the society of Hollywood—forced them into these roles. And in order to become a success, you had to play the part of a good mother. And you were always playing a dual role: the public perception of you and then privately who you really were. And I was fascinated by the way that they both navigated this. I was surprised that this really was the greatest feud in Hollywood. They really did hate each other.

More than Joan and Bette Davis?

Yeah, whereas that one probably was manufactured because of the success of the feud between Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer. I was surprised that Norma Shearer really did do everything in her power to thwart Joan Crawford’s career. That was real. She stole Clark Gable from her as her leading man. Anytime that Joan Crawford was getting a little bit of traction in her career, it seemed as if Norma Shearer tried to steal her [thunder]. If Joan Crawford started working with a really good cameraman who devised a different way to light her, then Norma Shearer would steal him away because she’s married to the boss. And the fact that this was all going on at MGM, they knew it was going to be combustible to put them in the same movie. They had reporters on the set waiting for the feud to explode—I found it delightful but slightly shocking.

And the fact that both women fueled their feud in a way that you would not be able to do today because it would unravel, but that they both enjoyed hating each other. They were unapologetic about their hatred for each other, but they played it out like a Molière restoration comedy, like, ‘Oh my dear, I enjoyed playing bitches, and Norma helped me enormously with my part.’ And then the back-and-forth volleys that were in the press, I just thought were unbelievable, and that the fans seemed to be so supportive of enjoying their feud.

I was totally surprised that F. Scott Fitzgerald had written an entire script [for the movie]. We have a sense today of like, ‘Oh, a script has got so many fingerprints on it,’ but I didn’t anticipate the amount of material from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Donald Ogden Stewart to Anita Loos and Jane Murfin. Each person who took on the script really fueled their own personality. They had their own ideas of who these women were, and it kept shifting from Clare Boothe Luce’s original vision. And I love the idea that everybody who got involved had their favorites or rewrote [aspects].

Style is a big part of the film, of course. That first climactic fight between Norma and Joan’s characters comes after Rosalind Russell says, “I saw it in Vogue,” about how a particular runway piece should be styled. And I keep thinking about the end of that first fight, when Joan says the line, ‘When anything I wear doesn’t please Stephen, I take it off.’

I know! It’s like, Oh my God! It was unscripted. One of the great things I had in Anita Loos’ script is, in those days, anything that was in blue pencil meant she was on the set writing ad libs and changes. And so what I found in blue pencil was, I don’t think that Joan Crawford was supposed to move into Norma Shearer’s shot that way, when they’re in the doorway. I think that’s why we gasp; it’s the physicality too. She gets right in her face.

That scene took a week to film because they started to film it, then Joan Crawford was deliberately trying to ruin Shearer’s takes, off-camera. And then they stopped shooting for the day, and then when they came back, they were no longer speaking except through the scene. So you can imagine the tension of when they came back. And I think that Joan Crawford coming into her shot like that, you see Norma Shearer, who’s pretty unflappable—it seems to me that she looks aghast.

There’s a great story, of course, behind what they’re wearing too. Joan Crawford loved showing off her legs. They did not want her to wear that outfit, the one with the turban and gold lamé—I mean, it’s so garish and over the top.

The dress that Norma Shearer is wearing is, believe it or not, an unused dress from [her film] Marie Antoinette. At the last minute, when she was shooting the scene with Rosalind Russell, which was before this, she tried to find a dress. She was upset that Rosalind Russell was upstaging her. And Russell had this big outfit on with all her veils and hats and everything. So Norma Shearer decided at the last minute to change her dress. And so she came back wearing this ball gown from Marie Antoinette, which has a bustle.

And part of the reason she did that was that George Cukor wouldn’t be able to shoot her [with anyone else in the frame]. She only wanted singles—she didn’t want another actress [in her frame]. [The dress] would occupy a big space, so that it would make it very difficult to shoot two actresses together.

Costumes are really one third of the performance here. Rosalind Russell is in a lot of almost Salvador Dali-esque accessories. And then Joan, of course, gets the sexier outfits, but in a way that’s not refined—the messaging is clearly: she’s from the wrong side of the tracks. And then Norma’s the queen.

When they first meet, Norma Shearer is wearing a white hat, slightly similar to that famous hat in Ninotchka, where it’s square, and it’s up very, very high. She’s in white, and she’s very refined, and Joan Crawford is wearing... it looks like some sort of fur, but we don't know what kind, but it looks sort of slightly cheap, and she’s all black, and she's sort of slouched over. Her posture isn’t that great. So you see immediately in their confrontation, ‘Okay, Norma Shearer’s the refined one.’ And then Rolsand Russell in that absurd outfit where she’s got a bustle in the back, and she’s got pinstripes, and she’s just the busy beaver.

What Adrian did, I was amazed at. I mean, it’s the amount of work we think of today for fashion shows.

There was another great story about the sequin dress. For Adrian, sequins connoted a bad girl. So he wanted Joan Crawford in the sequined dress. Norma Shearer didn’t want her to be in it because she thought she would upstage her. And so Adrian and Joan Crawford got together very cleverly and actually built a dress that would look almost exactly one shade different from Norma Shearer’s dress.

They very cleverly went about it like, ‘You’re absolutely right. She won’t wear the sequined dress. This is what she's going to wear.’ And they photographed it and sent it to [Louis B.] Mayer. This is what was so interesting about this woman: they don’t want to tangle with Joan Crawford. In what you're reading in the memos, what I got from that is eventually they relent because they were like, ‘I can't deal with this woman. Just let her wear the sequin dress for God's sakes.’ So then, if she got the sequin dress, then Norma Shearer asked for a gold cape.

Oh, that’s why there’s a cape.

Yeah, so it never ends. There’s always kind of a sense of a one-upmanship here—but then, Joan Crawford’s the master [of that]. Then she says, Okay, honey, you take your cape. How about in the bathtub I wear nothing? It’s the only movie that I ever remember where you can see Joan Crawford’s freckles. I always thought that was amazing and really kind of brave. She’s got this very bright, harsh lighting; she still looks very attractive, but you can see her freckles.

That’s why she’s one of the great actresses. She understands the cinematic moment.

Right, and she made sure that the press was going to be there when she did her scene, and she made sure everybody knew that she had no clothes on. I mean, it was all reported on. It said, ‘And for modesty, she only had a towel.’ They were all playing a game, so everybody knew she was naked, so later on, it was yet another way for her to upstage Norma Shearer.

We need to talk about Adrian, the great costume designer, who co-directed this six-minute fashion film within the film, of the fashion show the ladies watch in the department store. I find it interesting because, in some ways, it doesn’t move the plot forward. But in another way, it really tells you about the milieu. What did you learn about it?

It was the producer’s idea to do the fashion show. They wanted to experiment with Technicolor. This would be an added gimmick that you could come see. And fashion was very important in films. A lot of the clothes that you saw in the fashion show were then ready to wear at Macy’s. People would look at films for fashion, and then those clothes would be modified and then later sold at department stores: ‘As seen in The Women’—a modified version of those [costumes]. So it was a twofer in that sense.

For Adrian, I really think it’s his swan song at MGM, because within a couple of years—which I write about in the book—they were cutting up his dresses and they didn’t save anything. So it’s really a shame.

So many of his designs still feel so contemporary. I was kind of like, ‘That’s a Rodarte dress.’ Or ‘that’s Daniel Rosebery’s Schiaparelli.’ From The Women, which pieces were the most popular?

They modified Rosalind Russell's pinstripe dress without the bustle. And the outfits at the ranch, everything was a modified version, mainly of Norma Shearer’s clothing: her suits, her train travelwear, the suits, which you can see in the fashion show. Again, elements—they’re not exactly the same, they became ready-to-wear. They also did handkerchiefs. I mean, they did everything.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.