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In 1936, journalist Clare Booth Luce wrote a play called “The Women”, a satire about the idle, gossipy lives led by society wives and divorcees, based on a conversation she had overheard in a ladies’ powder room. The play was so popular that it had 657 performances before being adapted to the screen in the 1939 film of the same name, which starred some of the most famous actresses of the time, including Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, Joan Fontaine, and Paulette Goddard.

This summer, “The Women” was remade with a fresh, all-star cast, with a screenplay written by famed comedy writer Diane English (“Murphy Brown”) who also directed. The cast reads like a Who’s Who of women actors in Hollywood- Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith, Debi Mazar, Cloris Leachman, Candice Bergen, Eva Mendes, Carrie Fisher, and Bette Midler. The film explores the ideas of friendship, of love and commitment, of success and failure, of secrets and betrayal. I don’t know if it’s still in theaters, but when it comes out on DVD I intend to see it. Any movie with that many incredible actors in it, written and directed by the woman responsible for creating one of the funniest shows on television, that’s a movie I want to see.

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