In 1939, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released a film adaptation of the Broadway hit play ‘The Women’ by Clare Boothe[1903-1987] which contains extended sequences inside a beauty salon. Directed by George Cukor [1899-1983] from a script written by Anita Loos [1888-1981] and Jane Murfin [1884-1955], it contained an all-female cast which included Norma Shearer [1902-1983], Joan Crawford [c.1904-1977], Rosalind Russell [1907-1976], Mary Boland [1882-1965], Paulette Goddard [1910-1990] and Joan Fontaine [1917-2013].
The movie opens outside Sydney’s beauty salon on Park Avenue, New York – the name pays homage to Sydney Guilaroff [1907-1997], the chief hairstylist at MGM at the time. According to Woodhead the set design took its inspiration from the Fifth Avenue salon of Elizabeth Arden [1881-1966] (Woodhead, 2003, p. 250). Apparently, Arden saw the salon set when her ex-employee Hedda Hopper [1885-1966] – who appeared in the film as the society columnist Dolly Dupuyster – took Elizabeth to the studio to see it. Arden was apparently unhappy about it, perhaps because many details seem to have been taken from the new Fifth Avenue salon of Helena Rubinstein [1872-1965] which opened in 1936.
See also: Rubinstein Day of Beauty
The movie opens by following Mrs. Van Adams from just outside Sydney’s salon into the reception where she is booked in. We then pass to an upstairs waiting room where a Mrs. Spencer and Mrs. Carter enter and begin looking at a display of miniatures – a possible reference to Helena Rubinstein’s collection of miniature rooms on display in her New York salon – which Mrs. Carter describes as a “sure sign of a petty mind”. The two women are then ushered into an examination room where Mrs. Spencer has her face viewed under a dermascope.
Mrs. Carter pushes the attendant to one side, looks down the dermascope herself and exclaims “I hate to tell you, dear, but your skin makes the Rockies look like chiffon velvet.”
See also: Complexion Analysers (Dermoscopes)
We then track the women through a series of rooms where we see:
1. A client attached to a machine for measuring basal metabolic rate.
2. A tiled room with clients taking foam and mud baths.
3. A booth where a client is receiving a body massage.
4. A larger room with clients relaxing under sun lamps.
At the start of this sequence an older woman – who is the subject of a lot of comments as she is going to marry a jockey – disappears up a spiral staircase wearing only a towel. She is heading for a steam bath or infra-red treatment, edited out of the final cut of the film but depicted in a 1939 article in LIFE magazine.
5. A gymnasium with clients exercising on horizontal bars.
See also: Paraffin Wax Treatments
6. A room with bicycles and a rowing machine.
7. A cubicle where a diathermy treatment is being conducted.
See also: Arden Vienna Youth Mask
8. A facial booth where a client is having a face mask applied during a facial treatment.
9. A room where an attendant is using hot wax to remove superfluous hair from the forearm of a client.
Soon after this we move to the hairdressing salon where Mrs. Sylvia Howard Fowler (Rosalind Russell) is receiving a manicure from Olga (Dennie Moore [1902-1978]).
See also: Glazo
Sylvia is getting a manicure while her hair dries and will soon learn from the manicurist that the husband of Mary Haines (Norma Shearer) is having an affair with perfume counter salesgirl Crystal Allen (Joan Crawford), the event that propelled the plot for the rest of the movie.
First Posted: 6th April 2015
Last Update: 8th April 2024
Movie of the week: The women. (1939). LIFE, September 4, 28-29.
Stromberg, H. (Producer), & Cukor, G. (Director). (1939). The women [Motion picture]. United States: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Woodhead, L. (2003). War paint: Miss Elizabeth Arden and Madame Helena Rubinstein. Their lives, their times, their rivalry. London: Virago.