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TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
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TIME, Almanac of the 20th Century.ISO
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30women
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<text>
<title>
(1930s) The Women
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1930s Highlights
Theater
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
The Women
</hdr>
<body>
<p>(January 4, 1937)
</p>
<p> The Women is calculated to give the Men two of the most
shockingly informative hours of their lives and is so clever
that few women would willingly miss it. Its cast of 35 is
entirely feminine and its subject is exactly what its title
suggest. Halfway through scene I, Playwright Clare Boothe makes
a distinction between Women and Females, Mary Haines (Margalo
Gillmore), a gracious and homeloving blonde with one husband,
two children and a heart filled with anxiety about reaching the
shady side of 30, is a woman. Most of the rest of The Women are
females, belonging to Manhattan's restaurant and rotogravure
set. Disclosed in bathrooms, ladies' rooms, beauty parlors and
maternity wards, safe from the eyes and ears of their menfolk,
they talk, as men never hear them, about clothes, nail polish,
money ("a woman's best protection is a little money of her
own"), sex ("I'm just a frozen asset," says the play's lone
virgin), nursing babies (ouch! he's got jaws like a dinosaur").
</p>
<p> When Mary Haines discovers through gossipy friends that her
husband has become involved with a perfume salesgirl, her sage
mother advises her to ignore the whole matter (as she did 30
years before) and keep her husband and her home at the cost of
her pride. But the gossipy friends push Mary remorselessly along
the Reno trail with all its bitterness.
</p>
<p> Much of the play is brash and bitter. Much of it is moving--notably the scene wherein Mary tries to explain to her little
daughter (Charita Bauer) how it is that Mother and Daddy can
fall out of love. Clever of line and deft of pace, The Women is
packed with cracks which will doubtless be batted back and forth
across Manhattan dinner tables the rest of the season. Samples:
</p>
<p> "Why is it that in a taxicab every man behaves like Harpo
Marx?"
</p>
<p> "Watercress! It's like eating your way across a lawn."
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>