Old Acquaintances and New Sisterhoods: Female

Friendship in Classical Hollywood Cinema

by

Celine Ellen Reid Bell

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Cinema Studies Institute

University of Toronto

© Copyright by Celine Ellen Reid Bell 2021

ii

Old Acquaintances and New Sisterhoods: Female Friendship in

Classical Hollywood Cinema

Celine Ellen Reid Bell

Doctor of Philosophy

Cinema Studies Institute

University of Toronto

2021

Abstract

This dissertation examines representations of female friendship in Hollywood films from

1930-1953. I seek to demonstrate that the first half of the twentieth century was a crucial period

of transition in thinking about female friendship and how women relate to each other. The

period I consider is largely marked by an increasing distrust of close friendships between women

and a subsequent pivot towards a redefinition of and reinvestment in heterosexual courtship and

marriage. At the same time, widespread socio-cultural changes were bringing about

circumstances through which women were spending increasing amounts of time with their peers.

Women were meeting, learning about, and forming bonds with increasing numbers of women,

including those with lives and experiences radically different from their own. Hollywood

movies played a role in creating this connectivity between women, both as a public, social space

and, most pertinently for this dissertation, as a platform for female viewers to connect with and

relate to other women. Many of the films I examine pick up and reinforce ideas about female

friendship already circulating in popular discourse, albeit with a distinctly Hollywood spin.

Broadly speaking, I identify the early twentieth-century as marking a shift in female friendship

iii

styles away from the intense, dyadic friendships of the Victorian period towards social,

collective friendship groups. This does not mean, however, that Victorian style friendships

disappear entirely. Indeed, the period I examine is marked by continuous negotiations and

contradictions, allowing multiple friendship styles to exist simultaneously. I argue that many of

the traits prized in Victorian friendships, most notably emotional intimacy, reciprocity, equality,

and supportiveness, continued to define the new friendship styles that would emerge in the

twentieth century. At the same time, these Victorian traits were re-imagined in a new context.

Group friendships are emblematic of the increasingly public lives of twentieth-century women as

well as both the new opportunities and new challenges that came with these lives. Women’s

friendships took on a newly pragmatic function as practical support became increasingly

important. The films I examine take up many of these key elements of female friendship,

translating them into visual and narrative terms.

iv

Acknowledgments

I am extremely grateful to my supervisor, Corinn Columpar, for all of her guidance and

support over the past eight years. I am thankful as well to my committee members, Alice

Maurice and Charlie Keil, for their invaluable feedback and advice. Thank you as well to

Angelica Fenner and Sara Ross for their generative questions and comments at my defense.

I also thank the faculty and graduate students at the Cinema Studies Institute at the

University of Toronto for helping me along the way. I am especially indebted to Kevin Chabot,

Justin J. Morris, Amber Fundytus, and Anjo-Mari Gouws whose support and encouragement

throughout this process has meant more than I could possibly express.

I am also deeply thankful for the support of my family, especially my mom who has been

there for me through many, many emotional conversations over the year.

I dedicate this project to my friends, both old and new.

v

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ......................................................................................................................................... IV

TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................................ V

TABLE OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................................................... VI

INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................................ 1

FEMALE FRIENDSHIP AND FILM THEORY ................................................................................................................. 7 HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS OF FEMALE FRIENDSHIP ................................................................................................. 17 WOMEN’S FRIENDSHIPS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY ........................................................................................ 26 CHAPTER OUTLINES ............................................................................................................................................... 29

CHAPTER ONE – PASSIONATE COMMITMENTS: VICTORIAN FRIENDSHIP MODELS IN FEMALE

FRIENDSHIP FILMS ............................................................................................................................................... 41

INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................................... 41 FEMALE FRIENDSHIP IN THE VICTORIAN ERA ....................................................................................................... 42 THE PLOT OF FEMALE AMITY................................................................................................................................. 45 THE PATHOLOGIZATION OF LOVE BETWEEN WOMEN .......................................................................................... 48 THE FILMS ............................................................................................................................................................... 51 “IF I DON’T ASK, WHAT KIND OF A FRIEND AM I?”: MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE ................................................... 53 “TWO FRIENDS, BOTH WRITERS, BOTH SUCH SUCCESSES”: WRITING FRIENDSHIP ............................................ 71 “I’VE LOVED YOU LIKE A FRIEND, THE WAY THOUSANDS OF WOMEN FEEL ABOUT OTHER WOMEN”:

SUBVERSIVE FRIENDSHIPS ...................................................................................................................................... 90

CHAPTER 2 – THE ART OF COOPERATION: TWENTIETH-CENTURY FRIENDSHIP STYLES ....... 114

INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................................... 114 SCHOOL AND WORK .............................................................................................................................................. 116 DATING AND MARRIAGE ....................................................................................................................................... 122 MOVIES AND TECHNOLOGY ................................................................................................................................. 125 THE FILMS ............................................................................................................................................................. 127 “WELL BEHAVED AND SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE”: SCHOOL FRIENDSHIPS ......................................................... 128 “PRETTY TOUGH GOING FOR YOU GIRLS”: WORKING WOMEN ......................................................................... 156 “ISN’T THERE ENOUGH HEARTACHE IN THE THEATRE WITHOUT OUR HATING EACH OTHER?”: THEATRICAL

FRIENDSHIPS ......................................................................................................................................................... 170

CHAPTER THREE – FEMALE BONDING: WOMEN’S FRIENDSHIPS AND WORLD WAR II............. 195

INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................................... 195 WOMEN AND THE NATION .................................................................................................................................... 197 WOMEN AND WAR WORK ..................................................................................................................................... 201 THE FILMS ............................................................................................................................................................. 212 “IF ONE OF US DIES, WE ALL DIE”: WOMEN AT THE FRONTLINES ...................................................................... 216 “BE A GOOD SHIPMATE”: TRAINING CAMP FILMS .............................................................................................. 240

CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................................................... 265

BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................................................... 270

vi

Table of Figures Figure 1: Mary shows off her “Jungle Red” manicure. ................................................................ 56

Figure 2: Sylvia (left) and Nancy face off .................................................................................... 58

Figure 3: Miriam (left) and Mary near the end of the film. .......................................................... 61

Figure 4: Peggy (left) and Mary hug on the train to Reno. ........................................................... 62

Figure 5: Helen and Jessie (with her back to the camera) discuss Bran’s infidelities. ................. 66

Figure 6: Rosa (left) and Jessie at their first meeting. .................................................................. 69

Figure 7: Mary (left) and Clare at the piano with Jimmy behind them in the 1933 version. ........ 75

Figure 8: Mary (right) sits at Clare’s feet in the 1941 version. ..................................................... 78

Figure 9: Mary (left) and Clare in their final scene together in the 1933 version. ....................... 79

Figure 10: Kit shakes some sense into Millie. .............................................................................. 86

Figure 11: Kit (left) and Millie toast to their friendship. .............................................................. 89

Figure 12: Martha (left) and Karen discuss their plans for the school in their shared room at

college. .......................................................................................................................................... 95

Figure 13: Karen (left) and Martha share a moment of connection. ............................................. 98

Figure 14: Mary (right) demands that Rosalie swear allegiance. ............................................... 101

Figure 15: Sandra (left) and Maggie during their first scene together. ....................................... 103

Figure 16: Sandra (left) and Maggie during their second encounter. ......................................... 104

Figure 17: Maggie (foreground) and Sandra share a moment of connection. ............................ 107

Figure 18: Maggie (left) and Sandra return to their pre-desert interlude configuration. ............ 109

Figure 19: Violet (centre) places a protective arm around Maggie during a confrontation with

Pete. ............................................................................................................................................. 112

Figure 20: Pony (left) and Virginia in their dorm room. ............................................................ 138

Figure 21: Jane (second from right) meets the glamour girls. .................................................... 142

Figure 22: The dreeps. ................................................................................................................ 146

Figure 23: The friends help Franky (left) prepare for her date. .................................................. 161

Figure 24: Jerry (right) comforts a distraught Connie. ............................................................... 162

Figure 25: The women walk together. ........................................................................................ 165

Figure 26: The women disappear into the fog together at the film’s end. .................................. 167

Figure 27: The women seen from the point of view of the police. ............................................. 168

vii

Figure 28:Gabby (centre) watches as Mary (right) and Betty argue. ......................................... 169

Figure 29: The friends choose sleep over work. ......................................................................... 175

Figure 30: Eve (standing at left) commands the attention of the group. ..................................... 177

Figure 31: The women watch with glee as Jean (standing right) fight over a pair of stockings. 178

Figure 32: One of the many reaction shots used in Stage Door shows Jean (left) and Annie react

with emotion to Terry’s curtain speech. ..................................................................................... 181

Figure 33: Jean and Terry solidify their friendship with a hug................................................... 182

Figure 34: Blondie (left) and Lottie hug as Lottie departs to begin her stage career.................. 184

Figure 35: Larry (centre) quite literally comes between the two friends. ................................... 185

Figure 36: A close-up of the friends grasping each other during “The Whip.” .......................... 187

Figure 37: Judy (right) and Bubbles reconcile at the film’s end................................................. 191

Figure 38: In a montage sequence, the nurses are shown trying on their new uniforms. ........... 224

Figure 39: The women gather around to help a fellow nurse who has collapsed from exhaustion.

..................................................................................................................................................... 225

Figure 40: Davy comforts a tearful Olivia with a hug. ............................................................... 228

Figure 41: Davy comforts Olivia in a shot reminiscent of their hug on the ship. ....................... 229

Figure 42: Helen (centre) tells a story in the bunker. ................................................................. 236

Figure 43: The women prepare to exit the bunker. ..................................................................... 237

Figure 44: The women share a meal in the bunker. .................................................................... 238

Figure 45: Val (left) and Leigh (right) face off for the first time while Ann (centre) mediates. 247

Figure 46: Val (left) and Leigh (right) shake hands while Ann (centre) looks on...................... 248

Figure 47: Ann (left), Val (centre), and Leigh (right) in the film’s final shot. ........................... 250

Figure 48: The women work together to fix the general’s car. ................................................... 252

Figure 49: Whitney comforts Mary Kate (lying down in foreground) while Una (background)

looks on. ...................................................................................................................................... 255

Figure 50: Whitney gets soaked in “What Makes a WAVE?” ................................................... 256

Figure 51: The women sing “What Good Is a Gal (Without a Guy)?”....................................... 258

Figure 52: Whitney and Una take the initiative. ......................................................................... 260

Figure 53: Mary Kate (left), Whitney (centre), and Una (right) listen to Stauton’s speech. ...... 262

1

Introduction

At the climax of Calamity Jane (David Butler, 1953), the titular protagonist (Doris Day)

learns that her close friend Katie (Allyn Ann McLerie) has left Deadwood on a stagecoach bound

for Chicago. Calamity Jane (or “Calam” as her friends call her throughout the film) leaps on her

horse and races after the stagecoach, intent on stopping Katie from leaving. As Calam rides,

stirring music fills the soundtrack and the camera pans across dramatic prairie vistas. When

Calam catches up with Katie, she explains that Katie’s departure has been predicated on the kind

of elaborate romantic misunderstanding common to the classical Hollywood musical: Katie

believed that she and Calam were in love with the same man and, so, Katie chose to step aside

for the sake of friendship. Fortunately, Calam reveals to Katie that she was secretly in love with

another man all along. Voice brimming with emotion, Calam asks, “Where are we headin’?

Chicag-y or back to Deadwood?” Katie enthusiastically responds, “Deadwood, Calam. Oh!”,

and the two share a tender hug. The camera lingers briefly on Calam’s joyful face before

dissolving back to Deadwood for a finale that promises resolution through wedded bliss. In

many ways, the film offers the expected ending for a classical Hollywood musical, emphasizing

the satisfying completion of the narrative through the protagonist’s happy marriage to the correct

man. At the same time, the emotional impact of Calamity Jane’s ending rests on the centrality of

female friendship to its storyline. Throughout the film, both women grow and develop as a result

of their nurturing bond with each other. Calam’s dramatic ride (with its nods to classical

Western iconography) and the poignant reunion between the two women serves as the emotional

climax of the film’s final act, establishing the reconstitution of the bond between the friends as a

key element of the film’s fulfilling resolution. Indeed, the importance of female friendship is

2

solidified in the film’s final scene in which Calam and Katie marry their respective men in a joint

wedding before embarking on what appears to be a joint honeymoon.

The final sequence of Calamity Jane exemplifies an approach to female friendship that I

identify in many classical Hollywood films throughout this dissertation. While not positioned at

the centre of the narrative, the friendship between Katie and Calam plays a fundamental

structural role in the film, facilitating Calam’s character development from tomboy to lady and

ensuring a romantic Hollywood ending. At the same time, Katie and Calam’s relationship offers

more than just a reinforcement of classical closure. Throughout the film, the bond between Katie

and Calam is presented as a source of affection and support, both emotional and practical. The

two discuss their hopes and fears, teach each other their trademark skills, and even share a house

for the bulk of the film (an element that has also allowed the film to become something of a

queer classic).1 While their bond is challenged by romantic complications, the film ultimately

culminates in the final sequence discussed above in which Calam realizes that she cannot be

happy without ensuring her friend’s happiness as well. Focusing on the female friendship in

Calamity Jane reveals both a complex new dimension to the film and a fascinating portrait of

how female friendship was understood and conceptualized for American audiences.

In this project, I examine representations of female friendship in Hollywood films from

1930-1953. I seek to demonstrate that the first half of the twentieth century was a crucial period

of transition in thinking about female friendship and how women relate to other women.

Following the passage of women’s suffrage in 1920 in the United States, women’s lives

underwent significant changes, prompting a negotiation between past models of womanhood and

1 See for example Patricia White, Uninvited: Classical Hollywood and Lesbian

Representability (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 38-39.

3

new and emerging ideas about womanhood. These changes are well represented by looking at

women’s relationships with each other and how they change and evolve across the early

twentieth century. In examining these relationships, I draw on a wide variety of sources from

socio-cultural histories of women in America to contemporary periodicals and fan magazines.

Most crucially, I examine the films themselves for what they can tell us about how women’s

friendships were understood and represented. I argue that the portrait of female friendship that

emerges is ultimately complex and fluid. The films I examine throughout this dissertation

demonstrate the tension and negotiation between traditional models of female friendship and

emerging twentieth-century models of female friendship.

As I argue below, the first half of the twentieth century is largely marked by an

increasing distrust of close friendships between women and a subsequent pivot towards a

redefinition of and reinvestment in heterosexual courtship and marriage. At the same time,

widespread socio-cultural changes were bringing about circumstances through which women

were spending increasing amounts of time with their peers. Bonds between women proved

particularly crucial for navigating the changing landscape of the twentieth century. I argue that

the period I examine marked a time in which connectivity between women was becoming more

important than it had ever been before. Women were meeting, learning about, and forming

bonds with increasing numbers of other women, including those with lives and experiences

radically different from their own. The movies themselves played a role in creating this

connectivity between women, both as a public, social space and, most pertinently for this

dissertation, as a platform for female viewers to connect with and relate to other women. Socio-

cultural historians of the early twentieth century frequently credit Hollywood films, an extremely

popular and widely disseminated mass cultural form, as a key force in propagating desirable and

4

influential images of human behaviour. Film form works to connect the viewer with the

characters and the actresses who play them in powerfully affective ways, making film a medium

ideally suited for conveying the intense emotions associated with female friendship. Many of

the films I examine pick up and reinforce ideas about female friendship that were already

circulating in popular discourse, albeit with a distinctly Hollywood spin. Conflict and

competition, particularly over men, becomes a key feature of women’s onscreen friendships, an

approach well suited to Hollywood’s need for drama and emphasis on romantic love. As I will

demonstrate, many films that feature female friendship try to smooth out the disruptive potential

of close bonds between women, placing female friendship in the service of clear narrative and a

Hollywood happy ending. At the same time, tensions continue to surface, pointing away from

conventional closure toward possibilities ranging from homoerotic intimacy to feminist

camaraderie.

Creating a cohesive definition of female friendship is necessarily difficult, but certain

commonalities emerge from the time period and the body of films that I am examining in this

dissertation. Broadly speaking, I identify the period from 1920-1953 as marking a shift in

female friendship trends away from the intense, dyadic friendships of the Victorian period and

towards social, collective friendship groups. This does not mean, however, that Victorian style

friendships disappear entirely. Indeed, the period I examine is marked by continuous

negotiations and contradictions, allowing multiple friendship styles to exist simultaneously. I

argue that many of the traits prized in Victorian friendships, most notably emotional intimacy,

reciprocity, equality, and supportiveness, continued to define the new friendship styles that

would emerge in the twentieth century. At the same time, these Victorian traits were re-

imagined in a new context. Group friendships are emblematic of the increasingly public lives of

5

twentieth-century women as well as both the new opportunities and new challenges that came

with these lives. In addition to the emotional support that was so important to Victorian

friendships, women’s friendships took on a newly pragmatic function as practical support

became increasingly important. The films I examine take up many of these key elements of

female friendship, translating them into visual and narrative terms. One hallmark of these

friendships is intimate, confessional conversations between the friends in which they discuss

their lives and their emotions. These conversations focus on private hopes and fears and are

typically marked by a high degree of honesty. Frequently, the female protagonists are initially

reluctant to confront and express their true feelings. Thus, the scenes in which they finally do

open up serve as a kind of climax, both in terms of the friendship and in terms of the character’s

journey within the larger narrative, reinforcing the importance of female friendship as a narrative

device. The emotional intimacy between the characters is also visually represented through

physical affection. These displays of physical affection can be highly demonstrative and

effusive, drawing on the Victorian mode of romantic friendship. Alternatively, affection can be

expressed in small moments of physical contact, such as a supportive hand on a friend’s shoulder

after a long day of work. Another key hallmark of friendship seen across all the films I will

discuss is the ability to comfortably share space, particularly domestic space, marked as separate

from the public, male-dominated world. Across a wide variety of films, female friends share

apartments, invite each other into their homes, create new spaces together, and help each other

cope with temporary or makeshift dwellings. Visually, the connection between friendship and

shared space is further highlighted by choices in blocking and framing that allow friends to share

the screen with each other. The use of domestic space emphasizes the fundamental togetherness

6

at the heart of the friendships explored in these films, a comfort in sharing space with each other

even in times of conflict.

In researching this project, there have been two major obstacles that I have had to

confront. One is the relative lack of work in cinema studies on female friendship on screen

before approximately the late 1970s. The other is the lack of historical research more generally

about female friendship in the first half of the twentieth century, specifically before the rise of

the women’s movement in the 1960s. The women’s movement of the sixties is often viewed as

providing the impetus for serious considerations of the importance of bonding and camaraderie

between women. As a result, much of the existing work about female friendship on film

examines films made post-1970 that explicitly foreground female friendship.2 The perception

thus emerges that few films dealing with female friendship were made before the attention

brought to the subject by second-wave feminism. While the work done on more contemporary

female friendship films is certainly valuable, my project argues for the importance of women’s

friendships as a significant, if marginalized, discourse in classical Hollywood film. These

friendships disrupt the frequently pessimistic readings of traditional feminist theory by offering

the prospect of productive and supportive relationships between women. In this way, I argue

that these films offer key feminist precursors to the more overt celebrations of sisterhood in the

films of the 1970s and beyond. By shedding light on this habitually overlooked aspect of

classical Hollywood cinema, I hope to offer a new perspective on the feminist potential of these

works. As I will demonstrate, female friendship plays a fundamental if underexplored role in

many classical Hollywood films centred around female protagonists. In what follows, I explore

2 For example, both Karen Hollinger and Lucy Fischer (whose work is discussed below)

largely focus on films made post-1970.

7

the complex and often contradictory ways in which female friendship functions in a wide variety

of films. Taken together, this work can tell us how female friendship was understood and

represented in the pivotal period between women’s suffrage and the second-wave feminism of

the 1960s.

Female friendship and film theory

While a few scholars have written extensively on female friendship on film, the topic has

generally received very little attention from feminist film scholars, particularly in the context of

classical Hollywood. I would argue that the reason for this is twofold. On the one hand, a great

deal of traditional feminist film theory has drawn on Freudian psychoanalytic paradigms that

leave little room for theorizing women’s relationships with other women and promote a tendency

to focus on a specific type of woman’s film. The typical definition of the woman’s film suggests

that these films “treat problems defined as ‘female.’”3 These female problems are usually

defined in relatively traditional terms with films focused on marriage and motherhood being

treated as especially privileged examples of the genre. In writing about precedents for the

contemporary female friendship film, Karen Hollinger seems to reinforce this view when she

writes, “…the plots of 1930s and 1940s woman’s films make it clear that the issues filmmakers

deemed important to women in that time period involved romance and domesticity, not female

friendship.”4 In her influential book on the woman’s film The Desire to Desire, Mary Ann

Doane outlines four categories of films (the medical discourse film, the maternal melodrama, the

3 Mary Ann Doane, The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s (Bloomington

& Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987), 3. 4 Karen Hollinger, In the Company of Women: Contemporary Female Friendship Films

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 27.

8

love story, and the gothic) that appear to have been extremely influential in guiding the focus of

future feminist film scholars. All of these categories focus on an individual female protagonist

as she confronts issues relating to the men in her life with such films as Now, Voyager (Irving

Rapper, 1942), Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937), Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945), Letter

from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls, 1948), and Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)

becoming privileged examples of the genre. The psychoanalytic model is particularly well suited

to an analysis of the gothic and noir-influenced films of the 1940s that engage rather explicitly

with Oedipal themes. While much interesting work has been done on these films and the kinds

of female problems that they present, this focus has tended to marginalize any meaningful

engagement with these films that does not ultimately reinforce a conception of women trapped

within oppressive patriarchal paradigms. While some feminist scholars (such as Hollinger) have

turned to object relations theory as a more productive paradigm for exploring relationships

between women, this still roots women’s relationships with each other in an ultimately negative

experience.

In the paragraphs that follow, I offer a brief survey of the limited work that has already

been done on female friendship in classical Hollywood cinema. Much of this work positions

itself (either explicitly or implicitly) as working to push back against the monolithic pessimism

of the psychoanalytic approach to feminist film theory that frames women onscreen as fetishized

objects for male enjoyment while placing women offscreen in a viewing position of passive

complicity that can only be avoided through total rejection. The conflict between these two

positions is exemplified in two radically different essays addressing Howard Hawks’ 1953 film

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Maureen Turim’s “Gentlemen Consume Blondes” outlines a fairly

typical psychoanalytic/Marxist stance that sees the film’s central female characters (played by

9

Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell) as the object of a voyeuristic male gaze. Turim decries their

“exploitation as objects being trotted back and forth, up and down the screen like ducks in a

shooting gallery”5 and the treatment of their bodies as commodities in a capitalist exchange both

within the narrative (where Monroe’s character “sells” her body to a rich husband) and within

the larger Hollywood system (where Monroe and Russell’s bodies are used to sell the film

itself).6 Turim ends her essay by emphasizing that Monroe and Russell’s relationship is not self-

sufficient; it requires male spectators (both inside and outside of the text) in order to exist.

As a response to Turim’s essay (particularly her final conclusion), Lucie Arbuthnot and

Gail Seneca’s “Pre-text and Text in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” argues for finding distinctly

feminist pleasures in dominant cultural texts by reading “against the grain.” Arbuthnot and

Seneca explain that they embarked on their essay in an attempt to understand why they find the

film so immensely pleasurable.7 They ultimately suggest that they find the film pleasurable for

two reasons: first, Monroe and Russell’s resistance to male objectification and, second, Monroe

and Russell’s connection to each other. In contrast to Turim, Arbuthnot and Seneca argue that

Monroe and Russell portray active characters who return the aggressive gaze of the male

characters, control the onscreen space, and initiate their romantic relationships with men.8

Moreover, they strongly counter Turim’s view that Monroe and Russell’s friendship exists only

for men. They argue that this relationship is emphasized at both the narrative and formal levels

of the film, that it is free of the usual competitiveness that characterizes female friendships

5 Turim, Maureen, “Gentlemen Consume Blondes,” in Issues in Feminist Film Criticism,

ed. Patricia Erens (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), 105. 6 Turim, 106. 7 Lucie Arbuthnot and Gail Seneca, “Pre-text and Text in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” in

Issues in Feminist Film Criticism, ed. Patricia Erens (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana

University Press, 1990), 112. 8 Arbuthnot and Seneca, 116-117.

10

onscreen, and that the two women’s relationships with men are never privileged over their

relationship with each other. Throughout their essay, Arbuthnot and Seneca advocate for a move

away from discussions of how films either affirm or deny male pleasure and agency in favour of

a focus on discovering feminist pleasures in dominant cinema.

Arbuthnot and Seneca’s work has certainly had a profound influence on my own thinking

about female friendship in classical Hollywood cinema. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is not

necessarily about female friendship, but the friendship between the two female protagonists

forms an important part of the narrative. In many of the films I examine in my project, I will

similarly be looking past some of the more obvious narrative elements (particularly the

ubiquitous heterosexual love story) to focus on the presentation of friendships between women.

As well, like Arbuthnot and Seneca and many other feminist critics, I have generally chosen to

work with films that I find pleasurable and rewarding in their own right. Many of the scholars I

survey below emphasize the potential for productive and even subversive feminist readings of

mainstream Hollywood texts. These scholars emphasize the availability of a multiplicity of

reading positions that decenter traditional psychoanalytic theory and allow for new ways of

reading familiar texts. Below, I examine the work of scholars that specifically address female

friendship in classical Hollywood cinema. For all of these scholars, the representation of female

friendship on film offers a potential site of resistance to the dominant discourse of mainstream

Hollywood cinema. This work has certainly informed and shaped my project, but, even taken

together, I find that it fails to provide a comprehensive account of the complexities of female

friendships onscreen. Most of these scholars explore only a limited number of films that lead to

a similarly limited conclusion, such as Karen Hollinger’s choice to treat A Letter to Three Wives

as representative of the group friendship film. In other cases, the authors focus on only a certain

11

type of onscreen friend, such as Judith Roof’s focus on the female comic second. In my

discussion below, I highlight the elements of each work that I find useful as well as those

elements that I hope to shine new light on in my own research.

In Shot/Countershot: Film Tradition and Women’s Cinema, Lucy Fisher investigates the

question of how to consider cinematic works by women artists within a predominantly male

artistic tradition. Should these works be integrated into the (predominantly male) canon at the

risk of ignoring their unique features or should the gender of their creators be emphasized at the

risk of reinforcing essentialism?9 Fischer ultimately chooses to examine films by women within

the context of films by men, creating an intertextual debate between films about similar subjects

within each chapter of her book.10 Fischer takes up female friendships in the chapter “Girl

Groups: Female Friendships.” Although the two films that Fischer analyzes throughout the bulk

of the chapter are not from the classical Hollywood period, her work does provide some

generally useful arguments about female friendships both on and off the screen. Fischer begins

by drawing upon Molly Haskell’s complaint in From Reverence to Rape that camaraderie

between women largely disappeared from Hollywood films in the 1960s,11 an observation that

Fischer extends to the present moment of her writing in the 1980s.12 Fischer’s book utilizes a

variety of different methodological approaches and in this chapter, she notes that she will draw

on the strengths of the largely neglected sociological approach to film analysis.13 She chooses to

take this approach because the two films that are the focus of this chapter, Rich and Famous

9 Lucy Fischer, Shot/Countershot: Film Tradition and Women’s Cinema (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1989), 6. 10 Fischer, 12. 11 Fischer, 216-217. 12 Fischer, 218. 13 Fischer, 218

12

(George Cukor, 1981) and Girlfriends (Claudia Weill, 1978), both adhere to a seamless classical

style unlike the more formally inventive films that have been the focus of her other chapters.14

To this end, Fischer draws on contemporary research (chiefly Robert R. Bell’s Worlds of

Friendship and Lillian B. Rubin’s Just Friends) that speaks to the importance of friendship in the

lives of real women.15 Despite this seeming importance, Fischer argues that negative portrayals

of friendships between women continue to be the norm in film.16 In her negative assessment of

Rich and Famous, Fischer draws on the sociological research to argue that the film’s

presentation of female friendship is highly distorted and should be read instead as a projection of

male discomfort with close friendships between women. By contrast, Girlfriends is a more

complex portrayal of female friendship and provides an interesting twist on the familiar plot of

two women competing for the same man. Fischer argues that Girlfriends instead provides a

model in which the female protagonist vies with a man for the time and attention of her female

friend.17 Fischer also raises questions about the importance of form in feminist film production.

Although Girlfriends presents a more nuanced approach to narratives about female friendship, it

largely adheres to classical formal techniques. Still, Fischer argues that the radical

deconstruction offered by films like Riddle of the Sphinx (Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, 1977)

can alienate many mainstream viewers and without these viewers, “for whom can it be said that

the critique is raised?”18 This perspective is useful for my own work on female friendship films

since the classical Hollywood films that I am working with are not noted for their formal

14 Fischer, 218 15 Fischer, 221. 16 Fischer, 223. 17 Fischer, 235. 18 Fischer, 248.

13

innovation, but are still able to offer subtly subversive critiques through their focus on

relationships between women.

Jeanine Basinger’s A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960

surveys a wide range of female-centric films from the classical Hollywood era. Basinger

celebrates the films for offering their female protagonists (and by extension their female viewers)

a temporary liberation from patriarchal oppression that, she argues, cannot be entirely undone by

the films’ recuperative endings. Basinger takes up the subject of relations between women in the

chapter “Duality: ‘My God! There’s Two of Her!’” She argues that films with multiple female

protagonists are designed to illustrate the different life choices available to women with the

ultimate goal of encouraging the female spectator to the make the “right” choice (typically the

choice of love and marriage). As the title of the chapter indicates, Basinger is largely concerned

with films with two protagonists who represent highly polarized life choices. These can be

divided into 3 categories: (1) Good sister/bad sister films, such as Leave Her to Heaven (John M.

Stahl, 1945) and A Stolen Life (Curtis Bernhardt, 1946); (2) Films in which a lone female

protagonist pretends to be someone else, such as Midnight (Mitchell Leisen, 1939) and Two-

Faced Woman (George Cukor, 1941); and (3) Films in which a woman must make a choice

between two lifestyles represented by two supporting characters, such as The Man I Love (Raoul

Walsh, 1947) and Daisy Kenyon (Otto Preminger, 1947). Basinger also briefly touches on the

multiple protagonist film (“there’s three of her”19). She claims that the multiple protagonist film

does not ask the viewer to “involve [herself] emotionally”20 with the right or wrong choice, but

19 Jeanine Basinger, A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960

(Hanover, University Press of New England, 1993), 109. 20 Basinger,111.

14

to simply “watch and observe.”21 It is, however, not entirely clear how or why Basinger sees this

as the typical or default spectatorial experience of the multiple protagonist film. Furthermore,

she suggests that the multiple protagonist film promotes the same kind of “right” choice as the

dual protagonist film so that there ultimately appears to be very little difference between the two

types of films other than the number of protagonists/choices. Basinger does acknowledge that

some women’s films celebrate sisterhood, but the only example she gives is the two versions of

When Ladies Meet (Harry Beaumont, 1933 and Robert Z. Leonard, 1941) and she treats these

films only very briefly despite acknowledging that their popularity was “proof positive that

women liked such stories.”22 I find it curious that Basinger mentions When Ladies Meet as the

sole example of women’s films celebrating sisterhood. Received wisdom about the way the

Hollywood studio system operated would suggest that if the first film was popular enough to

warrant a remake, it would also have inspired a number of copycat films attempting to profit off

of its success that may have contained similar explorations of sisterhood.

Karen Hollinger’s In the Company of Women: Contemporary Female Friendship Films

deals largely with films made after 1970 that fall outside of the scope of my project, but her book

does include one chapter on classical Hollywood films as well as offer a more extensive

theorization of the female friendship film than any of the authors I have discussed so far.

Hollinger argues that the female friendship film fits within the larger generic category of the

woman’s film,23 a claim that I take up and revise within my project. Hollinger examines the

tension between what she terms the “progressive” and the “recuperative” in the texts that she

analyzes, suggesting that female friendship films are particularly fertile ground for negotiation

21 Basinger, 111. 22 Basinger, 99. 23 Hollinger, In the Company of Women, 1-2.

15

between these two terms.24 She argues that the friendship films she examines explicitly work to

assimilate progressive ideas about female identity drawn from second-wave feminism into

mainstream, classical film texts.25 As a result, these female friendship texts offer both

progressive and recuperative elements, leaving it largely up to the viewer to construct the reading

she prefers.26 In theorizing female friendship films, Hollinger draws upon Janet Todd’s work on

friendship between women in literature. Todd divides female friendship representations into five

categories: sentimental, erotic, manipulative, political, and social.27 Sentimental friendship texts

involve close emotional bonds between two women that encourage the personal and

psychological growth of the protagonists.28 Erotic friendship texts involve explicitly lesbian

relationships and typically focus on a coming-out narrative, in which the protagonist discovers

and explores her emerging lesbian identity.29 Manipulative friendship texts deal with friendships

that typically begin as sentimental friendship before becoming antagonistic with one of the

friends ultimately revealed as disloyal.30 Political friendship texts substitute the intense

emotional attachment of other friendship texts with an alliance that involves overt political action

against the existing social structure.31 Finally, social friendship texts involve a group of women

who support and nurture each other in a manner similar to sentimental friendship texts.32

Hollinger largely adopts these categories for her book although she retitles the manipulative

friendship text as the “anti-friendship” text and includes a chapter that specifically focuses on

24 Hollinger, 3-6. 25 Hollinger, 6. 26 Hollinger, 6. 27 Hollinger, 7. 28 Hollinger, 7. 29 Hollinger, 7. 30 Hollinger, 7. 31 Hollinger, 8. 32 Hollinger, 8.

16

friendship films featuring women of colour. While I will not be adopting Todd’s and Hollinger’s

categories or terminology for my own work, the films that I will be examining certainly display

elements of each of these friendship categories to different degrees. As I will elaborate below,

social, manipulative, and sentimental friendships are readily apparent in classical Hollywood

films, but political friendships also appear in select historical moments and erotic friendships can

be found lurking at the margins of the narrative.

While Hollinger’s book largely focuses on films made in the 1980s and 1990s, her book

begins with a chapter on “Women’s Film Precedents” that explores female friendship in films of

the classical Hollywood era. Most relevant for my project is Hollinger’s analysis of A Letter to

Three Wives (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1949), which she positions as exemplary of the group

friendship films. Hollinger argues that these films ultimately end up reinforcing the message that

women should dedicate themselves to their romantic relationships with men and forgo both

friendships with other women and attempts at a meaningful career.33 I would argue, however,

that this generalization is clearly shaped by the choice of A Letter to Three Wives as Hollinger’s

case study. As the title clearly indicates, the bond between the women in this film is largely

predicated on their status as wives. While the wives are presented as friends to each other

(particularly in an early sequence between Jeanne Crain and Ann Sothern), the film’s focus is

largely on each woman’s relationship with her husband and the question of whether she has been

a “good” wife. My analytic approach will also differ from Hollinger’s by putting greater

emphasis on reading classical Hollywood films “against the grain.” While these films

undoubtedly celebrate traditional views of love and marriage, they also offer interesting and

33 Hollinger, 39.

17

nuanced portrayals of friendships between women that, as in the contemporary films that are

Hollinger’s focus, coexist with their recuperative elements.

Judith Roof’s All About Thelma and Eve: Sidekicks and Third Wheels looks at secondary

comic female characters who are typically close friends and confidantes of the female leads.

Roof argues that the comic seconds that are the focus of her work reflect cultural anxieties about

gender and class through their association with a “middle” space.34 This involves both their

relegation to the middle portions of the narrative (their fate is often left unspecified at the film’s

end) and their ability to occupy a middle position in relation to gender identity and sexuality.

Roof also posits these comic seconds as serving as a form of audience surrogate, a character with

whom the viewer can identify because her perspective mimics the viewer’s own.35 Roof takes up

two films that I discuss in my own work, The Women and Stage Door, and is one of the few

scholars who provides a more nuanced reading of The Women. Overall, however, Roof’s focus

is largely on the marginal status of these secondary comic characters and their relationship to the

female leads. By contrast, my work focuses on a wider range of female friendships on screen,

including those where two or more female friends share the spotlight.

Historical accounts of female friendship

As I mentioned earlier, the other major obstacle to my work is the general paucity of

research about women’s friendships in the first half of the twentieth century. What makes this

particularly notable is the fact that considerable work has been done on female friendship in the

years immediately preceding and immediately following this historical gap. Female friendship

34 Judith Roof, All About Thelma and Eve: Sidekicks and Third Wheels (Urbana and

Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 15. 35 Roof, 92.

18

in the Victorian era has attracted considerable scholarly attention due to the effusive and

passionate prose in which Victorian friends expressed their affection for one another. Similarly,

the emergence of second-wave feminism has drawn considerable attention to the importance of

sisterhood and friendship for the enrichment of women’s lives both personally and politically

from the 1960s to the present day. Some of the authors I have cited above such as Hollinger and

Fischer draw from late-twentieth century sociological works to enhance their analysis of female

friendship on film. While this approach is well suited to their focus on late twentieth-century

film, I find that these works clearly speak to the lives and friendships of women situated in a

post-1960s historical moment who have an overt consciousness of the value and importance of

sisterhood between women. How, then, can we account for the gap in research about female

friendship in the first half of the twentieth century?

Before answering this question, I want to take a look at some of the work that has been

done on friendships between women before the twentieth century. Taken together, this work

argues that female friendship was a vital part of the lives of many women throughout history.

The friendships explored in this body of work range from the highly emotional, sentimental

friendships experienced by upper-class women in Victorian England to the bonds created by

shared domestic labour in eighteenth- and nineteenth- century New England. What unites the

friendship experienced by these women is its dual nature, simultaneously forging a shared proto-

feminist solidarity and reinforcing traditional gender norms. In an era in which women’s lives

were marked by their subordination to men (both socially and economically), friendships

between women could allow for a degree of equality and reciprocity absent from their

interactions with men. The bonds formed between women certainly enriched their lives both

emotionally and practically. At the same time, these bonds were viewed as secondary to the

19

eventual relationship a woman was expected to form with her husband and children. Female

friendship could provide a training ground for the skills that would make a woman a successful

wife and mother, particularly in fostering the appropriately feminine virtues of empathy and

compromise. Similarly, pre-twentieth-century women were largely confined to the domestic

sphere, a world separate from the public sphere of politics and commerce occupied by men.

Still, the alliances these women formed would eventually move into the realm of direct political

action. Beginning with the formation of various clubs, societies, and other institutions (including

all-girls schools), women banding together to support one another eventually led to the final push

for women’s suffrage in the early twentieth century. Also notable in this body of literature is the

significant work that has been done on female friendship in Victorian literature. Sharon Marcus

and Tess Cosslett are just two of the scholars I have chosen to single out below, but they

exemplify trends across this body of work. While female friendship rarely took centre stage in

Victorian fiction, the relationship between the protagonist and her closest female friend was

instrumental in shaping the narrative and, perhaps most importantly, for bringing about the

happy marriage with which these novels inevitably ended.

Sharon Marcus’ Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian

England provides a particularly useful look at the importance of female friendships in the lives

of Victorian women. Significantly for my work, Marcus examines both the lifewriting (letters,

memoirs, diaries, etc.) of a range of Victorian women and the portrayal of female friendships in

Victorian novels (including novels written by women). Marcus emphasizes both the multiplicity

of relationships between women in Victorian society and the complex ways in which these same-

sex relationships coexisted with heterosexual relationships. On the one hand, female friendship

helped prepare women for marriage by cultivating the appropriately feminine virtues of

20

sympathy, altruism, and compromise that would make them into desirable wives and mothers.36

On the other hand, women’s friendships were also defined by genuine affection and pleasure,

and offered an opportunity for women to engage in behaviour that was typically seen as more

fitting of men, such as competition, active choice, and an appreciation of female beauty.37 One

of the most notable aspects of Victorian women’s friendships (remarked upon by virtually all

scholars) is the unreserved expression of love and affection (including physical affection) that

characterizes their letters to one another. Because of the time and attention that a Victorian

woman was expected to lavish on her female friends, these sentimental friendships are typically

seen as characteristic of upper or middle class women.38 Working-class women, by contrast, still

formed close bonds with other women (particularly coworkers or employers), but were far less

likely to express their devotion in the effusive language of sentimental friendship.39 (However, it

is also important to consider the relative paucity of sources from working-class women, who

were presumably less likely to have the time or inclination for the kind of lifewriting that Marcus

uses as her primary source.)

The importance of female friendship in Victorian women’s lives also carries over into

Marcus’ analysis of Victorian literature. Marcus examines a number of Victorian novels with

female protagonists and notes that, although the narratives are frequently centred around

heterosexual marriage, the protagonist frequently has a female friend who is also instrumental to

the narrative. Marcus notes that “the female friend is not a static or dispensable secondary

36 Sharon Marcus, Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian

England (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), 26. 37 Marcus, 26. 38 Marcus, 69. 39 Marcus, 69.

21

character but one with a crucial role to play in achieving the marriage plot’s end.”40 Marcus

outlines what she calls “the plot of female amity.” While the heterosexual couple at the heart of

the Victorian marriage plot spends the novel entangled in misunderstandings and other obstacles,

the female protagonist often enjoys a stable and openly supportive relationship with a female

friend throughout the entire course of the novel.41 Marcus argues that it is the very stability of

these friendships that prevents them from attracting much critical attention.42 Because female

friendship is not presented as a site of competition or conflict, it largely eludes extended critical

analysis. The female friend is also actively involved in bringing about the happy resolution of

the marriage plot. For Tess Cosslett, this is the moment that demonstrates the importance of

female friendship to the Victorian novel. While an entire novel may not be “about” female

friendship per se, “The coming together of two women is often essential to the resolution of the

plot, figuring as a necessary stage in the heroine’s maturation and readiness for the marriage that

conventionally closes the action.”43 This can involve either two rivals reconciling their

differences or two female friends who represent opposing “types” acquiring traits from each

other that prepare them for marriage.44 I discuss the plot of female amity in more detail in

Chapter One, where it offers an interesting comparison to Hollywood’s approach to female

friendship.

The dual nature of female friendship is reinforced by Nancy Cott in her work on female

friendship in New England from 1780-1835, suggesting that women’s friendships both

40 Marcus, 79. 41 Marcus, 82. 42 Marcus, 82. 43 Tess Cosslett, Woman to Woman: Female Friendship in Victorian Fiction (Atlantic

Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1988), 3. 44 Cosslett, 3.

22

encouraged their confinement to the domestic sphere while also laying the foundations for later

feminist movements by creating a common vocation rooted in gender solidarity. As Cott writes,

“The ‘woman question’ and the women’s rights movement of the nineteenth century were

predicated on the appearance of women as a discrete class and on the concomitant group-

consciousness of sisterhood.”45 In this era, New England women were associated with the heart,

meaning that they were ultimately defined by the positive affective relationships they developed

with other people.46 On the one hand, this need to cultivate interpersonal relationships resulted

from women’s dependence on men for their survival.47 On the other hand, the belief that men

were too controlled by rationality to experience the same depth of emotion as women meant that

women were only able to seek complete emotional satisfaction with each other.48

Female friendships were also fostered by a woman’s involvement in various institutions.

As the nineteenth century progressed, the changes of the Industrial Revolution were reshaping

the lives of middle-class women by alleviating some of the more physically taxing labour

associated with running a household and allowing them more free time for pursuits outside of the

home.49 Perhaps one of the oldest institutions involved in (unwittingly) fostering female

friendship was the church. Some of our earliest historical knowledge of friendships between

women comes from nuns in the Middle Ages, one of the few groups of women who were able to

read and write and thus leave behind a record of their lives.50 The Christian revival in

45 Nancy Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman’s Sphere” in New England, 1780-

1835, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 194. 46 Cott, 165. 47 Cott, 167. 48 Cott, 168. 49 Marilyn Yalom and Theresa Donovan Brown, The Social Sex: A History of Female

Friendship (New York: Harper Perennial, 2015), 184-185. 50 Yalom and Brown, 51.

23

eighteenth- and nineteenth-century New England similarly inspired the development of

friendships based on shared discussions of faith and mutual outpourings of feeling.51 Indeed,

women were far more likely than men to become involved in revivalism, meaning that many

women, whose husbands did not share their devotion, were forced to turn to their female

friends.52 These religious gatherings also allowed women an acceptable avenue to develop and

utilize skills that went beyond the traditionally feminine, including public speaking, community

organizing, and fundraising.53 Schools for girls and young women were a particularly vital

institution that developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. By 1820, it was

common for (presumably upper-class) young women in New England to spend at least a few

months attending school.54 Not only did these schools gather a large number of young women in

close proximity to one another, but they also shared a philosophy that encouraged young women

to look to one another for support and guidance, typically resulting in particularly intense

friendships.55 By the second half of the nineteenth century, women’s colleges like Vassar,

Wellesley, and Bryn Mawr were providing an increasingly rigorous and serious education for

young women.56 Graduate schools were also increasingly opening up to women, typically with

the intention of training women for academic positions, although some would go on to careers in

fields like medicine and law that were just beginning to open up to women.57 While schools and

colleges increasingly became co-ed in the twentieth century, this continued to be an important

institution for forming female friendships as will be explored later in this dissertation.

51 Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood, 178-180. 52 Cott, 192. 53 Yalom and Brown, The Social Sex, 183. 54 Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood, 177. 55 Cott, 177. 56 Yalom and Brown, The Social Sex, 209. 57 Yalom and Brown, 211.

24

Friendships between women could also emerge from a shared involvement in clubs and

societies organized around a variety of interests and causes. Marilyn Yalom and Theresa

Donovan Brown’s The Social Sex: A History of Female Friendship traces these groups back to

the literary salons of seventeenth-century Europe, which often featured both men and women

discussing intellectual and artistic pursuits.58 By the eighteenth century, women were becoming

involved in explicitly political causes, such as the American Revolution. The American

Revolution proved to be a key political event for uniting women who viewed themselves as

actively involved in the cause through fundraising, boycotting British goods, and signing oaths

of loyalty.59 Notably, many of these women were related (either through blood or marriage) to

men who were actively involved in the Revolution.60 While this was thus a cause led by and

shared with the men in their lives, this involvement would lay the foundations for later causes in

which women would take the lead. In the nineteenth century, informal, women-only groups

would often develop around shared labour, particularly the “women’s work” of sewing and

quilting.61 At the same time, women’s church groups were becoming involved in local causes,

typically tending to orphans, unwed mothers, and the poor.62 These church groups laid the

groundwork for later women’s reform groups that would emerge throughout the nineteenth and

into the twentieth century and that would work for active reform around a wide range of issues,

including prostitution, temperance/prohibition, and women’s suffrage. The reform work of many

of these clubs appears to have been largely directed outwards. That is to say that these clubs

typically involved middle-class women attempting to improve the lives of those they perceived

58 Yalom and Brown, 102. 59 Yalom and Brown, 122. 60 Yalom and Brown, 123. 61 Yalom and Brown, 178-183. 62 Yalom and Brown, 185.

25

as less fortunate, either economically or morally. One of the earliest of these groups was the

New York Female Moral Reform Society, a group dedicated to eliminating prostitution; it would

eventually change its name to the American Female Moral Reform Society, as branches appeared

across the United States.63 Other clubs, like the Chicago Woman’s Club, were involved in

causes such as providing urban children the opportunity to partake in summer programs in the

countryside, which was presumably seen as offering benefits to both the children’s health and

their moral fiber (by taking them away from the detrimental effect of urban squalor).64

Distinct from the goals of these middle-class women’s clubs, urban working women

formed their own clubs designed to aid their members with matters both practical (by providing

loans, medical assistance, and job training) and social (by providing a safer gathering place than

the male domains of saloons and bars).65 Another key function of these clubs involved women

educating their peers in proper feminine behaviour. As Yalom and Brown write, “True friends

could dissuade their club sisters, for the sake of the group’s respectability, to avoid vulgar

behavior such as loud talking, slang, gum chewing, ostentatious clothing, and bold flirting.”66

This kind of peer-group instruction in correct behaviour would continue to be a key element of

friendships between young women in the twentieth century, even as the concept of “correct”

behaviour changed dramatically. Other groups of women, barred from joining the white, middle-

class clubs discussed above, formed their own societies. Black women created their own clubs,

such as the Colored Woman’s League (founded by Black teachers), which combined the

reformist outlook of the white women’s clubs with a desire to improve educational standards and

63 Yalom and Brown, 187. 64 Yalom and Brown, 200. 65 Yalom and Brown, 197. 66 Yalom and Brown, 198.

26

opportunities for Black Americans.67 Women from various ethnic groups also formed their own

clubs (such as the Polish Women’s Alliance and the Italian Women’s Civic Club), which were

dedicated to helping newly arrived immigrants integrate into American society.68

Perhaps one of the most notable of the women’s groups of the late nineteenth century is

the National Woman Suffrage Association, founded by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady

Stanton, whose friendship was rooted in their mutual interest in women’s rights.69 While the

success of this and other groups promoting women’s suffrage can be measured by the passage of

the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, the 1920s also witnessed “the disintegration of the self-

conscious female community that had fostered friendships in the context of Progressive reform

efforts and the battle for suffrage.”70 The serious image of the New Woman invested in religion,

education, and reform was giving way to the carefree flapper, with one Wellesley professor

bemoaning the fact that the “crusading comradeship” of women’s suffrage had fallen out of

favour with young women.71 While the advances gained by this early generation would continue

to have profound effects on the lives of these increasingly independent young women, there is a

sense that female friendship was becoming unfashionable by the beginning of the 1920s.

Women’s friendships in the twentieth century

In the friendships discussed by both Marcus and Cott, women’s friendships are defined

by a kind of reciprocity and equality that they are unable to experience in their relationships with

67 Yalom and Brown, 201. 68 Yalom and Brown, 201. 69 Yalom and Brown, 203. 70 Linda W. Rosenzweig, Another Self: Middle-Class American Women and Their

Friends in the Twentieth Century (New York and London: New York University Press, 1999),

106. 71 Yalom and Brown, The Social Sex, 231

27

men. At the same time, female friendship was seen as leading towards proper femininity, aiding

a young woman in adapting to her future role as a helper and comforter for her husband. By the

early twentieth century (particularly post-women’s suffrage), it appears to have been seen as

leading away from “proper” femininity.

In searching for a historically grounded approach to female friendship in the first half of

the twentieth century, I have found Linda W. Rosenzweig’s book Another Self: Middle-Class

American Women and Their Friends in the Twentieth Century to be particularly useful. Not only

does Rosenzweig’s book provide one of the few comprehensive studies of female friendship in

the twentieth century, but she also posits a shift in conceptions and patterns of female friendship

beginning around 1920 that helps to explain why this research has been so scarce. Rosenzweig

argues that after 1920, “[t]he legitimacy of close relationships between women was rejected, and

heterosexual interactions often took precedence over female friendship, although they did not

supplant it completely.”72

Rosenzweig identifies five key factors that helped to bring about this change: 1) changing

emotional standards that resulted in an emphasis on restraint rather than the effusive emotional

displays of the Victorians; 2) rising consumerism that fostered an attachment to goods rather than

people; 3) increasing reliance on expertise, with advice from experts supplanting advice from

family and friends; 4) the pressures of the heterosexual imperative; and 5) the stigmatization of

homosexuality.73 In this dissertation, I argue that the heterosexual imperative and the

stigmatization of homosexuality are particularly significant and intimately intertwined factors in

the representation of friendships between women in the classical Hollywood period. Many of

72 Rosenzweig, Another Self, 8. 73 Rosenzweig, 67.

28

the films that I examine position female friendship as ultimately structured by and around

women’s romantic relationships with men. Whether this involves single women aiding each

other in the quest for a husband or married women seeking emotional support in the face of

crumbling marriages, friends exist primarily to help navigate the troubled waters of heterosexual

romance. Rosenzweig further argues that the changes she notes were particularly prominent

among younger women (that is, those of the flapper generation or later who came of age in the

wake of women’s suffrage) who created a “distinctly new friendship style” compared to older

women (some of whom had come of age prior to 1920), who displayed greater continuity with

Victorian friendship models.74

In approaching the first two chapters of my dissertation, I have thus chosen to divide

them between those films featuring friendships that are more explicitly modelled on older

Victorian friendship styles and those films featuring friendships that are largely shaped by the

new friendship styles that emerged post-1920. Chapter One focuses on friendships that exhibit

continuity with Victorian models of female friendship. These are typically dyadic friendships

characterized by a high degree of emotional openness and reciprocal support. While the

friendship styles on display draw from Victorian influences, the crises faced by the protagonists

frequently point to twentieth-century changes with new ideas about marriage and divorce,

conflicts between career and love, and fears of lesbianism permeating the narrative. Chapter

Two focuses on friendships that display the influence of the newer friendship styles that

blossomed after 1920. The women in these films are often part of friendship groups with the

entire group working together to ensure the happiness of each of its members. In these films,

the emotional support of the Victorian friendship films extends to more practical means of

74 Rosenzweig, 9.

29

support wherein friends share apartments, jobs, and other resources in a reciprocal exchange.

Chapter Three departs from the models of friendship proposed by Rosenzweig and explores a

group of films that I argue point the way toward the more politicized forms of female friendship

that would emerge in the 1960s. These films are largely about women bonding together in the

service of a political cause of national significance – World War II. While none of these films

are overtly “feminist,” the frequently propagandistic goal of many of the films provides an

excuse for including narratives that overtly celebrate the camaraderie of women.

Chapter outlines

Chapter One focuses on classical Hollywood films featuring female friendships that

combine intimate Victorian-era friendship with the contemporary pressures caused by new

configurations of marriage, career, and sexuality. I argue that these films exemplify the use of

female friendship as a narrative device for negotiating the tensions between older models of

womanhood and emerging twentieth-century ideas about womanhood. Not only do the

depictions of friendship draw on the emotional, dyadic friendship types favoured by the

Victorians, but the films’ structure draws on elements of the Victorian plot of female amity

within which the protagonist’s growth is intimately tied to her friendships. Domestic space also

plays a central role in these films with the protagonists frequently inviting their friends into their

homes for intimate, confessional conversations. In the films I consider in this chapter, the

protagonists grapple with aspects of life that were central to Victorian women, but were

beginning to take on new forms in the twentieth century.

I begin Chapter One by addressing two films that deal with the changing landscape of

twentieth-century marriage. For many women, marital status had a significant impact on their

30

experiences of female friendship. As discussed earlier, Victorians expected a married woman to

have close female friends with whom she could share her feelings. Unlike Victorian women,

however, twentieth-century women experienced a significant conflict between the imperatives of

marriage and domesticity on the one hand and female friendship on the other.75 The increased

privileging of companionate marriage and the belief that a woman’s husband should now provide

the emotional support originally furnished by female friends likely exacerbated this conflict. As

Rosenzweig writes, “Unlike their predecessors in earlier periods, wives and mothers now

perceived a conflict between their family responsibilities and domestic obligations and their

relationships with female friends; as a result, the latter assumed a distinctly lower priority.”76

Many of these women, however, “found the reality of married life disappointing in comparison

with the ideal of companionate marriage, and female friends could be a source of support and

comfort for them….”77 As a result, married women, seeking out the emotional support they

lacked in marriage, turned to female friendships that mimic the close bonds of Victorian

friendship. Indeed, when it comes to classical Hollywood films that feature intimate friendships

between married women, these are frequently marriages in crisis. The Women (George Cukor,

1939) and East Side, West Side (Mervyn LeRoy, 1949) both feature women seeking support and

advice from friends in times of marital strife. Notably, both films also tackle a solution to

marital strife that was becoming increasingly prevalent in the twentieth century: divorce. Taken

together, the two films provide a look at the competing and intersecting attitudes toward divorce

that co-existed in the early twentieth century. In the films, the protagonist’s friends help her

navigate her options with their portrayal as “good” or “bad” friends partially dependent on their

75 Rosenzweig, 98. 76 Rosenzweig, 98. 77 Rosenzweig, 107.

31

attitudes toward divorce. Not unlike the Victorian novels discussed by Marcus, the female

friends provide a stable and sympathetic contrast to the turbulent world of the protagonist’s

marriage. At the same time, these films also traffic in the stereotypical image of female

friendships marred by competition revolving around men.

Chapter One also addresses two films featuring women grappling with the conflict

between love and career. By the late Victorian era, some women were finding the opportunity to

develop careers in vocations that were seen as uniquely suited to women, often vocations that

could be practiced at home or that were specifically connected to domestic concerns. One of

these potential vocations was as a writer, a growing field at a time when four-fifths of the reading

public were estimated to be women.78 Through their work, “women authors succeeded in

popularizing feminine values, celebrating domestic influence, and feminizing the literary

marketplace. They were also able to earn income without appearing to leave the home, to adhere

to the limits of woman’s sphere while capitalizing on it.”79 As Woloch notes, Victorian women

were typically only encouraged to pursue careers if they could combine them with the

prerogatives of “woman’s sphere”, namely being a good daughter, wife, and mother. By the

twentieth century, however, increasing numbers of women began pursuing careers rather than

marriage. Close female friendships became especially important for career women, particularly

those who were unmarried. Rosenzweig singles out writers, intellectuals, and politicians as those

who were particularly likely to form significant female bonds. She notes that these women

“often drew vital emotional as well as practical support from female mentors and peers as they

78 Nancy Woloch, Women and the American Experience, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-

Hill, 1994), 132. 79 Woloch, 135.

32

pursued career goals.”80 Old Acquaintance (Vincent Sherman, 1943) and both versions of When

Ladies Meet (Harry Beaumont, 1933/Robert Z. Leonard, 1941) feature women who display

intense dedication to their careers as writers. The perceived conflict between their dedication to

their careers and their love lives help to drive the films’ plots. Relationships with female friends

play a significant role in the lives of these career women, often blurring the line between the

professional and the personal. On the one hand, these films are often eager to play up the

romantic conflicts of the female protagonists. In both films, the two friends at the centre of the

film spend at least part of the narrative in love with the same man. At the same time, these films

both highlight the significance of the help and support that these career women derive from other

women, with the writers frequently engaging in long, intimate conversations about their work.

The characters repeatedly stress that they are writing for and about women, striving to connect

with and relate to other women through their work. In developing their narratives, the films

covered in this section exhibit similarities to the Victorian plot of female amity while also

updating it for the twentieth-century career woman. While still being employed in the service of

mediating women’s relationships with men, female friendship also becomes an essential element

in the lives of career women, particularly those who remain unmarried.

I dedicate the final section of Chapter One to a discussion of two films that hint at

questions of same-sex desire. As I have discussed, the Victorians saw no problem with

emotionally intimate and physically affectionate relationships between women, largely because,

as Lillian Faderman puts it, “it was generally inconceivable to society that an otherwise

respectable woman could choose to participate in a sexual activity that had as its goal neither

80 Rosenzweig, Another Self, 116.

33

procreation nor pleasing a husband.”81 By the early twentieth century, however, the

popularization of the works by Sigmund Freud, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, and others had led to

a reevaluation of female sexuality and growing fears about lesbianism. By the 1920s, the

cultural consensus was that homosexuality in women was “unfortunate, unhealthy, and

harmful.”82 Any film of this era that presents close emotional bonds between women thus had

to work to distance their relationship from any hint of homosexuality. This helps to explain the

strong emphasis on heterosexual relationships, even when the protagonist initially seems

opposed to romance and marriage. If she is still single at the film’s ending, it is typically the

result of one or more tragic twists of fate rather than being a conscious choice on her part. Still,

even if these endings are occasionally bittersweet, films that feature close friendships between

women still open up the possibility of addressing same-sex desire. The Great Lie (Edmund

Goulding, 1941) and These Three (William Wyler, 1936) use the form of the love triangle to

explore the complicated relations between the female protagonists. These films are unique,

however, for containing extended sequences in which the women build and sustain their own

female-centric worlds. Domestic space plays an essential role in these films as the protagonists

create their own homes and their own surrogate families with their “own” children without the

assistance or interference of men. By the end of the films, however, these alternate worlds have

been dismantled, with the heterosexual couple being reconstituted and the extra woman

banished. These Three is a particularly interesting film to examine in this context since it is an

adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s 1934 play The Children’s Hour. The choice to adapt The

Children’s Hour into a film seems particularly unusual in light of the increased stigmatization of

81 Lillian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love

Between Women, from the Renaissance to the Present (New York: Morrow, 1981), 153. 82 Rosenzweig, Another Self, 128.

34

lesbian relationships and I will be examining how this film works (only partially successfully) to

shift the play’s focus from lesbianism to a heterosexual love triangle.

Chapter Two focuses on filmic friendships that display the influence of new friendship

styles emerging in the 1920s. Female friendships in this era were being shaped by a shift from

the more emotional mode of Victorian friendship to a more instrumental and pragmatic approach

to friendship. Part of this shift in friendship styles in the early twentieth century appears to be

rooted in the increased tendency of younger woman to have friend groups, rather than the intense

one-on-one friendships that characterized the Victorian era. For the characters of these films, the

focus of their friendships is thus on providing help and support in navigating the changing world

of the twentieth century. In this chapter, I explore two major areas of change that are deeply

intertwined in these films: first, the increasing importance of school and work as a part of

women’s lives, and second, an increased cultural emphasis on heterosexual love and marriage

accompanied by new courtship practices such as dating. As they navigate their changing

circumstances, however, the friends seen in Chapter Two still demonstrate continuity with some

of the hallmarks of friendship that we have seen in Chapter One. Confessional conversations

between friends continue to be important. Notably, however, these “modern” friends tend

towards an initial reluctance to express their true feelings, often putting on a façade of strength

that is presented as a necessary part of twentieth-century life. The moment when they do reveal

their true feelings thus becomes a particularly important climactic moment in the friendship

narrative. Domestic space also takes on a new meaning in these films, as the friends share

apartments with each other, adding a layer of casual, everyday intimacy to these friendships.

In the first section of Chapter Two, I explore a group of films that centre on young

woman at school. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, increasing numbers of

35

young people were staying in school for increasingly longer periods of time. As a result, these

women were spending more time with peers their own age than any preceding generation had

done.83 The rising popularity of sororities and other all-female campus groups also contributed

to the move towards group-based friendship formations.84 These kinds of social groups also

promoted an emphasis on being popular and joining the “correct” friendship group in order to

meet and attract the right kinds of men.85 Films such as These Glamour Girls (S. Slyvan Simon,

1939), Finishing School (George Nichols Jr., 1934), and Sorority House (John Farrow, 1939)

focus on the dynamics of young women navigating peer groups and heterosexual romance

beyond the influence and guidance of their families. The films in this section are also some of

the most didactic among the works that I examine, overtly cautioning against the dangers of

conformity and peer pressure. These films seem designed to call into question the real

“education” that young women are receiving at institutions of higher learning.

Chapter Two also highlights films featuring working women striving to support

themselves in bustling urban environments. Films like Our Blushing Brides (Harry Beaumont,

1930) feature groups of young women helping each other juggle love and work in big cities

without support from their families. While many of the friends display a genuine affection for

each other, these friendships also include a utilitarian aspect, with the women frequently sharing

housing, clothing, money, and other resources. This utilitarian, collaborative approach extends

to the portrayal of work itself. In this section, I examine how the common ground of a shared

profession opens up the possibility and perhaps even the necessity of bonding between women.

While friendship films like Old Acquaintance and The Great Lie also deal with working women,

83 Rosenzweig, 71. 84 Rosenzweig, 71. 85 Rosenzweig, 80.

36

these women typically pursue prestigious, solitary professions. There is also little sense that

these women work out of financial necessity. By contrast, the films in Chapter Two place

greater emphasis on the labour involved in the lives of working women. Rather than pursuing

their vocations out of artistic or altruistic devotion, the working women of Chapter Two need to

work. They are thus often placed in positions where they are in danger of exploitation by

powerful men, a situation that comes to the fore in films like Marked Woman (Lloyd Bacon,

1937) that deal with women whose work skirts the line of legality. Although these women are

often described as “hostesses,” the films clearly suggest that they are in fact sex workers with

connections to organized crime. Unlike the powerful gangster characters played by actors like

James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson, they typically have limited control over their lives and

few opportunities to escape or alter their situation. These characters thus turn to the support of

other women similarly rejected by mainstream society, often forming a type of pseudo-family.

As I will discuss further in Chapter Two, Marked Woman offers a particularly revealing example

of this tendency, with the female protagonists unable to rely on either their mobster boss or the

crusading district attorney who thinks that he can help them.

The final section of Chapter Two focuses on women who are performers, working as

actresses, dancers, or chorus girls (although they are rarely portrayed as serious dramatic

actresses86). Like the films discussed in the previous section, films about performers typically

focus on groups of female friends whose bonds of friendship are at least partially shaped by their

shared profession. Many of these women work out of financial necessity, rather than a deep

obligation to their art. The need to work to support oneself creates an interesting dynamic

between competition and collaboration in films such as Stage Door (Gregory La Cava, 1937),

86 Stage Door is the one clear exception here.

37

Dance, Girl, Dance (Dorothy Arzner, 1940), and Blondie of the Follies (Edmund Goulding,

1932). These films often include a plotline that involves conflict over coveted leading roles,

pitting the women against one another in their attempts to impress a (male) director or producer.

At the same time, they also typically involve a significant focus on the close bonds between the

chorus girls who work together to support each other during the grueling hours of rehearsal and

the long, hungry stretches between jobs. The tension between competition and collaboration is

also visible in the actresses’ off-stage relationships with men. While competition for men often

plays a role in these films, the chorus girls also frequently work together to land rich husbands,

as in films such as Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933). This section will also consider

the role of “performing” in female friendship more generally. Performative professions are often

seen as ideally suited for women since they position them as objects of a (male) gaze. In these

films, however, the women also “perform” for their female friends, although often in different

forms and with different motivations.

Chapter Three departs from the first two chapters to examine the friendships between

women that develop in unique moments of political upheaval. As Rosenzweig writes, the 1920s

“witnessed the disintegration of the self-conscious female community that had fostered

friendships in the context of Progressive reform efforts and the battle for suffrage.”87 Unusually,

for a book whose focus is 1900-1960, Rosenzweig largely avoids any discussion of either of the

World Wars that shaped this era. While World War I falls outside of the time span of my

project, I argue that World War II is a key political event that allowed for a clear shift in public

discourse around female bonding. The overt celebration of female camaraderie present in films

about World War II provides both an echo of the unity created by earlier women’s clubs, and a

87 Rosenzweig, 106.

38

prescient image of the fight for gender equality that would bring women together in the 1960s.

Notably, however, World War II was a national cause that was presumed to unite all citizens,

and thus provided an acceptable motivation for women to band together in ways that were

overtly political. Hollywood’s active involvement in promoting the war effort led to a large

number of films about the war, including a number that celebrated the role women played in the

fight.

This chapter zeroes in on four films in which women are either engaged in active military

service or training for active military service. These films about women in the military often

employ a trajectory similar to that of the male-oriented combat film. The women’s combat film

is a particularly interesting subcategory since the typical combat film is notable for its lack of

female characters. While some include brief sequences with women (typically as a

demonstration of what the men are fighting for), other films include no women at all (i.e.

Guadalcanal Diary (Lewis Seiler, 1943), Sahara (Zoltan Korda, 1943), and Wake Island (John

Farrow, 1942)). These films are thus notable not just for being a version of Hollywood’s

tendency to take a film or genre of films and re-do it with women, but for introducing female

characters into a genre in which they are typically totally absent. In Jeanine Basinger’s book The

World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre, she argues that the group is a key element of

the combat film. This group is made up of men from a variety of socioeconomic, geographic,

and ethnic backgrounds who have been thrown together by the war and must learn how to work

together against a common enemy.88 In this chapter, I examine how the combat film formula is

altered when the protagonists are women, as well as exploring how the portrayal of friendship

88 Jeanine Basinger, The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1986), 74-75.

39

between women changes within a combat context. Lucy Fischer argues that male friendships are

defined by “doing” together while female friendships are defined by “being” together.89 The

male-oriented military films are a perfect example of the connection between male camaraderie

and shared pursuits. In films about women in the military, however, we see the clearest

departure from the “typical” female mode of just “being” together.

This chapter also considers the role that women play in the national imaginary and how

their participation in the military challenges established notions of both citizenship and

womanhood. While women often play key symbolic roles in the national imaginary (especially

as “mothers” of the nation), their relationship to the public realm of citizenship is frequently

more fraught. In most formulations, “good” citizenship is linked to active participation in civic

duties, including voting and paying taxes. Scholars such as Nira Yuval-Davis and Holly Allen

argue that one of the most critical civic duties in the American context is military service, a field

from which women have typically been marginalized or excluded. Military service, particularly

in the modern nation-state, is frequently positioned as a privileged space of collective bonding,

producing connections that are predicated on a foundation of sameness. Indeed, one of the key

reasons for excluding women from an increasingly automated military was the disruptive

potential of their sexual difference. In the films I examine in this chapter, the entrance of women

into the military prompts both a revision of gender roles and a new vision of gender solidarity.

In Woman to Woman: Female Friendship in Victorian Fiction, Tess Cosslett writes, “The

world of women’s friendships seems to be perceived as something static, outside the action that

makes a story. In narrative, men are thought to be needed to create tension and initiate

89 Fischer, Shot/Countershot, 221.

40

significant action.”90 While Cosslett is writing about Victorian fiction, this quote could equally

apply to typical perceptions of female friendship in classical Hollywood cinema. Through my

project, I seek to advance a more nuanced understanding of the onscreen portrayal of women and

their relationships with each other during this era. While the sixties are frequently viewed as the

era in which sisterhood and camaraderie between women grew and thrived, I wish to shed light

on the importance of friendships between women in the first half of the twentieth century. As I

will demonstrate, the first half of the twentieth century was a crucial transitional period in

thinking about female friendship and how women relate to one another. The films I examine

demonstrate a constant negotiation between the past and the present, demonstrating the

coexistence of a multiplicity of friendship models. Although they rarely take centre stage in the

films of this era, I argue that these female friendships play a key role in these films and serve as a

site of proto-feminist resistance that points the way towards the more overtly political films of

the 1970s and beyond.

90 Cosslett, Woman to Woman, 11.

41

Chapter One – Passionate Commitments: Victorian Friendship

Models in Female Friendship Films

Introduction

This chapter examines films featuring friendships that demonstrate clear links to

Victorian friendship styles. Victorian women tended to prize so-called “romantic friendships” –

passionate, dyadic friendships characterized by emotional intimacy and reciprocity. Victorian

women’s friendships were defined by a kind of reciprocity and equality that women were

generally unable to experience in their relationships with men. At the same time, female

friendship was seen as leading towards proper femininity, aiding a young woman in adapting to

her future role as a helper and comforter for her husband. In what follows, I begin by outlining

some of the historical and cultural reasons for this orientation towards intense, intimate

friendships for women. Chief among these was the Victorian belief in “woman’s sphere,” the

idea that women were fundamentally different from men and thus were naturally suited to

separate vocations, interests, and even emotions. Also crucial to my analysis is the centrality of

female friendship as a narrative device in the Victorian novel. I draw from the work of Sharon

Marcus and Tess Cosslett who argue that female friendship is at the core of the Victorian

marriage plot, playing a key role in bringing about the happy ending. Overall, Victorian

discourse represented close friendships between women in a largely positive fashion. By the

early twentieth century, however, the passionate friendships favoured by the Victorian discourse

began to become unpopular. While the next chapter considers socio-cultural factors that

influenced new friendships styles, this chapter takes up one of the key reasons why Victorian

models of female friendship began falling out of favour in the early twentieth century. Changing

ideas about human sexuality coupled with women’s increasing economic independence propelled

42

fears about lesbianism, resulting in a stigmatization of intimate relationships between women.

Passionate, emotional female friendships were no longer seen as a normal corollary to

heterosexual marriage or a harmless schoolgirl phase, but instead were framed as a disease,

linked to insanity and criminality.

Female friendship in the Victorian era

Caroll Smith-Rosenberg emphasizes the importance of understanding women’s

friendships within the larger social and cultural framework of Victorian society. The rigid

gender divisions of this society led to women necessarily forming close bonds with other

women, both for practical purposes (largely focused around child rearing) and for emotional

reasons.91 The Victorian ideology of “woman’s sphere” also contributed to the acceptability of

these intimate friendships. The rise of “woman’s sphere” is closely linked to the rise of the

middle class and the market economy in the early nineteenth century. In Women and the

American Experience, Nancy Woloch emphasizes the importance of early nineteenth-century

shifts in the organization and conception of labour for the formation of a shared female

consciousness. As increasing numbers of men left the home to work, the domestic space

increasingly came under the control of women.92 This domestic space was necessarily enclosed

and limited with a focus on housework, child rearing, and the religious and moral life of the

family.93 At the same time, however, their command over the home gave women an

unprecedented degree of autonomy and authority while also fostering a sense of gender

91 Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 60. 92 Woloch, Women and the American Experience, 115. 93 Woloch, 115.

43

consciousness by proposing a shared vocation for all women albeit one that was directly linked

to domesticity.94 The ideology of woman’s sphere also led to a redefinition of women’s

character. Aided by the religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening, women

became associated with piety, purity, and moral superiority.95 Women could use this newly

acquired moral high ground to advocate for greater influence both within the home and outside

it, particularly in vocations that were seen as uniquely suited to women.96 Writing was one area

in which women were able to flourish in the Victorian era, both in periodicals like Ladies

Magazine and in popular novels. According to Woloch, “Never before had so vast a literate

female audience existed, nor had women authors ever been so welcome in the literary

marketplace. And never before had the technology existed to mass produce what they wrote.”97

Part of the appeal of these woman-authored novels was the creation of heroines who assumed

important roles and exerted influence on the world around them.98 Other professions, such as

teaching and social reform, appeared to provide a natural extension of women’s maternal

function. Indeed, Lillian Faderman associates the rise of feminism with the gender-segregated

world of the Victorian era:

A large group of educated, articulate women, who saw the possibilities of organizing for

social betterment and were not tied to old traditions, who were raised believing that men

and women were different species and could share nothing but family, who could not

marry and had no work to occupy them, made inevitable the growing strength of

feminism in the latter half of the nineteenth century.99

94 Woloch, 119. 95 Woloch, 125. 96 Woloch, 125. 97 Woloch, 131. 98 Woloch, 134. 99 Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men, 181.

44

While the Victorians generally held a positive view of female friendship, it was implicitly

assumed that a woman’s husband and children were her priorities. For women who remained

single, however, the Victorians viewed female friendship as particularly useful. For the

Victorians, “singleness was seen as the state of something lacking, and female friendships were

an appropriate solution for those who were losers in the demographic lottery.”100 These

friendships between single women were often represented as mimicking the dynamics of

stereotypical heterosexual partnerships with one woman assuming the dominating leadership role

of the “husband” and the other woman assuming the weaker submissive role of the “wife.”101

The acceptability of these relationships among the Victorians stemmed from a substantially

different conceptualization of marriage. Unmarried women in female couples could, through

unique legal agreements, obtain some of the rights typically reserved for married, heterosexual

couples, including the ability to own property together.102 Additionally, women in female

marriages were granted access to extensive social networks based around monogamous couples

in both same-sex and heterosexual pairings.103 While there are differing opinions about whether

these female marriages also involved sexual intimacy,104 there appears to be little doubt that

these relationships were largely viewed by the Victorians as socially acceptable. For the

Victorians, “female marriage was not associated with a savage state of sexual license but instead

was readily integrated into even the most restrictive ideas of the social order.”105 Although

Marcus cautions against reading these relationships as necessarily lesbian in the contemporary

100 Pauline Nestor, Female Friendships and Communities: Charlotte Bronte, George

Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 15. 101 Nestor, 16. 102 Marcus, Between Women, 194. 103 Marcus, 202-203. 104 Marcus, 203. 105 Marcus, 203.

45

sense, she does seem to suggest that they fell out of favour beginning in the 1880s alongside the

development of medical theories that equated homosexuality with primitivism and perversion.106

The increasing pathologization of homosexuality in the early twentieth century would lead to

shifting opinions about close friendships between two women as well as female friendships more

generally.

The plot of female amity

Not only did Victorian women prize female friendship in their own lives, but they also

celebrated close female friends in literature. As I mentioned in my introduction, scholars like

Marcus and Cosslett see strong, stable female friendships at the core of the Victorian marriage

plot (or what Marcus terms “the plot of female amity”). Ultimately, however, these strong

friendships operate in the service of bringing about the novel’s happy ending – the protagonist’s

marriage to a suitable husband (possibly with an identical marriage for her friend). Marcus

specifically links the friend’s key role in Victorian fiction to the rising popularity of

companionate marriage.107 If romantic partners were also meant to be friends, then it was fitting

for female friends to assume the role vetting potential mates that had been traditionally held by

the family.108 Thus, in many Victorian novels, “female friendship is a vector of both marriage

and feminism; it bolsters the female self and thus ensures that a heroine’s marriage follows from

her strength, not her weakness.” 109

106 Marcus, 194. 107 Marcus, 85. 108 Marcus, 85. 109 Marcus, 99.

46

Marcus describes the plot of female amity as illustrating “the interdependence of female

friendship and the marriage plot.”110 These plots begin by contrasting the stability of female

friendship with the obstacles and misunderstandings of heterosexual courtship. As the plot

progresses, one friend will help the other (or both friends will help each other in what Marcus

refers to as “the double marriage plot”) to form a happy marriage. This can be accomplished

through a variety of means:

This can take the form of mediating a suitor’s courtship, giving a husband to the friend or

the friend to a husband, or helping to remove an obstacle to the friend’s marriage. This

phase can also take the form of one friend assuaging the other’s wounds and bolstering

her subjectivity to make her more marriageable.111

As a result of the friend’s involvement, the heroine is able to make a happy marriage. Marcus

further writes that, in the novels she analyzes, “female friendship absorbs, neutralizes, and

transmutes female rivalry.”112 Cosslett similarly emphasizes the Victorian novel’s ability to

transmute rivalry into friendship by focusing on “transforming interchanges” in which “the

potential rivals discover solidarity.”113 These interchanges are designed to facilitate a happy

marriage for one or both of the women: “[A] very common device here is for two women who

are potential rivals to discover or declare solidarity, and to arrange between themselves which of

them is to have the man – sometimes there is a scene in which each in turn offers him selflessly

to the other, or, more simply, the ‘rival’ gives him back to his rightful owner.”114 The

interchange between the friends can also happen at a more symbolic level, in which each women

takes on desirable qualities from the other in order to become better suited to marriage.115

110 Marcus, 82. 111 Marcus, 82. 112 Marcus, 97. 113 Cosslett, Woman to Woman, 3. 114 Cosslett, 3. 115 Cosslett, 4.

47

Cosslett argues that these interchanges can be viewed both “negatively” (in that it involves

heretofore independent women conforming to social expectations) and “positively” (in that the

protagonist accepts her place within the Victorian ideology of the “woman’s sphere” including

the limited but very real power that comes with it).116 The connection between female friendship

and the woman’s sphere is indeed so strong that many later “New Woman” novels actively avoid

presentations of female friendship in order to establish its protagonists as strong, independent

women.117 As I will explore later in this chapter, these kinds of “transforming interchanges” can

also occur between Hollywood rivals.

In discussing female rivalry in Victorian fiction, it is also important to keep in mind

uniquely Victorian attitudes towards rivalry between women. Smith-Rosenberg emphasizes that

part of the reason women were able to establish such close bonds was because hostility towards

and criticism of other women was strongly discouraged.118 For Marcus, however, female

friendships were one of the few areas that allowed women to exhibit their competitive side.

Notably, the Victorians discouraged women from competing for men (“because it implied that

women fought for and won their husbands”) as well as competing with men (either

“intellectually, professionally, or physically.”)119 Women were, however, given free rein to

enjoy “the pleasures of toying with another woman’s affection or vying with other women for

precedence as a friend.”120

116 Cosslett, 4. 117 Cosslett, 6. 118 Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct, 64. 119 Marcus, Between Women, 59. 120 Marcus, 59.

48

As Cosslett writes, “Female friendship [in the Victorian novel] leads towards, not away

from, traditional female roles.”121 As I discuss below, this is an idea that retained a considerable

degree of currency in classical Hollywood depictions of female friendship even as new

twentieth-century challenges began to take centre stage.

The pathologization of love between women

By the turn of the twentieth century, perceptions of female friendship were beginning to

shift as women gained increasing social and political power. The image of supportive women

working together and championing each other became increasingly threatening. As Linda W.

Rosenzweig writes in her study of female friendships in the twentieth century, “By the post-

World War I era, when opportunities for the education and employment permitted middle-class

women to support themselves, close female friendships had become socially threatening as

symbols of women’s growing autonomy.”122 These friendships “challenged male prerogatives in

several areas – sexual, economic, and even political.”123 Thus warnings about the dangers of

lesbianism (usually depicted as an illness) were used to dissuade women from forming close

relationships with other women and instead to channel their emotional energies into heterosexual

romance.

The pathologization of same-sex love between women around the turn of the twentieth-

century dramatically altered public perception and, in turn, fictional portrayals of female

friendship. As Lillian Faderman argues, prior to the turn of the century, there was no pressing

need to censure closeness between women because it was understood that most women would

121 Cosslett, Woman to Woman, 5. 122 Rosenzweig, Another Self, 128. 123 Rosenzweig, 128.

49

ultimately reconcile themselves to heterosexual marriage, if for no other reason than economic

considerations.124 With women becoming increasingly economically independent (particularly

post-World War I), the possibility of lesbianism became increasingly threatening to social

mores.125 Many turn-of-the-century sexologists conceived of lesbians as those who rejected the

“natural” behaviour of women: “Instead of being passive she was active, instead of loving

domesticity, she sought success in the world outside, instead of making men prime in her life,

she made first herself and then other women prime.”126 As Lisa Duggan writes, the developing

image of the lesbian

significantly modified earlier forms of women's partnerships, which have been described

by historians as falling within two defined class-bound types – the romantic friendship in

which bourgeois girls and women made passionate commitments to each other within a

gender-segregated female world, and the ‘marriage’ between a ‘female husband’ who

passed and worked as a man among workingmen and her ‘wife.’127

While fears about lesbianism had long gestated in Europe, Faderman suggests that it was

not until the 1890s that these same fears began to take root in America.128 A significant

instigator of these fears appears to have been the trial of Alice Mitchell for the murder of her

lover Freda Ward. The murder attracted considerable attention for its presumed uniqueness –

Mitchell claimed to have committed the crime out of passionate love for the victim and the belief

that if the two could not be together, it was preferable to die.129 The exact nature of the

relationship between Mitchell and Ward and exactly how it had come to transgress the

124 Lillian Faderman, “The Morbidification of Love Between Women by 19th-Century

Sexologists,” Journal of Homosexuality 4, no. 1 (1978): 88. 125 Faderman, “The Morbidification of Love”, 88. 126 Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men, 240. 127 Lisa Duggan, “The Trials of Alice Mitchell: Sensationalism, Sexology, and the

Lesbian Subject in Turn-of-the-Century America,” Signs 18, no. 4 (Summer 1993), 792. 128 Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men, 291. 129 “A Most Shocking Crime”, New York Times, Jan. 26, 1892.

50

acceptable bonds of sentimental friendship was a frequent topic of press coverage about the case.

Many accounts suggested that Mitchell was far more committed to the relationship than Ward,

who often treated Mitchell as just one among a group of (largely male) suitors.130 The case thus

proved fascinating for European sexologists such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Havelock

Ellis who saw it as proof of their theories of a link between lesbianism, criminality, and

insanity.131 While Mitchell was not understood as a “lesbian” as such, she was perceived as

taking a schoolgirl infatuation too far by exhibiting a desire to take on “masculine” qualities

(including dressing as a man), concocting a plan to elope with the object of her affection, and

attempting to create a life outside of the family-based world of heterosexual monogamy.132

Throughout the early twentieth century, the case continued to be a popular one in medical

literature about lesbianism and Faderman credits it with helping to eradicate the image of

romantic friendships among schoolgirls as a harmless phase.133

Popular literature played a significant role in promoting the evil of lesbianism often in

concert with pop Freudianism. Faderman points to Freud’s emphasis on the importance of the

sex drive as a key element in twentieth-century reevaluations of romantic friendship:

…romantic friendships of other eras, which are assumed to have been asexual since

women were not given the freedom of their sex drive, are manifestations of

sentimentality and the superficial manners of the age. Throughout most of the twentieth

century, on the other hand, the enriching romantic friendship that was common in earlier

eras is thought to be impossible, since love necessarily means sex and sex between

women means lesbian and lesbian means sick.134

130 Duggan, “The Trials of Alice Mitchell,” 798. 131 Duggan, 795. 132 Duggan, 808-809. 133 Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men, 291. 134 Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men, 311.

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Lesbian characters in popular fiction generally conformed to one of two archetypes: “the

villainous pervert” or “the pathetic invert.”135 The “villainous pervert” was often explicitly

portrayed as a strong-willed feminist who wielded authority over young, impressionable girls,

often in the form of a teacher.136 The “pathetic invert” by contrast is frequently confused, lonely,

and hysterical. Rather than leading other women into temptation, she often comes to a tragic end

as a result of her inability to experience “normal” female desire.137 Lesbian characters could also

be “simply weird,” especially when presented as minor or supporting characters.138 While the

depictions of lesbianism in popular fiction are far more overt than anything that would be

possible in classical Hollywood film, shades of these lesbian characters made their way into a

variety of films that dealt with close relationships between women. The sadistic authoritarian

lesbian was a popular antagonist for female protagonists, with Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca

(Alfred Hitchcock, 1940) serving as perhaps the most famous example. As well, the “simply

weird” lesbian supporting characters persisted in a number of films, including several that I will

be discussing below. The “pathetic invert” seems to appear significantly less often in Hollywood

films of the studio era, with one notable exception being Martha from The Children’s

Hour/These Three.

The films In the analyses that follow, I have paired together texts that speak to similar issues within

Victorian influenced friendship. In many ways, these films can be seen grappling with social

135 Faderman, “The Morbidification of Love,” 86. 136 Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men, 341. 137 Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men, 349. 138 Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men, 353.

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and cultural changes occurring in women’s lives in the first half of the twentieth century. Like

the friendship styles they feature, these films present elements of women’s lives that were

established in the Victorian era, but were beginning to shift and take on new forms in the

twentieth century. In the first section, I examine two films that grapple with changing

perspectives on marriage, particularly changing attitudes towards divorce. Both films feature

women grappling with the decision of whether or not to divorce their husbands. The portrayal of

the protagonist’s friends plays a key role in illustrating competing attitudes towards marriage and

divorce, both overtly (in that the friends often directly express their views in dialogue) and more

covertly (in that elements of the friends’ characterization will often suggest whether or not their

advice is meant to be viewed as sound). The second section examines films featuring female

writers. These films grapple with changing attitudes towards career women by combining

narratives about women writers (a profession already established in the Victorian era as suited to

women) with a focus on agency and self-determination. In both films, this is reflected through

protagonists whose art closely reflects their lives. Rather than the multiplicity of friends seen in

the first section, these films focus on close dyadic relationships that are intimately linked to the

women’s working lives. In the third section, I examine films that focus on female-centric

worlds. These worlds harken back to the “woman’s sphere” of the Victorian era in which

women led lives largely separate from men. In these twentieth-century films, however, these

separate worlds are often a conscious choice, one that allows the women to both exercise their

own agency and form surrogate families complete with children. At the same time, these

separate worlds also appear to offer a far greater threat to patriarchal control than the docile

woman’s sphere of the Victorian age and they must thus be dismantled by the films’ end. All the

films I examine below draw on elements of the plot of female amity. While some follow the

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general contours of the plot fairly closely, others deviate considerably. I thus argue that

Hollywood films that follow a similar plot (i.e. one in which female friendship leads to happy

heterosexual matrimony) are ultimately allowed greater leeway to glorify friendships between

women. By contrast, films featuring protagonists that question, resist, or avoid heterosexual

monogamy and marriage often place greater emphasis on the antagonisms between female

friends. The films explored in this chapter demonstrate that both traditional and modern attitudes

coexisted simultaneously with films both endorsing and repudiating new approaches to marriage,

career, and bonds between women.

“If I don’t ask, what kind of a friend am I?”: Marriage and divorce The films in this section explore changing attitudes towards marriage and divorce. Both

The Women and East Side, West Side focus on a woman who learns that her husband has been

unfaithful and must decide how to cope with this revelation. In both films, the protagonist’s

friends play key roles in helping her decide how to handle her husband’s infidelity.

The Women (George Cukor, 1939) is perhaps one of the most infamous classical

Hollywood films to deal with relationships between women. The film is frequently taken to task

for its seemingly negative and borderline misogynistic portrayal of its gossipy, scheming female

characters. In one infamous scene, two characters become embroiled in a slapstick catfight. Still,

I would argue that The Women’s status as one of the few classical Hollywood films with an all-

female cast makes it worthy of extended consideration. Most critics are dismissive towards the

film’s portrayal of relationships between women. Yalom and Brown describe The Women as “a

classic example of Hollywood’s presentation of women as wealthy bitches, ruthless in their

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efforts to steal husbands, lovers, money, and social positions from other women.”139 For

Woloch, “The malicious gossip of spoiled socialites in Clare Boothe Luce’s The Women (1939)

conveyed disgust with the entire sex.”140 Hollinger lumps it in with “negative group female

friendship portrayals” such as Stage Door141 and A Letter to Three Wives that portray “women’s

relationships as plagued by jealousy, cattiness, and competition for men.”142 One of the few

scholars to come to the defense of The Women is Judith Roof who suggests that, “although the

film’s vision of a women’s world seems sometimes treacherous and unkind, it is so because of

the male infidelities, and lack of economic independence that pit women against one another.”143

She advocates ignoring the story of Mary’s marital woes and focusing on the interactions

between the women, which reveal that the film is actually about the competition between the

women for Mary’s attention and favors.144 Roof’s description strikes me as remarkably similar

to Marcus’s discussion of the Victorian practice of encouraging spirited competition between

friends. While I do not disagree that the negative portrayal of female friendship identified by

many scholars is in evidence in the film, I seek to redress this critical derision through a focus on

the multiplicity of female relationships on display in The Women. I thus argue that the film

ultimately offers both a more nuanced depiction of female friendship than is generally accepted

and a more ambivalent attitude towards marriage and romance. The film’s central narrative

concerns a married socialite named Mary (Norma Shearer) who discovers that her husband is

having an affair with a salesgirl named Crystal (Joan Crawford). My reading shifts the traditional

139 Yalom Brown, The Social Sex, 266. 140 Woloch, Women and the American Experience, 460. 141 This strikes me as a very strange categorization of Stage Door for reasons that will be

discussed in the next chapter. 142 Hollinger, In the Company of Women, 252n19. 143 Roof, All About Thelma and Eve, 59. 144 Roof, 62.

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critical focus on the romantic rivalry between Mary and Crystal to a focus on the importance of

Mary’s extensive group of friends who drive and shape the narrative.

Near the beginning of the film, Mary has a conversation with her mother about Stephen’s

infidelity. Her mother urges Mary not to turn to her friends for advice, telling her, “If you let

them advise you, they’ll see to it in the name of friendship that you lose your husband and your

home. I’m an old woman, my dear. I know my sex.” Mary’s mother’s outlook on female

friendship is resoundingly negative. The implication is that Mary’s friends will urge her to

divorce Stephen not out of concern for her best interests, but out of a petty spitefulness that is

inherent in all women’s dealings with one another. In a startling contrast to the plot of female

amity, female friendships are explicitly constructed as the enemies of marital bliss, actively

working to undo the protagonist’s marriage. Indeed, Mary’s New York friends actively

encourage Mary to leave Stephen, a choice that the film’s ending (in which Mary and Stephen

are on the verge of a happy reunion) seems to present as a bad one.

The friend that undeniably takes the central role in leading Mary towards divorce in

Sylvia Fowler, played by Rosalind Russell. Thanks to Russell’s outrageous costumes and

scenery-chewing performance, Sylvia is one of the most memorable characters in the film, easily

stealing the spotlight from ostensible protagonist Mary. Throughout the film, Sylvia functions as

the primary force in driving the plot forward. Sylvia is the first of the main characters that we

meet. She is introduced in the film’s opening sequence where she is seen getting a manicure in a

colour called “Jungle Red.” Sylvia’s “Jungle Red” manicure becomes a key symbol throughout

the film, intimately associated with Sylvia and her ability to control her world and the people in

it. While getting her initial manicure, Sylvia learns the piece of gossip that will propel that plot:

Mary’s husband is having an affair with salesgirl Crystal Allen. Although Sylvia describes Mary

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as her “very dearest friend in all the world,” she clearly delights in the gossip and orchestrates a

chain of events that eventually results in Mary divorcing her husband. Early in the film, Sylvia

attends a luncheon at Mary’s house, shows off her Jungle Red manicure, and encourages Mary to

visit the same manicurist, knowing that Mary will then hear the same gossip about Stephen’s

infidelity.

While this may seem worlds away from the stable, supportive friendships of the Victorian

novel, traces of the female amity plot are still in evidence. In contrast to Sylvia, Mary is a

Figure 1: Mary shows off her “Jungle Red” manicure.

relatively passive character. For the bulk of the film, she is controlled by the directives of her

friends. Throughout the first half of the film, Sylvia is the friend who holds the most sway over

Mary and, while she doesn’t outright advise Mary to divorce Stephen, she essentially

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orchestrates the events that result in Mary’s divorce. While Sylvia’s motives may be suspect,

Mary does learn a crucial lesson from Sylvia’s assertive behaviour. Mary’s triumph at the end of

the film (and her implied reunion with Stephen) hinges on her learning to control and direct

events just like Sylvia. In one of the film’s most iconic lines, Mary’s integration of Sylvia’s

cunning is represented by her adoption of Sylvia’s signature red nails: “I’ve had two years to

grow claws. Jungle Red (fig. 1)!”145 Thus, as in the plot of female amity, Mary learns to adopt

traits from her friend in order to win back her husband, symbolized through the adoption of her

friend’s signature fashion trait.

Focusing on Sylvia, however, provides only a partial view of the female friendships on

display in the film. Mary has a number of other friends who both serve key narrative roles and

help elucidate the film’s conflicting perspectives on marriage. Nancy (Florence Nash) is

depicted as the odd woman out in the group. Indeed, I would argue that she is established as a

character type that Judith Roof refers to as the “comic second.” According to Roof, the comic

second reflects cultural anxieties about gender and class through their association with a

“middle” space.146 This involves both their relegation to the middle portions of the narrative

(their fate is often left unspecified at the film’s end) and their ability to occupy a middle position

in relation to gender identity and sexuality. Roof also posits these comic seconds as serving as a

form of audience surrogate, a character with whom the viewer can identify because her

perspective mimics the viewer’s own – like the viewer, the comic second is looking in on the

145 Although this line appears in both the original play and the film, its placement is

changed. In the play, this is the final line, a response to Crystal’s observation (omitted from the

film) that Mary has become “a cat, like all the rest of us.” In the film, the line is moved to the

ending of the penultimate scene (before Mary confronts Crystal and Sylvia at the night club).

Was this change made to soften the vindictiveness of Mary’s character in the final scene? 146 Roof, 15.

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main action of the film from a position that is simultaneously involved and somewhat

distanced.147 In The Women, Nancy is certainly placed in the middle position with relation to

gender identity and sexuality that Roof describes. The characters (particularly Sylvia and even

Nancy herself) repeatedly underline the fact that Nancy doesn’t adhere to the image of

womanhood projected by the other characters. She is the only one of the group who is

unmarried, describing herself as “what nature abhors…an old maid, a frozen asset”. She is also a

professional writer, making her the only woman in the group with a job. Nancy’s status as the

Figure 2: Sylvia (left) and Nancy face off

147 Roof, 92.

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odd woman out is further enhanced by a tendency on the part of critics to interpret her character

as a lesbian. Alexander Doty points to Nancy’s “mannish” attire and argues that the term “old

maid” with which Nancy defines herself was “a common euphemism at the time for a

lesbian.”148 Nancy largely conforms to Faderman’s third type of lesbian character, the minor or

supporting character who is “simply weird.” These “simply weird” lesbians were often “walk-on

characters who make some point about the decadence or absurdity of society…”.149 In The

Women, Nancy serves just such a function, often pointing out and puncturing the pretensions of

the other characters and the social games in which they are engaged. Sylvia in particular is a

frequent target of Nancy’s penetrating quips (fig. 2). For instance, as Sylvia shows off her

“Jungle Red” manicure, Nancy comments astutely, “Looks as though you’ve been tearing at

somebody’s throat.” Because Nancy is unmarried, she remains largely on the margins of the

film’s action, unable to participate in the various marital hijinks that make up the plot. This

marginal status, however, give her a distanced position from which to observe and dissect the

behaviour of the other characters.

Due to her status as the odd woman out, Nancy’s character certainly has the potential to

be either subversive and threatening or pathetic and pitiable. Yet, the film’s positioning of

Nancy is largely positive and sympathetic. I would argue that a big part of the reason for the

positive portrayal of this potentially subversive character is that she is ultimately depicted as

being in favour of Mary and Stephen’s marriage. Nancy is depicted as a good friend to Mary

precisely because she defends not just Mary, but Mary’s marriage and her identity as a wife from

Sylvia’s barbs:

148 Alexander Doty, Flaming Classics: Queering the Film Canon (New York: Routledge,

2000), 92. 149 Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men, 354.

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Sylvia: I think Mary’s being very wise snatching Stephen Haines off to Canada.

Nancy: You just can’t bear Mary’s happiness, can you, Sylvia? It gets you down.

Sylvia: Why, how ridiculous. Why should it?

Nancy: Because she’s contented, contented to be what she is.

Sylvia: Which is what?

Nancy: A woman.

Sylvia: And what are we?

Nancy: Females.

At the film’s end, Nancy is one of the characters who takes an active role in bringing

about Mary and Stephen’s reconciliation by locking Sylvia in a closet and openly approving of

Mary’s new ruthless attitude to winning back her husband. Moreover, I would argue that Nancy

is positioned as a kind of audience surrogate. Her opinions and perspectives essentially mirror

those of the audience. We can see this both in her assessment of the other characters and in her

positioning in relation to the action. In the quotes from the film that I cite above, Nancy

essentially mirrors and amplifies knowledge about the characters that the viewer has already

gained from previous scenes: Sylvia is pompous, catty, and deserving of the quips Nancy

delivers at her expense; Mary is kind, likeable, and deserving of Nancy’s attempts to defend her.

Like Nancy, the audience is placed at the margins of the action, but with an emotional

investment in the proceedings. Like a supportive friend, the ideal viewer is rooting for Mary to

take control of her life and win back her husband.

Miriam (Paulette Goddard), a friend Mary meets on the train to Reno, is set up as a foil to

Sylvia. Miriam is even in Reno to divorce her current husband in order to marry Sylvia’s

husband Howard, thus supplanting Sylvia in both her marriage and her friendship with Mary.

Miriam is a former chorus girl, depicted as pragmatic and quick-witted but also kind-hearted.

She is the friend who most clearly and explicitly urges Mary to patch up her marriage with

Stephen. Miriam confronts Mary with tough love and practical advice about her marriage:

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Listen, honey, don’t you know that we dames have got to be a lot more to the guy we

marry than a schoolgirl sweetheart? We gotta be a wife, a real wife. And a mother too

and a pal…and a nursemaid. Sometimes when it comes to the point we’ve even got to be

a cutie. You should have licked that girl where she licked you – in his arms.

Miriam more clearly serves the classic role of the friend in the plot of female amity, giving

advice, helping to bolster Mary’s self-confidence, and stoking the fires of competition that will

culminate in Mary’s renewed resolve to win Stephen back at the film’s end. At the same time,

Miriam is a friend firmly rooted in the twentieth century. Miriam’s pragmatic perspective is

Figure 3: Miriam (left) and Mary near the end of the film.

carefully attuned to contemporary expectations around love, marriage, and sex. She

acknowledges, for instance, that friendship itself is a more important component of

contemporary marriage, telling Mary that she needs to be a “pal” to her husband. Similarly, her

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advice about being a “cutie” is meant to be an acknowledgement of the importance of sex in

modern relationships. Although it is toned down in the film, the fact that Miriam is referring to

sex is made much more explicit in the play where “in his arms” is replaced with “in the hay.”

Like Nancy, Miriam appears in the final scene at the Casino Roof and expresses her pride in

Mary’s proactive attempt to win back her husband (fig. 3).

Peggy (Joan Fontaine) is the youngest and most naïve of the friend group. Peggy’s lack

of guile prevents her from offering pragmatic help or advice to Mary. At the same time,

however, she displays the greatest empathy for Mary’s situation. Peggy’s empathy is visually

Figure 4: Peggy (left) and Mary hug on the train to Reno.

communicated through her tendency to hug her friends, particularly Mary. Throughout the film,

Peggy and Mary frequently hug each other in moments of high emotion. For instance, when the

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two are on the train to Reno to obtain their divorces, they console each other with a hug as the

more emotional Peggy breaks down in tears (fig. 4). Later, when Peggy reconciles with her

husband and reveals that she is pregnant, Mary and Peggy celebrate the good news with a long

hug. Peggy’s association with hugging provides a stark contrast with Sylvia who tends to hover

around Mary without actually touching her. While Peggy never directly comments on whether

she believes Mary and Stephen should separate or reconcile, her empathy and her association

with physical touch, a signifier of positive and sincere friendship, suggests that Mary should

mirror Peggy’s feelings of sadness at the dissolution of her marriage and Peggy’s desire for a

reconciliation with her husband.

Although my analysis of female friendship largely eschews a discussion of female family

members, I want to briefly touch on the importance of Mary’s mother, Mrs. Morehead (Lucile

Watson). From the beginning of the film, Mrs. Morehead urges Mary to ignore Stephen’s

infidelity, explaining that this is how she handled Mary’s father’s similar “mid-life crisis.” Mary

decries this attitude as a relic of another era when women were “chattel,” claiming that it is

unsupportable in a present in which men and women are equals. While Mary initially ignores

her mother’s advice, she ultimately decides to rekindle her relationship with Stephen. Mary’s

mother plays a key role in this reunion, appearing in the film’s penultimate scene to ask Mary

why she can’t find a man to marry. Mary tells her, “I had the only one I ever wanted. If it hadn’t

been for my pride….” Mary’s reflections in this scene directly inspire her trip to the Casino

Roof to win back Stephen at the film’s conclusion.

Despite the conservative message promoted by this ending, the film must inevitably

acknowledge changing attitudes towards marriage. The very fact that divorce is even a viable

option for Mary (in a way that it likely was not for her mother) speaks to these changes as does

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Mary’s insistence that men and women are now “equals.” The view that men and women are

equal partners in a marriage speaks to the predominance of companionate marriage as a standard

in the 1930s. Under this rubric of reciprocity and mutuality, a philandering husband would be

failing to live up to his role as an emotionally supportive partner. It is thus fairly safe to assume

that even some contemporary audiences would have been sympathetic to Mary’s choice to

divorce Stephen. Consequently, the film must call into question not the idea of divorce per se,

but the motivations of the characters advocating for the divorce.

Ultimately, The Women offers a deft blending of the old and the new. Supportive friends

like Miriam guide Mary towards marriage in a twentieth-century extension of the plot of female

amity. At the same time, the film displays a noted irreverence towards marriage. While the

ending implies that Mary and Stephen will remarry,150 the attitude of the film essentially turns

marriage into a game with many of its characters speaking derisively of their husbands and

swiftly swapping them out for a newer model in Reno. Thus although Sylvia is portrayed in a

largely negative light, she also represents a more modern attitude towards marriage, one that

accepts the possibility of divorce.

East Side, West Side (Mervyn LeRoy, 1949) is another film that navigates the connection

between female friendship and heterosexual marriage. The film concerns Jessie, a married

socialite (Barbara Stanwyck) who appears to be happily married to Brandon, a successful

businessman (James Mason). Jessie’s marriage is threatened when Isabel, an alluring younger

woman (Ava Gardner) with whom her husband had previously had a fling, suddenly returns to

town. Notably, there is never any friendship or former friendship implied between Jessie and

150 Indeed, the film’s ending implies their remarriage even more forcefully than the play.

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Isabel. Unlike the “frenemies” of other female friendship films (as in The Woman or Old

Acquaintance), Jessie and Isabel never put up a front of camaraderie and indeed they interact

only once. Part of the reason for this distinction is the film’s overt obsession with class,

telegraphed by the film’s title and its reference to the geography of Manhattan and the class

distinctions with which it is embedded (with the upper-class characters living on the east side

and lower-class characters on the west). Isabel describes herself as the daughter of a burlesque

dancer who grew up “slingin’ hash” until she learned how to manipulate men for money. She

juxtaposes this to Jessie’s childhood as the daughter of a “great lady of the theatre” who attended

“Miss Cavanaugh’s school for nice young ladies.” As a result of the class distinction, the two

women are thus not in a position where they are expected to mix socially. Despite this, Jessie

develops a genuine, if brief, friendship with Rosa, another denizen of the west side. (The viewer

later learns that Jessie was actually born on the west side although this is revealed in an off-hand

remark and not treated as a great revelation.)

Jessie has two significant friends throughout the film: Helen (Nancy Davis, still a few

years away from becoming Nancy Reagan), a fellow socialite who has a small but significant

role in the film, and Rosa (Cyd Charisse), a young model she meets early in the film. Although

they are quite clearly secondary characters, both Helen and Rosa serve important narrative

functions while also offering Jessie support and comfort. At the same time, it is notable that both

women essentially disappear after the first half of the film. In particular, unlike The Women or

the 1941 version of When Ladies Meet discussed below, this film is fairly direct in questioning

the value of standing by an unfaithful husband. Both of Jessie’s female friends play a key role in

this questioning.

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Helen Lee, a socialite who seems to be one of Jessie’s closest friends, appears in only two

scenes. The first of these is particularly interesting. The scene takes the form of a confessional

conversation between the two friends and even provides an opportunity for the character of

Helen to comment directly on popular notions of female friendship (fig. 5). Helen ostensibly

stops by Jessie and Bran’s apartment to remind Jessie about the party she and her husband are

throwing that night. In reality, however, she has learned about the return of Bran’s former lover

and wants to see how Jessie is holding up. Jessie initially attempts to rebuff Helen by telling her

everything is fine, but Helen becomes frustrated with Jessie’s evasion:

Figure 5: Helen and Jessie (with her back to the camera) discuss Bran’s infidelities.

Helen: All right, Jess. Would you like me to go now? Or shall I stay and make what’s

known as girl talk? Clothes, gossip, the high price of this and that.

Jessie: Helen, you’re angry.

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Helen: Yes – at the lies that are told about women. That they aren’t capable of affection

for one another and honest friendship. Because the terrible part is that women believe

these lies. I’m concerned about you and I’m afraid to ask. I’m afraid you’ll think I’m

prying. And yet if I don’t ask, what kind of a friend am I?

Jessie: You ask anything you like. I know what kind of a friend you are.

Helen’s speech here is a remarkably frank assessment of many popular representations of female

friendship. The focus on frivolity (“Clothes, gossip, the high price of this and that”) is a

common feature of filmic female friendships, particularly those between society women. The

difficulties of women being honest with each other is a similarly popular assumption of female

friendship whether it is played for laughs (as in The Women) or treated more seriously (as in

When Ladies Meet discussed below). Helen does not want Jessie to mistake her for a prying

gossip like The Women’s Sylvia Fowler, but she also acknowledges that a good friend is one who

listens supportively to her friend’s problems. Jessie’s response clearly indicates that she

considers Helen a good friend, although as the conversation proceeds it seems clear that the two

friends have never had a conversation of this depth. Helen admits that they have never before

spoken of Bran’s affair to which Jessie responds, “There’s a kind of trouble you hate to think

anyone knows about.” The conversation that follows largely consists of Helen asking brief

questions to which Jessie responds with important background information about Bran’s earlier

affair with Isabel and her response to his affair. Although Helen’s presence largely serves as an

excuse for this necessary exposition, the kinds of questions she asks are notable. She questions

why Jessie did not seek a divorce, why she never confronted Bran with the knowledge of his

affair, and how she feels now that Isabel is back. Although Helen stops short of outright

suggesting that Jessie should leave Bran, the kinds of questions she asks certainly seem to

suggest that she believes this is the correct choice.

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In this conversation between Helen and Jessie, we see a subtle opposition to the Victorian

plot of female amity. Rather than guiding her friend towards marriage, Helen is implicitly

advocating for Jessie to leave her philandering husband. This is similar to the way in which

some of Mary’s friends advocate for divorce in The Women, but notable for two reasons. First

Helen takes pains to separate herself from the gossipy Sylvia Fowler types as she initiates the

conversation. Secondly, the resolution of the narrative appears to endorse Helen’s view. Unlike

The Women, which ends with the joyous (offscreen) reunion of Mary and Stephen, Jessie

chooses to leave Bran at the film’s conclusion, a choice that the film presents as painful but

necessary. The scene under consideration ends rather abruptly with an ironic return to the

frivolous stuff of which female friendship is thought to be made. Helen asks Jessie what she

plans to do now and Jessie responds, “Oh…change my clothes, check the menus with the cook,

do some shopping at Marianne’s, [starting to cry] all the things I’d do if I…weren’t afraid.”

Helen appears only once more in the film, at the party she mentions at the beginning of her first

scene. Although they have only a brief exchange here, Helen proves once again to be a

perceptive friend by noting the growing attraction between Jessie and a new man.

Jessie and Rosa offer another example of friends who initially appear to have very little

in common, but are ultimately proven to have a number of similarities. Because of the age

difference between the two, the relationship has a different quality than Jessie’s relationship with

Helen. Rosa clearly admires and looks up to Jessie, but she also appears to have an insight into

Jessie’s relationship with Bran that Jessie herself lacks (fig. 6). As Rosa tells Bran, “If I were

your wife, I’d cut your heart out.” Men serve as an important factor in bringing Jessie and Rosa

together. The two women first meet after Rosa helps Bran out of an embarrassing situation at a

nightclub. Rosa is also responsible for introducing Jessie to Mark, a dashing reporter who falls

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for Jessie over the course of the film. Despite the fact that Rosa herself is in love with Mark, she

accepts the news that he has fallen for Jessie with dignity. At the same time, there is also a sense

that her short-lived friendship with Jessie will not survive after the film’s end. At a narrative

level, both women are parting ways with the men that have brought them together (Mark and

Bran) by the film’s end. At a structural level, Rosa’s departure from Jessie’s life is signaled by

her virtual disappearance from the second half of the film. Indeed, although Rosa plays a key

role in the narrative by bringing Mark into Jessie’s life, she has her last scene with Jessie less

than halfway through the film.

Figure 6: Rosa (left) and Jessie at their first meeting.

As I did in my discussion of The Women, I would briefly like to note the key role that

Jessie’s mother, Nora (Gale Sondergaard), plays in the narrative. Nora appears in only two

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scenes, one at the very beginning and the other at the very end of the film. In the opening scene,

Jessie and Bran have dinner with Nora and she appears to have a wonderful relationship with her

son-in-law. In the penultimate scene, however, Bran goes to Nora to ask her to talk Jessie out of

leaving him. To Bran’s surprise, she tells him that she wants Jessie to leave him, describing him

as “vain and self-centered and ruthless” and saying that, “I’ve never been as fond of you as I am

at this moment knowing that Jessie is free of you and that I no longer have to make you welcome

in this house.” Structurally, this scene serves a similar function to the scene near the end of The

Women where Mary’s mother encourages her to find a man, inspiring Mary’s reunion with

Stephen. It is also notable that while neither of Jessie’s female friends are able to explicitly

encourage her to leave Bran, her mother, a female figure with even greater authority than either

friend, is able to offer a clear denunciation of Bran moments from the film’s end. As in The

Women, mother ultimately knows best, even if each mother advocates for a radically different

path.

As discussed above, both female friends disappear from the narrative relatively early.151

Both interact with Jessie for the last time at the Lees’ party, which occurs less than halfway

through the film. For Helen, this is her last appearance in the film. Rosa makes one more

appearance just over halfway through the film to wrap up her plotline with Mark. As such,

neither character is able to perform the function of bringing closure to the narrative that Marcus

and Cosslett assign to the female friend in Victorian fiction. As I argue, part of the reason for

151 The rather sudden removal of the two friends is partly accomplished through a strange

generic shift that occurs in the last third of the film. While most of the film has remained firmly

in the realm of the woman’s film, the last third takes a bizarre turn into the detective story when

Isabel is abruptly killed off and Mark must solve the murder. It is proven almost immediately

that neither Jessie nor Bran are the culprit, which makes it especially odd that the film devotes so

much screen time at such a pivotal point in the narrative to an extended subplot involving only

one of the main characters (Mark).

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this change is that both friends are advocating against, rather than for, Bran and Jessie’s

marriage. These friends thus represent the more dangerous side of female friendship that

troubled the turn-of-the-century sexologists and adherents of pop Freudianism, a side of female

friendship that is set in opposition to heterosexual monogamy. It is unclear what Jessie will do

now that she is leaving Bran, but she has a wealthy family behind her, thus removing the

economic imperative that forced many Victorian women to remain in unhappy marriages.

The Women and East Side, West Side provide a fascinating snapshot of contemporary

attitudes towards marriage and divorce. Notably, the films ultimately endorse different views

with The Women arguing against divorce and East Side, West Side making the case for divorce.

These differences certainly correspond to the genres of the film – while The Women is a comedy

and thus needs a “happy” ending, East Side, West Side is decidedly more serious. Interestingly,

The Women’s comedic status means that it can get away with advocating for divorce via the

character of Sylvia, who is not meant to be taken seriously.

“Two friends, both writers, both such successes”: Writing friendship

The films in this section focus on female writers. Books written by and for women

(including those that featured plots of female amity) flourished during the Victorian era.

Although many women wielded considerable influence in this field, their writing was largely

expected to celebrate traditional femininity, including the domestic realm of marriage and

family.152 Indeed, one of the appeals of writing was that it was a job women could do seemingly

152 Woloch, Women and the American Experience, 135.

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without leaving the home.153 This also seems to have made writing a profession ideally suited to

screen heroines who could pursue a career while also finding plenty of time to dedicate to love

and romance. For on-screen writers, their work usually closely mirrored their personal lives.

Even Nancy, the writer character from The Women, comments on the ways in which the

women’s various intrigues appear to be ripped from the pages of one of her novels. In the

analysis that follows, I will examine the ways in which When Ladies Meet and Old Acquaintance

utilize the intersection of life and art to explore the lives of their female protagonists. In their

writing, these characters seek to explore women’s roles and self-determination, often placing a

special emphasis on the relationships between women. These films explore the negotiation of

traditional attitudes towards women pursuing careers and emerging twentieth-century notions of

the modern career women. These negotiations also involve an exploration of the changing

relationships between women, figured through a borrowing from and reworking of the plot of

female amity. As in the plot of female amity, friendships between women play a role in shoring

up heterosexual love and marriage. At the same time, these films highlight the increased

importance of bonds between women for the twentieth-century career woman.

One film that appears to mimic closely the plot of female amity is When Ladies Meet.

Based on a 1932 play by Rachel Crothers, When Ladies Meet was adapted for the screen in both

1933 (Harry Beaumont) and 1941 (Robert Z. Leonard). When Ladies Meet deals with a young

author named Mary (Myrna Loy in 1933; Joan Crawford in 1941) who is having an affair with

Rogers, her married publisher (Frank Morgan in 1933; Herbert Marshall in 1941). While Mary

initially believes herself to be justified in the affair with a married man, she reconsiders after

153 Woloch, 135.

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meeting his wife (Ann Harding in 1933; Greer Garson in 1941). The meeting is the result of the

machinations of her other suitor, Jimmy (Robert Montgomery in 1933; Robert Taylor in 1941).

When Ladies Meet offers an interesting twist on the plot of female amity as the two women are

essentially rivals when they meet; however, they are unaware of each other’s true identity. Both

versions of the film are extremely similar although the 1941 version seems to take greater delight

in puncturing Mary’s intellectual aspirations, as discussed below. Overall, When Ladies Meet

presents a relatively positive view of female friendship, a view that I would argue is enabled by

the narrative’s ultimate linking of female friendship and heterosexual monogamy. I find the fact

that two different versions of the film were produced within the time period I am examining to

be particularly noteworthy. Although reviews for the 1941 version were not particularly positive

(especially concerning Crawford’s performance), the 1933 version was clearly successful enough

that it was deemed worthy of a remake.

While most of my discussion will be focused on the friendship that develops between

Mary and Clare, the publisher’s wife, I would also note that Mary is given a second friend named

Bridget (Alice Brady in 1933; Spring Byington in 1941). As the casting indicates, Bridget is a

friend of the comic second type, a gossipy society woman who appears to be slightly older than

Mary. In both films, she is involved with a younger man named Walter. Bridget’s country

house serves as the setting for the second half of the film and is the location of the meeting

between Mary and Clare. In addition to providing comic relief, Bridget largely serves as a foil

for Mary. She is scandalized by Mary’s “modern” behaviour and frets over Mary inviting a

married man to her country house. She is similarly separated from Mary’s intellectual pursuits.

In a conversation about Mary’s new book, Bridget accidentally states, “I’m just crazy to read it,

Mary. I usually don’t like your…”, followed by a shocked expression when she realizes how

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close she came to insulting her friend’s work. Although presented as a bit of a fool, both Mary

and Clare express affection for her, saying that it is a relief to meet someone who does not think

she knows everything (presumably offered as a stark contrast to Mary’s presentation as a

sometimes haughty intellectual).

In addition to the meeting between the titular ladies, the film also serves as a meeting

between modern and traditional views of love and marriage. Mary sees herself as a modern,

intelligent woman. The importance of her identity as an author is established through her

repeated references to her career and her pride in her work. Beyond her identity as a career

woman, Mary professes a commitment to a modern morality that is on display in both her life

and her work. In a case of life reflecting art, Mary spends the film working on the final chapter

of a new book about a woman having an affair with a married man. Mary’s plan for the final

chapter involves the woman going to the married man’s wife “without subterfuge or hypocrisy”

and hashing out the situation. Both of the men in her life object to this ending, claiming that

such a situation would never work out. Her publisher, Rogers, asserts, “If the two women met,

they’d make a mess of everything.” Mary attributes their attitudes to the black-and-white way in

which men view women, an attitude which she refers to as Victorian. Jimmy succinctly

summarizes this attitude when he states, “Women are like eggs. When they’re good, they’re

good. When they’re not…boy.” Notably, in the 1941 version, Mary actually agrees to change

the ending of the book. Mary tells Rogers that she has been approaching the last chapter too

intellectually and instead the heroine should just go to the man and tell him how she feels rather

than attempting to have a rational conversation with the wife.

Mary’s decision to change the ending occurs almost immediately before Mary meets

Rogers’ wife, Clare. After calling Rogers back into town, Jimmy brings Clare to the country

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house where Mary is staying. He hides Clare’s true identity from Mary, telling Clare that he

wants to make Mary jealous. This plan backfires, however, as Mary and Clare hit it off almost

immediately. Mary’s writing initiates the bond between the two as Clare tells Mary that she is a

fan of her work and finds it to be very true to life. While both versions depict Mary warming up

to Clare after this compliment, the 1933 version has Mary emphasize how glad she is to receive

such a compliment from another woman. She also informs Clare that she is sure to like Mary’s

new book even more “from a woman’s perspective,” claiming that Jimmy’s dislike of the new

book is rooted in the fact that he is not a woman. Clare’s admiration of Mary’s writing identifies

her as a kindred spirit. Mary’s emphasis on her enjoyment of a woman’s praise for the writing in

Figure 7: Mary (left) and Clare at the piano with Jimmy behind them in the 1933 version.

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the 1933 version is also interesting. Rather than attempt to separate herself from the often

denigrate sphere of “woman’s fiction,” Mary actively seeks to appeal to women and provide a

true representation of their experience. Mary and Clare further bond by singing a song together

(“I Love But Thee”) while Clare plays the piano. (In the 1941 version, Mary had earlier played

this song for Rogers with Rogers identifying it as his favourite song. Its reprise here underlines

the irony of the title.) Mary’s blocking emphasizes the changing relationship between the two

women. While Mary begins the song standing behind Clare, she eventually moves to the piano

bench beside her, even joining in her playing in the 1941 version (fig. 7). Jimmy comes up

behind them and Clare acknowledges that Jimmy’s plan to make Mary jealous has backfired as

the two women have developed a mutual appreciation for each other. In a line that could be

drawn straight from a description of the plot of female amity, Jimmy states, “I suppose you’re

just handing me back and forth to each other.” He continues, “Well, I wanted you two to meet

anyway. You’ve got a lot in common.” While the two women have yet to discover the

commonality to which Jimmy refers, the film has already established the two women as well

suited. Although not approaching the effusiveness of Victorian romantic friendships, Mary is

open in expressing her admiration of Clare, telling her, “You’re so interesting and so

contradictory” and “You’re so full of everything worthwhile. You simply vibrate with it.”

As a result of a storm, Clare and Jimmy are forced to spend the night at Bridget’s house.

Clare is placed in the connecting room next to Mary, which facilitates a long conversation

between the two women that mimics the intended final chapter of Mary’s book. While Mary and

Clare have already established some common ground, this is truly the moment in which, to

borrow Cosslett’s term, the “transforming interchange” occurs between the two women. In this

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scene, Mary earnestly seeks Clare’s input on her book. In the 1933 version, Mary again

emphasizes how important a woman’s opinion is for her:

Mary: Two men told me two different things, but I care a lot more about what women

think.

Clare: So should I if I were writing. Women can’t fool women…about women.

Mary: You bet they can’t. Now if you told me it rang true, I’d tell those two men to go to

[hell].

Mary is eager for Clare to agree with and approve of her protagonist’s choices, but Clare is

reluctant, drawing on her extensive experience with Rogers’ past affairs to illustrate her

reasoning. Clare reinforces the view expressed early by Jimmy and Rogers that a frank

conversation between the two women is hopeless: “I think from the time those two women met

and faced each other and talked things out, life would be an impossible mess for all of them.”154

At the end of the scene, Rogers reappears and both women realize that they are in love with the

same man. The characters retreat to separate areas of the house to process what has just

happened, but the film has already revealed the fallibility of the contention that women cannot

have an open and honest dialogue with each other. Over the course of this lengthy scene (lasting

approximately ten minutes in both versions), the two openly and frankly air their often-opposing

views on marriage and love without resorting to any of the bickering associated with conflict

between women. Although they were not aware of their underlying rivalry at the time, the

following scenes of plot resolution indicate the extent to which the interchange that occurs in this

scene has opened them up to new perspectives and challenged their preconceived notions about

the other woman.

154 This dialogue is taken from the 1941 version of the film, but Clare expresses similar

sentiments in the 1933 version.

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The ultimate outcome of the transforming interchange is significant in that it presents

both an affirmation of the importance of female friendship and an affirmation of the ultimate

importance of heterosexual marriage. As both women make plans to leave Bridget’s country

house, they run into each other once again and, after some initial reluctance, candidly express

their mutual admiration for each other:

Figure 8: Mary (right) sits at Clare’s feet in the 1941 version.

Clare: At first I was…hurt. Then I got to thinking over all the things you and I said to

each other. How fine I think you are. How much I like you. I knew it couldn’t be just a

tawdry affair with a girl like you.

Mary: [moving closer to Clare and putting her hand on Clare’s] Please believe this: How

any man who had ever known you could even think of anyone else is beyond me.155

155 This dialogue is taken from the 1933 version of the film. The dialogue in the 1941

version is similar, but not identical.

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Jimmy’s attempt to cultivate a rivalry between the two women has backfired thanks to their

willingness to communicate openly with each other. The reciprocity between the women is

illustrated in a striking change in blocking from their extended dialogue in Mary’s bedroom.

Throughout that scene, Mary largely sits at Clare’s feet, suggesting the reverence in which she

holds the older woman as well as the fact that they are not quite seeing eye-to-eye at this point in

the narrative (fig. 8). As they speak to each other in the later scene, however, the two women are

framed in profile in a two-shot that begins as a medium long shot and slowly tracks into a

medium close-up by the end of the scene. Throughout the scene, the two look each other directly

in the eye and, as noted in the dialogue above Mary even moves closers to Clare and touches her

Figure 9: Mary (left) and Clare in their final scene together in the 1933 version.

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hand at the climax of the scene (fig. 9). Their body language is such by the end of the scene that

it almost appears as though they are about to kiss before Rogers enters.156 Clare also

acknowledges that she plans to visit Mary once they are both back in the city, suggesting that the

events of this one night have led to a deeper bond between the two women.

Still, part of what allows for this open celebration of the bond the women have cultivated

is the way in which the film’s ultimate ending reinforces the importance of heterosexual

monogamy. Rogers ends his affair with Mary, telling her he never had any intention of

divorcing his wife. He tries to apologizes to Clare, but she walks out, telling him, “You’re not

worth a minute of one anxious hour that either one of us have given you.” Despite this, however,

Jimmy immediately tells Rogers to pursue Clare and win her back. After Rogers’ rejection,

Mary is initially distraught, delivering a speech in which she says that she is not as smart and

modern as she thought she was and she is deeply ashamed of how she has behaved. Following

this speech, Jimmy comforts Mary and their exchange suggests (as the audience has likely

inferred from the start) that the two will become a couple. As in the plot of female amity, the

happy ending for the two couples serves as a reaffirmation of heterosexual monogamy, but this

ending is only possible as the result of the bond developed between the two women. Clare

actively encourages Mary to get together with Jimmy, the man whom the audience has known

from the start is the right man for her. As well, Mary has taken on qualities from Clare that will

allow her to be a better partner and (presumably) wife. Similarly, Clare’s encounter with Mary

has allowed her to reevaluate her relationship with Rogers and, even though she may ultimately

reunite with him, opened up the possibility of renegotiating their marriage on more equal footing.

156 This change in blocking applies exclusively to the 1933 version. While the 1941

blocking for the bedroom scene similarly places Mary at Clare’s feet, the following scene

includes far more movement and cutting than the 1933 version.

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I want to note briefly an interesting difference between the film’s two versions. While

the 1933 version generally seems to accept Mary’s competence as an author, the 1941 version

takes pains to skewer Mary’s pseudo-intellectualism, notably through the symbolic use of a pair

of glasses she uses throughout the film. In her essay “Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the

Female Spectator,” Mary Ann Doane addresses the emblematic usage of the woman who wears

glasses in classical Hollywood film. For Doane, “Glasses worn by a woman in the cinema do

not generally signify a deficiency in seeing but an active looking, or even simply the fact of

seeing as opposed to being seen. The intellectual woman looks and analyzes, and in usurping the

gaze she poses a threat to an entire system of representation.”157 While Mary is not associated

with an active gaze per se, Mary’s use of glasses is linked to an attempt to exert agency and

influence over the construction of the narrative. The film opens with a scene in which Jimmy

attempts to steal Mary’s glasses as they argue about their relationship. Jimmy soon discovers

that Mary’s glasses are fake and that they are merely an intellectual prop she has assumed to

impress Rogers, an observation that is confirmed when Rogers enters the room and Mary quickly

puts her glasses on. Throughout the film, Mary puts on her glasses whenever she is trying to

assert her identity as an author and the intellectual superiority of her writing. A notable example

is the sequence in which Mary tries to convince Rogers that her vision for the book’s final

chapter is the correct one. Mary wears her glasses throughout the bulk of the sequence before

finally removing them when she suggests that the two adjourn their conversation for dinner.

Mary’s glasses also serve as a telling prop in the film’s conclusion. Doane notes that the woman

with glasses ultimately removes her glasses in order to become a desirable spectacle for the male

157 Mary Ann Doane, “Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator,” in

Issues in Feminist Film Criticism, ed. Patricia Erens (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

1990), 50.

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protagonist (and by extension the male spectator).158 As Mary prepares to leave, Jimmy hands

her the glasses, deliberately dropping them on the floor. Rather than picking them up, Mary

crushes the lens with her high-heeled shoes before pulling Jimmy into the final embrace. The

destruction of the glasses clearly represents Mary’s choice of Jimmy over Rogers, a choice that

the film overwhelmingly represents as the correct one. At the same time, the destruction of the

glasses seems to also suggest that Mary’s identity as an intellectual author will similarly be cast

aside as a false identity. While this interpretation is certainly possible in the 1933 version, the

1941 version seems to insist upon this reading.159 While both Loy and Crawford’s Marys declare

themselves ashamed of their behaviour in relation to Rogers, the use of the glasses directly links

the affair with Rogers to Mary’s identity as an author, suggesting that Crawford’s Mary is

perhaps ashamed of both.

Old Acquaintance (Vincent Sherman, 1943) is a fascinating film to consider in the

context of Victorian friendship and the plot of female amity. Since both female protagonists end

up single at the film’s end, one would expect this film to emphasize the competitive side of

female friendship. To a certain extent, the film does just that, playing up the differences between

the two friends and continually holding out the promise of an epic clash at the film’s climax. At

the same time, the film’s ending is cautiously optimistic, sounding an unusually hopeful note for

the fate of its heroines. As the title indicates, the film centres on two life-long friends, Kit (Bette

Davis) and Millie (Miriam Hopkins). The film emphasizes the longevity of their relationship

158 Doane, “Film and the Masquerade,” 50. 159 Crawford’s performance also seems to invite a more comedic reading of the character,

imbuing Mary with a more affected quality that encourages the viewer to delight in seeing her

cast aside her glasses in the film’s finale.

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with repeated references to the shared childhood and the narrative itself follows their relationship

across twenty years. The film is roughly divided into three sections. The first section takes

place in 1924 and chronicles a visit from Kit, a successful author, to the small town where she

grew up and where Millie still lives. On the trip, Kit stays with Millie who confesses her desire

to become an author like Kit. The second section takes place in 1932. Millie has become a

successful author, but ruined her relationship with her husband, Preston, and daughter, Deirdre.

Preston leaves Millie and confesses his love to Kit. Although she reciprocates his love, Kit

rejects Preston out of devotion to Millie. The final and longest section takes place in 1942.

Although both women’s careers are thriving, they are struggling to find satisfaction in their love

lives. Kit is torn about whether or not to marry Rudd, a much younger man whom she loves

deeply, while Millie is longing to reunite with Preston.

Throughout the film, the differences between the two women are played up to the point

that one might wonder how or why they became friends in the first place. Kit is the “modern

woman” who dresses in a masculine fashion, pursues a career instead of marriage and a family,

and typically remains calm and controlled. By contrast, Millie dresses in frilly, feminine

fashions, is initially introduced as a housewife and expectant mother, and is prone to wild

overreactions. Interestingly, although Millie is portrayed as the more traditionally feminine, she

is open about her desire to be more than “just a woman” by pursuing a literary career like Kit’s.

Indeed, Millie demonstrates a desire to “have it all” (that is, both a career and a marriage/family)

that certainly seems more contemporary than the supposedly modern view held by Kit

(unexpressed but clearly implied) that a successful career woman cannot also be a successful

wife and mother. Unsurprisingly for a mainstream film released in 1943, Kit is ultimately

proven right, paving the way for a strangely subversive ending in which the two women end up

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comforting each other over glasses of champagne. While the film upholds the premise that

career and marriage are ultimately incompatible for a woman (a view espoused in many, many

woman’s films of the 1930s and 1940s), the film is distinct in actually allowing its protagonists

to choose career over marriage and to end the film in any state other than abject misery.

The differences between Kit and Millie are also reflected in their writing. At times, their

writing careers can feel almost peripheral to the narrative, an afterthought to the romantic

escapades that are at the heart of most classical Hollywood film. Still, their work as writers is

essential for shaping and understanding the personalities of the protagonists and their friendship.

Kit is portrayed as the serious artist of the two. We are told in the opening section that her first

book, Bury My Soul, “provoked considerable discussion in New York literary circles,” but,

despite good reviews, it has not been selling very well. Millie suggests that this is linked to Kit’s

ambivalence about her own talent (Kit: “I write and I rewrite and I still don’t like it.”) and her

lack of self-promotion. Kit’s self-effacing approach to her own work clearly carries over into her

friendship with Millie, in which she constantly subsumes her own ego and her own needs to

those of her friend. Millie’s work is the polar opposite of Kit’s. Kit describes Millie’s first book

as “tender love stuff,” a theme clearly reflected in the titles of Millie’s novels, including Married

in June, Lingering Love, and Too Much for Love. Compared to Kit, Millie’s books are

enormously successful financially, no doubt as a result of their focus on romance and happy

endings. Like Millie, the books are positioned as frivolous and inconsequential in comparison to

Kit and her serious, thoughtful work. It is made particularly clear that Millie’s work involves an

element of wish fulfillment for her. In the opening section, when she first presents her

manuscript to Kit, she describes the main character as “the kind of a girl I would have been if I’d

been born in vast spaces – tall and willowy.” Millie’s daughter, Deidre, is named for the

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protagonist of her first novel, published the same year as Deidre’s birth. Although Deidre is

Millie’s only child, she continued to “birth” a novel every year, resulting in a total of eight

novels by the second section of the film. Unlike Kit, Millie is extremely confident in her writing

skills, although this confidence is less about her artistic talent than her ability to produce the kind

of writing that sells. Ironically, despite this knowledge of what the public wants, Millie is blind

to the needs of her own husband, which eventually results in the dissolution of their marriage.

What explanation then does the film offer for the friendship between the two? Indeed,

Millie’s husband, Preston, asks Kit just such a question in the second section of the film. Kit

offers this account of their first meeting: “On my very first day at school, she took me by the

hand and brought me home and said to her mother very solemnly, ‘Mama, this is Katherine

Marlowe who’s going to be my very best friend.’” Preston insists that it can’t be just because

they were friends as children, but Kit tells him that childhood friendship means more than he

thinks it does, telling him, “Millie remembers the same things I do. That’s important.” Earlier in

the film, Millie has similarly alluded to their long history together, telling a reporter that they’ve

been inseparable since the day they met.

While the two frequently speak of their friendship, the film places considerably more

emphasis on the conflicts between them. This conflict is most clearly rooted in rivalry around

men, which comes to a head in the film’s third section. As mentioned above, the third section

revolves around both women struggling to find satisfaction in their love lives. Preston has

returned to New York for the first time since his divorce from Millie ten years ago, which Millie

believes is evidence that he wishes to rekindle their relationship. Instead, Preston tells her that

he is engaged to a younger woman and accidentally reveals that he was once in love with Kit.

Millie immediately flies into a rage. When Kit comes to visit later that day, Millie accuses her of

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ruining her marriage and coveting everything she has ever had. Kit calmly puts Millie in her

place and attempts to leave Millie’s apartment. Millie, however, has to get the last word: “You

can’t take my work away from me. That at least is inviolate.” In the film’s most celebrated

camp moment, Kit finally snaps, grabbing Millie, shaking her forcefully, and depositing her on a

sofa (fig. 10). Spitting out the word “sorry,” she stalks out of the room, leaving Millie in a rage.

It is notable that it is Millie’s reference to their shared career that finally causes a break in Kit’s

cool and composed façade. Rather than jealousy, however, what may be motivating Kit here is

Figure 10: Kit shakes some sense into Millie.

frustration with Millie for refusing to play by the rules. Since the beginning of the film, Kit has

made it clear that the dedication required to be a successful writer means that a woman has no

time for love, a sacrifice that Kit has been willing to make. Millie, however, insists on following

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Kit into a career as a writer, but without sacrificing her husband and family. Despite what Millie

believes, it is ultimately this choice, not any romantic feelings that may exist between Preston

and Kit, that leads to the downfall of their marriage.

Millie’s inability to play by the rules seems to have caused similar confusion for Kit, who

also considers marriage in the film’s final section. Ultimately, however, the relationship falls

apart leading to the film’s intriguing conclusion. In the film’s final scene, Kit and Millie mend

their relationship while resigning themselves to the reality that they will have to remain single.

Millie expresses concern that this state of affair will ruin the ending of her new book:

Millie: My new book. The one I told you I was writing. You see, it’s about two women

friends. They’re practically brought up together. They have their ups and downs, and

finally-

Kit: You mean like us?

Millie: Oh, the characters are all imaginary, but…in a way yes.

Kit: [laughing] Millie, you never cease to amaze me.

Millie: No, really, it’s your not marrying Rudd and both of us finding ourselves lonely. If

I finish it that way… Well, of all my books it’ll be the first sad ending I’ve ever written.

Kit: Well, Millie, you’ve always said you wanted to write what you call an artistic flop.

Maybe this will be it.

Millie: No, Kit, the public doesn’t expect a sad ending from me. Two women left all

alone like this.

The discussion of Millie’s book’s ending calls attention to parallels with the film’s

ending and invites the viewer to decide whether or not to agree with her assessment. Are Kit and

Millie’s fates “sad”? Throughout the film, Millie has generally been portrayed as foolish,

histrionic, and prone to overreaction. Thus, it seems reasonable to suggest that the viewer is not

meant to agree with Millie that the film’s ending is sad, but rather that it is hopeful. Although

Millie describes the characters (and by extension herself and Kit) as “two women left all alone,”

this is clearly inaccurate. They may have lost the men they loved, but they have each other. At

its most melancholic, the ending can perhaps be read as akin to the ending of Now, Voyager,

Davis’s popular vehicle from the previous year with which audiences would have undoubtedly

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been familiar. Once again, Davis’s character is unable to capture the moon (in the form of a

husband), but she has the stars (in the form of other close but platonic relationships and a

thriving and fulfilling vocation). The final shot of Old Acquaintance shows Kit and Millie

toasting to their friendship with glasses of champagne, certainly not an image that reads as

deeply tragic (fig. 11). What emerges is thus a portrait of female friendship as clearly lesser than

or compensatory for romantic love. At the same time, however, these friendships can still be

rich and fulfilling, especially when paired with a rewarding career or other vocation. Indeed, the

film reinforces the research done by Rosenzweig that suggests female friendship was particularly

important for career women who often remained unmarried out of choice or necessity. While

both Kit and Millie struggle with this choice throughout the film, the ending suggests that the

two will ultimately be all right because they have each other. Despite their markedly different

approaches to writing, the two have been more supportive of each other’s work than have any of

the men in their lives. In the first section of the film, Kit is the first person that Millie tells about

her writing aspirations and Kit offers to read her manuscript. Millie is effusive about the idea of

their shared profession: “Won’t it be marvelous? Two friends, both writers, both such

successes.” In the second section, Millie has come to New York to support Kit at the opening of

her new play. In the third section, both women express enthusiasm for each other’s work with

Kit telling Millie that she will send her the galleys for her new book. Consequently, a clear

undercurrent of support runs between them throughout the film. Unlike the plot of female amity,

however, this support is related not to heterosexual matrimony, but to their careers, suggesting

that the film should present a largely negative portrait of female friendship. Indeed, much of the

film stresses the disunity between the two friends, particularly when it comes to men. This

message, however, is subtly balanced throughout the film by the subplot about their writing

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careers and at least partially undermined by the ambiguity of the ending. Marcus writes that,

“[I]t is famously difficult to find a Victorian novel whose female protagonist survives her failure

to marry.”160 By the middle of the twentieth century, however, this had clearly become a

possibility for women in popular fiction, albeit one that was rarely presented in particularly

optimistic terms. In Old Acquaintance the ending suggests a hopeful future of supportive

collaboration for the two women, particularly now that the competitive field of romance has been

removed from their lives.

Figure 11: Kit (left) and Millie toast to their friendship.

160 Marcus, Between Women, 102.

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Both When Ladies Meet and Old Acquaintance ultimately conclude on a note of mutual

support between the female protagonists. This common ground has been forged through their

work as writers and their use of their writing to reflect and reveal their lives. Their writing

serves as a representation of their developing agency and self-determination in their ability to

both literally and metaphorically write their own stories. While When Ladies Meet seems to

argue for a curtailing of this agency in the service of marriage (particularly in the 1941 version),

Old Acquaintance presents a more open-ended future for its independent protagonists.

“I’ve loved you like a friend, the way thousands of women feel about other women”:

Subversive friendships As my analysis thus far has demonstrated, films from the 1930s and 40s that depict

dyadic friendships based on the Victorian model place a strong emphasis on the importance of

heterosexual romance in the lives of their female protagonists. This emphasis on heterosexual

romance was so pervasive that it could even allow for some surprisingly disruptive endings as in

East Side, West Side and Old Acquaintance. Films that tread more closely to genuinely

subversive relationships between women, however, often had to be particularly careful to

reinforce the status quo by the film’s conclusion. Two films that are notable in this regard are

These Three and The Great Lie. Both films present woman-centric worlds constructed and

sustained by their female protagonists. These worlds allow their protagonists to form surrogate

families including their “own” children. These worlds, however, are ultimately fragile and

temporary, giving way to a reconstitution of the heterosexual couple at the film’s end. More than

in any of the other films examined thus far, the central friends in these films are roughly equal in

that they both are fully fleshed characters and both receive comparable amounts of screen time.

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Indeed, the only way in which one character could be said to be the “lead” is by looking to the

woman who ends up with the leading man.

These Three’s notability as a queer text is almost entirely a result of its basis in Lillian

Hellman’s 1934 stage play The Children’s Hour. An unusual candidate for Hollywood

adaptation under the production code, Hellman’s play concerns a pair of female school teachers,

Martha Dobie and Karen Wright, who are accused by one of their students of carrying on a

lesbian relationship. The play largely conforms to the “pathetic invert” mode of portraying

lesbians with Martha, the teacher who comes closest to confessing actual queer desires, killing

herself at the end of the play. In adapting the play for the screen, however, the rumour was

changed to a heterosexual one. Instead of a rumoured affair between Karen and Martha, the film

substitutes a rumoured affair between Martha and Karen’s fiancé Joe Cardin. The film also

substitutes a happy ending in which Martha survives (although her fate after the closing of the

school is ultimately unknown) and Karen and Joe are happily reunited in Vienna. That said, the

film’s dialogue remains surprisingly faithful to the play, even in those sequences that specifically

deal with the rumours of lesbianism. This is partly due to the fact that, although the play makes

the nature of the rumours clear, it never explicitly uses the word “lesbian” or any other language

that spells out the sexual nature of the rumoured relationship between the two women. As a

result, some of the dialogue remains loaded with the implication of a queer interpretation. For

instance, a pivotal exchange between Mary, the malicious student who initiates the rumour, and

Mrs. Tilford, her wealthy and influential grandmother, uses ambiguous dialogue to carry great

implication:

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Mary: They’ve got secrets, grandma. Funny secrets. All about Miss Dobie and Dr.

Cardin – and Mrs. Mortar161 told Miss Dobie that she knew what was going on.

Mrs. Tilford: What?

Mary: That she knew what was going on and that she’d always known what was going

on.

Mrs. Tilford: Stop using that silly phrase, Mary.

Mary: But that’s what she kept using, grandma. And Miss Dobie said she’d have to get

out of the house. That’s why we had to move our rooms, I bet, because they’re

frightened we’ll hear things too.

Mrs. Tilford: Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I don’t think I like it. If

anything puzzled you, you should have gone to Miss Wright or Miss Dobie.

Mary: But they would have punished me more and more and more. If they knew about

how I couldn’t help hearing about that awful night-

Mrs. Tilford: What awful night?

Mary: Well, Dr. Cardin was in Miss Dobie’s room late and other times when things

happened too. I can’t say them out loud, grandma. I’ve got to whisper.

Mrs. Tilford: Nonsense. Why must you whisper?

Mary: Because I got to. Because it’s bad. Well, it was late at night and Miss Dobie’s

room is right next to ours and… (Mary starts inaudibly whispering in Mrs. Tilford’s ear.)

Other than the mention of Joe being in Martha’s room, this exchange is fairly ambiguous about

what “funny secrets” (a phrase also used in the play) Martha may be harbouring. Borrowed

directly from the play is the whispering, ensuring that the scandalous secret is never explicitly

spelled out in this sequence in either the play or the film.

The Children’s Hour taps into growing concerns around lesbianism at girls’ schools in

the early twentieth century. Historians like Martha Vicinus argue that Victorians largely saw

same-sex crushes between students or even between a student and her teacher as a normal,

harmless, and temporary phase of adolescent development, often one that prepared a girl for

future heterosexual love.162 According to Vicinus,

The emotions were concentrated on a distant, inaccessible, but admired student or

teacher; differences in age and authority encouraged and intensified desire. The loved

one became the object of a desire that found its expression through symbolic acts rather

161 Martha’s aunt who is also a teacher at the school. 162 Martha Vicinus, “Distance and Desire: English Boarding School Friendships, 1870-

1920,” in Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. Martin Baumi

Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, Jr. (New York: NAL Books, 1989), 219.

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than actual physical closeness or even friendship in an ordinary sense of daily contact and

conversation.163

By the twentieth century, however, as fears of lesbianism increased, these kinds of crushes came

to be seen as signs of potential abnormality that would continue long after the girls left school.164

In her book Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability, Patricia

White argues that this association between girls’ schools and lesbianism would have been well

known to contemporary audiences, including through the controversial German film Maedchen

in Uniform (Leontine Sagan, 1931).165 In the next chapter, I will be looking at some of the ways

in which films set at girls’ schools depict friendship between women, particularly in ways that

emphasize the importance of heterosexual dating. These Three, however, depicts a markedly

different approach to female friendship than the films I will be examining in Chapter Two.

White argues that The Children’s Hour “seems to dramatize the juxtaposition of 1930s

understandings of lesbianism and the perception of romantic friendships.”166 I would like to turn

then to examining how both the play and the film navigate the slippage between Victorian

romantic friendship and twentieth-century lesbianism. In many ways, the play appears to

dramatize the fears about close relationships between women that led to the pathologization of

female friendship at the turn of the twentieth century. Karen and Martha are unmarried women

supporting themselves in a respectable middle-class profession – owning and operating a girls’

school. In both the play and the film, the rumours are responsible for destroying Karen and

Martha’s livelihood. These Three, however, places considerably more emphasis on the

163 Vicinus, 215-216. 164 Vicinus, 226-227. 165 Patricia White, Uninvited: Classical Hollywood and Lesbian Representability

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 18. 166 White, 118.

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importance of the school and their professional lives. While the play opens with the school

already established and operating, These Three includes an extended opening sequence (about a

third of the film’s running time) that depicts Karen (Merle Oberon) and Martha (Miriam

Hopkins) establishing the school. The film opens with the two graduating from a woman’s

college at which they were roommates. Karen quickly forms a plan to travel to the small town of

Lancet where she owns a piece of property inherited from a grandmother and start a girls’

school. Although Karen owns the property, she makes it clear that the venture would be a

collaborative effort (fig. 12):

Karen: Something of our own. It would be fun and we’d be good at it too.

Martha: Oh, but it isn’t practical, Karen.

Karen: But we’ve got to do something. Oh, Martha, take a chance with me and come.

Take a chance with me.

When they arrive in Lancet, they are shocked to discover the house (which Karen describes as

“our house”) in a state of serious disrepair. They soon meet Joe, however, and he persuades

them to fix up the house with his help. Subsequent scenes depict the refurbishment of the house,

making it clear that Karen and Martha are both actively involved in the work. Although this

sequence does depict the courtship of Karen and Joe, it is also made clear that Karen intends to

keep working at the school after they are married. Karen directly addresses the importance of

the school when the trio confronts Mrs. Tilford about the damaging rumours late in the film,

saying, “We happen to be people who worked hard for what we’ve got. You wouldn’t know

about that. That school meant things to us. It meant self-respect and bread and butter and honest

work. Now it’s gone.”167 By directly showing the creation of the school, the first third of the

film reinforces Karen’s words by presenting Karen and Martha as independent women capable

167 Interestingly, this dialogue also appears in the play, although it is spoken by Joe on

Karen’s behalf (584)

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of supporting themselves and each other, the kinds of women who were becoming increasingly

threatening to male dominance in the early twentieth century. More than the unconvincing

heterosexual love triangle then, it is perhaps this emphasis on Karen and Martha’s independence

that stands in for the deviant lesbianism of the original play and must be brought crashing down

by the film’s ends. The attempt to shift the focus away from any queer implications has

ironically resulted in a film that actually features more scenes of the two female protagonists

together and places a greater emphasis on the female-centric homosocial world that they create

together. At the end, however, this world must be pulled apart to allow the marriage plotline to

resolve happily.

Figure 12: Martha (left) and Karen discuss their plans for the school in their shared room at college.

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One oft-repeated claim about These Three is that Hellman had no problem changing the

plot of her play because she “denied that the play was about lesbians at all”168 but rather about

rumours and the damage they do. While this may be true, the power of the play’s ending still

hinges on the revelation that Martha does indeed harbor romantic feelings for Karen. How then

is Martha’s lesbianism portrayed in the play and how does the film adaptation attempt to erase

these traces of lesbianism? A key piece of evidence seems to be the way in which Martha

behaves around men. As in the film, Martha’s aunt highlights the fact that Martha behaves

strangely around Joe and notes that it is high time Martha gets a “beau” of her own. During

Martha’s disclosure at the play’s end, she similarly highlights the fact that she has never been in

love with a man as proof of her lesbian identity. Martha is also characterized as being possessive

of Karen, a trait that has characterized her friendships with women since childhood. Martha’s

aunt tells her, “You were always like that even as a child. If you had a little girl friend, you

always got mad when she liked anybody else.”169 This emphasis on childhood and the idea that

Martha has always been “unnatural” form a key component of her ultimate revelation. Indeed,

“unnatural” seems to be the key word that the play uses to stand in for “lesbian.”

In Hellman’s original play, Martha’s final confession of her love to Karen enacts a

slippage from friendship to romantic love within her dialogue:

Martha: I don’t love you. We’ve been very close to each other, of course. I’ve loved you

like a friend, the way thousands of women feel about other women.

Karen: (only half listening). The fire’s nice.

Martha: Certainly that doesn’t mean anything. There’s nothing wrong about that. It’s

perfectly natural that I should be fond of you, that I should –

168 Judith Halberstam, introduction to Scotch Verdict: The Real-Life Story that Inspired

The Children’s Hour, by Lillian Faderman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), viii.

Like other sources who make this claim, Halberstam gives no actual source since this appears to

have become “common knowledge” about The Children’s Hour. 169 Lillian Hellman, The Children’s Hour, in 20 Best Plays of the Modern American

Theatre, ed. John Gassner (New York: Crown Publishers, 1939), 569.

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Karen: (listlessly). Why are you saying all this to me?

Martha: Because I love you.

Karen: (vaguely). Yes, of course.

Martha: I love you that way – maybe the way they said I loved you. I don’t know.

(Waits, gets no answer, kneels down next to Karen.) Listen to me!

Karen: What?

Martha: I have loved you the way they said.170

Here, Martha begins by suggesting that there is nothing unusual – nothing unnatural – about her

feelings for Karen. As she speaks, however, she acknowledges for the first time that her feelings

for Karen go beyond the bounds of acceptable love between women. These Three retains this

structure with its climax revolving around a confession from Martha although this time the

confession is of her love for Joe. Interestingly, this confession is also prompted by Martha’s

reflections on her friendship with Karen. Karen admits to Martha that she has been wondering

whether there might be some truth to Mary’s rumours. Martha initially denies that there is any

truth to the rumours, but then seems to experience a change of heart. This change of heart is

signaled in two ways: by a sudden softening of Martha’s defensive tone and by a moment of

physical contact between the two women. As Karen starts to walk away, Martha clutches

Karen’s wrist and softly says, “You thought that for all these months and yet you stood by us.

You’ve been a good friend, Karen.” Karen turns to look at Martha, giving Martha a small smile

and briefly touching her wrist in return (fig. 13). Martha’s realization of Karen’s faithful

friendship prompts Martha’s confession that she has been in love with Joe since the day they

met, but that he has never reciprocated her feelings. As in the play, Martha’s climactic

confession is prompted by reflecting on her love for Karen, although in the film, Martha’s

romantic love for Joe makes it clear that her feelings for Karen remain within the socially

inscribed limits.

170 Hellman, 595.

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Figure 13: Karen (left) and Martha share a moment of connection.

From this point, the ending of These Three diverges markedly from the play. In the play,

Martha’s realization of her true feelings for Karen causes her to take her own life, a similar fate

to that of other “pathetic inverts” in early twentieth-century fiction. In a final tragic twist, Mrs.

Tilford then arrives at the shuttered school and reveals to Karen that Mary has confessed to

inventing the stories. In the film, however, it is Martha who is ultimately responsible for

exposing Mary’s deception. After revealing her true feelings to Karen,171 Martha goes to see

Rosalie, the student who confirmed Mary’s stories, and manages to persuade her to tell the truth.

Martha and Rosalie then go to Mrs. Tilford and reveal Mary’s deception. While this is a fairly

171 As in the play, this is the last scene the two women share.

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unconvincing development (why would Rosalie suddenly confess to Martha after going through

a lengthy trial?), it is striking that Martha is here given the agency to investigate the truth for

herself and to play an active role in the final humbling of Mrs. Tilford. Martha instructs Mrs.

Tilford to take a message to Karen explaining what Martha has learned and urging her to go to

Joe. The film’s final scene captures Karen and Joe’s reunion in Vienna, providing the film with

a traditional romantic ending. Although the film gives no indication of what will become of

Martha now that the truth has been revealed, Patricia White reads the ending as a triumphant one

for Martha:

Martha becomes a true women’s picture heroine as she departs, under the gaze of Mrs.

Tilford, to a destiny unknown to us. If the content of her ‘coming-out’ speech to Karen

has been altered to fit the ‘straight triangle,’ the impact of her self-realization has not; in

this sense the film’s ending is hers.172

I would argue that we can also see the film conforming in these final moments to the guiding

principles of the plot of female amity. By proving that Mary lied and removing Karen’s doubts

about her relationship with Joe, Martha facilitates the happy union of Karen and Joe. Having

thus cleared the way for their marriage, Martha gracefully disappears from the narrative,

removing any lingering threat of rivalry. Indeed, Karen’s departure for Vienna gives the ending

to their relationship a note of finality – an entire ocean now separates the two.

While Karen and Martha are clearly the central female pair in the film, I also want to

touch on the important relationship between Mary (Bonita Granville) and the other schoolgirls,

particularly Rosalie (Marcia Mae Jones). In addition to spreading the rumour that brings about

the school’s destruction, Mary is presented as a cruel bully, tormenting her roommate Rosalie

both psychologically and physically. Patricia White mentions Mary’s “sadism” was of great

172 White, Uninvited, 27.

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concern to the PCA in the adaptation of the play.173 Indeed, Mary’s behaviour has shades of the

“villainous pervert” lesbian characters identified by Faderman. Mary is intent on controlling and

dominating Rosalie. Mary forces her to back up the rumour by threatening to reveal that Rosalie

stole a classmate’s bracelet, an act that Mary assures her will result in Rosalie spending the rest

of her life in prison. Mary demands that Rosalie prove her allegiance by swearing an oath to be

Mary’s vassal, a position that requires Rosalie to do anything that Mary asks of her (fig. 14).

Rosalie could also be said to share characteristics with the “pathetic invert,” a type characterized

by her confusion and hysteria. This interpretation of Rosalie is further enhanced by her link to

Martha throughout the film. Early in Mary’s malicious scheme, Rosalie makes a fruitless

attempt to defend Martha, prompting Mary to reply, “That’s right. Stick up for your crush. Take

her side against mine.” “I didn’t mean it that way,” responds Rosalie. The reference to Rosalie’s

crush ties the film in to the circuits of knowledge around girls’ school that the film otherwise

works so hard to avoid at the same time that Rosalie’s response (she didn’t mean it “that way”)

attempts to disavow these connections. As mentioned earlier, the film further links Martha and

Rosalie by adding the scene in which Rosalie gives Martha the information necessary to finally

expose Mary’s lies. In this way, both Martha and Rosalie have an opportunity to vindicate

themselves within the film. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, the film also adds a punishment scene for

Mary, who receives a slap from Mrs. Tilford’s maid.)

173 White, 26.

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Figure 14: Mary (right) demands that Rosalie swear allegiance.

The Great Lie appears to turn around female rivalry more insistently than These Three.

Maggie (Bette Davis) and Sandra (Mary Astor) stretch the definition of friendship perhaps more

than any other women discussed in this chapter. The convoluted plot revolves around their

rivalry over Pete, a pilot played by reliably bland leading man George Brent. For much of the

film (including a lengthy stretch in which Pete is presumed dead), the focus is on the interactions

between the two women. Indeed, it is these interactions, far more than their rival romances with

Pete, that generate the interest and tension that propels the film. As one contemporary trailer for

the film notes, “When those two [referring to Astor and Davis] get together, the sparks really

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fly!”174 Embedded within the film’s ostensible narrative of rivalry is a surprisingly subversive

sequence in which Maggie and Sandra travel to the Arizona desert and briefly establish an

unconventional female-centric family unit. The film is also notable for the positive offscreen

working relationship between Davis and Astor. While Davis was perhaps best known for her

famous rivalries with costars such as Joan Crawford and Miriam Hopkins, her collaboration with

Astor proved to be markedly different. During the production of The Great Lie, Davis and Astor

reportedly worked together to improve upon the trite and melodramatic script and place the

relationship between the two women at the heart of the narrative.175 Thus, the narrative around

the production of The Great Lie is one of female camaraderie, a welcome deviation from the

typical focus on behind-the-scenes rivalries between diva actresses.

As I mentioned, the film largely revolves around a series of confrontations between the

two women. Indeed, the film is notable for the amount of screen time that the two protagonists

share, which is significantly more than the friends in many of the films I have examined so far. I

would thus like to chart these interactions throughout the film, exploring the complex balance

between rivalry and camaraderie exemplified by their relationship.

Maggie and Sandra’s first scene arrives about a quarter of the way through the film. At

this point, Maggie believes that Sandra and Pete are married, unaware that their impulse

marriage has been annulled because Sandra’s divorce was not yet final. Maggie goes to see

Sandra, a concert pianist, backstage at her performance in Philadelphia. Although Sandra

ostensibly has the upper hand at this point, Maggie demonstrates her closeness to Pete through

174 This trailer itself is interesting as it features two female friends attending the film

together and providing commentary from the audience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS_1RiVeC-s 175 Judith Mayne, Cinema and Spectatorship (London: Routledge, 1993), 138.

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her attempts to get him an unspecified job with the government involving his aviation and

navigational skills.176 Both women are polite if frosty through the exchange until the end of the

scene:

Sandra: If I didn’t think you meant so well, I’d feel like slapping your face.

Maggie: On that one point, Sandra, we deeply understand each other.

Figure 15: Sandra (left) and Maggie during their first scene together.

This undercurrent of violence is emphasized through the women’s framing throughout the

sequence. In a pattern that is repeated throughout the film, Maggie and Sandra are framed facing

each other in a two-shot (fig. 15). In addition to giving the impression that the slap could be

176 The film was released in 1941 and the looming war provides an unspoken backdrop to

the events.

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arriving at any moment, the framing positions the women as equals. Both love Pete and both

have valid claims on his ambivalent affections. In general, both maintain eye contact during

these shots, demonstrating their strength and their unwillingness to back down. The dialogue

between the two is often deliberately paced and filled with pauses as though each is carefully

weighing her words before she speaks. Of course, both the framing and the intensity of

unexpressed emotion can also give the impression that the two are about to embrace.

Figure 16: Sandra (left) and Maggie during their second encounter.

In their second scene, the relationship between the two women has flipped. This time,

Maggie is the one with the ostensible upper hand (she is now married to Pete) while Sandra has

the secret ace up her sleeve (she is pregnant with Pete’s child). Sandra sees Maggie at a

restaurant and informs her that she intends to use her child as leverage to win Pete back.

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Although their situations are now different, the framing and composition of the interaction is

substantially similar to the earlier scene (fig. 16).

Maggie and Sandra’s next meeting brings us to the heart of the film. Shortly after his

marriage to Maggie, Pete’s plane goes down over the Amazon and he is presumed dead. Maggie

goes to Sandra’s apartment, seeking to adopt Sandra and Pete’s (still unborn) child. Sandra is

initially hesitant, but Maggie persuades her:

Sandra: Oh no, I couldn’t do it now – it’s different. I’d be alone – I’d be afraid.

Maggie: But you needn’t be. I wouldn’t leave you for an instant.

Sandra: You?

Maggie: Sandra – let’s call a truce.

Sandra: What?

Maggie: A truce until it’s over. You haven’t told anyone else?

Sandra: Of course not.

Maggie: We’ll go away together secretly. You say no one else knows – no one else will

know. Don’t worry about anything – leave the arrangements, everything, to me.

This proposal is reminiscent of Karen’s proposal to Martha at the beginning of These Three – an

offer to go away together and create a world of their own, albeit an intentionally temporary one

in this case. In the absence of the object of their rivalry, their shared love for Pete allows them to

unite to do what is best for his legacy (after all, Maggie argues, as Pete’s legal wife, she can give

the baby his name if she claims him as her own).

Following this scene is the central section of the film that tends to draw the most critical

comment.177 Maggie and Sandra take up residence in a modest house in the Arizona desert to

await the birth of Sandra’s baby. Thanks to classical Hollywood conventions of depicting

pregnancy, it is difficult to tell how long the women spend in the desert, but the pieces we see in

the film make it clear that they are there long enough to form routines and habits. Other than a

brief scene featuring a cook, the two women appear to spend all of their time alone together. The

177 See for example Jeanine Basinger in A Woman’s View and Patricia White in Uninvited

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sequence represents both a continuation of the relationship we have seen throughout the film and

its culmination. The women continue to be framed primarily in a two-shot that allows them to

occupy the frame together although this sequence offers considerably more movement and

variety than the scenes set in “civilization.” Throughout this sequence, the two form a kind of

surrogate family, taking on a variety of different roles over the course of their sojourn. Maggie

dedicates herself to taking care of Sandra, assuming a role that is alternatively that of the doting,

comforting mother and that of the strict disciplinarian, preventing the rebellious Sandra from

doing their unborn child any harm. Sandra, meanwhile, is restless and argumentative, often

coming across as Maggie’s spoiled child.

While the relationship between the two continues to be prickly, each scene in the Arizona

sequence ends with a kind of truce between the two, a moment of reconciliation in which they

appear to acknowledge that their similarities outweigh their differences. In the first scene of this

section, Maggie returns from running errands in town where she has purchased a shawl and a

record to amuse Sandra. Sandra rejects both gifts and instead demands that Maggie give her the

sleeping pills she requested. Maggie tells her she did not get the pills because the doctor advised

against them and suggests she go for a walk instead. Although Sandra initially protests, she

ultimately takes Maggie’s advice. In a haunting scene, Maggie and Sandra walk silently through

the desert together, having reached a tentative truce. In the next scene, Sandra sneaks into the

kitchen at night to make a sandwich of forbidden foods (ham, butter, pickles, and onions) before

being stopped by Maggie. After an outburst from Sandra (“I’m a musician. I’m an artist. I have

zest and appetite and I like food.”), Maggie consents to make her a sandwich complete with one

“very thin slice” of onion. The sequence reaches its climax in the next scene, one that seems to

mark a shift in the relationship between the two from parent-child to something more egalitarian

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and companionate. One windy night, Maggie and Sandra sit by the fire playing cards. As the

scene progresses Sandra becomes increasingly agitated, attempting to provoke the placid Maggie

into a fight. In frustration, Sandra tries to flee from the house ultimately becoming so aggravated

that she stands in the centre of the room screaming until Maggie slaps her brusquely. The slap

brings the film full circle to the women’s first interaction. The tension that simmered between

them in the early scenes has finally erupted in a moment of physicality. Maggie allows herself to

release the anger and frustration she has felt for Sandra from her attempts to meddle in Maggie’s

relationship with Pete to her spoiled behaviour throughout their desert residence. For Sandra,

Figure 17: Maggie (foreground) and Sandra share a moment of connection.

the slap is a chance to break down in tears, revealing the fear and uncertainty behind her outward

defiance. Maggie’s slap clears the air for the more tender moment of physical connection in the

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following scene. Sandra is now about to give birth. As a nervous Sandra waits for the doctor,

Maggie gently places her hand on top of Sandra’s. Sandra quickly moves her hand on top of

Maggie and grips her tightly (fig. 17). This moment of comfort abruptly cuts to the next scene in

which Maggie is now the nervous one, pacing anxiously as she waits for news of the baby. The

doctor emerges to tell her that the baby has been born and all is well. He mentions that he misses

having a father around, pacing anxiously and waiting to hear how the baby is doing, seemingly

oblivious to the fact that Maggie is doing just that. Maggie’s assumption of the role of expectant

father in this scene underlines the extent to which the two have become a surrogate family over

the course of their time in the desert. By this point, the impression has emerged that they are

awaiting the birth not of Sandra and Pete’s child or even Maggie and Pete’s child, but rather

Maggie and Sandra’s child. As if to shift the focus away from this potentially transgressive

conclusion, Maggie slips outside the house and looks to the sky, softly calling Pete’s name.

Thus, the Arizona sequence concludes and the film abruptly shifts to the women’s separate post-

partum lives – Sandra travels to Australia for a concert tour while Maggie returns to her

Maryland farm as a doting mother to Pete’s son.

In its final act, however, the film introduces one of the great ludicrous twists of classical

Hollywood. It is revealed that Pete is not dead after all and he returns to take up his life with

Maggie right where he left off. Shortly thereafter, Sandra arrives for a visit with the obvious

intention of reclaiming both Pete and the baby (which Maggie has passed off as her own).

During Sandra’s stay at the house, the two women share two scenes alone in which they argue

over who deserves the child and how Pete will respond to learning that Maggie has lied

(although Maggie maintains that she is the child’s true mother since Sandra “walked away from

that baby without one backward look”). Visually, these scenes are very similar to the

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interactions between the women from prior to the Arizona sequence with the two frequently shot

together in profile maintaining strong eye contact (fig. 18). They similarly offer a return to the

restrained tension of the earlier interactions between the two. Ultimately, Sandra forces Maggie

to tell the truth: Sandra is the mother of the child and she now wants him back. Pete makes it

clear that although Sandra has the right to take the baby, he will be staying with Maggie.

Abruptly, Sandra sits down at the piano and begins playing her signature piece. She informs

Figure 18: Maggie (left) and Sandra return to their pre-desert interlude configuration.

them that she won’t be staying for lunch and she’ll be leaving the baby with his mother –

Maggie. As Pete wanders into the hall to greet their lunch guests, Maggie steps behind Sandra,

extending a hand to gently place it on her shoulder. This moment of physical connection

provides an echo of their time in the Arizona desert. Although Sandra does not react to Maggie’s

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touch, the implication seems to be that their temporary truce in the desert will now become

permanent. Although the ending brings a reconciliation between the two, it is also clear that this

will mark an end to their relationship. Maggie will continue her life with Pete and their child

while Sandra will retreat from their lives into her music. Indeed, Sandra’s devotion to her career

is repeatedly vilified throughout the film. She is depicted as a temperamental artist (notably in

the Arizona sequence) who puts her career above her husband (she goes to Philadelphia to work

instead of staying in New York to marry Pete) and child (her motivation for giving Maggie her

child is a desire to continue her career). Her decision late in the film to re-devote herself to

motherhood is seemingly only made out of jealousy and spite.

In the film’s final shot, Pete pulls Maggie away from Sandra and leads her into the

entrance hall. As the couple walks towards the door to greet their guests, Maggie glances back

over her shoulder to Sandra (now off-screen) as Sandra’s piano playing blossoms into a full

orchestral rendition of her song. Like These Three, the film ends on a note of reaffirmation for

the heterosexual couple with the complicating third party withdrawing from the triangle. The

abrupt nature of this ending, however, makes it feel far less settled than the ending of These

Three. As well, Sandra’s disconcerting presence lingers as her song plays over the final shot of

the happy couple. Notably, it is Pete who leads Maggie away from Sandra at the end rather than

the other way around.

Like many of the films I have examined thus far, the central relationship between Maggie

and Sandra is balanced out by a secondary female pairing. The close relationship between

Maggie and her devoted Black maid Violet (Hattie McDaniel) receives a fair amount of screen

time. As a servant figure, Violet belongs to a group of characters Judith Roof refers to as

“tertiary characters,” that is characters that are even less prominent than the secondary characters

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that are the focus of Roof’s study. These tertiary characters “furnish another tier of characters

who are often less individualized than stereotyped but who still play an important role in

promoting the flow of information or augmenting the charms or foibles of the main

characters.”178 Violet’s character is a fairly typical “mammy” characterization, albeit with the

tart edge that was characteristic of McDaniel’s particular spin on the mammy archetype. Violet

lives with Maggie at her farm in Maryland. Although there is at least one other Black servant

living at the farm, the film’s early scenes give the impression of an especially close relationship

between the two women who run the world of the farm with Maggie even turning to Violet for

advice about Pete.

Violet is depicted as fiercely protective and deeply loyal to Maggie to the point that she is

given no interests or emotional life beyond the needs of her white mistress. Early in the film

Violet highlights this emotional connection by telling Pete, “There ain’t nothing personal

between Miss Maggie that ain’t personal with me (fig. 19).” While Violet is absent from the

Arizona sequence, she returns in the final section of the film. Once Pete returns from the dead,

Violet’s emotional importance to Maggie is downplayed and instead her maternal functions are

emphasized. Notably, Violet seems to spend much more time taking care of the baby than

Maggie does, putting him to bed, giving him his bath, and generally caring for him while Maggie

is absorbed in the love triangle. Patricia White sees Violet’s role as offering a shadowing of the

main “double mother” plot.179 Not only does the baby have two mothers in the form of Maggie

and Sandra, but he also has two mothers in the form of Maggie and Violet. Violet’s

contributions are simultaneously made visible in the film, but also remain unmentioned. Thus,

178 Roof, All About Thelma and Eve, 125. 179 White, Uninvited, 156.

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although Maggie and Violet’s relationship offers another instance of a female-centred world, it is

also one founded in deep inequality.

Figure 19: Violet (centre) places a protective arm around Maggie during a confrontation with Pete.

Overall, The Great Lie follows a pattern similar to that laid out in These Three. The

female protagonists build a female centred world together and form a surrogate family complete

with children. Ultimately, however, this female world must give way to reestablishment of the

patriarchal family. While the film spends considerable time grappling with the question of what

makes a “real” mother, it seems to clearly indicate that a real family requires a father. While the

film places considerably more emphasis on tension and competition between the women than the

typical plot of female amity, it is largely the two women who make choices and arrange the

events of plot. Indeed, the focus on the animosity between the two women can be read as an

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attempt to ward off any implications of lesbianism between the two. As in These Three, the

film’s more rigorous assault on patriarchal family structures means that the film must end with a

strong affirmation of the heterosexual couple and the clear removal of the other woman, not just

as a romantic rival but as any kind of friend or ally to the romantic victor.

As I have argued, the films discussed in this chapter offer an intermingling of Victorian

and twentieth century attitudes towards marriage, career, and bonds between women. The films’

adoption of select elements from the plot of female amity demonstrates the extent to which

Victorian models experienced both continuity and revision in this era. Even when their endings

attempt to repudiate all that has come before, these films ultimately expose the strength and

importance of bonds between women.

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Chapter 2 – The Art of Cooperation: Twentieth-Century Friendship

Styles

Introduction

This chapter centers on films that display new friendship styles that began emerging in

the 1920s. As I demonstrated in the previous chapter, Victorian friendships styles could and did

persist into the twentieth century. At the same time, the world was changing in ways that would

ultimately have a profound impact on the ways in which women socialized and bonded with each

other, escalating the tension between conflict and camaraderie seen in the films of the previous

chapter. In what follows, I outline three major factors that led to changes in women’s friendships

during the period from 1920-1953: 1) increased time spent with peers as women spent more time

at school and work; 2) increased emphasis on the importance of heterosexual love and marriage

coupled with the introduction of new courtship practices such as dating; 3) increased influence of

the movies and mass culture on both women themselves and on popular perceptions about

women. Taken together, these three factors speak to women’s movement out of the “woman’s

sphere” of the Victorian era and into the public realm.

One significant factor is the increased importance of peer-centered socialization as

women (particularly young women) spent increasing amounts of time outside the family home. I

draw on the work of scholars such as Paula S. Fass and Nancy Woloch to illustrate the increased

importance of school and work in the lives of young women, two activities that took them out of

the home and into the company of their peers. As a result, I argue that friends and peers took on

an increasingly important role in forming the opinions, perspectives, and morals of many young

women, a role formerly occupied by the family. Friends thus became a kind of surrogate family,

guiding and supporting young women as they learned to navigate the world. In many cases,

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friends further extended their familial role by living together and sharing domestic space. As

well, young women were more likely to eschew the dyadic friendships of the Victorian era and

instead form themselves into friendship groups. Large groups could mean an extended support

system in times of need. At the same time, however, group friendship could also lead to an

increased drive towards conformity as women sought to fit in with their friend group and the

wider peer culture.

Another significant factor influencing the friendships explored in this chapter is changing

ideas about love and marriage. Rather than stressing questions of economic status, social

position, or family lineage, personal compatibility became the key factor in choosing a

prospective life partner. As such, ideal romantic relationships were now expected to include

friendship and emotional support, reducing the need (at least theoretically) for the intimate same-

sex friendships of the Victorian era. At the same time, the pressure for young women to find a

husband was very intense. Although greater numbers of women were going to school and

taking on paid jobs outside of the home, these activities were still meant to be only an interlude

or a supplement to their true vocation of being a wife and mother. As well, the popularization of

Freudian theory during this period also led to an increased stigmatization of homosexuality

(discussed in more detail in Chapter One). This stigmatization contributed to concerns about

close female friendships in the Victorian mode and further encouraged women to seek emotional

support from their husbands rather than with other women.

Crucially, a third factor exerted a powerful influence on public perception of both peer

socialization and love and marriage: the movies themselves. As I outline below, several scholars

point to Hollywood movies as the source of many young peoples’ ideas about love, marriage,

work, school, and friendship. I also draw on some contemporary commentators who express

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concern about the frequently disparaging portrayal of young women on screen, most notably in

connection to films about school. Additionally, films about actresses proved to be a source of

fascination for audiences during this period. In the final section, I examine several of these

films, which serve as a culmination of many of the themes explored in this chapter. Actresses

serve as a particularly visible example of women in the public realm with both their conflicts and

camaraderies being amplified by the spotlight. This section also gives me an opportunity to

explore the ways in which “acting” in general plays a role in friendships. Many of the films I

examine include scenes in which the characters put on an act for their friends, typically affecting

a strength or confidence that they do not truly feel in an attempt to put on a brave face and

assuage their friends’ concern.

School and work

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, increasing numbers of young people

were staying in school for increasingly longer periods of time. In Holding Their Own: American

Women in the 1930s, Susan Ware offers this statistic to account for the shift towards peer-centred

socialization: “In 1930, barely half of the youngsters between fourteen and eighteen attended

high school; by 1940, three-quarters shared this experience.”180 Although a much smaller

percentage was attending college, this group exerted a huge influence on trends and popular

culture nationwide. The evolving importance of college youth culture is documented in historian

Paula S. Fass’s influential 1977 study The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the

1920s, an account frequently cited in subsequent studies of women at college in the first half of

180 Susan Ware, Holding Their Own: American Women in the 1930s (Boston: Twayne,

1982), 56.

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the twentieth century. Starting in the 1920s, “college students were fashion and fad pacesetters

whose behavior, interests, and amusement, caught the national imagination and were emulated

by other youths.”181 The nationwide spread of college trends was aided by emerging mass media

forms, including the movies.182 At college, the supervisory role once played by family and the

wider community was increasingly assumed by one’s peer group.183 One arena in which peer

culture played a key role was the relatively new field of dating. Going out on dates, either as a

couple or with a group, replaced the earlier style of suitors paying calls at a young woman’s

family home.184 A social life focused on heterosexual dating rapidly replaced the same-sex

fellowship of earlier college campuses and could also foster an air of competition between

women.185 As Betty Friedan writes in The Feminine Mystique, “The one lesson a girl could

hardly avoid learning…was not to get interested, seriously interested, in anything besides getting

married and having children, if she wanted to be normal, happy, adjusted, feminine, have a

successful husband, successful children, and a normal, feminine, adjusted, successful sex life.”186

Extracurricular clubs could also contribute to this aura of competition, most notably the

campus sororities. At most coed schools, fraternities and sororities formed the centre of campus

social life.187 The expansion of fraternities and sororities began in the 1870s as American

institutions began to grant their students greater freedoms, “emulating European attitudes that

181 Paula S. Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (New

York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 126. 182 Fass, 126. 183 Woloch, Women and the American Experience, 402. 184 Woloch, 404. 185 Woloch, 404. 186 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, reprint in paperback (New York: W.W. Norton

& Company, 2001), 156. 187 Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, 140.

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permitted students greater latitude for self-determination in social and academic matters.”188 By

1930, 35% of students belonged to a fraternity or sorority.189 While a minority of students

actually belonged to the exclusive fraternities and sororities, they exerted considerable influence

over the campus at large, dictating the correct ways to dress and behave in order to fit in. Fass

argues that the rise of fraternities and sororities coincides with dramatic demographic changes at

American universities. Student populations were becoming larger and more heterogeneous,

“denominationally, economically, socially, and to a limited degree even racially.”190 As a result,

fraternities and sororities played a key role in sorting and separating this heterogeneous

population. The influence of fraternities and sororities led to students attempting to conform to

the standards set by these exclusive clubs in an effort to fit in. Thus, fraternities and sororities

played a key role in reshaping this increasingly heterogeneous population into a homogenous

one. As Fass argues, “It was conformity, above all, that was the glue of campus life, the basis for

group cohesion and identification on the campus, and while it was stickiest among members of

fraternities and sororities, the whole campus seemed to be molded along similar lines.”191 The

fraternities and sororities accomplished this goal through what Fass calls “the major mechanisms

of peer control – election, supervision, ostracism, and prestige.”192 According to Fass, “The

desire to be accepted by the inner group led to a voluntary assumption of the approved interests,

manners, appearance, and behavior.”193 Although money was rarely explicitly acknowledged as a

188 Fass, 142. 189 Fass, 144. 190 Fass, 147. 191 Fass, 149. 192 Fass, 149-150. 193 Fass, 151.

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key requirement for fraternity or sorority membership, the expenses associated with Greek life

often meant that only relatively wealthy students could afford to join.194

Although Fass tries to remain relatively detached in her examination of the sororities,

Shirley Marchalonis finds that fictional treatment of sororities was often far more condemnatory.

In her fascinating study College Girls: A Century in Fiction, Marchalonis examines a wide range

of fiction about women at college written from 1865 to 1940. While Marchalonis notes that the

early fiction generally presents a positive image of communities of women living and studying

together, she sees this changing after the turn of the twentieth century, including through the

introduction of sororities as a key element in women’s college fiction. She writes,

Tones differ, but the authors who focus on sororities present them without redeeming

virtues other than their providing more comfortable and pleasant places to live than the

boardinghouses which are the nonsorority woman’s fate. Otherwise the fictional sorority

is a distortion of women’s space as a place of power: in a masculine world, the only

power women have comes through winning the approval of the dominant group and then

by extension to exclude, to strengthen themselves by weakening others.195

This negative view of sororities tends to be supported by the films that I examine in this chapter

with both the necessity of appealing to men and the desire to exclude women seen as

“undesirable” forming key components of sorority life.

Peer socialization would continue to play a central role in the lives of adult women.

Unlike Victorian women, who would have been confined largely to the domestic and familial

realm, twentieth-century women experienced increased opportunities to meet other women both

through new leisure opportunities and through expanded participation in the work force. By the

1920s, leisure activities were generally becoming more organized and group oriented, which

194 Fass, 154. 195 Shirley Marchalonis, College Girls: A Century in Fiction (New Brunswick, N.J.:

Rutgers University Press, 1995), 126.

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Rosenzweig suggests led to a decreased focus on intimate, one-one-one relationships in favour of

more superficial, group-based friendships.196

Perhaps more significant was the entrance of larger numbers of women into the work

force. In Women and the American Experience, Nancy Woloch charts changes in female

participation in the labour force between the two World Wars. She notes that although the

proportion of women in the work force remained unchanged (about 25 percent), the actual

number of women rose and the kinds of work they were performing changed.197 Particularly

important were gains in the lower rungs of the business world, including jobs as office clerks,

stenographers, typists, switchboard operators, and sales women.198 Woloch notes, however, that

women seeking work post-1920 (i.e. post-women’s suffrage) often had different motivations

than their earlier counterparts: “Economic independence was in fact the new frontier of feminism

in the 1920s. A change of direction from the service-oriented, progressive goals of the

presuffrage era, it was also a shift of emphasis from public causes to private career, from society

to self.”199 She notes that this shift in emphasis from the social to the self largely means an end

to organized unity between women: “Professional situations were competitive, not cooperative;

individual achievement was more vital than collective action.”200 On the other hand, according

to Rosenzweig, friendships “played both an important personal and a more utilitarian,

untraditional, public role”201 as increasing numbers of women entered the work force. These

friendships would include practical mentorship as well as emotional support, both of which

196 Rosenzweig, Another Self, 106. 197 Woloch, Women and the American Experience, 388. 198 Woloch, 390. 199 Woloch, 388. 200 Woloch, 393. 201 Rosenzweig, Another Self, 116.

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Rosenzweig sees as equally important.202 As Lorine Pruette observes in her 1924 book Women

and Leisure: A Study of Social Waste, for women, a key value of the working world is “the

fellowship, the working together of a group, the satisfaction which comes of doing things in

common.”203 To a certain extent, the discrepancy between these two accounts seems to hinge

largely on the decline of the formal organization among women. Both Woloch and Rosenzweig

provide compelling evidence that the kind of reform groups that advocated for suffrage and other

progressive causes were on the decline in the 1920s. At the same time, women were clearly

making advances into public life via increased participation into the labour force, an endeavour

in which they appear to have had at least some form of support from other women. The

implication, however, seems to be that this support was largely unofficial and ad hoc with

different working women having markedly different experiences. As a result, it becomes

somewhat more difficult to delineate a unity among the experiences working women may have

had with other women in the work force.

While women had certainly been engaging in paid work prior to the 1920s, the sheer

number of women working during this period is notable. As well, the types of work women

performed began to change. I argue that the new jobs taken up by increasing numbers of women

involved a crucial movement out into the public sphere. To illustrate what I mean here, consider

a comparison with the working women we saw in Chapter One. In films like Old Acquaintance,

When Ladies Meet, and These Three, the female characters are largely shown working from their

homes, spending most of the film surrounded by domestic space. By contrast, the women we

202 Rosenzweig, 116. 203 Lorine Pruette, Women and Leisure: A Study of Social Waste, reprint (New York:

Arno Press, 1972), xii.

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will see in this chapter do all of their work outside of the home. These women are also employed

in professions that make them increasingly visible, putting them on display for their peers.

Dating and marriage

In her book on female friendships, Rosenzweig draws on a variety of letters and diaries

from young women that attest to the importance of female friendships in the lives of young

women in the period from 1920-1960. She notes that, “peers played a more important role in the

process of self-discovery and the development of self-esteem than either family or religion.”204

These friendships, however, are increasingly organized around discussions of boys. The rise of

dating as a practice moved courtship from a tradition over which a young woman’s family had

considerable oversight to a public ritual in which peer approval held considerable sway.

Rosenzweig argues that by the time adolescents moved on to early adulthood (possibly including

time spent at college), they had fully internalized the cultural imperative regarding heterosexual

romance, ensuring that the friendships they developed throughout their lives would continue to

mimic these formative experiences.205

In her book From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America,

Beth L. Bailey traces the move from “calling” as a central courtship practice to “dating” in

roughly the contemporary sense of the term. As Bailey argues, up to roughly the 1920s,

American courtships largely took place in the family home with young men calling on young

women and being received in the family parlour. This system allowed families to exert

considerable control over partner selection. The shift towards dating, however, “moved

204 Rosenzweig, Another Self, 71. 205 Rosenzweig, 80.

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courtship in to the public world, relocating it from family parlors and community events to

restaurants, theaters, and dance halls.”206 Bailey notes that the practice of going out on dates

initially evolved from the inability of working-class youth to entertain in homes that lacked a

bourgeois parlour. In the 1920s, dating became fashionable among hip and rebellious college

students. By the 1930s, however, dating as a practice had gained large scale acceptance among

young people nationwide. Bailey emphasizes the extent to which the public nature of dates also

made them grounds for competition (particularly, this quote seems to imply, between women):

The concept of dating value had nothing to do with the interpersonal experience of a date

– whether or not the boy (or girl, for that matter) was fun or charming or brilliant was

irrelevant. Instead, the rating looked to others: ‘pass in a crowd’ does not refer to any

relationship between the couple, but to public perceptions of success in the popularity

competition.207

Rather than family, however, the ones who would be judging the “value” of the date were peers.

In addition to its public nature, the spending of money was a key element of the date. As Bailey

writes, “In almost all instances, a date centered around an act of consumption: going out for

dinner or a Coke, seeing a movie, buying access to some form of entertainment.”208

The shift towards dating as a courtship practice also led to changes in sexual mores. As

Fass puts it,

Dating opened the way for experimentation in mate compatibility. The lack of

commitment permitted close and intimate associations and explorations of personality,

and isolation and privacy laid the ground for sexual experimentation, both as a means for

testing future compatibility and as an outlet for present sexual energies.209

206 Beth L. Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century

America (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1988), 13. 207 Bailey, 29. 208 Bailey, 58. 209 Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, 263.

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By the 1930s, sexual intimacy (although not necessarily sexual intercourse per se) was becoming

increasingly acceptable in casual dating relationships.210 Still, a 1938 study by Dorothy D.

Bromley and Florence H. Britten revealed that one-fourth of female undergraduates had

experienced premarital sexual intercourse.211 Perhaps more significant, however, is a 1930 study

of undergraduate women by Phyllis Blanchard and Carolyn Manasses, which revealed that “only

one-third disapproved of friends who had extramarital sex experience, and only 13% would

break their friendship on the basis of that disapproval.”212 While attitudes towards sexual

behaviour were certainly changing, it was still essential for women to adhere to the behaviour

sanctioned by the peer group as a whole. While there was considerable pressure to engage in

sexual activities such as “petting parties,” sexual intercourse was largely restricted to couples

who were engaged rather than those who were casually dating.213 Vigorous competition between

campus women over men ensured that correct sexual behaviour would be observed, with anyone

failing to conform to standards being ostracized from the group.214 As we will see in the films I

explore below, this failure to conform can apply both to those who exceed the limits of sexual

propriety as well as those who fall short of expected dating behaviour.

Changes in romantic relationships were not confined to the dating stage. Once women

were married, they continued to set different goals and expectations for married life. As several

contemporary commentators note, working women began to express a desire to combine

marriage and career. As Freda Kirchwey writes in her series on “modern women” published in

Nation in the 1920s, “She wants money of her own. She wants work of her own. She wants

210 Fass, 270. 211 Fass, 275. 212 Fass, 277. 213 Fass, 268-269. 214 Fass, 268.

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some means of self-expression, perhaps, some way of satisfying her personal ambition. But she

wants a home, husband, and children, too.”215 By the end of the 1920s, however, a study

conducted by Phyllis Blanchard and Carlyn Manasses found that few young women were willing

to forgo marriage in favour of a career.216 The expectations that women had for these marriages

were radically different than earlier generations, however, with a focus on equality, reciprocity,

and sexual compatibility.217 Woloch also suggests that the Depression played a key role in this

ideological shift, giving “new currency to the dogma that woman’s place was at home, that

women who worked did so mainly for ‘pin money,’ and that jobs should be reserved for male

‘breadwinners.’”218 The reality of working women’s lives, however, did not necessarily line up

with this ideal. In practice, women workers were often protected (somewhat ironically) by the

sex-based segregation of the work force. As Woloch writes, “Women workers were

concentrated in ‘women’s fields,’ such as sales, clerical, and service occupations, and these were

less hard hit than the areas of heavy industry – autos, steel, construction – where few women

were employed.”219 As a result, many women did continue to work through the Depression,

whether out of necessity or out of choice. Still, they would have been exposed to messaging that

argued that the “correct” choice was to leave the task of earning money to a man.

Movies and technology

Finally, I want to touch briefly on a third factor that is often cited as an influence on

changing friendship patterns in the early twentieth century: the movies themselves. In

215 Woloch, Women and the American Experience, 394. 216 Woloch, 407. 217 Woloch, 407. 218 Woloch, 441. 219 Woloch, 447.

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researching the historical changes that I outline in the preceding sections, I was struck by how

frequently Hollywood movies were cited as an influence on women’s behaviour, even in works

not primarily concerned with film or media. Movies are often cited for their key role in the new

peer culture. Group activities based around the rise of commercial entertainments available in

urban areas were becoming increasingly popular, especially with young people. Paula S. Fass

notes that, “The young were more and more orienting their behavior to non-traditional

institutions – peers rather than parents, movies rather than the local community.”220 Similarly,

along with the popularization of Freudian ideology, Rosenzweig points to “Hollywood images of

heterosexual love”221 as one of the factors encouraging women to seek out male companionship.

The image of love and marriage promoted in Hollywood films often reinforced the ideals of

companionate marriage, which “implied that the emotional support and companionship that

women (and men) had found previously with members of their own sex would be provided by

their spouses.”222 As a result, the close female friendships of the Victorian era came to be seen

as old-fashioned or even abnormal – a throwback to a time when women and men were less

“equal.”223 With this emphasis on companionship between spouses, other women necessarily

became a threat. Woloch specifically points to the movies as elaborating the perilous status of

married life: “The married woman needed survival tactics to meet the competition – whether

from the next generation of flirts and flappers, with access to office and husbands; from family

friends, as in Flaming Youth; or from married peers. Almost 300 movies in the 1920s dealt with

220 Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, 290. 221 Rosenzweig, Another Self, 70. 222 Rosenzweig, 70. 223 Rosenzweig, 70-71.

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the theme of infidelity, and their lessons were obvious.”224 The image offered by Woloch here is

a familiar one, focusing as it does on competition rather than camaraderie between women.

Technological change also played a significant role in the ways in which friends

interacted with each other. Rosenzweig notes that the rise of the telephone was particularly

crucial. While the telephone made it easier than ever to keep in touch with friends over

geographic distances, the nature of telephone communication also reduced the need for (or the

desirability of) the kind of lengthy, intimate self-disclosure that was a part of Victorian letter

writing.225 (This change also poses a significant historiographical problem for Rosenzweig as

personal letters are one of her key sources on female friendship.)

The films

In what follows, I examine three groupings of films that illustrate the changing dynamics

of female friendship in the first half of the twentieth century. These changing dynamics are

broadly tied to women’s definitive movement from the private “woman’s sphere” of Victorian

times into the public world of the twentieth century. In many ways, this brought women into

greater contact with their peers than ever before. Many of the films below demonstrate a move

away from the dyadic model of Victorian friendship to a group-based model of friendship.

Significantly, these friendships also come into being within the context of new, gender-integrated

environments. These gender-integrated environments provide both a need for women to band

together and an impetus for competition as each woman seeks to validate her worth to the group

by proving her desirability for men. The films I examine below evidence a new tension between

224 Woloch, Women and the American Experience, 408-409. 225 Rosenzweig, Another Self, 106.

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public and private spaces, particularly in relation to gendered interactions. The first section

focuses on films that take place largely within the context of schools. These films tend to use

models of friendship based on the sorority in which conformity plays a central role in

determining who can be part of the group. Men are a key pivot point in the networks of

competition that develop amongst school friends. The second section examines women in the

working world. These women are often employed in professions that surround them with other

women as salesgirls, models, or hostesses. Here, the women must band together to create a

space for themselves in the wider male-dominated world, whether this means working together

to find husbands for each member of the group or joining force to bring down predatory men.

The third section focuses on a particular group of working women, namely actresses. These

women are united by both a unique relationship to their shared profession and a unique

relationship to performativity. For these women, the tension between public and private is

underlined by a tension between the performative and the authentic.

“Well behaved and socially acceptable”: School friendships

Sociologist Orden Smucker’s 1947 study “The Campus Clique as an Agency of

Socialization” offers an interesting look at college friendship groupings among women that is

roughly contemporaneous with the films I examine in this chapter. Smucker delineates several

different cliques united by shared behaviours, values, and interests. (Most of these cliques do not

appear to share formalized affiliations such as sororities or campus clubs although they do often

reside in the same dormitory.) Tellingly, Smucker notes that he began his study with a negative

view of cliques: “The hypothesis was that the clique is a factor disruptive to campus unity; that it

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promotes snobbishness by its exclusiveness and is therefore an undesirable influence.”226 By the

end of the study, however, Smucker emerges with a largely positive view of college friend

groups. Still, he notes three major negative aspects of cliques: 1) some students will be left out

and subsequently develop “maladjustments;”227 2) smaller groups with their own shared goals

can make the promotion of campus-wide goals more difficult; 3) cliques tend to de-emphasize

academic achievement, thus encouraging their members to “keep academic achievement fairly

close to the college norm.”228 Outweighing these negatives, however, is the positive work that

the cliques do in helping young women adjust to life away from their families and providing

them with a welcoming environment for self-expression. Smucker quotes one unidentified

student who states,

Maybe it isn’t exactly right that the members of our clique should associate with each

other on such an exclusive basis, but it means a lot to have these friends who accept you

as you are. We share each other’s secrets and are able to let our hair down. I think that

friendships formed on this basis are one of the most satisfactory aspects of our college

experience. Then too it means that we are never left out of things. We always have

friends with whom we can go places and have good times. We often have feeds together

late at night in which we talk and laugh and have lots of fun together. I wouldn’t have

missed this for anything in the world.229

I find the relationship between Smucker’s analysis and the films I examine below fascinating

since it would appear that the films largely invest in portrayals that conform with his negative

conclusions while downplaying or outright rejecting the positive aspects Smucker highlights.

Notably, Smucker’s hypothesis at the beginning of the study suggests the extent to which

negative perceptions of female friendship groups (particularly those among young women) were

226 Orden Smucker, “The Campus Clique as an Agency of Socialization,” The Journal of

Educational Sociology 21, No. 3 (November 1947), 164. 227 Smucker, 167. 228 Smucker, 168. 229 Smucker, 167.

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entrenched in the popular consciousness by 1947, perceptions that likely were not helped by

depictions in Hollywood movies and other forms of mass culture. The emphasis on

“maladjusted” students who do not fit into the standard peer groups is also invoked in several of

the films I discuss below. Similarly, the films markedly downplay the academic side of college

with only two films actually featuring scenes set in classrooms. At the same time, the films

present little of the acceptance and easy camaraderie articulated by the unidentified student

Smucker quotes. Friends who “accept you as you are” are few and far between in Hollywood’s

depiction of college students, which tend to emphasize conformity as the key to social success.

The relaxed and jovial atmosphere invoked by the unidentified student, in which girls can “let

[their] hair down” and “talk and laugh and have lots of fun together” is similarly limited in filmic

depictions of college friendships. Indeed, another study mentioned in Mabel Newcomer’s 1959

book A Century of Higher Education for American Women notes that the most fondly

remembered friendship moments from college where those spent “just talking” rather than

engaging in any organized activities.230 The films thus downplay the moments of “being”

together that are emphasized as the foundations of female friendship in many contemporary

studies.

It could be said that these films develop an opposition between fake/bad friendships

equated with hierarchy and conformity and real/good friendships, which are equated (sometimes

very explicitly) with democracy and acceptance of individuality. Implicit here is the suggestion

that positive friendships are based on a sense of equality, reciprocity, and mutual respect. At the

same time, the films seem to acknowledge that the dominant peer culture does not actually

230 Mabel Newcomer, A Century of Higher Education for American Women (New York:

Harper, 1959), 123.

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operate on a democratic basis and that acceptance within the dominant peer culture is of

paramount importance. In these films, the sorority model of sociality based on status, wealth,

competition, and conformity is largely presented negatively. This is made clear by the negative

characterization of many of the sorority women themselves. At best, they are shallow and self-

centered, focused on looking good and having fun. At worst, they are actively petty, mean, and

vindictive, scheming to sabotage the lives of other women. At the same time, the films seem to

have a difficult time envisioning or articulating another, more supportive mode of sociality

amongst young women. Even when the protagonist meets women who present an alternate,

more supportive model of female friendship, the films seem uncertain how to handle these

relationships. Instead, our protagonist usually ends the film by finding the support and respect

she lacks among women with a young man who is poised to become her future husband.

The role of peer groups in regulating behaviour and encouraging conformity is evident to

a certain extent in all of the films that deal with school friendships. At its most overt level,

formalized sorority groups fill this regulatory role. Acceptance into the sorority thus becomes

symbolic of acceptance into the wider peer group. In the school films, there are two central

obstacles that threaten the protagonist’s smooth integration into the peer group – one relating to

romance and one relating to class. Sorority House (John Farrow, 1939) is one film that explores

the hierarchal world of sorority membership and peer integration. The film focuses on Alice

(Anne Shirley), the daughter of a small-town grocer, who attends fictional Talbot University and

longs to join a sorority. Dotty (Barbara Read), one of Alice’s roommates, fills her in on the

essential qualities for sorority membership. While sororities are in need of a few “date-getters”

(that is, women who attract men to sorority functions), the most important quality is money. As

Dotty puts it, “Of course, you can be ugly if your father or grandfather stole a million dollars and

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kept it. You know that still gets you in any sorority on the hill. So – do[dough]-re-mi is the first,

last, and perpetual consideration.” The film’s central plot device emphasizes the importance of

money to sorority membership. Bill, a fraternity man with an interest in Alice, learns of her

desire to join a sorority and calls up every sorority on campus, telling them that Alice is the

daughter of a rich man with a chain of grocery stores who was brought up “simply” and insists

on pretending she is not wealthy. As a result, six sororities express an interest in Alice.

Throughout the film, as Alice considers which sorority she might want to pledge, she continues

to be plagued by concerns about the financial costs of sisterhood, expressing her doubts to both

her father and her roommates. To put her financial situation in context, Alice’s father tells her at

the film’s beginning that she will receive an allowance of $15 a week. We later learn that the

initiation fee at a sorority is $100, not including dues and the extra clothes Alice will need for

sorority functions. Alice’s father ultimately ends up selling his grocery store specifically to

finance Alice’s dream of joining a sorority.

Why join a sorority? It is not entirely clear why Alice wants to join a sorority, other than

the fact that it was considered an established part of the college experience. Fass notes that, by

the 1920s, the “glamour” of college life was drawing national attention and incoming freshmen

would have already learned to associate this glamour with membership in a fraternity or sorority

even before they set foot on campus.231 Alice’s roommates, Dotty and Merle (Adele Pearce),

offer a clearer rationale:

Merle: Well, my dear girl, they’re the most important thing in college. Why, without

belonging to a sorority, a girl simply hasn’t got a chance.

Dotty: She doesn’t meet the right fellas.

Merle: Well, a sorority simply means the right marriage and the right kind of a life – long

after you leave school.

Alice: What about the girls who never get to join one?

231 Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, 150.

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Merle: Oh, they’re simply nothing, nothing at all.

In this exchange, it is made clear that being part of a sorority is necessary to be socially relevant

on campus and that being socially relevant means dating the right men, a topic that I will explore

in more depth later in this chapter.

Alice ultimately receives a bid to join the Gammas, a prestigious sorority that both Alice

and Merle want to join. While the Gammas as a group are outwardly kind to Alice and the rest

of the prospective pledges, one scene, which shows the Gammas discussing potential bids,

reveals the sorority’s focus on status. They consider pledging a pair of twins, who are

dismissively referred to as “truck horses,” because their father is rich and could furnish a new

living room set for the sorority house. Merle’s family connections are similarly highlighted (her

father is a well-known lawyer) as well as the fact that she is “well behaved and socially

acceptable.” This evaluation of Merle’s best qualities echoes those emphasized by Fass – the

fraternities and sororities “emphasized, above all, personal attributes that made an individual

sociably agreeable and able to mix with others.”232 Merle ultimately falls out of favour after the

Gammas encounter her aunt at a campus soda shop where the aunt creates a socially

unacceptable scene by questioning the Gammas about Merle’s odds of receiving a bid. Overall,

then, the message emerges that the valuable sorority sister is not one with whom the sisters share

a personal connection, but one who can bring increased prestige to the sorority as an institution.

Notably, as Merle’s downfall demonstrates, correct behaviour is perhaps even more important

than money in the world of the sorority (or at least that money in itself cannot make up for

improper behaviour). Thus, out of fear of rejection from the group, the sorority model of

232 Fass, 154.

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sociality conditions women to mold their personalities to a set of appropriate behavioural

standards set by the group’s leaders.

Another film that centres on sororities and fraternities as arbiters of correct behaviour is

the 1938 short It’s in the Stars (David Miller). In this short, a sorority and a fraternity jointly

choose to enact a dating ban in order to focus on their studies. One couple is resistant to this

plan, but avoid voicing open objections to the rest of the peer group, choosing instead to meet

covertly at the observatory. When the couple is eventually discovered, they are thrown into a

pond as punishment for violating the ban. The short thus demonstrates the way in which proper

behaviour is determined by the group’s leaders and enforced at the expense of personal choice,

occasionally through public humiliation. Fass notes that this kind of public “razzing” was a key

element of enforcing conformity among fraternities and sororities: “it pitted the individual and

his peculiarities against the massed congregation of his peers.”233

Also worth mentioning for its almost subversive look at exclusionary sorority behaviour

is Thirteen Women (George Archainbaud, 1932). This film centres on a group of former school

friends who were all members of the Kappa Sorority. At the beginning of the film, all the

women receive astrological charts predicting imminent doom. The women’s tragic fates are

ultimately revealed to be the work of a woman named Ursula (Myrna Loy) who the Kappas had

excluded from their sorority. What is particularly notable is that the film is surprisingly

forthright about the reason for Ursula’s exclusion – her race. Although she is played by the very

white Myrna Loy,234 Ursula is described throughout the film as a “half-breed” whose multiracial

233 Fass, 162. 234 Although she would later be identified largely with patrician housewife roles (most

notably Nora Charles in the Thin Man series), Loy’s early career is littered with ethnic stereotype

roles in such films as The Crimson City (Archie Mayo, 1928), The Squall (Alexander Korda,

1929), and The Mask of Fu Manchu (Charles Brabin, 1932).

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heritage prevented her from fitting in at her prestigious boarding school. Ursula spells out her

motivation in a conversation with one of the surviving women near the end of the film:

Laura: What have I done? What has anyone done to make you so inhuman?

Ursula: Do I hear the very human white race asking that question? When I was twelve

years old, white sailors-

Laura: You’re insane, you’re insane-

Ursula: Maybe I am. But do you know what it means to be a half-breed – half-caste in a

world ruled by whites? If you’re a male, you’re a coolie. If you’re a female, you’re –

well… The white half of me cried for the courtesy and protection that women like you

get. The only way I could free myself was by becoming white. And it was almost in my

hands when you – you and your Kappa Society – stopped me.

Laura: You’re crazy. We never did-

Ursula: I spent six years slaving to get money enough to put me through finishing school

– to make the world accept me as white. But you and the others wouldn’t let me cross the

colour line.

Laura: But we were young. Maybe we were cruel, but you can’t use that to justify

murder.

Ursula: I can.

It is notable here that it is not the school itself that excludes Ursula, but the Kappas. As Fass

points out, student populations were rapidly expanding in this era and thus becoming

increasingly diverse, including, to a limited extent, racially. The exclusiveness of the sororities

thus begins to assume the kind of gatekeeping function that used to belong to the broader

institution of the school, separating those who are “acceptable” from those who are not. The film

thus links Ursula’s desire to belong to the white world symbolized by the Kappas with her desire

for an education. Moreover, although Ursula is clearly the film’s villain, the sorority women do

not necessarily emerge particularly sympathetically. It is their cliquishness that ultimately brings

about their downfall. The film similarly highlights the perils of conformity. On the one hand,

Ursula’s death at the film’s end can be read as an argument for upholding the status quo,

suggesting that one should not strive to move beyond one’s “correct” place in society. At the

same time, Ursula’s fate highlights the potentially tragic consequences of the drive to

conformity, especially for those who are unable to conform. While the world of sororities is

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often depicted as catty and snobby but essentially harmless, moments like these reveal the darker

side of peer conformity and the need to fit in.

The behavioural controls of fraternities and sororities “were only more ritualized, more

explicitly, and better publicized than those of other groups, and they are symbolic and illustrative

of peer-group interaction generally.”235 Thus, the same controls present in these sorority centric

films also appear in other films involving school friends, extending the sorority model of

sociality beyond the confines of the sorority as institution. These Glamour Girls (S. Slyvan

Simon, 1939) centers on a group of wealthy society girls who travel to prestigious Kingsford

College for an annual weekend event known as “House Parties.”236 During a drunken night at a

dance hall, Phil, one of the girls’ boyfriends, invites Jane (Lana Turner), a taxi dancer, to attend

House Parties. The resultant class clash drives the plot of the film. The women themselves are

not technically college students (they all appear to live at home with their parents), but the main

action of the film takes place at college and the peer group dynamics at play in the film are

similar to the films about sororities I have already discussed. An early exchange between Carol

(Jane Bryan), Phil’s girlfriend, and her mother indicates the important role played by gossip in

maintaining peer control:

Carol’s mother: You’ll have to have a new evening gown.

Carol: Oh no. No, I can get along with what I have. It’s not my clothes Phil’s in love

with. Besides, boys don’t notice those things.

Carol’s mother: No, but girls do. And they’re just the ones who like to say you married

one of the richest boys in New York after your father lost his money.

235 Fass, 192. 236 House Parties appears to be an event similar to homecoming (in that alumni are in

attendance and athletic events are involved), but also involving parties thrown at what appear to

be fraternity houses (although they are not referred to as fraternities and they do not have Greek

letter names).

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Although the glamour girls do not initially know that Jane is a taxi dancer, it is clear from the

first time they meet her that she is not “one of them” and their behaviour towards her ranges

from faux politeness to outright disdain. Daphne (Anita Louise), the cattiest of the girls,

eventually reveals the truth about Jane’s occupation. The occupation of taxi dancer was often

used as a stand-in for prostitution in classical Hollywood films237 and the innuendo is clear in

Daphne’s revelation. Daphne’s attempt to humiliate Jane backfires, however, as the revelation

quickly makes Jane exceedingly popular with the Kingsford men.

Finishing School (Wanda Tuchock and George Nichols Jr., 1934) similarly highlights the

importance of peer group conformity and solidarity beyond the formalized unit of the sorority.

This film centres on Virginia (Frances Dee), a rich society girl who is new to the titular finishing

school. Virginia initially has trouble fitting in with her rebellious roommate Pony (Ginger

Rogers) and her friends because Virginia declines to drink or smoke. Virginia is ultimately able

to demonstrate her loyalty to the group when she is caught with a note that Pony was trying to

pass. Rather than give the note to the teacher, Virginia tears it up, earning Pony’s respect in the

process. Finishing School demonstrates the extent to which different peer groups could

formulate their own standards of appropriate behaviour. Unlike the “well behaved and socially

acceptable” model favoured by the sororities and the glamour girls, Pony and her friends rebel

against the straight-laced decorum of the finishing school. After welcoming Virginia into the

group, they take her on an illicit weekend trip to New York City. Upon arrival in the city, the

girls ditch their chaperone (an actress Pony hired to pose as her aunt), put on make-up (against

school rules), and go to a hotel to meet their boyfriends. At the hotel, Virginia reveals that she

has always wanted to get “tight” and wonders if this would be a good opportunity. Pony

237 For a vivid example, see Ten Cents a Dance (Lionel Barrymore, 1931).

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responds, “Opportunity? It’s an obligation.” Interestingly, although Pony’s group clearly

encourages conformity, the film’s presentation of Pony’s crowd is slightly more affirmative than

the peer groups seen in the other films I have discussed so far. Part of the reason for this is that

the film manages to include a few moments of the friends enjoying the kind of easy camaraderie

and “being” together highlighted in Smucker’s study but rarely seen in the college films. In one

brief scene, Pony and Virginia are shown in their dorm room dressing for tea (fig. 20). The two

share easy domesticity, doing their nails, picking out clothes, and brushing their hair. They also

get into a play fight (laughing and smiling throughout) and chat happily about Virginia’s

boyfriend. In another brief scene, the two are shown staying up past curfew, huddled under

blankets with flashlights on their respective beds. Pony reads a book (wonderfully titled Purple

Figure 20: Pony (left) and Virginia in their dorm room.

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Passion) while Virginia composes a letter to her boyfriend, occasionally asking for Pony’s help

(Virginia: How do you spell “embarrassment”? Pony: H-u-m-i-l-i-a-t-i-o-n.). Although both of

these scenes are centrally about Virginia’s blossoming relationship with her boyfriend, her

friendship with Pony serves as an important counterpoint. The playful camaraderie she shares

with her roommate echoes the kind of companionate relationship that was becoming increasingly

prized in romantic relationships. Pony is further proven to be a reliable and supportive friend in

the film’s dramatic conclusion (discussed in more detail below). Indeed, while Virginia does get

into trouble as a result of her involvement with Pony and her friends, her problems are

exacerbated by the snobbery and hypocrisy of the school, the real target of the film’s critique.

Notably, Finishing School is co-directed by a woman, Wanda Tuchock, making this one

of only two films in my dissertation to feature a female director. Tuchock, who also co-wrote

the screenplay for Finishing School, largely worked as a writer and has only one other directing

credit (a 1952 short called Road Runners). Very few contemporary reviews single out Tuchock

or the direction in any way. One notable exception is Arthur Forde’s review in Hollywood

Filmograph, which suggests that the film’s success is largely attributed to its pairing of a female

director and a female-led narrative: “‘Bring on your women’ – that’s all we can say, if this is a

sample of what a woman director can do with a story that revolves around a woman’s troubles.

Naturally a woman should understand all the intricacies of a young girl’s mind much better than

any man, even though Wanda Tuchock had George Nicholls, Jr., to help her in the necessary

details.”238 Although it is hard to say exactly how much influence Tuchock had, it seems highly

likely that her presence both behind the camera and in the scriptwriting process had an influence

238 Arthur Forde, “Finishing School: Distinct Hit for Frances Dee and Wanda Tuchock,”

Hollywood Filmograph, April 14, 1934, 2.

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on the inclusion of some of the quieter moments of female friends simply enjoying each other’s

company as highlighted above.

The dating pact seen in It’s in the Stars was a very real phenomenon. According to Fass,

Women at Northwestern University made a pact to have a certain number of dateless

nights every week in order to have time to do some studying, which suggests both how

engrossing and time-consuming the social life of a student could be and how sharp the

competition for popularity. All had to agree so that no one girl might get a competitive

edge.239

Indeed, dating and sexual mores became a particularly important arena of peer regulation and

control among college students. As Lady Lore, a 1939 advice guide aimed at female college

students but penned by male college students, puts it, “…your most important outside activity is

dating.”240 Casual, peer orientated dating plays a central role in all of the college films. Often,

however, dating is less a question of romance than a question of social status. Many of the

women in these films seem primarily fixated on impressing their female peers via the men they

date. The main exception in each film is the protagonist. While her peers engage in dating

primarily in an attempt to impress others and fit into the wider youth culture, the protagonist

displays a genuine commitment to the ideals of companionate marriage, seeking out a partner

with whom she is truly compatible despite class barriers.

Out of all the school friendship films, These Glamour Girls provides perhaps the most

explicit look at competition around men and dating. As the film opens, the women are all

telephoning each other to check who has received invitations to the House Parties. This

239 Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, 200. 240 James W. Putnam, ed., Lady Lore (Lawrence: the Witan, 1939), 160 quoted in Lynn

Peril, College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Coeds, Then and Now (New York: W.W.

Norton & Company, 2006), 85.

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sequence demonstrates the importance of securing dates as an indicator of social status among

women. Daphne brags about receiving three invitations (although she pretends to be dismayed

about her “man jam”). Carol (whose family is secretly suffering from the effects of the

Depression) receives an invitation from Phil, the wealthy boyfriend she does not love. Mary

Rose (Ann Rutherford) is incensed at the lack of an invitation from her boyfriend Homer,

complaining that she will be a “social outcast” if she is not invited to House Parties. The dating

status of each girl also plays an essential role in establishing the girls’ personalities. As

mentioned above, Daphne is the cattiest of the group, clearly established as she attempts to lord

her three invitations over her friends. She is also played by Anita Louise, the most outwardly

glamourous of the actresses playing the society girls. In contrast, Carol’s financial situation

establishes her as the most sympathetic of the glamour girls. Carol is also played by Jane Bryan,

who is known for playing down-to-earth (and frequently bland) good girls. Mary Rose’s

overreaction to her lack of a date marks her as foolish and overdramatic. (A fourth girl, Ann, is

also part of the group although she is given no personality to speak of.) These personality traits

are underlined and amplified in the scene in which they meet Jane and immediately sense how

out of place she is at Kingsford (fig. 21). Daphne greets her sarcastically, telling her to close the

door because “You can’t tell what’ll blow in.” Mary Rose barely notices Jane as she rants about

Homer’s bad behaviour. Carol is the only girl who tries to be kind to Jane, offering her a

welcoming handshake and telling her to ignore Daphne: “She started out with three men and now

she only has one like an ordinary girl so naturally she’s bitter.” Jane demonstrates a somewhat

jaded attitude towards men. Daphne advises Mary Rose to improve her relationship with Homer

by making him look up to her. Jane scoffs at this advice, retorting that the only way to make a

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college boy look up to you is to “climb a ladder.” Despite this cynicism, Jane falls for Phil and

becomes frustrated with the way he strings along both her and Carol.

Figure 21: Jane (second from right) meets the glamour girls.

In Sorority House, competition over men also plays a central role. Neva (Doris Jordan),

the most overtly antagonistic of the Gammas, is depicted as possessive and vindictive when it

comes to romantic relationships. Neva tries to veto a potential pledge because she had the gall to

date a man in whom Neva has also shown an interest. Neva is also the only Gamma who is

shown objecting to Alice, and once again this objection is predicated on a man. Alice meets

Neva’s boyfriend Bill early in the film after Alice accidentally tears off her skirt and he offers his

coat to cover up. Neva sees Alice in Bill’s coat and jumps to conclusions. This revelation

provokes similarly snarky comments from the other Gammas about Alice’s sense of propriety

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(“Where do you suppose she’s been?” “I was beginning to like her.”), but their concerns seem to

be quickly forgotten when they hear that Alice is rich. Neva, however, continues to hold a

grudge, particularly after Bill gives Alice his fraternity pin, a gesture which in the world of this

film means that they are engaged. At a big sorority party, Neva needles Alice about Bill’s pin,

telling her that it is not hard to get and all of the girls who have worn it are thinking of starting a

club. Ultimately, Alice receives a bid from the Gammas despite Neva’s resistance, but Neva’s

behaviour makes it clear that competition over men is a sore spot between sorority sisters.

Indeed, considering the importance of “date-getters” to sororities, it is equally possible that

Alice’s connection to Bill (who is established as a popular Big Man on Campus) plays a role in

getting her the coveted bid.

In Finishing School, dating is also a necessary part of fitting in. This film exhibits a more

open attitude towards sexuality than These Glamour Girls or Sorority House. On their weekend

trip to New York, it is made clear that Pony and her friends will be sharing a hotel room with

their boyfriends. (The hotel room is shown to have two bedrooms, although sleeping

arrangements are never explicitly discussed or shown in the film.) The second half of the film

hinges on Virginia’s attempts to deal with an unplanned pregnancy. Notably, the problems

around Virginia’s illegitimate pregnancy are largely caused by the condescension and

obliviousness of the adults in her life while her peers aid and support her. The snobbish

headmistress, Miss Van Alstyne (Beulah Bondi), repeatedly prevents Virginia from

communicating with her boyfriend, Mac, who is unaware that she is pregnant and needs his help.

Virginia’s parents are similarly oblivious to her distress, offering her only money when she

desperately needs emotional support. In the film’s final act, it is Pony who ultimately comes to

Virginia’s aid. After Virginia breaks down into tears, Pony asks her what is wrong and what she

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can do to help. Virginia protests that only Mac can help her now. This appears to be all the

information Pony needs to intuit that Virginia is pregnant. Telling Virginia to buck up, she sends

her to class with their other friends and rushes to the school’s kitchen to put in a call to Mac. It

is unclear exactly what Pony tells him, but Mac immediately rushes to the school. Miss Van

Alstyne, having also deduced that Virginia is pregnant, calls her “cheap and vulgar” and

reprimands her for bringing disgrace on the school. Virginia’s mother meanwhile wonders what

she has done to deserve this and how she will face her friends. Mac arrives in the nick of time to

whisk Virginia away from the school and off to a happy ending. This final sequence

demonstrates the radically different generational attitudes towards premarital sex. While the

older generation shames Virginia for her behaviour, Virginia’s friends rush to her aid. This is

not to suggest that illegitimate pregnancies were always viewed so sympathetically, but Virginia

and Mac are clearly presented as a committed if not an officially engaged couple and thus

Virginia’s behaviour is deemed acceptable within peer norms.

In many of the school films, the protagonist is presented as the odd girl out in some way.

She is often the new girl at school (as in Finishing School and Sorority House) or she comes

from a dramatically different background than the other women (as in These Glamour Girls).

Her differences, however, often separate the protagonist in a positive way at least in the eyes of

the viewer. She is grounded and relatable, often tempted by the lure of popularity and prestige,

but ultimately turning her back on the glittering world of high society at the film’s end. The

films make clear that the protagonist could easily assimilate herself into the group, but instead

she makes a choice to separate herself, a choice that the happy endings appear to validate as the

correct one. In contrast to the sympathetic protagonist, however, the films also highlight

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ancillary characters whose failure to conform serves as a cautionary tale for the viewer. At best,

these characters can appear merely foolish. In Finishing School, Billie (Anne Shirley billed as

Dawn O’Day) is a young student who desperately wants to be friends with Pony and her clique,

prompting Pony to remark, “I’ve had warts that were easier to get rid of.” Billie attempts to

invite herself along on the group’s weekend outings, telling Pony, “I could be a real friend to you

if you’d only let me.” Billie’s desperation to get in with the right crowd is explicitly tied to a

desire to meet men. After being rebuffed by Pony, she remarks, “The way I get treated around

here, I’ve got a good chance of dying an old maid.” While Billie is clearly portrayed as naïve

and inexperienced (including borrowing a bra from Pony in order to disguise the fact that she

does not own one), there is a sense that this is largely due to the fact that she is younger than the

other girls. After all, Billie is still a traditionally attractive young woman241 and her presence at

the finishing school suggests that she comes from a wealthy background. As Billie grows up,

she will likely be able to learn to fit in and thus escape the fate of becoming an “old maid.”

Other ancillary characters, however, may not be so lucky. These characters more clearly

represent the “maladjusted” girl that is such a concern for Smucker. In Sorority House, girls who

are not accepted into sororities are derisively referred to as “dreeps,” so named because they are

dreary and they weep. In their brief appearance in Sorority House, the dreeps are treated

mockingly and shunned by the other girls at Alice’s boarding house. Unlike Billie, the dreeps

are identified by an outwardly “weird” appearance. While Alice and the other girls appear

presentable at all times (even, in typical classical Hollywood style, when they are going to bed),

the dreeps wear housecoats and pajamas and sport pigtails or curlers in their hair. The dreeps

spend time with each other rather than going to the sorority party, participating in tasks such as

241 Indeed, Anne Shirley would later go on to play Alice in Sorority House.

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knitting, playing the ukulele, and reading (fig. 22). While the dreeps initially voice their disdain

for the sororities (“What a bore. I couldn’t think of anything worse than going to one of those

parties tonight.” “Of course, the whole sorority system’s hokum anyhow.”), they ultimately

admit that they long for one accessory readily available to sorority sisters: a boyfriend.

Figure 22: The dreeps.

Dreep #1: You know what I could do with? A boyfriend.

Dreep #2: Bill Loomis?242 Or Hal Thompson? He’s captain of the football team. [to

dreep #3] Which would you pick?

Dreep #3: Neither. I prefer the Anthony Eden type. Culture, you know.

The fourth dreep chimes in by swapping out her history book for a book of Indian love lyrics.

Thus, the one group of women who appear to offer hope for female solidarity are instead

242 Bill is the fraternity member who is interested in Alice.

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depicted as both unable to conform to conventional beauty standards and desperately eager to

escape from their homosocial companionship into the world of heterosexual dating. Although

the dreep scene is treated in a comedic fashion, it is also presented as clearly undesirable. The

viewer is not encouraged to sympathize with the dreeps, but solely to laugh at them as they

fantasize about men clearly out of their league. After this short scene, the dreeps are never seen

again. Will they be welcome as a part of the not-a-sorority club that Alice forms at the film’s

end or are the dreeps destined to forever remain out of the college social scene?

The most tragic of the peripheral women, however, is Betty (Marsha Hunt) in These

Glamour Girls. Betty has been attending the Kingsford House Parties for the last five years.

This shameful fact indicates that not only has she been unsuccessful at securing a husband, but

she also refuses to gracefully retreat from the college scene. Betty defends her choice to Jane,

telling her that House Parties are “more fun than simply haunting the late spots on East 52nd

Street with a lot of dull little people who think they’re going to be powers on Wall Street. Give

me a college man every time.” Betty’s predicament underlines the heightened importance of

making the right social connections in college (whether that be via sororities or more unofficial

social groups) or risk loneliness and alienation. Betty thus decides to pursue Mary Rose’s

boyfriend, Homer. In an attempt to win Homer, Betty stays out all night with him and the

viewer is presumably meant to intuit that the two had sex. The next morning, the other girls

react with shocked silence when Betty returns to the dorm room the girls are sharing while Phil

calls Homer a heel when he finds Betty’s purse in his dorm room. Homer’s defense (that Betty

has “been around”) once again indicates the importance of adhering to group sexual norms.

Betty’s transgression of these norms provides another reason for the girls to look upon her as an

outsider. It is interesting to note that while only Phil learns of Homer’s role in the scandal, Betty

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is exposed in front of the entire group of women. That night, Betty overhears the other girls

gossiping about her (“Why can’t she get a man of her own?” “She oughta get married before she

misses the boat altogether.”) and she decides to take action. She temporarily persuades a drunk

Homer to marry her, but when they arrive at the justice of the peace, Homer changes his mind

and passes out in Betty’s car. As she drives away, a devastated Betty hears the girls’ voices echo

in her head, condemning her to a life of spinsterhood. Betty decides to take her own life by

driving her car onto the train tracks (with Homer regaining consciousness at the last minute and

just barely escaping the collision). This sequence vividly illustrates the tragic fate of the woman

who is unable to fit in, both within the realm of female cliques and within the realm of

heterosexual dating. It seems clear that Betty’s main motivation in dying by suicide is to avoid

having to face the scorn and derision of the other women. Betty does not want to marry Homer

because she loves him or because she needs a husband out of economic necessity, but because it

is a social necessity. The use of the hallucinatory voiceovers highlights the central role that peer

regulation plays in Betty’s decision. When Betty first hears the girls’ words, she decides to

marry Homer. When she realizes her plan to marry Homer has failed, her mind returns to those

same words as she makes the decision to kill herself. Betty’s death immediately follows Jane’s

verbal denunciation of the glamour girls and serves as a further repudiation of the gossipy clique.

Unlike the strong-willed Jane, however, Betty’s story ends unhappily, suggesting the very real

pain associated with an inability to fit in.

Another version of the odd girl out who often appears in contemporary writing about the

college student is the “grind,” a girl who is focused on academic rather than social achievement.

According to a 1952 study, the grind is

a girl with flat shoes, horn-rimmed glasses, and a shiny nose which she keeps buried in

Shakespeare, Schopenhauer, and Shelley; a girl who is not interested in dancing, sports,

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or small talk; a girl who has the musty air of the library instead of a drop of perfume

behind her ears. To date her or court her would be just like having to stay after school,

and therefore unthinkable. Obviously, while her former classmates traipse off one by one

to be fitted for their wedding gowns, she will be sitting at home reading a good book.243

Although Fass argues that a greater valuation of academic achievement had returned to the

college scene by the 1930s (presumably as a result of the pressures of the Depression),244 the

films I am examining here instead present a vision of academic life that is closer to Smucker’s

assessment that college women devalued academic achievement. As mentioned above, of the

four films set predominantly at schools, only two contain scenes that actually take place in

classrooms. The first, Finishing School, shows the girls in class only to mock the clearly non-

academic nature of the concepts that they are being taught. In one sequence, for example, the

teacher offers a synopsis of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, telling the students that she is giving them

all the information they will need for conversational purposes and saving them the trouble of

reading the book. The second, It’s in the Stars, at least features a more serious approach to the

subject (astronomy), although it similarly undermines the educational in favour of the social.

While the students are trying to enact a ban on dating in order to give them more time to focus on

their studies, their astronomy professor encourages them to throw a dance in the hopes that it will

lead to an end of the dating ban, which it ultimately does by the film’s conclusion.

As I have shown, many of the films that focus on school friendships foreground a view of

female friendship as cliquey and exclusionary. Ironically, many of the contemporary advice

books for women heading to college emphasize the importance of co-operation and congeniality.

243 Ernest Havemann and Patricia Salter West, They Went to College: The College

Graduate in America Today (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1952), 59 quoted in Peril,

College Girls, 209. 244 Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, 179.

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CO-Ediquette: Poise and Popularity for Every Girl (1936) reports, “…if college teaches her

nothing else, it does teach her how to live congenially with somebody else.”245 She’s Off to

College (1940) claims that involvement in college life helps women to “learn the art of co-

operation, the art of admiration, corporate enjoyment, and group success.”246 This kind of

interpersonal cooperation rarely enters into the films and, when it does (as in the friendships

formed in Finishing School), it is usually despite rather than because of the environment fostered

by the school. Instead, these films attempt to counteract the largely negative presentation of

college peer interactions with an overt endorsement of democracy and equality as the foundation

for productive social interaction. Although this endorsement is woven through the film, it is

often driven home in a speech delivered by the protagonist at the film’s end. As a result, the

ultimate figure of this democratic impulse becomes the heterosexual couple formed at the

conclusion of each film. The extent to which friendships between women are also figured on

this democratic model varies between the films, but the school films ultimately fail to articulate a

convincing model of democratic friendship between women.

As I highlighted earlier, Finishing School focuses on a generational difference,

suggesting the possibility that the old cliquishness will die out with the older generation.

Virginia’s friends aid her in a securing her marriage to Mac, a man who does not share Virginia’s

wealthy background and works as a waiter to put himself through medical school. When Mac

arrives to rescue Virginia at the film’s end, he gives Miss Van Alstyne and Virginia’s mother a

final kiss-off:

245 Elizabeth Eldridge, CO-EDiquette: Poise and Popularity for Every Girl (New York:

E. P. Dutton, 1936), 150, quoted in Peril, College Girls, 65. 246 Fell Alsop Gulielma and Mary F. McBride, She Off to College: A Girl’s Guide to

College Life (New York Vanguard Press, 1940), 160, quoted in Peril, 85.

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Mac: You really take this dump seriously, don’t you? Maybe you don’t realize the

world’s too busy earning its three squares a day to worry about what fork to eat ‘em with.

Stick around, sister, because it won’t be long before this is an old ladies’ home.

Although this resolution clearly displaces any potential snobbery from the students to the school

itself, it also lacks any acknowledgement of the bonds between Virginia, Pony, and the others.

The union between Virginia and Mac is predicated on a change in Virginia’s class status: she is

choosing to give up the luxurious (but restrictive) life of a society woman to be with the man she

loves. As a result, one must assume that she must also give up her high society friends who,

despite similar dissatisfaction with the snobbish school, seem willing to tough it out until

graduation.

In These Glamour Girls, protagonist Jane is a taxi dancer crashing the weekend parties at

a prestigious university. Early in the film, Jane’s roommate cautions her against attending the

event, telling Jane she does not belong with the Kingsford College crowd. Jane responds, “If

you’re born in a stable, does that make you a horse? After all, this is America 1939.” Jane’s

pronouncement makes clear the film’s intention to challenge the value of the rigid class system

upheld by exclusive institutions like Kingsford. Once at Kingsford, however, Jane discovers just

how out of place she really is among the other students who look down on her working-class

roots. By the end of the film, Jane has had enough and lashes out at the group:

Jane: Listen, you wise-cracking, back-knifing glamour girl, I’ve had all of your kind of

fun that I can use. Why, I wouldn’t breathe the same air with you and your pedigree polo

shirts for another five minutes.

[…]

Jane: The glamour girls and their men. Men – this herd of calves? Well, you can give

me the mugs at the Joy Lane. Mr. and Mrs. South Brooklyn know more about living than

you and your whole phony crowd. Champagne for breakfast, two-timing for lunch. It’s

family and background that matter. Well, listen upper crust, you go home to your

families and rest on your backgrounds. With a pedigree and a nickel, you can buy a cup

of coffee in Kansas. Oh boy, what a sucker I was. I wanted to meet you – the nice

people. [Jane walks away.]

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In this speech, Jane reveals her disillusionment and champions the more down-to-earth values of

Brooklyn and Kansas over the glamour and pedigree of the Kingsford crowd. She particularly

highlights the falsity of the glamour girls’ friendships describing them as “back-knifing,” “two-

timing,” and “phony.” Unfortunately, the film never offers much of an opportunity to observe

the friendships of the kinds of “real” people Jane endorses in her farewell speech. Jane’s

roommate appears in only two brief scenes and the viewer learns very little about their

relationship. The film thus paints a rather dire picture of female friendship without offering any

real alternatives. Like Finishing School, the film figures its affirmation of democracy through a

romantic couple, with Phil turning his back on high society in favour of Jane. This pairing is

similarly enabled by a change in class status after Phil’s father loses all his money in the film’s

denouement, allowing Phil and Jane to begin their lives together as equals.

Sorority House is the most overt in its endorsement of democracy, perhaps because it was

scripted by Dalton Trumbo. In his survey of Trumbo’s work, Peter Hanson dismisses Sorority

House as “a trifle with little content of note save for the oddly political bent of its

denouement.”247 The political content, however, is more completely interwoven within the

narrative than Hanson would suggest. Early in the film, Alice is bewildered about all the fuss

over the exclusive sororities:

Alice: Doesn’t sound very democratic to me.

Dotty: Whoever told you college was democratic?

Alice: Why – nobody. Only – I just sort of imagined it would be that way.

247 Peter Hanson, Dalton Trumbo, Hollywood Rebel: A Critical Survey and Filmography

(Jefferson: McFarland, 2001), 34.

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Throughout the film, the non-democratic nature of the sororities will continue to be juxtaposed

with the purportedly democratic nature of obtaining a college education. On her first date with

Bill, Alice continues to expound on the supposedly democratic virtues of college:

Bill: Alice, what does it mean to you? College and all?

Alice: Oh, it means friends I’ll keep all my life, memories – why I’ve got lots of

memories already. It means learning things and lifting myself. It means membership in

the international democracy of culture.

Bill: Dr. Tillary’s guff.

Alice: It is, only it isn’t guff. You probably don’t know how it feels to want to learn to

appreciate things. You know, to tell the good from the bad. Good music, good books…

Here, Alice’s notion of democracy appears to have an aspirational edge that falls in line with her

increasing desire to be part of a sorority. Indeed, learning to “tell the good from the bad” is part

of the larger project of the film as Alice ultimately chooses to reject the false friends of the

sorority who are only interested in her fake wealth. In the film’s final scene, Alice tears up her

sorority bid and recommits herself to the friends she has made at the boarding house:

Alice: And so – I’m not going to join the Gammas or any other sorority. I’m going to

stay right here with Dotty and Merle.

Dotty: And any other girl who thinks the same way we do.

Merle: We’re going to have the only place on the campus that’s strictly democratic.

Alice: We’re going to make a sort of club out of the house.

Dotty: And only non-sorority girls can live with us.

Bill: Looks like you’re starting a new sorority.

Alice: We’re strictly anti-sorority.

Merle: Sorority girls are all snobs and we’re not going to have anything to do with them.

Alice’s father: Sounds to me like you’re getting kind of snobbish yourselves.

Alice: What do you mean, daddy?

Alice’s father: When I heard of this first, it sounded like a pretty good idea – a bunch of

nice kids getting together and enjoying yourselves. But surely you don’t think you’re the

only nice girls in the whole school?

Alice: Oh, of course not.

Alice’s father: Now, I’m going to give you a bit of advice – whether you want it or not.

Just take care of yourselves.

Dotty: Oh, we don’t-

Alice’s father: It strikes me that most of the grief in the world today is caused by people

acting just like you youngsters – forming cliques and hating everybody else. Now, call

‘em what you will – sororities, clubs, states, or even nations – nobody has the right to go

about telling the other fella what to do. Live and let live. Let that be your motto.

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In this final sequence, the film struggles to make sense of its ultimate message. On the one hand,

Alice ends up happily preserving her friendships with Dotty and Merle, who she seemed to

prefer to the sorority girls all along. On the other hand, this sequence seems to suggest that

cliquishness is practically unavoidable in female friendships with the boarding house crew

forming their own anti-sorority sorority. (Will the dreeps be allowed to join?) The final speech

from Alice’s father seems to attempt to sum up the film while also bearing little relation to what

has come before. His “just take care of yourselves” attitude would seem to disavow any

possibility of supportive camaraderie even though the film has made a point to show just such a

relationship between Alice, Dotty, and Merle. It also seems somewhat at odds with the Trumbo

of Tender Comrade (Edward Dmytryk, 1943), whose portrait of women living together and

supporting each other would ultimately see him accused of Communist sympathies. Alice’s

father’s rhetoric ultimately seems to make little impression on the women – the bell rings and

they all disperse to class with Alice and Bill lingering to receive her father’s blessing on their

upcoming marriage. Like Finishing School and These Glamour Girls, the film thus sidesteps any

knotty thematic concerns to resolve itself squarely in the land of Hollywood romance.

The generally negative view of school friendships presented in these films should not

necessarily be taken as representative of the real-life conditions of college life. Most critics were

primarily concerned about each individual film’s success or failure as entertainment, placing

each film largely within the context of other films, not the real world of college. For instance, I

found five separate contemporary reviews that compared Finishing School to Maedchen in

Uniform (Leontine Sagan, 1931), with which it does share considerable similarities minus the

lesbian undertones. The major exception, however, is Sorority House, which provoked

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considerable comment in contemporary reviews about whether or not it presented an accurate

representation of sorority life. One reviewer complained, “From the picture it would appear the

average girl goes to a university principally to join an exclusive and expensive sorority and to

find a good matrimonial prospect. Perhaps some do, but with the larger portion I am sure such

things are secondary.”248 Another review worried that “in exaggerating the snobbishness of the

more fortunate as well as the hysterical reactions of those who have been left out, it loses force

both as entertainment and as a brief for an improvement in the system.”249 Other critics,

however, found the film to be refreshingly accurate, with Motion Picture Daily calling it “a

brutally frank expose of the caste system generally accepted as abounding in American college

sororities and fraternities”250 and Box Office Digest calling it “consistently interesting and always

real” and claiming it was likely to attract even the most cynical youth audiences who had taken

to jeering at Hollywood’s portrayal of their lives.251 It is curious that this film in particular drew

such concerns about its accuracy or lack thereof. This suggests that the film clearly resonated

with an image of college life that had become thoroughly entrenched in the popular imagination

by 1939. As I have demonstrated, the idea of college coeds as snobby, catty, and competitive is

one that clearly dominates films about school friendships. Even when these films try to counter

these images with messaging about democracy, they struggle to envision a model of female

friendship that is based on equality and cooperation.

248 Bert Harlen, “Playing in This One Best Feature,” Hollywood Spectator, April 29,

1939, 11. 249 The Women’s University Club, “Sorority House,” Motion Picture Reviews, May

1939, 8. 250 Vance King, “Sorority House,” Motion Picture Daily, April 27, 1939, 3. 251 “Sorority House Just One of Those Things,” Box Office Digest, April 26, 1939, 14.

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“Pretty tough going for you girls”: Working women

Fass argues that the peer socialization young people experienced at school ultimately

paved the way for future work and marriage patterns:

While these [peer] values served group and inter-group ambitions, they also bound the

young into the larger social culture. For as they served their immediate interests, peers

were ultimately directing the young to future adult roles and expectations as consumers,

mates, workers, and citizens.252

By the time these young women moved into adulthood and the working world, they had fully

internalized the cultural importance of privileging heterosexual relationships.253 These cultural

imperatives encouraged women to focus their energies on their romantic and eventually familial

relationships rather than professional pursuits. At the same time, increasing numbers of women

were also moving into the work force with increasing numbers attempting to combine marriage

and career. As I note in the introduction to this chapter, the question of how work affected bonds

between women seems to be somewhat unsettled, with some authors arguing that entering the

work force decreased the possibility for positive collaboration between women while others

argued that support amongst peers only became more crucial in the working world. Here,

scholars tend to be particularly concerned with women working in high-profile, male-dominated

professions. Woloch bemoans women joining professional societies over women’s societies254

(which suggests she is not thinking of women employed as secretaries or salesgirls) while

Rosenzweig dedicates considerable space to friendships between women in politics, academia,

and public reform. The reality, however, is that women in these kinds of professions were hardly

reflective of the typical working woman in the first half of the twentieth century. Similarly,

252 Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, 221. 253 Rosenzweig, Another Self, 80. 254 Woloch, Women and the American Experience, 393.

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these types of career women were hardly typical of the working woman onscreen. As Jeanine

Basinger highlights, drawing on Carolyn Galerstein’s filmography Working Women on the

Hollywood Screen, female characters were more likely to be nurses than doctors (177 films vs.

73 films) and more likely to be prostitutes than lawyers (139 films vs. 28 films).255 While

professional women in the real world may have had the kind of support systems Rosenzweig

describes, professional women onscreen are far more likely to be isolated from other women,

with their status as an anomaly emphasized by surrounding them with men. When they are given

female friends, the friends are often not professional women themselves and thus serve to point

towards the kind of life that the female protagonist should be leading (that is, one in which she is

a happy housewife). A good example of this is Female (Michael Curtiz, 1933) in which Ruth

Chatterton plays the head of a large automobile manufacturer. Early in the film, Chatterton’s

character receives a visit from an old friend who is now happily married. While the cynical

Chatterton speaks dismissively of love and marriage, her content friend worries that Chatterton is

“missing so much, the real things.” The contrast between the two is further emphasized in the

following scene in which the friend (who is spending the night at Chatterton’s house) retires

early to phone her husband while Chatterton stays up to seduce the male employee she has

invited for dinner. The friend disappears after this scene, but her impact resonates throughout

the film as Chatterton does indeed end up falling in love and choosing marriage over work by the

film’s end.

More typical of classical Hollywood’s portrayal of working women are films that focus

on women engaged in the kinds of service-oriented jobs typically seen as work ideally suited for

women. Many of these films feature a group of young working women who combine their work

255 Basinger, A Woman’s View, 450.

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lives with the search for suitable husbands. The implication here is typically that the women are

not working out of a deep love of their chosen career, but out of a need to support themselves

until they find a man who will look after them. Many of these films end with a reinforcement of

the primacy of heterosexual romance similar to that displayed in the films from Chapter One.

This element is explicitly acknowledged by Rosalind Russell, an actress frequently associated

with career woman characters in such films as His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940), Design

for Scandal (Norman Taurog, 1941), and Take a Letter, Darling (Mitchell Leisen, 1942):

Except for different leading men and a switch in title and pompadour, they were all

stamped out of the same Alice in Careerland. The script always called for a leading lady

somewhere in the thirties, tall, brittle, not too sexy. My wardrobe had a set pattern: a tan

suit, a grey suit, a beige suit, and then a negligee for the seventh reel, near the end, when I

would admit to my best friend that what I really wanted was to become a dear little

housewife.256

Note, however, that even in Russell’s tongue-in-cheek assessment the pivotal role played by the

best friend is acknowledged. The best friend is the one the protagonist turns to with her intimate

confession that leads to the film’s happy (or “happy”) conclusion. In many films involving

working woman characters, female friends play an essential supporting role. In addition to

displaying a genuine affection for each other, these friendships also include a utilitarian aspect

with the women frequently sharing housing, clothing, money, and other resources.

Many of these young working women films focus on a group of friends. A popular

dynamic is what Basinger refers to as the “there’s three of her” film, in which each of three

central characters illustrates a different life choice and the viewer is invited to assess which is the

“correct” choice.257 Basinger offers a brief, rather depressing reading of Our Blushing Brides

256 (Susan) Elizabeth Dalton, “Women at Work: Warners in the 1930s,” in Women and

the Cinema: A Critical Anthology, ed. Karyn Kay and Gerald Peary (New York: Dutton, 1977),

272-273. 257 Basinger, A Woman’s View, 110-112.

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(Harry Beaumont, 1930), one film that she feels represents this mode. Our Blushing Brides was

the third in a cycle of films starring Joan Crawford and Anita Page, preceded by Our Dancing

Daughters (Harry Beaumont, 1928) and Our Modern Maidens (Jack Conway, 1929). While

Crawford and Page played different characters in each of the films, the cycle was united by a

focus on the lives and loves of a group of female friends. Our Blushing Brides is notable for

deviating from the two earlier entries in two significant ways. One is the introduction of

synchronized sound to the series. The other is a change in the financial status of the

protagonists. While the lead characters in Our Dancing Daughters and Our Modern Maidens

were wealthy flappers who had no need for jobs, the protagonists of Our Blushing Brides are

working-class women who often struggle to make ends meet. This film centres on three young

women who work in a department store – Jerry (Crawford), Connie (Page), and Franky (Dorothy

Sebastian, who also appeared in Our Dancing Daughters). Basinger describes the women as

models,258 but only Jerry actually works as a model. All three work at the same department store

where Jerry models while Connie and Franky work as salesgirls. Connie and Franky, however,

quickly quit their jobs after landing rich boyfriends although this is ultimately revealed as the

“wrong” choice. Franky chooses money over love and her husband is revealed to be a crook.

Connie chooses to become a kept woman, and her boyfriend ultimately marries another woman

who is of his social class. As a result of these choices, Franky has to move back home to Ohio

while Connie ends up dying by suicide. In a rather unconvincing ending, Jerry becomes engaged

to the rich man who has been pursuing her throughout the film.

Like many scholars of the woman’s film, Basinger focuses on the film’s romantic

plotline. This ignores, however, the important role that friendship plays in the film. Throughout

258 Basinger, 110.

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the film, scenes involving Jerry’s budding romance with Tony Jardine (Robert Montgomery) are

interspersed with scenes of Jerry aiding and supporting her friends. Indeed, while the end to the

romance plot is thoroughly unconvincing (Tony and Jerry abruptly become engaged immediately

following Connie’s suicide), the female friendship scenes are rich and engaging. This is largely

achieved through the way in which the women share space and demonstrate affection through the

use of physical contact. Although the film takes place in both public and private spaces, the

scenes of female friendship largely take place in private domestic spaces. At the beginning of

the film, the three women are sharing an apartment, with an early sequence set in this apartment

used to establish the relationship between the three women. Throughout the sequence, the

women move about the domestic space, engaging in various household tasks while carrying on a

conversation about love, money, and work. These include communal tasks like preparing dinner,

but also more intimate or personal tasks of the domestic realm. After dinner, the three friends

move to their shared bedroom where Franky begins dressing for her date that night. As she

primps, Jerry washes her stockings in the bathroom sink while Connie mends a dress before

helping Franky fasten her dress (fig. 23). These actions demonstrate the easy camaraderie of the

three women, clearly used to sharing space with each other. In this light-hearted scene, the

women also share an easy physical rapport with Jerry jokingly caressing Connie’s body as she

narrates the tale of her love affair and giving Franky a quick peck on the lips as she leaves on her

date. As the narrative becomes more serious, physical touch continues to be an important

element of demonstrating the bond between the women. For instance, after Franky and her

boyfriend return to the apartment following their drunken marriage, Franky and Jerry hug twice.

In both instances, Jerry tries to hold on to Franky even as she breaks the hug to move back

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towards her new husband, demonstrating Jerry’s desire to hold Franky back from what she

recognizes as a tragic mistake.

Figure 23: The friends help Franky (left) prepare for her date.

In the second half of the film, the three friends are separated when Franky and Connie

give up their jobs to be with their men and Jerry is forced to move into a smaller, cheaper

apartment. After the passage of an unspecified amount of time, Jerry is suddenly reunited first

with Franky and then Connie. In each reunion scene, physical touch plays a key role. When

Franky unexpectedly shows up at Jerry’s new apartment, the two women hug joyfully several

times as they catch up on the events in each other’s lives. When a policeman shows up looking

for Franky, Jerry protectively moves Franky behind her and clings tightly to her hand as the

policeman recites a litany of Franky’s husband’s crimes. As the policeman attempts to take

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Franky away in his car, Jerry again clings protectively to Franky until the policeman is forced to

separate them so he can drive away. After Franky is taken away, Jerry wanders into a cinema

where she sees Connie’s boyfriend with another woman discussing their upcoming wedding.

Concerned for her friend, Jerry goes to Connie’s apartment to warn her. As in the earlier scene

Figure 24: Jerry (right) comforts a distraught Connie.

between Jerry and Franky, Jerry and Connie use physical contact both to demonstrate their joy at

reunion and to comfort each other in moments of distress. The two friends hug happily several

times over the course of the sequence as Connie shows Jerry around her luxurious apartment and

they catch up on their lives. When Connie ultimately learns the truth about her boyfriend, Jerry

wraps her arms around her while Connie buries her face in Jerry’s neck and sobs (fig. 24). After

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the breakup, Connie moves in with Jerry, who takes to expressing her affection for Connie via

the motherly gesture of kissing her on the forehead.

Marked Woman (Lloyd Bacon, 1937) is another film that features a group of friends who

live and work together. Unlike the women of Our Blushing Brides, however, these women have

little time for love or marriage. Instead, their focus is squarely on survival. As a result, the film

features considerably more scenes in which the women are actually engaged in working at their

jobs. The protagonists of Marked Woman work as hostesses at a clip joint, a job that is strongly

implied to involve a sex work component.

Marked Woman involves a larger group of friends than Our Blushing Brides. The title,

however, indicates the more individuated focus of this film, referring as it does to a singular

“woman.” As a result, each friend is not given a clear, individual character arc and the star

persona of Bette Davis plays a stronger role in shaping the narrative. At the time she made this

film, Davis had already won an Oscar and was strongly associated with playing strong-willed,

“bad girl” characters in such films as Dangerous (for which she won her Oscar), Of Human

Bondage (for which she should have won her Oscar), and Bordertown. Marked Woman provides

a kind of revision of the Davis image, in which she plays a woman whose tough exterior masks

her inner goodness. When we first meet the women, the club at which they work has just been

taken over by gangster Johnny Vanning. Mary (Davis) quickly establishes herself as the leader

of the group of five women who work at the club, by asking Vanning how much they will be

paid, protecting Estelle (Mayo Methot) when Vanning threatens to fire her for being too old, and

skillfully rebuffing Vanning’s advances.

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While the women share several scenes in their shared apartment, the film’s most iconic

representation of their friendship and solidarity is a shot of the group walking down the street

together that is reprised at various moments in the film. The shot is first used near the beginning

of the film after the women have their first meeting with Vanning. As the women emerge from

the club, Florrie (Rosalind Marquis) moves to get into a waiting chauffeured car, presumably

supplied by Vanning. Gabby (Lola Lane) places a hand on her back and says, “Wait a minute –

let’s walk. We’ll need some fresh air after that one.” The five women turn from the car and

walk towards the camera. As they walk, Gabby moves her hand down from Florrie’s back to

link their arms. Mary links her arm with Estelle’s. The only woman omitted from the linked

arms is Emmy Lou (Isabel Jewell), an early indicator that she will prove to be the weak link in

the group’s united front. The group passes by the camera and Vanning emerges from the club

for a brief dialogue with his henchmen. In the next shot, the women are shown from the knees

down walking in a line, each step perfectly synchronized (fig. 25). Although we can identify star

Davis in the centre from the spangled hem of her dress, the women’s dark clothing causes them

to blend together in the shot. The camera tracks with them as they move down the street and

then cranes up to show them walking up the steps to their apartment building. In this shot, we

can see that the pairs from earlier still have their arms linked (although Florrie releases Gabby’s

arm as they climb the stairs). This first iteration of the walking scene clearly establishes the

cohesion of the group. They maintain a degree of independence from Vanning (literally

choosing to take their own path rather than his limo), using physical touch to emphasize their

bonds and walking in step with each other (no small feat for such a large group).

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Figure 25: The women walk together.

When we see the hostesses walking as a group in the latter half of the film, they are once

again shown walking in a straight line as they approach the apartment – although this time their

approach is shot from above as though the camera is waiting for them at the door of the

apartment building. The women are seen only briefly walking in step, but the events precipitated

by this scene will prove to be a crucial test of their solidarity. Conspicuously absent from the

line is Emmy Lou, who has taken Betty (Mary’s sister, played by Jane Bryan from These

Glamour Girls) to a party at Vanning’s apartment. As the women walk up the front steps, a taxi

carrying Betty pulls up outside the building. When Mary learns where she has been, the two

argue and Betty ends up returning to the party where she will later be murdered by Vanning.

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Betty’s murder proves to be the catalyst Mary needs to help the crusading district

attorney, Graham (Humphrey Bogart – Davis was not the only one going against type in this

film), bring Vanning to justice. This decision causes friction within the group. A running theme

throughout the film has been the question of whether the law can do anything to truly help these

women escape from their lives of violence and crime. Mary encapsulates this view in an early

conversation with Graham:

Graham: Pretty tough going for you girls, isn’t it?

Mary: Yeah – sometimes too tough. There’s no use crying about it. That’s the way it is

and that’s the way it’s gotta be.

After Betty’s death, Gabby reiterates this view, telling Mary, “You know the law isn’t for people

like us.” The women finally change their minds when Emmy Lou (the only witness to Betty’s

murder) tells Mary that she is willing to testify, leading to a climactic court sequence in which all

of the hostesses testify about Vanning’s abuses. Vanning and his associates are found guilty and

sentenced to thirty to fifty years in prison. After the sentencing, Mary says, “Well, that’s that.

Come on, kids. Let’s go.” The women all calmly stand up and walk out of the courtroom. As

the women leave the building, Graham catches up to them, asking Mary where she plans to go

and what she plans to do. She puts him off, merely telling him that she will get by, and walks

off. As she walks down the long courthouse steps, the other women cluster around her with

Emmy Lou and Gabby on either side and Estelle and Florrie behind them. As the women come

to the bottom of the steps, Estelle and Florrie move around so that they are now standing beside

Emmy Lou and Gabby respectively. Once again, the women are all standing in a straight line,

walking in step with each other, the camera tracking their movements as they walk off and

disappear into a thick fog (fig. 26). Stylistically, this shot is unusual in that the fog gives it an

atmospheric quality unlike anything else in the film. Symbolically, however, the fog allows for

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an apt (if somewhat heavy-handed) summation of the film’s themes. Although the law has

helped the women find some semblance of justice, they will now disappear back into the

underworld with only themselves to rely on.

Figure 26: The women disappear into the fog together at the film’s end.

These street shots are also echoed in other shots in which the women are lined up

together, typically under the eyes of the law. While Mary is the only one who becomes literally

a “marked woman” (Vanning’s henchmen scar her cheek after she accuses him of murdering her

sister), the whole group is more figuratively “marked” through their association with Vanning

and their surveillance by the police. After one of the club’s patrons is murdered, the women are

brought in for a police lineup. Here, the women are frequently filmed from the perspective of

the men who are observing the lineup through the slates of the venetian blinds (fig. 27). Not

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only do the women themselves remain stationary in the lineup, but the camera is also

immobilized during the shot. The women’s other significant “lineup” is during the climactic trial

sequence. The five women sit at the front of the courtroom and each woman’s testimony is

intercut with shots of the group. Shots of the entire group also appear prominently throughout

Graham’s passionate summation, the handing down of the verdict, and the sentencing, most

notably in a slow tracking shot across the women’s faces as the judge hands down the sentence.

Figure 27: The women seen from the point of view of the police.

While Davis’s Mary receives the most screen time and plays the greatest role in

propelling the plot, the other women still play a crucial role in the film. This is perhaps most

notable in the scenes in which they serve as a kind of silent Greek chorus, commenting on the

action through reaction shots filmed in close-up. For example, as Mary and Betty argue on the

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apartment steps, Gabby occupies the centre of the frame, her eyes moving back and forth

between the two women. Indeed, Gabby’s face occupies a privileged position in the shot as she

is the only one facing the camera – both Mary and Betty are seen in profile, facing each other as

they argue (fig. 28). Reaction close-ups are also notably used in the sequence in which

Vanning’s men beat Mary. The beating happens entirely offscreen and thus is conveyed solely

through sound and the reactions of Estelle, Florrie, and Gabby. As the sounds of the first blows

are heard, all three girls jump before the film cuts to individual close-ups of each of their

reactions.

Figure 28:Gabby (centre) watches as Mary (right) and Betty argue.

Estelle reacts as though the sounds are causing her physical pain. Florrie clutches the arms of the

chair she is sitting in and shrinks back as if she is being menaced. Gabby remains stoic, merely

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closing her eyes when Mary screams loudly. Close-ups are also used as commentary in the final

scene as the women leave the courthouse. Over the excited chat of people congratulating

Graham on his victory, we are shown individual close-ups of each of the women as they walk

down the steps. All but Mary remain stoic and impassive. They have accepted that this battle is

over and, although they have won, little about their lives will ultimately change. Mary cries

softly and briefly glances back in Graham’s direction, but then keeps walking with her friends.

While Mary is free to temporarily express her emotions here, the close-ups of her friends signal

the attitude she must eventually adopt in order to move forward with her life.

“Isn’t there enough heartache in the theatre without our hating each other?”:

Theatrical friendships This section is dedicated to a group of films that zeros in on a particular group of working

women: actresses. Actresses, especially those at the top of their profession, would appear to fall

into the category of the more exceptional career women – those for whom the tension between

competition and camaraderie is particularly fraught. Indeed, as I already highlighted throughout

my analysis, a desire to emphasize tension and conflict between Hollywood actresses was (and

continues to be) a key feature of writing about Hollywood. The rivalry between Bette Davis and

Joan Crawford has formed the basis of books (Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud by Shaun

Considine) and television shows (Ryan Murphy’s 2017 series Feud) while the tension between

sisters Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine has similarly produced books (Sisters: The Story of

Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine by Charles Higham) and even a contemporary court case

(after de Havilland sued the creators of Feud for including a line in which she refers to Fontaine

as a “bitch”). While the juicy nature of these kinds of stories attracts considerable attention, the

annals of Hollywood history are similarly filled with stories of camaraderie and collaboration

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between actresses. Some of these collaborations took place on set. For instance, I have already

cited the professional collaborations of Mary Astor and Bette Davis on the set of The Great Lie.

Close friendships also developed between actresses off set. In addition to her friendship with

Astor, Davis also developed a lifelong friendship with de Havilland. Both had lengthy

contractual battles with their home studio of Warner Brothers. The two appeared in two films

together – It’s Love I’m After (Archie Mayo, 1937) and Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Robert

Aldrich, 1964), with de Havilland coming out of semi-retirement to replace Crawford in the

latter. De Havilland later spoke positively of Davis describing her as “a unique person and a

good friend. She would always be there for you. Your secrets were safe with her, because she

never gossiped.”259 Joseph Egan’s The Purple Diaries: Mary Astor and the Most Sensational

Hollywood Scandal of the 1930s highlights the close and supportive friendship that developed

between Astor and Ruth Chatterton during the former’s contentious custody battle with her

second husband. (Ironically, the two had met while playing romantic rivals in the 1936 film

Dodsworth.) Other notable actress friends included Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck (who had

known each other since their days as Broadway chorus girls), Ava Gardner and Lana Turner

(despite the fact that they were romantically involved with several of the same men including

Artie Shaw and Frank Sinatra), and Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell (who played onscreen

friends in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes). Reporting about classical Hollywood friendship can often

take on shades of the Sapphic as in an article quoted by William J. Mann in his autobiography of

Katharine Hepburn: “When the gossip writer Dan Thomas compiled a roundup of Hollywood’s

‘gal pals,’ he listed Laura [Harding, a close friend of Hepburn’s] alongside Sandra Shaw, ‘closest

259 Charlotte Chandler, The Girl Who Walked Home Alone: Bette Davis, A Personal

Biography (New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2007), 244.

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friend’ of Dolores del Rio, Madeline Fields, ‘inseparable companion’ of Carole Lombard, and

Elizabeth Wilson, ‘constant chum’ of Claudette Colbert – all of whom faced their own

underground lesbian scuttlebutt.”260 Whatever the nature of these relationships, however, it was

clear that actresses forged friendships with each other despite a press fixated on their conflicts.

Classical Hollywood produced a considerable number of films about actresses. Although

the films I examine below focus on actresses in the theatre rather than on film, the importance of

camaraderie and collaboration is similarly highlighted. This section bridges the previous section

in that the actresses in these films are rarely depicted as stars, but instead as workers, constantly

in search of the next job. Rather than focusing on either the glamour of show business or the

artistic rewards of the craft of acting, these films focus on the struggle and hardship associated

with the profession. At the same time, however, these characters are far more focused on their

careers than the women in the previous section. In her discussion of onscreen portrayals of

actresses, Lucy Fischer highlights the extent to which these characters are often depicted as

“acting” both in their onstage and offstage lives with the offstage performances often occurring

for the benefit of men. Indeed, in all four of the films I examine below, women are shown

putting on an act in order to extract gains from the (often easily duped) men in their lives. Such

performances raise the question of whether these women also feel the need to dissemble in front

of one another. In most of the films discussed below, while the female characters also “act” for

one another, these performances typically have different motivations and take on different forms.

When women “act” for men, their performance is often highly sexual in nature, highlighting the

link between acting and prostitution emphasized by Fischer. In contrast, when women “act” for

260 William J. Mann, Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn (New York: Picador, 2006),

224.

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their female friends, their goal is often to inspire courage and strength within their friends. This

intimate connection between the professional and the personal often culminates in an onstage

sequence in which the female protagonists stop acting and reveal a part of their true selves.

The link between acting and prostitution is perhaps most notable and explicit in Gold

Diggers of 1933. Although directed by Mervyn LeRoy, Busby Berkeley is often perceived as the

“real” author of Gold Diggers of 1933 (as well as many of the other films Berkeley

choreographed in the 1930s). In scholarship on the Berkeley films, it is the production numbers

that typically draw the most comment. A common feminist criticism of these production

numbers is the way in which they reduce the female chorus girls to objects, sometimes quite

literally as in the “Shadow Waltz” number where the chorus girls arrange themselves in the

shape of a giant violin. As Fischer notes, “Berkeley girls did not (and often could not) dance – a

phenomenon that accentuates our perception of their role as visual embellishments.”261 This

focus on the production numbers (which are often linked only tangentially to the main plot)

results in a tendency of critics to ignore or sideline the narrative segments that make up the bulk

of the film. The plotlines of the Berkeley films offer surprisingly rich pre-Code narratives, often

focused on the hard-scrabble Depression existence of those employed in show business. Indeed,

the portrait of working women’s lives presented in these films is often strikingly at odds with the

glamour of the celebrated musical numbers. The central plot of Gold Diggers of 1933 concerns

three actresses – Polly (Ruby Keeler), Carol (Joan Blondell), and Trixie (Aline MacMahon) –

who are attempting to find steady employment during the Depression. As the film’s title would

imply, the women pursue their careers less out of a devotion to their art than a need to make

money and support themselves, a need that can perhaps be more easily filled through the support

261 Fischer, Shot/Countershot, 139.

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of a rich man. The women largely avoid competing with each other for jobs, partly because they

are represented as three different “types” – Polly is the dancer, Carol is the torch singer, and

Trixie is the comedienne. Interestingly, the three friends rarely appear together in the film’s

showcase production numbers. Polly is the only one who appears in “Shadow Waltz” and Carol

is the only one who appears in the film’s closing number “Remember My Forgotten Man.”

None of the three appear in the opening number “We’re in the Money” (performed by Ginger

Rogers, who has a secondary role in the film). “Pettin’ in the Park” is the only exception.

Polly’s dancing is highlighted several times throughout the lengthy number while Trixie appears

in a brief comedic turn as a policewoman. Limiting their joint appearance in the production

numbers has the effect of both discouraging comparisons between the three women and

separating them from the anonymous sameness of the Berkeley chorus girls. Polly, Carol, and

Trixie are not mere “visual embellishments,” but become clearly defined characters whose

actions propel the narrative sections of the film.

Like the women in the other working girl films, the three protagonists are shown sharing

an apartment with an early sequence that uses the domestic space of the apartment to establish

and develop the relationship between the friends. The friends are shown sleeping in beds that are

pushed together with Trixie in a single bed and Carol and Polly sharing a double. The three

friends debate getting out of bed to look for work, but ultimately decide to roll over (in perfect

synchronization) and go back to sleep (fig. 29). Once they finally make it out of bed, the friends

go about their morning routines together, primping in front of mirror and doing calisthenics clad

in their slips and housecoats. The three friends fix breakfast as a group with Polly setting the

table and Carol preparing toast while Trixie steals a bottle of milk from a neighbour’s balcony.

As they sit down to eat, Fay (Rogers) arrives to tell the women of a possible job opportunity – a

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noted producer, Barney, is rumoured to be putting on a new show. Deciding they do not have

enough presentable clothing to all go see Barney, the women pool their resources (including

Fay’s dress) in order to send Carol in style. When Carol discovers that Barney is indeed

planning to put on a show, she immediately organizes a meeting of all of their chorus girl friends

in the apartment so that they can all get parts in the show. Later in the film, after the show

becomes a hit, the women continue to share an apartment, albeit a much nicer one. The end of

the film breaks up this arrangement, however, with the same maneuver adopted in many of the

other films – pairing the women off in marriage.

Figure 29: The friends choose sleep over work.

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Early in Stage Door, Terry (Katharine Hepburn) expresses her dismay at her inability to

fit in with her wisecracking roommates. Kay (Andrea Leeds) reassures her by saying, “They do

make a lot of noise but it’s just to keep up their courage and hide their fears.” Kay’s words

suggest that when the women do “perform” for each other, it is often with the goal of inspiring

and encouraging both themselves and their friends. The spirit-lifting wisecrack is a common

feature of these films used to alleviate the fear of the protagonists. It is in Stage Door that the

importance of the wisecrack gets its clearest airing. Throughout the film, we repeatedly return to

the sitting room of the Footlights Club, the boarding house for actresses where the bulk of the

film takes place. Here, the unemployed actresses sit around exchanging witty banter, often

talking over each other as they compete to get the last laugh. While the atmosphere clearly

promotes equal opportunity wisecracking (even the tragic Kay fires off the occasional laugh

line), these banter sessions still retain a clearly performative air.

Eve (Eve Arden, one of several actresses in this film who shares a name with her

character) serves as a kind of ringleader, an embodiment of the wisecracking but ultimately

supportive atmosphere of the Footlights Club. In her book on female comic seconds, Judith

Roof devotes considerable attention to Arden (and indeed she is one of the character actresses

who gives the book its title All About Thelma and Eve). On Arden’s performance in Stage Door,

Roof writes, “The leader of [Terry’s] deflation is Eve, who, though a strong voice among the

group, seems the most marginally situated of all. She often has the last word, which reflects a

combination of apparent cynicism, resignation, and feistiness.”262 Indeed, Eve is often quite

literally marginally situated onscreen, rarely given the kind of placement that would normally

signal a character of importance. Despite this, Eve often commands considerable attention. In

262 Roof, All About Thelma and Eve, 39.

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one shot, for instance, Eve is placed at the back of the group. Like the stage actress she is,

however, this allows her to “upstage” the other women – that is, force them to turn their backs to

the audience/camera in order to engage in conversation with her. In other shots, Eve is placed at

the edge of the frame, but once again, the other women turn towards her as she fires off quips,

making her the focus of the shot (fig. 30). Eve is also visually highlighted by her blindingly

white pet cat whom she typically carries draped around her neck. (Where did they cast such an

incredibly patient cat?) Eve’s connection to the Club is further reinforced by the fact that, unlike

many of the other women, she is only seen outside of the Club in one scene. In addition, she is

one of the few characters of any note who does not attend Terry’s opening night. (Jean: Hey,

Figure 30: Eve (standing at left) commands the attention of the group.

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you’re not going to catch the opening tonight, huh? Eve: No, I’m going tomorrow and catch the

closing.) The only other woman who is similarly tied to the Club is Kay (also only seen in one

scene outside the Club). The difference between Kay and Eve is that Kay makes repeated

references to the (unseen) time she does spend outside the Club attempting to look for acting

jobs. Indeed, in the one scene in which the two appear outside the Club, Kay is actively trying to

get a job while Eve appears to be doing little more than cracking wise from the sidelines.

Instead, all of Eve’s acting goes on within the Club, a performance she puts on for the benefit of

the other women.

Arguments can similarly serve as entertainment for the women. Early in the film Jean

Figure 31: The women watch with glee as Jean (standing right) fight over a pair of stockings.

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(Ginger Rogers) and Linda (Gail Patrick) get into a fight over a pair of stockings that Linda

iswearing. Jean insists they belong to her and starts actively reclaiming them as a group of

women gather around (fig. 31). (Notably, Eve is the first women to walk over to the fighting

pair and thus draws the attention of the rest of the group to the brawl.) Underlining the

performative nature of the fight one onlooker remarks, “Linda’s doing a strip tease” while

another responds, “You can get a bigger crowd in the street.” Similarly, when Terry arrives, she

attempts to ask Jean various questions about the Club, prompting witty but unhelpful replies

from Jean. With each of Jean’s responses, a chorus of laughter can be heard from the other

women offscreen, indicating that Jean’s banter with Terry is largely for the amusement of the

group.

The wisecracking secondary characters often serve as a form of Greek chorus. At the

top of many scenes, two or more actresses share in some banter that establishes the central

subject of the scene or provides a sense of plot direction. For instance, in one scene, which

opens with Judy (Lucille Ball) and Eve waiting in an important producer’s office, they are

exchanging wisecracks about how difficult it is to see him. As the scene unfolds, it continues to

explore the ins and outs of who can get in to see the producer. Kay’s inability to get in to see

him proves to be a serious setback for her character while Terry manages to gain access to his

office as a prelude to eventually receiving the part Kay covets in his new show. In another

instance, conversation between the women is used to indicate the passage of time and to

foreshadow upcoming events as they banter about their plans to attend the opening of Terry’s

play that night.

The dialogue between the secondary actresses often registers their response and reactions

to the events of the central plot. As I have demonstrated, these reactions are often coated with a

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layer of performative banter, designed to amuse and entertain each other. Slightly different

responses are captured in the close-up reaction shots of various members of the group that

accompany key moments of the film. These shots are particularly important in chronicling the

group’s changing reactions to Terry over the course of the film. At the beginning of the film,

Terry arrives at the Footlights Club and proceeds to have a conversation about the

accommodations with Mrs. Orcutt (Elizabeth Dunn), the landlady, that reveals Terry’s

pretensions. Throughout the conversation, the film repeatedly cuts to close-up shots of the other

women reacting with surprise and amusement. For example, Terry’s request for a room with a

private bath is followed by a cut to Judy laughing out loud. When Terry pulls a fifty dollar bill

out of her purse to pay her rent, a reaction shot shows Annie (Ann Miller) chomping her gum

and widening her eyes in amazement. These shots emphasize Terry’s outsider status at this point

in the film. Terry’s attempts to bond with the other women and integrate herself into the group

forms one of the key narrative throughlines of the film. Her eventual success in becoming part

of the group is underlined by a repeat of the shot structure from her introductory sequence. In

the film’s climactic sequence, Terry learns of Kay’s suicide right before her premiere

performance of Enchanted April. The shock of Kay’s death inspires Terry to give a brilliant

rendition of the famous “calla lilies” speech. As Terry gives the speech, the film repeatedly cuts

to reaction shots of the various Footlights residents in the audience. Just prior to Terry’s

entrance, their faces register anticipation, but as she speaks, their expressions turn serious and

contemplative, with two of the women exchanging uncertain glances. Compared to the early

sequences, their reactions are considerably muted as though they were expecting a markedly

different performance and are unsure of the correct reaction. The play ends with enthusiastic

applause and Terry is brought on to give a curtain speech. As Terry dedicates her performance

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to Kay, the camera pans across the Footlights residents in the audience, all of whom are visibly

moved. The camera movement ends with a cut to a lengthy two-shot of Jean and Annie who

both begin to cry as the camera holds on them (fig. 32).

Figure 32: One of the many reaction shots used in Stage Door shows Jean (left) and Annie react with emotion to Terry’s curtain

speech.

These reactions attest to Terry’s acceptance into the group, an acceptance that is

confirmed in the following scene where Jean visits Terry in her dressing room after the

performance. Jean’s entrance is announced with the sound of a door opening offscreen and

Terry, who had been sitting on a chair staring off into space, rises to her feet and looks towards

the door. The film cuts to a close-up of Jean’s face in which she appears to be on the verge of

tears. We then cut to a close-up of Terry returning Jean’s gaze with a look full of understanding

and empathy. In a medium long shot, Jean rushes towards Terry and the two women embrace as

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Jean bursts into tears (fig. 33). Terry tells her, “Don’t try to say anything. We’ll go to her.”

When Miss Luther protests that Terry has people she needs to see, Terry responds, “You see

them for me” and departs with Jean to see Kay. Notably, although Terry’s moving performance

clearly plays a role in changing the women’s impression of her, it is her choice to dedicate the

Figure 33: Jean and Terry solidify their friendship with a hug.

triumph of her first night to Kay that seems to solidify her status as a member of the group. The

exchange of looks that precedes the embrace mirrors a similar exchange in Jean and Terry’s first

scene together in which a close-up of Jean looking at Terry is answered by a close-up of Terry

looking at Jean. In this early scene, the two women are sizing each other up, evaluating each

other as potential competitors. In the later scene, the two have reached an understanding through

their shared connection to Kay. This is clearly symbolized by the hug. Despite the fact that

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Terry and Jean are roommates and have shared numerous scenes throughout the film, this is the

first time that they have touched in any significant way. Indeed, the film charts their progress

towards becoming friends.

Narratively, Stage Door’s ending is unusual in that the central characters (Terry and Jean)

both end up unattached at the film’s end. Judy, a minor character who has been seen going on

dates throughout the film, does depart to move back to Seattle and get married in this final scene,

but the only other character who has successfully found a mate is Eve’s cat Henry, who turns out

to be pregnant, a development that prompts Eve to remark, “I’ll never put my trust in males

again.” Terry in particular, who has achieved considerable success in Enchanted April, seems

perfectly content with her living arrangement. Notably, Terry continues to stay on at the

Footlights Club even though she is now so successful that she could move out. Jean is also

single at the film’s end although in the final shot she is placing a call to a former boyfriend, who

was seen briefly earlier in the film. The sound of her conversation, however, is drowned out by

Mrs. Orcutt discussing the Club’s accommodations with a new arrival and the swelling babble of

the women in the living room, reasserting the woman-centric world of the Club over the world of

heterosexual romance.

Throughout Blondie of the Follies, Blondie (Marion Davies) and Lottie (Billie Dove), the

two central friends in the film, also have a tendency to act for each other – although in a slightly

different way from the women discussed above. These two characters are presented as

childhood friends who knew each other long before either entered show business. The friends

thus have a different dynamic to their relationship that is shown through physical touches

between the two, including play fighting. While the play fighting may appear a bit odd to

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modern sensibilities, it is clearly meant to be played for comedy. Early in the film, the two get

into a fight in the halls of the tenement building where they live when Blondie mocks Lottie’s

desire to get into burlesque. Lottie slaps Blondie, Blondie returns the slap, and the two then grab

each other and fall to the floor where Blondie’s sister finds them tussling ineffectually and

breaks up the fight. Both women’s families subsequently seem thoroughly unconcerned about

the fight, suggesting that this is something that happens frequently and is an accepted part of the

relationship between the two. Indeed, moments later Blondie and Lottie are bidding each other

an emotional farewell as Lottie leaves to embark on a career in burlesque. Blondie assures her

Figure 34: Blondie (left) and Lottie hug as Lottie departs to begin her stage career.

that she will be a success and tells her, “If you ever need a pal, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

as the two friends hug (fig. 34). The physical contact between the friends is clearly linked to

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Blondie and Lottie’s working-class roots, an element of her persona that Lottie attempts to shed

after becoming a chorus girl. When she returns to the tenement to visit her mother, Lottie also

stops by to visit Blondie who greets her with a big hug. Lottie purposely breaks the hug and

seems eager to get out of the tenement although she does invite Blondie to come with her to visit

her posh apartment. At the apartment, Blondie tries to wrestle with Lottie on her bed, but Lottie

refuses to be lured into the play fighting saying, “We’re children no longer, Blondie.”

The one moment when Lottie does initiate physical contact during this scene is

significant. Lottie’s boyfriend Larry is looking for a date for a friend of his and expresses

interest in Blondie for the job. Lottie, clearly believing that this is a bad idea, tells him Blondie

Figure 35: Larry (centre) quite literally comes between the two friends.

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has to leave and takes her hand to lead her towards the door. As they pass Larry, however, he

grasps both their hands and physically separates them, pulling the women onto the couch with

him, one on either side of him so that Larry acts as a physical barrier between the two (fig. 35).

This moment serves as a clear indication of the extent to which Larry will come between the two

friends over the course of the film. The film handles the eventual competition over Larry in an

interesting way in that the two friends actively try to avoid competing over him. After Blondie

realizes that Lottie is in love with Larry, she promises to stay away from him. Eventually,

however, the situation comes to a head after Lottie sees Blondie talking to Larry at a party on a

boat. Blondie confesses that she too is in love with Larry, a confession that prompts Lottie to

drop her dignified façade. She grabs Blondie and begins violently shaking her in an echo of the

earlier fight scene in the tenement hallway, but without the playful subtext. Blondie grabs her

back and in the ensuing scuffle the two fall off the boat. While this scene certainly belongs to

the tradition of “cat fighting” women that would reach its apogee in The Women, the film also

links the women’s fighting to a degree of honesty in the women’s relationship. By harkening

back to their tenement roots, the two are able to drop their façades and finally be honest with

each other about their feelings for Larry, even if it ultimately causes a rupture in their

relationship.

The women’s conflict over Larry fittingly reaches its climax one night during a

performance. After another argument over Larry, Blondie and Lottie prepare to go on for a

dance sequence called “The Whip,” which appears to consist of all of the dancers holding hands

and moving in a circle with Blondie as the dancer at the tail end of the whip holding onto

Lottie’s hand. As the women are about to walk onto the stage, another dancer warns Blondie

that a girl died doing the dance because “her partner was careless,” but Blondie goes on anyway.

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The dance is shown in a series of frantic cuts alternating between wide shots of the entire

company, two shots of Blondie and Lottie (who appear to be arguing although their voices are

not audible on the soundtrack), and reaction shots of stunned dancers watching from backstage.

A single significant close-up shows Blondie and Lottie clasping each other’s wrists (fig. 36). As

the dance continues, another close-up of their hands shows that Lottie is no longer holding onto

Blondie’s wrist. Blondie screams and falls into the pit as Lottie is whisked away by the other

dancers, looking distressed. As Blondie is whisked into a waiting ambulance, Lottie hops in

after her, taking Blondie’s hand and holding it against her breast. Whether or not Lottie

deliberately let go of Blondie’s hand is left ambiguous, but the gesture of taking Blondie’s hand

points to a commitment to renew their friendship and repair the bond between them.

Figure 36: A close-up of the friends grasping each other during “The Whip.”

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As noted above, the scenes in which Blondie and Lottie most prominently ‘act’ for each

other are those in which each of them is concealing her true feelings about Larry from the other,

an act that continues even after the fight on the boat. Late in the film, however, Blondie employs

a variation on the “putting on a brave face” act seen in Gold Diggers of 1933 and Stage Door.

After learning that her leg has been permanently damaged by the fall from the stage, Blondie

throws a farewell party in her luxurious apartment before moving home. Rather than

wisecracking, Blondie adopts a variation of the “party girl” persona she puts on at various points

throughout the film, mostly notably in an interminable party sequence in which she reenacts

scenes from Grand Hotel with Jimmy Durante. Moreover, instead of wallowing in her

misfortune, Blondie greets everyone with beaming smiles and encourages them to drink her

champagne. Lottie attempts to apologize for injuring Blondie, but Blondie insists on claiming

the incident was an accident:

Lottie: I hated you.

Blondie: Well, that was an accident, wasn’t it? Isn’t everything an accident?

Although both are aware of the artifice of Blondie’s act, it still provides them with an

opportunity for reconciliation. This scene also attempts to offer closure to their relationship, but

for the viewer it feels oddly unsatisfying. Lottie asks if Blondie has turned down Larry’s

proposal, which indeed she has. When Blondie responds in the affirmative, Lottie tells her that

she has to go now, but she will come to visit her once she is back at home. In a final scene,

Larry shows up at Blondie’s family’s home with a doctor who can fix her leg and it appears to be

implied that the two will be married after all. It seems as though we are meant to interpret the

two scenes as causally linked – that is, that Lottie left the party to encourage Larry to try again

with Blondie. At the very least, we are presumably meant to read the scene as a symbolic

blessing from Lottie of the union between Blondie and Larry. At the same time, this ending

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seems unsatisfactory after a film that has been dedicated to exploring the necessity for honesty

between friends. Every time the friends hide their true feelings from each other, some kind of

catastrophe results, from the fight on the ship to Blondie’s injury. Although Blondie’s act in the

final scene is for her own good as well as Lottie’s, it seems to only reinforce the notion that

friendships between women must be fraught with dissembling on some level.

Perhaps more than any other film discussed above, the friendship between Blondie and

Lottie is reinforced throughout the film in the dialogue with Blondie and Lottie repeatedly

describing each other as their “pal.” Blondie also refers to Lottie as “mug,” a term of

endearment that also points to their shared working-class roots. The need for openness between

friends, especially in sensitive matters of the heart, is of particular importance in this film. When

Blondie belatedly realizes that Lottie is in love with Larry, she asks Lottie why she did not

confide her true feelings to her. When Lottie claims, “You just don’t tell those things”, Blondie

insists, “You could have told me.” This moment is echoed later in the film when Lottie attempts

to get Blondie to confess that she too has feelings for Larry, telling her “We’re pals. Come on –

you can tell me.”

Dance, Girl, Dance is one of the few films from the classic Hollywood era that routinely

receives acknowledgment for its positive portrayal of female solidarity. Part of this reason is

undoubtedly the understandable eagerness of female critics and scholars to celebrate the work of

the only major female director of classical Hollywood era, Dorothy Arzner. In Directed by

Dorothy Arzner, Judith Mayne notes the extent to which relationships between women is a

central feature of much of Arzner’s work. In Arzner’s films, “the development of heterosexual

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romance intrudes upon all-female worlds.”263 Mayne further notes that, “while the films often

conclude with the requisite happy couple, such conclusions seem somewhat fragile in regard to

the amount of time and energy devoted, screen-wise, to the female worlds.”264 On Dance, Girl,

Dance specifically, Mayne notes that much of its power is located in its movement away from

the kind of good/bad woman dichotomies that undermine some of the other films I have

examined such as The Women and East Side, West Side. While the film presents two opposite

types in burlesque dancer Bubbles (Lucille Ball) and ballet dancer Judy (Maureen O’Hara),

neither woman is villainized.265

As Mayne notes, Dance, Girl, Dance is fairly explicit in presenting heterosexual romance

as a troubling influence on otherwise stable female worlds. The conflict between Bubbles and

Judy stems entirely from their interest in the same man. Despite this conflict, however, Bubbles

and Judy continue to support each other professionally. Although Bubbles can often be self-

centered, she returns unexpectedly in an attempt to help her former dance troupe land an

audition. When this plan backfires, she later helps a now unemployed Judy get a job in her

burlesque act. Although this job turns out to be somewhat humiliating (she plays the stooge in

Bubbles’s act), Judy does need the work and chooses to stick with the job. The conflict between

the two ultimately comes to a head after Bubbles marries Jimmy, the man they’ve both been

pursuing. As in both Stage Door and Blondie of the Follies, Judy learns the pivotal news right

before the two are about to go onstage. As the men heckle Judy (an expected response to her

role as stooge), her offstage feelings overwhelm her, but rather than displaying Terry’s raw

263 Judith Mayne, Directed by Dorothy Arzner (Bloomington: University of Indiana

Press, 1994), 131. 264 Mayne, 131. 265 Mayne, 141.

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sadness from Stage Door, Judy angrily lashes out at the objectifying audience of jeering men,

which leads to Bubbles storming onstage and becoming embroiled in a physical fight with Judy.

While this “cat fight” would seem to undercut the overt feminist messaging of Judy’s speech, it

also serves as a kind of outlet for the frustrations that have been building between the two

women over the course of the film and will eventually allow them to put aside their differences

in the final scene. As Judy ultimately realizes, “Lots of times I’ve been mad at Bubbles but I

shouldn’t have been (fig. 37).” Interestingly, part of what allows the women to reconcile is that

neither of them ends up with Jimmy (who returns to his wife in the penultimate scene). Judy

meets a new man who will both advance her career and become her romantic partner while

Bubbles ends up single but optimistic about her future prospects.

Figure 37: Judy (right) and Bubbles reconcile at the film’s end.

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Dance, Girl, Dance also provides us with another story of offscreen female camaraderie.

In her autobiography, O’Hara reports that she bonded with Ball while they prepared for the film:

“By the time dance classes were finished, Lucille and I were inseparable chums. We were a lot

alike, two tough dames.”266 She goes on to note that the two reminded friends for many years

after, supporting each other through both personal and professional milestones.267

As in other films about working women, a shared profession unites the actress characters

I examine above. For the actresses, however, their professional lives play a more significant

narrative role. For the women of Our Blushing Brides, the goal of their professional activities is

to ultimately find a husband and quit their jobs. For the women of Marked Woman, there is little

hope of any such escape, but they are similarly unfulfilled by their work. In contrast, the actress

characters in this group appear to take considerable enjoyment from their careers. There is a

greater sense that their work is a source of pride even if they do not necessarily view themselves

as great artists. As a result, these films typically contain a greater number of scenes depicting the

women actually at work, scenes which also take on a greater significance within the film.

Blondie of the Follies, Dance, Girl, Dance, and Stage Door all feature scenes in which the

relationship between the female protagonists reach a key emotional climax in the middle of an

on-stage performance. Somewhat paradoxically, all of these moments are also presented as

authentic, unscripted, moments in which the actress characters are finally and definitively not

acting. It is often made clear to the film viewer (although not necessarily the audience within the

film) that the actress character has deviated from the scripted performance for a moment of

honesty. These moments of honesty are presented as creating some kind of moment of

266 Maureen O’Hara with John Nicoletti, ‘Tis Herself: An Autobiography (New York:

Simon & Schuster, 2004), 51. 267 O’Hara, 54.

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transcendence. Terry’s raw pain over Kay’s death allows her to finally become a good actress

and gain the acceptance of the women from the Club. Judy’s speech reveals a truth about the

nature of spectatorship and clears the way for the final scene in which she and Bubbles reconcile.

Blondie’s accident makes the violence implied in the name of the dance (“The Whip”) real. As I

have demonstrated, over the course of these films, the characters have repeatedly put on an act

for their friends, hiding their true feelings behind a façade of strength and cheerfulness. These

climactic performance sequences paradoxically offer the female protagonists a moment of truth

and honesty that clears the way for bonding and reconciliation between the friends in the final

moments of the film. Notably, while the ending of the film typically revolves around the

formation of a heterosexual couple (with the exception of Stage Door as discussed above), these

onstage sequences, with their explicit focus on the relationship between the female protagonists,

form the emotional climax of the films.

As I have demonstrated over the course of this chapter, the changing world of the

twentieth century led to new forms and expressions of female friendship. Despite a cultural shift

that sought to delegitimize and deprioritize female friendship, friends ultimately became even

more important for many young women as friend groups increasingly took over the support role

traditionally played by family, particularly during late adolescence and early adulthood. In the

films I examine in this chapter, friends offer both emotional and practical support for each other.

Like the friends in Chapter One, the friends in these films share their problems with each other,

listening and offering advice. Many films feature a scene of intense emotional outpouring in

which the friendship is affirmed and any earlier conflicts are laid aside. At the same time,

pragmatic considerations enter the realm of friendship in a new way. Friends frequently live

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together in these films, pooling their financial resources and sharing the work around the home.

These films also reflect the increasingly public nature of women’s lives, a shift that is clearly

embodied in the actress films I examine at the end of this chapter. As women continued to move

outside of the home, the need for supportive friends only grew stronger. In the next chapter, I

consider a crucial moment of political upheaval in which camaraderie between women became

an issue of national importance: World War II.

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Chapter Three – Female Bonding: Women’s Friendships and World

War II

Introduction This chapter considers films featuring women in the military during World War II. In

these films, the war provides a unique context for the friendships that develop between female

characters. These friendships display both a consistency with and a difference from the

friendships seen in earlier chapters. Many of the hallmarks of female friendship that I have

explored so far, including confessional conversations, physical touch, and the sharing of

domestic space, continue to be important. At the same time, the war allows these established

traits to take on a different inflection. A big part of this change is the generic blend exhibited by

these films. Most of the films I have examined in previous chapters can be fairly comfortably

described as fitting into the genre of the “woman’s film” with its attendant focus on questions of

romance and family. The introduction of the war as a key element of the films allows for an

integration of generic elements drawn from an established body of combat films. A notable

element of many combat films is their overt celebration of friendship and camaraderie between

fellow soldiers. Indeed, wider discourses around warfare often emphasize the importance of

interpersonal bonds uniting soldiers from disparate backgrounds into a cohesive troop. In these

films, the military unit is presented as a microcosm of the nation as a whole, celebrating the same

values and facing the same challenges as America itself.

In this chapter, I begin with a broader consideration of the intertwined relationships

between gender, citizenship, and the military. I consider the key role that women have played in

the national imaginary as opposed to their more marginal or overlooked role in relation to the

active political realm of citizenship, including voting and serving in the military. The military

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has historically played a key role in definitions of national identity with military service often

being framed as both a privilege and a duty of good citizens. Military belonging is predicated on

subsuming differences into a fundamental sameness, a process that has often resulted in the

exclusion or marginalization of those who appear to threaten the fundamental sameness on which

the military is founded. To this end, I highlight the ways in which “male bonding” has been

prioritized as an essential part of military life, one that risked possible disruption by the

admittance of those deemed too “different.” By World War II, however, the fundamental nature

of the military itself was beginning to change, becoming both increasingly bureaucratic and

increasingly mechanized.

Despite significant resistance, women made major inroads into the U.S. military during

World War II. Initially, some commentators expressed reservations about whether women could

develop the kind of camaraderie that was seen as essential for male soldiers. Ultimately,

however, these fears were unfounded. As I argue below, “female bonding” proved to be an

important part of life for enlisted women who learned to rely on the mutual support of their

fellow soldiers. In this section, I demonstrate the ways in which the friendship among enlisted

women is borne out across a number of sources from official documents to the oral histories of

the women themselves. I also explore the importance of friendship for women on the home

front. Whether going to work or staying at home, women appear to have found their lives much

changed by the absence of men. Again, oral histories play an important role in highlighting these

crucial friendships. Women’s magazines, however, also noted the changing social dynamics of

the war, often taking a tongue-in-cheek look at the prevalence of newfound female camaraderie.

I then devote the rest of the chapter to an analysis of four films featuring women at war.

I argue that in these films the war becomes not only another set of circumstances in which

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women can form friendships, but a unique situation in which friendship becomes a matter of

survival. For the women in these films, the ability to rely on each and both accept and offer

support (logistically and emotionally) is a vital part of what allows them to persevere. At the

same time, I highlight the ways in which these films demonstrate a continuity with the portrayal

of female friendship in other films of the Classical Hollywood era. Even in the combat zones of

the Pacific, the women work together to create domestic spaces and to find simple moments of

physical and emotional connection.

Women and the nation

To begin, I want to briefly consider the ways in which women have been positioned in

discourse on nationhood. The scholars I survey here provide valuable insight into the ways in

which women have been celebrated as symbolic guardians of deeply held national values while

simultaneously being relegated to the sidelines of public life. For Joanne R. Sharp, women play

an essential role in the national imaginary. She points out that while many nations are figured as

female (such as Britannia and Mother Russia), the relationship between woman and nation is

ultimately symbolic or metaphoric, with men positioned as those capable of exercising national

agency: “Prevention of foreign penetration of the motherland – and women’s bodies as symbols

of it – is at the very heart of national-state security. The female is a prominent symbol of

nationalism and honour. But this is a symbol to be protected by masculine agency.”268 For other

scholars, this symbolic linkage of woman and nation is connected to women’s role as

reproducers of the nation. This reproduction is both biological (in that women are expected to

268 Joanne R. Sharp, “Gendering Nationhood: A Feminist Engagement with National

Identity,” in BodySpace: Destabilising Geographies of Gender and Sexuality, ed. Nancy Duncan

(Florence: Routledge, 1996), 100.

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bear children who will serve the nation) and ideological (in that women are expected to transmit

cultural knowledge to the younger generation).269 This key role in propagating the nation’s

future has thus often placed considerable emphasis on women’s traditional roles within national

culture. Questions of “proper” cultural behaviour become particularly important for women in

their role as bearers of national honour.270

While woman is symbolically linked to the nation, she is often opposed to or excluded

from the public realm of citizenship, which involves the active ability to take part in shaping the

nation. Nira Yuval-Davis examines women’s relationship to citizenship by drawing on Bryan

Turner’s comparative typology of citizenship. One key axis of Turner’s typology is a continuum

from passivity to activity, which he defines as “‘whether the citizen is conceptualized as merely a

subject of an absolute authority or as an active political agent.”271 Yuval-Davis notes that active

citizenship involves both rights and duties. She argues that one of the key duties in most modern

nations involves national defence: “Defending one’s own community and country has been seen

as an ultimate citizen’s duty – to die (as well as to kill) for the sake of the homeland or the

nation.”272 Yuval-Davis further connects this ultimate duty to gendered notions of citizenship

and national construction: “…citizenship has been linked with the ability to take part in armed

struggle for national defence; this ability has been equated with maleness, while femaleness has

been equated with weakness and the need for male protection.”273 Here, women’s ability to

269 Tamar Mayer, “Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Setting the Stage,” in Gender Ironies

of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation, ed. Tamar Mayer (New York: Routledge, 2000), 7. 270 Nina Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London: Sage Publications, 1997), 45-46. 271 Bryan S. Turner, “Outline of a Theory of Citizenship,” Sociology 24, no. 2 (May

1990): 209. 272 Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation, 89. 273 Yuval-Davis, 89.

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function as active citizens is complicated by the symbolic role they play in the national

imaginary.

The scholars cited above largely consider the theoretical relationship between gender,

citizenship, and war. I am also, however, interested in exploring the ways in which these

theoretical formulations translate into political practice. Holly Allen’s essay “Gender, sexuality

and the military model of U.S. national community” examines how these theoretical

formulations impact policy decisions in the U.S. military. Allen argues that the military is the

most significant public institution in the United States. As such, the military plays a crucial role

in shaping national discourse about questions of both citizenship and gender. As Allen writes,

“military service is an important privilege of citizenship – one that carries with it the political

legitimacy necessary to make broader, national claims.”274 Thus, the status of women within the

military and ideas about womanhood propagated by the military have a vital impact on women’s

status as citizens. In constructing her argument, Allen draws on testimony from Congressional

hearings on the status of women and gay men in the military from the mid-1990s. Allen notes

that many of those who seek to restrict or exclude women and gay men (particularly from

combat positions) point to an idealized image of male bonding that these “outsiders” might

disrupt. Military experience is collective in nature, calling upon soldiers to set aside individual

self-interest in favour of the common good.275 In the transcripts from which Allen draws,

however, military officials and personnel frequently testify that “men risk their personal welfare

not only or even primarily out of commitment to abstract national interests, but also out of a

274 Holly Allen, “Gender, Sexuality and the Military Model of U.S. National

Community,” in Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation, ed. Tamar Mayer (New

York: Routledge, 2000), 312. 275 Allen, 315.

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commitment to the tangible embodiment of those national interests, the fraternity of fighting

men.”276 The testimony also emphasizes the importance of sameness in solidifying these bonds

with one official stating, “Men trust each other when they are alike, their values, their similar

training, and the same objectives, traditional values given to them by their families before they

entered the military.”277 Women pose a threat to this sameness not only because of their gender

difference, but because their very presence in combat would seem to imply a difference in the

traditional values the military is designed to defend. The exclusion of women from the military

and combat situations thus becomes necessary for upholding a certain idealized version of

femininity on which military masculinity relies.

As Nira Yuval-Davis writes in Gender and Nation, modern militaries fulfil two

potentially contradictory roles:

On the one hand, especially in times of national crisis and war, they became a focus for

national bonding and patriotism, which cuts across differences of class, region, origin,

and sometimes age and gender. On the other hand, they developed as a modern efficient

corporation, structured and geared towards the perfection of the ability to produce death

and destruction in the most efficient and innovative ways.278

While Yuval-Davis is writing in late 1990s, her observation here seems to me particularly

relevant to a consideration of the military at the moment I am examining in this chapter. On the

one hand, the World War II era films themselves lean heavily on a presentation of the military as

an institution for promoting national unity and defending nationally recognized values (with

democracy frequently presented as the key value). On the other hand, World War II was a

watershed moment for the transformation of the U.S. military into a modern corporation with the

276 Allen, 315. 277 Policy Implications of Lifting the Ban on Homosexuals in the Military, Hearings

Before the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, 103rd Congress, 1st Session

(1993) (statement of Colonel J. Ripley), 155, quoted in Allen, 316. 278 Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation, 97-98.

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increasing visibility of women in the military as one of the symptoms of this change. While

these films did not typically present the military as a “career” for women (as discussed below,

much emphasis was placed on women taking on exceptional roles only “for the duration”), the

kinds of tasks women largely performed in the modern military were not unlike the jobs they

performed in civilian life, that is the kinds of clerical and administrative jobs that first brought

women into corporate America.

Women and war work

World War II is often presented as a watershed event for women’s movement into the

United States labour force. While it is true that many women already worked prior to the war (as

discussed in Chapter Two), government recruitment efforts were largely targeted at women who

had never previously held a paying job, operating under the assumption that these women were

“housewives reluctant to take jobs.”279 Attesting to the success of these campaigns is the fact

that the female labour force grew by 32 percent over the course of the war280 with women’s share

of the total labour force increasing from 29 percent in 1941 to 37 percent in 1944.281 The war

was particularly notable for a large influx of married women into the work force. One in every

ten married women worked during the war and, for the first time in the nation’s history, married

women outnumbered single women in the work force.282

279 Leila J. Rupp, Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda, 1939-

1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 99. 280 Rupp, 75. 281 Rupp, 78. 282 Susan M. Hartmann, The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s

(Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982), 78.

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This statistic, however, does not apply to the field of work that saw huge expansion for

women in this era: military service. In the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), the branch of the

military that employed the largest number of women,283 70% of the women were single and only

15% were married (with the remaining 15% being widowed, divorced, or separated).284

Women’s participation in the military was largely facilitated by large-scale changes in the nature

of global warfare in the twentieth century. Changes in military technology resulted in fewer

military personnel directly engaged in combat. Indeed, only 12% of soldiers participated in

active combat during World War II with 25% never even leaving the United States.285 Similarly,

the increasingly bureaucratic nature of modern warfare resulted in an increasing number of

administrative and clerical positions that were viewed as inherently suitable for women with

such positions now occupying more than 10% of all military jobs.286 Indeed, Leisa D. Meyer

contends that women who served in the WAC actually had fewer opportunities for non-

traditional work than their civilian counterparts with 70 percent of all WACs engaged in clerical

and communications work.287 While the number of women serving in the military remained

small (only 1.2 percent according to Rupp288), women serving in the military received a

disproportionate amount of attention in the media. Military jobs for women were unusual

enough to imbue them with a certain degree of glamour. At the same time, however, the idea of

women serving in the military proved to be incredibly controversial.

283 Hartmann, 32. 284 Leisa D. Meyer, Creating GI Jane: Sexuality and Power in the Women’s Army Corps

During World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 73. 285 Meyer, 71. 286 Hartmann, The Home Front and Beyond, 34. 287 Meyer, Creating GI Jane, 72. 288 Rupp, Mobilizing Women for War, 78.

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Initially, there was considerable public pushback to the idea of establishing a women’s

division of the Army. This negative reaction is perhaps unsurprising considering the ideological

dimension of woman’s relationship to war discussed above. The idea of women moving onto (or

even near to) the battlefield threatened to raise questions about the very nature of warfare and the

seemingly inherent connection between masculinity and national defence. As soon as plans to

form the Woman’s Army Auxiliary Corps (a precursor to the WAC) were announced, debates

arose about the “proper” way for women to serve their country. Many opponents were

concerned that the enlistment of women would quickly lead to the crumbling of the American

home. An interesting quotation from Congressman Clare Hoffman conceptualizes this fear in

terms that specifically relate to women’s duties as transmitters of cultural knowledge: “Take the

women into the armed services…who will rear and nurture the children; who will teach them

patriotism and loyalty; who will make men of them, so that when their day comes, they, too, may

march away to war?”289 While Hoffman concedes that women understand the concepts of

patriotism and loyalty well enough to teach them to their children (or rather their sons), women

can best fulfill their own patriotic duty by properly raising their children. Supporters were quick

to offer assurance that women’s roles within the military would be in line with their roles in

civilian life. Women would be placed in roles that would allow them to “assist,” not “displace,”

men, largely by having women fill the kinds of the clerical jobs that had become central to the

modern military but were typically viewed as “feminine.”290 Thus, women were being brought

in to shore up rather than disrupt traditional gender roles by freeing up more men for the “manly”

work of combat. The WAAC helped reassure the American public of the non-combatant status

289 Meyer, Creating GI Jane, 20. 290 Meyer, 21.

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of military women with their first recruitment slogan “Join the WAAC! Release a man for

combat!”291 While designating women as non-combatants was easy when they were stationed in

the US, the line between combatant and non-combatant became much thinner for women serving

in Europe or in the Pacific, who would have been far closer to the actual fighting. Part of this is

directly linked to changes in air warfare and long range artillery that deteriorated or collapsed

distinctions between the “front” and the “rear.”292 Ultimately, however, combat personnel were

officially defined not in terms of where they were stationed or whether they had to contend with

enemy fire, but by whether or not they were issued weapons, which women decidedly were

not.293 While this officially prevented women from being classified as combatants, their

presence at or near the front still held great potential for troubling normative ideas about warfare

and gender. As Meyer writes, “Thus, the paradox of women’s military service during World

War II and today is that by utilizing women and designating them as ‘noncombatants’ the Army

could preserve the roles of some men as ‘protectors/defenders’ and some women as the

‘protected/defended,’ even as women’s very presence within the military, and the nature of

‘modern war,’ threatened to undermine these absolutes.”294

Military women were thus attacked in terms that called their womanhood into question.

Negative images of women in military jobs (particularly in the WAC) tended to focus on two

specific types: first, The mannish lesbian who was drawn to the WAC out of a desire for female

company and, second, the promiscuous camp follower who was seen as little more than an

officially sanctioned prostitute for the (male) military. As Meyer points out, both of these fears

291 Meyer, 56. 292 Meyer, 87. 293 Meyer, 88. 294 Meyer, 89.

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revolve around concerns about the power of female sexuality: “During the war the breakdown of

previous systems of protection for women, as well as established modes of controlling and

regulating sexuality, coincided with an increasing public focus on and visibility of alleged female

sexual agents.”295 To assuage fears that the WAC posed a threat to proper femininity, WAC

director Oveta Culp Hobby cultivated an image of the Corps as equivalent to a sort of boarding

school or women’s college, “an elite, cloistered, enclave of young women eligible to enter male

public space because of their inherent respectability and difference from other ‘questionable’

women.”296 The ideal recruit was thus constructed as “white, middle-class, and educated.”297 As

a result of the very specific demographic it sought to court, the WAC had considerably more

rigorous screening processes the regular Army: “Local interviews of candidates were conducted

by a board of two ‘prominent’ local women and one male Army officer. This board was to

disqualify those unsuited because of ‘character’ or ‘bearing,’ and board members were asked to

consider the question ‘Would I want my daughter to come under the influence of this

woman?’”298 Indeed, WAC recruitment efforts were specifically aimed at women’s universities,

technical schools, and business colleges.299

Beyond these official attempts to ensure that only the “right” kind of women were

admitted to the WAC, peers played a key role in shaping and controlling group behaviour.

Major Margaret Craighill, who served as a medical consultant for the WAC, identified group

disapproval as one of the key elements in discouraging inappropriate sexual behaviour.300

295 Meyer, 34. 296 Meyer, 50. 297 Meyer, 52. 298 Meyer, 64. 299 Meyer, 64. 300 Margaret D. Craighill, “A Psychological Approach to Social Hygiene for Women,”

Journal of Social Hygiene 32, no. 4 (April 1946), 200.

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Craighill saw the Army as producing circumstances particularly suited to encouraging this type

of group behaviour: “Group approval is much more necessary to an individual living the

community life of the Army, than to individuals in the more isolated lives of civilians. And there

is less opportunity to hide one’s behavior from the group in the Army, because of the intimate

associations of living conditions. Therefore, one is more apt to conform to group ideals.”301

Indeed, this drive towards conformity is another way in which the Army environment appears to

mimic the school environments I explored in Chapter Two. Of course, peer pressure could also

function in ways that ran counter to Craighill’s plans. Meyer notes several occasions on which

officers investigating alleged sexual misconduct on behalf of WACs discovered that this

behaviour stemmed from their involvement with peer groups that encouraged and supported

extramarital sex.302 Interestingly, a later article by Craighill, “Psychiatric Aspects of Women

Serving in the Army,” seems to contradict this premise by arguing that women generally display

“a more marked tendency towards individuality rather than group activity” and “are much more

independent in matters of social conformity.”303 Nonetheless, Craighill argues that women can

ultimately assimilate themselves happily within the Army and that they will learn to value

“group comradeship.”304 It is also in this later article that Craighill addresses concerns about

lesbianism in the WAC. While she finds that lesbianism is not a major problem in the Corps, the

real plague is another disease often diagnosed as distinctly female – gossip: “…too frequently a

worse problem was that of false rumors and witch hunting. Any girl with marked masculine

tendencies or any two girls with close friendships were under suspicion and were practically

301 Craighill, “Social Hygiene,” 200. 302 Meyer, Creating GI Jane, 130-131. 303 Margaret D. Craighill, “Psychiatric Aspects of Women Serving in the Army,”

American Journal of Psychiatry 104, no. 4 (October 1947), 228. 304 Craighill, “Psychiatric Aspects,” 230.

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convicted by a whispering campaign.”305 Meyer indeed notes that discharges on the grounds of

lesbianism were relative rare in the WAC, but she argues that this was due to an unspoken

tolerance of relationships that adhered to the paradigm of Victorian “romantic friendships” – that

is, close relationships between middle class, feminine women that were not visibly sexual.306

While many women did seek paid work for the first time during the war, they did so

somewhat conditionally. In The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s, Susan

M. Hartmann identifies three conditions imposed on women’s entrance into the work force that

sought to limit social change: 1) The assurance that women’s entrance into the work force was

only temporary and that they would relinquish their jobs once the war was over; 2) The idea that

women would retain their “femininity” (in both appearance and behaviour) despite taking up

“masculine” jobs; and 3) The emphasis placed on the notion that women took up war jobs for

appropriately feminine reasons, that is, to bring their men home more quickly and secure a better

world for their children.307 This last point is particularly crucial as it frames women’s war work

as a natural extension of their caregiving role in the home. The labour they performed was not

for their own personal benefit (be it financial gain or personal satisfaction) but for the benefit of

others. At the same time, women’s patriotism was meant to be personal in that it was focused on

the private sphere of the home rather than the broader political realm of national defense. As

Leila J. Rupp puts it, “the appeal to patriotism usually took on a personalized cast, urging women

to work for their men rather than for their country.”308 Once women actually took up jobs,

however, they often discovered satisfactions beyond those trumpeted by government

305 Craighill, “Psychiatric Aspects,” 228. 306 Meyer, Creating GI Jane, 159. 307 Hartmann, The Home Front and Beyond, 23. 308 Rupp, Mobilizing Women for War, 156.

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propaganda. As Hartmann explains, “They enjoyed the companionship of fellow workers, the

pleasure of mastering a new skill, the opportunity to contribute to a public good, and the

gratification of proving their mettle in jobs once thought beyond the powers of women.”309 This

perspective is further endorsed by a contemporary article in which a working mother explains

how she “found that the companionship of working with others is vastly more stimulating and

rewarding than housework.”310

Friendship between women is rarely given much space (if any) in the various histories of

women and World War II that I have consulted in preparing this chapter.311 Where friendship

does make a minor but significant appearance is in the books dedicated to collecting the personal

oral or written histories of women who lived and worked through the war. Books such as Olga

Gruhzit-Hoyt’s They Also Served: American Women in World War II, Sherna Berger Gluck’s

Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Women, the War, and Social Change, Suzanne Broderick’s Real

War vs. Reel War: Veterans, Hollywood, and WWII, and Emily Yellin’s Our Mothers’ War:

American Women at Home and at the Front During World War II focus on collecting women’s

personal reminiscences of the war. While none of these authors appear to have been specifically

interested in friendships women made during the war, it is clear from reading the histories

presented in these books that the friendships many women formed were an important part of

their wartime experiences. Gruhzit-Hoyt’s book focuses on women who served in the military

and many of the women she profiles touch on the importance of their bonds with other women in

the all-female units. Susan Eaton, who served with the Army Nurse Corps, highlights “the

309 Hartmann, The Home Front and Beyond, 79-80. 310 Rhoda Pratt Hanson, “I’m Leaving Home Part Time,” Independent Woman

(December 1946), 364. 311 Indeed, one book I consulted on the military nurses has an entire chapter dedicated to

camaraderie that focuses exclusively on relationships between women and men.

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foreboding feeling we would not see each other again”312 and the “nonchalant but poignantly

strong hug to friends”313 that came at the war’s end, with Gruhzit-Hoyt noting in her author’s

note at the end of Eaton’s account that the now widowed Eaton currently spends time “trying to

keep in touch with her many friends.”314 Gertrude Pearson, who served with the WAC, similarly

highlights the bittersweet partings upon the return to the home front: “It certainly was a happy

homecoming. At the same time, I felt an emptiness knowing that I was leaving my friends and

the service.”315 Another Army Nurse, Signe Skott Cooper, emphasizes that the nurses had to

largely learn from and lean on each other:

The nurses had a very good support system, as it would be called today; we helped each

other through the rough times; we encouraged each other; we shared the good times and

provided solace in the tragic ones, as when one of the nurses who lived in my basha

received word that her sister, a chief nurse in New Guinea, had died there.316

Charity Adams, one of the first Black women to become an officer in the WAC, highlighted the

pride many women felt in their shared professional accomplishments:

Most of all I am proud to have had the opportunity to serve with such a fine group of

women soldiers and to have been their commanding officer. Almost fifty years later,

collectively and individually we have pleasant recall of the 6888th, of the common battles

we fought and special friendships, which last till now.317

The oral histories featured in Gluck’s book demonstrate similar ties of friendship between

women who worked in defense plants. For Betty Jeanne Boggs, her work at the defense plant

and the friends she made there were instrumental in drawing her out of her shell:

People were very friendly and I could get over my shyness a lot easier. We’d talk about

our families and maybe that we’d gone to a movie or what we did on the weekends. We

312 Olga Gruhzit-Hoyt, They Also Served: American Women in World War II (New York:

Carol Publishing Group, 1995), 19. 313 Gruhzit-Hoyt, 19. 314 Gruhzit-Hoyt 315 Gruhzit-Hoyt, 99. 316 Gruhzit-Hoyt, 35-6. 317 Gruhzit-Hoyt, 75.

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did an awful lot of joking back and forth. Oh, one girl was engaged and she would talk

about what she was going to do when her fiancé came home from service. It was a lot of

female talk.318

Juanita Loveless saw these wartime friendships as having a unique closeness:

I think people just clung together. They were closer. Even in aircraft, the friends you

made, even though you didn’t really know them very well, you were concerned. When

you said good-bye to them, you said, “Well, I’ll see you again soon, I hope,” and you

really meant it. Today you meet someone and you say, “I’ll see you later,” and you don’t

even remember their names five minutes later.319

Helen Studer, like the military women profiled by Gruhzit-Hoyt, spoke to the longevity of some

of these wartime friendships:

In my department there were at least four, maybe five of us that had been in the [training]

class together. There were some of them who went in training together that worked

together, and we stayed together all while I was out there. You pick up good friends. I

kept in contact, oh, I don’t know how long.320

An interesting story from Beatrice Morales Clifton specifically speaks to the necessity for

women to band together in the face of male opposition to their work:

He [a leadman who told her she was no good at her job] couldn’t have hurt me more if he

would have slapped me. When he said that, I dropped the gun and I went running

downstairs to the restroom, with tears coming down. This girl from Texas saw me and

she followed me. She was real good. She was one of these “toughies”; dressed up and

walked like she was kind of tough. She asked me what was wrong. I told her what I had

done and I was crying. She says, “Don’t worry.” She started cussing him. We came

back up and she told them all off.321

The experiences of these women and others like them is nicely summarized in the final

chapter of Suzanne Broderick’s book. Real War vs. Reel War: Veterans, Hollywood, and WWII

asks veterans of World War II to reflect on the similarities between their lived experiences and a

318 Sherna Berger Gluck, Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Women, the War, and Social

Change (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1987), 112. 319 Gluck, 140. 320 Gluck, 188. 321 Gluck, 209.

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selection of films about the war (ranging in release date from 1942-2002). In the final chapter,

she asks Marge Mehlberg and Lucille Broderick, two women who worked in defense plants, to

watch and respond to several films about women’s lives on the home front. On their response to

Swing Shift (Jonathan Demme, 1984), Suzanne Broderick writes,

Mehlberg and [Lucille] Broderick agreed that they both had formed great and lasting

friendships with the women they worked with, and that the film was very evocative of the

period. The women left behind on the home front during the war learned to depend on

each other – for support, for friendship, for counsel. Those who went to work in war

industries built ships and planes and trucks and Jeeps, but they also built their own self-

confidence, effective working relationships, and trust in each other.322

It is clear from the personal reminiscences collected here that the friendships women developed

under the unique circumstances of the war were both important and especially close. Although

often sidelined in histories of World War II, these friendships do leave clear traces on the films

about women in wartime.

The general absence of men meant that it became increasingly common and acceptable

for women to spend time with other women. At the same time, various articles in popular

publications of the early 1940s attest to the fact that women spending time with other women

could be viewed as unusual or undesirable and thus in need of proper framing and sanctioning.

In a 1942 Life Magazine article titled “Lonely Wife,” Ethel Gorham offers advice for the lonely

wife whose husband is at war, including the radical suggestion to cultivate friendships with other

women: “Company of other women, of little interest when husbands are around, is now

appreciated by Joan [the prototypical housewife featured in the article].”323 She continues,

“Intelligent women add as much vigor to an evening as intelligent men….You can talk freely,

322 Suzanne Broderick, Real War vs. Reel War: Veterans, Hollywood, and WWII

(Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 108. 323 Ethel Gorham, “Lonely Wife,” Life, December 21, 1942, 77.

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honestly with them.”324 Gorham largely suggests that women entertain at home, but a 1943

article in Good Housekeeping acknowledges that women may sometimes wish to seek

entertainment outside their homes and offers advice on “How to Behave in Public Without an

Escort.” While author Florence Howitt believes that groups of women out for a good time “often

present a depressing picture”, she acknowledges that, at least for the duration, “women are more

or less expected to depend on one another for company.”325 Howitt’s overall message is for

women to behave as quietly and inconspicuously as possible, avoiding getting drunk, dancing,

overdressing, or looking at strange men. Howitt’s article is certainly no feminist classic, but it

does effectively highlight the dramatic shift and potential threat of women appearing together in

public. By the end of the article, Howitt comes around to the girls’ night as a form of gender

equality: “After all, men enjoy a special sort of camaraderie with one another that effectively

excludes women – and, in fact, makes a point of doing so. Why, then, shouldn’t women enjoy

the same social independence? There is no reason in the world why you shouldn’t publicly enjoy

the company of your women friends without feeling that you are taking second best.”326

The films

The films I examine in this chapter focus on women in times of war, particularly World

War II (although there is one exception that I discuss below). In my analysis below, I divide

these war-centric films into two categories: first, combat films that focus on women serving in

the Army Nurse Corps and working at the front lines during World War II and, second, training

324 Gorham, 77. 325 Florence Howitt, “How to Behave in Public Without an Escort,” Good Housekeeping,

September 1943, 40. 326 Howitt, 161.

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camp films that focus on women training to be members of the women’s divisions of the US

military. For the women in this chapter, the bonds of friendship are formed by a combination of

their shared labour (an element they share with the friendships in Chapter Two) and their shared

commitment to the overarching ideology of American democracy. In both categories of films,

the war is the clear and explicit reason for the bonds that develop between the women. At the

beginning of the training camp films, the women are clearly strangers to each other. In the

combat films, the emphasis on the women’s diverse backgrounds (both socio-economically and

geographically) demonstrates that they are unlikely to have known each other in civilian life. To

a certain extent, friendship is permitted here as a substitute for patriotism. The idealized version

of America for which the women are fighting is often presented in these films in collective

terms: American democracy means that everyone is different but everyone is equal and thus

everyone is in the fight together. The devotion to friends is ultimately part of a larger devotion

to the national cause of winning the war – another version of the kind of personalization of

patriotism described by Rupp above. At the same time, as Allen’s analysis makes clear, this kind

of interweaving of the personal and the patriotic was already very much a part of “normal” (that

is, male) military modes of bonding. While most of these films contain moments of overt

propagandizing where the action will be temporarily suspended for a character to deliver a

rousing speech, the women’s bonds are largely forged through living, working, and facing the

dangers of war together. Thus, the films present the women’s relationships as situational (that is,

they wouldn’t have known each other if it weren’t for the war) and yet their friendships are

expressed in terms that are still akin to the friendships we see in other films.

At the same time, placing female characters in the new context of the military opens up

new possibilities for the expression of friendship between the characters. Lucy Fischer argues

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that while female friendships are defined by “being” together, male friendships are defined by

“doing” together.327 The goal-oriented nature of the military film provides a clear example of the

kind of “doing” that Fischer sees as the root of male camaraderie. Thus, the female iterations of

the genre share an increased emphasis on “doing” in the form of shared work and shared

objectives/goals as a way to cultivate and strengthen bonds within the group. At the same time,

many of these films also emphasize “being” together, showcasing moments of downtime

between the women. In these sequences, the women often reminisce about life at home, eat, and

rest, colouring traditional domestic activities with the unique circumstances of the war. Indeed,

the wartime films examined in this chapter highlight the ways in which female friendship is

ultimately formed out of both “being” together and “doing” together. I would argue that part of

the reason female friendship in classical Hollywood film has been overlooked is this very

reliance on the notion of friendship as a state of “being”, one of stable support existing at the

margins of or in a separate space from the more dramatic action of the plot proper. While my

earlier chapters have ultimately demonstrated that friendship is always more complex than this

reduction would indicate, I argue that the combat films throw into particularly sharp relief the

role that “doing” together or taking part in shared action plays in friendship formation. The

wartime setting of these films places more emphasis on the importance of action, whether these

actions be individual heroics for the benefit of the group or formerly antagonistic group members

collaborating to fix a key piece of equipment. These moments of action form a reciprocal

relationship with the moments of downtime in which each mode of friendship (the “being” and

the “doing”) reinforces the other.

327 Fischer, Shot/Countershot, 221.

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The films I examine in this chapter were frequently made with the explicit goal of

providing support for the war effort and with the direct cooperation of the military. All of the

films were produced and released in 1943 or later, after the United States had entered the war

and it had become clear that the support of the full citizenry would be necessary. Whether films

were meant to simply boost morale on the home front or to aid in recruitment, the Office of War

Information and its Bureau of Motion Pictures was directly involved in overseeing Hollywood

production during the war years. The OWI did oversee a number of informational films, but the

Office was particularly interested in inserting wartime propaganda into narrative films based on

the belief that this would be more effective in communicating messages to the average

American. As OWI director Elmer Davis put it, “The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea

into most people’s minds is to let it go in through the medium of an entertainment picture when

they do not realize that they are being propagandized.”328 The OWI sought to infuse the films

with a blend of entertainment, authenticity, and positive messaging. Military personnel were

frequently employed as technical advisors in order to ensure a level of authenticity. At the same

time, however, there was often a push for positive messaging about the war effort, something

that was particularly crucial in the early days of the war when American forces suffered several

demoralizing losses in the Pacific. The OWI asked filmmakers to consider seven questions in

creating their films, a list that began with the pivotal question, “Will this picture help win the

war?”329 Promotion surrounding the films would often include direct “tie-ups” with the war

effort, including sales of war bonds, special screenings for military personnel, and recruitment

328 Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics,

Profits and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (Berkeley: University of California Press,

1990), 64. Unfortunately for Davis, critics frequently complained of the overt propaganda in the

OWI-supervised films. 329 Koppes and Black, 66.

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booths in theatre lobbies. These films should thus be understood as generally presenting an

image of the military that conformed to the image the military wished to project. As I discuss

below, audiences were expected to come away from the films with an understanding of the

difficult fight being waged by the Allied forces, but also an optimistic perspective on the outlook

of the war.

“If one of us dies, we all die”: Women at the frontlines

In her book on the World War II combat film, Jeanine Basinger highlights the value these

films place on teamwork and camaraderie. Basinger makes clear that the group is meant to

represent the “melting pot” nature of the American nation, a point that is typically made by

having soldiers represent different states and different ethnic groups. Over the course of the

film, the team will learn to overcome their differences and function as a group. Indeed, Basinger

sees the emphasis placed on the group as the key development that distinguishes the World War

II combat film from earlier combat films:

It is this shifting from a single individual, or a pair of competitive individuals, over to a

unified group as a hero (although not without its leading man, the hero of the heroes) that

marks the war years and the new genre. The obvious interpretation is that the war brings

a need for us to work together as a group, to set aside individual needs, and to bring our

melting pot tradition together to function as a true democracy since, after all, that is what

we are fighting for: the Democratic way of life.330

In a chapter dedicated to variations on the genre, Basinger spends some time taking up female

variations on the World War II combat film.331 She notes that the woman’s film and the combat

330 Jeanine Basinger, The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1986), 37. 331 Basinger also briefly touches upon the training camp films I discuss in this chapter,

but she makes clear in the book’s introduction that she does note considering training camp films

to be part of the combat film genre.

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film initially appear to be thoroughly incompatible. One difficulty in reconciling the two genres

is their fundamentally different approach to group dynamics. While the group is central to the

combat film, the woman’s film is more “individualistic.”332 As Basinger writes, “The notion of a

group of women working together is a film rarity. To work as a group, women must set aside

petty rivalries, and unfortunately many films present women as petty rivals. Sisterhood is not

common.”333 While my work thus far has demonstrated that sisterhood is perhaps not as

uncommon as Basinger suggests, the ideas she presents here are certainly a common perspective

on the woman’s film.

In her analysis of So Proudly We Hail and Cry Havoc, Basinger argues that the woman’s

combat film largely borrows the group structure from the male combat film in which the group is

made up of different “types.” What has changed, however, is the primary concerns of the group:

Although these women are in the midst of the war, the primary issues the film brings into

focus are those connected with the world of women: love vs. duty and motherhood, for

example. Instead of the issues of the war itself, or why we fight, we have romantic

entanglement, fear of rape, and issues that might be said from the woman’s frame of

reference. When the question of why we fight does appear, it also emerges from the

woman’s point of view. We fight because we are mothers, to keep our sons safe.334

Basinger’s point here is that these are the traditional concerns of the woman’s film and, indeed, I

would argue that Basinger largely discusses these concerns in ways that point back towards the

individualistic focus of the woman’s film and away from the shared objective of the combat film.

Her assertation that “we fight because we are mothers” is actually a reflection of the perspective

of only one character in So Proudly We Hail (the aptly named Ma), who is the only woman in

332 Basinger, Combat Film, 224. 333 Basinger, Combat Film, 224. 334 Basinger, Combat Film, 232.

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either of the films who is a mother.335 Indeed, Basinger’s evaluation of the question of why we

fight strikes me as somewhat odd in relation to these particular films. While home front films

did typically frame the women’s sacrifices as being made for the men in their lives (including

husbands and brothers as well as sons), the combat film necessarily makes the danger of war

more real. When stationed at or near the front, the women share in the dangers of combat.

Although these women are nurses and not soldiers, they are frequently under attack from the

enemy. Rather than suggesting therefore that the women are engaged in a fight that is an adjunct

to or in support of the men’s fight, these films reinforce the impression that everyone is in this

fight together. As Sue puts it in Cry Havoc, “If one of us dies, we all die.”

In both of the films I examine below, the central characters are not WACs or members of

any other women’s branch of the military. Instead, they are nurses, serving at field hospitals

located in the Pacific. Considering the negative publicity revolving around women in the

military (and particularly the WAC), I am certainly curious about the choice to focus these films

on nurses. Nursing is typically perceived as a traditionally female profession, one that involves a

kind of caring that is analogous to motherhood. Nurses are also primarily associated with the

maintenance of life rather than the taking of life that is enacted on the battlefield. Nurses are

thus definitively not combatants, rendering them potentially less troubling figures than other

kinds of military women. At the same time, they are clearly positioned (quite literally) such that

they are facing many of the same dangers as the male soldiers they are meant to be treating.

Indeed, the women are frequently shown carrying out their nursing duties as bombs rain down on

335 Indeed, women with children under the age of fourteen could not enlist in the WAC

and the majority of the women in these films are too young to realistic have children over the age

of fourteen. Elaine Tyler May, “Rosie the Riveter Gets Married,” in The War in American

Culture: Society and Consciousness During World War II, ed. Lewis A. Erenberg and Susan E.

Hirsch (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 135.

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the field hospitals. On occasion, the nurses are even called upon to actively step into the role of

protector, especially in relation to their fellow nurses, but, in a few instances, also for the male

soldiers under their care. If the intention behind the choice to focus on nurses was to assuage

fears about women in combat, these films are not much of a success. Indeed, these films clearly

present the potential dangers of the front and can perhaps even be read as presenting a case for

arming women stationed overseas.

So Proudly We Hail (Mark Sandrich, 1943) focuses on a group of nurses in the early days

of the war. While en route to Hawaii, the group learns of the attack on Pearl Harbor and are

quickly deployed first to Bataan and then Corregidor. Davy (Claudette Colbert) and Joan

(Paulette Goddard) are the film’s two central protagonists with Olivia (Veronica Lake) playing a

particularly crucial supporting role. Script reviewers for the OWI were ambivalent about the

initial draft, suggesting that it had great propagandistic potential, but needed to refrain from

depicting too much “gore and hopelessness” in order to convey the right upbeat message.336 In a

quest for realism, Paramount employed Eunice Hatchitt, a nurse who had actually served on (and

escaped from) Corregidor, as a technical consultant.337 Hatchitt was initially happy with the

script, applauding the verisimilitude of the characters, costumes, and sets.338 Colbert and

Goddard even invited Hatchitt to their homes to probe her for more information about what the

nurses were “really like.”339 Ultimately, however, Hatchitt became dissatisfied with the film,

feeling that it took too many liberties and contained too many inaccuracies, and complained to

336 Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War, 99. 337 Elizabeth M. Norman, We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses

Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese (New York: Random House, 1999), 125. 338 Norman, 126. 339 Norman, 128.

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her superior, Florence Blanchfield. Blanchfield, who was assistant superintendent of the Army

Nurse Corps, urged Hatchitt to look past the inaccuracies, saying that the studio should be

allowed some leeway, especially if the film helped with recruitment and moral.340 For her part,

Hatchitt argued that the film’s “cardboard characters” would discourage new recruits, rather than

attracting them.341 Indeed, the nurses from Hatchitt’s unit ultimately hated the finished film,

claiming that it trivialized their experiences, and placed the blame for the distortions squarely on

Hatchitt.342 Their views, however, were not shared by either the OWI or American moviegoers.

At its release, So Proudly We Hail was ultimately well received by both audience and critics and

one of the biggest box office hits of 1943.343 Nelson Poynter, head of the BMP’s Hollywood

branch, praised the film, writing, “So Proudly We Hail demonstrates what film can do toward

interpreting the war without sacrifice of dramatic and entertainment values, when it is in the

hands of gifted and conscientious men.”344 Peg Fenwick, a BMP reviewer, specifically praised

the film’s depiction of the female contribution to the war effort.345 Despite Hatchitt’s

reservations, contemporary views suggest that the film was largely seen as an accurate depiction

of the war. For example, a very positive review in Harrison’s Reports declares, “Unlike a good

many war dramas, this one has an authentic and realistic flavor; it is a fitting tribute to a valiant

group of women.”346 Variety, in another positive review, even goes so far as to pronounce the

film too realistic in its depiction of wartime atrocities.347 A review in Motion Picture Reviews

340 Norman, 128. 341 Norman, 128. 342 Norman, 129. 343 Norman, 127. 344 Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War, 103-104. 345 Koppes and Black, 104. 346 P.S. Harrison, ed., “So Proudly We Hail with Claudette Colbert, Veronica Lake and

Paulette Goddard,” Harrison’s Reports, June 26, 1943, 103. 347 “So Proudly We Hail,” Variety, June 23, 1943, 24.

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tellingly speaks to the film’s effectiveness: “One never has the feeling that this is

propaganda…we simply hear the reiteration of our own faith in American aims.”348

So Proudly We Hail (and other films about the war) appear to have been intended to

encourage not simply feelings of heightened patriotism, but also direct action on the part of the

viewers. In addition to the usual bond drives that accompanied many films screened during

wartime, So Proudly appears to have been the subject of a particularly intense recruitment drive.

An item in The Exhibitor reports, “All of the 370 Red Cross chapters in the United States have

been urged by Miss Mary Beard, director of nursing for the American Red Cross, to extend full

cooperation to theatres showing So Proudly We Hail.”349 Over the course of the film’s run, items

in the trade press mention that recruitment drives were indeed held by exhibitors in many states,

including Indiana,350 Massachusetts,351 and Pennsylvania352 to name just a few locations. Letters

published in fan magazines also attest to the direct action So Proudly We Hail was meant to

provoke. Mrs. Thomas H. Peay of Mobile, Alabama, in a letter published in Screenland, reveals

that she initially felt inconvenienced by the war until a screening of So Proudly awakened her to

the plight of Americans serving in the war, writing, “From now on I’m giving up this foolishness

and waste of money and buying more War Bonds and Stamps with the money thus saved so this

horrible war will soon be over and our dear ones can come home to us.”353 In a 1944 issue of

Photoplay, a United States Cadet nurse writes into Claudette Colbert’s advice column expressing

her admiration for So Proudly and asking Colbert to give a plug for Nursing Corps (which

348 The Women’s University Club, “So Proudly We Hail,” Motion Picture Reviews, July-

August 1943, 8. 349 “Proudly Aids Recruiting,” The Exhibitor, September 1, 1943, 30. 350 “Regional News: Indianapolis,” Showman’s Trade Review September 18, 1943, 30. 351 “Scrap Collected at Lowell,” Motion Picture Herald, October 23, 1943, 59. 352 “Harvey Invites Nurses,” Motion Picture Herald, November 6, 1943, 79 353 Mrs. Thomas H. Peay, “First Prize Letter,” Screenland, January 1944, 10.

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Colbert obligingly does while also name-dropping Hatchitt, “a woman whose friendship I value

highly.”).354 In a later issue of Photoplay, another Army Nurse writes in to attest that her sister

was convinced to join the Nurse Cadets after a screening of So Proudly We Hail, adding that the

film also “made the rest of the Army nurses hold their heads high.”355 Whatever the truth of

these letters, it seems clear that they were intended to spur other women into taking similar

action, whether through buying bonds or joining up with the Nurse Corps.

The film was also specifically applauded for its appeal to female audiences. Separate

articles in Motion Picture Daily and Motion Picture Herald mention that war movies are

becoming unpopular at the box office, but exhibitors are having success with So Proudly by

pushing the “women’s angle.”356 Despite the presumed desire to promote a united front in the

service of the war effort, one gossip column item reports on friction between the three leads,

claiming their relationship was “not so congenial as one might hope” and that “a controversy has

already begun over who wears a flimsy black nightgown in one scene.”357 (This frankly seems

unlikely since the nightgown is an important prop for Goddard’s character and it would make no

sense for any of the other women to wear it, which suggests that gossip about battling actresses

was so popular it would be invented even where it did not belong.)

So Proudly We Hail largely alternates between romance scenes and war scenes. Davy

and Joan both develop relationships with military men over the course of the film. Interestingly,

354 “What Should I Do?” Photoplay, May 1944, 60-61. The article misspells Hatchitt’s

name as “Hatchett.” 355 An Army Nurse, “Honorable Mention,” Photoplay, July 1944, 98. 356 Fred Stengel, “FP-C Close for Paramount Program,” Motion Picture Daily, September

13, 1943, 8; “The Selling Approach on New Product: So Proudly We Hail,” Motion Picture

Herald, July 17, 1943, 77. 357 Cal York, “Cal York’s Inside Stuff: Last-Minute Flashes,” Photoplay, March 1943,

19. This story appears directly below an item about Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins fighting on

the set of Old Acquaintance.

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while the men feature prominently in the romance scenes, they tend to be sidelined in the war

scenes. Instead, the war scenes focus on the relationships between the female characters,

highlighting their conflicts and their camaraderie, their shared labour and their shared heroism.

Indeed, as I will discuss below, the war sequences often actively undermine the expected

presentation of “men as protectors” and “women as protected.” While men are almost constantly

surrounding them (including uninjured soldiers who are meant to act as their protectors), the

women almost always need to rely on themselves or each other to survive. Indeed, the film

largely promotes a form of camaraderie similar to the idealized “male bonding” venerated by

military propaganda. The women largely put aside their own self-interest for the good of the

collective. As in Allen’s evaluation of male bonding, this collective good is understood less in

terms of a grand, abstract patriotism than a more grounded commitment to one’s fellow soldiers.

The comfortable camaraderie within the group is highlighted in brief but structurally

significant quiet moments throughout the film. These montage sequences highlight the group

nature of the narrative and reinforce the easy camaraderie between the women. While the story

largely focuses on two individual women (Davy and Joan plus a subplot with Olivia that

occupies the first half of the film), these montages emphasize that the women are all in the same

situation together and that these individual stories can be read as just a representative example of

what the whole group is going through. The moments highlighted in the montage sequences can

be further said to focus on moments of “being” rather than “doing.” In contrast to the action-

oriented war sequences, these montage sequences typically show the moments in between the

action in which the women eat, dress, rest, listen to the radio, and so on, always together. The

quieter moments shown in these montages are also used to set the tone for upcoming scenes,

highlighting the connections between the bonds developed in moments of “being” that will later

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manifest themselves in moments of “doing.” For instance, shortly after they arrive on Bataan,

the women are shown exchanging their nurse’s whites for men’s coveralls, a more practical

choice for the rugged conditions they will have to endure from this point on (fig. 38). The end of

this montage also shows Joan in her black silk nightgown greeting an exhausted Olivia,

foreshadowing the conclusion of their time at the camp (discussed in more detail below).

Figure 38: In a montage sequence, the nurses are shown trying on their new uniforms.

The film similarly highlights quiet moments of caring and compassion between the

nurses. They frequently express concern for each other, encouraging each other to rest and take

care of themselves. These moments are also an opportunity to highlight and integrate some of

the secondary characters. In one scene, for example, a nurse named Ethel (Kitty Kelly) nearly

collapses with exhaustion and the others quickly gather around to help her (fig. 39). In another

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scene, two secondary nurses, Sadie (Mary Treen) and Irma (Dorothy Adams), encourage each

other to take an unpleasant dose of quinine to prevent malaria. This brief scene features none of

the central characters, but clearly highlights both the camaraderie among all the nurses and the

hazards of the jungle environment.

Figure 39: The women gather around to help a fellow nurse who has collapsed from exhaustion.

So Proudly We Hail is unique among the films examined in this chapter in that it focuses

on a group whose members were already working together prior to the start of the film, thus

allowing for plentiful examples of the kind of camaraderie I discuss above. Still, the film finds

the opportunity to explore the narrative of integration that is so central to the combat film. One

of the key character types Basinger identifies in her analysis of the combat film is “the hero’s

adversary,” a character who is part of the group but also an outsider. As the film progresses, this

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character will eventually have a change of heart, become integrated into the group, and

frequently die making a noble sacrifice to aid the group.358 In So Proudly We Hail, this combat

film mainstay is given a specifically feminine spin with both Olivia’s resistance and eventual

integration being filtered through elements of women’s friendships that we have seen highlighted

in other films. Oliva is a nurse who joins the group after being saved from a ship wreck.

Although the women try to welcome her into the group, Olivia resists their attempts at

friendship. She is unwilling to participate in the clothes-sharing that is an accepted part of the

group dynamic, starting a physical fight with Joan when she attempts to borrow a locket for the

Christmas dance on their transport ship. She also resists participating in the intimate, self-

disclosing discussions that are typically presented as a staple of female friendships. A brief

exchange between Davy and Joan highlights how unusual this resistance appears to the other

women:

Davy: Has she ever opened up? Ever give [sic] you a hint of what’s wrong?

Joan: There’s nothing wrong. She’s just naturally a frozen face ghoul.

Here, Olivia’s emotional detachment from the group has rendered her less than human – she is

not a woman, just a “ghoul.” In ultimately breaking down Olivia’s resistance, Davy first tries

appealing to her on a woman-to-woman basis:

Davy: What’s the matter, Olivia? Something’s hurt you. Why don’t you talk about it?

Get it off your chest. You can forget I’m your superior officer.

Olivia: It’s none of your business so don’t forget you are my superior officer.

Davy: Maybe if I knew what was eating you, I could help.

Olivia: Nobody can. I don’t want anybody to try. I can do it myself.

When this fails, Davy tries an appeal based on Olivia’s duty to the military, telling her, “It

concerns me that the morale of this group remains high. Until you joined up, it was.” Olivia

358 Basinger, Combat Film, 54.

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finally breaks down and reveals that her behaviour is a result of witnessing her fiancé die during

the attack on Pearl Harbor and her subsequent decision to avenge his death by personally killing

as many Japanese soldiers as she can. Thus, as a direct result of losing her man, Olivia has been

driven towards troubling behaviour that contradicts both her nature as a woman and her vocation

as a nurse. Rather than giving or preserving life, Olivia has become fixated on taking life. As

the film progresses, Olivia develops a friendship with the women in her unit and this friendship

in turn allows her to reconnect with her identity as a woman and a nurse. Olivia’s integration

into the group begins immediately after her confession. As she finishes speaking, she breaks

down in tears. Davy, who has been sitting on a bed opposite Olivia, immediately moves to

comfort her with a hug, a frequent gesture of female friendship in the films I have examined thus

far (fig. 40). The hug also marks a change in the scene’s framing/blocking, marking the first

time in the scene that the women share both the same frame and the same plane. The scene

begins with Olivia lying down and Davy sitting beside her, transitions to Olivia lying and Davy

standing, then to Olivia standing and Davy sitting. When Olivia bursts into tears, she sits down

again and Davy immediately moves to sit beside her and pulls her into a hug. Olivia initially

resists the hug, saying, “Let me go. Let me go.” She quickly relents, however, putting her arms

around Davy’s waist as Davy guides her head down to rest on her shoulder.

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Figure 40: Davy comforts a tearful Olivia with a hug.

After the women arrive on Bataan, Olivia is assigned to the ward containing the Japanese

POWs. When Davy’s learns of Olivia’s assignment, she rushes to the ward, fearing that Olivia

will attempt to carry out her plan. What she finds, however, is a tearful Olivia who tells her that

she could not kill any of the men because she “didn’t have the guts to.” The shot of Davy

comforting the tearful Olivia is reminiscent of the earlier moment on the ship (fig. 41). Olivia’s

inability to carry out her plan is thus linked to this earlier moment of connection: thanks to the

support of her companions, Olivia is reconnecting with her humanity and her vocation as a nurse.

After this point, Olivia appears to become an accepted member of the unit, developing a genuine

friendship with Davy who even starts referring to her as “Livvy.”

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Figure 41: Davy comforts Olivia in a shot reminiscent of their hug on the ship.

Olivia’s integration into the group leads into the film’s most iconic war sequence, which

happens completely in the absence of men and indeed is brought about by the death of the

soldiers who are meant to be protecting the women. Earlier in the film, the women are forced to

evacuate their first hospital station on Bataan. (Indeed, evacuating seems to be their principle

action in the film.) At the last minute, Joan rushes back to her tent for a black lace nightgown

that she has forgotten. Unfortunately, the delay allows the Japanese to infiltrate the camp and

kill the remaining soldiers and the women are forced to take shelter in a nearby building. Joan’s

nightgown has been an important symbol for the character throughout the first half of the film.

The nightgown presents a clear link to life back in America and the individualism with which

this life is associated. Joan’s decision to cling to this symbol, her choice to put her individual

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desires above the needs of the group, ultimately puts the whole unit in danger. The women

huddle together in the building, largely photographed in dimly-lit group shots that translate the

nurses of earlier scenes into an undifferentiated mass of feminine fear, hoping for someone to

come rescue them. One nurse advises that should rescue not arrive, “we better all kill

ourselves,” adding, “I was in Nanking. I saw what happened to the women there.” The threat of

sexual violence frames this scene in specifically female terms. Additionally, the women’s

government-mandated status as non-combatants means that they lack weapons with which to

defend themselves, leading them to scavenge grenades from a nearby dead soldier. Ultimately

Davy and Olivia take action to save the group from their predicament. While these moments

certainly involve individual heroism, the dialogue emphasizes that this heroism is for the benefit

of the group. As Oliva steps from the building, preparing to sacrifice herself to save the group,

Davy pleads with her to stay. Olivia responds, “It’s our only chance. We can’t get through. It’s

one of us or all of us.” This scene thus serves as the culmination of Olivia’s lesson in the

importance of group camaraderie, the moment in which the friendship built in living and

working together translates into a decisive act to save her friends. Olivia manages to accomplish

her goal from the beginning of the film (killing Japanese soldiers), but she learns to place this

goal within the proper context. Rather than killing injured POWs out of a desire for personal

vengeance, she kills armed soldiers to ensure the safety of the group. Olivia’s heroic sacrifice

demonstrates that she has correctly integrated herself into the unit and learned to put the group’s

needs before her own.

The sidelining of the men is perhaps most vividly illustrated during the escape from

Bataan. During the escape, both of the male leads lose consciousness and need to be rescued by

the women. John (Davy’s boyfriend) loses consciousness during an operation for injuries

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sustained in an earlier battle and must be carried into a boat by Davy and Chee (the only man

who receives any significant screen time in this evacuation sequence). Kansas (Joan’s

boyfriend) initially refuses to leave with Joan so she knocks him unconscious with a rock and

carries him into a boat herself. The sequence thus serves as a clever inversion of the

protector/protected paradigm – both men need to be saved by the women.

Cry Havoc (Richard Thorpe, 1943) highlights the dynamic of the group even more

forcefully than So Proudly We Hail. This film focuses on a group of volunteer nurses on Bataan.

Smith (Margaret Sullavan), a professional Army nurse, leads the group despite suffering from a

secret case of malaria. While Smith is clearly the protagonist, the volunteer recruits are the ones

who undergo the greatest growth and development over the course of the narrative, learning vital

lessons about camaraderie and group solidarity. None of these recruits have backgrounds in

medicine or the military. Ultimately, however, the lessons the women will learn have less to do

with medical skills or military discipline, but rather the importance of thinking and acting as a

unit. The film is notable for featuring only women in the credited cast although some men do

appear in bit parts. Cry Havoc received a relatively muted response, partly because it had the

misfortune of being released only a few months after the similarly themed but more lavishly

produced So Proudly We Hail. Indeed, many of the reviews compare Cry Havoc unfavourably

to the earlier film. Cry Havoc also does not appear to have participated in the same kind of

promotional tie-ups with the ANC. Again, this is likely due at least partly to the fact that the

film was not an “A” production, lacking the stars, the action, and the production values of So

Proudly We Hail. Cry Havoc was based on a play, which likely accounts for its smaller scale.

While it is certainly lighter on action than a typical combat film, Cry Havoc presents a more

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intimate look at life on the frontlines. The film’s focus is placed squarely on quiet moments of

bonding between the characters as the group transitions from a disparate collection of individuals

to a united band of soldiers.

A “roll call” scene early in the film highlights the disparity between their backgrounds.

While tough-talking Pat (Ann Sothern) has held jobs ranging from waitress to garment worker,

ditzy Southern belle Nydia (Diana Lewis) comes from a background where “women aren’t

allowed to do a blessed thing.” Sensitive college students Sue (Dorothy Morris) and Andra

(Heather Angel) are contrasted with burlesque dancer Grace (Joan Blondell) and machine

operator Stephena a.k.a Steve (Gloria Grafton). The group even contains some ethnic diversity

in the form of Luisita (Filipina actress and dancer Fely Franquelli).359 Cry Havoc shifts the

typical focus of the combat film by placing its emphasis on the moments of downtime rather than

the moments of action. Part of this is presumably due to the film’s roots as a stage play, which

would have necessarily precluded the showing of much combat action. The focus on talk over

action means that the women’s bonds are formed less by their shared work than by their shared

experience of the home they left behind and their desire to protect this home from destruction. In

this way, the film seems most connected to the woman’s film’s privileging of the personal over

the political. Interestingly, rather than speaking of their families or other people they miss back

home, their conversations tend to be about the small cultural touchstones of American life like

Sunday night dinners and childhood pets.

Grace, the burlesque dancer, plays a key role in trying to keep the women’s spirits up

throughout the film, particularly through humourous discussions of life back in the United States.

359 Unlike the other women, Luisita is not American. She is, however, successfully

integrated into the group as a representative of America’s allies, which was fairly common in the

combat film.

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These moments are typically juxtaposed with moments that highlight the suffering and

deprivation of the nurses. In one sequence, Sue has been rescued from a shelter where she spent

four days trapped with a half dozen dead bodies. The women are all shaken by Sue’s experience,

and Grace attempts to lighten the mood by demonstrating the routine she used to perform in the

burlesque show. In another sequence, the women are becoming deeply concerned about the

delayed arrival of a shipment of much needed food. Here again, Grace lightens the mood by

reminiscing about the repetitive meal her family ate on Sunday nights, prompting the other

women to chime in with their own memories of Sunday night dinners back home. Later, Nydia

will provide a similar boost to morale by revealing that she has been carrying a bottle of brandy

with her and offering to share it with the other women. All of these moments are fleeting but it

is made clear that they serve an important role in boosting morale and helping the women to

bond with each other by drawing on their shared experiences from “back home.”

The world the women have left behind is further summoned in scenes highlighting the

question of why we fight. The film’s big “why we fight” speech comes relatively early in the

film, delivered by young, idealistic Sue. Sue argues that the war is fundamentally simple

because of the shared goals of those who are fighting:

Pat: Did you say simple?

Sue: Yes. Oh, it’s big and it’s terrible and it’s frightening, but…. In other wars, lots of

times, you didn’t always know exactly why you were fighting. Not clearly. But that’s

not so of this war. This war, we’re all fighting for the same thing. We’re all fighting for

one same thing. And we all know what it is.

Pat: And that one thing?

Sue: Our lives.

[A pause as Sue’s words sink in.]

Pat: I think you got something there, kid.

Sue: Oh, there’s no doubt about it. Well because…if we should lose this war, we’d all be

dead. You…you, me, millions and millions of us. And those of us who were down

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under the ground’d be the luckiest. Because those of us who weren’t would be slaves.

Actually slaves.360 That’s why it’s such a simple war. If one of us dies, we all die.

The question of why we fight is not framed here as either a political commitment to an abstract

and idealized notion of democracy or a personal desire to protect one’s family and home.

Instead, Sue’s speech strips the war down to its bare essentials, a fundamental fight for survival

without the sentimental or romanticized tone often ascribed to the woman’s film. The need for

group solidarity, highlighted by Sue’s repeated use of “we” and “us”, feels similarly divorced

from national or familial groupings, instead positing a solidarity at a very basic human level. At

this point in the narrative, the women are still virtual strangers, having just arrived at the camp

and already involved in petty squabbles. While Sue’s words only briefly chastise them here,

they will ultimately come to resonate with the group. This happens quite literally after Sue

returns from her traumatic experience with the dead soldiers and Helen repeats Sue’s parting

words: “If one of us dies, we all die.” Grace also invokes a variation on Sue’s words when

Smith gives the women the option to either stay on Bataan or escape to Corregidor when the

island is on the verge of being overrun by the Japanese: “We may all get killed.” This latter

scene marks a key turning point for the women. Because they are volunteers, they are not

subject to the same rules as the nurses who can be either ordered to stay (as Smith is in this film)

or ordered to evacuate (as the group of nurses are in So Proudly We Hail). The emphasis on

choice thus renders the women’s ultimate decision to remain on Bataan particularly poignant.

Connie (Ella Raines) highlights the rationale that this sacrifice is necessary for the greater good

360 This warning of enslavement under fascism is reminiscent of the “slave world” from

Frank Capra’s Prelude to War (1942), perhaps demonstrating a consistent OWI messaging

across the two films.

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of the Army: “We’re talking like we’re doing all the fighting. Where the Army is, is where they

need us.”

Like some of the other films I’ve examined, the cinematography of Cry Havoc places

considerable emphasis on group shots and reaction shots. Particularly notable, however, is the

use of these group shots as reaction shots. Other films I’ve discussed tend to favour the close-up

or medium close-up of one or two characters reacting, often in order to highlight the

individualized reactions of the characters.361 Although the characters may be having similar

reactions (as in the climax of Stage Door, for example), they are still stressed as individuals. Cry

Havoc, however, tends to favour shots showing the entire group, which highlights the similarities

in their reactions. The knitting of the women into a group begins early in the film. After they

change into their uniforms (already a marker of their status as a unified group), Marsh (Fay

Bainter) briefs them on the dangerous and unpleasant nature of their work. As she speaks, the

camera pans across the women’s faces, uniting them visually. From this point on, the film

favours the use of group reaction shots although the nature of these shots does subtly shift over

time. Early in the film, group shots typically feature blocking that allows for considerable

distance between the women (considering the limited space) with the women arranged across

both the horizontal and the vertical planes of the frame. For instance, in one shot, Helen

(Frances Gifford) tells a story about a pet fox she had as a child (fig. 42). Helen is positioned in

the centre of the frame as she tells the story with the women arranged around the frame. This

shot takes in the entire width of the bunker with women in the bunks on both the left and the

right of the frame. Some women are shown actively listening to Helen (including those in the

background) while some are engaged in other tasks. Already, the women are clearly shown

361 See for example my earlier discussions of Marked Women and Stage Door.

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occupying and settling themselves into a shared space. Further group shots in this sequence

establish other group activities that will be an important part of life in the bunker, including

eating and enduring air raids.

Figure 42: Helen (centre) tells a story in the bunker.

As the film progresses, the physical proximity of the group increases. Near the end of the

film, for example, the women gather around the door to listen for the arrival of Japanese tanks.

Here, the women are closely crowded together with only Pat remaining in the background.

Other shots stress proximity while still playing with the depth of the frame. For example, one

striking shot from the end of the film shows the women as they prepare to depart the bunker and

confront the Japanese (fig. 43). Marsh, who is speaking to the Japanese soldiers outside the

bunker, is placed in the foreground. Most of the rest of the women are arranged around the

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Figure 43: The women prepare to exit the bunker.

table in the middle ground with Smith seen entering from the tunnel in the background. As my

discussion of these two group shots from the film’s dramatic conclusion demonstrates, these

shots are typically employed in moments of heightened emotion. Other notable group shots are

seen following Connie’s unexpected death and as the women make the decision whether or not

to evacuate Bataan when they are given the chance.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a film based on a play, the bulk of the narrative takes place

within a single location: the bunker. Although some attempts are made to move beyond the

world of the bunker, the film is notably light on action, especially when compared with So

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Figure 44: The women share a meal in the bunker.

Proudly We Hail. Many notable events (including Sue’s traumatic experience in the foxhole and

Andra shooting down a plane) happen entirely offscreen and must be recounted to the group by a

character who witnessed them. Even in the case of Connie’s death, which is presented onscreen,

the group is still shown hearing the news from the surviving witnesses. The shared space of the

bunker is also vital because the film documents the full span of time they spend within its

confines. The film begins shortly before they arrive at the bunker and ends with them

surrendering to the Japanese and walking out of the bunker. Indeed, the film maps the space of

the bunker remarkably clearly. The relatively extensive use of long shots makes it possible to

put together a clear picture of the entire space (fig. 44).

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Like other films I have examined, the bonds behind the women are forged in a shared

space. To a certain extent, this space is also a domestic space – that is, the space in which the

women eat, sleep, and dress, all activities that have been central to shared life in the domestic

spaces I have explored throughout this dissertation. The functioning of the space, however, is

altered by its positioning in a war zone. The women are under a constant threat of danger from

the outside world. At the same time, the bunker remains a safe space within the film. The

women are never killed or injured while inside the bunker. Although air raids occasionally shake

the furniture, they never cause any significant damage. The film ultimately ends with the women

being forced out of the safety of the bunker by the (unseen) Japanese soldiers. I would argue that

the bunker thus becomes emblematic of the film’s blend of the (male) combat film and the

woman’s film. The bunker provides a variation on a familiar domestic environment in which the

women can process and share their new and unfamiliar wartime experiences. The friendships

within the group are forged both by sharing in the objective driven work of wartime (tending the

wounded, fighting the enemy, facing death) and by sharing in the domestic downtime that allows

them to process and reflect on these experiences together.

Overall, the film’s presentation of its female characters is less threatening than So

Proudly We Hail. Because of Cry Havoc’s emphasis on downtime and the domestic space of the

bunker, the nurses are less frequently shown engaged in work. As a result, they are given fewer

opportunities to take on active “heroic” roles or act as protectors for the men. At the same time,

Cry Havoc paints a far bleaker picture of the war. While the dialogue takes pains to suggest that

the nurses’ sacrifice is necessary for the greater good of the American war effort, the film’s final

image still shows the women being captured by the Japanese and marched off to an uncertain

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fate. As in So Proudly We Hail, with the American soldiers either dead or evacuated, the only

ones the women can rely on are each other.

“Be a good shipmate”: Training camp films

The combat films discussed above place their female protagonists in perilous situations

that allow them to display heroic behaviour. These women, however, are deliberately placed

within the traditionally female profession of nursing. As I explored in the introduction to this

chapter, women’s participation in the newly-established female branches of the armed forces was

typically far more controversial. The films that dealt with military women were typically set not

in combat zones, but in training camps in the United States. Both training camp films I discuss

in this section revolve around three women entering a branch of the military (the WACs in the

case of Keep Your Powder Dry and the WAVEs362 in the case of Skirts Ahoy). Each of the

women is a distinct “type” in the mode of group friendship films discussed in the previous

chapter. Both films include a character (played by the biggest star in each film, Lana Turner in

Powder and Esther Williams in Skirts) who is a rich society woman used to getting her own way

and whose reasons for joining and suitability for military life are called into question over the

course of the film. Ultimately, however, she makes good, partly by leveraging the very desire to

get her own way that is initially seen as an obstacle. Another of the women (Susan Peters in

Powder and Joan Evans in Skirts) is defined largely by her relationship with a specific man who

has been directly responsible for her decision to join the military. The third woman is a vastly

different type in both films, with Laraine Day playing a severe, rule-bound woman from a

362 The WAVEs were the women’s branch of the United States Naval Reserve. The acronym

stands for Women Accepted for Volunteer Service.

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military family in Powder and Viviane Blaine playing a man-crazy, comic character who joins

the WAVEs to be close to her sailor fiancé in Skirts. In both films, the three women are

strangers at the film’s beginning who will eventually learn the importance of cooperation and

sisterhood. While the stakes are lower than they are in combat films, the training camp films

evidence a similar blend between the importance of “being” together and “doing” together.

Indeed, these films often place even greater emphasis on shared pursuits as the building blocks of

friendship. These films also tone down the patriotic rhetoric of the combat films. Instead, life in

the military is celebrated for its possibilities for personal fulfillment, including the opportunity to

work and bond with like-minded women.

Keep Your Powder Dry (Edward Buzzell, 1945) fits within the pattern of many of the

friendship films I have examined thus far with its blend of competition and camaraderie. At the

centre of the film is the competition between Val (Turner), a society girl who has joined the

WAC with the hope of proving herself worthy of receiving her inheritance, and Leigh (Day), a

rule-bound woman from a military family. The third woman, Ann (Peters), who has joined the

WAC because her husband is in the Army, is a decidedly secondary character throughout much

of the film, existing largely as a sounding board for Val and Leigh to rant about each other, until

she learns that her husband has been killed in action. Ann’s selfless determination to remain

strong in the face of loss inspires Val and Leigh (both of whom had been on the verge of

resigning from the corps) to put aside their own egos and do what is best for the greater good.

Elements of this film harken back to the Victorian novel of female amity with each woman

learning from and taking on characteristics of the other in order to become a better, more well-

rounded soldier and person. At the same time, the film fits firmly within the genre of the combat

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film with its emphasis on the work of being a WAC. Indeed, of all the films I examine in this

chapter, Keep Your Powder Dry places the greatest emphasis on the working lives of its

protagonists and subsequently the greatest emphasis on “doing” together. While this film lacks

the combat action of So Proudly We Hail, Keep Your Powder Dry features numerous scenes of

the women training and working together around the base.

Like So Proudly We Hail, Keep Your Powder Dry made use of a technical advisor in an

attempt to ensure authenticity. WAC Lieutenant Louise V. White appears to have been chiefly

in charge of ensuring that the appearance of the women onscreen matched the strict uniform

requirements of the WAC. Modern Screen reports that White would have the women “line up

each morning in full uniform and stand for inspection a la regular Army” and inspect their hair

(“WACs aren’t permitted to wear their hair below the collars”), their makeup (“WAC’s must not

wear bright polish”), and their uniforms (especially their stocking seams).363 White was reported

to be pleased with one facet of the actresses’ training, however: “Lt. White was thrilled with the

way the girls did their close order drills – wished that all WACs might first be precision dancers

in a chorus.”364 WAC director Colonel Hobby even attended the Washington premiere of the

film alongside Lana Turner, a further indication of WAC approval of the project.365 This

premiere event also included 25 medical WACs as guests of honour, eighteen uniformed WACs

as usherettes, and a special musical number performed by a group of WACs titled “The Gal

Behind the Guy Behind the Gun.”366 Colonel Curtis Mitchell of Army Public Relations also

363 Virginia Wilson, “Movie Reviews: Keep Your Powder Dry,” Modern Screen, May

1945, 24. 364 Wilson, 24. 365 “Lana Turner Feted as Power Dry Premieres,” The Film Daily, March 9, 1945, 2. 366 “Turner, Army, Wac Active In Captial Powder Campaign,” Showman’s Trade

Review, April 14, 1945, 18.

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gave a speech thanking MGM and citing Powder as “a fine example of the Motion Picture

Industry’s cooperation with all phases of the war effort.”367 As with So Proudly, considerable

evidence exists that Powder was intended to boost WAC recruitment. The Exhibitor describes

the film as “a natural for tieups with the WAC”368 while an item in Motion Picture Daily notes

that MGM has moved up the film’s release date in order to coincide with a WAC recruitment

drive.369 In addition to these more conventional recruitment drives, Motion Picture Herald

mentions at least two WAC “fashion shows” that took place in conjunction with the film,

perhaps validating the importance placed on proper uniforms by Lt. White.370

Keep Your Powder Dry received a generally mixed response from critics. One of their

main criticisms was one levelled at a number of war related films, namely that the film used the

war as little more than a backdrop for giving a topical update to an old story. For example, the

National Board of Review Magazine complained that, “Their adventures…are of a fairly

ordinary boarding-school story variety.”371 In an article for The Screen Writer, Lester Koenig

similarly complained that, “…the dramatic conflict is an old pattern, used time and again in

almost any story made about somebody going to Eton, Oxford, West Point, or Annapolis – the

spoiled character who doesn’t take the school and its traditions seriously, but eventually sees the

light.”372 As covered in Chapter Two, the boarding school settings mentioned by these reviews

367 “Turner, Army, Wac,” 18. 368 “Keep Your Powder Dry,” The Exhibitor, February 21, 1945, 1665. 369 “Army Asks MGM to Advance Wac Film,” Motion Picture Daily, January 29, 1945,

2. 370 “Hart Holds WAC Fashion Show on Keep Your Powder Dry,” Motion Picture Herald,

June 9, 1945, 57; “Matlack Holds WAC Style Show For Keep Your Powder Dry,” Motion

Picture Herald, June 16, 1945, 51. 371 “Keep Your Powder Dry,” New Movies: The National Board of Review Magazine,

April 1945, 22. 372 Lester Koenig, “Back from the Wars,” The Screen Writer, August 1945, 24.

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were indeed a popular setting for exploring dynamics between same-sex friends. Notably,

however, the friendships I covered in the school films of Chapter Two tend to present some of

the most unencouraging images of female friendship, frequently privileging conflict and cattiness

over camaraderie. By contrast, as I discuss below, the training camp films present some of the

most open endorsements of friendship between women seen in any classical Hollywood films.

Despite their dismissive view of the interpersonal drama, reviewers were generally

positive about the moments in the film that shed light on WAC training processes. Showman’s

Trade Review notes, “This picture obviously has been made to aid recruiting in the important

Women’s Army Corps and contains an interesting story. It shows a few of the many jobs for

which the Wac are being trained.”373 A review in Film Bulletin states, “The script writers have

refrained from playing up the romantic angle and, while this may detract from its boxoffice

appeal, it makes the picture more plausible from a military standpoint…. The drill sequences

and classroom and barrack episodes have an air of authenticity throughout.”374

As the Film Bulletin reviewer above notes, Keep Your Powder Dry largely dispenses with

romance. Only one of the three central characters has a significant love interest (Ann and her

husband Johnny). Johnny appears in only one scene at the beginning of the film before being

shipped overseas and ultimately killed in action near the film’s conclusion. Val has a brief

flirtation with one of Johnny’s friends (who also appears in only one scene) as well as receiving

a visit from a man who may be an old flame, but whom she firmly rejects. Leigh has no

potential romantic prospects, which seems particularly unusual since she most clearly fits the

373 “The Box Office Slant: Keep Your Powder Dry,” Showman’s Trade Review, February

17, 1945, 18. 374 “Keep Your Powder Dry Formula Story About WAC,” Film Bulletin (Independent

Exhibitors Film Bulletin), February 19, 1945, 8.

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type of the “mannish” WAC that the military hierarchy was so eager to disavow. Instead,

Leigh’s potentially deviant over-devotion to military protocol is corrected by teaching her to

embrace the friendship and support of her fellow WACs. Leigh’s military personality is

certainly represented as excessive and off-putting. Towards the end of the film, Leigh is

informed by her commanding officer (Agnes Moorehead) that fifty percent of Leigh’s platoon

does not consider her fit officer material, deeming her a “cold potato” who lacks the “human

qualities” that can inspire confidence in a troop. While this is a typical Hollywood assessment of

a woman who is too competent, it is notable that this designation is not deployed in relation to

her treatment of and behaviour towards men, but her treatment of and behaviour towards women.

Similarly, the cure for Leigh’s “cold potato” status is not finding a man to love, but learning to

rely on the support of her fellow WACs. Following her harsh assessment from the commanding

officer, Leigh shares an emotional scene with Ann in the deserted barracks. Leigh is distraught

that the other women in the corps view her as “the kind of specimen you find clinging to the

bottom sides of slimy rocks.” Equally important, however, is her recognition that her issues with

Val stem from feelings of jealous. Leigh tells Ann:

From the first time I ever saw her, she was everything I wanted to be, all my life. A girl

in high heels and furs, a girl who knew her power as a woman, the kind of a girl

who…who lives in the pages of Vogue and Town and Country – not in an army camp in

boots and breeches. I just couldn’t bear to see a girl from her world make good in mine.

The further she went, the better soldier she became. The better soldier she became, the

more envious I got and the more I wanted to see her fail.

This speech clearly drives home Leigh’s lack of traditional femininity. At the same time,

Leigh’s speech also underlines the fact that Val’s very traditional femininity is not an obstacle to

her skills as a soldier. Although the military camp is hardly the place for Leigh to adopt high

heels and furs, one traditionally feminine trait that Leigh does display in this scene is a

willingness to openly express her emotions and her vulnerability. She opens the conversation by

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telling Ann: “I need your help. I’ve never needed anybody before in my whole life

but…suddenly I need somebody.” Over the course of the scene, Leigh unburdens her feelings

(“Oh, let me get it off my chest. I’ve got to say it out loud to somebody.”), openly crying and

eventually reaching out to take Ann’s hand. This overt emotionality has been a quality more

clearly associated with Val over the course of the film, a quality which Leigh now takes on as

part of her transformation into a better WAC.

From early in the film, camaraderie is established as an important element of a successful

military personality – and one that Leigh is conspicuously lacking. The importance of

camaraderie is established from the moment the women arrive in the barracks. As the women

settle in, Leigh quickly establishes her military knowledge by advising Sarah, a platoon member

who has lost her comb, that the PX should still be open and she can purchase a replacement

comb there. Val, on the other hand, quickly establishes her affability by instead lending her

comb to Sarah. Val’s gesture displeases Leigh who says, “Look, if we want to start borrowing

from each other, we’re all sunk.” In response, Val cheerily tells Sarah, “Keep it!” as she thrusts

the comb past Leigh like a weapon. This brief exchange instantly establishes Leigh as dedicated

to self-reliance and following the rules while Val is open to sharing and helping those in need.

This is particularly interesting in the case of Val since it hints that she is more multi-faceted than

her introduction as a spoiled society girl would suggest, pointing the way towards her eventual

transformation into a capable soldier and officer. After this initial clash with Val, Leigh

immediately goes to the company commander to request a transfer. The commander turns her

down, noting the first duty of a good soldier is being able to get along with people. We see from

her friendship with Ann that Leigh has the capacity for forging friendships, but she needs to

learn to extend this to all women equally.

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This early barracks sequence also establishes Ann’s crucial role as a mediator between

the two women. The first clash between Val and Leigh establishes the framing for their fights

throughout the film with the two positioned facing each other in a medium two-shot that holds

out the possibility of a physical confrontation (fig. 45).375 As their argument escalates, Ann

steps in between the two, so that she is in the centre of the shot facing towards the camera. The

framing thus emphasizes both Ann’s role as mediator and as the centre around which the entire

friendship pivots.

Figure 45: Val (left) and Leigh (right) face off for the first time while Ann (centre) mediates.

375 Not dissimilar from the framing of Maggie and Sandra in The Great Lie.

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This blocking and variations on this blocking will be repeated in many of the scenes the

three women share. For instance, an early training montage shows the developing rivalry

between Val and Leigh by alternating episodes in which Val gets the upper hand (she is better at

identifying planes because she has dated many pilots) with those in which Leigh gets the upper

hand (she easily bests Val in wrestling). The montage ends with a sequence of the women

drilling and singing a comedic cadence where Ann marches in between the two rivals and

alternates her attention between the two, jokingly pulling faces with each woman in turn.

Following basic training, Val and Leigh attempt to go out of their way to ensure that they will

Figure 46: Val (left) and Leigh (right) shake hands while Ann (centre) looks on.

not go on to future assignments together. When they find out their plan to be assigned to

different divisions has backfired, they are once again standing in their three-person configuration

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with Val and Leigh facing each other on either side of Ann who intones, “Private [Leigh] Rand,

meet Private [Val] Parks. And in the middle, Private [Ann] Darrison. All students of the motor

transport school.” The configuration recurs yet again when Val and Leigh decide to bury the

hatchet halfway through the film, with Val and Leigh reaching across Ann to shake each other’s

hand (fig. 46).

Even in scenes where the three women do not share the screen, the impression of this

configuration is retained. In one scene, Leigh and Val separately approach Ann as she walks

back to her barracks. Leigh stands on the right side of the screen as she invites Ann to join in on

her weekend plans. After Leigh departs, Val arrives on the left side of the screen to invite Ann

to join in on her weekend plans. This configuration will continue to be repeated throughout the

course of the film. The final shot thus signals the resolution of the tension with a new spatial

configuration. The film ends with the three women marching towards the camera, smiling

broadly and dressed as if they are going into battle (fig. 47). Narratively, the shot makes little

sense – is it meant to represent their graduation or their imminent departure for overseas

deployment? Thematically, however, the shot offers a clear conclusion to the film. Here, all

three are now facing in the same direction and they have been repositioned so that former

nemeses Val and Leigh are standing next to each other with star Turner placed in the centre.

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Figure 47: Ann (left), Val (centre), and Leigh (right) in the film’s final shot.

Their shared affection and concern for Ann is one of the elements that help to bring Val

and Leigh together. Both women end up choosing motor transport as their second assignment

choice because of a desire to be with Ann. Their initial decision to bury the hatchet is partially

prompted by a concern that Ann did not make it into OCS (Officer Candidate School) followed

by their relief and excitement at the realization that all three of them have made the cut.

Similarly, at the film’s conclusion, the riff between Val and Leigh is ultimately healed by the

revelation that Ann’s husband has been killed in action, but she is selflessly attempting to put her

friends’ needs above her own. Notably, Ann is absent during the section of the film in which Val

and Leigh’s friendship breaks down, opting to stay behind at the barracks while Val and Leigh

go into town. While the tension between Leigh and Val has been the focus of much of the film,

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their shared dedication to Ann has been consistent throughout, forming an underlying narrative

that points the way towards friendship and camaraderie as the basis for success in the military.

Despite Meyer’s contention that most WACs were employed in traditionally female

occupations, Keep Your Powder Dry largely chooses to play up the non-traditional side of life in

the Corps. Drilling is presented as a central component of WAC life and one that resonates with

the iconography of the traditional war/training film. All three women also decide to specialize in

transport, a field that requires them to utilize considerable mechanical skills. The importance of

“doing” as a source of camaraderie is most clearly highlighted in the sequence in which the

women are performing the “manly” task of fixing the general’s car. The general is clearly

skeptical of these women’s ability to fix his car and is suitably impressed when they carry out the

job despite being “such pretty girls.” This scene of the women working together is a clear

turning point in the first half of the film as it both squarely places the focus on cooperation

between the women and leads directly into the scene in which Leigh and Val decide to become

friends. Throughout the scene, the women are largely framed in a shared group shot as they

work on the car together (fig. 48). The dialogue also makes clear that the shared work is starting

to heal the rift between Leigh and Val. When Leigh discovers the source of the problem, she

tells Val, “Here, you do it. You’re better at it.” On the way back to the garage, the women

jubilantly celebrate a job well done. Back at the garage, all three learn that they have been

accepted into OCS. This additional shared success prompts Val to suggest that they bury the

hatchet, a suggestion that Leigh accepts provided Val can “keep your hands out of my tool kit.”

Working together and experiencing shared success is thus presented here as the path to

friendship and camaraderie.

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Figure 48: The women work together to fix the general’s car.

After Leigh and Val fall out once again, their battle of wills largely plays out within the

realm of “doing together” within the training camp. Leigh, in her role as acting platoon

commander, becomes determined to work Val as hard as possible until she either quits or is

expelled from the officer training program. Leigh assigns Val additional jobs (particularly in the

most menial positions such as laundry detail), subjects her to a more rigorous inspection than the

other WACs, and punishes her for minor infractions. The tension between the two culminates in

a sequence in which Leigh drills the platoon and continuously goes out of her way to undermine

Val’s performance. The battle between the two thus plays out against a field of action with the

women marching in formation for much of the scene. Moreover, the breakdown of the

friendship between the two women leads to a breakdown of the efficient running of the platoon

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as Leigh ultimately places her desire to make Val look bad over the smooth functioning of the

platoon. The sequence culminates with Leigh repeatedly asking Val to salute until Val snaps and

slaps Leigh across the face, which results in the women being called up before a disciplinary

committee. As noted above, the disciplining ultimately results in a change of heart for Leigh

who chooses to work on becoming a better person and a better soldier by embracing

camaraderie.

Skirts Ahoy (Sidney Lanfield, 1952) utilizes a similar premise to Keep Your Powder Dry.

The film follows three women who decide to join the WAVEs, the women’s branch of the U.S.

Navy. Like Powder, the film traces the women’s journey through basic training, culminating in

their graduation and deployment. While Skirts Ahoy largely downplays actual military training,

the film still focuses on women “doing” and taking action together in the more traditionally

masculine mode. Here, however, the “doing” is switched to the realm of romance with the film’s

female protagonists taking a more active role in pursuing the male objects of their affection.

While this can be read on the one hand as a retreat from the more obviously radical elements of

the World War II combat film, this potentially disruptive new assertiveness in romantic and

(particularly) sexual matters was a source of great concern for the military establishment. As

discussed in this chapter’s introduction, the concern that female soldiers would start to display

the same sexual agency as male soldiers was very real.

While romantic relationships are a central element of the plot in Skirts Ahoy, the way in

which romance is handled tends to undercut or at least complicate its centrality in the women’s

lives. The opening sequence shows each woman turning to the WAVEs to solve an issue in her

love life. Mary Kate (Evans) has been jilted by her fiancé and wants to get away from the small

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town in which she grew up. Whitney (Williams), on the other hand, gets cold feet at her own

wedding, walking out on her fiancé as he stands at the altar. Una (Blaine), meanwhile, joins the

WAVEs in the hopes of being closer to her sailor fiancé. Once in the WAVEs, however, this

initial preoccupation with romance is set aside for approximately the first third of the film’s

running time as the women bond over basic training and Mary Kate’s homesickness. The three

protagonists meet when they are assigned to share a room during basic training (a fourth

expected roommate never materializes). Whitney and Una quickly establish their compatibility

by bantering about their reasons for joining the WAVEs:

Una: What are you doing here? Getting away from it all?

Whitney: Well, in a manner of speaking. What are you doing here?

Una: It all got away from me. So I’m looking for it.

Whitney: What’s its name?

Una: Archie O’Connovan, United States Navy.

Whitney also attempts to bond with the clearly homesick Mary Kate, sitting beside her on her

bunk and encouraging her to let out her emotions (“when you got a lump in your throat, it’s the

only way to drown it”). This brief scene also establishes the visual pattern of featuring all three

women in a shared frame. Here, they are arranged in depth with the homesick Mary Kate lying

down in the foreground, Whitney quickly establishing herself as a major presence in the middle

ground, and the comic Una in the background (fig. 49). Mary Kate’s homesickness will be a

major force in bonding the three women in the first part of the film. Whitney initially tries to

persuade Mary Kate that she will have a richer and more fulfilling life in the WAVEs than she

will back in Ohio, but this does not seem to interest Mary Kate, who tells Whitney, “I’m not

much of a person.” Whitney and Una ultimately decide to help Mary Kate get out of the

WAVEs and essentially stage scenes in which Lieutenant Commander Stauton (Margalo

Gillmore), their superior officer, can bear witness to the intensity of Mary Kate’s homesickness.

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Notably, however, Stauton’s view is that Whitney and Una have an obligation to help Mary Kate

get over her homesickness, telling them, “Look out for her. Talk to her. Keep her company. Be

a good shipmate.” Admittedly, Mary Kate’s homesickness is ultimately resolved by the

intervention of a man. When Dick, Mary Kate’s aptly named fiancé, shows up on the base,

telling her that she is not independent or tough enough for the WAVEs and they had best get

married instead, Mary Kate becomes determined to stay in the WAVEs and prove him wrong.

Figure 49: Whitney comforts Mary Kate (lying down in foreground) while Una (background) looks on.

Unlike Keep Your Powder Dry, which tends to emphasize the women’s equality in terms

of their skill level, Skirts Ahoy tends to single out Whitney as particularly accomplished. It is

equally clear, however, that Whitney’s skill is rooted in her willingness to see herself as part of a

team. When she first arrives at the base, Stauton asks Whitney why she did not seek a

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commission. Whitney makes it clear that she is not interested in receiving special treatment or

taking the easy road. Later, the three women are shown signing up for an introductory

swimming course together, with Mary Kate remarking, “Well, at least we stay together so far.”

At the first lesson, however, Mary Kate almost drowns. Whitney promptly dives into the pool to

save Mary Kate, revealing that she is actually an accomplished swimmer and only took the

introductory course out of solidarity with her friends. As training progresses, Whitney’s

popularity with the other women leads to her election to the role of company recruit commander.

Figure 50: Whitney gets soaked in “What Makes a WAVE?”

While this is presumably similar to the position held by Leigh in Keep Your Powder Dry, this

film makes clear that Whitney is far more popular with the women in her company as the group

gather around to congratulate Whitney on her election. Whitney’s status as “one-of-the-group”

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is further underlined by “What Makes a Wave?”, a comical number performed by Whitney and a

group of WAVEs to entertain the rest of the company. Whitney gamely leads the group in a

send-up of the drilling and the chores that are part of Navy life before being repeatedly drenched

in a finale that proclaims, “A whole lot of water makes a WAVE (fig. 50).” Whitney’s

willingness to be part of the group rather than setting herself apart is clearly shown as a key

element of professional as well as personal success.

Contemporary reviews of the film occasionally compared it to On the Town (Stanley

Donen and Gene Kelly, 1949), another wartime film about three sailors and their romantic

adventures. These similarities are most notable in a sequence in which the three women go to

Chicago on a day pass, eager to see the sights and meet some men. The women initially try

splitting up, but the film omits these individual exploits and moves directly to the women

meeting at a restaurant to discuss their disastrous day. Una tells the women, “Let’s face it: we’re

all we’ve got.” Moments later, however, she dismisses this notion, stating, “If we’re all we’ve

got, there’s something wrong.” The women here segue into the song “What Good Is a Gal

(Without a Guy)?” Notably, this is the only number the three protagonists perform together, and

it largely serves as a showcase for their rapport with one another. Throughout the sequence, they

are largely synchronized in both their singing and their movement. All three are also

consistently shown in the frame together (fig. 51).

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Figure 51: The women sing “What Good Is a Gal (Without a Guy)?”

This song also illustrates the assertive approach to pursuing romance that the women (or

at least Whitney and Una) will take in the second half of the film. Whitney bemoans the fact that

they aren’t able to go places and take action in the way men can. Una, however, points out that

they're sailors – and sailors can do anything! Once again, this film emphasizes the male

prerogative for “doing” rather than “being,” a prerogative that is once again extended to women

in times of war. Here, assertiveness in matters of romance (and, by extension, sex) is assumed to

be the prerogative of the sailor. Whitney and Una decide to go to the Mahogany Room, a bar

that they learn has just recently begun admitting women, emphasizing once again their

assumption of the male prerogative for going where they want. At the bar, the women survey the

room, eventually setting their sights on Paul. The significance of this moment is highlighted

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with a rare point-of-view shot. In the shot, the camera pans across the room, initially passing by

Paul seated alone at the bar before returning quickly to settle on him. Part of what makes this

shot interesting beyond its atypicality is that it is not specifically anchored to either of the two

women, but seems to represent their shared perspective. The point-of-view shot is followed by a

cut to a medium shot of Paul seated at the bar with a cigarette in his mouth as he searches for a

light. Two arms enter the shot, one from each side of the image, both holding out lighters. The

camera pulls back to reveal Whitney and Una on either side of Paul (fig. 52). Although the two

apologize for being so direct in their approach, they do not actually seem apologetic nor do they

make any attempts to change their approach. Whitney and Una ultimately decide between

themselves who will take Paul to dinner (with Whitney winning by offering to take over some of

Una’s chores on the base). At dinner, the potentially aggressive sexuality of women in the

military is showcased once again as a nearby table of WACs (like our protagonists, there are

three of them) flirt openly with Paul despite the fact that he is dining with Whitney. Although

these WACs are essentially presented in a negative light, Whitney and her friends are never

forced to renounce their assertiveness over the course of the film. Paul is clearly flustered by

Whitney’s assertiveness in pursuing what she wants, pointing out that she has been engaged

eleven times and that he likes to do his own “hunting.” By the film’s end, however, Whitney

shows no sign of changing her ways, telling Paul, “I’m not apologizing for the way I acted. That

it bothered you – that’s what I’m sorry about. I still believe in asking for what I want. All I’ve

learned is not to count on getting it.” Even the small lesson the film offers here is rapidly

undermined as Whitney does indeed end up getting what she wants. The final scene offers yet

another gender reversal of familiar war film clichés as Whitney, Una, and Mary Kate depart on a

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train for Washington (and eventual deployment overseas) with Paul, Archie, and Dick seeing

them off and staying behind.

Figure 52: Whitney (left) and Una take the initiative.

In her autobiography, Williams cites the film’s emphasis on female camaraderie as one of

the elements that drew her to the script, writing, “I liked the fact that the story lines of their

loyalty to one another, and of the way they adapt to life in the navy, took precedence over

romance.”376 She specifically credits screenwriter Isobel Lennart with the choice to emphasize

female camaraderie.377 Indeed, Skirts Ahoy climaxes with perhaps the most explicit dialogue

376 Esther Williams with Digby Diehl, The Million Dollar Mermaid: An Autobiography

(San Diego: Harcourt, 1999), 204. 377 Williams with Diehl, 204.

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directly celebrating friendship between women in any film under consideration in this study.

Near the film’s end, the three protagonists graduate from the training program and receive their

commissions. As the women celebrate their graduation, Lieutenant Commander Stauton comes

in to give her speech that is worth quoting at length:

Stauton: Any idea how different you look from that tacky, scared, wish-I-were-dead

bunch I met here ten weeks ago? And what’s more, I think you are different. You’ve

learned what many girls don’t get a chance to learn: that there are other people in the

world besides yourself. That women don’t have to be dependent, weak sisters – catty,

backbiting, or the natural enemies of each other. In other words, that women can be

friends. After ten weeks, of course, nobody can tell you anything about the Navy. You

know it all. Except for one thing – the best. You don’t ever have to be lonesome again.

There’s no place you can go, no station, no city, no country where you won’t find a

shipmate. And every now and then, you’ll run into one from Company Three. And

much as you’re happy to leave here now, much as you think you’re sick of each other’s

faces, that day will always be a holiday.

Stauton’s speech directly invokes and then refutes the negative stereotypes of women’s

relationships with each other. Over the course of basic training, the women have learned to be

friends and shipmates. Working together in the active, goal-oriented world of the military has

allowed the women to forge unique and lasting bonds. Stauton’s speech is intercut with various

shots of women watching in the audience, including a three-shot of Whitney, Una, and Mary

Kate as Stauton says the word “friends” (fig. 53). Interestingly, this speech does not have to

couch its endorsement of friendship and camaraderie in the language of a larger appeal to

national patriotism. Removed from the context of World War II, friendship was also freed from

the “excuse” of patriotism. Rather than becoming friends because their country needed them to

become friends, military training serves as a conduit for the women to learn something that is

essentially presented as a fact, albeit one that few women are able to learn – that women can be

friends. This friendship can thus be framed as a part of their personal development.

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Interestingly, the tone of this scene actually feels somewhat at odds with the rest of the film.

Unlike Keep Your Powder Dry and the women’s combat films, the relationship between the three

protagonists is generally characterized by cooperation and unity from the start. Indeed, rather

than needing to learn that women can and should support each other, the three protagonists form

strong bonds from the moment they meet.

Figure 53: Mary Kate (left), Whitney (centre), and Una (right) listen to Stauton’s speech.

There is one notable difference between Skirts Ahoy and the other films discussed in this

chapter that is worthy of mention. Basinger describes Skirts Ahoy as being “from the Korean

period.”378 While this is technically true, the Korean War is never mentioned. Indeed, Basinger

378 Basinger, Combat Film, 244.

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notes that the relatively few films made about the Korean War essentially replicate the formal

and narrative conventions of the World War II combat film, including the focus on the group that

is essential to the World War II combat film.379 Skirts Ahoy never comments directly on the war

in Korea and indeed the implication at the film’s end seems to be that the women will eventually

be deployed to Europe. In looking through the Hollywood trade press, there appears to have

been a far less intense push to tie the film to recruiting efforts than the films made during World

War II. While there are a few mentions of local theatre owners creating tie-ups with the

WAVEs,380 this does not appear to have been a widespread initiative as part of the film’s

marketing. In Skirts Ahoy, the formal and narrative conventions of the World War II films

persist into the 1950s, but these devices are now being put to new ends. Women’s participation

in the military was no longer temporary, existing only “for the duration.” Instead, the military

could be a new vocation for women, one that could enrich them both personally and

professionally.

As Skirts Ahoy demonstrates, the notion of “for the duration” was ultimately untenable.

This untenability is further illustrated in a post-war article by Rhoda Pratt Hanson, a housewife-

turned-wartime-reporter. Hanson writes, “I had had a brief whirl at an interesting life, beside

which housework seemed like pale, dull unreality”381 and asserts her desire to keep working at

least part-time. She furthers notes, “Looking around me, I see many other women are similarly

changed.”382 The war had given many women a taste of new and exciting opportunities,

379 Basinger, Combat Film, 176-177. 380 See for example “The National Spotlight : Boston,” Motion Picture Herald, June 14,

1952, 48 and “The National Spotlight: Seattle,” Motion Picture Herald, June 14, 1952 52. 381 Hanson, “I’m Leaving Home,” 363. 382 Hanson, 364.

264

opportunities that frequently allowed them to feel that they were making an active contribution to

their country. These women were not individual outliers, but members of new, female-centric

groups, forging bonds of sisterhood as they moved into previously male-dominated fields. In the

epilogue to Creating GI Jane, Leisa D. Meyer notes that many women found that their military

experience gifted them with new skills and a newfound self-confidence. In post-war America,

however, “many [women] came out of the war to face a culture that had not changed as much as

they had and which in many ways tried to restrict women’s opportunities.”383 The

disillusionment that many women felt in the post-war return to the home is often cited as a

critical factor in the rise of second-wave feminism. I would argue further that camaraderie and

bonding that women experienced during the war (whether on the home front or abroad, whether

they worked or not) also played a crucial role. During the war, women could and did join

together in support of a political cause of national importance. This bonding laid the foundations

for not only for the collective feminist action of the 1960s, but also the overt celebration of

friendship and sisterhood that would prove to be such a crucial element of both second-wave

feminism and feminisms of the future.

383 Meyer, Creating GI Jane, 182.

265

Conclusion

As second-wave feminism flourished in the 1960s, its celebration of sisterhood and

camaraderie eventually extended to more overt film portrayals of friendship between women. In

the present moment, the popularity of female friendship media seems to be higher than ever. In

addition to films and television shows like Booksmart (Olivia Wilde, 2019), Hustlers (Lorene

Scafaria, 2019), and Broad City (2014-2019), broader discussions of women in the media also

revolve around the complex dynamics of female camaraderie, from pop star Taylor Swift’s

“squad” of friends to the media domination of the Kardashian-Jenner sisters to the rise of the

#MeToo movement. Female friendship texts continue to draw upon and provoke a wide range of

emotions and meanings.

In the first half of the 20th century, mass media played a significant role in reshaping

women’s perspectives on themselves, other women, and their place in the world. While books

written by and for women had long been popular, the movies served as a particularly powerful

affective medium for forging connection. The tools of the filmic medium, particularly in their

classical Hollywood deployment, encourage an intense emotional bond between the viewer, the

character onscreen, and the star who plays her. These tools allow cinema to more ably convey

the affective dimension of friendship itself and the emotional stakes that friendship holds for

women. Indeed, intense emotional connection proved to be one of the key traits of Victorian

women’s friendships that continued to be important for twentieth-century women. Crucially,

movies were also consumed and experienced in a group setting, where women could have a

collective experience of Hollywood cinema’s intense affect.

Over the course of this dissertation, I have examined a range of films that demonstrate the

ways in which female friendship becomes visible in films of the classical Hollywood era. In

266

some of these films, friendship exists at the margins, enhancing and supporting the central

narrative. In other films, friendship takes centre stage with the relationship between the female

characters driving the narrative forward. Similarly, some films use female friendship to

reinforce dominant ideology and encourage conformity. By contrast, other films feature

friendships that subvert or challenge social and cultural norms. Taken together, all of these films

attest to the flexibility of female friendship as a narrative device in classical Hollywood cinema.

At the same time, across all of the films I examine in this dissertation, certain

commonalities emerge in their depictions of friendship between women. Despite the waning of

Victorian friendship norms, emotional intimacy continued to be presented as a key element of

female friendship. Many of the films I examine contain scenes in which the friends speak openly

about their feelings, often in a way that they cannot with the men in their lives or their family

members. The dyadic, Victorian-influenced friendships seen in Chapter One most explicitly

foreground emotionally honest conversations, both as a hallmark of long-standing friendships

(such as Jessie and Helen’s friendship in East Side, West Side) and as a conduit for building

friendship and establish compatibility between two soon-to-be friends (such as Mary and Clare

in When Ladies Meet). The group friendships of Chapters Two and Three also continue to value

emotional intimacy although often with a modern twist. In films ranging from Dance, Girl,

Dance to Keep Your Powder Dry, the protagonists spend much of the film reluctant to confess

their true feelings, hiding their emotions behind a fearless façade. The moment in which she

finally drops her façade and discloses her innermost feelings thus often serves as a key climactic

turning point, both leading the character to a new understanding of her own emotions and

strengthening the bonds of the friendships depicted within the film. Notably, however, some of

these films forgo lengthy emotional disclosures in favour of a moment of physical intimacy that

267

visually demonstrates the emotional honesty and solidified bond between the protagonists. Stage

Door is an exemplary film in this regard where the newly cemented bond between Terry and

Jean is affirmed with an exchange of looks and an emotional hug with no dialogue required.

Another key trait of friendship seen across all the films is the ability to comfortably share

space, particularly domestic space. Chapter One highlights two modes of sharing space that

speak to the Victorian concept of “woman’s sphere.” Here, female characters invite their friends

into their homes, typically homes that are organized around family and married life.

Alternatively, the female characters in these films take off together to establish a truly separate,

female-centric household. Chapter Two focuses on female friends who live together under

largely temporarily conditions as they look towards the next phase in their life. These include

students living together as they pursue an education, working women living together as they

pursue a husband, and actresses living together as they pursue their dreams of making it big.

Sharing living quarters allows these friends to support each other both practically and

emotionally. Chapter Three features more friends in temporary residences although the barracks

and bunkers of the war films are even more ephemeral and makeshift than the households in

Chapter Two.

The films discussed within this dissertation present just a small sampling of the diverse

range of films made from 1930-1953 that include female friendship in some form. For the sake

of time and space, I have had to omit a wider discussion of friendship between women in some

genres and subgenres. For instance, westerns such as Calamity Jane (discussed briefly in the

introduction), The Harvey Girls (George Sidney, 1946), and Westward the Women (William A.

Wellman, 1951) provide a view of female camaraderie that resonates with the combat films of

Chapter Three, in which women are called upon to band together in the service of a higher goal

268

of national importance (in this case, the settling of the American west). Another fertile subgenre

for portrayals of female friendship is films set in women’s prisons. Films such as Ladies They

Talk About (Howard Bretherton, 1933), Condemned Women (Lew Landers, 1938), and Caged

(John Cromwell, 1950) explore the ways in which the unique environment of the prison fosters

both bonding and competition between women as well as offering an interesting counterpoint to

the sex-segregated environments of the boarding school films. Additionally, I have omitted the

many films from this period that focus primarily on the relationships between sisters and other

female relatives, including films as diverse as the Four Daughters series, The Dark Mirror

(Robert Siodmak, 1946), and Pride and Prejudice (Robert Z. Leonard). All of these examples

attest to the richness and complexity of female friendship texts during the pivotal transitional

period that I examine in this dissertation. As I have argued throughout my dissertation, the films

of this period demonstrate the coexistence of a multiplicity of friendship models. Examining

these configurations of female friendship provides us with insight into the ways in which women

related to themselves, each other, and the world around them during a key period in the early 20th

century.

In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir writes,

The feminine friendships she is able to keep or make are precious for a woman…women,

confined within the generality of their destiny as women, are united by a kind of

immanent complicity. And what they seek first of all from each other is the affirmation

of their common universe.”384

By 1953, the year in which The Second Sex was first published in English translation, women’s

common universe had undergone considerable transformations. From the Victorian world of

woman’s sphere to the public world of 20th century working women to the patriotic camaraderie

384 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-

Chevallier (New York: Vintage Books, 2011), 584.

269

of World War II, women experienced myriad ways of encountering themselves and each other.

The films and friendships that I consider over the course of this dissertation exist within the

perceived interval between first-wave and second-wave feminism, a period in which close

friendships between women were generally regarded as unfashionable, a relic of a Victorian past

when women inhabited a world apart from the public domain of men. Yet, as women

increasingly moved into the wider world, they found that solidarity with their fellow women both

continued to provide emotional nurturance and served a new utility in navigating the

opportunities and challenges of the twentieth century.

270

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