SassMouthDames

As part of the 'unholy trio' of gossip columnists, including Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, Sheilah Graham wrote juicy articles about the stars during the golden age of Hollywood. In 1937, she began a passionate affair with F Scott Fitzgerald that lasted until the author's death in 1940. The film version, based on Sheilah's bestselling memoir, gives us a glossy romance, rather than the reality of Scott's addiction. Deborah Kerr gives a lush performance as the columnist. Gregory Peck gets to the heart of why Sheilah fell for him, and why she stayed, despite his epic benders.

Whether in a rubbish heap or grey industrial horizon of the Panama Canal, love blooms wherever Carole Lombard shines her blonde halo. Carole plays Maggie King, a nightclub singer who poses as a beauty operator for free passage to California. When she meets a soldier on his last day in the Army, she falls for him like a ship's anchor. Swing High, Swing Low balances screwball and melodrama better than any other picture, and arguably, Lombard gives her best performance. Maggie King makes a star out of a mug, played by Fred MacMurray. And what does he do to thank her?

He forgets about her the minute it happens.

After Gypsy Rose Lee finished the biggest show of her career for the 1940 World's Fair, she decided to finally write that novel she had in mind--a murder mystery set in a Burly-Q theatre. Gypsy's book, The G-String Murders, became a massive bestseller. It was adapted to the screen with Barbara Stanwyck playing Gypsy's role, renamed 'Dixie' to appease the scolds in the production code office. The result is an epic sass mouth dames crossover. The backstage dialogue is bawdy, deliciously bitchy, and a tribute to hard working dames who always made the curtain.

Not since Joan Blondell vowed that she knew all the answers and the only thing worthwhile was dough have we seen a more vital queen of the rackets than June Havoc in The Story of Molly X (1949). Molly takes over a crime syndicate. She plans the heists, hires the muscle, and even joins them for the safe cracking. June Havoc was a performer from the age of two and grew up as a headliner in the vaudeville circuit. And boy could June write. I close the episode with a scene from her memoir about her first dance marathon, which lasted for four months. She's the definition of trouper.

In her best picture from the 1930s, Joan Crawford absorbs slings and arrows from men. Men call her cheap, a chiseller, a tramp. She's abandoned on her wedding day. Punched in the face by a drunk husband. But with the help of Jean Dixon, who plays a hardboiled dame, Joan's Sadie fortifies herself with courage and exquisite style. I live inside the scene set in the Automat, where Joan conceals her desperation with great style.

Sadie McKee (1934) has everything a woman's picture needs.

The subtext of Virginia Van Upp’s script asks what kind of a society forbids ex-cons to fall in love and marry? Sylvia Sidney paid her debt to society, then risks her freedom for marriage with George Raft. Both are employed at a busy department store owned by a man who thinks good works mean more than a donation to the community chest. Once Raft learns that his wife was a jailbird, his double standards stink worse than clams at low tide. Who could give out to Sylvia Sidney, who has a face like a Valentine, heart-shaped with bow lips?

Instead of going for an obvious three-hanky approach for a story about a single mother out of work at Christmas, screenwriter Norman Krasna gift wraps a screwball delight. Ginger Rogers was riding high at the box office in a series of hits for RKO. Bachelor Mother proved that Ginger’s comic timing was as steady and accomplished as her foxtrot or carioca. As a shop girl with a sass mouth, she shows a man that he doesn’t know half as much as he thinks.

Among the stars of woman's pictures, Irene Dunne was arguably the most scandal-proof, even when she lived apart from her husband during the first six years of her career in Hollywood. But Irene often played women who were carried away by passion. During a transatlantic voyage, her character meets Charles Boyer, a man whose romantic conquests dominate international news. Irene shakes up the great lover's flirt game with some quality sass mouth.

Boyer is the ultimate swoon merchant, a man who starts out with pick up lines, yet in time, transformed by love, wants nothing more than to be worthy of her. Love Affair remains a standout because of its fearless embrace of love, faith, and pure emotion.

Mary Astor plays an American living alone in Italy. She embodies the fantasy Bette Davis had in Now, Voyager to 'live alone in single blessedness'. A chance encounter with an American businessman (Walter Huston) leads to a surprise romance. The hardship her character endured onscreen paled in comparison with the real drama in Mary Astor's life. After filming all day, she spent the evenings in a courtroom locked in a vicious custody battle. Astor's ex-husband attempted to sway the ruling in his favour by feeding excerpts from Mary's diary to the press. You can imagine the media frenzy at the news that Mary kept a scorecard which ranked the sexual performance of Hollywood's top leading men. The episode closes with a brief passage from Astor's memoir.

If stories about glamorous women who destroy men make your heart gladsome, Ruby Gentry will be your queen. Sure, she's sexually obsessed with Charlton Heston, but she's also willing to ruin him for being a grubby developer who pumps chemicals into the land, She's the hero we need these days. Ruby survives the men who wanted to control her, just like Jennifer Jones survived the controlling men in Hollywood.