Peggy Day (but that's just because I love Joan Fontaine so much)! Otherwise, my favorite characters are Miriam and Sylvia!
"I am nobody's fool. Least of all, yours."
Mrs. Morehead..(the great Lucile Watson)Mary's Mother. Little Mary,(Virginia Weidler, a gifted child star who had already played Norma Shearer's daughter in MARIE ANTOINETTE)Mary, because I love Norma Shearer.
For the other Women it's equal between Rosalind Russell and Paulette Goddard.
The Best performance of all of them was Joan Crawford as Crystal.
Game, Set, Match! She stole the whole film.
I absolutely LOATHE Joan Crawford, but I love this performance from the first word to the last.
JS
Peggy. She was so gentle and sweet.
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Virginia Grey's character, Pat. She's only there for a few minutes, but she's the best. Of the regular cast, I'd probably go with Sylvia. The way she bites Miriam gets me every time.
"Why do you find it so hard to believe?"
"Why do you find it so easy?"
"It's never BEEN easy!"
All of them were so catty and mean, lol. But fun to watch.
I liked the older maid who told the younger one to listen in on Mary and Stephen arguing. I don't recall her name...but she was hilarious.
"You can't trust none of 'em no further than I can kick this lemon pie."
Love her!
..your dead end dreams don't make you =)
Agreed, she was a riot. Mary Cecil as "Maggie," the Manhattan cook.
My favorite was Mrs. Morehead. I love wise old ladies who have no patience for gossipy cat-women.
Always liked Norma Shearer's character, Mary. I like her character arch. The way Mary changes & grows and becomes smarter & stronger from the experience ultimately.
Also love Mary's mother, Mr. Morehead. The talk she gives Mary is one of the most fantastic things I've ever heard regarding cheating!
Peggy.
shareMrs. Morehead's advice to daughter Mary is both very good and very awful.
When she insists Mary say nothing and not fly off the handle that very night and force a showdown with Stephen, she's absolutely right. Mary's found out, but Stephen doesn't know that Mary's found out, which gives Mary time to think and strategize.
I wish I could have walked Mary's mother to her car after that scene: "Forgive me, Mrs. Morehead as I couldn't help overhearing. But if I may suggest, ma'am, you are a woman of means and there are any number of good private detectives available to investigate the past of this perfume-seller, and quite likely ma'am, what they'd find could well be very disillusioning to a good man like your son-in-law..."
And the entire movie shows how good her other advice is: "Don't confide in your girlfriends. If you let them advise you, they'll see to it in the name of friendship that you lose your husband and your home." How true, especially when Sylvia all but pushes Mary into Crystal's dressing room.
But it's that long-term piece of advice from Mary's mother that's terrifying: "Keep still. Keep still, when you're fairly aching to talk. It's about the only sacrifice spoiled women like us ever have to make to keep our men."
To do exactly as her mother says on that point, is to silently acquiesce in Stephen's disloyalty and invite a succession of Crystals into their lives. And that's no marriage.
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Truth is a hard master, and costly to serve, but it simplifies every problem.
Miriam. Paulette Goddard was ALWAYS such a class act!!!
(Mind you, pretty much everybody's great in this film!)