The Best of Everything
by Rona Jaffe
The 1959 film The Best of Everything is one of my favorite movies of all time. I’d seen it over a dozen times before cracking open the book’s spine. Needless to say, I was keenly aware of all book-to-screen differences. Although Rona Jaffe’s writing was beautiful at times and as realistic as a 1950 soap opera could be, I couldn’t separate my love for the movie. The novel was the original creation, and deserves my gratitude, but the deviations from the film’s middle and end made me loathe some of Jaffe’s choices.
Six women are employed at Fabian Publishing, four as secretaries, one as a beauty magazine editor, and one as a main manuscript editors. All in search of love—mostly in the wrong places—the women try to obtain the “best of everything” by striking a balance at work and at home. This is the greatest difference between the film and the original novel. As per Hollywood’s usual, the characters are much more in search of love—namely, marriage—than their careers. The film is much tamer, without the raunchier plot lines that might put ideas into impressionable women’s minds. The novel, as groundbreaking as its predecessor Peyton Place, explores the 1950s woman’s journey to self-fulfillment. Where earlier in the decade, she was expected to marry quickly and remain content as a housewife and mother, the 1959 woman was different. She was active in the workplace, marrying later in her life, perhaps taking a lover or two before her marriage, and not content to stay at home afterwards.
The Best of Everything explores every angle of this transformation, with each of the six women. There’s the traditional woman, using her secretarial job as a means to an end, fully intent on retiring after her marriage. There’s the divorced single mother, working out of necessity. And there’s the career woman who never had time for a family, at home with nothing but her regrets. All of the women have affairs and weigh the balance between work and love differently in their own life journeys.
If read before watching the film, it will probably be a highly enjoyable, scandalous read. If read after the film, you’ll probably feel as frustrated as I felt. Whatever your decision, add the movie to your watch-list. Stephen Boyd will become your new celebrity boyfriend. That is, if you can steal him from me!
Six women are employed at Fabian Publishing, four as secretaries, one as a beauty magazine editor, and one as a main manuscript editors. All in search of love—mostly in the wrong places—the women try to obtain the “best of everything” by striking a balance at work and at home. This is the greatest difference between the film and the original novel. As per Hollywood’s usual, the characters are much more in search of love—namely, marriage—than their careers. The film is much tamer, without the raunchier plot lines that might put ideas into impressionable women’s minds. The novel, as groundbreaking as its predecessor Peyton Place, explores the 1950s woman’s journey to self-fulfillment. Where earlier in the decade, she was expected to marry quickly and remain content as a housewife and mother, the 1959 woman was different. She was active in the workplace, marrying later in her life, perhaps taking a lover or two before her marriage, and not content to stay at home afterwards.
The Best of Everything explores every angle of this transformation, with each of the six women. There’s the traditional woman, using her secretarial job as a means to an end, fully intent on retiring after her marriage. There’s the divorced single mother, working out of necessity. And there’s the career woman who never had time for a family, at home with nothing but her regrets. All of the women have affairs and weigh the balance between work and love differently in their own life journeys.
If read before watching the film, it will probably be a highly enjoyable, scandalous read. If read after the film, you’ll probably feel as frustrated as I felt. Whatever your decision, add the movie to your watch-list. Stephen Boyd will become your new celebrity boyfriend. That is, if you can steal him from me!