Jungle Red!

How Hollywood's greatest actresses proved women didn't need leading men to rule the box office in one of cinema's most daring films. Nineteen thirty-nine is generally regarded as the greatest year in cinema history, producing such outstanding films as Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Goodbye, Mr.Chips, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, Stagecoach, and Ninotchka. No less a critically acclaimed or financially successful movie release that year was The Women, a film now regarded as one of the major films of what was a stellar year in Hollywood film production. But what made The Women unique is that not a single male actor appears in it, not even as a voice off-screen. Its all-female cast included some of the finest actresses of their era--Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Norma Shearer, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, and Butterfly McQueen--with costumes and sets designed by MGM's master stylists, Adrian and Cedric Gibbons. Based on the hit Broadway play by Clare Boothe Luce, the film adaptation went through several screenwriters--including a failing F. Scott Fitzgerald--before a final script was developed by Jane Murfin and Anita Loos. In Jungle Red!, Illeana Douglas explains how the film came together, the infighting among the cast both on and off camera, and how three gay men--director George Cukor, Adrian, and set designer Cedric Gibbons--combined to produce a stylish film that exposes the many faces of womanhood.