Sadly Over-hyped

A lot of fun.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Caroline Bender (Hope Lange) gets a job at a publishing company staffed almost exclusively by women. She manages to work her way up the company ladder even though her real desire is to marry her sweetheart and settle down. That falls through when he impulsively marries another woman (who has money). This a very soapy drama that relies heavily on outdated societal expectations, namely among women. All of them want to get married, even the one who gave up the prospect of marriage for career success (Joan Crawford), and will go to extreme lengths to achieve that goal. Some find happiness, others get pregnant out of wedlock, and still others resort to stalking. In spite of the somewhat ridiculous plot twists, this is an enjoyable and stylish film with a capable and beautiful cast. The sets are reminiscent of Mad Men and they're photographed wonderfully.

Yes, after getting off to a rather poor start, this film grows on you. Or at least it grew on me. The beginning, setting the stage, seemed so very cliché, but as the film progresses we see that most of the characters have a fairly interesting story to tell us.The real treasure here is Hope Lange, whom I remember enjoying in movies and on television quite a bit before she faded in my memory. She's excellent here, an probably the highlight of the film. As the main character, she matures in her character's role from naive secretary to executive...and makes it believable.On the other hand, Stephen Boyd, whom she eventually appears to fall in love with, does little more than stand around in a few scenes. And in those few scenes he was pretty ineffectual. Surprisingly, he was stunning in his very next film -- "Ben-Hur"! I also wan't very impressed with Suzy Parker as a secretary. Her role is significant, but somehow she just didn't have star quality...other than her looks.I would like to have seen more of Martha Hyer, a very underrated actress. Her part is not that significant here.Diane Baker was quite good as another of the secretaries, and significant parts of the film revolve around her affair and later romance.Brian Aherne is around as an older editor who can't keep his hands off the young secretaries. He's okay, but I was not impressed.Louis Jourdan is here as a Broadway director, and although his role is not large, it is significant, and he handles it well.And then we have Joan Crawford. Her present-day image as a witch (or something that rhymes with that)...well, this role helped cement that image. But, her role is my biggest criticism of the film. Almost seems like they sat around saying, "Hey, we need a witch to counteract with a couple of the characters. Maybe we could get that over-the-hill actress Joan Crawford." It almost becomes camp. This was Crawford's last film before she fell into horror pictures.The acting runs from hot to cold in this film (as described above), and Crawford is little more than a distraction. But there's a lot to like here, as well. It really does have quite a good story line, however, and as previously mentioned, Hope Lange is superb.

If your a fan of drama, this movie is for you. Hope Lange stars as Miss Bender, a young woman on the way up out of college after the editor job held by Joan Crawford. The setting is New York Ctity.The project is romance. The industry is office, publishing office. There are several women in this cast who are not well known but who hold their own quite nicely. This 1959 era is sort of out of date with what was coming in the 1960's.This is the rare film that features Stephen Boyd the same year he was doing Ben Hur which won a lot of Oscars this year and Louis Jourdan as powerful men who are after the women in the cast. The best of everything which is the songs title tune, seems to be that these women, within limits, can get everything they want.Being the 1950's, they seem to want love and marriage. Lange's character, Miss Bender, wants a career too. That is a little different for a 1959 setting. That might be the main difference in this film from most films of this period.If you like drama, New York City in the 1950's, or are a fan of Boyd, Jourdan or Hope Lang, this movie is for you. If you like romantic drama, this is your film too. While not a big classic, at least it is a film that tells a story, though a bit outdated today. Its sets look at lot like AMC's Mad Men done years later. In fact, it is story wise.

Although dated, this film is definitely worth a watch. I saw it about eight times as a teenager when it opened and it changed my life...I just HAD to live in New York. It has great opening shots of the Manhattan skyline with Johnny Mathis crooning "Romance is still...the best of everything..." that rival those of West Side Story. There is a rather stilted performance by the world's REAL first Supermodel, Suzy Parker (sorry about that, Janice D.), but it's great eye-candy! It also offers a bit of insight into late 1950's American mores--our obsession with (and repression of) sex (in the workplace, no less!), romance, and marriage before women's lib. It represents an era in which New York was at it's finest and a super-bitchy performance by Joan Crawford is just the icing on the cake.