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I'm not sure how the movers and shakers of television never saw the Dynasty like possibilities in It's A Woman's World. Who knows, maybe some sharp TV executive will read this critique and act on it.Lots of star power operating here and nicely mixed by Director Jean Negulesco. Automobile industry scion Clifton Webb is looking for a new general manager of Gifford Motors. His three top candidates are his franchise managers in Dallas (Van Heflin), Philadelphia (Fred MacMurray), and Kansas City(Cornel Wilde). Webb brings all three of them and their wives to New York so he evaluate all of them, including the spouses.Van Heflin and Texas gal Arlene Dahl are ambitious, but she far more than he. Fred MacMurray and Lauren Bacall are on the verge of splitting up over his total dedication to his job, Bacall doesn't want her hubby to have it because that ulcer he's got will exponentially increase and eventually kill him. Cornel Wilde would like the job, but not if it means upsetting homebody wife June Allyson. Who will get the nod. Watch the film boys and girls.Clifton Webb is still the aesthete and as acerbic as ever, but he's toned down some from Laura and The Razor's Edge and Belvedere films. Still he's a joy to watch, silently evaluating those three Hollywood hunks.One thing I can't figure out. All the major automobile companies main offices are in Detroit. So why isn't the film located there, especially since Webb and the other three visit a factory? Answer; Detroit just ain't got the glamor of the Big Apple, never has never will. It wouldn't be that much of a stretch from Kansas City to Detroit for June Allyson and Arlene Dahl would look real silly saying to Van Heflin that she's fallen in love with Detroit. This was before the Ewing family made Dallas chic, you know.It may have been a Woman's World back then, but a Woman's World consisted of just being in support of the male breadwinner. If the film were made today, one of the women would be an executive in the film. If not for reality, definitely for political correctness.Which brings up an interesting possibility. Clifton Webb was the closest thing to an out male movie star that gay people had back then. One of the big "inside" jokes of the time was one of the wives offering up her body to Webb for that promotion for hubby. If one of the husbands offered himself to Webb for his wife's promotion, I don't think Webb would have turned down any of them, especially Cornel Wilde.It's nice soap opera if your taste runs to that kind of film and maybe we'll see a 21st century version of it yet.
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