When Ladies Meet

Adapted from Rachel Crothers' play, previously filmed in 1933 with Ann Harding and Myrna Loy. When the ladies in question are the supremely vulgar Joan Crawford and the svelte-but-deadly Greer Garson, quite a lot happens. Both in love with Herbert Marshall, the ladies have a lot of girl-talk before fighting it out. The screenplay, by Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), ensures maximum bitch-factor. Crawford, playing a sophisticated (and ridiculously well-dressed) novelist, loses Marshall but gets Robert Taylor as a kind of consolation prize. No fool, our Joan; she trades romance for looks, in which department Taylor could beat any contender in Tinseltown. Hovering over the whole proceedings is the motherly form of Spring Byington.