...That MGM really did lose its future when Irving Thalberg died. It was just a matter of time. Granted, it took several years for the downhill slide to begin around 1946, but I think Thalberg could have weathered the post war storm of changing audience tastes.

This film is a saccharine Technicolor musical remake of the superior black and white 1939 film "The Women". The original has the same basic story - a woman's pride is wounded over an affair her husband has, so she divorces him, only to change her mind right after the divorce is final. But it's too late, the husband has married the homewrecker.

Some things are just not MGM's fault- director David Miller is no George Cukor, the studio system is on its last legs and MGM can no longer command the kind of star power that it did in 1939, and even if they could remedy these first two things, MGM is a studio that has lost its way.

This film also loses the gimmick of the original by actually having men in the cast rather than just alluding to them. But the biggest problem is Joan Collins. She is just playing this too nice to be Crystal Allen, the other woman. Joan Crawford in the same role in the 1939 version was just the right balance of scheming, outwardly nice, and closeted nasty to get the job done.

And 50 year old Joan Blondell is playing a pregnant woman? Yikes!

Can't I say at least one thing good about it? The musical number with the revolving purple cellos is super cool.

I'd skip this unless you are a student of film history. In that case I'd watch 1939's "The Women" first, and then this film.

My main problem with this musical remake version of The Women is that it was not just confined to The Opposite Sex. When Clare Booth Luce wrote her original work with only female roles it was not just as a gimmick. She wanted her viewers to use their imaginations especially in the roles of the husbands as to what these men were like and whether The Women should let them go or fight for them.

That is now lost with the men being flesh and blood now. Leslie Nielsen in the role of Steven Hilliard (formerly Haines) is in an impossible job and he comes off as insipid. One wonders whether June Allyson wants him back for himself or just to reassemble the American family for the sake of her daughter Sandy Descher.

Jeff Richards can't compare to the imaginary Buck Winston we have in our minds from the first version. In fact he's more Joe Buck than Buck Winston.

Joan Collins in her salad years is just getting into those femme fatal roles she took out a patent on. Of course she's no Joan Crawford, but who is. And Dolores Gray carries right on from where Rosalind Russell left of as Sylvia Fowler.

No great songs from writers Nicholas Brodzsky and Sammy Cahn are in this score.

It's not a bad film, but in comparison to the original this is like a summer stock production.

Plush musical remake of 1939's "The Women", which in turn was based on Clare Booth Luce's catty play, about gossiping females in New York City getting involved in each other's love lives. Artificial fluff with a good cast (this time including males as well),but completely disposable and unmemorable, never offering up anything substantial. There's an unnecessary Broadway sub-plot shoehorned in as an excuse to feature several songs, and the script is arranged carefully so that each well-dressed lady gets a choice moment in the spotlight. June Allyson, playing the put-upon wife of Leslie Nielsen (!),gives the movie's best performance, although Joan Collins and Ann Miller certainly get their licks in. **1/2 from ****