Class Notes ’33

August 30, 2010
Filed Under: Design, Film

The Group & a Polish poster I saved many moons ago. Similar, no?

Thanks to a pal’s knowhow, I recently managed to track down a copy of Sidney Lumet’s 1966 film The Group, based on Mary McCarthy’s (by all accounts, scandalous) novel. The first time I saw it was by accident, late one night on cable. I came in on the final ten minutes and couldn’t sleep until it aired again a few hours later to see what had led to that scene with a 19 year old Candice Bergen and Larry Hagman, talking about “lesbian slime.” I’ve not read the novel (Flippe, I look in your direction) but was stoked to find audio of McCarthy reading from it at the 92nd Street Y in 1963 here. It seems relatively tragic that something so potentially ephemeral could be available and yet the film version is nigh on impossible to get a hold of, bar catching it on TCM (here’s to you, Millie!).

This is “The Group” (from left to right)
Lakey Mona Lisa of the smoking room – for women only!
Dottie Thin women are more sensual. The nerve ends are closer to the surface.
Priss She fell in love – and lived to be an “experiment.”
Polly No money. . .no glamour. . .no defenses. . .poor Cinderella.
Kay The ‘outsider’ – at an Ivy League Ball.
Pokey Skin plumped full of oysters. . .money, money, money. . .yum, yum, yum!
Libby A big red scar in her face called a mouth.
Helena Many women do without sex. . .and thrive on it.

Girls in saddle shoes and women in veils aside, my favourite moment in the film is when you see — for a split second — Helena’s personal stationery, featuring herself as a Pan figure. It shows up again momentarily in a painting she did of the group in college, all the women in realistic birthday suits except for herself, cross-hooved on the ground, flute in tow.

Also of note: Mary McCarthy reviewing Joan Didion’s Democracy in the New York Times, 1984 — ”Democracy” is deeply mysterious, cryptic, enigmatic, like a tarot pack

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