csdcsdcsd2003

To think I was paying for a subscription service that included Brokenwood Mysteries a few years ago which I finally cancelled but here comes this show on PBS and it is even worse than I recall and why oh why country music every so often, booming out of an old car radio or whatever - even one of the detectives cringes whenever she has to listen to her superior's musical taste. The mysteries are child's play and the lingo hard to decipher but I continue watching because I like the characters, cops and villains both. Even if I nod off and miss half the show I can still come up with the correct suspect . . . Sigh.

I saw "The Best of Everything" and read the book upon which it was based 65 years ago all because of the crush I had on Stephen Boyd who portrays one of several book editors - although he does not appear to do much work during this glitzy look at the sexual encounters of female employees of a publishing company a decade before the legalization of abortion (an issue one of the employees faces), the advent of Casual Fridays and computers. I watched the film again recently on cable - my My MY how things have changed. The story centers around three recent hires who perform their menial office duties while dreaming of romance and/or marriage, as well as three other women also employed by the same publisher - an executive who regrets having had an affair with her married colleague, an older woman with a harsh work ethic and strong desire to latch onto a man pronto, and the droll-tongued director of the typing pool who is eagerly looking forward to her upcoming wedding. Boyd arrives at work hungover, his usual state in this picture, and while drinking at the water fountain also ogles Hope Lange as she takes a speed-typing test. She passes, is hired and begins her surprisingly easy upward climb in the publishing biz but in her heart she eagerly awaits wedding her college beau. Meanwhile, her two co-workers/roomies are pursuing their own pastimes - one is dating a fast guy with a fast car and the other is an aspiring actress who often sneaks off from work to audition for acting parts in theaters on nearby Broadway - getting entangled with a smooth-talking Frenchman in the process. All these subplots take the viewer on a tour of the urban jungle of late 1950s New York City where wolves in stylish menswear roam free. I was struck by how well dressed everyone was in The Best of Everything - as if office workers in those days always showed up for work looking as if they are instead going to Sunday church services, complete with costly skirt-suits, pearls, heels, hats and white gloves, which, as I recall, was not the way we working women were attired on weekdays but this is Hollywood, I reminded myself. There is hardly a church in sight except I think in the closing city scene after a long day at work, hinting at perhaps one happy ending - the 1950s idea of happiness anyway - for two of the characters. Another thing I wondered about, having had my own career related to book publishing, is all the typing going on at this work place - it's the authors who do the typing at home, not the publishers' office workers in a NYC high rise but again this is Hollywood. The theme song tells something of the story - sung by Johnny Mathis who does not appear in the film. I'd recommend this movie to those who wonder what life was like back then - a rather realistic but fictional tale told with some humor and heart.