• the217
• Movies + TV
• Rich and Famous

Related Media

Related Video

George Cukor, one of the grand directors of Hollywood’s golden era, had nearly two decades of creative obscurity before he met the challenge of his career in making a modern R-rated adaptation of an old Bette Davis film in the 1981 hidden gem, Rich and Famous.

This tale of a 20-year relationship between Liz Hamilton and Merry Noel Blake is sometimes trashy, like a pulp romance melodrama. The two start of as college girlfriends, whose lives take two different career paths, and eventually become rivals in the literary world. But the film’s uniqueness is in how it successfully explores the many types of relationships women are capable of having, whereas most films only explore these possibilities with men’s lives.

The film stars Jacqueline Bisset as Liz, a serious writer with a feminist following, and Candice Bergen as Merry, a housewife turned trashy novelist. Under the expert guidance of the old master Cukor, the man who got some of the greatest performances from screen legends Greta Garbo, Judy Garland, and Katharine Hepburn, Bisset and Bergen’s talents are channeled into their career-best performances. While on the surface this may seem like a chick flick, the decades long rivalry over fame, men, and loyalties makes for a surprisingly compelling film. Bisset is especially powerful as a successful modern woman who came of age in the ‘60s but never found complete satisfaction in her personal life.

Cukor’s Rich and Famous was his final film project in a career that included Camille, The Philadelphia Story, A Star is Born, and My Fair Lady. It’s a gem of a woman’s film in the legendary career of a master storyteller.