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Jungle Red!

Name: Jungle Red!
Brand: GLOBE PEQUOT
SKU: 9781493093946
Price: 66.99 AUD
Availability: InStock

GLOBE PEQUOTISBN: 9781493093946

The Making of MGM's the Women

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$66.99

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By Illeana Douglas
Imprint: GLOBE PEQUOT
Release Date: December 14, 2026
Format: HARDBACK
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Pages: 248

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The year 1939 produced such outstanding film classics as Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Wuthering Heights. No less critically acclaimed that year was The Women. A largely forgotten masterpiece, The Women is a glamorous but stinging satire about women forced by society to be defined by men. Jungle Red! The Making of MGM’s The Women restores this classic to its rightful place in Hollywood history, and its lasting legacy as a template for later female-driven projects like Sex and The City, and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Four MGM screenwriters, including a failing F. Scott Fitzgerald and an on-the-rise Donald Ogden Stewart, fought over their vision of The Women. Jane Murfin was completing her script when Anita Loos was brought in to work with her on a new draft for George Cukor, then recently fired from Gone with the Wind and determined to use The Women to get his career back on track. He became, as one newspaper called him, the lion tamer to the ladies. With sophisticated direction by Cukor, lavish fashions by Adrian, and gorgeous sets by Cedric Gibbons, its all-star cast was led by Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, and Joan Fontaine. Not a single male actor appeared, proving that women didn’t need men to rule the box office. Gossip columns were filled with stories about fierce on-set rivalries, which proved fairly combustible, leading one columnist to refer to the set as “a female kennel,” with behind the scenes antics as fierce and flamboyant as the film itself. The Los Angeles Times wrote, “The Women is a vitriolic masterpiece!” Now, it’s time to fall in love with The Women all over again! In Jungle Red! The Making of MGM’s The Women, and using never-before-seen photographs, memos, and script notes, Douglas writes not only how the film came together, but captures how the lives of the people who made it intersected before, during and after, and how the conflicts on-set and off resulted in the greatest film ever made about women . . . by a man!

Illeana Douglas has starred in films like Cape Fear, To Die For, Grace of My Heart, and Ghost World, as well as in TV shows like Goliath, Shrill, Entourage, and Six Feet Under. Douglas is the granddaughter of two-time Academy Award-winning actor Melvyn Douglas. A classic film lover, she hosted Trailblazing Women for Turner Classic Movies and participated in many film documentaries, including CNN: The Movies and Kino Lorbers Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers, which she also executive produced and hosted. Her first book, I Blame Dennis Hopper: And Other Stories from a Life Lived In and Out of the Movies was named Best Pop Culture book of the year in 2015 by Entertainment Weekly. Her most recent book, Connecticut in the Movies, was a regional bestseller in 2023.

“After devouring Jungle Red! in two sittings, I’m here to say that the multitalented Illeana Douglas was born to write about the making of one of the all-time funniest, bitchiest, wisest, most enjoyable movies of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Jungle Red! brims with the wit, intelligence, knowhow, self-assurance, and high style the subject deserves. It’s impressively researched, empathetic, amusingly reported, jam-packed with delicious gossip, and it assigns blame and lavishes credit on all the right parties—the playwright, the screenwriters, the director, the producer, the cast, the studio, the sexist culture in which it was created, the works. I’m guessing that any fan of The Women will savor this book’s intrigues, revelations, and delicious indulgences. Consider it the literary equivalent of the films high caloric Pancakes Barbara.”

— Stephen Rebello, author of Criss-Cross – Making Hitchcock’s Dazzling, Subversive Masterpiece Strangers on a Train

"In this fun and smart account, actor and film historian Douglas (Connecticut in the Movies) chronicles the making of The Women, a 1939 film featuring a cast of 135 women—including Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, and Norma Shearer—and no men. Douglas traces the long, circuitous development process for the film . . . [Jungle Red!] reveals the complexities inherent to getting a movie made, from stars buying the favor of the crew by having ice cream delivered to set to the perceived politics of a costume choice and camera setup. Film buffs will flock to this.”

— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[C]onversational yet info-packed . . . offers gossipy tidbits about [The Womens] offscreen feuds and fights but also provides plenty of background that might surprise even the most devoted fans . . . will please cineastes, Old Hollywood buffs, and readers of LGBTQIA+ histories.”

— Library Journal (starred review)

"With a breezy but incisive veracity, [Illeana] Douglas reveals the intrigue behind granular aspects of the production of [The Women], especially the personality conflicts that upended everything from costume design to set lighting. A film fans dream."

— Booklist (starred review)

"[An] engaging work . . . a book for cinema completists who like a deep dive into one film, with details about everyone from the art director to the hair stylist . . . contains juicy stories . . . A fun biography of an underappreciated cinema landmark."

— Kirkus Reviews

Jungle Red!

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