Thirteen Women (1932) is a psychological thriller film, produced by David O. Selznick and directed by George Archainbaud. It starred Myrna Loy, Irene Dunne, Ricardo Cortez, Florence Eldridge and Jill Esmond. Several characters were deleted, including those played by Leon Ames and Betty Furness (in her film debut at the age of sixteen).
It is notable for providing the only movie role for Peg Entwistle, who achieved notoriety when she committed suicide by jumping from the Hollywood sign shortly before the film's release. Entwistle's suicide occurred on 16 September 1932; the film was not released until the following October, and then only at the Roxy Theater in New York City. (See New York Times review of 15 October 1932.) It was then released in Los Angeles (See Los Angeles Times 4 November 1932) and a few other cities in November. A limited national release came in 1933.
Originally running seventy-three minutes, the studio edited fourteen minutes out of the picture after it received poor reviews. The film was edited and re-released in 1935 (post-Code) by RKO, hoping to turn a profit by cashing in on the growing popularity of stars Dunne and Loy.
Not a popular success either critically or financially, Thirteen Women has achieved a "cult classic" status in recent years. Modern critics have stated that its theme was ahead of its time and out of step with the tastes of 1930s cinema patrons.
Plot summary
Thirteen women, former members of a girl's college sorority, all visit a clairvoyant (C. Henry Gordon), who reads their horoscopes. The clairvoyant is under the influence of a woman named Ursula Georgi (Myrna Loy), a half-Javanese Eurasian woman who had been a student at the college. Subjected to harsh bigotry from the other women during her school days due to her mixed-race heritage and forced out of the college, Georgi exacts revenge by using the suborned swami to manipulate the women into killing themselves or each other.
The film follows a staple formula of slasher films, though it was new at the time of its release, by setting up the victims and killing them off one by one. By the end of film, and before she is apprehended, Loy's character has caused the deaths of all but one of the women. The sole survivor is Laura Stanhope (played by Dunne), the film's heroine, whose death would have pushed the envelope way too far even in Pre-Code days.
It is interesting to note several of the key differences between the film and Tiffany Thayer's book. Most notable, perhaps, is that Thayer (who was actually a man) has character Hazel Cousins (Played in the film by Peg Entwistle) as a lesbian who is seduced by a "dyke" (as Thayer writes) married to a lung doctor. Hazel never marries, nor commits murder. Instead she withers away from TB and starves herself to death in a sanitarium while suffering the heart ache of having been abandoned by her lover Martha.
Also of note are May and June Raskob. Both in the book and film, the girls are twin sisters who work in the circus, however, in Thayer's book May and June are not trapeze artists, but rather obese side-show attractions.
Credited Cast
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