Stanley Cox: "I'm gonna need a working woman; that's you. You're gonna need a broad shoulder; that's me."
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NOTE: This is NOT a DVD. It's a 12" Laserdisc. These record album-sized predecessors of today's DVDs were visually superior. Until the advent of Blu-Ray technology, Laserdiscs were the best video format available.

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STANLEY & IRIS is director Martin Ritt's final film. It was also Jane Fonda's last movie until her 2005 comeback in&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/MONSTER-IN-LAW/dp/B000A343RI/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">MONSTER-IN-LAW</a>.

This is one of my least favorite Robert De Niro pictures. Although his portrayal of the simpleminded Stanley is believable, De Niro and Fonda have little screen chemistry.

The cast includes Feodor Chaliapin Jr., son of the renowned Russian-born basso profundo opera star. Fourth-billed Martha Plimpton is Keith Carradine's daughter. Bit player Kathy Kinney is best known as Mimi Bobeck on&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/THE-DREW-CAREY-SHOW/dp/B000MGBLFK/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">THE DREW CAREY SHOW</a>. (This Wisconsin native is allergic to cheese!)

The movie's plot is fairly simple: a romance that blooms from an unlikely pairing. Stanley loses his cafeteria cook's job because he's illiterate and is thus forced to put his dad in a home, where the old guy dies soon after. Stanley prevails upon Iris to teach him to read, blah, blah, blah, happy ending.

Not my cuppa java.

Parenthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 IMDb viewer poll rating.

(6.0) Stanley & Iris (1989) - Jane Fonda/Robert De Niro/Swoozie Kurtz/Martha Plimpton/Jamey Sheriden/Feodor Chaliapin Jr./Kathy Kinney/Stephen Root
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"A turn in the tale is not the end." - Chapter Nineteen

Iron Cast made my heart ache for the potent brew of true friendship. It filled me up, patted me down for spare emotions, and set me down gently. I have a feeling Ada and Corinne will be with me for a while.

Living in Boston myself, I enjoyed being able to picture the landmarks of 1919 Boston, smoke unfurling from parted lips and sidewalk gratings as my daring new friends Ada and Corinne led me through their colorful, dangerous adventures.

This book is for the outcasts. Welcome to the Cast Iron.
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If you want someone to do the work for you, this is not that book. If you are ready to dig deep within yourself and heal, this is that book. Nyeesha has taken us to a place where we are faced with ourselves individually and collectively. As we stand at our mirrors, we free ourselves by our stories.
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This is really the one what is relevant my job however it is a bit wide. But I keep wearing it.
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Sherry Stanfa-Stanley dares herself to find new horizons to her everyday life - she dreams up a year's worth of challenges and then goes out and does them. More than most of us would have the guts to do. Along the way she has some embarrassing, some puzzling, and some laugh out loud adventures. It's a fun read. Now where did I put that old lady wish list I just drew up?
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Self-leadership meets the Situational Leadership II model in this updated business parable from management guru Ken Blanchard and his two co-workers, Susan Fowler and Laurence Hawkins. In this story, our main character learns the importance of diagnosing where he is on the development continuum within the SLII model, then advocating for the corresponding leadership style from his boss.

Ultimately, what we learn about self leaders is that they are willing to challenge assumed constraints, activate their power resources, and be proactive about getting what they need. Assumed constraints are beliefs that limit ones experience, such as projecting a past failure on a current challenge. Gaining an understanding of assumed constraints and their impact may be the most important insights from reading the book.

Self Leadership and the One Minute Manager is a quick read and a worthwhile resource for leadership development. Consider reading and discussing it in a team setting to create greater awareness of different leadership styles and ways for workers to better communicate what they need from their bosses.
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Four women from different backgrounds all find themselves working within an office heavily dominated by men.  Caroline Bender is jilted by her high school sweetheart, and moves to New York in search of a new life; she is a woman caught much between two worlds: the want to have the cookie-cutter lifestyle of the time (marry young, have children) and move forward in her career as a book editor.  Gregg is a struggling actress, obsessed with her director boyfriend to an unhealthy degree.  April is a mountain girl from Colorado intent on blending into the Big Apple, and meeting the man of her dreams.  Barbara is a divorc&eacute; raising her young daughter on her own, while balancing career and her love of a married man. It is a touch of Mad Men coupled with womanly drama.  I would not call it a classic, but it is a quick read, and an interesting one.
I would compare this book to the obvious: Payton's Place, Valley of the Dolls, Satisfaction, etc.
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Yeah....im going  to have to ask you to work tomorrow, and Sunday too
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This was an interesting, if not exactly gripping, account of a middle class family in Manchester during Victorian times, times when women were not expected to want more than a husband, house and children.

Like her mother before her, Elizabeth Sanderson is dedicated to helping the impoverished and downtrodden of Manchester. Her marriage to Alfred Moberley appears to be a marriage of convenience that allows her to continue her good-works. Alfred is an artist and interior designer who designs wallpaper and fabrics for wealthy home owners and although his business is doing well, Elizabeth's upbringing does not allow her to employ servants to do the work she feels she should do herself. When Alethea (Ally) is born Elizabeth is totally out of her depth and has no idea how to care for this squalling baby, so she puts her out of earshot. This neglect continues throughout Ally's life and as a result, she is always striving to impress her mother, or even to be noticed.

She is a studious, conscientious child, in an era when girls did not receive much in the way of education, but she is driven to study and eventually to become a doctor, determined to finally make an impression on her mother. Her sister, May seems less affected by their mother's behaviour and much less serious. She is motivated by the more frivolous side of life.

I was fascinated by the mention of the the Contagious Diseases Act of 1864, which allowed police to detain and inspect any woman walking alone, on suspicion of prostitution. Under the pretext of reducing sexually transferred diseases, women could be subjected to invasive testing on little evidence and it became hazardous to leave the home without a male escort.
This Act was one of the motivations for Elizabeth to press Ally into the medical profession. She felt that women should receive attention from sympathetic female doctors rather than uncaring male ones. It was a very difficult time to become a female doctor, though doors were finally beginning to open. Male colleagues tended to be skeptical and scathing of their female counterparts.

During this time, Ally stayed with her less zealous aunt and realised how different other families were from her own. She also developed a close friendship with another student and finally found a guy who she could relate to.
The story continues with Signs for Lost Children, which follows Ally's work in a mental institution and her husband's time as an engineer in Japan.

I listened to the audio version, well read by Meriel Scholfield, but one problem of this medium was that the introductory descriptions of artworks and their provenances at the beginning of each chapter didn't really work in an audiobook and they became a bit irritating.
3.5 stars.
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That's violinist Paul Boray's working-class mother's opinion about the affair her son is having with the older and unhappily married socialite Helen Wright (Joan Crawford). What's Helen's problem? Does she attach herself to male artists like Paul because she believes that, as a woman, she's incapable achieving anything creative on her own? Crawford's character wears clothing with enormous shoulder pads--large and out-of-date even by the fashion standards of the time (Gina, the virtuous girl that Paul dumps, dresses in clothing that already looks ahead to Dior's New Look). Helen's big-shouldered outfits give her a masculine look that suggests she longs for the life of fame and achievement that Paul attains (with her financial and emotional support, to her credit). What's stopping her? She's hooked on her husband's money and she's an alcoholic (another black mark against her in Paul's mother's book). Crawford gives a great, scenery-chewing performance. Sure she's a mess, but she's a lot more interesting than anyone else in the film. John Garfield is attractive as Paul Boray and he's a strong actor, but he's left playing second fiddle (excuse the pun) to Crawford's non-stop histrionics. Oscar Levant plays his usual role as the wisecracking sidekick.

Humoresque has a left-wing political component to it that's easy for us to miss today. Paul argues with his mother beneath a large portrait of FDR. Gina, also a musician, volunteers to work with a youth orchestra composed of children of the poor. Helen could use her money and influence to genuinely help young artists and do real good in the world--but she's too self-involved to to see beyond her own needs. "Here's to the time where we were all little girls, and no one asked us to marry!" Helen says bitterly to herself as she pours herself yet another drink. And she's not the only woman who's stuck. Helen, Paul's mother and Gina all face a problematic future as women in a postwar America that marginalizes them.
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The title of this review is a bit oblique, but it is the best I could do to bring to life a time when so many of the women of the 1970s whom I knew in New York City - restless, talented, sensitive, feeling valueless in the society we lived in - became aware of the many homeless women around us. We called them "bag ladies." We would get off the subway, on our way to work we didn't love and that didn't satisfy but was necessary, and meet the open hand and often howling mind of a woman in rags, hungry for far more than our spare change could ever buy for her. Sometimes she would shout at us, whether we gave her money or not. Sometimes she was clearly lost in a mind-world far far away. We would say to each other, in whispers, "I could be that bag lady." And we meant it.

We were struggling to find a place, work that was meaningful, a sense of community, in a city as big as a not-small country, and she was struggling to stay alive. She terrified us. We felt that we were slowly losing control, slowly sliding into her life. We felt helpless to prevent it.

Most of us didn't become homeless, of course, no matter how near madness we skated. We had enough sense of self to do whatever it took to survive and to continue to move on. But we didn't forget these women. We had quite limited access to education and opportunities that would help us achieve meaningful and secure lives. But whatever we lacked (that our brothers did not), we had far more than these women did. (Why us? Why them? There but for . . .) Still, too often, meeting the outstretched hand and the wild eyes, we flinched away. Not because we didn't feel but because we felt all too rawly.

Stephanie Golden did not flinch. She worked in a shelter for many years, exploring the real lives of these women even as she sought the connections between them and herself. What could help each of them get food and shelter? And why did so many women feel this sense of danger?

This book brings a journey to life. What is most significant is that while many people who seek to connect the outside with the inside end up telling their own stories, Stephanie tells the stories of the women themselves. This book won't comfort those of us who have lived many decades feeling "outside" and afraid. But it will bring some healthy truths to our thoughts, and some cognizance of the likenesses between those women and ourselves. And it will give us more than a hint of what is solely their own.

Today, in 2014, on the streets of all cities, there are more homeless people than ever, most driven there by cataclysms quite different from those that flayed the haunting women of the past. Their pain is also palpable, and we surely should go far beyond hand-outs to help people who have fallen prey to a society that is uncaring. Three strikes and you're out applies to more than baseball and the criminal world. Our society is unkind - there is no longer a meaningful safety net for anyone, let alone lost, wandering bag ladies. This book will let you see into the new lost, the women of the past, and into yourself.

By waking you up, it can make you kinder - perhaps even willing to work for a more compassionate society.
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Now that I understand all of humanity, I will take over the world.
That, and beautiful women are lined up to help me...

Truly and insightful tome.
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I loved this book by Jennifer Scanlon. With hard work, savvy and a couple of lucky breaks, Helen became a pioneer of the second wave of feminism, although generally unacknowledged.  What Jennifer Scanlon does well is show that Helen Gurley Brown sits in the center of the feminist movement, between the more widely lauded Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem.  A highly educated woman that became a housewife, Betty thought women needed escape from the oppressive suburban domesticity trap. Work was necessary for her fulfillment and happiness, which is easy to preach when a husbands finances had already secured survival.  HGB on the other hand, had a firm grasp on the working class perspective:  womens equality was necessary for survival, especially single women, who did not have a husbands finances to rely upon.  Gloria Steinem was young and more radical, seeing womens equality as an essential human right with the voracity of the civil rights movement.  For Friedan, freedom came from the intellectual mind and women should reject the society dictated feminine monster as they became more enlightened.  Steinem wanted women to violently shake off the shackles of feminine oppression-bras and all. Helen Gurley Brown was all about the feminine, monster though it may be.  She never wanted women to forget the assets of femininity, and encouraged their full human expression in all ways;  makeup, wardrobe, sex and intellect sharing the same level of importance. To Helen, sex and intellect were twin powers that when wielded effectively, helped women progress in arenas that were not often welcoming.  Where Friedan was intellectual, Steinem was action-packed, Helen Gurley Brown was practical. She encouraged power and independence by working within the system and using every asset in your arsenal.  Work hard, be smart, but wear the right bra (or take it off if necessary). The fact that her target audience was the uneducated, working class, and often single woman, gave  voice to a neglected majority in the feminist fight. She introduced the world to the lipstick feminist and made sure we all know that our smart is beautiful, pretty is powerful and nothing is as fun as achieving.
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The Atlantic article is pretty darn good and will suffice for most.  If you were really taken with the candor and insights in the article and long for more space and time to think about women's issues and your own, then you'll appreciate this book.  Her story is personal yet universal, admittedly for a certain demographic.  Pair it with "Lean In" for some great discussion.  I'm just glad she's keeping the conversation going because as she clearly shows, there aren't easy answers.
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In just a few short years Ms. Williams has gotten herself the support of a big mangement company behind her, but frankly Dar's magic comes out of an acoustic guitar.  Sure, it's great the AGF people were able to get some top-notch studio/session players to join her on the road, but that's exactly what you are hearing.  Hired hands being paid to do a job, period.  From the reports I've heard she should have cut a live album with the folks that are touring with her now to, ironically, support this album.
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This will be a work bra for me lol. It gives the torpedo t**ts, but I am well supported and not spilling out. Heads up, this bra is not padded of lined.
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Never can be too thin or too rich..., even if you need to pick a toad to get you there. Validation of the 1950 mindset that a woman needs a
rich if broken down man to "protect" her and to define her. Sadly compelling.