MEN TRANSFORMED INTO DOCILE HOUSEWIVES IGNITED A NATIONAL
OK BACK AT A FEMINIST CLASSIC.BY DEVAN COGGAN @DEVANCOGGANupermarkets have never been
so scary. WithThe Stepford
Wives, director Bryan Forbes
crafted a thriller in bright
suburban sunlight, where
modern-minded 1975 women
are replaced by soulless an-
droids who will just die if they don’t get
this recipe. Four decades later, the film
stands as a creepy gender study that
cleverly explored women’s role in the
home and turned “Stepford wife” into a
household phrase. “It has passed into the
language,” says Nanette Newman, who
starred as the eerily cheery Carol Van
Sant and was married to Forbes until his
death in 2013. “A Stepford wife epito-
mizes somebody who is perfectly made
up, looks perfect, and presents a very
perfect facade.”
Based on the 1972 novel by Ira Levin
(Rosemary’s Baby),The Stepford Wives
follows Joanna Eberhart (Katharine Ross),
a New York City photographer whose
husband, Walter (Peter Masterson), per-
suades her to move to Connecticut.
There, they and their two children settle
in the idyllic town of Stepford, which has
an unnatural number of bland, smiling
women in long skirts. (Masterson’s real-
life daughter, Mary Stuart Masterson,
made her film debut as Joanna and Wal-
ter’s 7-year-old.) Joanna and best friend
Bobbie Markowe (Paula Prentiss) grow
suspicious as they watch new friends like
Charmaine Wimpiris (Tina Louise) change
personalities overnight, transforming into
obedient male fantasies. “It’s the first of
the women’s-lib kind of movies,” Prentiss
says. “It isn’t pounding you on the head.
It’s doing it through horror and comedy,
and that’s a good genre.”1975