Ross and Bryan
Forbesinto Bobbie’s stomach to see
whether she bleeds, Ross couldn’t
bring herself to deliver the lethal
blow—Forbes had to do it for her.
“I remember that it was very hard for
me, even though they had made this
sort of Styrofoam midsection [for
Prentiss],” Ross recalls. “It was very
hard for me to stab, even something
that wasn’t real. So that’s his hand
on the knife that you see going in.”
Desperate and alone, Joanna real-
izes she must be next, so she goes to
the men’s association to try to find
her missing children and escape
Stepford. After getting lost in the
mazelike building, she comes
face-to-face with her android
doppelgänger—virtually identical to
the real Joanna, except for her fuller
breasts and vacant black eyes. Forbes
and Ross discussed the best way to
portray the almost finished robot,
deciding that the last element to be
added would be the most human: the
eyes. Ross was fitted with custom
black contact lenses that made her
eyes water but gave her that dark,
inhuman look. “What they really
wanted was for them to not look
shiny, to look like these black holes,”
Ross says. “With my eyes tearing,WELCOME TO STEPFORD
Producer Edgar J. Scherick (The
Heartbreak Kid) recruited Forbes to
direct the screenplay by Oscar
winner William Goldman (Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), and
they soon set about finding their
Joanna. It wasn’t easy: Jean Seberg
(Breathless) was in the running but
ultimately said no. Diane Keaton met
with Forbes, but he later said she
turned down the script because her
analyst didn’t like it. And Tuesday
Weld (Play It as It Lays) was actually
cast but decided to drop out at the
last minute. In the end, the role of the
doomed heroine went to Katharine
Ross, then best known forThe Gradu-
ate and Goldman’sButch Cassidy.
The film was shot on location inConnecticut, with towns like Darien
and Fairfield standing in for the uto-
pian Stepford. “A lot of horror
movies are dark and gloomy and sin-
ister, but this was a horror that was
in sunlight with beautiful surround-
ings and beautiful people,” Newman
says. “It made it so it lulled you along
until it finally terrified you.”
Forbes came up with the signatureStepford style: Think Marilyn Mon-
roe meets June Cleaver. “When Bill
Goldman wrote the script, he said
he intended for it to be a bunch of
Playboy Bunnies,” Peter Masterson
says. Instead, Forbes dressed Bobbie
and Joanna in modern crop tops and
short shorts, while the Stepford
wives all wore pastels, long skirts,
and lots of ruffles.
As seemingly the only two wives in
Stepford without a spotless kitchen,
Joanna and the wisecracking Bobbie
strike up a fast friendship, and after
observing their neighbors’ bizarre
behavior and passion for cleaning
supplies, the pair start investigating.
“Little did I know that I was in for it,”
Prentiss says with a laugh.COFFEE, TEA, OR ME?
Before long, Bobbie herself falls vic-
tim, transforming overnight into a
cheerful housewife who curls her
hair, paints on the makeup, and
meticulously scrubs her kitchen.
Horrified by her friend’s metamor-
phosis, Joanna plans to leave her
husband and Stepford, but before
she can, she realizes her children are
missing. Desperate to find them, she
goes back to Bobbie’s, where she
learns the terrifying truth: The mem-
bers of the local men’s association
have been killing their wives and
supplanting them with high-tech,
subservient robots. In the final-act
scene where Joanna drives a knife (PREVIOUS SPREAD) EVERETT COLLECTION; (THIS PAGE) COLUMBIA PICTURES/PHOTOFEST (2)