General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Opposite Sex

The Opposite Sex is a 1956 American musical comedy from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, directed by David Miller and produced by Joe Pasternak, that remakes the studio's 1939 film The Women, itself adapted from Clare Boothe Luce's 1936 Broadway play.¹ Where the play and the 1939 film featured no men on stage or screen, the remake changes the setting from Park Avenue society to show business and adds three elements the original lacked: men, music, and color.¹

Key fact	Detail
Source	Remake of The Women (1939), based on Clare Boothe Luce's 1936 play¹
Release	26 October 1956 per the Fashion History Timeline; The Numbers records a limited domestic release on November 15, 1956²^•³
Running time	117 minutes³
Key credits	Director David Miller; producer Joe Pasternak; screenplay Fay and Michael Kanin; costume design Helen Rose¹
Principal cast	June Allyson (Kay Hilliard), Joan Collins (Crystal Allen), Dolores Gray (Sylvia Fowler), Ann Sheridan (Amanda Penrose), Ann Miller (Gloria Dell), Leslie Nielsen (Steve Hilliard)¹
Format	Technicolor musical shot in Cinemascope and Metrocolor²
Reception	Most critics felt the additions of men and music were mistakes; many compared the picture unfavorably to the 1939 film¹^•²

Spoilers

Plot and characters

June Allyson plays Kay Hilliard, a former musical theater star and happy wife and mother, until her gossipy friends discover that her husband Steve, a theatrical producer played by Leslie Nielsen, is having an affair with the showgirl Crystal Allen, played by Joan Collins. Kay goes to Reno to file for divorce, loses her husband to her rival, and then sets out to win him back.¹ In the end the husband returns to his original wife, aided by the fact that Crystal has fallen for a cowpoke from Reno.⁴

The supporting cast keeps the ensemble structure of the original. Dolores Gray plays Sylvia Fowler, the cattiest member of the circle; Ann Sheridan plays Amanda Penrose, an acerbic writer and Kay's best friend; Ann Miller plays a showgirl in Reno; Agnes Moorehead plays a much-married countess; and Joan Blondell plays an always-pregnant matron.¹ Jeff Richards appears as a singing cowboy, and the male cast also includes Sam Levene and Bill Goodwin.¹^•⁴ The protagonist's name was changed from Mary Haines in the 1939 film to Kay Hilliard, and the idle Manhattan socialites of the original were recast as show business wives.²

Production

MGM assigned the remake to producer Joe Pasternak and director David Miller, who assembled an all-star cast the Fashion History Timeline describes as of comparable caliber to the 1939 original.² The screenplay was written by Fay and Michael Kanin, based on Luce's play.¹ In a February 1956 Los Angeles Times article, the Kanins said the studio included men in the film because "you can't play a love scene alone."⁵ Casting changed during development: by August 1955 the studio had planned to star Doris Day and Howard Keel, and later cast Eleanor Parker in the lead role, before June Allyson took the part.⁵

For Allyson the film was a return to MGM, where she had spent a decade as one of its most popular stars before leaving in 1953; The Opposite Sex would be her last musical at the studio.¹ Most of the songs were new, written by Nicholas Brodszky and Sammy Cahn, and the standout number is a reprise of "Young Man With a Horn," a duet between Allyson and trumpeter Harry James recalling her early hit from Two Girls and a Sailor (1944).¹

Behind the camera. Helen Rose designed the costumes, Cedric Gibbons served as art director, and Robert Bronner shot the film in color.¹^•² The picture was shot in Cinemascope and Metrocolor, which the fashion-history analysis credits with enhancing the gowns and decor, and Rose used color to differentiate the three leading characters played by Allyson, Collins, and Gray.²

Fashion and marketing

The remake retained the fashion focus of the 1939 film. Reviewers wrote that The Opposite Sex "is as much a fashion show as it is a musical," and MGM's publicity department again used fashion to market the picture, sending three models on tour putting on fashion shows in leading department stores.² Comparing the two films shows the change in the fashionable silhouette over seventeen years and a world war: Adrian's 1939 designs emphasized the shoulders, while Helen Rose's 1956 designs consistently emphasized the slimness of the waist.²

Audience expectations had also shifted. Where a ten-minute Technicolor fashion show had been spectacle enough in 1939, 1956 audiences demanded flashy musical numbers, and the film's fashion sequence resorts to a stylized "striptease" to hold attention.²

Reception and assessment

Critics largely judged the remake against its source. The American Film Institute records that many reviewers "compared the picture unfavorably to the earlier film version, stating that the biting humor of the original had been lost."² Turner Classic Movies summarizes the consensus: most critics felt the additions of men and music were mistakes, though the color, along with the cast, helped mitigate them.¹ John McCarten's 1956 New Yorker review found the proceedings cluttered with shattered marriages and the male cast members functioning "as hopelessly as male spiders," while conceding the women had all the best acting assignments.⁴ Reviewer Dennis Schwartz later called it a remake that is glossier and softer in its satire than Cukor's original, adding Cinemascope, music, and men "to no avail."⁶

Two casting choices drew particular comment. Dolores Gray, a stage musical performer, sings only the title song over the opening credits, and Ann Miller, a noted dancer, has no dance numbers in the film at all.¹ For Joan Collins, the role of Crystal was, by her own account in her autobiography, her first "grown-up role," a character she described as the embryo of Alexis, the part she later played in the 1980s television series Dynasty.¹

TCM's retrospective assessment credits the film's assets as Robert Bronner's color cinematography and Helen Rose's haute-fifties costumes, and places the picture among the last examples of 1950s glamour and MGM's trademark deluxe style.¹ The story itself has continued to be remade, with a Broadway revival of the play in 2001 and a 2008 film adaptation of The Women directed by Diane English.²^•⁷

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026