Word: joanna
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...Gorham, Kans., to shoot a new Peter Bogdanovich movie called Paper Moon, Ryan O'Neal carried on devotedly with his newest costar. That was only natural, since she is his nine-year-old daughter Tatum (by his first wife, Joanna Moore). The pair amused a group of school children by performing balancing tricks along a deserted railroad track, and when Tatum earned more applause than her father, O'Neal remarked, "I guess it's natural with her. Her mother was an actress and so was my mother. It's in the family." Asked...
Unspeakable changes in personality occur almost overnight among wives soon after they move to Stepford. With mingled horror and disbelief, Joanna, the heroine of this minor movie in hardback form, questions the ten-year-old son of a woman friend who has been thus mysteriously afflicted...
...over the way your mother's changed," says Joanna. "Neither can I," the boy replies...
Those of us who are not against a spot of hot oatmeal on a frosty morning, may wonder at Joanna's perturbation. But Joanna is a clever modern wife. She has a husband who cheerfully shares her household chores. Joanna has just moved to Stepford too. Gradually - about 27½ steps behind the reader - she puts the whole sinister plot together. Why Stepford wives never use baby sitters. Why Stepford wives put the packages neatly in their carts at the supermarket. Why the Stepford Women's Club closed down shortly after it was addressed by Betty Friedan...
This is really a short story with delusions of grandeur. But Levin skillfully manipulates the reader's feelings of suspense about Joanna, and whether or not she could do with a little domestic transformation - thus catering to male chauvinists and Women's Liberationists alike. The final message is clear and simple. As an assortment of duennas in 1930s movies used to warn their pretty charges (Frances Dee, Annabella, Maureen O'Sullivan): "Men are interested in just two things. And food's the other...