text: That's a bad, raunchy, predictable, tacky, salacious soap opera? "The Best of Everything" is just such a guilty pleasure for me, something along the lines of "Valley of the Dolls". I mean, "Best" has everything. Somebody gets pregnant out of wedlock (when's the last time you heard THAT phrase?), there are affairs everywhere, drinking, backstabbing, jealousy, and even a tragic but not altogether unexpected death.<br /><br />Caroline Bender (Hope Lange) and Mike Rice (the delicious Stephen Boyd) are the centerpieces of the goings-on. Their chemistry is immediate and is the glue that keeps this film from becoming too fragmented.<br /><br />Suzy Parker, the off-the-chart gorgeous ex-fashion model, appears as Gregg Adams, an aspiring stage actress, a role that, according to any biography I've ever read about her, was apparently not much of a stretch. But Parker does a surprisingly credible job here, more than holding her own in a couple of scenes opposite Louis Jourdan who plays David Savage. Jourdan probably took this role for the money and the special screen credit because he was clearly headed down the aging star/has-been road.<br /><br />Diane Baker is fine as naive, gullible April Morrison, Martha Hyer as Barbara Lemont has a particularly juicy storyline, and film legend Joan Crawford chews her usual serving of scenery as Amanda Farrow, another role, like Jourdan's Savage, that Crawford likely took for the paycheck.<br /><br />There is some obviously dated dialog and plot devices (this IS 1959), and the predictability of the soap opera genre. But if you like a good soap as I do, "The Best of Everything" will more than satisfy you.