McGinnis Nine-Nine: “The Company Girls”

Part of a celebration of Robert McGinnis’ XCIXth birthday.



The Company Girls, by Mona Williams (Gold Medal, 1965).

Vermona “Mona” March Goodwyn (1905-1991) might well have abandoned her dreams of becoming a writer, after having her first completed novel rejected by an editor named Henry Meade Williams. Instead, six years later, in 1929, she married Williams, the son of journalist, author, and Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Jesse Lynch Williams. They would go on to bear three children together. She would publish a short stack of novels and at least one collection of poetry, proving her husband dead wrong about her literary potential.

I can’t say I know much about The Company Girls. In all likelihood, its Robert McGinnis-created front teases sexy and unwholesome doings that the story inside fails to deliver without reservation. (This, after all, is a Gold Medal release, not a paperback from mid-20th-century soft-core sleaze publishers such as Midwood or Beacon.) The back-cover copy does, though, reinforce the presumption of lubricious allure:

The Company Girls knew the one basic rule for survival: don’t turn your back—ever—if you don’t want to be knifed.

The Company Girls knew all about knifing.

They knew the formulas for wrecking a reputation, stealing a man’s job, spreading the breath of scandal, seizing power.

The Company Girls were supremely shrewd, supremely efficient, and supremely female.

During her career, Mona Williams drew Hollywood’s interest, but only one among her works—a novelette titled May the Best Wife Win, published originally in McCall’s magazine—was actually translated for film, becoming the 1954 feature Woman's World, starring Clifton Webb, June Allyson, Van Heflin, and Lauren Bacall. But the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) credits her also with penning episodes of the 1950s TV anthology series The Ford Television Theatre and Lux Video Theatre.