The First Wives Club (1996)

and What Comes After the Discard

Three college friends, replaced by younger wives, find each other again at a funeral. What it shows about women who built their husbands' success and left with little of it, a husband who calls his wife manipulative while hiding an affair, the therapist on his side, the three ages Hollywood allows a woman, and the turn from revenge to something built for other women.

The First Wives Club (1996). Directed by Hugh Wilson, screenplay by Robert Harling, from Olivia Goldsmith’s 1992 novel. Bette Midler as Brenda, Goldie Hawn as Elise, Diane Keaton as Annie, with Maggie Smith as Gunilla, Dan Hedaya as Morty, Stephen Collins as Aaron and Victor Garber as Bill.

“Annie don’t be childish, you know how you manipulate me.”

He said it a minute before she found out he was seeing their therapist.

A note before you read. The film begins with the death by suicide of the three women’s college friend. This page mentions it with care and without detail. If you are thinking about suicide, you can call or text 988, any time, in the US. Every other number is on the Resources page.

This page belongs to Plot Twist. It is a refusal, and the second film in the series about women who get each other out, after 9 to 5 and Waiting to Exhale. It is also the first about what comes after the discard: women in their forties and fifties, replaced by younger wives, deciding what the rest of their lives are for.

Like every entry on the Plot Twist page, it reads a story for the pattern it teaches, and makes no claim about anyone’s diagnosis. The ex-husbands are comic figures, and one of them turns out to be sorry. The three women are not saints either: their plan runs on blackmail and worse, played for laughs. The pattern belongs to the marriages, and to what the film does when revenge stops being enough.

The Story

In 1969, four friends graduate from college. Cynthia gives the other three, Annie, Brenda and Elise, matching pearl necklaces, and makes them promise to stay connected. They don’t. Years later, Cynthia’s husband, whose fortune came from her family’s connections, leaves her and marries his young mistress. Cynthia sends each of her old friends a letter, and dies.

At her funeral, the three survivors see their own lives in hers. Annie is separated from her husband, Aaron, and her confidence is gone. Elise, an Oscar-winning actress, is drinking, being offered only older roles, and divorcing a producer who has moved on to a young actress. Brenda helped her husband, Morty, build his chain of electronics stores, and came out of the divorce with far less than she was owed.

Annie learns that Aaron is seeing the therapist they shared. Elise is offered the part of the mother of the character she wanted to play; the young actress her husband is dating will play the lead. Brenda meets Morty’s young girlfriend, who makes fun of her weight.

Remembering Cynthia’s letters, the three women form the First Wives Club, to pursue, they say, justice rather than revenge. They take back what they are owed, piece by piece: Elise’s art and furniture, Aaron’s agency, the evidence of Morty’s fraud. Then they fall out, and make up, and decide to look beyond themselves. They make the men fund a crisis center for women, named after Cynthia.

At the opening, Morty, who is genuinely sorry, reconciles with Brenda. Elise is starring on Broadway in a play called Of a Certain Age. Annie turns Aaron down when he asks to try again. And the three of them walk out into the street together, singing “You Don’t Own Me.”

The First Wives Club was a surprise hit, earning $181 million worldwide, and found a lasting following among women who saw their own lives in it.

The Story Before the Story

Olivia Goldsmith’s novel, her first, drew on what she had seen of divorce, inequality and aging in marriages, and it became a bestseller. The film kept its premise and added its ending: according to the production history, the closing song wasn’t in the script, and was added during filming because the film had no final scene.

It is a fitting accident. A story about women whose marriages were written for them ends with a scene they, in a sense, had to make up.

What It Gets Right

A great deal. It is about women over forty, which was rare then and is rare now. It shows plainly how much of each man’s success was built on his wife. It makes the friendship the love story. And its best turn is not revenge. It is the moment the three women stop aiming at the men and build something for other women instead.

What It Teaches

1. She built it, and he kept it

Every marriage in the film has the same shape. Cynthia’s husband’s wealth came from her family. Brenda helped Morty get his first store off the ground. Annie and Elise each gave years to a husband’s career. And when each man left, he left with what they had built together.

The Decoder’s Card P-2, Ownership Entitlement, is “Claiming what isn’t theirs.” Its companion is Card 8, Financial Superiority: “Using money as control and leverage.” Many women in long marriages have found out, at the end, that the life they built was legally or practically his. The film’s comedy runs on getting it back.

2. “You know how you manipulate me”

Annie’s husband takes her out, and then tells her he wants a divorce. When she’s hurt, he tells her not to be childish: “you know how you manipulate me.” When she asks if there’s someone else, he says it’s about them, and then, “well it’s really about you.” A minute later, the therapist they shared walks in and calls him “Babe.”

The Decoder’s Card 17, Projection, is “Accusing you of what they’re doing.” The man hiding an affair accuses his wife of manipulation. It is played for laughs, and it’s exact. Many women have been told, in the middle of being deceived, that they were the manipulative one.

3. The therapist on his side

Worse than the affair is who it’s with: the therapist Annie shared with her husband, and trusted.

The Decoder’s Card 47, Flying Monkeys, has a variant for exactly this, the captured professional: “A therapist the whole family sees,” someone whose neutrality you assumed and who was never neutral. Annie had been paying for help from the person helping herself to her husband. The card’s advice is to find someone outside the system entirely. Annie finds two old friends.

4. There are only three ages

Elise wants to play the lead. She’s offered the mother. She sums up Hollywood’s options for women: “There are only three ages for women in Hollywood; ‘Babe’, ‘District Attorney’, and ‘Driving Ms. Daisy.’”

Every one of the three women has been replaced by someone younger. The film’s joke is that the culture tells women their value has an expiration date, and then acts surprised when they’re angry about it. By the end, Elise is starring in a play called Of a Certain Age. The age was never the problem.

5. Justice, revenge, and something better

The three women say they want justice, not revenge. Then they blackmail, deceive and, in one scene, abduct their way to it. It’s a comedy, and the men had it coming, the film says.

It is worth being honest about that, because this series has spent a long time naming these same moves when men use them. The film’s best instinct comes after: when the three fall out, they reconcile by deciding to look beyond “justice” for themselves. The money goes to a crisis center for women, named for Cynthia. The most lasting thing they do with their anger is give other women somewhere to go.

6. The friend they lost

The film begins with a promise the four friends didn’t keep: to stay connected. Cynthia lost touch with the others, and faced the end of her marriage alone. The film ties her death to that loss. In life, suicide is almost never about one thing. But the film’s instinct is sound: isolation is dangerous, and the women who come through the film come through it together.

If you are in a hard stretch, you deserve people who will pick up the phone. 988 is there any time. And if there is a friend you promised to stay connected to, this might be the week.

The Friends Who Got Them Out, Side by Side

	9 to 5 (1980)	Waiting to Exhale (1995)	The First Wives Club (1996)
Who they are	Three coworkers	Four friends	Three college friends who’d lost touch
What kept them apart	A boss, a rumor, a rule	Waiting for the right man	Time, and marriages that swallowed them
What they took back	The office	Their own lives	What they’d built, and then some
What they built	Daycare, equal pay	A table that holds	A crisis center named for their friend

Three films in sixteen years in which the way out was other women. The last one ends with the three of them walking out into the street, singing.

If You Grew Up on This

Many of us have watched the last scene more times than the rest of the film put together. Nothing on this page asks you to stop. The useful thing is to look at it clearly from where you stand now.

Some questions to sit with:

Did you help build something that ended up with someone else’s name on it?
Have you been called manipulative by someone who was hiding something?
Was there a professional in your life, a counselor or doctor or lawyer, who turned out to be on someone else’s side?
Has anyone made you feel your value had an expiration date?
Is there a friend you promised to stay connected to? When did you last call?

Three women who’d lost touch found each other at a funeral. They got back what they’d built, and then built something for women who needed it.

You’re the audience now. Call your friend.