It's Been DONE....
In fact, it has been done several times, always with indifferent results.
One time was the 1956 musical version, titled The Opposite Sex. In addition to music, men show up in this one. While it's not the worst movie in the world (nothing with Dolores Gray in it could ever qualify for that title), it does star June Allyson, who is no match for Norma Shearer- or anyone else. Allyson is absolutely terrible in it, and the movie's box-office reflected that.
A few years ago there was a video taping of a revival on Broadway, with lots of highly-regarded current actresses parading around in Isaac Mizrahi clothing (they took their bows in Mizrahi lingerie, which left any reasonably sensitive onlooker feeling pretty damn embarrassed for the older members of the cast). Cynthia Nixon was pallid and tentative as Mary Haines, and Jennifer Tilly's alleged performance as Crystal would have disgraced an Ed Wood movie. It would have been fine if only a few foolish Manhattan theatregoers had been subjected to it, but no, PBS had to inflict this thing on the whole country.
The point is that the original 1939 movie has something going for it that no other version has had- something no other version probably ever will have. It's a movie of its time, with actresses who had a deep- in fact visceral- connection to the material, because they'd lived the life it depicted on one level or another. There is little way that actresses of later generations can understand "on the train to Reno" on quite the same level as women of the 1930s did, as a weary admission of failure, and a terrifying journey into a life without the secure status they'd previously enjoyed. They don't understand being wholly dependent on men and marriage. They don't understand Crystal's climb up the ladder of Society, wrong by wrong. They think she's a gold-digger, and there's a little truth to that, but Joan Crawford, as a star who'd literally gone from rags to riches, understood the bigger picture- you grabbed the brass ring if you could, otherwise you slogged in retail until your ankles were too swollen to carry you another day, no in-between. Norma Shearer, as the widow of M-G-M studio head Irving Thalberg, knew all too well what idle gossip could do to derail one's position- she'd frequently been accused of using her marriage to foster her career.
Today, women have choices. If you don't want to get married, you don't. If you want another woman as a life partner, fine. If one career doesn't work out, you can try another, and it's completely open to you, whether you want to run for national office, drive an eighteen-wheeler, run a movie studio or repair telephone lines. Today's women cannot possibly understand The Women at the gut level necessary to believe in the material, and when they tackle the famous lines and try on the '30s glamour, they're out of their depth and it shows. Playing The Women for irony doesn't work; these are desperate ladies in desperate times. M-G-M's version of the work has an authenticity nothing made later can match.
One of the things I wish Hollywood people would remember more often is that the entire purpose of film is to capture and save performances, so that they can be enjoyed not only by huge numbers of people, but for all time. When a movie turns out as perfectly as the 1939 version, all that is necessary is to keep showing it. It doesn't need updating, changing, musicalising, spinning, or tweaking. The Women, in the hands of Shearer, Crawford, Russell, Fontaine, Povah, Main and many others, is perfect, a cry from the heart of women who had weathered the Depression in comfort, but a comfort that they knew ultimately depended on another sex, one no woman could or should ever really trust.
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