When ladies smiled their way to success

Camille Paglia once said that Mona Lisa’s famous smile conveys the idea that “males are unnecessary.” The same could be said of the atmosphere inside this cavernous hall, standing in for Wellesley College, where Julia Roberts and some of the most in-demand young actresses in Hollywood were filming a scene last December for the new movie “Mona Lisa Smile.”

Roberts, 36, plays Katherine Watson, a free-spirited art history professor from Berkeley who comes to Wellesley in 1953 and helps raise the consciousness of her students. On this day, she’s wending her way past cables, lights and cameras to get to the edge of what has become a dance floor for Wellesley’s annual Spring Fling.

Her commanding presence immediately eclipses her none-too-retiring co-stars, Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles and Maggie Gyllenhaal, who are waiting around for their scenes in colorful ‘50s frocks. “Hi, I’m Julia,” says the star to a visitor with an almost fearsome self-confidence, extending her hand in a grip that could break bricks. Standing nearby is Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, 39, who has worked with Roberts for more than 15 years, first as her agent at ICM and now as a producer.

The formidable Goldsmith-Thomas, who negotiated the deals that made Roberts the first actress to make $20 million a movie, is a partner at Revolution Studios -- which is releasing “Mona Lisa Smile” on Friday -- and supervises Roberts’ own company, Red Om Productions. Together, Roberts and Goldsmith-Thomas are the driving force behind “Mona Lisa Smile,” which tells the story of a time when bright women went to college but were taught that landing a husband was still the ultimate goal. “It’s about what happened when Rosie the Riveter was sent home,” says Goldsmith-Thomas.

“During World War II women were told they could do what they wanted. Then after the war they were, in effect, recorseted.” In “Mona Lisa Smile,” Watson exhorts her mostly prim and sheltered students to pursue their goals independent of men and marriage. Few women in Hollywood epitomize the movie’s message more than Roberts and Goldsmith-Thomas. In fact, Roberts’ co-stars say she mentored them off-screen much the way Watson does in the film.

“Julia is such a smart, strong woman,” says Dunst, 21, who plays a conservative campus journalist who becomes Watson’s nemesis in the movie. “It was surprising to see her nail a scene on the first take. She’s into it emotionally right away; for me it takes a bit of time. It makes you step up yourself. And to see her have that kind of power and use it well was very instructive.”

Marcia Gay Harden, who plays Nancy Abbey, a “spinster” who teaches speech, elocution and poise at Wellesley, echoes Dunst’s comments. An Oscar winner herself (for “Pollock”) and a possible nominee again for “Mystic River,” as well as a wife and mother, Harden also found Roberts to be an inspiration.

“She’s handled fame on a scale I can’t imagine,” says Harden, 44. “She makes the studios boatloads of money, she has tons of employees, but she still cooks her own turkey every Thanksgiving and has a great domestic flair. She takes the falls with you on the set. I think it’s key that Julia’s company produced this. Some women complain there aren’t enough roles for women: Julia’s doing something about it.”

Pre-’Feminine Mystique’

At first, however, Roberts had to be persuaded to sign on to the film by Goldsmith-Thomas and Deborah Schindler, her producing partner.

“It’s a period piece that actually takes place not so long ago,” says Roberts. “It’s before ‘The Feminine Mystique,’ before Gloria Steinem. I didn’t really know that much about that time before we started the movie, but there’s a lot that makes it pertinent today. For instance, a lot of very young women have the luxury of saying they’re not feminists because of the women who went before them.”

The collective good cop/bad cop vibe radiated by Roberts and Goldsmith-Thomas sometimes overwhelmed the men working on the film, including director Mike Newell, who threw a chair in the vague direction of Goldsmith-Thomas during one on-set argument, and Roberts’ husband, Danny Moder, who was part of the camera crew. (“He was promoted several notches above what he probably should be doing given his experience, but he’s a good guy,” says a set source.)

“I’m not proud of myself,” says Newell, the director of “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Pushing Tin.” (He will next direct “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” the fourth film in the lucrative series.) “I threw a chair at the wall next to Elaine during a particularly heated discussion. But when you go through these tough times, you fall in love with each other at the end, and that’s what happened to us.”

Newell, 61, began as a television director in 1964, when women did not wield as much power behind the scenes. But he says he’s now used to them. “On every movie, people fight for what they perceive the soul of the movie to be,” he says. “It has nothing to do with gender. Elaine had a very strong point of view; there was a lot riding on this movie for her. Elaine does not have a lot of experience in making a movie, and I do, and sometimes she had to go through a learning process that I didn’t have to go through. Other times she’d cut right to the heart of the matter.”

The Lewinsky connection

“Mona Lisa Smile” may have been fueled by estrogen, but the movie was conceived and written by two men, veteran movie and television screenwriters Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal (“Jewel of the Nile,” “Planet of the Apes”). Their unlikely inspiration for the movie came indirectly from, of all people, Monica S. Lewinsky.

“The idea came during the height of the Lewinsky scandal,” says Konner. “A number of TV commentators kept saying, ‘You have to understand why Hillary Clinton put up with this: She went to Wellesley College, where even in the ‘60s they were trained to be wives and mothers first.’ ” The writers researched what women’s colleges were like 10 years before Clinton attended Wellesley. They found that even the most progressive schools were not immune to the rampant conservatism that overtook the country after World War II. Konner and Rosenthal traveled to the Wellesley library in search of material and discovered a photo from the 1956 Wellesley News showing a woman in a dress and pearls, holding a frying pan in one hand and a book in the other.

Konner and Rosenthal shaped the final shooting script with the help of Goldsmith-Thomas, who met with them many nights at her Central Park West apartment.

“We all had plenty of fights, but without Elaine this movie would never have been made,” says Konner. “No other producer would have fought so hard to make it happen.” Tales of Goldsmith-Thomas’ toughness and tenacity during the filming of “Mona Lisa Smile” are matched by stories about Roberts’ charisma.

Her co-stars were won over when Roberts showed up for the first day of a three-week rehearsal session that Stiles, Gyllenhaal, Dunst and Harden were required to attend to learn the etiquette, elocution and dance styles of the early 1950s. Since Roberts’ character was more of a California bohemian, she did not really need the extensive tutoring, but she came every day anyway.

Roberts downplays her effect on the cast. “We all had fun, and we had a productive relationship,” she says. “But they are all pretty good at what they do, and most of them have been at it for a while. It wasn’t as if they sat around with their mouths agape saying, ‘She’s so cool.’ ”

Roberts and her husband kept a low profile on the set. “They were very discreet,” says Konner. But Roberts apparently exhibited some tendencies that would make Katherine Watson pull her hair out. “Julia loves being called Mrs. Moder,” says Goodwin. “One of the crew wrote it in duct tape and put it on her chair. Their relationship is very professional but very open.”

The real challenge for the younger actresses was learning to emulate well-bred young women of the 1950s. Director Newell said Stiles, a more classically trained actress, who plays class valedictorian Joan Brandwyn, had the easiest time. Gyllenhaal, who plays Giselle Levy, a more sophisticated and rebellious student, comes from a “feminist background,” says Newell, and found the ideology of the ‘50s women tough to take.

“We learned how to sit with our legs crossed at the ankles so we would appear more dainty,” says Ginnifer Goodwin, 25, who is making her film debut in “Mona Lisa Smile” playing an especially naive student who Roberts’ character takes under her wing. “We learned how to not take up too much space and how to blow smoke in the most ladylike way. We also used a lot of little things we learned in the etiquette school that people will never pick up on but were good for our characters.”

Adds Dunst, “As soon as you put the girdles on, you get the picture. And you feel it when you put the clothes and makeup on, how perfect they made themselves. It’s just uncomfortable. You feel the restrictiveness.”

Goodwin devoured a 1940 edition of Emily Post’s book on etiquette to prepare for the role. “It made me understand my own mother and why things were important to her,” says Goodwin. “It never really hit me until I made this movie how free women are today and what women had to go through in the ‘60s to get us here. We just take it for granted. And it’s a period in history we’re not taught about.”

Many women involved with “Mona Lisa Smile” said their mothers came of age in the 1950s or ‘60s and did not feel they had the potential for the powerful careers now enjoyed by their daughters. Harden’s mother, who visited the set one day and seemed thrilled when Harden brought Roberts over to meet her, married very young, had five children and did not get her college degree until the 1980s.

“My mom was brought up a very proper Dallas lady who was not encouraged to have a career,” says Harden. “When she did go back to school in the ‘80s, it was because she felt, where’s my identity, where’s my voice? One thing she helped me understand was that women back then were brainwashed by the media, by TV and advertising, about how they should stay at home. If you had a Hoover, you were a complete woman.”

Goldsmith-Thomas’ mother went to college briefly in the early 1950s and then dropped out to raise a family. She returned to college to get her degree in the 1970s.

“I’d like to say I was deeply affected by my mom’s experience, but I’m deeply ashamed to say I wasn’t,” says Goldsmith-Thomas. Her mother has seen the movie and loved it, Goldsmith-Thomas reports. She asked if she could see it a second time and bring her friends.

Never accuse Goldsmith-Thomas of being sentimental or not keeping her eye on the bottom line. “I told her to wait until it comes out,” she says, laughing. “Then they can all pay for tickets like everybody else.”