While some married movie women cheat on their husbands with other men, and others are bad mothers (or stepmothers) to their children, the truly evil spouses are those who act like a cancer to their man, kicking him when he’d down and failing to provide him with encouragement when he needs it most or vindictively working against him (and even her own better interests) out of spite just to keep him from experiencing the happiness that has eluded her.

One of the first films that comes to mind is the aptly titled drama In Name Only (1939), which is one of Carole Lombard’s best movies despite the fact that it’s not a comedy. Her debonair co-star Cary Grant, also better known for more comedic roles, plays a well-to-do man stuck in a loveless (e.g. name only) marriage to Kay Francis. Grant meets Lombard because she’s renting a house he owns that reminds him of happier times; she’s a beautiful widower who’s also a nice person, so naturally he’s attracted to her. They spend some happy platonic times together with her young child, and Grant realizes what he’s been missing in life. But when Lombard finds out that he’s married, she stops dating him. So he asks his social climbing bore of a wife (Francis) for a divorce, and she’s willing to end their sham until she finds out about Lombard and realizes that her husband might live happily ever after with another woman. She then conspires against the lovebirds while exploiting her victim-hood status with Grant’s parents (Charles Coburn plays his father), entrapping her husband once again. Fortunately, her true character (and Lombard’s) is exposed in time for the requisite Hollywood ending.

Another woman who married for wealth, and its power, without having any real interest in her husband (other than his ability to enable her to procreate) was Regina Giddens (in the Samuel Goldwyn produced The Little Foxes (1941)) – you knew that a Bette Davis character had to make this list, right? Regina ruthlessly fights for everything she can against her brothers, played by Charles Dingle & Carl Benton Reid, and her domineering nature has so weakened her husband (Herbert Marshall) that he has to live elsewhere. When Regina and her brothers need Marshall’s money for their latest scheme, she manipulates his return. Though he’s finally able to resist his wife’s plans, it takes all of his strength. She seizes upon the opportunity to be rid of him by refusing to get his heart medicine, and he dies pleading for her assistance – after collapsing on the stairway – while she’d remained seated in the living room. Regina’s uncharacteristic yet timely passivity helped her to earn the forty-third position on the American Film Institute’s 50 movie villains list.

Goldwyn produced another gem which features the unsupportive wife that prompted me to write this article in the first place. The producer’s greatest achievement was arguably The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), which won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture; it’s an essential "coming home" from war (in this case, World War II) picture, #37 on AFI's 100 Greatest Movies list and #11 on AFI's 100 Most Inspiring Movies list, and it was among the twenty-five inaugural inductees into the National Film Registry in 1989. Struggling with assimilation back into society after being an officer and bombardier in the Air Force, Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) finds that his wife (Virginia Mayo) had gotten on fine without him during his absence (to the point that she’s not exactly excited about his return). In fact, now that he’s no longer in uniform, she’s not really attracted to him anymore (they’d married hastily before he’d left), feels no real loyalty to him, and derides his unsuccessful efforts to find a substantial job outside of the service.

For many, the poster child character for this topic would be Elizabeth Taylor’s Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966); her professor husband George (Richard Burton) made the mistake of marrying the daughter of the man (the president of the university) that employs him, an oft repeated mistake by men in movies (and out?). Therefore, she runs roughshod over his fragile ego and he drinks to assuage his pain and self-loathing; the booze also gives him the courage to fight back, and the couple quarrels incessantly during this emotional draining drama. Taylor’s performance earned her a second Oscar (for the last of five Best Actress nominations).

I think I’ll save Barbara Stanwyck’s wicked wife characters for a possible future article because she played so many heartless, self-centered, power hungry women that emasculated (or even killed) their husbands for money, or her own malevolent satisfaction, in films from Double Indemnity (1944) and The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) to Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) and Clash By Night (1952).