12 Movie Characters Who Used Sex to Climb the Corp Ladder3

By Steven Novak, Sep 07, 2010 in Pop Culture, Real Girl's Guide to Everything Else, Show News

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12 Fem Movie Characters Who Used Sex to Climb the Corp Ladder

Things have always been tougher out there for women than men. Women have had to fight for the right to vote, the right to attain the same jobs as men and the right to earn comparable salaries. Although society is getting very close to reaching true equality between men and women, it has taken a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get there. To this day, some women continue to use somewhat “unconventional” methods in order to make their dreams a reality. As in KoldCast TV’s The Real Girl’s Guide to Everything Else for instance, a liberal, lesbian journalist hooks up with a conservative, rich man and transforms herself into a glitter-wearing, Cosmo-reading, straight girl to finance her dream project. And that’s one way to go. Another, far more classic direction to take, though not necessarily recommended, is to sleep with the higher-ups. In recognition of the ladies out there who will do whatever it takes to reach the top, here’s a list of 12 female characters in film that used sex to climb the corporate ladder.

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1. MATTY – BODY HEAT

Lawrence Kasdan’s 1981 thriller not only lives up to its title, but it also launched the career of a painfully sexy Kathleen Turner. Turner stars as Matty, the wife of a rich guy that starts up an affair with a sleazy lawyer. Turner and the lawyer proceed to plan the husband’s murder in order to take control of his wealth. Matty has absolutely no qualms about taking the horizontal route to riches, and in the end it works. When the dust clears and the plot twists are revealed, Matty finds herself “rich and living in an exotic land.”

2. MEREDITH JOHNSON – DISCLOSURE

Released in 1994 and directed by Barry Levinson, Disclosure stars Michael Douglas as a software executive that gets passed over for a promotion, which instead goes to a former girlfriend played by Demi Moore. How did Demi get that promotion? On her back. Wait, no… maybe it was on top. The character of Meredith seems much more like an “on the top” sort of girl. Anyway, the plot deepens further when a sexual harassment suit is filed (by Douglas), and the plot twists multiply.

3. CAROLYN POLHEMUS – PRESUMED INNOCENT

Based on the best-selling novel of the same name and starring none other than Han Solo himself, Harrison Ford, 1990’s Presumed Innocent centers around the death of a woman named Carolyn Polhemus. Carolyn was an up-and-comer in the Kindle County D.A.’s office before she was found in a pool of her own blood. An investigation soon follows and before long, it’s revealed that Carolyn was working her way up the ladder, thanks in no small part to her willingness to drop her britches. She paid for it with her life though.

4. TRESS McGILL – WORKING GIRL

Released in 1988 and directed by Mike Nichols, Working Girl stars Melanie Griffith as a bright, thirty-year-old working-class secretary that finds out her boyfriend is cheating on her, gets liquored up, takes some pills, and ends up in bed with an executive named Jack Trainer, played by Harrison Ford. Fortunately, the night of unexpected mattress dancing proves to be the greatest thing that ever happened to her. Before she knows it, she has herself a comfy entry-level position and a secretary of her own.

5. WANDA BRANDT – WANDA WHIPS WALL STREET

The winner of the absolute most explicit and obvious example of a woman using sex to rise to the top of the world is undoubtedly 1982’s Wanda Whips Wall Street, which stars the one and only Veronica Hart. Despite attempts to “class it up,” this is basically a porn flick. As a shrewd corporate takeover engineer, Wanda Brandt plots to seize control of the most stable investment firm on Wall Street. She accomplishes this by sleeping with a bunch of oily, mustached porn stars in cheap suits. Shockingly, it works.

6. VIVIAN WARD – PRETTY WOMAN

Released in 1990 and directed by Gary Marshall, Pretty Woman stars Julia Roberts as a prostitute that gets hired on by a successful businessman and “corporate raider” played by Richard Gere. While Julia’s character might not have set out to use prostitution to “move up the corporate ladder,” by the end of the movie she’s gone from lowly streetwalker to the girlfriend of a rich bigwig that’ll listen to all her crazy business ideas – to the point of changing his business model. If not the corporate ladder, she definitely climbed the social ladder mighty fast.

7. LILY POWERS – BABY FACE

1933’s Baby Face stars Barbara Stanwyck as a mostly miserable speakeasy employee during Prohibition in Erie, Pennsylvania. After her father is killed in an explosion, a friend tells her that she should move away and start fresh in a new city, and that she should “use men to get what she wants.” It’s a solid bit of advice. Guess what she does? Exactly that. Scheming, and sex, and attempted extortion follow – and for the most part it all works.

8. HOWARD PRESCOTT – THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS

Why should the ladies have all the fun? Just to mix things up a bit, here’s 1987’s corporate-ladder-climbing classic, The Secret of My Success. Michael J. Fox plays a fresh-faced Kansas kid named Brantley that moves to New York in hopes of becoming a big time financier. Instead, he ends up working in the mailroom of Pemrose Incorporated for his uncle Howard. How did Howard get to the top? He slept with the daughter of Pemrose’s founder, Vera. Guess who else Vera sleeps with and then promotes before the movie is over? Yep, Brantley.

9. DIANA SCOTT – DARLING

Darling is a British comedy/drama directed by John Schlesinger and released in 1965. The film tells the story of a trendy young woman named Diana (played by Julie Christie), who uses her sexual wiles to convince a journalist to give up his family and spend his life with her instead. When she gets bored of him, she starts sleeping with some other people. All the sleeping around eventually leads to modeling and acting roles, and even draws the attention of international nobility – proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that being good in bed is far more helpful a tool than brains or dedication to your craft… at least in the movies.

10. NATHALIE AND SANDRINE – SECRET THINGS

Released in 2002, Secret Things is a French film directed by Jean-Claude Brisseau that focuses on a female stripper and a female bartender who get fired from their jobs and decide to hike up their skirts in order to secure themselves jobs in investment banking. While not the traditional method of earning a banking position, it works really well for the girls. Well, for one of them anyway. The movie is pretty bizarre, and features incest, gang rape, an orgy, and to top it all off, a can full of petrol and a lighter. The French have a long history of pushing the envelope with their films, and Secret Things is no exception.

11. SUZANNE STONE – TO DIE FOR

Directed by Gus Van Sant, 1995’s To Die For is an interesting little film about a dopey blond played by Nicole Kidman that wants nothing more than to be a world famous news anchor – despite the fact that she has no talent. She beds and marries a financially stable guy with mafia connections and makes her way to becoming a weather girl. When her husband wants her to take some time off and raise a family, she decides to kill him. This is where her plan goes awry. She beds a teenager and convinces him to do her dirty work for her. All this sleeping around, however, ultimately lands her six feet under an ice rink.

12. CATHERINE TRAMELL – BASIC INSTINCT

In 1992’s Paul Verhoeven-directed Basic Instinct, Sharon Stone stars as a no-panty-wearing, ice-pick-wielding, leg-crossing, novel-writing dynamo that seduces men, kills them, and works their murders into the plots of her books. While you could argue that she doesn’t really use sex to advance “the corporate ladder,” I would have to respectfully disagree with you. Without the sex, (which leads to the murders), she has no books. And without the books, she’s just a broke chick with no panties on.

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Steven Novak is a writer, illustrator, graphic designer and admitted lifelong nerd with an embarrassingly large DVD collection. He is currently working and living in the Southern California desert. His most recent fantasy/action adventure novel, “Forts: Fathers and Sons,” is available everywhere books are sold.