A Guide for the Married Man | |
---|---|
Directed by | Gene Kelly |
Screenplay by | Frank Tarloff |
Based on | A Guide for the Married Man, as Told to Frank Tarloff 1967 novel by Frank Tarloff |
Produced by | Frank McCarthy |
Starring | Walter Matthau Robert Morse Inger Stevens Sue Ane Langdon Claire Kelly Elaine Devry |
Cinematography | Joseph MacDonald |
Edited by | Dorothy Spencer |
Music by | John Williams |
Distributed by | 20th Century-Fox |
Release date |
|
Running time | 89 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $3.3 million [1] |
Box office | $5 million (US/ Canada) [2] |
A Guide for the Married Man is a 1967 American bedroom-farce comedy film directed by Gene Kelly and starring Walter Matthau, Robert Morse and Inger Stevens. [3] [4] [5] It features many cameos, including those by Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, Terry-Thomas, Jayne Mansfield, Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Joey Bishop, Art Carney and Wally Cox. [3] The title song, performed by the Turtles, is composed by John Williams, with lyrics by Leslie Bricusse.
This article needs an improved plot summary.(August 2024) |
Paul Manning discovers that his dear friend and neighbor, Ed Stander, has been cheating on his wife. When Paul asks him about it, Ed talks about men who have successfully committed adultery. With each new story, Paul cannot help noticing the attractive blonde, Irma Johnson, who lives nearby.
Paul comes close to cheating on his wife Ruth, but he does not commit adultery. When in a motel room with a woman who is a wealthy divorced client, Paul hears shouting outside, and when he looks out the window, he sees photographers taking pictures of Ed in bed with Irma. Paul takes the opportunity to flee the scene and go home to his wife.
According to Fox records, A Guide for the Married Man needed to earn $5,900,000 in rentals to break even, and it returned $7,355,000, resulting in a profit. [7]
In a contemporary review for The New York Times , critic Bosley Crowther called A Guide for the Married Man "the broadest and funniest farce to come out of Hollywood since the Russians came last year", and wrote:
What is thoroughly disarming and delightful about this mischievous film is the impudent candor of it and its freedom from the leer. Mr. Matthau approaches infidelity with the ingenuousness of a clumsy bull moose, and Mr. Morse assists his intentions with all the wickedness of an imp. The felicities of girl-watching—and there are many of them through the film—are treated with absolute frankness as innocent enjoyment. And Mr. Kelly has directed with speed and persistent wit. "A Guide for the Married Man'' is in the spirit of some of those wonderful old Robert Benchley shorts. [8]
Variety wrote, "Walter Matthau plays a married innocent, eager to stray under the tutelage of friend and neighbor Robert Morse. But this long-married hubby is so retarded in his Immorality (it takes him 12 years to get the seven-year-itch) that, between his natural reluctance and mentor Morse's suggestions (interlarded with warnings against hastiness), he needs the entire film to have his mind made up." [9]
Critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "There are a lot of funny people in this movie, but they are not very funny people in this movie, Gertrude Stein might have said. The Casino Royale syndrome has struck again in A Guide for the Married Man, and we are forced to sit and watch as dozens of big-name stars jostle each other for their moment before the cameras." [10]
Pauline Kael of The New Yorker called A Guide for the Married Man "a series of dumb skits", and felt that the famous names in the cast are all wasted: "[W]hat they do is no more memorable than the plugs for brand-name products that are scattered throughout." [11]
The film was released on DVD on September 6, 2005, by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. [12]
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is a 1957 American satirical comedy film starring Jayne Mansfield and Tony Randall, with Betsy Drake, Joan Blondell, John Williams, Henry Jones, Lili Gentle, and Mickey Hargitay, and with a cameo by Groucho Marx. The film is a satire on popular fan culture, Hollywood hype, and the advertising industry, which was profiting from commercials on the relatively new medium of television. It also takes aim at the reduction television caused to the size of movie theater audiences in the 1950s. The film was known as Oh! For a Man! in the United Kingdom.
Kotch is a 1971 American comedy-drama film directed by Jack Lemmon and starring Walter Matthau, Deborah Winters, Felicia Farr, Charles Aidman and Ellen Geer.
Suellyn Lyon was an American actress who is most famous today for playing the title role in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita, for which she was awarded a Golden Globe.
Jayne Mansfield was an American actress and Playboy Playmate. A sex symbol of the 1950s and early 1960s, Mansfield was known for her numerous publicity stunts and open personal life. Although her film career was short-lived, she had several box-office successes, and won a Theatre World Award and Golden Globe Award, and soon gained the nickname of Hollywood's "smartest dumb blonde."
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a 1970 American satirical musical melodrama film starring Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Marcia McBroom, Phyllis Davis, John LaZar, Michael Blodgett, Erica Gavin, and David Gurian. The film was directed by Russ Meyer and written by Roger Ebert from a story by Ebert and Meyer.
Candy is a 1968 sex farce film directed by Christian Marquand from a screenplay by Buck Henry, based on the 1958 novel of the same name by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, itself based on Voltaire's 1759 novel Candide. The film satirizes pornographic stories through the adventures of its naive heroine, Candy, played by Ewa Aulin. It stars Charles Aznavour, Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, James Coburn, John Huston, Walter Matthau and Ringo Starr. Popular figures, such as Sugar Ray Robinson, Anita Pallenberg, Florinda Bolkan, Marilù Tolo, Nicoletta Machiavelli, Umberto Orsini and Enrico Maria Salerno also appear in cameo roles.
Jayne Meadows was an American stage, film and television actress, as well as an author and lecturer. She was nominated for three Emmy Awards during her career and was the elder sister of actress, banker, and memoirist Audrey Meadows as well as the wife of original Tonight Show host Steve Allen.
The Laughing Policeman is a 1973 American neo-noir thriller film loosely based on the 1968 novel of the same name by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. The setting of the story is transplanted from Stockholm to San Francisco. It is directed by Stuart Rosenberg and features Walter Matthau as Detective Jake Martin.
Hombre is a 1967 American revisionist Western film directed by Martin Ritt, based on the 1961 novel of the same name by Elmore Leonard and starring Paul Newman, Fredric March, Richard Boone and Diane Cilento.
The Odd Couple is a 1968 American comedy film directed by Gene Saks, produced by Howard W. Koch and written by Neil Simon, based on his 1965 play. It stars Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau as two divorced men—neurotic neat-freak Felix Ungar and fun-loving slob Oscar Madison—who decide to live together.
Promises! Promises! is a 1963 American sex comedy film directed by King Donovan and starring Tommy Noonan and Jayne Mansfield. Released at the end of the Production Code era and before the MPAA film rating system became effective in 1968, it was the first Hollywood film of the sound era to feature nudity by a mainstream star (Mansfield).
Merry Anders was an American actress who appeared in a number of television programs and films from the 1950s until her retirement from the screen in 1972.
Too Hot to Handle is a 1960 British neo-noir crime thriller film directed by Terence Young and starring Jayne Mansfield, Leo Genn and Carl Boehm. The screenplay was by Herbert Kretzmer from a story by Harry Lee.
Matt Cimber is an American producer, director, and writer. He is known for directing genre films including The Candy Tangerine Man, The Witch Who Came from the Sea,Hundra, and Butterfly. Cimber has been called "an unsung hero of 70s exploitation cinema." He was co-founder and director of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW) professional wrestling promotion and syndicated television series. Cimber also occasionally acts in films, television, and theatre.
Harry F. Gerguson, known as Michael Romanoff, was a Hollywood restaurateur, con man and actor born in Lithuania. He is perhaps best remembered as the owner of the now-defunct Romanoff's, a Beverly Hills restaurant popular with Hollywood stars in the 1940s and 1950s.
Jayne Mansfield was an actress, singer, Playboy playmate and stage show performer who had an enormous impact on popular culture of the late 1950s despite her limited success in Hollywood. She has remained a well-known subject in popular culture ever since. During a period between 1956 and 1957, there were about 122,000 lines of copy and 2,500 photographs that appeared in newspapers. In an article on her in the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture (1999), Dennis Russel said that "Although many people have never seen her movies, Jayne Mansfield remains, long after her death, one of the most recognizable icons of 1950s celebrity culture." In the novel Child of My Heart (2004) by Alice McDermott, a National Book Award winning writer, the 1950s is referred to as "in those Marilyn Monroe/Jayne Mansfield days". R. L. Rutsky and Bill Osgerby has claimed that it was Mansfield along with Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot who made the bikini popular.
Jayne Marie Mansfield is an American actress and model. She is the first child and eldest daughter of 1950s Hollywood sex symbol and Playboy Playmate Jayne Mansfield and Mansfield's ex-husband Paul. Mansfield is also the elder half-sister of actress Mariska Hargitay. In July 1976, Mansfield became the first daughter of a Playmate to be a featured model in Playboy. To date, only one other daughter of a Playmate has been featured in the magazine. Additionally, Mansfield is the only model who was featured in 100 Beautiful Women along with her mother in the magazine's 1988 special issue. She has acted in the film Olly, Olly, Oxen Free (1978) and TV production Blond in Hollywood (2003).
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is an original stage comedy in three acts and four scenes by George Axelrod. After a try-out run at the Plymouth Theatre in Boston from 26 September 1955, it opened at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway on 13 October, starring Jayne Mansfield, Walter Matthau and Orson Bean. Directed by the author and produced by Jule Styne, it closed on 3 November 1956 after 444 performances.
In 1957, Jayne Mansfield, an American actress and model known for her publicity stunts, attended a dinner in Beverly Hills at the exclusive Romanoff's restaurant hosted by Paramount Pictures to officially welcome Italian actress Sophia Loren to Hollywood. A photograph of the two women, with Loren casting a sideways glance at Mansfield's cleavage, was distributed world-wide and became an international sensation.
Follow the Sun is an American television adventure series that aired on ABC from September 17, 1961, to April 8, 1962. The episodes follow a pair of freelance magazine writers based in Hawaii who seek out interesting stories while leading an active social life both on the mainland and aboard their boat, The Scuber. The series is characterized by a host of guest appearances by popular film and television actors.