The Bachelor Party

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The Bachelor Party
The Bachelor Party.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Delbert Mann
Written by Paddy Chayefsky
Produced by Harold Hecht
Starring
Cinematography Joseph LaShelle
Music by
Production
companies
Distributed by United Artists
Release date
  • April 9, 1957 (1957-04-09)
Running time
92 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$960,000 [1]
Box office$1.5 million (US and Canada rentals) [2]

The Bachelor Party is a 1957 American drama film directed by Delbert Mann and adapted by Paddy Chayefsky from his 1953 teleplay. The film stars Don Murray, with E. G. Marshall, Jack Warden, Phil Abbott, Larry Blyden, Patricia Smith, and Carolyn Jones. Jones was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of a party girl who is actually very lonely. Mary Grant designed the film's costumes.

Contents

Plot

Charlie Samson is a hard-working married bookkeeper in Manhattan, struggling to advance himself by attending night school to become an accountant. He has just learned his wife is pregnant with their first child, and worries whether he is ready for fatherhood. He and four co-workers throw a bachelor party for a fellow bookkeeper, Arnold Craig, who is about to get married. After watching explicit, short stag films at one member's apartment, they decide to go bar-hopping. Charlie is to be Arnold's best man.

Colleagues attending the party include the older married man, Walter, who has recently been diagnosed with asthma, and Eddie, a happy-go-lucky bachelor. The night becomes a turning point for all five men.

Charlie finds his loyalty to his wife tested during the evening, and he almost has an affair with a young woman he meets on the street heading to a Greenwich Village party. Charlie's young wife at home is also shocked to hear her visiting sister reveal her own husband's extra-marital affairs. Walter, in despair about his situation, wanders off during the evening.

Arnold becomes drunk and ambivalent about getting married, and he breaks off the wedding. He changes his mind after he sobers up and Charlie gives him a lecture about the benefits of married life, despite Charlie's having regretted his own marriage as the story began, and having gone to the party with the serious intention of committing adultery.

We last see Eddie at a bar, striking up a conversation with an older unattractive woman. In the end, Charlie decides that married life is the way to go, and that his struggle to build a home with his wife is worthwhile, and better than the empty and lonely existence of his friend Eddie, whom he used to envy. [3]

Cast

Reception

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote of the film, "Mr. Chayefsky in his writing and Delbert Mann in his direction of this film have made it delightfully amusing and compensating as it flows. For the most poignant revelations of emptiness and fear, they have provided hilarious explosions in the serio-comic vein." [4]

The Bachelor Party was nominated for one Oscar, one BAFTA award, and one award at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival: [5] [6]

GroupAwardResult
30th Academy Awards Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Carolyn Jones
Nominated
BAFTA Award Best Film from any Source (USA) Nominated
1957 Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or Nominated

Chayefsky on The Bachelor Party

Afterword to The Bachelor Party: [3]

I am not sure to this day where the basic approach was wrong; but obviously the line of the story is six inches off from beginning to end, and the third-act resolution is hardly an inevitable outgrowth of the preceding two acts. I have also found that most directors take a somewhat different approach to my scripts than I do.

See also

References

  1. "Chayefsky". Variety. September 4, 1957. p. 28. Retrieved March 18, 2023.
  2. "Top Grosses of 1957", Variety, January 8, 1958: 30
  3. 1 2 The Collected Works of Paddy Chayefsky (1994), Applause Books, New York ISBN   1-55783-191-2
  4. Crowther, Bosley (April 10, 1957). "Screen: 'Bachelor Party'". The New York Times . Retrieved May 5, 2017.
  5. "Awards for The Bachelor Party (1957)". Internet Movie Database . Retrieved June 30, 2007.
  6. "Festival de Cannes: The Bachelor Party". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved December 6, 2023.