What's Good for the Goose | |
---|---|
Directed by | Menahem Golan |
Written by |
|
Produced by | Tony Tenser |
Starring |
|
Cinematography | William Brayne |
Edited by | Dennis Lanning |
Music by | Ken Howard |
Distributed by | Tigon British Film Productions |
Release date |
|
Running time |
|
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
What's Good For The Goose (also known as Girl Trouble and What's Good for the Gander), is a 1969 British comedy film writter directed by Menahem Golan and starring Norman Wisdom and Sally Geeson. [1] [2] [3] It was written by Wisdom and Golan and produced by Tony Tenser.
The film features pop music by Electric Banana, otherwise known as the Pretty Things.
Norman Wisdom plays a 50-something assistant bank manager called Timothy Bartlett whose working life and marriage in London have become lacklustre. After the death of his superior, he is sent in his place to a bankers' conference in Southport, and he gives a lift to two fun-loving female students, Meg and Nikki. Initially annoyed by them, he ends up becoming interested in Nikki. Wandering around to find something to do one night, he ends up meeting her, at a Mod Band venue where the band The Pretty Things are playing. After this, she comes back to his hotel where they spend the night together.
The following day, during the conference, he can only think of her. He abandons his work responsibilities to have a perfect day with her, taking in all the seaside amusements and recapturing his youthful energy. He tells her he has fallen in love with her and rents a 'love nest' for them. Her friend tries to warn him not to get too serious, as Nikki doesn't want a relationship. He comes back to their love nest, only to find all the hippies are hanging out there having sex, and have vandalised it. When he goes to the bedroom, he finds that Nikki is in bed with another man of her own age. Her friend Meg tells him he was just a two-day novelty for her and she has already moved on to someone her own age, and that's the nature of the free love scene.
However, inspired by the time he has spent there, he invites his wife to join him at the resort. She doesn't recognise him when he meets her at the airport, as he is now wearing counterculture scene clothing. He takes her to buy "young" clothes, and goes off with her to the places Nikki and he had gone to where he had such a good time. They replicate the perfect day he had with Nikki, though his wife doesn't enjoy everything as much as Nikki did. He finds he can have (almost) as much enjoyment with his wife, and ultimately, the couple embrace dressing "young" and doing cool now things.
There was also a German dubbed version of the film titles Öfter mal was Junges!! This is 27 minutes shorter than the UK version running to 75 minutes instead of 102 minutes. It contains alternative longer versions of the hotel bedroom scenes in which Sally Geeson is topless rather than remaining in her bra as she does in the UK print (which is the generally available version). The text in the opening credits is completely redone in German over the same unfettered film sequence as in the UK version meaning it must have been prepared concurrently.
The film uses locations around the Southport area, including the Birkdale Palace Hotel.
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Norman Wisdom joins the flower people in what must be a strong candidate for the worst British comedy for some considerable time. Wisdom's brand of little man pathos – in his previous films merely embarrassing – is here grotesque beyond belief, whether he is narcissistically flexing his sagging muscles before leaping into bed with a giggling teenage dolly, prancing insanely over sand dunes in breathless celebration of his rejuvenation, or cavorting round a hideous discotheque in a painfully unfunny attempt to persuade the inmates that he's still young at heart. The rest is a catalogue of disaster: dialogue of indescribable inanity, appallingly crude performances from most of the supporting players, and colour which looks as though it has been processed in a mud bath. And the Israeli director (previously responsible for such horrors as Seduced in Sodom ) adds insult to injury by periodically inserting bits of pointless speeded-up motion. Ugh. He," [4]
When Harry Met Sally... is a 1989 American romantic comedy drama film directed by Rob Reiner and written by Nora Ephron. Starring Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher, and Bruno Kirby, it follows the title characters from the time they meet in Chicago and share a drive to New York City through twelve years of chance encounters in New York, and addresses the question "Can men and women ever just be friends?"
Brigadoon is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, and music by Frederick Loewe. The song "Almost Like Being in Love", from the musical, has become a standard. It features two American tourists who stumble upon Brigadoon, a mysterious Scottish village that appears for only one day every 100 years. Tommy, one of the tourists, falls in love with Fiona, a young woman from Brigadoon.
A Good Woman is a 2004 romantic comedy drama film directed by Mike Barker. The screenplay by Howard Himelstein is based on the 1892 play Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde. It is the fourth screen version of the work, following a 1916 silent film using Wilde's original title, Ernst Lubitsch's 1925 version, and Otto Preminger's 1949 adaptation entitled The Fan.
Little Women is a 1978 American television miniseries directed by David Lowell Rich and written by Suzanne Clauser based on the 1868–69 two-volume novel of the same name by Louisa May Alcott. The cast includes Susan Dey, Meredith Baxter Birney, Ann Dusenberry, Eve Plumb, Dorothy McGuire, William Schallert, Greer Garson, Robert Young, Richard Gilliland, William Shatner and John de Lancie.
"The Goose Girl" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and first published in Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1815. It is of Aarne-Thompson type 533.
Sarah Louise Clouston Geeson, known professionally as Sally Geeson, is an English actress with a career mostly on television in the 1970s. She is best known for playing Sid James's daughter, Sally, in Bless This House and for her roles in Carry On Abroad (1972) and Carry On Girls (1973). She also starred alongside Norman Wisdom in the film What's Good for the Goose (1969), and appeared with Vincent Price in two horror films, The Oblong Box (1969) and Cry of the Banshee (1970).
The Birkdale Palace Hotel was a luxury hotel located in the Lancashire coastal resort of Birkdale, Southport, on the north-west coast of England. The building towered over the surrounding area for over a hundred years before being demolished in 1969. During the Second World War it had been used as a rehabilitation centre for US airmen, and in the last two years of existence was used as a film location. The Palace is notorious in local folklore as a haunted hotel.
Meg Giry is one of the fictional characters from Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera. In the story, she is Madame Giry's daughter.
Sex comedy, erotic comedy or more broadly sexual comedy is a genre in which comedy is motivated by sexual situations and love affairs. Although "sex comedy" is primarily a description of dramatic forms such as theatre and film, literary works such as those of Ovid and Giovanni Boccaccio may be considered sex comedies.
I Think I Love My Wife is a 2007 American romantic comedy film starring Chris Rock, Gina Torres and Kerry Washington. Rock co-wrote the film with Louis C.K. and also directed and produced it. It is a remake of the 1972 French film Love in the Afternoon by Éric Rohmer. The film was released on March 16, 2007 and received generally negative reviews from critics.
Samuel Anthony Tenser was an English-born film producer of Lithuanian-Jewish descent. He began as the producer of low budget exploitation films before moving into mainstream productions.
Trouble in Store is a 1953 British comedy film directed by John Paddy Carstairs and starring Norman Wisdom in his cinema debut. The film also featured Moira Lister, Margaret Rutherford, Jerry Desmonde and Lana Morris. For his performance, Wisdom won a BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer. Although it was shown at a West End venue, the film broke box office records at 51 out of the 67 London cinemas in which it played. The film was shot at Pinewood Studios with sets designed by the art director Alex Vetchinsky. It was released by Rank's General Film Distributors and was later released in America by Republic Pictures. The film's success led to Wisdom appearing in a string of films for Rank beginning with One Good Turn.
Bunty was a British comic for girls published by D. C. Thomson & Co. from 1958 to 2001. It consisted of a collection of many small strips, the stories typically being three to five pages long. In contrast to earlier and contemporary comics, it was aimed primarily at working-class readers under the age of 14, and contained mostly fictional stories. Well-known regular strips from Bunty include The Four Marys, Bunty — A Girl Like You, Moira Kent, Lorna Drake, Luv, Lisa, The Comp, and Penny's Place.
Coins in the Fountain is a 1990 American made-for-television romantic comedy film based on the 1952 novel Coins in the Fountain by John H. Secondari, which was previously filmed in 1954 as Three Coins in the Fountain. It was directed by Tony Wharmby and written by Lindsay Harrison. Filming took place in Rome and other parts of Italy during the summer of 1990. The film originally premiered on CBS on September 28, 1990.
Kiss or Kill is a 1997 Australian thriller film about two lovers and fugitives from the law who are pursued across the Australian Outback. The film was written and directed by Bill Bennett, and stars Frances O'Connor and Matt Day.
The Ware Case is a 1938 British drama film directed by Robert Stevenson and starring Clive Brook, Jane Baxter and Barry K. Barnes. It is an adaptation of the play The Ware Case (1915) by George Pleydell Bancroft, which had previously been made into two silent films, in 1917 and 1928. It had been a celebrated stage vehicle for Sir Gerald Du Maurier. The film was made at Ealing Studios with stately home exteriors shot in the grounds of Pinewood. Oscar Friedrich Werndorff worked as set designer.
Three into Two Won't Go is a 1969 British drama film directed by Peter Hall and starring Rod Steiger, Claire Bloom and Judy Geeson. The film was entered into the 19th Berlin International Film Festival.
Blake Dean is a fictional character from the Australian Channel Seven soap opera Home and Away, played by Les Hill. Blake debuted on screen during the episode broadcast on 26 July 1990.
Love Letters is a 1984 American romantic drama film starring Jamie Lee Curtis and James Keach. The film is written and directed by Amy Holden Jones, whom Roger Corman agreed to finance following her success with The Slumber Party Massacre (1982).
Sally Bazely is a British television actress.