Sex and the Single Girl (1964)

Wonderful character development!

Let's be realistic.

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

. . . into a film in which a character named "Emily Post" went around correcting the table manners of Lauren Bacall, Tony Curtis, Henry Fonda, and Natalie Wood, it may well have made for a BETTER movie than SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL. In the first place, "girls" do NOT have PhD's. Secondly, a book of demographic information and dating tips could have been abridged into an 114-minute on-screen dramatic reading, and been far more entertaining that the lame plot on exhibition here. Taking only its title and author's name from Ms. Brown's original self-help book, the character "Helen Gurly Brown" is presented as a 23-year-old blushing virgin daring to dish out sex advice (something priests have been doing for centuries WITHOUT blushing). Ho ho ho (yawn). Also, Helen's middle name is pronounced the same as "girlie," making this flick a "girlie show" titter-titter (shrug). The material here is so thin, the movie is "padded" out with a slapstick car chase dragging on for nearly half an hour for its "big finale." This is even less hilarious than the coin-operated mirrors shown in STOP MAGAZINE's men's room. People expecting to see A MAN AND A WOMAN-type movie instead are cursed with a dumbed-down version of IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD.

WB sure has made some silly movies, and this one is no exception. It's a lot like the WB comedies of Barbra Streisand from the same time period. Forget about the title. Natale Wood plays "Dr. Helen Gurley Brown" as the author of the book "Sex and the Single Girl." No resemblance to the book, whatsoever. A great cast in a lightweight film: Natale Wood, Tony Curtis, Henry Fonda, Lauren Bacall, Jose Ferrer, Stubie Kay, Larry Storch. The guy who played "Gen. Bullmoose" in Li'l Abner. Also Leslie Parish (she was Daisy Mae) and several Hollywood character actors old film buffs will recognize at once. Edward Everett Horton as the Chairman of the Board of "Stop" Magazine. Count Basie and his Orchestra. Fran Jeffries is a "knockout" as Gretchen. Great chemistry between Tony and Natale. They really seem to enjoy kissing each other. She is wonderful to see as a fresh-faced young girl. The plot is so silly it's barely worth mentioning. Through many cases of mistaken identity, Tony Curtis writes an article for that sleaze-bag mag "Stop" and exposes the writer of that "Sex" book as a complete phony. Henry Fonda, a nylon salesman, is wrongly accused of being a "trigamist" married to three women. Tony Curtis has several girlfriends and falls in love with Natale (who wouldn't?) The whole thing ends with a hysterical 20 minute slapstick car chase reminiscent of the old Universal movies from the 1940's. Larry Storch as the motorcycle cop goes "nuts" and tries to arrest everybody. It's a lot of fun in a totally forgettable film that will remind you of "Mad Mad World". It's only highly-rated because Natale Wood is in it, and we miss her so much!

I was reading in the Citadel Film Book Series The Films Of Lauren Bacall that the real Helen Gurley Brown was less than thrilled with the film made of her work which was a landmark in feminist literature. Turning it into a poor man's version of a Rock Hudson-Doris Day sex comedy she probably never envisioned.The Rock and Doris roles are taken by Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood. Tony plays a writer for a Confidential style magazine, today it would be the National Enquirer. He's already done articles debunking her credibility as far as being an expert on sex. Now Curtis proposes to publisher Edward Everett Horton to really get to know this person and embarks on a campaign to seduce the sex expert with all the cunning of Ashton Kutcher on the punk. But as what happens in all these films he actually falls for her.Of course it doesn't help that he gets in to see her pretending he's hosiery manufacturer and neighbor Henry Fonda and using his marital problems with Lauren Bacall as his entry to the pop psychologist's office. In this film Helen Gurley Brown is not the editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine, but a Joyce Brothers type psychologist.I wish I could remember who said it, but I read a review of this film once where the reviewer said that the parts Fonda and Bacall played in cheaper productions years ago would have been played by Edgar Kennedy and Dot Farley. I should only have said something that brilliant. Watching Fonda I did see traces of the slow burn and Bacall is certainly more chic than Dot Farley. Nevertheless the way they bicker at each other could be the best thing about Sex And The Single Girl. Neither Fonda or Bacall is terribly proud of Sex And The Single Girl. I wonder what could have induced them to appear in this film?It's not the worst film that any of the leads or an exceptionally talented name cast of character players ever appeared in. Still these kind of films were being turned out regularly in the late Eisenhower- Kennedy years and this one dates real badly.Helen Gurley Brown's name and real contributions to feminism have stood the test of time better than this film has.

I actually find this scatterbrained 1964 comedy a surprisingly amusing screwball farce all these years later despite its titillating title. So apparently does director Peyton Reed since he based most of his 2004 comic pastiche, "Down with Love", on the storyline of this movie and less so on any of the Doris Day/Rock Hudson romps of the same era. Regardless, they all have the same brew of conjugal misunderstandings, mistaken identities and leering though never explicit sexuality because those were the days when a woman's virtue would never be compromised for anyone but the right man. Directed by the heavy-handed Richard Quine ("Paris When It Sizzles") and written by Joseph Heller (later the author of "Catch-22") and David R. Schwartz, this ridiculous comedy benefits from a game cast headed by Tony Curtis still riding high from "Some Like It Hot" (which is referred to for easy laughs in the story) and Natalie Wood who shows her comedy chops with dexterity here.Curtis plays Bob Weston, a sleazy magazine writer for a men's magazine whose editors are intent on exposing Dr. Helen Gurley Brown as a fraud as a sex expert. Author of the best-selling "Sex and the Single Girl", Brown is not at all the clench-jawed celebrity author who wrote the real book and appeared on "The Tonight Show" constantly. Instead, she is a gorgeous, intellectually prodigious 23-year-old who extols female empowerment in the bedroom. Showing off his moral depravity, Weston steals the marital woes of her next-door neighbors, pantyhose magnate Frank Broderick and his acerbic wife Sylvia, and comes to see Dr. Brown as a patient. The rest is predictable but still a good amount of fun. Curtis was still at the top of his game here showing how he can easily elicit laughs from such a vile manipulator, but it's Wood who surprises as Brown. Displaying a nervous but infectious energy that feeds nicely into the two sides of the doctor, she is funny and sexy in a way that she could never quite balance as well again in her career. Witness the hilariously conflicted drunken scene in her apartment for evidence of her talent.Quine was smart to cast three sharp stars in the key supporting roles - Henry Fonda as the put-upon Frank browbeaten into a sad man by Lauren Bacall pulling all the stops as the shrewish basket case Sylvia is, and Mel Ferrer as Brown's somewhat ambiguous colleague. Add a sultry Fran Jeffries who performs two numbers (including the title tune) for no apparent reason except to sell records, an even sexier Leslie Parrish ("The Manchurian Candidate") as Weston's secretary, and a genuinely funny extended car chase scene, and you have the makings of an under-appreciated sex comedy. The 2009 DVD, part of the six-disc "The Natalie Wood Collection", includes a Warner Brothers cartoon ("Nelly's Folly") and the original theatrical trailer.