Sex and the Single Girl

Year 5, Day 42 - 2/11/13 - Movie #1,343

BEFORE:  It's been quite a wild February for me so far in movies - I set the tone with "Picture Perfect", about a made-up boyfriend.  Since then I've seen married people pretending to be single ("Along Came Polly"), single people pretending to be married ("Just Go With It" and "Cactus Flower"), people hiding affairs ("The Dilemma" and "Same Time, Next Year"), people NOT hiding their affairs ("The Four Seasons" and "How to Make an American Quilt") and even a guy faking a back injury ("The Fortune Cookie"), all in the name of love.  Umm, and for insurance money, and maybe a promotion or two.

This theme continues tonight - and it's easy to link from Jack Lemmon to Tony Curtis (last seen in "Spartacus") in that movie where they dressed in drag, that bromance "Some Like It Hot".

THE PLOT:  A womanizing reporter for a sleazy tabloid magazine impersonates his hen-pecked neighbor in order to get an expose on renowned psychologist Helen Gurley Brown.

AFTER:  Heh, this movie even name-checks Jack Lemmon twice, when Tony Curtis wears a woman's robe at one point.

I'm not really qualified to comment on the sexual revolution of the 1960's - I was just an infant at the tail end of the decade, but here is what I do know:  Helen Gurley Brown wrote a book called "Sex and the Single Girl", and this film is based on just the title of the book, not any of its contents.  The book was published when she was 40, but the character of Helen Gurley Brown in this film appears to be only 25 or so - yet somehow she's got her doctorate already, and is working at an "institute".

The book in the real world covered many topics, including sexual freedom, living on a budget, advice for eating well, staying fit, and succeeding in the workplace.  Yet in the film version, the fictional Ms. Brown refers to "that best-seller I wrote", and it seems to be all about how to land a man.

This makes the fictional Ms. Brown a target for a tabloid magazine that wants to tarnish her image - but since she claims to be sexually free, the only way the magazine can defame her is to find evidence that she's a virgin.  It seems like a strange twist on the old double-standard - if you can't call her a slut, go the other way and prove she's not an expert on the topic.

Everyone at the tabloid, called "Stop" for some reason, congratulates each other for being part of a terrible magazine, and I found this very confusing.  Are they good at being bad, or are they bad at being good, and if so, then why are they proud?  And if they're trying to put out a bad magazine, how can they tell if they've succeeded?  And if they've succeeded at being bad, what's good about that? 

But then I remembered what's hot in tabloids right now, shows like "TMZ", which are not only poorly produced (Do they HAVE to film every episode in their cubicled common area?  Can't they afford a central table?) but also committed to the lowest form of guerrilla journalism - ambushing jet-lagged celebrities at the airport and asking loaded questions like "Have you stopped beating your wife?"  I do imagine at the end of the day the people involved congratulate each other by saying, "Hey, bad job today, Harvey!" and "You too, Frank, keep up the bad work!"

So this non-married tabloid writer checks into Dr. Brown's clinic while pretending to be his married neighbor - because back then, nobody checked your I.D. or insurance when you went to a clinic - and tries to get close enough to seduce the female doctor.  This was also confusing, because if he seduces her and she's halfway decent in bed, doesn't that mean she's not a virgin, which would ruin his story?  So his goal is to get close enough to FAIL to seduce her, which would prove exactly nothing?  This is either a terrible plan or a poorly conceived plotline, or both.

On one level, his plan does work, because the doctor who espoused sexual freedom and said that women could "have it all" apparently throws her beliefs out the window and falls for the first halfway decent looking married man she treats.  Maybe it's that doctor-patient transferrence thing.  But just like the girlfriends in "Cactus Flower" and "Just Go With It", she demands to meet the (pretend) wife.  And then the scheme starts to unravel, just as it has almost every night this month.

It's tough to say what the message here is, or if there's any message at all.  The married man whose identity gets borrowed claims to be a faithful, but incredibly busy, husband.  But he sells women's stockings, so that involves looking at a lot of leggage, and dealing with models with nice legs, so who can say?  And his wife is little more than a stereotype, bouncing between madly in love and breaking the furniture while throwing him out of the house.  They seem to always be on the verge of splitting up, yet are somehow back in each other's arms the next day, with little explanation.  It's a strange depiction of marriage.

It all wraps up with a madcap car chase through L.A.'s still-being-built highways, (even crazier than the one at the end of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World") with so many people changing cars and romantic partners, it's tough to keep track of who's in love with who, or who's passing who on the way to the airport.  As to who really SHOULD end up with who, your guess is as good as mine.  What I want to know is who said, "You know, what this self-help book adaptation really needs is a good old car chase!"

NITPICK POINT: Apparently back in the 1960's you could just switch plane tickets with other people too, since airlines never checked the IDs of passengers, either.  

Also starring Natalie Wood (last seen in "Splendor in the Grass"), Henry Fonda (last seen in "The Grapes of Wrath"), Lauren Bacall (last seen in "The Big Sleep"), Mel Ferrer, with cameos from Larry Storch and Stubby Kaye.

RATING: 3 out of 10 Bavarian pretzels