Boys’ Night Out * (1962, Kim Novak, James Garner, Tony Randall, Howard Duff, Howard Morris, Oscar Homolka) – Classic Movie Review 10,348

The 1962 comedy film Boys’ Night Out is a very dated, rather offensive sex farce about four business guys (James Garner, Tony Randall, Howard Duff, Howard Morris) who keep a flat with a blonde bombshell (Kim Novak) for them to use on different nights.

Director Michael Gordon’s 1962 American romantic comedy film Boys’ Night Out is a very Sixties, very dated, rather offensive sex farce about four business guys-about-town Fred, George, Doug and Howie (James Garner, Tony Randall, Howard Duff and Howard Morris) who keep a flat equipped with a blonde bombshell called Cathy (Kim Novak, bizarrely cast as a sociology student!) for them to use on different nights.

Attractive players Randall, Garner and Novak are among those who keep us watching this thin, tawdry yarn when perhaps we really shouldn’t. It flirts with promiscuity, but ends up being as square as a cube and just a lot of weak, unwitty chat.

Also in the cast are Oscar Homolka, Janet Blair, Anne Jeffrys, Patti Paige, Jessie Royce Landis, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Fred Clark, William Bendix, Jim Backus, Larry Keating and Ruth McDevitt.

It is written by Ira Wallach based on a story by Arne Sultan and Marvin Worth. The story is a cousin of the one in Billy Wilder’s 1960 The Apartment.

It is a co-production of Filmways and Kim Novak’s production company Kimco, financed by Embassy Pictures of Joseph E. Levine, making his first film in the US. They sold the film to MGM. Novak was still a big star at the time and gave herself a $500,000 pay check. It was intended as the first film in a three-picture deal between Kimco and Filmways, but it turned out to be its last production when it was neither a financial nor a critical success, losing MGM $262,000.

Though Novak was only 29, her career was in already trouble following the death of her studio boss Columbia Pictures’ production head Harry Cohn, Ironically, though Boys’ Night Out did not resurrect her career, it helped Garner’s.

Boys’ Night Out is directed by Michael Gordon, runs 115 minutes, is made by Joseph E Levine Productions and Kimco-Filmways, is released by MGM, is written by Ira Wallach, based on a story by Arne Sultan and Marvin Worth, adaptation by Marion Hargrove, is shot in Metrocolor by Arthur E Arling, is produced by Martin Ransohoff, is scored by Frank De Vol [DeVol], and designed by George W Davis and Hans Peters.

It was released  on 21 June 1962 (US).

It is shot at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, 10202 W Washington Blvd, Culver City, California.

Michael Gordon recalled: ‘The picture really started from a five-page dirty joke the writers sold to the producer. It forced me to recognise that the principal business of a picture is to expose certain aspects of human or social folly to ridicule. Novak tried very hard. She just wasn’t the most adept comedienne.’

Garner recalled that Novak “was beautiful and she had a wonderful quality that audiences liked but she didn’t know how to act. I think she was insecure because she was always running off the set to fix her face. She was more interested in her makeup than the script.’

The cast are Kim Novak as Cathy, James Garner as Fred Williams, Tony Randall as George Drayton, Howard Duff as Doug Jackson, Janet Blair as George’s wife Marge Drayton, Patti Page as Howard’s wife Joanne McIllenny, Jessie Royce Landis as Ethel Williams, Oskar Homolka as Dr Prokosch, Howard Morris as Howard McIllenny, Anne Jeffreys as Doug’s wife Toni Jackson, Zsa Zsa Gabor as boss’s girlfriend, William Bendix as bartender Slattery, Larry Keating as Mr Bingham, Fred Clark as Ernest Bohannon, Jim Backus as Peter Bowers, Ruth McDevitt as busybody Beulah Partridge, and Billy Halop as elevator operator.

Novak’s best and most famous film is Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Her other notable films include Picnic (1955), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Pal Joey (1957), Bell, Book and Candle (1958), Strangers When We Meet (1960), Of Human Bondage (1964), The Mirror Crack’d (1980), and Liebestraum (1991).

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,348

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