Sex and the Single Girl *** (1964, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Henry Fonda, Lauren Bacall, Mel Ferrer ) – Classic Movie Review 5978

Tony Curtis stars as Bob Weston, the womanising editor of a sleazy scandal mag, who first gets an interview with renowned psychologist Helen Gurley Brown (Natalie Wood) in order to attack her bestseller sex book, and then proceeds to chase her romantically, in producer-director Richard Quine’s airy 1964 satirical comedy.

Joseph Heller and David R Schwartz’s bright screenplay bears no relation to the real Helen Gurley Brown’s book, but instead is based on a story by Joseph Hoffmann.

The script is chewed up and spat out with relish and style by the good performers, with Curtis and Wood showing good style and chemistry, and with Henry Fonda and Lauren Bacall (as quarreling husband and wife Frank and Sylvia) and Mel Ferrer (as Rudy) helping the movie out nicely.

Fonda was furious because he had been assured that both his and Bacall role would be the same size as those of the two top-billed stars, and that did not happen. Count Basie appears as himself.

It is shot by Charles Lang Jr, produced by Richard Quine and William T Orr, scored by Neal Hefti and designed by Cary Odell.

Curtis and Fonda starred together again in Richard Fleischer’s The Boston Strangler.

In 2016 a biopic of Helen Gurley Brown is in the works.

Also in the cast are  Fran Jeffries, Edward Everett Horton, Larry Storch, Stubby Kaye, Leslie Parrish, Otto Kruger, Howard St John, Barbara Bouchet, Max Showalter, William Lanteau, Helen Kleeb, Paul Bryar, George Carey, Taggart Casey, Edmund Glover, Tom Harkness, Sharon Johnson, Sheila MacRae, Martin Martin, Cheerio Meredith, Charles Morton, Burt Mustin, Tom Quine, Irving Steinberg, Fredd Wayne, Frank Baker, Claire Carleton, William Fawcett, Philip Garris, Curly Klein, Mary Kovacs, Paddi O’Hara and Yvonne White.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5978

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