jacobs-greenwood Taking the title of Helen Gurley Brown's book and casting Natalie Wood to play the author, Warner Bros. must have had a ready-made hit on its hands at the time, especially with Tony Curtis to play her opposite. Unfortunately, it doesn't translate very well today. It comes off as a silly sex farce with dated male-female relationships and inside jokes about the magazine business (and its frugality?).Its plot bears no resemblance to the author's best selling semi- autobiographical book, which helped to mark the beginnings of the sexual revolution. Directed by Richard Quine, its screenplay was written by Joseph Heller and David R. Schwartz from a story by Joseph Hoffman.Curtis plays Bob Weston, the editor that's responsible for transforming a once staid family periodical into a trashy scandal rag to the delight of its legacy owner, played by Edward Everett Horton (whose face can't hide the ravages of a lifetime spent smoking cigarettes).After accusing Brown (Wood) of being a virgin in their magazine, Weston decides to find out whether she is indeed a hypocrite. Using his neighbor's name and decade long marital situation as his own, Weston woos psychologist Brown. Her book advises single girls (such as herself) to pursue affairs with married men. This leads to the obvious, in the end.Did I mention that Weston's neighbors are played by Henry Fonda and Lauren Bacall? Both must have been embarrassed to appear in this comedy. He runs a hosiery business, which causes her (formerly one of his models) to be jealous of similarly leggy women.There's also Mel Ferrer as a psychiatrist that's (naturally) attracted to his co-worker Brown. Stubby Kaye, Otto Kruger, and even Count Basie also appear as do lesser known actors Fran Jeffries and Larry Storch. Perhaps because of the success of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), the studio decided to throw in the out-of-place madcap car chase which consumes this movie's final 20 minutes.

bobvend The sixties sex comedy can be considered a genre into itself. This entry into that franchise holds lots of promise at the outset and includes some wonderfully ironic comedy slants and in-jokes. But the impostor/deception angle that propels the film has been done often before and much better. Soon the film seems to come off as merely a framework in which Fran Jefferies gets to warble and wiggle at predetermined intervals.It's no stretch for Tony Curtis to portray a sleazy writer for a bottom-of-the-barrel tabloid magazine; he inhabits the role well as this is familiar territory for him. Natalie Wood- who could fall face- first into a septic treatment plant and still emerge luminous- tries hard with her character. But I can't decide if this material is wrong for her, or is it the other way around. If for no other reason than perhaps they "owed someone a picture", Lauren Bacall and Henry Fonda are inexplicably present to portray the bickering long-married neighbor couple. It's hard to imagine that either of these giants would be here by choice.And nothing clears up misunderstandings and solves problems like a good old car-chase scene! There's a right way (and a right reason) to shoehorn such a spectacle into a movie, but you won't find that here. The result is a juvenile, silly, and pointless finale. A running sight gag involving pretzels is the only ingredient that makes it even slightly amusing. They're crisp and salty and satisfying...everything this movie isn't. Too bad.

jkenny-2 Now I'm sorry I raced through this movie last night and told the DVR to go ahead and delete! I thought it was quite hilarious, in a screwball, self-referential, meta-fictional way! You've gotta love a film that continuously refers to how much Tony Curtis looks like Jack Lemon. I just never thought the studios allowed such tongue-in-cheek buffoonery on screen! Yes, Natalie Wood here is the most beautiful & desirable woman in the world. Henry Fonda does his gravitas routine to brilliant comic effect. Lauren Bacall is timeless & ageless in the role of a justifiably paranoid wife.I keep thinking: who was the wit who concocted such a script? Joseph Heller, the author of catch-22, one of the most highly-acclaimed novels of the 20th century. This film is amazingly & woefully under-appreciated!

bkoganbing 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.