Thoughts on 'Sex and the Single Girl'

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Helen Gurley Brown (Natalie Wood): You know, when you smile like that, you do look like Jack Lemmon!

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In 1962, Helen Gurley Brown's "Sex and the Single Girl" was a best–selling self–help book that encouraged women to become financially independent and to experience sex outside the traditional marriage relationship.

The movie that was released 50 years ago today had the same title and its lead character (played by Natalie Wood) had Dr. Brown's name, but that was just about all the two really had in common.

Tony Curtis played the managing editor of STOP magazine, a real rag of a publication, who wanted to get a scoop on Brown. He had already published an article alleging that Brown was a virgin, and that article had damaged her reputation. Half a dozen of her patients had quit on her, and Brown was intent on suing Curtis, who wanted to interview Brown but had no luck.

So Curtis' character impersonated his housemate (Henry Fonda) who worked in women's hosiery, pretending to be having marital problems so he could get closer to Brown. In the reality of the movie, Fonda actually was having problems with his wife (Lauren Bacall).

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And where would a Tony Curtis movie be without a car chase? That's how "Sex and the Single Girl" concluded: with just about everyone involved in a car chase and then living happily ever after (apparently).

Much of the movie was a farce about mistaken identity, sort of a single–joke "Midsummer Night's Dream." I have never read Brown's book, but it only inspired the screenplay, most of which apparently was written by Joseph Heller. Brown got partial credit for the story, but that may be because it was her book's title, not its content, that inspired it.

It wasn't clever. It wasn't thought provoking. It was mostly silly and contrived. It wasn't Heller's best work.

At one point, Fonda was accused of bigamy, which turned out to be false. That set up lots of cheap jokes about fidelity. To be honest, I had to wonder how stars of such stature as Fonda and Bacall got roped into this project.

In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I laughed out loud when Brown compared Curtis' character to Jack Lemmon in "Some Like It Hot," but that sort of thing didn't happen very much. Curtis and Lemmon, of course, were co–stars with Marilyn Monroe in "Some Like It Hot" — and there are folks who will tell you it was the best comedy ever made. (That is hard — but not impossible — to dispute.)

I don't know if that is true, but I know that the talent in "Some Like It Hot" was superior to the talent in "Sex and the Single Girl" — at least when you compare how the talent was used.

Fonda, for example, was capable of comedy even though he was usually seen in dramatic roles. The same could be said of Bacall and Wood. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that the material in "Sex and the Single Girl" just wasn't worthy of their talents. (You couldn't say that about "Some Like It Hot.")

Maybe the producers should have been faithful to the original book.

'Something Happened,' But What Was It?

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A few weeks ago, I was talking with a friend of mine about Joseph Heller's book, "Something Happened," which was published 40 years ago this month.

(By the way, that is about as close as I can come to pinpointing when it was published. I've tried, and I've tried, but the best I can find is September of 1974.)

I wanted to write about it, I told my friend, but I didn't know what to say. "Don't worry," he replied. "Something will come to you."

Well, September is nearly over. I'm not sure if something ever happened, as my friend said it would, but if I am going to write about it during its 40th anniversary month, I am running out of time.

"Something Happened" was Heller's long–awaited and highly anticipated followup to his critically acclaimed "Catch–22." In my opinion, he never matched "Catch–22," which was published 13 years earlier, but "Something Happened" was pretty darn good.

It wasn't a sequel by any stretch of the imagination. None of the characters from "Catch–22" was in "Something Happened," but they were similar books. The former satirized war; the latter poked fun at domestic life.

I read them in reverse order. I read "Something Happened" in paperback when I was in junior high school. I read "Catch–22" in college.

Since they didn't tell the same story, though, it wasn't necessary for me to read them in sequence.

"Something Happened" was the story of a fellow named Bob Slocum — told by Bob Slocum. He spoke of how everyone in his office was afraid of someone. It wasn't the same person in each case — although there was one person of whom nearly everyone was afraid. She was a typist who was "going crazy slowly" and everyone hoped that, when she finally snapped, as seemed inevitable, she would do so on a weekend.

Bob's home life wasn't much better. His wife, he said, was unhappy — mostly bored and lonely. She had turned to alcohol, he said, and believed she was older, heavier and less attractive than she used to be. He agreed with her but silently. She said he didn't love her anymore, and he agreed with her on that, too, again silently — although Bob did claim there were times when he was proud to have her on his arm when they went places.

His daughter was unhappy, too. In fact, both of his children were unhappy, but he tried not to think of his son, who was "having difficulties" in school. He was, Slocum observed in a less than paternal way, "starting to let me down."

Bob told his story in a stream of consciousness style. In one of my favorite sequences from the book, Bob reflected on a time early in his marriage and the lives of his children when their dwelling had a problem with mice, and he had to set traps for the mice each night and then check them each morning. Each morning, his wife and children huddled behind him while he checked places like behind the refrigerator and inside the pantry.

Although this is not word for word, Bob said something to the effect of, "Even then, I wasn't sure if I liked my family well enough to share such a personal and intimate experience with them."

Later in the book — in which, I should point out, Bob's anecdotes are only loosely connected to each other — the reader discovers that Bob is concerned about his sanity, and the reader starts to realize that Bob may be an unreliable narrator, not necessarily able to distinguish between what is real and what is not.

What it means to be an unreliable narrator is that the narrator's credibility is in doubt for some reason. Many people believe that an unreliable narrator is, by definition, a liar. Some are liars, but that is not always so. Some may be delusional, as Slocum apparently was, or they may be too young to perceive some things, such as Huck Finn or Forrest Gump.

So an unreliable narrator is not always deliberately deceptive. I suspected, as I read the book, that the title was a hint about that. Bob Slocum knew that something had happened to change the trajectory of his life. He just didn't know what it was.

Does that make him that different from the rest of us?

Defining a Lose-Lose Situation

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"There was only one catch and that was Catch–22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to."

Joseph Heller
"Catch–22"

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I have several favorite authors.

I don't like to categorize — or qualify — them by era or gender or nationality or genre or anything else. I've always been a writer. A well–written story is a well–written story, as far as I am concerned.

Oh, sure, I have my preferences. I like just about anything Mark Twain ever wrote. Ditto the works of Charles Dickens. While I didn't always agree with his politics, I admire the political novels of Allen Drury, and I love the rich detail of the books by James Michener.

I have loved the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien since I was in high school. And I have devoured most of Stephen King's novels.

But almost no one whose works I have enjoyed has seen the title of one of his books become accepted slang for a specific condition.

"Catch–22," though, has achieved precisely that. When someone says that something is a "catch–22," it is immediately understood that it is a lose–lose situation from which one cannot escape.

I suppose the modern equivalent — at least in the film world — would be "Groundhog Day."

And a movie that was based on "Catch–22" was made in 1970. It was good. It had some talented people in it. It was faithful to Heller's original work. But no movie could do complete justice to it.

In the literary world, "Catch–22" made its debut half a century ago today, and it received its share of praise. The Chicago Sun–Times said it was "the best American novel in years."

Others weren't quite as generous, and hardback sales were sluggish in the United States. But sales were more robust in Great Britain, and the paperback enjoyed enormous commercial popularity here, selling millions of copies during the Vietnam years.

It really is no wonder to me that it was so popular during the Vietnam eraIts influence continues to be felt.

That is because the concepts that were expressed in "Catch–22" are vividly seen in the world of 2011.

Just recently, in fact, the local Occupy Dallas protesters agreed to relocate to City Hall Park. Their permit to camp in Pioneer Plaza was revoked because organizers of the protest did not purchase a $1 million insurance policy — which no insurer will sell under such circumstances, anyway.

For Betty Grable's legs, yes. For a protest, no.

The protesters can camp in City Hall Park for up to 60 days and have continued protesting in Pioneer Plaza during the day.

Joseph Heller would be proud.