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.

Mistaken Identity Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

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"In the world of advertising, there's no such thing as a lie. There's only the expedient exaggeration."

Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant)

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"Everyone wants to be Cary Grant," Cary Grant once told an interviewer. "Even I want to be Cary Grant."

It always seemed to me that that was especially true of Cary Grant in "North by Northwest." Oh, I know, he had some run–ins with some not–so–nice folks who tried to kill him, but no one was as suave as Cary Grant, even when someone was trying to kill him.

I guess his identity was quite a dilemma for him, on screen or off. Like most of the folks in Hollywood, his screen persona (and name) differed from real life. He was born Archie Leach in England and came to the United States in his teens. He legally changed his name to Cary Grant when he became a naturalized citizen.

(The Cary part came from a character he once portrayed in a play. He chose the surname Grant from a list of options the studio gave him — because the CG combination had already proven successful for stars like Clark Gable and Gary Cooper.)

I suppose he always felt torn between his roots and his professional persona.

Combine Grant with Alfred Hitchcock in a movie about mistaken identity.

Hitchcock is one of my favorite directors, and I have seen most, if not all, of his movies. He is remembered as a master of suspense, and that was certainly an element of his style — he said he preferred suspense to surprise — but there were certain themes he explored more often than others. I suppose one of the most prominent was the one of mistaken identity. Offhand, I can think of at least half a dozen movies Hitchcock made that dealt with mistaken identity.

I'm inclined to think that the one that premiered 55 years ago today, "North by Northwest," was his best.

A pretty good case could be made for "Vertigo," I suppose. The same could be said for "Shadow of a Doubt" and "The Wrong Man."

The case is weaker for some of Hitchcock's other mistaken identity motif efforts of which I am aware.

But stacked up against "North by Northwest," everything else comes up short — in my opinion, anyway.

I have mentioned Hitchcock's famous cameo appearances on this blog before. At first they came well into his movies, but, as audiences became increasingly aware of them, there was a tendency for viewers to focus too much on spotting Hitchcock before they gave their full attention to the plot.

Consequently, Hitchcock began having his cameo appearances earlier and earlier. Late in his career, it was a sign of just how much he wanted his audiences to follow the story; if he was eager for viewers to concentrate on the story — and he usually was — he got his cameo out of the way very early.

Only three of his movies had quicker cameos than "North by Northwest." In fact, the cameo came while the opening credits were still rolling. Hitch didn't want the viewers to miss a thing.

Come to think of it, rolling is probably a pretty good word for "North by Northwest" because it hit the ground running and kept charging along until the end.

I guess that is why Hitch was in a hurry to get down to business. He must have felt he had no time to waste.

As much as I like "North by Northwest," though, I will readily admit that it isn't perfect.

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Probably the most famous image from "North by Northwest" was of Grant running from the crop–dusting plane that was intent on killing him.

Frankly, I didn't think that was too sharp of ol' Cary. I mean, the plane was dusting crops where there were no crops. I never did find out exactly what his character was thinking.

After all, enough strange things had already happened. If I found myself standing out in the middle of freakin' nowhere and I saw a crop–dusting plane dusting crops where there were no crops — and I knew that some bad people had been trying to kill me — I do believe I wouldn't keep standing there.

But that's just me. Hitchcock's movies sometimes had a logic all their own.

And then, of course, there was that iconic chase across Mount Rushmore. It was great, nothing else like it on film, but I had to admit that the ending was rather ambiguous.

I mean, just how did Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint manage to get off whichever president's face that was?

I know that movies, both then and now, often require the audience to believe whatever it sees on the screen — but that really was asking a lot of the viewers. They really deserved to know more than Saint was in a perilous predicament and managed to get out of it — somehow.

Isn't that asking a bit much?

Well, I guess you can get away with it if you're Alfred Hitchcock.

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Oh, and Grant and Saint must have gotten married in the interim.

This was 1959, after all. Ike was still president. Married couples couldn't even be seen in the same bed together on TV for another decade or so, and here were Grant and Saint about to get it on just as their train went into a tunnel.

You didn't have to be Fellini to figure that one out.

But perhaps I am being too picky.

"North by Northwest" was only nominated for three Oscars in the year of "Ben–Hur" — and lost all three.