Star Spangled Girl

Star Spangled Girl
December 22, 1971
Paramount
Comedy, Romance
VHS
C

This adaptation of a Neil Simon play didn't make anyone happy, including Neil Simon.  There are two things that strike me on this viewing.  It is sort of funny, even if sometimes I'm laughing at how hard they're trying, from the Midnight Cowboy joke to the way the dialogue, Tony Roberts's in particular, sounds completely unnatural.  (His "perfect aurals" line and his description of a feather duster stand out most.)  The other thing is that you've got these two young guys publishing an underground weekly magazine, but one is a shoplifter and the other a stalker (even after the victim repeatedly tells him she's not interested), yet they think they can question what's wrong with America.  Yes, some '60s activists were hypocrites, but no one ever calls these two out on these specific issues.  Yes, Amy (played by Sandy Duncan with a Florida twang) almost calls the police a few times, but she's too forgiving.  And then she falls for Roberts (the shoplifter) and empathizes with Todd Susman (the stalker).  The film is even more of a mess than it was 40 years ago, including the whole thing of Roberts supposedly sleeping with his landlady (so he can put off paying the rent), but only shown doing dangerous sports like sky-diving.

The song "Girl," which Davy Jones sings over both opening and closing credits, is the same one he performed on the classic Brady Bunch episode that year.  Peter Hobbs, who plays the man in the car who buys the Nitty-Gritty because it sounds like smut, would be Dr. Dean in Sleeper.  The duck is uncredited, but probably not the one from The Million Dollar Duck, which Roberts and Duncan had costarred in earlier in the year.

How Sweet It Is!

How Sweet It Is!
August 21, 1968
Cherokee Productions
Comedy
VHS
C+

Speaking of big-screen sitcoms....Well, OK, this Jerry-Paris-directed movie is less like a '60s sitcom than Did You Hear the One...? was, and more like a very extended episode of Love American Style (which would premiere the next year).  It's a little surprising to find that the book it's based on, The Girl in the Turquoise Bikini, came out as far back as '61, but that may explain the title change, since by '68 movie titles with the word "bikini" in them sounded a bit dated.  (Even It's a Bikini World was pushing it in '67, and that was made in '65.)  Debbie Reynolds is the title character, and looks quite fetching in the bikini, but she is 36 at this point and playing a woman of her own age, with a 15-year-old son.  Her husband, played by James Garner, thinks she looks indecently exposed, especially when she wears the bikini in a pool with a seductive Frenchman.  Meanwhile, a pretty tour guide is flirting with Garner, although he doesn't fall for her as Moondoggie did in Gidget Goes to Rome.  Also meanwhile, their son (who wears a peace necklace and has hair scandalously down to his chin) has his own love troubles.  This leads to the whole family winding up in the middle of a whorehouse brawl.

The movie is another example of the mainstream trying to cope with changing times, so it isn't particularly sweet.  You might hope for camp, and there is a bit, but the energy is off.  There are lots of jokes that misfire, like one that I think is about a lesbian having a riding crop.  I don't like that we're supposed to admire hot-tempered Garner, who threatens people, including his wife, with violence, and think that his sensitive son, who believes in not only peace but honesty and freedom in relationships, needs to grow up and "become a man."  The main enjoyment I got out of the movie was the music, including the Mamas & Papas-like title song, and the supporting cast, including of course many TV faces.

This was co-written by Garry Marshall, who does a voiceover as a belching young man and then later appears in the brothel in a baseball uniform.  Yes, that's Garry kid sister Penny, then 24 but passing for 16, as one of the girls on the tour.  And, yes, the little girl who answers the pay phone in the park is 7-year-old Erin Moran, the future Joanie Cunningham.

Paul Lynde steals a few scenes as the purse-lipped purser, while Terry-Thomas steals $1000 of Reynolds's savings and then of course disappears from the movie.  This time Vito Scotti plays the cook who kisses Reynolds on the stomach when she flashes her bikini.  Myrna Ross, formerly one of Von Zipper's Mice in the Beach Party movies, shows up as an "Agatzi girl" (working for Gino Conforti, later of Three's Company).  Another hooker, Eve Bruce, was a harem girl in John Goldfarb.  Walter Brooke, who plays Garner's henpecked boss, is better known for advising on plastics in The Graduate.

Alexandra Hay, who plays the "Are you sure you're 16?"-year-old Gloria would have a more prominent role as Darlene Banks, the hippie daughter of Jackie Gleason and Carol Channing, in Skidoo.  Johnny Silver, who plays "zipper man," would be Dr. Blinky and Ludicrous Lion in both the Pufnstuf show and film.

It is a turquoise bikini in the movie.  And, no, I don't know why they changed Garner's reaction.