User reviews

"Single Room Furnished" was the last film of the once-celebrated Jayne Mansfield. Not surprisingly, given the unfortunate state of her career, she was cast as a bitter, used-up prostitute. The film is ostensibly a dramatization of her sad life and times. Because she died before it was completed,it ended up on the shelf, until the director (and Mansfield's ex-hubby) Matt Cimber, made the decision to finish the film. In order to release it to capitalize on the lurid headlines generated by her untimely death, he added an additional story involving a singularly unappealing middle-aged couple that stops the film cold, and totally negates any interest it might otherwise have had. Mansfield, looking blowzy and tired, may be the main interest here, but she's done in by the pathetic script and the surrounding cast of no name, no talent performers, all of who seem to want to get off-camera as soon as possible. All except Charley and Flo, the characters played by the actors hired to complete the picture, who sigh, grunt, moan and whimper about the sad state of their lives. Not nearly as much as the critics who were forced to endure this film, however, or the audiences who were subjected to it during it's mercifully short release. Jayne gave a valid performance in "A Guide for the Married Man" shortly before her death, and that would have been a more fitting end to her (modest) career. Anyone who makes it all the way through this film (like I did) deserves what they get.

Jayne Mansfield dons three different guises to play one slow-talking, slightly zonked woman (her idea of being sultry is to dawdle over every other word--or maybe she thinks she's being dramatic?). It's a tacky, flashback-framed fiasco that is filled with two-person scenes, and in every sequence the characters keep saying each other's names: "Hey, Flo?" "Yes, Charlie?" "You know what, Flo?" "What, Charlie?" A tired and amateurish farewell to Mansfield, who, contrary to popular belief, was not beheaded before its release. After perishing in an auto crash, a newswire photo flashed across the globe featuring Jayne's blonde wig next to the crushed car's right-front tire. Rumor quickly spread that it was her head, but rest assured Mansfield's head was attached to her body when she died. *1/2 from ****

NYC apartment super Pop tells rebellious girl Maria about the dangers the city presents to young women. Johnie (Jayne Mansfield) and her husband Frankie used to live in the apartment but they grow apart. She gets pregnant and he leaves her. She has a miscarriage and changes her name to Mae. There is another couple Flo and Charley. Charley took pity on Mae who's pregnant again and proposed to her. He changes his mind and married Flo instead. Mae puts the baby for adoption, changes her name to Eileen and becomes a prostitute.

Jayne Mansfield tries to do some dramatic acting. This is notable for her death before she finished filming. Her acting is functional. She won't get any awards but she's not the problem with this movie. The directions are horrendous. Director Matt Cimber does little more than point the camera at a stage play. The settings are amateurish. His eye for visuals is lacking. The editing style is boring. Much of the problem is the disjointed nature of the movie. Some of that disconnected feel may be due to Mansfield's death. However it's not covered well at all. The dialog is clunky. It is slow. This is a bad movie.

At the height of her fame, Jayne Mansfield marketed hot water bottles shaped like her notorious 41-18-26 superstructure; sold her used bath water for $10 a shot; reportedly had 1,000,000 lines of copy devoted to her during a six month period in New York alone; and was considered a serious threat to Marilyn Monroe as the world's #1 blonde bombshell. Unfortunately, a relentless drive toward increasingly tacky publicity stunts quickly labeled Mansfield more an event than an actress. By the mid 1960's, her celebrity was renowned, but the star 20th Century Fox once valued at a reported $20 million was adrift without a major studio, appearing in tawdry European film productions and touring in a campy nightclub act. 1966 saw Mansfield hit near-bottom: overweight, alcoholic and dependent on pills, the fading sex goddess was at the nadir of her film career, appearing in worthless dreck like "Las Vegas Hillbillies.": Her current husband, Matt Cimber, however, still fed into her belief that, with the right project, she could become a serious actress. To that end, he directed her first "serious" drama since 1957's "Wayward Bus," a gritty little script called "Single Room, Furnished." In keeping with the film's seedy urban setting, the sets are tacky and threadbare, with a blaring jazz soundtrack. Jayne plays three roles: a teenage bride, a pregnant cocktail waitress, and a call girl. (As one columnist sniffed about the then-unmade film, "Should get into real ART when Jayne plays the teenager!") To Cimber's credit, he elicted a performance from Mansfield which, if not exactly good, is hypnotic and eminently watchable. In most of her films, Mansfield is over-upholstered window dressing; here, she is not given much room to be attractive, and even as the call girl, she's a far cry from her halcyon days at Fox. Therefore, it's to her credit that, without the benefit of silver lame, wriggling undulations or bare-breasted antics, she maintains our interest. It's a hauntingly poetic performance, completely guileless and technically lacking, but somehow very honest. At this point in her life, perhaps Mansfield knew something of her character's sadness and loneliness. On June 29, 1967, Mansfield was killed in a car accident; "Single Room, Furnished" was still incomplete, so additional scenes were shot with the supporting cast. Surprisingly, these scenes are remarkably touching, focusing on the romance between "Flo" and "Charlie." This isn't a good film, by any stretch of the imagination, but it is rather moving, and a sad, quiet postscript to the otherwise gaudy phenomenon of Jayne Mansfield.

I got this one in a Drive-in 50-pack. I was excited that Jane Mansfield was a part of this pack and was looking forward to watching Single Room Furnished (1966) because I had never seen it before. To my surprise the film is, well, awful.

Jane Mansfield was fine in this film. I did not have a problem with her acting ability. What I found horrible was this film - not Jane.

Being fair about it - I realize Jane died before she could finish this film and we were left with basically an incomplete film. I know they beefed up the extra characters in order to "complete" the film but the story is just bad. Really bad.

The whole idea behind this story is rubbish to me. Jane plays Johnnie / Mae / Eileen. The woman Johnnie is married, her husband leaves her when she becomes pregnant. That part of the story is OK but what happens next is crazy - Johnnie then changes her hair color and her name to Mae. Mae becomes a waitress, falls in love with a married man who goes back to his wife. Then Mae changes her looks again and her name again this time to Eileen and becomes a prostitute. WHY??? Why would Johnnie keep changing her name and looks just because her husband left her? He's not going to killer her!! He just flat out left her. Do what? What a crazy story that is, quite frankly, boring!!

Charley and Flo are worse... they are the beefed up characters. We hear long boring conversation between them.

OK. If Jane had lived long enough to complete this film then it might have made more sense in the end but I still don't think it would have ever helped this script over all.

Watch this film only if you are really crazy about Jane Mansfield. I'd give this film a 1 but I'm giving it an extra point just for Jane.

2/10

SINGLE ROOM FURNISHED has received some minor note of recognition purely because it stands as Jayne Mansfield's last film, and she died during the production in an infamous car accident. Thus, although Mansfield is the main star in this one, we gets of tacked-on scenes with extraneous characters who serve little purpose other than to pad out the running time and provide lots of unnecessary conversations which add nothing to the film's central storyline.

Mansfield was never much of an actress but she's adequate enough for what is obviously a B-movie. What is inadequate are the poor production values (typical for a Crown International Pictures release), inane dialogue, and nonsensical scripting. These factors combine to make SINGLE ROOM FURNISHED a very dull film to sit through.

The answer is yes. The question: Could Jayne act? She did in this one, and was surprisingly good at it too. I saw this movie more out of morbid curiosity than anything else, not really expecting much. I'd read lots of reviews of it, most of them on the negative side. I admit to being a big Mansfield fan so I did have a bit of a bias. And surprise, surprise I did enjoy it. For the most part! I liked her a lot more than the movie tho. I can understand why this wouldn't have been a box-office hit. It's a bit slow at times, and strays off course. The secondary plot involving Charley and Flo confused me. While the actors did a fine job, after a few minutes I felt like I was watching another movie altogether. Their first scene together was WAY too long, and I began to wonder who they were and why were they there in the first place. But after reading that Jayne died before the film completed it made sense. The producers didn't have enough completed film at that point, so it made sense to beef up the secondary roles the characters play, and pad the length of the film to a reasonable length. Not that the actors were bad, they weren't, but I felt that they were out of place here, and that they should have had a whole film of their own. Jayne does a good job here, though admittedly she's no Bette Davis. She was compelling enough to carry the movie. For a while I actually forgot I was watching Jayne Mansfield, and got caught up in the characters she was playing. She was talented. She could act. And while this isn't a great movie it does show a really good actress in the making. It's tempting to speculate where her career might have led if she'd lived. All in all, this is a good if not great movie. You be the judge.

Matt Cimber's "Single Room Furnished" is a dark, atmospheric film about destroyed lives and desperation. It is a wonder that this 60's gem is not a cult classic, as it features an outrageous jazz score, along with the legendary cult icon Jayne Mansfield, in three different roles. The story is amazingly lurid, following Jayne's character 'Eileen' on her downward spiral, through failed relationships, unwanted pregnancies, abandonment, leading her to a sad life of prostitution. The film possesses a hypnotic quality. The cheap, tawdry sets and tacky costumes, along with watching Mansfield move dreamily about her surroundings makes for a surreal viewing experience. I was moved by the operatically sad stories of these people. Because Mansfield died before films completion, an extra storyline was added in to bring the film up to feature length running time. Unlike some other viewers, I found the side story with Charlie and Flo thoroughly enjoyable, and those two had some hilarious lines. The scene where the middle aged Flo gets herself all "gussied up" to meet the beer drinking slob Charlie, in what has to be the most tacky bar/restaurant ever captured on film, only to pull a rotten fish out of her purse, and later snatch off her hairpiece; classic stuff. When watching this, one gets the feeling that they are seeing something very rare indeed. As mentioned earlier, the rousing 60's jazz soundtrack is memorable, and fetches over $100 whenever an old LP soundtrack of the movie pops up on ebay. The production carries a distinct feeling of "nostalgia", a shadowy look into a time now gone. And Jayne Mansfield has undeniable screen presence, and for those wondering, she actually could act, and "Single Room Furnished" is proof. The film is exploitation to be sure, capitalizing on Jaynes name, and her tragic life. But it is not degrading to the star for a moment. There is no nudity, and she is given the chance that she most likely always wanted, to play parts other than "sex kitten". The final scenes of 'Eileen' and her sailor, as she confesses her sordid life to him, and to the audience, are among the most beautiful and haunting images to grace the silver screen. For fans of cult or weird 60's films, and definitely for fans of Jayne Mansfield, this is required viewing. Surprisingly there is a great DVD edition of this obscure title, featuring a beautiful widescreen print. It would make a nice double feature with "Who Killed Teddy Bear," starring Sal Mineo. Also recommended is "The Wayward Bus," another obscure one featuring Jayne in a serious role.

I thoroughly enjoyed `Single Room Furnished,' a beautiful film about quiet desperation. The cinematic equivalent to a Graham Greene novel, this darkly daring film centers on Maria, an irrepressible girl in her teens played by the very catching Terri Messina (who looks a bit like Marlo Thomas and Mary Tyler Moore, only hotter) and the desolate trifecta character of Johnnie / Mae / Eilene, played by Jayne Mansfield.

Pop (Billy M. Greene) tells Maria the story of Johnnie's lowly life, as if it were one of Hilaire Belloc's `Cautionary Tales for Children,' against a backdrop of real, unadorned people in their real, drab existence. Director Matt Cimber, in his debut feature film, illustrates the ruthlessness and dreariness of life and how it gleefully pulverizes people who never had a chance. It's not a satirical film, just a bleak soul-shriveler of the cruelest kind. Throughout, Mansfield conceals a depth of softness and vulnerability, hinting that there's always a hopefulness hidden under her sobs and disappointment. The feel-good film of the year this isn't (Mansfield even died before the movie was completed)! But, if you're looking for a quiet tale about human nature and want to see how the majority of American people feel, definitely watch this one!

During the sixties, Jayne Mansfield tried her damndest to be another Marilyn Monroe. She thought that having a large bosom, dying her hair platinum blonde and speaking in a whispery, little girl voice that she would be a cinch to play in major productions like Marilyn Monroe was doing in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" or "Bus Stop." But alas. Jayne would do any type of publicity that would get her name in the news--which meant she eagerly opened super markets, pizza parlors, massage parlors and used car dealerships. Now and then, she would appear in a movie. At first, she lucked out with major productions like "The Girl Can't Help It," but it soon became obvious that she had only one major asset at that point: her impressive breast work. So I was eager to watch her in a "serious" role in this movie which was included in a 50-movie drive-in movie boxed set. Alas, what I saw was so excruitiating, I had to stop watching after 40 minutes. It was like viewing two different movies. The most boring story dominates, unfortunately, between two boring, miserable characters "Flo" and "Charley" that looks like an entirely different script. We watch endless minutes of them staring at each other, occasionally saying bright stuff like, "Hey Flo." And then "Hey Charley." Dorothy Keller plays Flo, doing her best imitation of Thelma Ritter or a Bronx housewife. There's nothing remotely interesting in her story except she's single and sighs a lot and in one inexplicable scene, she brings Charley an old fish that she's wrapped up in her pocketbook and gives it to him. Charley is played by Fabian Dean, an actor we've never heard of, who actually screams at the window because it's storming outside and shouts out stuff like, "What are you trying to do?" Finally, we see Jayne Mansfield. In some scenes she wears a terrible blonde wig that looks like a blanket of white straw. In her big scene, though, now inexplicably a brunet with a large lock falling over her eyes, she acts as if she were in a high school drama. Charley is listening to her talk about her bad luck life as if he were awaiting a root canal. She goes on and on, weeping and staring fixedly at the camera as if awaiting the tiny crew to applaud her. The production isn't helped with the literally threadbare sets--cardboard walls, freshly painted, a few accessories. In one scene in a nightclub, we watch Flo and Charley meet and stare at each other while on the stage is a supposedly go-go girl who wears a regular sweater and skirt. Jayne died before the production was complete and this movie lay on the shelf for a long time before Jayne's husband and director of this movie, Matt Cimber, took it off the shelf and added the horrible padding of another story played by Doris Keller and Fabian Dean. The movie starts with a long, long tribute to Jayne and this movie by gossip columnist, Walter Winchell who is treated to a huge close-up at the end--probably at his request as part of his movie deal. This film is so grim and depressing, as if it reflects Jayne Mansfield's life at that period of her life because she was killed in a car crash on her way to a cheap nightclub in Tennessee. By this time, she was relying on alcohol and probably drugs and had long outgrown her "blonde bombshell" period. Watching this drive-in flick once was more than enough. But in all the ads Jayne is the one we see prominently but her brief role here is pathetically small.

Single Room Furnished is a film with pretensions to art that was supposed to establish Jayne Mansfield. The screenplay was written by her second husband Matt Cimber and in it Jayne plays three different characters. The rest of the cast is folks you never heard of.

Put it simply Alec Guinness, Jayne ain't. She didn't have the acting chops for this kind of item. It's just plain ludicrous.

Let Mansfield be better remembered for Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter or The Sheriff Of Fractured Jaw.

Ironic also that Walter Winchell taped a post mortem introduction to this film saying this was Jayne's great acting triumph. Was he watching what I was watching. By 1966 Winchell was looking everywhere for some attention, he was past his prime as an entertainment influence.

Jayne's fans should skip this.

I know this is Jane Mansfield's last film, and I know that I'm probably not the target audience for an adaptation of a dramatic play what with me liking the films with the explosions and the ninjas and the zombies and such, but this film blows. It's not Janes Man Fields fault either.

Let me explain. This is an adaptation of a play by some guy, so you get a lot of scenes set in the same place, an awful lot of dialogue, and very little of anything happening. Basically it all starts with an annoying teenager storming out on her mum and being told some kind of story by the caretaker about one of the tenants, Jane Mansfield . Mainly told in flashback, we get to see how Jane met her husband, a skinny Bronx character who like to lean on things and stare off into the distance, but just months down the line her husband's getting cold feet and runs off. The teenager's all like 'What's your point, caller?' to the caretaker, so he meanders off on another flashback about two other tenants, Charlie and Flo, who love each other but take forever to get around to admitting it (while of course staring off into the distance and talking about this and that).

Jane turns up here as a different character, but like the same character, and we get subjected to yet another scene of people staring into the distance while jibber jabber pours out of their mouths. This continues as we get to see Jane in her burned out hooker role, complete with crazed stalker, long monologues, hugely unsatisfying ending.

This film is one long stretch of nothing purely designed to depress the hell out of anyone who tries to watch it. I'm guessing fans of Jane Mansfield might get a kick out of her doing this kind of role, but I was just waiting for something remotely interesting to happen. It's a good looking film, mind, but that's about it

Also three stories united in one, originally. "Miss Negligee"(Jayne Mansfield) could really play and even very good, this film proves it fully. She plays here 3 different roles and she plays them with a lot of talent, she is credible, convincing. And those are roles of depth, not the dumb blonde as she had been advised to play in all her other films. The other actors are also very good, especially Dorothy Keller, in a role in the spirit of Giulietta Masina in "The Nights of Cabiria".

Simple minded persons such as moonspinner55 do not try to distinguish the 3 different accents from 3 different cultures that Jayne Mansfield uses in Single Room Furnished. In my helping Jayne Mansfield master the 3 different accents it took the two of us 2 hours on how her saying the word "monkey" alone. Each of her 3 accents of Single Room Furnished were very different from her normal way of speaking. Add on that she used a different way of speaking in every movie and stage play that she was in shows, to at least me, that she had an brightness in her mind to even attempt Single Room Furnished. Another friend of mind said of Jayne Mansfield "genius"- John F Kennedy, President Of The United States.

Jane Mansfield is such a better actress than anyone gives her credit for. Yes its a late 60's melodrama however still the acting to so much better than stuff now. I wish she had, had more time.

Many years ago I saw a copy of this movie and I swear it was without the segueing story line that is now the available movie. What I saw originally was barely an hour long and it was about a single room furnished where Jayne Mansfield portrayed 3 different women who lived there and how each one was striving to overcome their loneliness without success. It was 3 vignettes done more as a stage set not unlike " Our Town " except for the Eileen character who had outdoor scenes as a street walker.

This version was a whole different scenario and if the added material had been better inserted then a lot of the questions of certain scenes not making sense would be answered. This movie proved that Jayne did have the ability to play it straight and deliver an excellent dramatic performance. Unfortunately the last scene is of her as an over the top hooker looking the Bimbo that she manufactured herself and relished in the publicity that it garnered. The Flo and Charlie story by itself was great. Flo was a combination of Thelma Ritter and Estelle Parsons where the Charlie character was Al Molinaro and Paul Douglas. Both delivered an excellent performance as their characters were believable and sympathetic but the insertion of their parts in this movie were obviously done to stretch the movie out due to Jayne's death. It's obvious that the "Pops" character was stretched out and originally was to have been a drunk superintendent of the building in the segment of Eileen but that was changed to have him become the nice super who looks out for his tenants and carry out the storyline making Jayne one person who stays at the complex but changes her personality. Again, due to Jayne's untimely death the movie was added to in an attempt to make a film that would have fluidity and a point.

Although I really liked the Flo and Charlie characters, Charlie during the "Mae" character is a completely different person as he talks about all the women he's had in his room until the addition of Flo where she knows of his celibate lifestyle and he admits he is a confirmed bachelor and doesn't date. None of Jayne's 3 vignettes were finished. The Johnie character who marries the scrawny little limey, Frankie, who looks like a reject from some British invasion band never reveals she is pregnant during that segment and the Frankie character appears to have no interest in her but is a bit too interested in his old friend Tony whom he repeats several times as being so good looking. 1966 was not a year of coming out but it sure looks like that's where this was heading. The Mae character comes to Charlie, a situation that is never developed, and divulges her dilemma which Charlie goes off about guys not taking their due responsibilities and that was it. He, Charlie tells Flo about his proposing to Mae but then with just a short phone call he calls it off and there is no reaction from Mae on film to make that situation at all comprehensive ."Pops" who along with the now married and pregnant Flo tell the young Maria/Mary the details of Eileen and how she ended up in her situation. The additional footage added to stretch the movie out caused it to become less than a B movie which is very sad because there was some damn good acting in it but it was like Orson Wells meets Ed Wood. As for Eileen, also sliced and spliced to try to get it synchronized to the rest of the mess this movie became. As I stated in the beginning of my review, I remember seeing this in a shorter version and I believe the Eileen character was shot and killed by the Billy character but this was changed again due to Jayne's death. In the scene where Billy lowers the gun and runs out, you never see Jayne in the frame/footage. When Pops knocks on her door to check on her, you only hear a voice reply that she's Ok.