Good Neighbor Sam

Jack Lemmon stands at the top of his profession when it comes to comedy. No other actor has his sense of timing or expressive manners to offer competition to the master. "Good Neighbor Sam" is Lemmon at his best. Playing the average guy next door who gets into all kinds of problems through mostly no fault of his own. Everyone will enjoy this movie and the other Lemmon films similar to it. I rated this a 7.

"Good Neighbor Sam" bombed big time when it was released in 1964. At the time I thought, "What a shame. This is Jack Lemmon's best comedic acting in years, and this is a pleasant movie."

Looking at it now, I understand why "Good Neighbor Sam" was a failure. For one thing, it's way overplotted (there's enough subplots for THREE sparkling comedies). It's played at the sitcom level and runs over two hours. The "domestic violence" subplot is disturbing, even for the times. However, it is still funny, beautifully cast (especially Lemmon, Dorothy Provine, Romy Schneider and Edward G. Robinson) and mostly gentle satire (the Hertz commercial retakes are a hoot). Best of all, the "billboard defacing," which happens near the end of the movie is the funniest sequence of all, meaning "Good Neighbor Sam" NEVER lets up.

Special note should be taken of Frank DeVol's music (the recurring theme is a classic). I recommend this one highly

I also saw this movie as a child, and fell in love with it. I particularly liked the wacky gadgets Sam would build, and the theme song (by Frank De Vol) is very catchy. One time when it was on TV, I was able to make an audio tape of it on this crummy little portable real-to-real tape recorder my dad gave me. I played it so much that I was able to memorize whole lines of dialog - "you can't alter a man's death-bed request with a lot of childish spying and gossip. Now obviously this man and woman are husband and wife, Mr and Mrs Howard Ebbets, and as such, I set the distribution of the Lagerlof will for 9am tomorrow morning. Now good day..."

It's nice to see Mike Connors in a pre-Mannix role, and you can never get enough of Louis Nye. Edward G Robinson does a good job of playing the wealthy dairyman, Mr Nurdlinger. Plus his participation gives the whole production a needed bit of weight. This is the kind of movie they're talking about when they say - "they don't make 'em like that anymore." And I say, it's our loss.

The film begins well with its depiction of 1960s suburbia, the introduction of the Bissell family (including the ducks), the amusing jibes at the advertising industry (including the inaccurate but hilarious depiction of the filming of a Hertz car rental commercial), provides some great performances from all the principals, and from a great supporting cast, such as Edward Andrews, R.Q. Jones, and Neil Hamilton. It has a smart, yet affectionate quality to it. But as the film chugs along, it seems to run out of steam, as the gags keep repeating themselves, and it begins to seem more like a less successful imitation of the popular Doris Day/Rock Hudson romantic comedies of the time, and one can begin to understand why Lemmon didn't put this one in the top drawer of his memories.

GOOD NEIGHBOR SAM was one of three films from the middle 1960s that Jack Lemmon detested. After making THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES and THE APARTMENT Lemmon felt he was finally being recognized as a fine dramatic actor, and suddenly he was in this film, UNDER THE YUM YUM TREE, and HOW TO MURDER YOUR WIFE. He felt that these were minor films, and always disliked making them.

In the case of UNDER THE YUM YUM TREE, one can sympathize with Lemmon's feelings. He never played a more detestable character in any of his films than in YUM YUM TREE where he was a total letch. But he was in top comic form, supported by good casts and good scripts in SAM and WIFE. They were not great movies, but both were entertaining.

The plot of GOOD NEIGHBOR SAM is an old one: a family friend is in a tight spot and needs to borrow the spouse of his/her closest friend to get out of it. Another example of this is GUEST WIFE, where Don Ameche borrows Dick Foran's wife (Claudette Colbert). There the complication is that Ameche's boss (Charles Dingle) believes Ameche's wife is an amazing, supporting woman in her "husband's" remarkable career as a correspondent in Asia. Here Romy Schneider borrows Dorothy Provine's husband (Lemmon) to pretend that she is happily together with her husband to claim a $15,000,000.00 estate. But her husband (Mike Connors) shows up, and to save the situation pretends he is Provine's husband. This leads to complications of mutual jealousies between Connors and Lemmon, as well as problems concerning a multi-million dollar ad campaign Lemmon is handling on behalf of dairy farm millionaire (and total prude) Edward G. Robinson.

The film has many nice spots in it, especially for Robert Q. Lewis, as a friend and fellow employee of Lemmon who is nearly driven nuts by watching the odd goings on between Lemmon - Provine - Schneider - Connors. Also the ultimate private detective, Louis Nye, who has some great (and for 1964 really advanced) devices for his business. My favorite bits are now a trifle dated - the running gag about the old Hertz Rent-A-Car ads ("Let Hertz Put You In The Driver Seat"). A wonderful chase, involving painting and billboards, raps the film up very nicely. Lemmon was wrong - not in the same category as SAVE THE TIGER, GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, or THE APARTMENT, but a worthy, entertaining film.