Kiss Me, Stupid

Billy Wilder's career as a hitmaker ended with this for-its-time smutty sex comedy, yet it shows all of the flaws and strengths that once made him one of Hollywood's top directors and, for all its sexual innuendo, is really a very sweet film. Although Ray Walston is terribly miscast as small-town songwriter Orville J. Spooner, who hires a local prostitute (Kim Novak) to impersonate his wife (Felicia Farr) so he can use her to sell singing star Dino (Dean Martin) his songs, the other three stars are dynamite. Farr displays a crack sense of comic timing. Martin, one of Hollywood's most underrated actors, is dead on in a parody of his own image. And Novak gives the performance of her career as the romantic small-town slut trying to earn enough money to get her trailer out of the desert.

As with most of Wilder's films, all the cynicism and sex play mask a romantic heart: Polly and Orville begin to believe in her masquerade as his wife, until he kicks Dino out to protect her honor. The two develop a genuine affection for each other that transcends their brief sexual encounter.

At the time of its release, it was a major scandal, condemned by the Legion of Decency and disowned by United Artists. Now, it seems less shocking and ranks among the second tier of Billy Wilder's work. It's hardly as good as "Some Like It Hot" or "Sunset Boulevard," but never descends to the shoddiness of "The Front Page."

Billy Wilder could well have entitled his best known comedy "Nobody's Perfect" after its unforgettable last line. Instead he saved this ploy for a a later work that I admire almost as much, "Kiss Me, Stupid". Two things have always puzzled me about this film, one, that a work so innocently harmless unleashed such a furore of moral indignation on its first appearance and two, that it has never become one of the most revered of the Wilder canon. Comedies that retain a freshness long after one knows all the jokes are rare, but, for me, "Kiss Me, Stupid" is one of the chosen few. Like all the best comedies it builds on a situation that gets more and more out of hand. A pair of frustratedly unrecognised songwriters, a small town piano teacher (Ray Walston) and his garage mechanic friend (Cliff Osmond) sense a golden opportunity to become known when a famous pop-singer and stand up comic (Dean Martin) needs to stop off in their town for petrol. It's really a single gag film dealing with the pair's machinations to prevent the singer from continuing his journey before they have played him their songs. Their scheming includes getting the piano teacher's wife out of the way and hiring a substitute in the form of a sexy floozy (Kim Novak) who is one of the attractions of the town's recently opened nightclub. To say more would be to spoil the fun. Suffice to say that all the main protagonists are perfectly cast. It has often been remarked that Ray Walston is no match for Peter Sellers who was originally due to play the role. I cannot but disagree fearing that Sellers might have invested the jealousy obsessed piano teacher with that element of caricature that the role does not quite need. All it requires are a few quirky props such as the Beethoven tee-shirt and the buttermilk deposited in the piano and the rather less than over the top quality of Walston's performance is able to convey the humour and fun of the situation without smothering them . There is one superbly funny cameo by Doro Merande (the waitress in "The Seven Year Itch")as his tetchy mother-in-law. Add to this some stalwart work by the great production designer, Alexander Trauner in recreating the atmosphere of small town Nevada and a sparklingly inventive score by Andre Previn and the result is an extremely enjoyable piece of movie escapism.

When writer-director Billy Wilder made `Kiss Me, Stupid' in 1964, he was riding high: His comedy-drama `The Apartment' had won the Oscar as best picture in 1960 and Wilder's `Irma La Douce,' released in 1963, had been a smash. `Stupid,' however, would not receive critical raves or a warm reception at the box office. Instead it would be condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency, banned in several cities and dropped by its original distributor United Artists, which gave `Stupid' a limited and unsuccessful release through its art-film branch Lopert Films. Seen today, it's laughable to think that this innuendo-laden but mostly innocuous comedy created such a furor. Admittedly, Wilder pushed the boundaries of good taste with some of the dialogue and imagery. Even so the movie is far more nutty than smutty. Set in the Nevada hamlet of Climax, `Stupid' tells the story of church organist and piano teacher Orville J. Spooner (Ray Walston), who is insanely overprotective of his adoring and adorable wife Zelda (Felicia Farr, who was married to Jack Lemmon offscreen). Orville and buddy Barney (Cliff Osmond) write songs in their spare time – one is called `I'm Taking Mom to the Junior Prom ‘Cuz She's a Better Twister Than My Sister,' and another begins, `I'm a poached egg without a piece of toast/Yorkshire Pudding without a beef to roast' – and they're excited when singing sensation Dino (Dean Martin as the same kind of leering lush he usually played in his nightclub act and on TV) is stranded in town. Orville thinks he can sell some material to Dino, but the aspiring tunesmith is alarmed by Dino's reputation as a great seducer and fears Zelda, a Dino fan, will end up in the star's clutches. So Orville hires Polly (Kim Novak), a trampy type with teased platinum hair who works at the local dive known as The Belly Button, to pretend to be his wife while he entertains Dino for an evening. Thanks to a series of surprises, it becomes a night to remember for all concerned, including Zelda, who wasn't even supposed to be a part of it in the first place. As the somewhat similar `Indecent Proposal' would do almost 30 years later, `Stupid' ultimately states that the best way to test a relationship is to walk away from it for a while and see what happens. What separates `Stupid' from so many of the so-called `sex comedies' of the period is its combination of cynicism and directness. Beneath the teasing and the titillation there are some genuinely provocative themes about human nature and the sacrifices we're willing to make to catch a break. Although the movie has what might be termed a happy ending, it's a conclusion with more than a few dark clouds hanging over it. Wilder and Diamond must have somehow known that the second half of the 1960s would be fraught with social changes and the re-evaluation of old standards. What looked like trash in 1964 seems pretty prescient when screened today.

This is a low and deeply cynical comedy even by Billy Wilder's standards. It's about the American Dream and says a man would sell his wife to achieve it. Ray Walston, (brilliantly cast; nobody played sharper or more venal in comedy than he did - remember, he once even played the devil?), is the small-town songwriter who tries to sell some of his songs to a visiting superstar called Dino, (Dean Martin, parodying himself as a womanizing, hard-drinking piece of scum). The way he does it is to pass his wife off as a piece of bait for Martin to sleep with and hopefully take his songs. But being the all-American hypocrite that he is, he can't bring himself to use his real wife so he packs her off to a motel and hires the local floozie Polly the Pistol (Kim Novak) to take her place.

The film is very funny in the way it undermines our conventional sense of morality. It's like a French Farce full of dirty American gags and in some ways is one of Wilder's best (though under-valued) films. The only 'nice' character in the whole picture is Polly and Novak brings to the part the same kind of touching naiveté we associate with Monroe. (It's a very Monroe-like performance). And this is probably the best acting Novak has done outside of "Vertigo" and possibly "Picnic"; (her Polly is like an older, more sullied version of the character she played in "Picnic"). A lot of Americans found this film deeply offensive, (it was a bigger success in Europe), and it was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency.

In this sex comedy from writer-director Billy Wilder, Dean Martin stars as Dino, a Vegas singer and comedian who heads to Hollywood to make his next picture. His ends up in the small town of Climax where his car "breaks down", leading him to stay at the home of local piano teacher and aspiring songwriter Orville (Ray Walston), who hopes to get Dino buy some of his songs. The only problem is that Dino wants a woman for the night, and the insanely jealous Orville is afraid he'll target Orville's wife Zelda (Felicia Farr). So Orville arranges for the real Zelda to be gone, and hires local cocktail waitress Polly (Kim Novak) to pose as her and take the brunt of Dino's charge. Also featuring Mel Blanc.

This was highly controversial upon release, condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency, and lambasted in the press as smutty and prurient. Even Barbara Stanwyck made public condemnations of the film. Now of course it doesn't come across as anything more than a typical primetime sitcom, and even tame by those standards. I wasn't too fond of Walston, although I learned that he was a late replacement for Peter Sellers, who suffered a series of heart attacks after filming began. In fact, the main cast was originally supposed to be Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, and Shirley MacLaine in the Martin, Farr, and Novak roles, respectively. Dean Martin's exaggerated spoof of his own persona seems to have been a forerunner of later "meta" self-parodies like Being John Malkovich, Topher Grace in the Ocean's movies, or the entirety of This Is the End.