At Long Last Love

Peter Bogdanovich has stated that Woody Allen watched the movie three or four times during its theatrical run, and later credited the film for inspiring Everyone Says I Love You (1996).

The Camera begins on a silver music box on which rest bas-reliefs of the 4 principals, they dance to a song and then the camera pans around Kitty Kelly's sumptuous black-and white art deco penthouse.

As of 2017, there are four editions of this film. The original 1975 theatrical release, running 115 minutes, begins with Brooke's (Cybill Shepherd) entrance, making the first musical number "Which?" Two musical numbers, "Down in the Depths" and "Tomorrow," initially placed before Brooke's scene and designed to introduce the characters of Kitty (Madeline Kahn) and Johnny (Duilio Del Prete), were deleted from the release print, borne out by both the original poster art and the RCA Victor original sound track album, neither of which includes these song titles. From later versions of the film, it is clear that director Peter Bogdanovich intended to establish his four characters as equally weighted, but it can be surmised that, based on the film's billing, studio heads deemed it extraneous to begin the film with what they considered two supporting players and opted to keep the focus on above-the-title billed Shepherd and Burt Reynolds. This relegated Kahn and Del Prete's characters to a lower rung, introduced only through their interaction with the established leads. Given the promotional materials, editing and billing, the theatrical release was erroneously presented as a love story between Reynolds and Shepherd, which only intensified audiences' confusion, as the final, ambiguous moment of the film (the indecisive figurines upon the music box) strikes a blow for those who'd assumed its "stars" would end up in each other's arms. In response to the film's critical lambasting and poor box office performance upon its premiere at Radio City Music Hall, Fox hastily edited the film and re-released a 98-minute version for nationwide distribution. This print begins with Kitty's entrance and restores both "Down in the Depths" and "Tomorrow," followed by the introduction of Michael (Burt Reynolds). Brooke's entire opening scene, including "Which?," has been scrapped, and she is not introduced until the racetrack scene. Also cut from this print: Reynolds and Kahn's eye-contact pantomime and the first verse of "You're the Top"; the entire nightclub scene (cutting from backstage at Kitty's show to the limo picking up Elizabeth, leaving only the reprise of "Friendship" as the principals drive to Long Island); the brief garden flirtation between Reynolds and Shepherd concerning his mustache following "Well, Did You Evah?"; Reynolds and Shepherd's final reprises of both "It's De-Lovely" and "Let's Misbehave" (cutting from the reprise of "But in the Morning, No" to the fade-in of the baseball game); and the post-song dialogue and phone call following "Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love," moving directly into the park scene following the number's end. Finally, there is no end title music during the credits roll, only the sound of street traffic below. One final aside on this print. While many initially believed it was the work of cable television technicians, achieved decades after the original release, there are two moments of artful editing that prove this print was executed by the studio's hand: the video overlap of Rodney (John Hillerman) mixing martinis over the instrumental audio of "You're the Top" (in the original, this scoring accompanies Kahn and Reynolds, with Hillerman having already made his exit), and the audio bleed following "Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love" which overlaps Kahn and Shepherd's dialogue in Central Park. Another contributing factor to this theory is the glaring amount of Shepherd's footage that has been axed in this print, indicating that Fox was likely responding to the vitriolic reviews that greeted her performance in particular. When At Long Last Love was leased to network television, the revised print ran 121 minutes. Everything was restored. The four main characters are equally weighted, with each receiving his or her own introductory sequence in Bogdanovich's original order: Kitty, Johnny, Brooke, Michael. Beyond the addition of the two "new" songs ("Down in the Depths" and "Tomorrow"), the film is exactly as it appeared in its original theatrical run. Many years later, a fourth print was unearthed, apparently grafted together on his own time by a Fox technician with great personal affection for the picture. It is, in effect, the entire 121-minute version with one notable addition, a two-minute Holy Grail he had found in the vaults: a dance reprise of "From Alpha to Omega," featuring a charming soft-shoe routine by Kahn and Del Prete. The technician lovingly rejoined this sequence to its proper place in the film, which he then returned to the vault with no fanfare whatsoever. This was not discovered until 2013, when Twilight Time and Fox released a limited edition Blu-ray of the film (another head-scratcher, as this was the first-ever home video edition of At Long Last Love and it was not given a dual-format release on DVD). Available only through Amazon, the Blu-ray sold out as expected within three years and now commands an astronomical out-of-print price. This version runs 123 minutes and is, of course, as complete as possible. That said, there may be a fifth incarnation of At Long Last Love waiting in the wings, as there are at least two other sequences that have never found their way into any print of the film: "It Ain't Etiquette" sung by Cybill Shepherd and Eileen Brennan outside the racetrack, and "Kate the Great" performed by Mildred Natwick, which has long been rumored to exist but has never turned up in any form.

Featured in Musical Hell: At Long Last Love (2013)