Themes: Wedding Bells, Mind Games, Obsessive Quests
Main Cast: Frank Sinatra, Debbie Reynolds, David Wayne, Celeste Holm, Lola Albright, Jarma Lewis
Release Year: 1955
Country: US
Run Time: 111 minutes
Plot
Max Shulman and Robert Paul Smith's Broadway hit The Tender Trap is transformed into a beguiling Frank Sinatra film vehicle. Sinatra plays a Manhattan showbiz agent, Charlie Y. Reader, who enjoys the attentions of several willing young ladies. At an audition, Charlie meets aspiring actress Julie Gillis (Debbie Reynolds), who is so determined to land a husband that she's already set the date. She goes out with Charlie for a short while, then announces that she won't marry him until he gives up all his other girls. Charlie, who hasn't said word one about marriage and who'd been preparing to give Julie the brush-off, is startled by her ultimatum -- so much so that he genuinely falls in love with her, which (we can safely assume) was her intention all along. A complication involving Charlie's former amour Sylvia Crewes (Celeste Holm) and his best friend Joe McCall (David Wayne) paves the way for the film's slightly offbeat denouement. In addition to scoring at the box office, The Tender Trap yielded a hit song (written by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen), which would remain a part of Frank Sinatra's repertoire for the rest of his life. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
While it's hardly a great film, The Tender Trap is a cut above your standard, run-of-the-mill sex comedies, especially those that masquerade as romantic comedies. Trap's defects are easy to spot. The two leading characters, especially the one played by Debbie Reynolds, are the kind of opposites-attract pair that rarely exist outside of a writer's imagination. Reynolds, in particular, is a type that seems to have been born in a typewriter. It's not that extremely marriage-minded woman don't exist; it's that, even in 1955, they were not as single-mindedly determined in the manner that Reynolds is here. The lack of credibility extends to a lesser degree to Frank Sinatra, whose playboy's irresistibility to women just is a bit too much to believe. Much of the plot is too mechanical and predictable, and the audience only believes that Sinatra and Reynolds get together at the end because of the charm and persuasiveness of the stars themselves. That said, Trap does have some very fine moments, and the characters portrayed by Celeste Holm and David Wayne are actually quite nicely drawn. Helped along by the actors' superlative performances, these two characters really anchor the film and give it a degree of distinction. Without them, Trap would be entertaining but forgettable; with them, it lingers in the mind far longer than it really should. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Based on the 1954 play The Tender Trap by Max Shulman and Robert Paul Smith, it marked Sinatra's return to MGM some six years after On the Town. A second film under a new contract with the studio, Guys and Dolls, actually was released ahead of The Tender Trap by one day on November 3, 1955.
The film earned an Academy Award nomination in the category of Best Original Song for "(Love Is) the Tender Trap" (music by Jimmy Van Heusen and lyrics by Sammy Cahn). The song proved a hit for Sinatra, one he would continue to sing throughout his career. It is performed in a pre-credits sequence by Sinatra, sung in the film by Reynolds in a lackluster version that Sinatra corrects and yet again at the end of the film by Sinatra, Reynolds, Holm and Wayne.
Charlie's best friend since kindergarten, Joe McCall, who has a wife named Ethel and children in Indianapolis, comes to New York for a stay at Charlie's apartment, claiming that the excitement is gone from his 11-year marriage and that he wants to leave his wife. Joe envies and is amazed by Charlie's parade of girlfriends, whilst Charlie professes admiration for Joe's married life and family.
At an audition, Charlie meets singer-actress Julie Gillis. She has her life planned to a tight schedule, determined to marry and retire from performing to a life of child-rearing by 22. Although at first she wards off Charlie's advances, she comes to see him as the ideal man for her plans. Julie demands that Charlie stop seeing other women. Charlie balks, but he begins to fall in love with her.
Joe has begun dating Sylvia Crewes, a classy classical musician and a typically neglected lover of Charlie's. Sylvia is approaching 33 and desires marriage as much as the younger Julie does.
One day, annoyed by Julie and possibly jealous of Joe's attentions, Charlie blurts out a proposal of marriage to Sylvia. She is thrilled, only to discover the morning after their engagement party that he has proposed to Julie as well.
Joe confesses his love to Sylvia and asks her to marry him. She turns him down, knowing that he loves his wife and children. Sylvia reminds Joe that girls turn into wives when they marry and she wants the same things Ethel does. On her way out, Sylvia runs into a charming stranger near the elevator who clearly wants to get to know her much better.
Joe packs up and returns to Indiana to his wife. Charlie, his other girlfriends also having moved on with their lives, leaves for Europe for a year.
Charlie returns just in time to see Sylvia marrying the new man in her life. She flips him the bridal bouquet. Julie is also at the wedding. Charlie tosses the flowers to her, then asks her to marry him. She agrees and they kiss.
Poppy Matson's surname is the same as that of Max Shulman's agent Harold Matson, while that of Joe McCall echoes that of Robert Paul Smith's representative, Monica McCall.
