Main Cast: Shirley MacLaine, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, Dean Martin, Gene Kelly
Release Year: 1964
Country: US
Run Time: 111 minutes
Plot
This lavishly produced, big-budget comedy (it cost $20 million in 1964 dollars) stars Shirley MacLaine as Louisa, a widow who is worth $200 million dollars. However, she's convinced that her fortune is cursed, and she wants to give all her money to the IRS. As she explains her sad tale to her psychiatrist, Dr. Stephanson (Robert Cummings), it seems that when Louisa was young she had the choice of marrying rich playboy Leonard Crawley (Dean Martin) or poor but decent Edgar Hopper (Dick Van Dyke). She chose Edgar, but soon he became obsessed with providing a fine home and fortune for her; he got rich but worked himself to death in the process. Despondent, Louisa flies to Paris, where she strikes up a romance with expatriate artist Larry Flint (Paul Newman). When Larry invents a machine that creates paintings based on sounds, he becomes wealthy and famous -- and dies. Louisa returns to America, where she figures to break her streak by marrying Rod (Robert Mitchum), a business tycoon who already has lots of money. He resolves to take life easier and becomes a farmer, only to die in a strange accident with a bull. Louisa is drowning her sorrows one night at a sleazy night spot when she falls for second rate entertainer Jerry (Gene Kelly). They marry, and a now-wealthy Jerry develops a relaxed, carefree quality to his act that makes him a huge star, which leads to his being crushed by a mob of his biggest fans. What a Way to Go! boasted a screenplay by Betty Comdon and Adolph Green that featured many amusing film parodies and a score by Nelson Riddle; it also marked the final screen appearance of comic actress Margaret Dumont, best remembered as Groucho Marx's straight woman in several films. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
Though not as dark as the contemporary Dr. Strangelove, the premise of What a Way to Go! is surprisingly black for a Hollywood comedy, especially one with an extraordinarily lavish budget. That budget is well used -- Shirley MacLaine gets to wear 72 mostly fabulous outfits, including a dress that is essentially one long pearl necklace and that must be seen to be believed. The rest of the physical production, including sets and decoration, is impressive, and the cast is stellar. Unfortunately, the excessive production seems to have overwhelmed screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green a bit. There are some good lines scattered throughout, but on the whole the writers don't rise to the bait offered by the premise. The movie ultimately is too soft and safe, and the atmosphere tends toward the frenetic and hysterical, indicating that the material itself can't sustain a more relaxed approach. Although the idea of telling the stories of each husband in a different style is clever, it wears thin after a while. The cast is always watchable, with Paul Newman turning in one of his most easygoing performances, and Dick Van Dyke is very funny. Gene Kelly's self-parody is perhaps the best realized performance. MacLaine is fine, although she does resort to mannerisms and mugging too often. What a Way offers delights, but it's a shame that it settles for being good rather than special. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Jack Martin Smith - Art Director, Gene Kelly - Choreography, Richard Humphrey - Choreography, Edith Head - Costume Designer, Moss Mabry - Costume Designer, Fred R. Simpson - First Assistant Director, J. Lee Thompson - Director, Marjorie Fowler - Editor, Nelson Riddle - Composer (Music Score), Ben Nye, Sr. - Makeup, Frank Westmore - Makeup, Dick Smith - Makeup Special Effects, Edward S. Haworth - Production Designer, Stuart A. Reiss - Production Designer, Walter Scott - Production Designer, Leon Shamroy - Cinematographer, Arthur P. Jacobs - Producer, Stuart A. Reiss - Set Designer, Walter Scott - Set Designer, L.B. Abbott - Special Effects, Emil Kosa, Jr. - Special Effects, Betty Comden - Screenwriter, Adolph Green - Screenwriter, Gwen Davis - Short Story Author
Shirley MacLaine plays Louisa May Foster, a romantic young woman who realizes she wants to marry for love, and not for money. However, she believes she's a victim of a supernatural curse, as she tends to marry poor men for love, then ends up a neglected wife and a rich widow. To prove her point, all of her four husbands die off after achieving wealth. All four leave her immensely wealthy but intensely unhappy.
In a dream-like pre-credit sequence, a pink coffin is carried down a pink staircase in a pink mansion with Louisa as a black-clad widow following behind. The pallbearers drop the coffin, which sleds down the stairs.
Louisa tries desperately to give away more than $200 million dollars to the U.S. government Internal Revenue Service who believe it an April Fool joke. Louisa ends up as sobbing widow on the couch of an unstable psychiatrist (Robert Cummings). Louisa tries to explain herself and her motivation for giving away all that money which leads into the rest of the story, a primarily romantic flashback with occasional fantasies from Louisa's point of view including a Marnie type aversion to the colour pink.
We meet Louisa as a young, idealistic girl. Her mother (Margaret Dumont) is fixated on money; she is pushing for Louisa to marry Leonard Crawley (Dean Martin), the richest man in town. Louisa loathes Lennie and instead takes up with Edgar Hopper, an old school friend who inadvertently woos her with his relaxed attitude, lack of ambition, and love of the simple life. Hopper is inspired by the writing of Henry David Thoreau, taking the writer's message of "simplify, simplify!" to heart. Louisa elects to marry Hopper, played by Dick Van Dyke. They live in a shack, poor but happy until Hopper abandons the simple life for an all-out assault to drive Crawley out of business in Crawleyville. Edgar makes a lot of money while pushing himself to his human limits. He pays the ultimate price.
After Hopper's death, Louisa is a millionaire. She travels to Paris, where she meets Larry Flint (Paul Newman). Avant-garde art dominates Flint's life, including a chimpanzee that paints. One of his projects is a machine that paints by sound, a "fusion of man and machine -- the only positive statement in art that is being made today!" Louisa falls in love with Flint's attitude of "Money corrupts. Art erupts!" and marries him. She enters into his bohemian lifestyle while renouncing her secret millions. An erotic foreign-film spoof shows the sheet-clad pair making love in progressively smaller bathtubs and on a bed. Flint's minimalist abstracts are just good enough to keep them fed. Louisa idly suggests having the machine paint to Felix Mendelssohn's Spring Song -- thus leading to the creation of a masterpiece. Flint becomes famous and increasingly obsessed with all the money coming into his life. His work of art ends up killing him.
Louisa is richer but more depressed. She meets an already wealthy magnate named Rod Anderson (Robert Mitchum) and convinces herself that it might be easier to love a rich man since she can't make him any richer and inadvertently cause his death. To paraphrase Louisa's narrative, it is "like one of those lush budget films where it's all about what she's going to wear next." This fantasy segment is full of Edith Head's over-the-top costumes and ends with Mitchum and MacLaine making love in a huge champagne glass. Despite his happy retreat into marriage Rod discovers he's actually gotten richer while neglecting his industry. Louisa convinces Rod to sell everything and retire to the type of small farm he lived on during his childhood. The good news is that Rod never neglects her. However, a fateful mistake by Rod on the farm leaves Louisa a widow yet again—and now fantastically wealthy.
Louisa wanders the States alone. In a cafe called the Cauliflower Ear in a podunk town, she meets Pinky Benson (Gene Kelly), a customer who charms her with silly dances and rhymes in the manner of Pinky Lee. She learns he's been a performer at the Cauliflower Ear for 14 years. Pinky invites her to come see him perform. She sees that his clown act is tolerated because he doesn't distract from the serving of food or liquor. Louisa is charmed by Pinky's satisfaction with his simple lot in life, seeing it as mirroring her own desires. She marries him. One night, Pinky decides to perform without his clown makeup and the customers notice his talent. In short order, Pinky becomes a Hollywood movie star. Once again Louisa is neglected by a husband obsessed with fame. An all-pink mansion is among Pinky's obsessions, as is Louisa's appearance at a screening in an all-pink chinchilla coat and a pink wig. Pinky's adoring public stampede him into an early grave.
Louisa has told the psychiatrist her sad tale. The rest of the movie unfolds in the present time, including her happy discovery that Leonard Crawley has lost everything and is now leading a poor, simple life that she can share.
Production
The audience sees four lampoons of film styles as interludes in the story. In order, we see lampoons of silent film comedy, French New Wave with jump cuts, Ross Hunter fashion-heavy eye-candy films, big 1940's Hollywood musicals, and a spoof of Cleopatra.
Shirley MacLaine was quoted as saying that she was happy to work with "Edith Head with a $500,000 budget, seventy-two hairstylists to match the gowns, and a three-and-a-half-million-dollar gem collection loaned out by Harry Winston of New York. Pretty good perks, I'd say."[1]
Robert Mitchum's role was originally meant for Frank Sinatra but Sinatra suddenly wanted several times more money than what the other male leads received. The studio refused Sinatra's demands; Gregory Peck was sought but he was unavailible. Shirley MacLaine recommended Mitchum to director J. Lee Thompson who recommended him to the studio.[2]
