What a Way to Go!

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What A Way To Go!
Directed by	J. Lee Thompson
Produced by	Arthur P. Jacobs
Written by	Gwen Davis (story) Betty Comden
Starring	Shirley MacLaine Paul Newman
Music by	Nelson Riddle
Cinematography	Leon Shamroy
Editing by	Marjorie Fowler
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	1964
Running time	111 min.
Country	U.S.A.
Language	English French
IMDb profile

What A Way To Go! (1964) is one of those movies that came out of the happy-fun Hollywood era of the Rat Pack years, where a popular type of movie promised escape into naive plots that exclusively focused on the themes of love and sex in fluffy, brightly enhanced Technicolor. This movie is the epitome of that type.

The plot of this movie is comic-tragic flashback into various relationships, with four lampoons of film styles as interludes in the story. In order, we see lampoons of early black & white Charlie Chaplin-type silent film, continental erotic film, fashion-heavy eye-candy film, and big Hollywood musicals.

Shirley MacLaine said she was entranced 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." (Reference 1)

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[edit] The plot

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 "witch's curse"...she tends to marry poor men for love and ends up as a neglected wife and then a rich widow. To prove her point, three of her four husbands die off after achieving fame, wealth, or power, while the other just dies...all four leaving her immensely wealthy.

In the opening of the movie, we see a pink coffin carried by pallbearers and a sad black-clad Louisa following behind. In the following scenes, we see Louisa trying desperately to give 200+ million dollars away to the U.S. Government, only to end up as sobbing widow on the couch of an unstable psychiatrist (Robert Cummings) at the Treasury Department's recommendation. It's clear that everyone thinks she's crazy. On the doctor's mechanical couch, Louisa tries to explain herself and her motivation for giving away all that money, unburdening her soul and her memories. The bulk of the rest of the movie is romantic flashback, with occasional spoofs/fantasies from her personal point of view.

In the first flashback segment, we see Louisa as a young idealistic woman. Her money-hungry mother is delighted that she's engaged to Leonard (Lennie) Crawley (Dean Martin), richest man in town. Louisa loathes Lennie, however, so before they are married, Louisa meets up with Edgar Hopper, an old school friend who charms her with his relaxed attitude, lack of ambition, 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 and living as a poor but happy, carefree man. Against her mother's wishes, Louisa abandons Lennie to marry Hopper, played by Dick Van Dyke. The two live in a shack by a lake, eking out a meagre but happy existence together. A face-off between Crawley and Hopper over Louisa throws Hopper into a tailspin, and he abandons the simple life for an all-out assault to become wealthy and to drive Crawley out of business in Crawleyville. The fair Louisa is neglected and miserable, especially after Edgar dumps their planned European vacation in favor of his business. Hopper makes a lot of money while pushing himself to his human limits. Watch the computer panel lights in back of Hopper in the last scene of this segment. Van Dyke doesn't move too far from his typecast persona in this role, but his genius for physical humor is evident all through his performance.

After Hopper's death, Louisa is a millionaire. She listlessly travels Europe and ends up in Paris, where she meets Larry Flint (Paul Newman), an over-the-top expatriate American-artist-in-France. Avant-garde art suffuses Flint's life, and 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, "Money corrupts. Art erupts!" and marries Flint and happily enters into the bohemian lifestyle while renouncing her previous secret millions. Flint paints through his invention of a sound activated painting machine. He creates clattering, rough sounds while banging around his studio, and these activate the machine to produce minimalist abstract paintings that are just good enough to keep the both of them fed, poor but happy. The fateful moment in this interlude comes when Louisa suggests having the machine paint to Felix Mendelssohn's Spring Song instead -- thus leading to the creation of a richly abstract masterpiece. From there, it's all downhill for Louisa, as Flint becomes famous with paintings made with his machines from recordings of other people's art -- music -- and not his own creations. Flint trades his soul for money and fame, and becomes increasingly obsessed with all the money coming into his life at the expense of a life with Louisa. His portrayal of a sex-crazed Frenchman, opposite the smokey-eyed MacLaine in the erotic film spoof is fantastic. The spoof shows the sheet-clad pair making love in progressively smaller bathtubs and on a bed. Brief, but very sexy.

After Flint's demise, Louisa is even richer, and horribly depressed. She meets a rich 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. The spoof here is on the big budget Hollywood films -- to paraphrase Louisa's narrative, "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 gorgeous costumes and ends up with Mitchum and MacLaine making love in a big champagne glass. Back in the story, despite his happy retreat into their marriage Rod discovers he's actually gotten richer while he was neglecting his industry. Enraged that someone in his company was driving his business success "behind his back", Rod plans on going on a global search to find the culprit. Louisa fears he'll die in the attempt (given her previous track record) so ends up convincing Rod to sell everything off and retire to the type of small farm he lived on during his childhood. The good news is that Rod never neglected her. However, a fateful mistake on Rod's part suddenly leaves Louisa a widow, and fantastically wealthy.

Feeling as if she dooms every man whom she loves, she wanders the United States alone. She finds herself in a cafe in a Podunk town, across the highway from the "Cauliflower Ear" eatery. In the cafe, she meets Pinky Benson (Gene Kelly), another customer who pours her a cup of coffee and charms her with his goofy wit. He tells her he's a performer at the Cauliflower Ear for the past 14 years, and invites her to come see him perform. When she shows up that night, she realizes that his clown act is tolerated by the establishment because he doesn't take away from the serving of food or liquor. She is further charmed backstage by his complete lack of ambition and satisfaction with his simple lot in life, seeing it as mirroring her own desires to forget her millions and live in happy poverty. She falls in love with Pinky and marries him, and they live on a broken-down old houseboat together while he works performing nightly. Look for Teri Garr in the dancing cast. Back in the story, another fateful decision makes Pinky decide to perform without his clown makeup at the Cauliflower Ear one night, and the customers rave at his talent. Over fast-forward time, Pinky becomes a famous Hollywood movie star. Once again Louisa is neglected by a husband obsessed with fame. Pinky's fans come before Louisa in everything. In this segment, the all-pink mansion and the mad pink painter are pure studio humor, as is Louisa's appearance at a screening in an all-pink chinchilla coat and a pink wig.

Pinky was Louisa's last husband before she showed up at the psychiatrist's office, and the rest of the movie unfolds "in the present time".

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[edit] Credits

Directed by J. Lee Thompson

Shirley MacLaine ... Louisa May Foster

Paul Newman ... Larry Flint

Robert Mitchum ... Rod Anderson, Jr.

Dean Martin ... Leonard 'Lennie' Crawley

Gene Kelly ... Pinky Benson

Robert Cummings ... Dr. Victor Stephanson

Dick Van Dyke ... Edgar Hopper

Margaret Dumont ... Mrs. Foster

Anton Arnold ... Mr. Foster

Lou Nova ... Trentino

Fifi D'Orsay ... Baroness

Maurice Marsac ... Rene

Wally Vernon ... Agent

Jane Wald ... Polly

Lenny Kent ... Hollywood Lawyer

Christopher Connelly ... Ned

Tom Conway ... Lord Kensington

Queenie Leonard ... Lady Kensington

Pamelyn Ferdin ... Geraldine Crawley, age 4

Jeff Fithian ... Jonathan Crawley, age 5

Bill Corcoran ... Leonard Crawley, Jr., age 7

Anthony Eustrel ... Willard

Milton Frome ... Lawyer

Army Archerd ... TV Announcer

Reginald Gardiner ... Mad Pink Painter

Phil Arnold ... Publicity and Press Agent

Roy Gordon ... Minister

Sid Gould ... Movie Executive

Joe Gray ... Customer

Jack Greening ... Chester

Marcel Hillaire ... French Lawyer

Mark Bailey ... Rod Anderson's Private Airline Pilot

Burt Mustin ... Crawleyville Lawyer

Dick Wilson ... Driscoll

Teri Garr ... Dancer in the Kelly/MacLaine shipboard musical

Arlene Harris ... Sour woman in club audience

Paula Lane ... Movie Executive's Girl

Marjorie Bennett ... Mrs. Freeman

Myrna Ross ... Party Girl

Barbara Bouchet ... Girl on Plane

Cleo Ronson ... Bit Part

Lynn Borden ... Bit Part

Patrick O'Moore ... Bit Part

Justin Smith ... Bit Part

Eugene Borden ... Bit part

Helene Winston ... Doris

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[edit] References

1. Shirley MacLaine on her experience with "What A Way To Go!" at shirleymaclaine.com