How to Murder Your Wife (1965)

User Rating:

6.5/10   

Director:

Richard Quine

Writer:

George Axelrod (written by)

Release Date:

26 January 1965 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy

Tagline:

Bring The Little Woman...Maybe She'll Die Laughing!

Plot:

A man who has set up the perfect lifestyle for himself makes the mistake of marrying while drunk... and his fantasies of murder are used against him.

Plot Keywords:

Italian Woman | Comic Strip | Beautiful Woman | Courtroom | Marriage

Awards:

Nominated for BAFTA Film Award. Another 1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Jack Lemmon	...	Stanley Ford
Virna Lisi	...	Mrs. Ford
Terry-Thomas	...	Charles
Eddie Mayehoff	...	Harold Lampson
Claire Trevor	...	Edna
Sidney Blackmer	...	Judge Blackstone
Max Showalter	...	Tobey Rawlins
Jack Albertson	...	Dr. Bentley
Mary Wickes	...	Harold's Secretary
Alan Hewitt	...	District Attorney
Barry Kelley	...	Club Member in Steam Room
William Bryant	...	Construction Worker
Charles Bateman	...	Club Member in Steam Room
Edward Faulkner	...	Club Member in Steam Room / Party Guest
Lauren Gilbert	...	Men's Club Manager

Runtime:

118 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Italian

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

UK:PG | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | USA:Approved (certificate #20436)

Filming Locations:

Culver City, California, USA

Company:

Murder Inc.

Trivia:

During a taping of "The Tonight Show", 'Jack Lemmon' told this story. Prior to filming How to Murder Your Wife (1965), co-star Virna Lisi's husband made her promise that she would not be talked into doing a nude scene in her first American film. She assured him that she would not, signed the contract and traveled to Hollywood. While filming the 'revelation' scene, where Lemmon awakes to discover in horror that he got married at the bachelor party, Virna had to disrobe and lay in the bed nude but discreetly covered with a bedsheet. However, it was this day that her husband, an architect, arrived unannounced at the set to surprise his wife. When he walked into the scene, he became very upset. He focused his anger toward her co-star. Lemmon, realizing that discretion was the better part of valor, exited the set at full run with Virna's husband in tow. Running past several sound stages on the MGM lot, he quickly found a garbage dumpster, jumped in and closed the cover. He waited there until security officers found him.

Quotes:

Stanley Ford: Push the button, Harold.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Chappaqua (1966)

Soundtrack:

Bridal Chorus

Cartoonish, and I Mean that in a Good Sense

I really want to recommend this movie to you.

Sure, it has a weak third act which pounds a particularly misogynistic message. And the end is so formulaic it hurts. But up until then, it classifies as among the best of comedies.

I have a particular admiration for it as what I think is the first example of a cartoonist whose drawings interweave with his life. Its a clever idea at root but handled with extra sophistication here.

The setup is that our hero (Jack Lemmon) is a cartoonist who draws himself in his strip as a sort of James Bond character. But before he draws each strip, he actually acts it out as movies that we see in the movie within the movie. (How he hires the actors and arranges the locations is a detail left unexplained.)

Thus, strip and life have a relationship within the story proper. Much is made of conflating the movie, the life depicted in the movie, the strip, and the movies within.

He ends up with an unwanted (well, sort of) wife and acts out her murder. Since she left in a huff, he has no defense when his readership (the whole country it seems) accuses him of real murder.

The pinnacle of this confabulation comes when his butler comes to the realization that the murder has actually been real with the enactment an alibi. Things go downhill from there. But until that point, this is sublime, a comic "Draughtsman's Contract."

See it.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.