Happy Anniversary

The real question is how the source material, a play by these screenwriters called "Anniversary Waltz," managed to captivate Broadway audiences for 18 months and tour extensively. (MacDonald Carey and Kitty Carlisle must have helped.) It's a prurient, shrill sex comedy about how a happily married couple with two 1950s-adorable kids endure a domestic crisis involving a) television's entry into their home and b) the revelation to her parents that they enjoyed premarital sex. It's smug and leering, and so's this loud film version, with a rather clueless David Niven and a posturing Mitzi Gaynor, directed by the seldom-reliable David Miller. The stately black-and-white photography (including some sumptuous 1959 NYC locations) helps, as does Carl Reiner in a capable best-friend supporting turn, as does Patty Duke as the daughter. Phyllis Povah and Loring Smith, as the parents, are tedious, as is the rest of the supporting cast, as is a screenplay that seemingly chuckles at how naughty it's being. You get to see Niven smash a bunch of television screens, and Gaynor does attractively croon one song. But it's 1950s sex comedy at its most lascivious and boring, at the same time.