Me, Natalie is a 1969 American comedy-drama film directed by Fred Coe

Fred Coe

Fred Coe , nicknamed Pappy, was a television producer and director most famous for The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse in 1948-1955 and Playhouse 90 from 1957 to 1959...

. The screenplay

Screenplay

A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 by A. Martin Zweiback is based on an original story by Academy Award-winner Stanley Shapiro

Stanley Shapiro

Stanley Shapiro was an American screenwriter and producer responsible for three of Doris Day's most successful films.Born in Brooklyn, New York, Shapiro earned his first screen credit for South Sea Woman in 1953...

, who previously wrote Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back

Lover Come Back

Lover Come Back is a 1961 Eastmancolor romantic comedy released by Universal Pictures. The film stars Doris Day and Rock Hudson in their second film together. The supporting cast includes Tony Randall, Edie Adams, Ann B. Davis, and Donna Douglas....

, and That Touch of Mink

That Touch of Mink

That Touch of Mink is a 1962 romantic comedy starring Cary Grant and Doris Day. The film co-stars Gig Young, John Astin, Audrey Meadows, and Dick Sargent. In addition, baseball stars Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Yogi Berra make cameo appearances....

for Doris Day

Doris Day

Doris Day is an American actress, singer and, since her retirement from show business, an animal rights activist. With an entertainment career that spanned through almost 50 years, Day started her career as a big band singer in 1939, but only began to be noticed after her first hit recording,...

. The film marked the screen debut of Al Pacino

Al Pacino

Alfredo James "Al" Pacino is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, Tony Montana in Scarface, Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice in Dick Tracy and Carlito Brigante in Carlito's Way, though he has also appeared...

 in a minor supporting role.

Synopsis

From childhood, Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

 teenager Natalie Miller, with upper front teeth that are slightly bucked and a nose too large for her face, has considered herself homely and she never has subscribed to her mother's determined belief that she will grow up to be pretty. Her best friend Betty is a knockout gorgeous blonde with boyfriends, which further depresses her. Natalie's father, a druggist who doesn't share his wife's optimistic

Optimism

The Oxford English Dictionary defines optimism as having "hopefulness and confidence about the future or successful outcome of something; a tendency to take a favourable or hopeful view." The word is originally derived from the Latin optimum, meaning "best." Being optimistic, in the typical sense...

 outlook, bribes myopic

Myopia

Myopia , "shortsightedness" ) is a refractive defect of the eye in which collimated light produces image focus in front of the retina under conditions of accommodation. In simpler terms, myopia is a condition of the eye where the light that comes in does not directly focus on the retina but in...

 optometrist

Optometry

Optometry is a health care profession concerned with eyes and related structures, as well as vision, visual systems, and vision information processing in humans. Optometrists, or Doctors of Optometry, are state licensed medical professionals trained to prescribe and fit lenses to improve vision,...

 Morris to marry her, hoping his nearsightedness will prevent him from seeing she's no beauty.

After she discovers her father's plan, Natalie leaves home and moves to Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...

, where she rents an apartment from eccentric Miss Dennison and sets out to enjoy a Bohemian

Bohemianism

Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...

 lifestyle. She finds employment as a cocktail waitress

Cocktail waitress

A cocktail waitress is a type of server who specializes in bringing drinks to patrons of bars, casinos, comedy clubs, live music venues and other drinking establishments and often wears revealing clothing in order to get more tips...

 at the Topless Bottom Club and befriends drug-addicted go-go dancer

Go-Go dancing

Go-go dancers are dancers who are employed to entertain crowds at a discotheque. Go-go dancing originated in the early 1960s when women at the Peppermint Lounge in New York City began to get up on tables and dance the twist...

 Shirley Norton. Although she contemplates suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

 after discovering her aspiring artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

 lover David Harris is married, he finally convinces her she's a worthwhile human being and not the ugly duckling she imagines herself to be.

Principal cast

• Patty Duke
  Patty Duke
  Anna Marie "Patty" Duke is an American actress of stage, film, and television. First becoming famous as a child star, winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at age 16, and later starring in her eponymous sitcom for three years, she progressed to more mature roles upon playing Neely...
  
   ..... Natalie Miller
• James Farentino
  James Farentino
  James Farentino is an American actor. He has appeared in almost one hundred roles, among them in The Final Countdown, Jesus of Nazareth, and Dynasty.-Career:...
  
   ..... David Harris
• Elsa Lanchester
  Elsa Lanchester
  Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was an English-American character actress with a long career in theatre, film and television....
  
   ..... Miss Dennison
• Deborah Winters
  Deborah Winters
  Deborah Winters is an American actress and businesswoman. Winters is probably most remembered for her roles in Kotch, The People Next Door, Class of '44, and The Winds of War...
  
   ..... Betty
• Salome Jens
  Salome Jens
  Salome Jens is an American stage, film and television actress. She is perhaps best-known for portraying the Female Changeling on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.-Life and career:...
  
   ..... Shirley Norton
• Nancy Marchand
  Nancy Marchand
  Nancy Marchand was an American actress, whose career encompassed both stage and screen. She appeared in various theatre productions throughout the early 1950s, before being offered roles on film and television....
  
   ..... Mrs. Miller
• Philip Sterling ..... Mr. Miller
• Bob Balaban
  Bob Balaban
  Robert Elmer "Bob" Balaban is an American actor, author and director.-Personal life:Balaban was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Eleanor and Elmer Balaban, who owned several movie theatres and later was a pioneer in cable television...
  
   ..... Morris
• Martin Balsam
  Martin Balsam
  Martin Henry Balsam was an American actor. He is known for his Oscar-winning role as "Arnold Burns" in A Thousand Clowns and his role as "Detective Milton Arbogast" in Psycho.- Early life :...
  
   ..... Uncle Harold
• Al Pacino
  Al Pacino
  Alfredo James "Al" Pacino is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, Tony Montana in Scarface, Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice in Dick Tracy and Carlito Brigante in Carlito's Way, though he has also appeared...
  
   ..... Tony
• Catherine Burns
  Catherine Burns
  Catherine Burns is an American actress of stage, film, radio and television. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Last Summer .-Career:...
  
   ..... Hester

Critical reception

In his review in the New York Times, Vincent Canby

Vincent Canby

Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...

 called the film "an artificial mess of wisecracks and sentimentality" and added, "Locales and a gummy musical score by Henry Mancini

Henry Mancini

Henry Mancini was an American composer, conductor and arranger, best remembered for his film and television scores. He won a record number of Grammy Awards , plus a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 1995...

 and Rod McKuen

Rod McKuen

Rod McKuen is an American poet, songwriter, composer, and singer. He was one of the best-selling poets in the United States during the late 1960s. Throughout his career, McKuen produced a wide range of recordings, which included popular music, spoken word poetry, film soundtracks, and classical music...

 are among the things constantly impinging on Me, Natalie. Another is Coe's apparent indecision as to whether the movie is a character study or a gag comedy. Mostly it's just gags, delivered abrasively by Miss Duke, who is even less effective when registering pathos

Pathos

Pathos represents an appeal to the audience's emotions. Pathos is a communication technique used most often in rhetoric , and in literature, film and other narrative art....

."

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert

Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 of the Chicago Sun-Times

Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...

found it to be "as conventional and corny as warmed-over "Young at Heart"

Young at Heart (1954 film)

Young at Heart is a 1954 film, directed by Gordon Douglas. It was a remake of the 1938 film Four Daughters, and it starred Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Gig Young, Ethel Barrymore, Alan Hale, Jr and Dorothy Malone and was the first of five films that Gordon Douglas directed with Frank...

 . . . a pleasant film, very funny at times . . . Patty Duke, as Natalie, supplies a wonderful performance."

TV Guide

TV Guide

TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...

considers the film "somewhat bland" but calls Duke "a wonder" and adds, "Handled by a lesser actress, the results might have seemed more stereotypical, but Duke is convincing."

Awards and nominations

• Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
  Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
  The Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy was first awarded by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association as a separate category in 1950...
  
   (Patty Duke, winner)
• Grammy Award for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television Show
  Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media
  The Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media has been awarded since 1960. Until 2001 the award was presented to the composer of the music alone. From 2001 to 2006, the producer and engineers shared in this award...
  
   (nominee)
• Writers Guild of America Award
  Writers Guild of America Award
  The Writers Guild of America Award for outstanding achievements in film, television, and radio has been presented annually by the Writers Guild of America, East and Writers Guild of America, West since 1949...
  
  for Best Drama Written Directly for the Screen (nominee)