What a Way to Go!
Encyclopedia
What a Way to Go! is a 1964 American comedy film
directed by J. Lee Thompson
and starring Shirley MacLaine
, Paul Newman
, Robert Mitchum
, Dean Martin
, Gene Kelly
, Margaret Dumont
, Bob Cummings and Dick Van Dyke
.
), 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 as a result of her ill-fated husbands' greed. 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 Fools' Day
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 (Dick Van Dyke
), 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, and they live in a shack, poor but happy (illustrated with a silent movie styled fantasy sequence) 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 achieves his goal of bankrupting Crawley, but pays the ultimate price of severe greed and falls dead from an apparent heart attack while chiding "Hard work never hurt anybody!"
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 "Sonic Palette", 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 by having the machine "paint" more music, and thus increasingly obsessed with all the money coming into his life. He builds more Sonic Palettes to paint a giant work of art, but the machines wind up turning on their creator by first staking and beating him to death before they self-destruct, which ends up killing him.
Louisa is richer but more depressed. After missing a flight back to the States, she meets an already wealthy magnate named Rod Anderson (Robert Mitchum
), who offers her a lift on his jet, Melissa. After discovering the softer, kinder man under the business-magnate veneer he projects, she 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. Just as he vows to find out who is responsible for making his company successful WITHOUT him, Louisa discovers Melissa was a prize cow he raised in his youth. 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 slightly-tipsy Rod makes a fateful mistake by trying to milk his bull, Melrose. The unhappy steer kicks Rod through the barn wall, presumably breaking his neck, and 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, she suggests that Pinky perform without his clown makeup, and suddenly 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 movie screening in an all-pink chinchilla coat and a pink wig. Pinky's adoring public stampede him at the premiere, trampling him to death into an early grave (the funeral we see at the beginning of the film).
Louisa has told the psychiatrist her sad tale. He turns and begs her to marry him, just as a familiar-looking janitor comes into the office. In an attempt to lower the psychiatrist's chair that Robert Cummings' character is stuck in, she winds up letting him drop from ceiling-height, knocking him out cold, reviving him by throwing a bucket of water on him. She then turns and makes the happy discovery that the janitor is Leonard Crawley, who has lost everything and is now leading a poor, simple life that she can share. As the doctor comes to, he sees Louisa and Leonard kissing passionately, which causes him to pass out again.
In the end, several years later, we see a happy and no-longer-curse-weary Louisa with several children in a quaint house, while Leonard sits in his running tractor reading Thoreau. The tractor slowly grinds itself into the ground and strikes oil. Thinking her "curse" has finally resurfaced, a devastated Louisa runs to her husband just as a man in coveralls runs up and starts berating Leonard for hitting an underground oil pipe with his tractor. Relieved, Louisa hugs and kisses Leonard as both are showered by the erupting oil.
comedy, French New Wave
with jump cut
s, Ross Hunter
fashion-heavy eye-candy films, big 1940's Hollywood musicals, and a spoof of Cleopatra
.
Originally intended as a Marilyn Monroe vehicle, recast after her death.
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."
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 unavailable. Shirley MacLaine recommended Mitchum to director J. Lee Thompson who recommended him to the studio.
, Ted Haworth
, Walter M. Scott
, Stuart A. Reiss
) and Best Costumes by Edith Head
and Moss Mabry
, a BAFTA Best Foreign Actress Award for Shirley MacLaine, a Laurel
award for Best Comedy and Best Comedy performer for Paul Newman, and an American Cinema Editors
Eddie award for best editor for Marjorie Fowler. It won a Locarno Film Festival award for Best Actor for Gene Kelly.
Comedy film
Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...
directed by J. Lee Thompson
J. Lee Thompson
John Lee Thompson , better known as J. Lee Thompson, was an English film director, active in England and Hollywood.- Early years :...
and starring Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine is an American film and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author, well-known for her beliefs in new age spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her spiritual beliefs as well as her Hollywood career...
, Paul Newman
Paul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...
, Robert Mitchum
Robert Mitchum
Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time...
, Dean Martin
Dean Martin
Dean Martin was an American singer, film actor, television star and comedian. Martin's hit singles included "Memories Are Made of This", "That's Amore", "Everybody Loves Somebody", "You're Nobody till Somebody Loves You", "Sway", "Volare" and "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?"...
, Gene Kelly
Gene Kelly
Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer...
, Margaret Dumont
Margaret Dumont
Margaret Dumont was an American comedic actress. She is remembered mostly for being the comic foil to Groucho Marx in seven of the Marx Brothers films...
, Bob Cummings and Dick Van Dyke
Dick Van Dyke
Richard Wayne "Dick" Van Dyke is an American actor, comedian, writer, and producer with a career spanning six decades. He is the older brother of Jerry Van Dyke, and father of Barry Van Dyke...
.
Plot
Louisa May Foster (Shirley MacLaineShirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine is an American film and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author, well-known for her beliefs in new age spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her spiritual beliefs as well as her Hollywood career...
), 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 as a result of her ill-fated husbands' greed. 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
Pre-credit
In film production, the pre-credit is the section of the film which is shown before the opening credits are shown.Many films will by common convention have a short scene before the credits to introduce characters who may, or may not, become crucial to the film's plot...
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
Internal Revenue Service
The Internal Revenue Service is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, and is under the immediate direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue...
who believe it an April Fools' Day
April Fools' Day
April Fools' Day is celebrated in different countries around the world on April 1 every year. Sometimes referred to as All Fools' Day, April 1 is not a national holiday, but is widely recognized and celebrated as a day when many people play all kinds of jokes and foolishness...
joke. Louisa ends up as sobbing widow on the couch of an unstable psychiatrist (Robert Cummings
Robert Cummings
Charles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings , mostly known professionally as Robert Cummings but sometimes as Bob Cummings, was an American film and television actor....
). 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
Marnie (film)
Marnie is a 1964 psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock and based on the novel of the same name by Winston Graham. The film stars Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery. The original film score was composed by Bernard Herrmann.-Plot:...
type aversion to the colour pink.
We meet Louisa as a young, idealistic girl. Her mother (Margaret Dumont
Margaret Dumont
Margaret Dumont was an American comedic actress. She is remembered mostly for being the comic foil to Groucho Marx in seven of the Marx Brothers films...
) is fixated on money; she is pushing for Louisa to marry Leonard Crawley (Dean Martin
Dean Martin
Dean Martin was an American singer, film actor, television star and comedian. Martin's hit singles included "Memories Are Made of This", "That's Amore", "Everybody Loves Somebody", "You're Nobody till Somebody Loves You", "Sway", "Volare" and "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?"...
), the richest man in town. Louisa loathes Lennie and instead takes up with Edgar Hopper (Dick Van Dyke
Dick Van Dyke
Richard Wayne "Dick" Van Dyke is an American actor, comedian, writer, and producer with a career spanning six decades. He is the older brother of Jerry Van Dyke, and father of Barry Van Dyke...
), 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
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
, taking the writer's message of "simplify, simplify!" to heart. Louisa elects to marry Hopper, and they live in a shack, poor but happy (illustrated with a silent movie styled fantasy sequence) 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 achieves his goal of bankrupting Crawley, but pays the ultimate price of severe greed and falls dead from an apparent heart attack while chiding "Hard work never hurt anybody!"
After Hopper's death, Louisa is a millionaire. She travels to Paris, where she meets Larry Flint (Paul Newman
Paul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...
). Avant-garde art dominates Flint's life, including a chimpanzee
Chimpanzee
Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...
that paints. One of his projects is a "Sonic Palette", 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
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
's Spring Song -- thus leading to the creation of a masterpiece. Flint becomes famous by having the machine "paint" more music, and thus increasingly obsessed with all the money coming into his life. He builds more Sonic Palettes to paint a giant work of art, but the machines wind up turning on their creator by first staking and beating him to death before they self-destruct, which ends up killing him.
Louisa is richer but more depressed. After missing a flight back to the States, she meets an already wealthy magnate named Rod Anderson (Robert Mitchum
Robert Mitchum
Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time...
), who offers her a lift on his jet, Melissa. After discovering the softer, kinder man under the business-magnate veneer he projects, she 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
Edith Head
Edith Head was an American costume designer who won eight Academy Awards, more than any other woman.-Early life and career:...
'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. Just as he vows to find out who is responsible for making his company successful WITHOUT him, Louisa discovers Melissa was a prize cow he raised in his youth. 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 slightly-tipsy Rod makes a fateful mistake by trying to milk his bull, Melrose. The unhappy steer kicks Rod through the barn wall, presumably breaking his neck, and 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
Gene Kelly
Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer...
), a customer who charms her with silly dances and rhymes in the manner of Pinky Lee
Pinky Lee
Pincus Leff , better known as Pinky Lee, was an American burlesque comic and host of a children's television program, The Pinky Lee Show, in the early 1950s.-Biography:...
. 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, she suggests that Pinky perform without his clown makeup, and suddenly 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 movie screening in an all-pink chinchilla coat and a pink wig. Pinky's adoring public stampede him at the premiere, trampling him to death into an early grave (the funeral we see at the beginning of the film).
Louisa has told the psychiatrist her sad tale. He turns and begs her to marry him, just as a familiar-looking janitor comes into the office. In an attempt to lower the psychiatrist's chair that Robert Cummings' character is stuck in, she winds up letting him drop from ceiling-height, knocking him out cold, reviving him by throwing a bucket of water on him. She then turns and makes the happy discovery that the janitor is Leonard Crawley, who has lost everything and is now leading a poor, simple life that she can share. As the doctor comes to, he sees Louisa and Leonard kissing passionately, which causes him to pass out again.
In the end, several years later, we see a happy and no-longer-curse-weary Louisa with several children in a quaint house, while Leonard sits in his running tractor reading Thoreau. The tractor slowly grinds itself into the ground and strikes oil. Thinking her "curse" has finally resurfaced, a devastated Louisa runs to her husband just as a man in coveralls runs up and starts berating Leonard for hitting an underground oil pipe with his tractor. Relieved, Louisa hugs and kisses Leonard as both are showered by the erupting oil.
Cast
- Directed by J. Lee ThompsonJ. Lee ThompsonJohn Lee Thompson , better known as J. Lee Thompson, was an English film director, active in England and Hollywood.- Early years :...
- Shirley MacLaineShirley MacLaineShirley MacLaine is an American film and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author, well-known for her beliefs in new age spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her spiritual beliefs as well as her Hollywood career...
... Louisa May Foster - Paul NewmanPaul NewmanPaul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...
... Larry Flint - Robert MitchumRobert MitchumRobert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time...
... Rod Anderson, Jr. - Dean MartinDean MartinDean Martin was an American singer, film actor, television star and comedian. Martin's hit singles included "Memories Are Made of This", "That's Amore", "Everybody Loves Somebody", "You're Nobody till Somebody Loves You", "Sway", "Volare" and "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?"...
... Leonard 'Lennie' Crawley - Gene KellyGene KellyEugene Curran "Gene" Kelly was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer...
... Pinky Benson - Robert CummingsRobert CummingsCharles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings , mostly known professionally as Robert Cummings but sometimes as Bob Cummings, was an American film and television actor....
... Dr. Victor Stephanson - Dick Van DykeDick Van DykeRichard Wayne "Dick" Van Dyke is an American actor, comedian, writer, and producer with a career spanning six decades. He is the older brother of Jerry Van Dyke, and father of Barry Van Dyke...
... Edgar Hopper - Margaret DumontMargaret DumontMargaret Dumont was an American comedic actress. She is remembered mostly for being the comic foil to Groucho Marx in seven of the Marx Brothers films...
... Mrs. Foster - Anton Arnold ... Mr. Foster
- Lou NovaLou NovaLou Nova aka Cosmic punch was an American boxer and actor. Born in Los Angeles, California, the Nova was the U.S. and World Amateur Boxing Champion in 1935. After turning pro, he remained undefeated in his first 22 matches, and won 40 fights in total...
... Trentino - Fifi D'OrsayFifi D'Orsay-Biography:Born Marie-Rose Angelina Yvonne Lussier in Montreal, Quebec, as a young typist, filled with the desire to become an actress, she went to New York City. There, she found work in The Greenwich Village Follies after an audition in which she sang the song "Yes, We Have No Bananas' in French...
... Baroness - Maurice Marsac ... Rene
- Wally Vernon ... Agent
- Jane Wald ... Polly
- Lenny Kent ... Hollywood Lawyer
- Christopher Connelly ... Ned
- Tom ConwayTom ConwayTom Conway was a British film and radio actor, and elder brother of actor George Sanders.-Early life:...
... Lord Kensington - Queenie LeonardQueenie LeonardQueenie Leonard was a British character actress and singer.-Early life and career:She was born as Pearl Walker in London in 1905 and began her career on stage in 1921, and debuted on film in 1931. She had already amassed 20 years of stage and screen experience when, in 1941, she made the first of...
... Lady Kensington - Pamelyn FerdinPamelyn FerdinPamelyn Ferdin is a former American television and film child actor, active both in live action and as a voice actress in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s and has since appeared in several voice acting roles as late as 2009...
... Geraldine Crawley, age 4 - Jeff Fithian ... Jonathan Crawley, age 5
- Bill Corcoran ... Leonard Crawley, Jr., age 7
- Anthony EustrelAnthony EustrelAnthony Eustrel was a British actor. His ashes are inurned at Chapel of the Pines Crematory.-Selected filmography:* Under the Red Robe * Second Bureau * The Wife of General Ling * Gasbags...
... Willard - Milton FromeMilton FromeMilton Frome was an American character actor. He made approximately 140 television and film appearances between 1934 and 1982.-Career:...
... Lawyer - Army ArcherdArmy ArcherdArmand Andre "Army" Archerd was a columnist for Variety for over fifty years before retiring his "Just for Variety" column in September 2005. In November 2005, Archerd began blogging for Variety and was working on a memoir when he died.-Life and career:Archerd was born in The Bronx, New York, and...
... TV Announcer - Reginald GardinerReginald GardinerReginald Gardiner was an English-born actor in film and television and a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in Britain. His parents wanted him to be an architect and he studied at it but he wanted to be an actor and eventually got his way.He started as a super on stage and eventually...
... Mad Pink Painter - Phil ArnoldPhil ArnoldPhil Arnold was an American screen, stage, television, and vaudeville actor. He appeared in approximately 150 films and television shows between 1939 and 1968....
... Publicity and Press Agent - Roy Gordon ... Minister
- Sid Gould ... Movie Executive
- Joe Gray ... Customer
- Jack Greening ... Chester
- Marcel Hillaire ... French Lawyer
- Mark BaileyMark BaileyMark David Bailey is a former cricketer who played one One Day International for the New Zealand cricket team although he failed to bat or bowl.-References:...
... Rod Anderson's Private Airline Pilot - Burt MustinBurt MustinBurton Hill "Burt" Mustin was an American character actor.-Early life:Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to W. I. and Sadie Mustin, Mustin was a 1903 graduate of the Pennsylvania Military College , earning his degree in civil engineering...
... Crawleyville Lawyer - Dick WilsonDick WilsonDick Wilson, born Riccardo DiGuglielmo , was a British-born American character actor who played the role of finicky grocery store manager Mr...
... Driscoll - Teri GarrTeri Garr-Early life:Garr was born in Lakewood, Ohio in 1947. Her father, Eddie Garr , was a vaudeville performer, comedian and actor whose career peaked when he briefly took over the lead role in the Broadway drama Tobacco Road...
... Dancer in the Kelly/MacLaine shipboard musical - Arlene HarrisArlene HarrisArlene Harris was a Canadian-born American radio, film, and television actress. Before her career in film, she was well-known as a comic actress on the radio program, The Chatterbox....
... Sour woman in club audience - Paula LanePaula LanePaula Lane is an English actress, perhaps best known for her work as Kylie Turner in Coronation Street. In 2010 Lane was nominated for Best Newcomer at the 2011 National Television Awards . She has also gained other nominations for her portrayal of Kylie.-Career:Lane made her professional debut in...
... Movie Executive's Girl - Marjorie BennettMarjorie BennettMarjorie Bennett was an Australian television and film actress who began her career during the silent film era.-Career:Bennett was born in York, Western Australia; her sister Enid was also an actress...
... Mrs. Freeman - Myrna Ross ... Party Girl
- Barbara BouchetBarbara BouchetBarbara Bouchet, is a German-American actress and entrepreneur.She has acted in more than 80 films and television episodes and founded a production company that has produced fitness videos and books as well as owning a fitness studio...
... Girl on Plane - Helene Winston ... Doris
Production
The audience sees four lampoons of film styles as interludes in the story. In order, we see lampoons of silent filmSilent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
comedy, French New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
with jump cut
Jump cut
A jump cut is a cut in film editing and vloging in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly. This type of edit causes the subject of the shots to appear to "jump" position in a discontinuous way...
s, Ross Hunter
Ross Hunter
Ross Hunter was a Hollywood film producer.-Biography:Hunter was born in Cleveland, Ohio as Martin Fuss. After serving in Army intelligence during World War II, he signed a movie contract with Columbia Pictures and acted in a number of B-movie musicals...
fashion-heavy eye-candy films, big 1940's Hollywood musicals, and a spoof of Cleopatra
Cleopatra (1963 film)
Cleopatra is a 1963 British-American-Swiss epic drama film directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. The screenplay was adapted by Sidney Buchman, Ben Hecht, Ranald MacDougall, and Mankiewicz from a book by Carlo Maria Franzero. The film starred Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Roddy...
.
Originally intended as a Marilyn Monroe vehicle, recast after her death.
Shirley MacLaine was quoted as saying that she was happy to work with "Edith Head
Edith Head
Edith Head was an American costume designer who won eight Academy Awards, more than any other woman.-Early life and career:...
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
Harry Winston
Harry Winston was an American jeweler. He donated the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Institution in 1958 after owning it for a decade, and traded the Portuguese Diamond to the Smithsonian in 1963.-History:...
of New York. Pretty good perks, I'd say."
Robert Mitchum's role was originally meant for Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
but Sinatra suddenly wanted several times more money than what the other male leads received. The studio refused Sinatra's demands; Gregory Peck
Gregory Peck
Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor.One of 20th Century Fox's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play important roles well into the 1980s. His notable performances include that of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an...
was sought but he was unavailable. Shirley MacLaine recommended Mitchum to director J. Lee Thompson who recommended him to the studio.
Awards
What a Way to Go! was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Art Direction (Jack Martin SmithJack Martin Smith
Jack Martin Smith was a highly successful Hollywood art director with over 130 films to his credit and nine Academy Award nominations which ultimately yielded three Oscars.-MGM:...
, Ted Haworth
Ted Haworth
Ted Haworth was an American production designer and art director. He won an Academy Award and was nominated five more times in the category Best Art Direction....
, Walter M. Scott
Walter M. Scott
Walter M. Scott was an Academy Award-winning set decorator who worked on films such as The Sound of Music and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid....
, Stuart A. Reiss
Stuart A. Reiss
Stuart A. Reiss is an American set decorator. He won two Academy Awards and was nominated for four more in the category Best Art Direction.-Selected filmography:...
) and Best Costumes by Edith Head
Edith Head
Edith Head was an American costume designer who won eight Academy Awards, more than any other woman.-Early life and career:...
and Moss Mabry
Moss Mabry
Moss Mabry was a famed Costume designer who lived from . He started off designing costumes for his high school plays, but actually studied mechanical engineering at the University of Florida. He later went to Hollywood to attend art school, eventually signing a contract with Warner Bros....
, a BAFTA Best Foreign Actress Award for Shirley MacLaine, a Laurel
Producers Guild of America
Producers Guild of America is a trade organization representing television producers, film producers and New Media producers in the United States. The PGA's membership includes over 4,700 members of the producing establishment worldwide...
award for Best Comedy and Best Comedy performer for Paul Newman, and an American Cinema Editors
American Cinema Editors
Founded in 1950, American Cinema Editors is an honorary society of film editors that are voted in based on the qualities of professional achievements, their education of others, and their dedication to editing itself. The society is not to be confused with an industry union, such as the I.A.T.S.E...
Eddie award for best editor for Marjorie Fowler. It won a Locarno Film Festival award for Best Actor for Gene Kelly.