By Lee Pfeiffer
One hates to get sociological or philosophical about a lightweight sex farce like How to Save a Marriage (and Ruin Your Life), a 1968 trifle that nonetheless boasts an impressive cast: Dean Martin, Stella Stevens, Eli Wallach and real-life wife Anne Jackson, Jack Albertson and Betty Field. However, the premise of the movie is so distinctly distasteful that it is sure to offend any self-respecting modern woman as well as any male who isn't still walking about clad in animal skins and clutching a club. The film, which is now available as part of Sony's burn-to-order DVD line, has a value that is more anthropological than comical. Wallach plays Harry Hunter, a successful New York business executive who is unhappily married to an attractive but shrewish wife (Katharine Bard). He finds solace by keeping a mistress, Muriel Laszlo (Anne Jackson) in an opulent apartment. His frequent visits there are as much therapeutic as they are sexual, with Muriel happily gearing her entire existence toward pleasing her man. She fawns over him, makes no demands, and pampers him constantly. When Harry brags to his best friend and fellow executive Dave Sloane (Dean Martin) about the joys of having a dedicated mistress, Dave sets out to test his theory about her never straying into the arms of another man. (One of the more cynical aspects of the script is that "kept women" are supposed to be completely loyal to their married sugar daddies). However, Dave mistakes another woman for Harry's mistress: Carol Corman (Stella Stevens), an attractive young sales girl in the corporation. When he observes her social behavior with other men, he assumes he has proof that Harry's "other woman" is cheating on him. To get further evidence, he decides to prove he can seduce her. Dave romances Carol and ends up renting her a luxury apartment right next door to Harry's real mistress, Muriel. It seems the apartment building is basically a classy bordello that houses numerous girlfriends of married rich men. In the film's most amusing scenario, Dave finds Carol understandably receptive to his sexual advances (after all, he looks a lot like Dean Martin.) Dave, however, can't take his "investigation" to the point of actually bedding the woman he thinks Harry really loves. There are some funny scenes in which Dave has to find a way to explain why he isn't eager to jump into bed with Stevens, who saunters about clad in a low-cut nightgown with a pouty look of sexual frustration on her face. He concocts a scenario whereby he explains that he is a widower whose beloved, late wife made him promise to never make love to another woman. It's a sign of the times that in 1968 you could plausibly present a plot scenario in which Carol still readily agrees to live with Dave, quit her job and devote her entire life to pleasing him. Naturally, complications ensue and she discovers she has been lied to. The script presents "liberated women" as those scorned mistresses who band together in order to force their sugar daddies to give them legally binding pension plans to get them through their later years, when they will have been discarded in favor of younger women. It's enough to give Gloria Steinem heartburn.
You don't have to be a knee-jerk liberal to wince at the entire tasteless scenario of this film. Not helping matters is director Fielder Cook's insistence that the always-watchable Wallach play his role in an "over-the-top" manner that is only matched by Betty Field's equally hysterical portrayal of an older, scorned mistress looking to wage war on all males. Usually, one doesn't analyze the production design in a romantic urban comedy, but it bears mentioning that, aside from a few second unit shots in New York City, there is absolutely nothing that suggests the look or feel of the city. A sequence showing the exterior of Dave Sloane's private club looks more like London than Gotham and the film has a rather cheesy feel to it, given the abundance of interiors. On the positive side, Martin and Stevens exude some real chemistry and there are a few scattered laughs. However, for the most part, this is a laborious exercise that celebrates an era in which women's fates were tied to dependency on the man in their lives.
The DVD presents a crisp, clean transfer but there are no extras.
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