Once Is Not Enough (film)

Once Is Not Enough is a 1975 American drama film directed by Guy Green and starring Kirk Douglas, Alexis Smith and David Janssen. It is an adaptation of the 1973 novel Once Is Not Enough by Jacqueline Susann.

Plot

In the film version, Mike Wayne is a middle-aged motion-picture producer whose career has fallen on hard times. Try as he might, Mike no longer can get a new Hollywood project made.

Accustomed to a lavish lifestyle, Mike has pampered his daughter, January, providing her with an expensive education in Europe and everything else money can buy. January worships her father and eagerly returns to America to be with him again.

Needing capital, Mike enters into a loveless marriage with Deidre Milford Granger, one of the world's wealthiest women. She already has been through multiple marriages and demands that things be done her way. She also is secretly carrying on a lesbian affair. January is devastated to learn that Mike is now wed to this rude, arrogant woman.

Deidre attempts to draw January into a relationship with David Milford, a ladies' man who is the rich woman's nephew. David, too, usually gets his own way, finally persuading January into going to bed with him, only to discover that she is a virgin.

Unsure what to do with her life, January is advised by an old friend, Linda Riggs, now a literary agent, to author a book. Linda enjoys a free-spirit life with many lovers and urges January to do likewise. But due in no small part to her father complex, January instead falls for a much-older Tom Colt, a hard-drinking, impotent novelist.

Mike bitterly resents the affair. He punches Colt upon catching January in a Beverly Hills hotel bungalow with him. Mike orders his daughter to make a choice—him or me—and Colt gives her the same ultimatum. She chooses her lover.

Deidre's demands and insults finally become too much for Mike, who wants a divorce. They amicably agree to one, but their airplane crashes and both are killed. The devastated January turns to Tom Colt for comfort, but he turns against her instead, leaving her to go on alone.

The novel includes much more drug use and sexual content, and has quite a different ending. After the events of the film transpire, January tries acid and partakes in an orgy. She then wanders onto the beach where she hallucinates that she sees her father and walks into the ocean after him, presumably drowning.

Cast

• Kirk Douglas as Mike Wayne
• Alexis Smith as Deidre
• David Janssen as Tom Colt
• Brenda Vaccaro as Linda Riggs
• George Hamilton as David Milford
• Deborah Raffin as January
• Melina Mercouri as Karla
• Gary Conway as Hugh Robertson

External links

• Once Is Not Enough (film) at the Internet Movie Database