What a Way to Go!

Infobox Film
name = What A Way To Go!

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director = J. Lee Thompson
producer = Arthur P. Jacobs
writer = Gwen Davis (story)
Betty Comden
narrator =
starring = Shirley MacLaine
Paul Newman
Robert Mitchum
Dean Martin
Gene Kelly
Robert Cummings
Dick Van Dyke
Margaret Dumont
music = Nelson Riddle
cinematography = Leon Shamroy
editing = Marjorie Fowler
distributor = 20th Century Fox
released = 1964
runtime = 111 min.
country = U.S.A.
language = English
French
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0058743

"What A Way To Go!" is a 1964 American comedy film directed by J. Lee Thompson and starring Shirley MacLaine, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum and Dean Martin. One of those movies that came out of the happy-fun Hollywood era of the Rat Pack years, where a popular type of movie promised escape into naive plots that exclusively focused on the themes of love and sex in fluffy, brightly enhanced Technicolor. This movie is the epitome of that type.

The plot of this movie was written around the concept of a comic-tragic flashback into various relationships, with four lampoons of film styles as interludes in the story. In order, we see lampoons of early black & white Charlie Chaplin-type silent film, continental erotic film, fashion-heavy eye-candy film, and big Hollywood musicals.

About the making of the film, 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." [ [http://www.shirleymaclaine.com/shirley/movies-whatawaytogo.php Shirley MacLaine on her experience with "What A Way To Go!" at shirleymaclaine.com] ]

The plot

Shirley MacLaine plays Louisa May Foster, 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 and ends up as a neglected wife and then a rich widow. To prove her point, three of her four husbands die off after achieving fame, wealth, or power, while the other just dies. All four leave her immensely wealthy, and her growing wealth is the central tension in the film.

In the opening of the movie, we see a pink coffin carried by pallbearers and Louisa as a black-clad widow following behind. In the following opening scenes, we see Louisa trying desperately to give 200+ million dollars away to the U.S. Government, only to end up as sobbing widow on the couch of an unstable psychiatrist (Robert Cummings) at the Treasury Department's recommendation as they believe she's crazy. On the doctor's mechanical couch, Louisa tries to explain herself and her motivation for giving away all that money which leads into the rest of the movie, which is primarily romantic flashback, with occasional spoofs/fantasies from Louisa's point of view.

In the first flashback segment, we see Louisa as a young idealistic girl. Her mother is fixated on money, and is pushing for Louisa to marry Leonard (Lennie) Crawley (Dean Martin), the richest man in town. Louisa loathes Lennie, so before they are married, Louisa meets up with Edgar Hopper, 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 and living poor but happy. Against her mother's wishes, Louisa abandons Lennie to marry Hopper, played by Dick Van Dyke. The two live in a shack by a lake, eking out a meager but happy existence together. A face-off between Crawley and Hopper over Louisa throws Hopper into a tailspin, and he abandons the simple life for an all-out assault to become wealthy and to drive Crawley out of business in Crawleyville. Louisa feels neglected and miserable, especially after Edgar dumps their planned European vacation in favor of his business. Hopper makes a lot of money while pushing himself to his human limits. A bit of an easter egg appears in the movie: watch the computer panel lights in back of Hopper in the last scene of this segment. Van Dyke doesn't move too far from his typecast persona in this role, but his genius for physical humor is evident all through his performance.

After Hopper's death, Louisa is a millionaire. She travels Europe and ends up in Paris, where she meets Larry Flint (Paul Newman), an over-the-top expatriate American-artist-in-France. Avant-garde art dominates Flint's life, and one of his projects is 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, "Money corrupts. Art erupts!" and marries Flint and enters into his bohemian lifestyle while renouncing her previous secret millions. The erotic foreign film spoof shows the sheet-clad pair making love in progressively smaller bathtubs and on a bed. Flint paints through his invention of a sound activated painting machine. He creates clattering, rough sounds while banging around his studio, and these activate the machine to produce minimalist abstract paintings that are just good enough to keep the both of them fed. The fateful moment in this interlude comes when Louisa suggests having the machine paint to Felix Mendelssohn's Spring Song instead -- thus leading to the creation of a richly abstract masterpiece. Flint becomes famous with paintings made with his machines from recordings of other people's art -- music -- and not his own creations. Flint becomes increasingly obsessed with all the money coming into his life at the expense of a life with Louisa.

After Flint's demise, Louisa is richer and more depressed. She meets an already-super-wealthy magnate named Rod Anderson (Robert Mitchum) and 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. The spoof seen here is on the big budget Hollywood films. 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 up with Mitchum and MacLaine making love in a big champagne glass. Back in the story, despite his happy retreat into their marriage Rod discovers he's actually gotten richer while he was neglecting his industry. Enraged that someone in his company was driving his business success "behind his back", Rod plans on going on a global search to find the culprit. Louisa fears he'll die in the attempt (given her previous track record) so ends up convincing Rod to sell everything off and retire to the type of small farm he lived on during his childhood. The good news is that Rod never neglected her. However, a fateful mistake on Rod's part suddenly leaves Louisa a widow, and fantastically wealthy.

Louisa's guilty feelings drive her to wander the States alone. She finds herself in a cafe in a podunk town, across the highway from the "Cauliflower Ear" eatery. In the cafe, she meets Pinky Benson (Gene Kelly), another customer who pours her a cup of coffee and charms her with some silly dances and rhymes. She learns he's a performer at the Cauliflower Ear for the past 14 years, and Pinky invites her to come see him perform. When she shows up that night, she realizes that his clown act is tolerated by the establishment because he doesn't take away from the serving of food or liquor. Louisa is further charmed by Pinky's complete lack of ambition and satisfaction with his simple lot in life, seeing it as mirroring her own desires to forget her millions and live in happy poverty. She falls in love with Pinky and marries him, and they live on a broken-down old houseboat together while he works performing nightly. Look for Teri Garr in the dancing cast. Back in the story, another fateful decision makes Pinky decide to perform without his clown makeup at the Cauliflower Ear one night, and the customers rave at his talent. Over fast-forward time, Pinky becomes a famous Hollywood movie star. Once again Louisa is neglected by a husband obsessed with fame. Pinky's fans come before Louisa in everything. In this segment, the all-pink mansion and the mad pink painter are studio humor, as is Louisa's appearance at a screening in an all-pink chinchilla coat and a pink wig.

Pinky was Louisa's last husband before she showed up at the psychiatrist's office, and the rest of the movie unfolds "in the present time".

Credits

Directed by J. Lee Thompson

* Shirley MacLaine ... Louisa May Foster

* Paul Newman ... Larry Flint

* Robert Mitchum ... Rod Anderson, Jr.

* Dean Martin ... Leonard 'Lennie' Crawley

* Gene Kelly ... Pinky Benson

* Robert Cummings ... Dr. Victor Stephanson

* Dick Van Dyke ... Edgar Hopper

* Margaret Dumont ... Mrs. Foster

* Anton Arnold ... Mr. Foster

* Lou Nova ... Trentino

* Fifi D'Orsay ... Baroness

* Maurice Marsac ... Rene

* Wally Vernon ... Agent

* Jane Wald ... Polly

* Lenny Kent ... Hollywood Lawyer

* Christopher Connelly ... Ned

* Tom Conway ... Lord Kensington

* Queenie Leonard ... Lady Kensington

* Pamelyn Ferdin ... Geraldine Crawley, age 4

* Jeff Fithian ... Jonathan Crawley, age 5

* Bill Corcoran ... Leonard Crawley, Jr., age 7

* Anthony Eustrel ... Willard

* Milton Frome ... Lawyer

* Army Archerd ... TV Announcer

* Reginald Gardiner ... Mad Pink Painter

* Phil Arnold ... Publicity and Press Agent

* Roy Gordon ... Minister

* Sid Gould ... Movie Executive

* Joe Gray ... Customer

* Jack Greening ... Chester

* Marcel Hillaire ... French Lawyer

* Mark Bailey ... Rod Anderson's Private Airline Pilot

* Burt Mustin ... Crawleyville Lawyer

* Dick Wilson ... Driscoll

* Teri Garr ... Dancer in the Kelly/MacLaine shipboard musical

* Arlene Harris ... Sour woman in club audience

* Paula Lane ... Movie Executive's Girl

* Marjorie Bennett ... Mrs. Freeman

* Myrna Ross ... Party Girl

* Barbara Bouchet ... Girl on Plane

* Helene Winston ... Doris

References