What a Way to Go!

source: What a Way to Go!

"What A Way To Go" is a very funny black comedy about a woman who keeps marrying rich men who meet with untimely deaths. So she keeps getting richer but not happier. The husbands are all played (in small parts) by some of Hollywood's biggest names at the time. Paul Newman, Gene Kelly, Robert Mitchum just to name a few. And Shirley MacLaine is at her absolute sexiest in this film. (Check out the movie sequence with Robert Mitchum). A very enjoyable but overlooked film.

There were several wonderful comedies in the sixties, exclusive of the Doris Day fluff. In this one, Shirley MacLaine has a problem with marriages. Well, not so much with the marriages, with the husbands. You see, marrying her is a death sentence. Each of the husbands starts out as a good catch, but over time they feel they must go for financial success. And succeed they do. As a matter of fact, they become incredibly rich. Unfortunately, through their greed or carelessness or some cosmic force, they meet their individual ends in some creative way, leaving Shirley with another fortune. She longs for the simple life without all the frills and is trying to find real love. The strength of this offering is the clever direction, the outlandish events, and the utter humor (the black kind) as the world collapses on these guys. I saw this film in high school and it was just as captivating today as it was then.

This is a great film. Some have said it epitomizes the 1960s glamour comedies but what it cleverly does is parody them, and other film genres, through its movie dream sequences and the ridiculous and gorgeous costumes Shirley wears. It has a great cast and everyone is in top tongue in cheek form. Dick Van Dyke plays his usual neo-Marx brothers physical comedy schtick (with Margaret DuMont, no less!) at the height of his powers. Paul Newman is great playing against type as a tortured artist, a perfect sendup of Kirk Douglas' portrayal of Van Gough in *Lust for Life* (he even wears the same beard). Mitchum is suave and cool as a kind of Cash McCall gone wrong, but far more slick then Jim Garner ever was. To top it off, Gene Kelley does an incredible spot on parody of himself in the Holywood story, with iconic images taken straight from his greatest triumph *Singing in the Rain,* turned on their head and twisted into a grotesque commentary on the evils of Hollywood as opposed to its dreams and glamour. The scene where he is trampled to death by his fans holds up a hilarious mirror to the similar scene in *Singing in the Rain* where he has his clothes torn off by them. This film elevated parody to a high art form before anybody had even heard the term "post modernism!" And those gowns she wears! The best one is the one which is just a string of pearls down Shirley's sexy back (she faces away from the camera for the shole scene because she is obviously topless). They must have cost a fortune! this is obviously a film with a very Lush Bugett!

Some movies are so supremely silly that they are worth experiencing once just for their sheer giddiness. Such is the case with this 1964 extravaganza, the kind of overdone product that brought many of the major studios to their knees in the sixties. At the time, Shirley MacLaine was a top big screen draw, having graduated from her earlier pixyish waifs. She portrays Louisa May Foster Hopper Flint Anderson Benson, a four times-married, four-times-widowed woman who became exponentially wealthier with each marriage. But instead of playing the black widow angle, screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green, most famous as songwriters but also for their scripts for classic MGM musicals like "Singin' in the Rain", manage an inordinate, bumptious mix of black comedy and slapstick in having Louisa tell her story as a flashback to a psychiatrist who inevitably falls in love with her. The mastodon-sized movie is really just a one-joke premise translated into four different episodes that lead to the same tragicomic end. Dick Van Dyke plays Thoreau-loving idler Edgar Hopper, who becomes an unbearable workaholic turning his failing little store into a Wal-Mart-level conglomerate. Paul Newman plays brooding, impoverished expatriate artist Larry Flint, who invents a wacky machine that paints big canvases to music and then becomes the toast of Paris with his modern paintings. Robert Mitchum plays maple syrup tycoon Rod Anderson, already a multi-millionaire when he meets Louisa but wanting the simple life down on the farm. Gene Kelly plays third-rate entertainer Pinky Benson, who changes his nightclub act and changes into a megalomaniacal movie star. In each marriage, it is Louise who ironically triggers her husband's success and finds out over and over that money does not bring happiness. In the bookend part, Dean Martin plays the one that got away, the smug hometown playboy at the beginning and the beaten man near the end. A tireless MacLaine is game throughout, but her character's innate why-me innocence becomes increasingly exasperating. In what amounts to be the movie's most clever parts, each marriage includes a mini-homage to a particular film genre - silent comedy with Edgar, sexy French films with Larry, elaborate mega-productions with Rod and of course, MGM musicals with Pinky. The Mitchum and Newman chapters are the most entertaining since both tweak their respective images sportingly. The Kelly segment is highlighted by a terrific shipboard musical number in which the leggy MacLaine gets to showcase her Broadway-trained dancing abilities next to the nimble Kelly. Lacking the finesse for this type of farce, J. Lee Thompson directs the proceedings with the subtlety of an army commando, not a surprise given that his biggest success was "The Guns of Navarone". And worse of all, it simply goes on and on. The legendary Edith Head must have had a field day designing MacLaine's series of elaborate costumes. It's definitely a curio from a bygone era.

"WHAT A WAY TO GO" is the epitome of the lush mid 60's style comedies. Great cast. Shirley MacLaine as Louisa, is a simple girl who longs for the simple life. Although her mother, played by the great Marx Brothers straight woman Margaret Dumont, pushes her to get with the money, Louisa marries for love. Once a little prosperity has touched hubby # 1, he works himself to an early grave. Poor Louisa goes through 3 more husbands who also are devoured by their various forms of greed leading to their demise(s). Finally with husband # 5 , Dean Martin as Leonard Crawley, she has found the simple life...or has she ? As Louella Parsons would have put it : Shirley was never lovelier than in this picture ! Edith Head clothes, and hair by Guilaroff, MacLaine looks wonderful wallowing in her chicest mourning weeds...Best Segment : Hubby #3 Bob Mitchum ........

I wondered when it would happen. When I was in my twenties I would occasionally get to see silent films. With the exception of Chaplin, almost all of them were difficult to watch. Acting styles were florid and the stories were mirroring (more than the film producers could know) late 19th Century and the first quarter of the 20th Century's societal 'ideas'. I don't know of any of them (except Chaplin) that ever reached me emotionally or in a thoughtful fashion. Friends and me who had the same reaction would fancifully say, "Gee, someday our films will appear to be as dated as those same silents. With 'What A Way To Go', seen in the perspective of my 21st Century eyes, that time has come. The so-called comedy of it, not subtle in the least and broad/broad/broad is painful to watch. But it's the falseness of as much of the film as I could bear that has the deepest impact, just like those silent films. There's a 'kidding', a winking at the audience that takes what's supposed to be true sentiment and turns it inside out. (Voltaire could do this but the screenwriters of this are not operating at his talent level.) So ultimately, nothing is satirized and everything becomes pap.

How much you like WHAT A WAY TO GO! depends a lot on how much pleasure you'll derive from seeing Shirley MacLaine in about a hundred costumes, each more outrageous than the last. She's the whole show and that's no small feat considering her leading men. As a too-often married widow, MacLaine recounts her marriages to doctor Bob Cummings. There's sensible Dick Van Dyke, unsavory would be suitor Dean Martin, starving artist Paul Newman, wealthy industrialist Robert Mitchum and big time star "Pinky Benson," played by Gene Kelly. It's all an excuse for MacLaine to get into one wild escapade after another and it's all set against a constantly changing though always colorful background...this is the glossiest of glossy movies. It's strange because although it's not particularly funny, it's very watchable. Of the leading men, Van Dyke and Martin fare best, essentially playing variations of their established personas. Newman is at sea in this type of light farce and Mitchum makes no attempt to be funny. Kelly's segment is dreadfully peppy. He almost manages to upstage MacLaine. The great Margaret Dumont has a cameo as MacLaine's mother. Directed with a surprisingly light touch by J. Lee Thompson, who was most famous at the time for directing THE GUNS OF NAVARONE!

Written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and directed by J. Lee Thompson, this super production had elaborate sets, and Shirley MacLaine with six leading men, 72 gowns and 72 hairstyles—all for the purpose of stating that money is the root of all evil! Like "A New Kind of Love," it's a pathetic pastiche of sex comedy, satire, fantasy and pretentious techniques, which support a one-joke story: a woman wants to live a simple life, but has the "misfortune" to marry men who become millionaires, and who die shortly thereafter, leaving her hopelessly wealthy Newman had the good fortune to appear in only a small portion of this disaster… He's the second of five husbands—an American gifted painter who drives a taxi in Paris and has invented a machine that converts sound into oil paintings The couple are poor and happy until MacLaine feeds classical music into the machine, resulting in a successful painting… Newman becomes rich, builds more and more machines, and gets so involved in his work (another obsessed artist!) he ignores his wife Newman is surprisingly amusing when he talks about art in almost a Graziano voice, and when he "conducts" his machines into a frenzy

This all-star comedy about a marriage-minded jinx who weds poor men for happiness--yet turns her hubbies into wealthy boors--had great satiric possibilities, but J. Lee Thompson was probably not the best director for a farce (his handling is lumbering and the picture never settles on an appropriate tone). Shirley MacLaine is too brash, too frenetic to get a handle on; pixie-cuteness wears fine on her, but her happy mania wears down the viewer, even if Shirl keeps right on going. She seems totally oblivious to the ridiculousness of the conception and the over-production, not to mention the limp gags in the screenplay. The guest actors either look perplexed (Paul Newman), winded (Dean Martin), or uninterested (Robert Mitchum). Only Gene Kelly is at home here--but Kelly is still doing what he did in the 1950s, telegraphing us this is just a lark but that he's a trouper anyway. The plush budget results in a few set-pieces which are something to see, but without a strong script it does a fairly fast fade. ** from ****