While the writer-director team of Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond have produced some of the greatest films of all time, their late career entry, "Kiss Me, Stupid," does not rank high among the duo's critical or box office hits. However, time has been kind to the film, and what may have seemed shocking in 1964 is relatively tame today, although controversy lingers even in this permissive age. Aspiring song writers Ray Walston and Cliff Osmond conspire to keep Las Vegas songster Dino from leaving Climax, Nevada, where his car has developed suspicious engine problems, long enough to sell him their songs. Walston is overly jealous of his luscious wife, Felicia Farr, and Dino gets headaches without daily sex. With Dino lodged in Walston's guest room, Walston must get his wife out of Dino's reach, and, with Osmond's help, replaces her with Kim Novak, a lady for hire from the local Belly Button Bar.Dean Martin effortlessly plays Dino, who is basically himself, and we hear him croon a couple of pleasant tunes during the film. However, the stand out is arguably Ray Walston, who gives a sometimes manic comic performance as the husband, who is suspicious of every man from the milkman to the dentist to a teenage piano student, who nears his wife. Walston is ably abetted by Cliff Osmond as Barney, his song writing partner and accomplice in the plot to sell Dino their songs. Kim Novak as Polly the Pistol has a part Marilyn Monroe could have played; Novak looks terrific, perhaps more than terrific, and her dumb, but endearing prostitute is memorable and among the film's major assets. Beyond the leads, Wilder has peppered the cast with a number of comic performers like Doro Merande, Alice Pearce, Mel Blanc, John Fiedler, and Henry Gibson, who add short, but amusing bits throughout.Sex comedies in the 1960's seemed daring at the time, and many have dated badly. This film understandably caused a stir by its implication that a man would sell his wife's sexual favors for a business deal. Perhaps the film has aged well because Wilder and Diamond do not cop out, and the moral compromises may still raise eyebrows. The well written script has enough amusing complications to be entertaining, although it lacks the one-liners and laughs of a "Some Like it Hot." Filmed in glorious black and white by Joseph LaShelle with an Andre Previn score and a Gershwin tune or two, "Kiss Me, Stupid," remains a comedy for adults. While no longer as risqué as originally intended, the film benefits from Walston and Osmond's comedy, Novak's astonishing beauty and vulnerability, and Wilder's sure direction. While not a comedy classic, the film is quite entertaining and worthy viewing.

When this was released in 1964 it received a loud and hearty round of indifference from the critics. I don't know why. It's hard boiled, amusing, romantic, and ironic. It's not Wilder and Diamond's best work but it's a satisfying blend of funny incidents, single entendres, and moments that almost approach drama.I'd guess there are at least two important reasons for the general lack of enthusiasm. One is that maybe Billy Wilder should never have directed such successful works as "Some Like It Hot" and "The Apartment" in the previous few years. He got too many awards. The bar was lifted. After his great successes, everything had to be a masterpiece. His critical S&P rating underwent what's called a "correction." Another reason is that this is, after all, a movie in the classical style appearing in 1964. That's the year of the Beatles and Richard Lester and "A Hard Day's Night" and Carnaby Street and LSD and Timothy Leary. (Kids, you'll have to Google all that.) Wilder always had his actors stick to the script. (He wrote it.) And the camera wasn't carried by some guy on roller skates. Wilder's comedy, while always a little vulgar and often biting, demanded the viewer's attention. It was grounded, while much of pop culture was becoming absurd. I mean, here is Wilder, grinding out a more ribald version of the delicate Ernst Lubitsch type while critics are gobbling up Andy Warhol's "Sleep", an hour-long movie of John Giorno sleeping for five hours.The story itself, though derived from an Italian play, is the kind that would interest Wilder. An ambitious, small-town song writer (Walston, my co-star in the excellent and under-appreciated "From the Hip") manages to trap pop singer Dean Martin in his house overnight. Walston tries to palm off a cheap local whore (Novak) as his wife (Farr), so that Martin doesn't wake up with a headache from lackanookie. Instead, Walston winds up spending the night with Novak and Farr spends the night with Dino. It all ends happily.True, it's not that well written. Walston is overwrought. He's jealous of his wife, okay, but in fact he's unbelievably jealous and it's not particularly amusing when he tears the shirt off a fourteen-year-old piano student and throws him out of the house -- just for LOOKING at Farr. And the rest of the plot does have its longueurs. But none of these flaws torpedo what is basically a mildly diverting piece of entertainment. Dean Martin is especially enjoyable as his narcissistic self. Novak's coarse accent sounds more like Chicago than Jersey City. And Cliff Osmond, as a co-conspirator, isn't funny just because he's tall and fat and has a flat facial plane. So what? Even the silly songs (from an early Gershwin flop) are enjoyable, although they are no good. I'm qualified to make that judgment since I'm an expert musician, once having played the hydrocrystalophone in the Short Hills, New Jersey, Marching Band and Perloo Society.You know, it's really a sin to expect too much of a movie or anything else.

A famous singer is stranded in a small town and is hosted by an aspiring but jealous composer with a hot wife. Martin plays a crooner known as Dino. OK, so there's not a lot of acting going on here, but who better to play an alcoholic crooner named Dino that Martin? Walston is well cast as the schmuck who wants Dino to take his songs but not his wife (the lovely Farr). Osmond is funny as Walston's goofy sidekick. Novak, however, is all wrong as a waitress who Walson hires to pretend to be his wife. This was a part written for Marilyn Monroe, and Novak seems to be doing a very poor impression of her. The script is surprisingly risqué for its time. It's amusing but not one of Wilder's better efforts.

Great premise and situational comedy which feels a lot fresher than it looks. Should have been made in color but the fact that it was done in black in white does help add to the drabness of the principal players lives and town. The part of Orville went to Ray Walston when Peter Sellers suffered a heart attack and had to be replaced. One reviewer here wrote critically of Walston and Novak referring to them as the "bus and truck co." cast and imagines what a film it would have been had Sellers and Marilyn Monroe been cast. Perhaps I misread him but Monroe was never considered for Novak's character, Polly The Pistol. She was to have played Felicia Farr's part, Zelda. He also imagines Jack Lemmon in the part of Orville and although Lemmon is on my very short list of the best actors ever, at the time this film was made, he was too handsome and charismatic and would have been a distraction. I believe Monroe would have pulled the film off it's balance as well whereas Felicia Farr was absolutely perfect. Kim Novak's performance was one of her best and proves that had she been given or had taken the right opportunities she could have had a whole new career in comedy. Ray Walston and Cliff Osmond were brilliantly believable as hapless scheming buddies-n-crime. So if this film needs a "re-work", for me, it wouldn't be tinkering with any of the casting. It would be in making it look as modern as it feels. Believing in the film enough to have sprung for a budget including color film would have helped a lot. It is a comedy gem which deals with the convoluted situation that its main characters create in a not too often seen adult approach and reaction.