There is something infectious about this comedy. The cast is about as perfect as you can get, but the subject matter was a bit awkward when compared to today's mores.Before Carrie Bradshaw there was Helen Gurley Brown (Natalie Wood) a real life psychologist and businesswoman (she was editor of Cosmo for 32 years). Ms. Brown has just written a very controversial book about sex and the single girl (hence the title). It creates a firestorm amongst her male colleagues and her conservative patients. Tony Curtis is Bob Weston, a writer for a sleazy National Enquire-esque magazine called Stop. Bob wants to get an interview with Ms. Brown, but pretends to be a patient in need of marital counseling as a ruse. He uses his next door neighbors', Frank (Henry Fonda) and Syvia (Lauren Becall), volatile marriage as material. Of course a romance blossoms and then the normal confusion and hijinks ensue.My issue with the film is the way Ms. Brown is portrayed. She is a befuddled, confused and weak female. She's also a terrible therapist. Despite writing a book on how a single girl can be successful, she immediately allows herself to become involved with a married patient. If I was the real Helen Brown, I would be appalled. Ms. Wood is gorgeous and I'm captivated by her screen presence, but she plays Ms. Brown as a woman who needs a man...the exact opposite of the book she wrote and my recollections of Ms. Brown in real life (mostly from reading her biography). I understand this was set in the 1964 when views of male/female relationship skewed more towards male dominance, but it was still hard for me to accept that Ms. Brown could accomplish so much while being so desperate for a man...and a married one at that. Her therapy techniques violate every code of ethics you can imagine. Sure, it was a funny movie and I enjoyed it, but it left me feeling awkward at how simple women were portrayed.The supporting cast is top notch and the movie's best selling point. Fonda and Bacall as the bickering neighbors are a treat. Mel Ferrer as Brown's fellow psychologist and potential love interest is hilariously smarmy and cocky. Fran Jeffries and Leslie Parish are attractive and funny love interests/secretary for Bob. Larry Storch appears in a cameo as a motorcycle cop during the finale's odd highway chase scene. Count Basie and his orchestra are here just to provide some gravitas, but don't really play any key roles.There is a running gag about Tony Curtis wearing a woman's robe and everyone referring to him as Mr. Lemon. Curtis and Jack Lemon had starred in "Some Like It Hot" a few years before where they dressed like women. The gag was funny the first two times, but it got overplayed.I have to say something about the chase scene. It seems that every romantic comedy in the 1960s had a chase scene. This one had a funny idea of the first three cars tossing a quarter to the toll taker. The last car leaves a dollar and takes the 75 cents. It was silly, poorly filmed, but made me laugh. Then there is another similar thing involving pretzels which I simply did not understand. I'm sure there was a point, but I missed it.With this much talent, it was going to succeed and it does. I just wish Ms. Brown had been played a bit more wisely and not as such an easy mark for Tony Curtis' Bob Weston.

. . . into a film in which a character named "Emily Post" went around correcting the table manners of Lauren Bacall, Tony Curtis, Henry Fonda, and Natalie Wood, it may well have made for a BETTER movie than SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL. In the first place, "girls" do NOT have PhD's. Secondly, a book of demographic information and dating tips could have been abridged into an 114-minute on-screen dramatic reading, and been far more entertaining that the lame plot on exhibition here. Taking only its title and author's name from Ms. Brown's original self-help book, the character "Helen Gurly Brown" is presented as a 23-year-old blushing virgin daring to dish out sex advice (something priests have been doing for centuries WITHOUT blushing). Ho ho ho (yawn). Also, Helen's middle name is pronounced the same as "girlie," making this flick a "girlie show" titter-titter (shrug). The material here is so thin, the movie is "padded" out with a slapstick car chase dragging on for nearly half an hour for its "big finale." This is even less hilarious than the coin-operated mirrors shown in STOP MAGAZINE's men's room. People expecting to see A MAN AND A WOMAN-type movie instead are cursed with a dumbed-down version of IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD.

Sex comedies from the sixties may seem a trifle dated now: it's a long way since Rock Hudson and Doris Day made their way through the seduction game. But what it loses in accuracy (if it was ever accurate), it wins back in appealing, innocent charm. This one was made in 1964, and follows the regular storyline: a guy who's strongly described as a womanizer, decides to make love to an inexperienced young woman, but she confuses him with someone else and the two fall in love in the process. This time, the guy is a newspaper man, from a tabloid (directed by Edward Everett Horton, who hasn't changed a bit since Fred Astaire) and the girl, a psychiatrist loosely based on the journalist Helen Gurley Brown- in fact that's her name, but the rest is fiction. There's also a shade of The Moon Is Blue, with everyone wondering if Helen is or not a virgin.The film itself is not very long and you have sometimes the feeling it lasts forever- and sometimes you wish it could. In the pivotal part, Natalie Wood is plain exquisite. She seemed to have grown more and more beautiful with each film she made, and it's no exception. She also manages to be terribly funny, without turning ridiculous, childlike and touching yet never losing her sophisticated seduction. Wood was about 26 then and to me that makes the film work much better than the Day-Hudson comedies. Who could believe a thirty-ish, attractive woman with an interesting job and an independent mind wouldn't meet any man before Rock decides to come along? As for Tony Curtis, he's very fine as the seducer. He has the chance to play a few wacky comedy scenes as well, jumping in the river with Natalie in his arms, and dressing as a woman to get out of her building- a Some Like it Hot joke he even explains to the audience. There's no Tony Randall here but Henry Fonda is the best friend, a fussy, middle-aged, depressed lingerie manufacturer, who can't seem to make things right with his wife, blasé Lauren Bacall. The real magic of the film is anytime Wood and Curtis interact, flirt and seduce each other, but the two older stars make for a very enjoyable counterpart. Fonda, claiming he will "never laugh again" then giggling over a racy tabloid is priceless. So is Bacall, opening her door to Natalie an early morning, with her legend husky voice. We've also got Mel Ferrer in a highly unexpected turn, as the light-hearted and pro-dancer psychiatrist Rudy and Fran "Meglio Stasera" Jeffries has a small part as Tony's casual girlfriend -and of course getting to sing the title song. Richard Quine gave a less dynamic direction than usual, but his emphasis on the easy life of the early 60's well-offs is still pretty funny to watch: the buildings, dresses, dances, dates come all from better days, probably idealized even then by the gentle eye of Cinemascope. The car chase near the end is uneven as well, with dragging bits against genuine laughter. Another pleasant point, still is the very breezy music written by Neal Hefti, the man responsible for The Odd Couple and Barefoot in the Park. A short piece devoted to accompany the two young leads 'romance, "The Game" is probably the sweetest Hefti ever get. Don't forget to check the in-jokes; Quine makes repeated allusions to one of his favorite actors, Jack Lemmon, who would a year after co-star with both Curtis and Wood in comedy masterpiece The Great Race. "When you smile like that, you do look a lot like Jack Lemmon", remarks a smitten Natalie through mid-film. He does not by the way, but who cares ? Lemmon's subtle yet persistent shadow on the film is another little thing that makes Sex and the Single Girl very lovable indeed.

It is the revolutionary decade of the 1960's, and you are a successful career girl, a devoted young sex therapist (aka Helen Gurley Brown). The intriguing conundrum being "Does she or doesn't she" You have been ravaged by a salacious tabloid which thrives on malignancy!! It boils down to a choice between a sleazy columnist concealing himself as a married man, (Tony Curtis) or a confidant who is merely seeking a stilted arrangement, (Mel Ferrar) Your clothes are from Bonwit Teller which insinuates that you are masquerading a pretense of sophistication and elusive composure!! Such a wardrobe suggests a disconcerting demeanor about "Being Above Reproach" So!! as a result, sex with whom you think is a married man, (Tony Curtis) is just not in your cosmopolitan repertoire..but then again, he does that "Thing with the Ear"...We are not talking about putting his mouth over it like a pet terrier or a grandparent or something, we are talking about a "penetrating slither"... Lauren Bacall and Henry Fonda's marital problems are what instigate the plot in this movie!! Tony Curtis pretends to be Frank Broderick,(Henry Fonda's character) with ulterior motives to unearth a gossip ridden story about a prominent therapist's (Natalie Wood) virginity status!! An oversexed male who delves into the recreation of sexual depravity is callous in his rudimentary pursuit of "basic needs". These urges are best paralleled with feeding time at the zoo!! While you are at the zoo, you might want to check up on how this evolutionary ladder thing is progressing!! Cleverly receiving an invitation to her apartment, she (Natalie Wood) thinks this for purposes of acting as a therapist and assuming a surrogate role, anything to help, right? How foolish!! Tony Curtis winds up wearing an upper middle class woman's bathrobe (fondly reminiscing about the days of "Some like it Hot") and now!! it is time to get down to business!! The bottom of the earlobe is everyone's nemesis, and not just a sexual deviate's!! Heavy breathing on your ear, especially after a couple of martinis, gives your professional resolve all the longevity of a Popsicle on a hot July afternoon!! Your befuddled verbosity which contains an onslaught of analytical euphemisms is a subterfuge for your maverick curiosity, and that pejorative confusion inevitably translates to your desire for "Sex"!! Everyone lights a cigarette while they have another cigarette going already!! This precarious mannerism purports a potpourri of falsehoods everybody seems comfortable with!! Lying about things has now become second nature to people, as a matter of fact, it is kind of fun!! This allegedly married man you are cavorting with has a good head on his shoulders, but he is not thinking with his head...What he is thinking with is not very swift at all!! BELIEVE ME!! Such a lewd fiasco comprises the aggregate compendium of you as the prototype for woman's liberation in the 1960's!! Finally, recrimination has evoked a bittersweet awakening to you!! It is now become very obvious to you that first hand consequences are dreadfully different from that article you read in Reader's Digest" on "THE DON JUAN COMPLEX" To top it all off, you fall in love!! Natalie Wood is sensational in this role...Originally known as the adorable little girl on "Miracle on 34th St" not much has changed since then!! She may still believe in Santa Claus because he is the only man who keeps his promises!!The movie "Sex and the Single Girl" has an amazing array of talent, Natalie Wood, Tony Curtis, Lauren Bacall, Henry Fonda, Mel Ferrar, and a whole list of others!! It depicts a scenario that the sexual revolution comes in blue and pink, and it is here to stay for good and keeps, it is just a matter of how effective and ubiquitous it will be on the various individuals involved!! Body parts like knees and ear lobes are vulnerabilities for the consummate carnal's double-entendre!! This film amusingly resonates itself to a common sixties style movie, and winds up having a matchmaker's version of a happy ending!! Most significantly, everybody has flippantly and metaphorically acknowledged that Eve ate the apple. the Greeks were indeed, perverted, and a person by the name of Sigmund Freud did actually exist!! Funny movie!!! Why? It is a comically realistic illustration of men's over active hormones that are incorporated into a screwball comedy!!...I liked this movie!!