Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! (1958) Online

Leo McCarey's next to last film and last in the comedy genre is Rally Round The Flag Boys. After his previous film My Son John got such bad reviews McCarey was hoping for a comeback of sorts. It was not to be for him.

The man who gave us such comedy gems as Ruggles Of Red Gap, Duck Soup, and The Awful Truth had seen his best days. Why a lot of the gems from Max Shulman's book on which this film is based were left out of the screenplay we'd have to have a séance to ask McCarey.

It's not a bad film, in fact it's pretty funny in spots, but it lacks the consistency of McCarey's previous cited work. And McCarey who was a serious practicing Catholic I don't think was the man to direct a sexpot like Joan Collins in the sexpot character she played here.

The stars are the newly married Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward who wind up on the opposite sides of a local issue in their suburban town of Putnam's Landing. To wit the establishment of a local military base in their town. The army has a public relations problem and that's Newman's field. They even go so far as to have General Gale Gordon call in a favor or two and have Newman's Naval Reserve status activated and special orders cut attaching him to the army. They need his public relations skills badly because half baked blundering oaf Jack Carson is the commander of said base.

The subplot also involves Newman feeling neglected as Woodward wraps herself up in various civic causes, the prevention of the army base being the latest. He's feeling a real itch and neighbor Joan Collins who is also neglected by eternally busy husband Murvyn Vye is quite ready to scratch it.

The physical comedy comes off the best, the highlight of the film in my opinion is the historical pageant that Joanne attempts to put on which ends in disaster. Joanne at this stage of her career is far better at comedy than her husband. Paul would have to wait until Slapshot before he had a real hit in comedy although I've always felt The Secret War Of Harry Frigg is underrated.

Before they became Dobie Gillis and Thalia Menninger on television Dwayne Hickman and Tuesday Weld played opposite each other in this film. Someone must have noticed the chemistry there.

Rally Round The Flag Boys has some good moments, but it is far cry from the pinnacle of Leo McCarey's career in the Thirties.

Playing his first comedy in "Rally, 'Round the Flag, Boys!" Newman was in the expert hands of Leo McCarey, who had directed Laurel and Hardy, W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers…

The Newmans are hard1y in that class, and the film is one of McCarey's lesser efforts, but it's often a refreshing reminder of thirties screwball farce as well as a frequently incisive satire on suburban life…

Newman is a typical Connecticut commuter with a good job in Manhattan, whose wife (Woodward) spends all her time in community affairs, leaving him frustrated, and whose two sons are so hypnotized by television they hard1y notice him—so he escapes with alcohol and daydreams…

When the Army schedules a top secret base for their town, the couple are on opposing sides: she heads the protest committee; he, a reserve officer, is "drafted" as public relations man to win over the town… Their marriage really goes downhill when she catches him in a compromising (but innocent) situation with a sexy neighbor (Joan Collins).

Newman is often charming, but generally, in a role Jack Lemmon would have walked through, he overacts outrageously, trying so hard to be funny…

Truly, some of the gags situations are forced, as when the drunken Newman and Collins dance the Cha Cha, swing on chandeliers, and fall down stairs; or when Newman is caught, literally with his pants down, turning away the predatory Collins and trying to explain to the outraged Woodward… But even Rock Hudson and Doris Day would have made something of these scenes… The Newmans are reduced to grimacing, exaggerated gestures and extreme over-reactions…

The Newmans were still young, but they played such older-generation types that a teenaged couple (Dwayne Hickman and Tuesday Weld) were added for the younger audience…

Incredibly, Hickman, who does an inventive caricature of an American teenager, plays it as Marlon Brando! Imitating Brando's "Wild One" performance, he mumbles, stutters, and ambles about with the familiar anguished look…

You've gotta feel sorry for Harry (Paul Newman) in "Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!". His wife (Joanne Woodward) is ALWAYS busy with committees and projects and never has time for him. No sooner does he convince her to take out some time so they can go off to a romantic hotel than she agrees to head up yet another committee--one to fight a new army base coming to town! This time, she not only agrees to be the head but volunteers Harry for it as well! All Harry wants is to be with his wife....alone! At the same time, a VERY sexy neighbor (Joan Collins) is suffering from the same problem with her husband--a man who is practically never home. However, she deals with it very differently--she decides she wants Harry! And, she'll do ANYTHING to get him--even ruin his marriage. For a 1950s film, "Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!" is an amazingly sexual film. Think about it--the premise is that Harry is very sexually frustrated through no fault of his own! And, again and again, his libido is unfulfilled.

So is this little comedy worth seeing? Yes. However, just because it has Newman and Woodward does NOT mean it's a great film--which it isn't. The film suffers from two main problems--the unfulfilled libido and the marital problems in Harry's marriage do seem to go on a bit too long. Additionally, I found it difficult to enjoy at times because Woodward's character is really difficult to like. Plus, towards the end it all just degenerates into a bit of a mess. Still, it's a cute film and a decent way to spend 106 minutes of your life provided your expectations are not especially high.

By the way, the pageant about Pocahontas was perhaps even more insanely inaccurate than the Disney film. Imagine--Pocahontas greeting the Pilgrims lead by John Smith at Plymouth!! Firecrackers! Crazy.

My local library picked this up as part of it's own fiftieth anniversary celebration last year, so this week I finally got around to watching it. With Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in the cast, one would expect so much more, but sadly that's not the case. The film is too farcical to be considered a screwball comedy, and relies too heavily on slapstick and buffoonery to make it's comic points. It's perhaps a tad above your typical beach blanket genre film, but without the girls, except Tuesday Weld who was embarrassingly juvenile. Other reviewers on this board who feel that she stole the show apparently missed the scene where she squealed in delight at Corporal Opie's (Tom Gilson) rendition of 'You're My Boojum'. Boojum, or Boo for short, is a word I've never heard before, and I'm sure never will again, unless I watch this one more time, and that's not likely.

It's too bad too, because on the face of it, this vehicle had enough talent to pull off a capable production, but it got frittered away somewhere along the line. Newman comes across as absolutely goofy most of the time, especially in that chandelier/choo-choo escapade with Angela Hoffa (Joan Collins). As his wife Grace, Joanne Woodward is almost lifeless, something the script obviously called for by placing her on every pointless committee in existence in Putnam's Landing. Gale Gordon and Jack Carson portrayed their characters pretty much straight from the play book, but it was disappointing to see Dwayne Hickman as a neutered version of Marlon Brando from "The Wild One". It wouldn't have been so bad if he had tried out his Dobie Gillis TV role, I think that would have been much more effective.

Which made it all the more puzzling to view the theatrical trailer on the 20th Century Fox DVD release, where Bob Hope practically rolls on the ground in a fit of laughter while congratulating director Leo McCarey on his cinematic achievement. I would like to have known what Hope REALLY thought. For viewers back in the day, the redeeming feature might have been seeing this one in full color, as the trailer itself for some dubious reason was offered in black and white.

"Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!" may be a movie that you never get to see. As far as I know, it's not available on video or DVD; I saw it on TV one night. But anyway, here's the story: Harry Bannerman (Paul Newman) and Grace Oglethorpe (Joanne Woodward) are a typical (or not so typical) suburban couple in an idealistic 1950's small town in Connecticut. Then, when the army announces plans to build a secretive base near the town, Harry is hired to promote it, while Grace does everything possible to oppose it. In the process of everything, the townspeople begin to see things that they've never seen before - namely, when Grace catches Harry...well, I won't spoil it for you (don't worry, it's not (particularly) dirty). The whole thing ends in one wacky climax.

Anyway, this is one of those interesting movies from the late '50s starring A-list stars, that for some reason doesn't seem to be very well remembered today. Good support comes from Tuesday Weld and Dwayne Hickman as local teenagers.

Opie, Tom Gilson,was my brother,so I went to see the movie and I never looked at it again in all these years. Sorry! it was bad. I'm told I have to write 10 lines so I'll put a little trivia in. Tom and Tuesday Weld were to be " introduced " in this picture and Tom was told to take Tuesday to the premiere but Tom said no he was going with Joan Collins, and he did and because he did only Tuesday Weld was Introduced. I found this very funny back then and still do. The movie, while the concept was a funny one, and the actors in it were impressive but some how it just did'nt come out funny.The continuity was abstract, at best,it was like I was watching 2 different movies at the same time,each running into the other. Sorry, Bob Gilson

In other of Paul Newman's movie years, this one might have fared better, but alongside the Southern masterpieces Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Long Hot Summer, and the flawed but interesting Billy The Kid take The Left-Handed Gun, this sometimes amusing fluff just can't hold up. Good to see him paired with Woodward and taking a stab at screen comedy for the first time, but he never truly excelled at it until later in his career. Still, some nice bits and decent work survive. It's just impossible to see and compare these days, rarely if ever broadcast and unreleased to video to this day.

Leo McCarey, whose credits were certainly nothing to be ashamed of, was a bit past his prime when he directed this minor misfire. 20th Century Fox gave it first-class production values and a cast that could have had a lot more fun had a less cautious approach to the material been allowed to prevail. Leon Shamroy's CinemaScope/DeLuxe Color lensing was, not unexpectedly, a treat for the eyes and a few minor bits (Tuesday Weld squealing with delight as a swain sings "You're My Boojum!" to her; Joan Collins and Paul Newman engaging in an inebriated slapstick sequence that involved swinging from a chandelier, no less) hit the mark. I remember being disappointed that things didn't take off, like the accidentally fired missile in a scene with Woodward and Newman. But anyone who thinks that Joan Collins' only forte is playing a ruthless bitch, as she did on the long-running TV series, "Dynasty," would probably be delighted with her witty romp as Angela Hoffa, for me this film's memorable highpoint.

I find that occasionally I recall the time I first watched a film with better clarity than the film itself. I wish this was one of them. RALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG, BOYS! apparently came from a very funny book by Max Shulman, but that I'd expect. From what I've read in the other comments the novel's framework seems to have been kept, but Shulman's witty barbs thrown out. This is frequently the case with Hollywood treatments of good books (i.e.: even if you liked Robert Redford's version of THE GREAT GATSBY, it and the previous one with Alan Ladd can't match Fitzgerald's terrific novel). I first saw this film (I've seen it two times, strangely enough) when it was shown about 1962 or 1963 on Saturday NIGHT AT THE MOVIES on television. Paul Newman was at the then height of his early film career as one of the best of the "Young Turk" breed of actors with Brando and Clift. But while doing well with dramas (SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME, THE YOUNG PHILADELPHIANS, CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, HUD, THE HUSTLER, HOMBRE) he failed to register any real success as a comic actor. In the long run it did not matter (it was just the choice of material). Films like BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, THE STING, THE HUDSUCKER PROXY, SLAP SHOT) all eventually showed he did have a mastery of comedy - but not bedroom farce. Leave that to his contemporary Rock Hudson. Actually I think Newman's first successful comic part (he was not the star of the whole film) was as the second doomed husband (the painter) in Shirley MacLaine's WHAT A WAY TO GO.

RALLY, 'ROUND THE FLAG, BOYS! like his other early doomed comedy, A NEW KIND OF LOVE, co-starred his wife Joanne Woodward. Both appeared together (to better advantage) in the more dramatic THE LONG HOT SUMMER, which did have some normal comic sections that Newman did well with Woodward and Orson Welles and Tony Franciosa. But that film blended comedy and drama, and the comic sections emphasized the conniving spirit of Newman's character Ben. Here he is a business executive returning to Putnam's Landing, Connecticut daily from his job in Manhattan. While such a position is not impossible to see Newman in, it is not handled as a similar situation was for Rock Hudson in his last Doris Day romp, SEND ME NO FLOWERS. Hudson's business executive went home with next-door-neighbor Tony Randall, and manages to depress the ebullient Randall with dire personal news. With Newman one imagines he just reads the New York Times on the way home. Woodward is there of course (as Doris was for Rock), but while one sees the sparks of personal chemistry between them, they don't translate to the humor that just sparkled between Doris and Rock on screen.

The plots in the movie are three: the trouble of the community regarding a new military base (connected, as it turns out, to the space program) being built near their town; the rocky personal relationship between married Paul and Joanne - especially as local rich witch (what else would she be?) Joan Collins thrown in; and the romance of young Tuesday Wells with Dwayne Hickman, who finds the competition rising - as do his fellow civilian teenage jocks - from the local military looking for relaxation on weekends. Joanne becomes the leading, anti-base spokesperson. She is confronted by base commander Gale Gordon, and his assistant Jack Carson. Given this set-up the viewer knows who is more likely to win.

Of the scenes I recall best, Collins and Carson did the most with material. Collins, of course, is an attractive woman (and here she was fantastic to look at), and one shot I recall when she and her target Newman are drinking and dancing together is of them bumping (possibly on purpose by her) derrières. She certainly brought spice into her scenes. Carson did what he could. Only a year before he gave one of his most dramatic performances in THE TARNISHED ANGELS with Hudson, Dorothy Malone, and Robert Stack, and in 1958 he would do yeoman work as Newman's bitter brother Goober in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, but the material there (Faulkner's PYLON and Tennessee Williams' CAT) helped him. Here he is a put-upon middle man taking orders barked out by Gordon and trying to restrain angry impulses of his own towards the townspeople. Yet he did do well, especially in two sequences which were relatively simple: the Thanksgiving pageant (where he keeps slipping on a wet rock supposedly representing Plymouth Rock), and the final shot where he is outsmarted by somebody who shouldn't have outsmarted him.

The Thanksgiving pageant has it's moments, with Hickman (as an Indian) leading his fellow "Indians" onto the oncoming "Pilgrims" (the soldiers from the base). And there is also the apparently unheralded capsizing of "the Mayflower", all to the amazement of pageant coordinator and narrator Woodward. Unfortunately even this suffers from comparison to other films. Think of the Thanksgiving pageant in ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES where Wednesday releases tensions at her school by giving the actors playing the Pilgrims a "grim" view of what happened to the Native Americans in the U.S. due to the arrival of the Europeans. She was far more eloquent, and one sympathized with the point of view (even if descended from those Europeans). Somehow that seemed more relevant for consideration in such a situation than whether quiet Putnam's Landing should accept the missile base next to it.

So, for the sake of the comic (and sexy) bits I liked, I will give this film a "6" rather than anything higher. Without those it would have been lower.

when she realizes she likes boys, she just doesn't like Dwayne Hickman, it's sheer truth and delight! the rest of the cast is forced...Joanne Woodward is strident. Paul Newman is slumming, Joan Collins is adequate. Jack Carson is Carson. Dwayne Hickman deserves Weld's scorn. bad comedy, except for Weld's self-recognition. these 50's films try to be smart, but aren't. once in a while a performer can rise above the material. here it's only a young, precocious teenager who mesmerizes.

Weld was given praise by none other than Pauline Kael. in her review of Weld's classic '68, "Pretty Poison", she suggested Weld didn't have the career she deserved, "and maybe it isn't just her unlucky name...maybe she's the kind of actress who doesn't let you know she's acting, like Geraldine Page or Estelle Parsons do. how else can an actress give the kind of performances Tuesday Weld has given in "Rally 'round the Flag, Boys!", "Soldier in the Rain", "The Cincinatti Kid", and "Lord Love a Duck", and still not being taken seriously?"

I saw this film with my then fiancée, Sheila, in Kilburn, London in 1959. From the very beginning we knew we were watching something special. A great battle of the sexes with wonderful chemistry between real-life husband and wife team Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. We couldn't stop laughing and even now, 48 years on, we still think it was a really good and funny film. Joan Collins gave a good performance, perfectly cast as "the other woman". It is a pity that this team of very talented actors were not brought together for more projects in the same genre. When or if it comes out on DVD, we'll certainly get a copy. Certainly a "feel-good" film to relish, in the same vein as the wonderful "What's up Doc?" with Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal.

Max Shulman was an absolutely brilliant comic writer/satirist ("The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis," "Anybody Got a Match?", etc.). In the mid-50s he published "Rally 'Round The Flag, Boys!" taking on everything from Madison Avenue, the New Haven Railroad, the U.S. Air Force to the space race in a hilarious farce that shows how seemingly unconnected lives, priorities and events can converge to produce a disaster of epic proportions. Even little league gets a drubbing at his hands.

This movie took the title and many of the book's characters. For some reason, the writers and producers chose to discard everything else.

Newman could have been GREAT as Harry Bannerman, harried Peter Pan-type account exec facing the prospect of fatherhood and settling down. Unfortunately, the script sabotaged him. Joanne Woodward is relegated to standing around looking hastled and confused-- probably trying to decide exactly how she's going to kill her agent for getting her into this dog. Veterans like Gale Gordon, Jack Carson and Murvyn Vye are similarly wasted.

The only cast member who doesn't disappoint, strangely enough, is Tuesday Weld as Comfort Goodpasture . . . but then, her character didn't have much to do in the book either, come to think of it.

This is what happens when Hollywood bends over backwards to avoid offending anyone . . . after having purchased the rights to a book that's guaranteed to offend just about everyone.

There is a character named Hoffa in this film. Oscar, not James. Probably the best thing that could be done with this turkey of a movie would be to take the master copy, seal it up in an empty bottle of "Newman's Own," and bury it about six feet under Hoffa. James, not Oscar.

I read the reviews before watching it again after many years. Shocked, I was, to see that they weren't good. My plan was to see the movie and mount a spirited defense of it on this very site.

I can't. I like romantic comedies. I like comedies from this era. I even like bad movies if they are sincere. This movie just makes me uncomfortable.

Paul Newman, never one of my favorites, but a pretty decent actor, has no real range or depth in this role. I watched, expecting him to suddenly step forward and take charge of the movie, but he disappointed me...

Joanne Woodward vacillates between stern wife and mother/retarded blonde. I think she was trying to be sexy, but came off as possibly addicted to Valium...

Joan Collins was the one bright spot in this movie. She was sexy and vivacious...even funny from time to time...

Gale Gordon (Mr. Mooney from the old Lucy Show) did okay with what he had.

What they managed to do with some pretty talented actors was to create a movie where not only did I not care about the lives of any of the characters, I don't think I would've cared if any of them had been tortured to death, either.

Except for Joan Collins, who looked GORGEOUS, and Joanne Woodward, who was just adorable, this movie is really not worth the time.

It is terribly disappointing, first because the book was by the great Max Shulman and was therefore, by definition, funny, and, second, because the superlative cast was so badly used by a barely mediocre script, and, third, because we expect so very much more from Leo McCarey, whose directing was not up to his standards and who also must take at least part of the blame for the script.

Paul Newman, who gave credible performances probably more often than not, was just not up to his par, either. Jack Carson, obviously in decline, was still pretty watchable.

Tuesday Weld was a little overdone, and didn't really look the part, at least not to those of us who've read the book.

There was another major error, one I see too, too often in Hollywood movies faking an auto trip on a sound stage: As the Collins character is driving the Newman character home, she spends much more time turned to look at him than at the road. And every time I see this particular bit of stupidity in Hollywood movies, I wonder "Why do directors and editors and even the actors allow this?"

If you're desperately bored, you might want to watch. If there is something better on, you'll skip this, which I watched On Demand. Now, having seen it, I can't understand anyone demanding to see this.

A couple of reviewers noted that they felt sorry for Paul Newman's character in "Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys." I had the same sense at times. Newman's Harry Bannerman is a picture of sympathy much of the time. One can imagine Rock Hudson, Fred MacMurray or Cary Grant in that role. None of them would be likely to garner our sympathy. And they shouldn't. They would have us laughing at the predicament they were in and how they handled it. Sure, they would be just as innocent as Newman is. But they would have played the role for the comedy, where Newman's character can't seem to do that. But it may not be all his failing. I suspect it was a combination miscue involving screen writing, acting and directing.

I think Newman is capable of comedy – he later shows a knack for some simple and sophisticated humor ("The Sting," "Slap Shot," and in the Western crime and biopic, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"). But – as at least one other reviewer noted, he's not suited for the farcical. For that matter, neither is Joanne Woodward. A couple others said they didn't like her character. I think it would have been fine -- if she had made it funny. Woodward was an excellent dramatic actress. She won an Oscar for "The Three Faces of Eve," and received three more nominations. But her comedic abilities were limited to the witty and wry dialog type – nothing with mayhem and farce. Other reviewers talked about the humor in the novel by Max Shulman that this movie is based on, and the absence of so many good and witty lines in the film.

Jack Carson helped pick the film up some as an incompetent Army officer, Captain Hoxie. Carson was a first-rate supporting actor who often had considerable roles in movies. His film persona reminds me of Bud Abbott – a straight man who always seems serious, and whom others can play off with such great humor. Carson was an intelligent actor who knew he wasn't going to get male leads. He played his characters to the hilt. Carson died of cancer at age 52. Had he lived longer, he might have garnered an Oscar – for a comedy or dramatic supporting role. Other fine supporting actors earned greater recognition for their talents in their later years. Examples are Hume Cronyn and Harry Morgan.

This film has a couple of very funny scenes, but nothing more. Others have noted the silliness of the plot toward the end. I don't have a problem with that – comedy is comedy, of whatever degree of foolishness, farce, fantasy and silliness. But, it really should be funny. Regrettably, "Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys" doesn't have what it takes. Newman and Woodward were at the peak of their careers and popularity at the time, so the studio (20th Century Fox) probably thought they could do no wrong. Maybe fan appeal would be enough.

The film had a considerable budget for 1958, at nearly $1.9 million. It made money but it didn't set the world on fire back then either. The box office take was reported at $3.4 million.

If you are unaware of what "Sgt. Deadhead" is, it is a 1965 American International Frankie/Annette movie w/out Annette, sending an idiotic pilot into space with a monkey. Other than Eve Arden and a cast full of famous comic faces from TV (including Gale Gordon, who happens to appear in "Rally 'Round the Flag"), it is mostly forgettable. But, with the way "Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys" starts, it seems like this Cinemascope sophisticated comedy about the lives of a classy Long Island couple is going to actually be really good. That it is for 3/4 of the movie, and features a really sexy Paul Newman and a genuinely funny Joan Collins. In the film, Newman is a seemingly happily married man, with a wife (Joanne Woodward) and two children, but his wife is so involved in the community's do-gooder activities, they can't make time to go off on a much needed second honeymoon together. That's where Ms. Collins comes in, as the very glamorous next door neighbor, neglected by her own husband. She sets her sights on Newman, and in a very hysterical sequence, the two of them get rip-roaringly drunk and spend an evening together. Whether or not they get down is never revealed, and can only be assumed. But Newman and Collins seem to be having so much fun in this sequence, and he gets to lighten up a bit after dealing with Elizabeth Taylor's Maggie the Cat in the same year's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof".

Acting wise, Collins easily steals the film. If Alexis Morrell Carrington Colby Dexter acted this way in 1958, she never got to show it when she came back to Denver on TV's "Dynasty" 23 years later. Collins proves herself to be an outstanding comedian, something most glamour queens of her stature never had the chance to do. Newman and Woodward never had the chance on screen to be a Burton and Taylor, as Woodward, obviously trained for the stage, wasn't as magnetic on screen in romantic parts as she was in sheer drama such as "Three Faces of Eve", "Rachel, Rachel", and "Summer Wishes, Summer Dreams". Newman, one of the most handsome men in films of the 50's and 60's, sometimes seems embarrassed by the comedy he has to do here, but Collins' light-hearted manner in their scenes together helps lighten him up.

There are tons of things to recommend about this film, but the last quarter is not one of them. Its like a delicious cake frosted with a sugarless topping that disappoints overall. Some fun character players have nice bits, but Jack Carson's obnoxious army officer is not one of his better roles. However, as a good-looking film in delicious technicolor, it still is a lot of fun. This would have ranked a lot higher in my book had the ending been less sitcomish and more glamorous.

Bob Hope appears in and narrates the trailer, but doesn't act in the movie itself.

Copyright 1958 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Palace: 23 December 1958. U.S. release: February 1959. U.K. release: March 1959. Australian release: 19 March 1959. Sydney opening at the Regent. 9,580 feet. 106 minutes.

SYNOPSIS: Harry Bannerman (Paul Newman) is a typical young commuter. He has a pretty young wife, Grace (Joanne Woodward), whose multiple civic activities leave Harry feeling neglected and frustrated. They live with their two sons in Putnam's Landing, a quiet, suburban community inhabited mostly by married couples like themselves. There is also Angela Hoffa (Joan Collins), who likes all men, except her husband, a busy TV executive, and she decides to hook onto Harry. When the Army announces this community as the site for a "Top Secret" project, the Town Council, led by the always eager-to-help Grace, selects Harry its unwilling committee chairman to go to Washington and tell the Army to find some other place.

NOTES: Fox's number one ticket-seller in the domestic market for 1958-59. Film debut of Tuesday Weld.

COMMENT: Are you a Max Shulman addict? Never heard of the old Max, eh? Good. You're not missing anything. But take my tip and give the film a miss too. Believe me, you'll absolutely loathe it.

Ah! You're a fan of Max. Welcome to the club. When last heard of, about 600,000 strong. Mostly in the States of course. And it's this legion of fans, plus Paul Newman's own home teams, who led the stampede to the ticket-windows, making the movie such a box-office bonanza for Big Picture-Fox.

However. I'm afraid that all of you would have been disappointed. "A slow and labored farce", said most of the critics — and that sums up the movie neatly. As for Mr. Newman, the unanimous opinion of almost every critic I could find was that his performance was akin to that of a maladroit elephant. Not all expressed this thought in exactly those words, mind you, but you get the general drift.

Terrible how the talents of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were wasted in this nonsensical film.

Without the space complication, this could have easily been a film in the 1930s with Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant playing up against Myrna Loy or Jean Arthur.

Joan Collins is her usual temptress in trying to break up a marriage and Jack Carson is the idiotic captain along with the more rational Gale Gordon in this farce.

The July 4 Grace (Woodward) plans for the town are disastrous which best describes the film. The parting of Carson to the moon at the end is equally ridiculous.

The film proves that civic responsibility and breaking up a marriage don't really together.