Promises Promises

PROMISES! PROMISES! has two reputations - one as a notorious film, being the first film in which a famed Hollywood star appeared nude (heavily hyped in Playboy magazine at the time) and the other as a bad film. It's "notorious" edge is merely historical - today it simply resembles an R-rated LOVE BOAT episode with a little bit of nudity from it's star lady Jayne Mansfield who literally drops her towel and reveals her famous breasts (as well as another scene which shows the butt that once famously bopped down the street to tune "The Girl Can't Help it"). It's bad reputation is not really deserved. While no classic, it's an pleasing time filler with enjoyable performances from both it's main cast and several notable character actors.

The parallels between the film and GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES are remarkably strong. Like Blondes, the film is set on an ocean liner, and has Tommy Noonan as it's leading man. Marie McDonald plays Jayne's caustic pal with an delivery that strongly suggests Jane Russell's performance in the Marilyn Monroe film.

Jayne and husband Tommy Noonan have been married for four years but have been unable to have children. This cruise ship vacation is apparently an attempt to put some spice into their love lives. Travelling with them are best friends, Marie McDonald and Mickey Hargitay, another childless married couple. Hargitay is a vain, health-obsessed movie star who apparently makes Hercules type pictures.

Neurotic (and apparently impotent) Tommy keeps running to ship doctor Fritz Field for help. Field gives Noonan tablets that are actually aspirins suggesting they are some sort of vintage equivalent to Viagra. The "pills" do the trick but Field's elaborate stories about them (suggesting they may have temporary amnesia as a side effect) wreak havoc on the neurotic Noonan's emotions after Mansfield, Hargitay, and McDonald all (accidentally) digest them as well.

This "independent" film has some very good production values despite allegations that it's a "low budget" film; there is superb editing in several scenes in which we see private moments in the Noonan, Mansfield/Hargitay, McDonald cabins which we see via split screen shots as they have concurrent private moments, often mirroring the other with similar or duplicate dialog and action, some it spoken at the same time. The film's score is surprisingly good and very much evokes the image of an "adult" albeit mainstream sex comedy of the 1960's.

Jayne looks sensational and has a charmingly sweet presence here like in her 1950's 20th Century-Fox glory days, qualities regrettably somewhat sidetracked in most of the dreary pot boilers she ended up making for most of the 1960's. I do wish though the script had played more on her considerable comic gifts. Tommy Noonan is very good as her emotional mess of a husband, I actually think his performance here is better than his more famous one in BLONDES. Marie McDonald is quite good as the jaded confidante. Character comic Fritz Field, whose film career spanned 1915 to 1989, is terrific as the doctor and there's a hilarious running bit character played by the plump, sixtyish character actress Marjorie Bennett (a very familiar face for her cheery roles in scores of TV episodes) as a rich old gal who has got herself a young Italian gigolo. The now forgotten T.C. Jones, one of the first widely famous female impersonators, is fun as the ship's hair stylist in perhaps the most blatantly "gay role" then seen in American films, a sassy pal to Jayne who is the lone male attending her baby shower where he amuses the girls with his impressions of Tallulah Bankhead and Bette Davis. Legendary TV comedienne Imogene Coca makes an amusing gag cameo (the film's director was her husband, King Donovan) as one of Jones' more unfortunate hair clients.

This is one of those movies were it's bad reputation gets in the way of people reevaluating it and giving it a fair appraisal. PROMISES! PROMISES! will never be a threat to Jayne's best films, the Frank Tashlin movies THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT and WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER? but it is entertaining and actually succeeds at it's most goal of being an amusing light sex comedy.

Jayne Mansfield generated some of the most heated publicity of her career (and that's saying a lot!) when she agreed to film nude scenes for the 1963 comedy, "Promises! Promises!" No American star of her magnitude had ever appeared undraped onscreen before, and the controversy led to the picture being banned, court hearings on obscenity, and Mansfield stoically bearing the bad press (and no doubt saving all the headline clippings). Watching the film is a sad, strange experience; the nude scenes have nothing to do with the plot, and were clearly filmed solely for sensation's sake. What it shows is a star badly on the wane, appearing in an extremely low budget production, and selling her body cheap for the resultant publicity. Jayne's two nude scenes come fairly early in the film, which means there's plenty of time left for highly strained, largely unfunny, mostly sex-less antics. The crux of the plot involves two married couples, Jayne/Tommy Noonan and Marie McDonald/Mickey Hargitay, on a cruise together. In a rather lewd plot device, both women end up pregnant, and because of some drunken revelry between the couples (never seen), no one is sure who the father is for which baby. One surreal scene has Jayne attending a shipboard party where female impersonator T.C. Jones does celebrity imitations, one of whom is Jayne Mansfield! In character as "Sandy," Jayne squeals with delight and does HER "imitation" of Jayne Mansfield. Unfortunately, it's the funniest moment in the film. On the brighter side, Jayne looks especially lovely and voluptuous, and, playing it relatively straight for once, doesn't rely too much on high-pitched ooohs and aahhhs. Micky Hargitay (Jayne's real-life husband) looks much too young to be marruied to former 40's pinup girl Marie McDonald, but displays a rather sweet, doltish charm as a Hungarian actor striving to lose his pronounced accent (it must've been a real stretch for him). For the die-hard Jayne Mansfield fan, this is basically a harmless, actionless, sexless sex comedy, and a chance to see the star rather perfunctorily topless. For everyone else, it's a historic curiosity, and nothing more.

I liked this a lot, but would've liked it a lot more without the topless/nudity scenes. Don't get me wrong, I am no prude when it comes to sex and nudity in film, depending on the type of film it is and when it was made. And yes, I know this was the first of its kind- but I personally feel it came a little early.

This film is like a 1950s-60s sitcom episode, made into a movie. It feels innocent and clean, the way "Leave It To Beaver" or "I Love Lucy" did. So, to see such nudity in this sort of film was a real turn-off for me, as it just didn't feel right. It felt out-of-place for the period and that whole innocent sitcom world- so out of place, as to seem freakish- and it was only from the belly up nudity! There was no sex scene, but certainly enough allusion to sex in this- to the point of being rather shocking!

So yeah, would have liked this film handled in the more old-Hollywood way, where she would have been covered by a towel, and the sex subject was less obvious. That being said, I still can't help but to like it but in a very mixed-feelings way.

Terrible, terrible comedy. But if I were rating it, I'd give it 1 star for the script, photography, and performances, and 10 for the display of Ms. Mansfield's ample attributes. I think this is why they invented the fast-forward button

This movie is considerate: it delivers what it promises (Jayne Mansfield topless) twice in the first 5 minutes - so you don't really need to bother with the remaining 70. Mansfield has a sensational body indeed (breasts as well as legs), but the film is more static and unfunny that smutty and scandalous. Tommy Noonan's drunken routine gets tiresome fast, T.C. Jones' gay-hairdresser routine is even worse. *1/2 out of 4.