Wie bringt man seine Frau um?

A delightfully sophisticated farce written and produced by George Axelrod and very nicely directed by Richard Quine, who seemed to have a knack for this sort of thing. Jack Lemmon is the New York cartoonist and a confirmed bachelor who goes to a bachelor dinner one night and wakes up in the morning married to the girl who popped out of the cake. And who could blame him since she's played by the delectable Virna Lisi who is not only gorgeous but a great comedienne as well. The problem is Lemmon doesn't want a wife, even one who looks like Lisi - hence the title.

Axelrod is the man who gave us "The Seven Year Itch" but this is better. It's beautifully designed and has a great supporting cast. Terry-Thomas is the British butler appalled by Lemmon's newly acquired martial status, the great Eddie Mayehoff is his lawyer, (the movies never really used Mayehoff to his full effect), and Claire Trevor is Mayehoff's wife. It's never as black as it ought to be, (indeed, it's highly coloured in the way many American comedies of the period were), but it's consistently funny and enjoyable.

The comic style of this film is reflected in Jack Lemmon's cartoons; in fact, he creates his comic-strip character, Brash Brannigan, in his own likeness and then tries to influence his own life by changing Brash's. A brilliant narrative trick.

The last time I saw this, adult life lay ahead like a kind of exam. Orange juice in the shower, and beautiful blonds popping out of cakes seemed to be the goal. This film was like a comedic case study in lifestyle management, a blueprint to be stored away - just in case. I liked all the ideas here: the perfect bachelor life, waking up and finding yourself married, the club where you can't be reached - and it's still likable.

Lemmon shows terrific timing with his rapid use of language and gesture that has an amazing flexibility to it - as a technique that is surely unique to him. Terry-Thomas is splendid and quite solid in contrast. Of course we scoff at the idea of a cartoonist living in a townhouse in the middle of Manhatten with a butler, but that's a metaphor for the end of the old days.

The Brash Brannigan shenanigans at the beginning were a little overdone though, and the courtroom scene near the end is more than preposterous - it's post-posterous; the whole murder trial device is weakened by the fact that we know what actually happened - much better if there'd been some doubt in our minds also as to whether he had killed his wife - hard to understand how George Axelrod's script missed that obvious point.

Still, the humour tootles along nicely: the gloppita-gloppita machine; the goofballs that make your wife dance on the table - Brrrrrrrrrrp! - and then collapse - Blapppp!; delicious Virna Lisi; and those in-your-dreams lifestyle tips - it's like re-reading an old favourite comic strip.

The comic strips in the film were actually drawn by the late Alex Toth. Alex Toth (June 25, 1928 – May 27, 2006), pronounced with a long "o", was a professional cartoonist. He began his career in comic strips and comic books but is best known for his animation designs for Hanna-Barbera throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

His work included Super Friends, Jonny Quest, Space Ghost and Birdman.

Toth's work has been resurrected in the late-night, adult-themed spinoffs on Cartoon Network: Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, Sealab 2021 and Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.

Some newspapers even carried 10 days of teaser Bash Brannigan strips which got sillier and sillier with insider Hollywood comments each day of its' short run.

It was one of those things life blesses us with. - Sparky

Jack Lemmon is a cartoonist who figures out "How to Murder Your Wife" in this 1965 film also starring Virna Lisi, Terry-Thomas, Claire Trevor, Eddie Mayehoff, Max Showalter and Sidney Blackmer. Lemmon is Stanley Ford, a successful cartoonist of a dashing James Bond-like figure. Ford leads the perfectly structured life in his gorgeous Manhattan townhouse. He has a man servant (Thomas), his weight his perfect, he works out, and he has a nice social life. One night that all changes. While drunk, a gorgeous blond (Lisi) comes out of a cake at a stag party, and Stanley marries her immediately. It turns out she can't speak a word of Englsh. She's an incredible Italian cook so his weight goes up. Under the influence of the domineering wife (Trevor) of his attorney (Mayehoff), she checks in on him at his club and gets him thrown out; she shops until she drops; she redecorates in chintz; his man servant leaves. His life is a disaster.

What Stanley does, his cartoon character does. His cartoon character was a swinging bachelor who got married when Stanley did. Now it's time for the character to kill his wife and go back to being a swinging bachelor. Stanley always does his sketches from photographs of himself actually performing the various tasks in his cartoon. Now he gets a blond mannequin and has the character kill his wife. Just one problem - Stanley's wife actually leaves with no forwarding address, and Stanley has the pictures to show himself killing her.

This film is totally sexist and misogynistic, but despite the weak ending, the concept is funny, and Lemmon is very good as a man watching his well-oiled life unravel before him. It's all about how a woman takes over a man's life and runs the show, and that does often seem to be true, though it's overstated here for the sake of comedy. The secret of any kind of marital bliss is some sort of compromise here and there, and by the end of the film, the characters are coming around.

I'm not crazy about most of these '60s battle of the sexes comedies, and it's no wonder that Jack Lemmon didn't really like making them. This one has some good scenes, like Lemmon being photographed carrying out different situations (with hired actors) for his cartoon. Terry-Thomas is quite funny, Lisi is beautiful, and Trevor is good in the role of an overbearing wife. Mayehoff makes a good henpecked husband.

Pleasant but not great.

This was the last of the three comedies that Jack Lemmon made in the middle 1960s that he hated. Like GOOD NEIGHBOR SAM (and not like the abysmal UNDER THE YUM YUM TREE) HOW TO MURDER YOUR WIFE had a clever script and good production. Lemmon played a successful cartoonist who carefully scripts and photos the scenes he will use in his detective adventure strip. He lives in a townhouse, complete with top rate valet (Terry-Thomas) and has a wonderful life as a bachelor. But while attending a stag party, he meets Virna Lisi, and takes her home. Apparently he has married her (the groom at the stag party had broken up with his fiancé before the party, and throws the wedding ring out - and Lemmon uses it). As a result Lisi starts domesticating him, and Terry Thomas walks out. Lemmon uses the changes in his lifestyle in the comic strip, but finally he revolts and kills off the comic strip version of Lisi. When Lisi sees this she walks out, but everyone thinks that Lemmon killed her. So the scene is set for a murder trial.

This is not a film for feminists. It takes a dim view at the effect of domestication on Lemmon (and his lawyer, a hysterically funny Eddie Mayehoff). But I point out that before the end Lemmon does admit he misses the domestication. Even Terry-Thomas gives into it at the conclusion. It still a good comedy, a worthy minor work if not one of the high points in Lemmon's acting career.