Traum in Pink

Ralph Meeker looks great. He tended toward puffiness in the all too few movies he made after the great "Kiss Me Deadly." Here he is trim and does a good job (with little to work with.) Keenan Wynn is all right. He played sidekicks -- sort of the Tony Randall of the 1950s.

Jane Russell wears the title outfit. She got a bad rap as an actress. She was hilarious in "Gentleman Prefer Blondes" and very convincing in her adventure/thrillers with Robert Mitchum.

Here she is OK. Her acting is OK, that is. But she's supposed to be a movie star at her peak and this is a little hard to buy. I remember her TV ads in which she spoke of "us full-figured gals." These came a couple decades after "The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown." But the nightgown, and everything she wears, looks like a maternity frock. She looks big here. In the beginning of the film she wears a long blonde wig. It is monumentally unbecoming. She looks better when she takes it off.

Still, the movie is a disappointment. It's always a treat to see Meeker. And the supporting cast comprises familiar faces and is amusing. But the movie is a misfire. Russell and Meeker have no particular chemistry. It isn't touching. And it isn't really very funny, director Taurog notwithstanding.

In late 1956, actress Marie (The Body) McDonald faked a kidnapping that got a ton of press but did little to help her sagging career. Fuzzy Pink is clearly capitalizing on that unfortunate episode. Also looks like the movie was rushed into production, released in Dec., 1957, by a first-time production company headed by Russell's husband, football great Bob Waterfield. I mention this background since it likely accounts for the film's uneven results.

The biggest stretch is having Laurel (Russell) fall for her kidnapper Mike (Meeker). It may have worked on paper, but it fails on screen. Too bad Meeker couldn't muster up some romantic emotion; instead he basically walks through the role in indifferent fashion. Then too, Russell's nightgown is hardly revealing, let alone titillating. Moreover, we have only the b&w movie's word that it's actually pink. Nonetheless she and Wynn do inject some needed spark.

Arguably, the movie's best part is its cynical take on the movie industry, from greedy studio honcho Martin (Menjou) to conniving agent Baylies (Harris) to waspish gossip columnist Parker (Venuta). Had the script played up this aspect, the results would have been more compelling. But, of course, that would have cut down on Russell's celebrity screen time. Anyway, there're some good shots of a Malibu beach house, a chic 50's parlor room, and a studio lot.

Despite Russell's spirited performance, the movie remains a jumbled disappointment.

Jane Russell plays a blonde bombshell movie star in the cute comedy The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown. When she plays a kidnapped character in her latest movie, small-time thugs, Kennan Wynn and Ralph Meeker, think it would be a good idea to kidnap her in real life!

Of course, since this is a comedy, things don't go as planned. While the kidnappers are hoping for lots of publicity and ransom money, Jane's manager, Adolph Menjou, tries to keep the scandal quiet. Meanwhile, there just might be a healthy dose of Stockholm Syndrome setting in for Jane. If you don't have an issue with making dramatic situations into funny ones, this '50s movie is pretty cute. Jane picks up on her funny blonde impersonation at the end of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and gets to channel her inner blonde for the entire duration of this movie. And as they say, blondes have more fun!

JANE RUSSELL, wearing the worst looking blonde wig since Barbara Stanwyck went blonde for "Double Indemnity", does nothing to enhance the reputation she had after "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", wherein she sometimes stole scenes from Marilyn Monroe and Charles Coburn. Here she plays a ditsy actress supposedly a blonde bombshell whose latest film is about a kidnapped bride.

Here she's not exactly a scene-stealer--in fact, her performance is rather strained and only improves after she takes off that horrendous wig. Then, it improves considerably.

No help is the script, a tiresome thing that is silly from the start and wastes some talented people--like ADOLPHE MENJOU, RALPH MEEKER and KEENAN WYNN. Meeker seems so uninterested in his role that it shows. Badly.

Meeker and Wynn are partners in a kidnapping scheme that fails to go smoothly because Russell is a regular spitfire who proves hard to handle, until she decides the kidnapping would be good publicity for her latest film. The script only gets worse as it goes along, with only FRED CLARK able to put some laughs into a brief supporting role.

Summing up: A really clumsy script, it does nothing for the careers of Russell, Meeker or Wynn who have all done better elsewhere.

A generation before Patty Hearst embraced her kidnappers and joined in their criminal enterprises, Jane Russell in The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown feels kind of sorry for kidnappers Ralph Meeker and Keenan Wynn and actually falls for Meeker. Totally outrageous but these two are such schlepps you can feel sorry for them. And God knows as movie star playing a movie star Russell knew what it was like to be trapped in that plastic bubble.

Given what Wynn's straight job is in the film their scheme wasn't a bad one. Of course that would have meant killing Russell to keep her quiet or keeping Wynn from her. You'll have to watch the film to see what I mean.

The title is the rather ridiculous looking feminine nightgown they have for Russell to wear while they are holding her. For myself when you use a color in a title it's almost a necessity to shoot in color. You will see no Fuzzy Pink Nightgown on the screen in this black and white film.

The cast also includes Adolphe Menjou as the studio head, Robert Harris as Jane's agent, Una Merkel as her secretary, and Fred Clark as the cop assigned to the case. All filling out their type cast parts.

The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown, this film about the Stockholm syndrome years before it was called that has a few laughs, but generally is kind of flat.