Le tendre piège

When the eyes are Debbie Reynolds and the viewer is Frank Sinatra, you can expect a lot of fun and The Tender Trap delivers that fun.

Frank Sinatra stars in the movie version of a play which had a modest run on Broadway concerning an actor's agent who's got the life we only dream about. Since this was the kind of life Sinatra really had, it sure isn't an acting stretch for him. Still Sinatra plays this thing very well. Of course everyone has beauties like Celeste Holm, Lola Albright, Jarma Lewis, and Carolyn Jones around. They all got a piece of old Blue Eyes.

In steps new client Debbie Reynolds, the 1950s all time good girl and she's not tolerating Frank's wolfish ways. She's got marriage on the mind.

It's an interesting commentary on the times that back in the 1950s, the ultimate goal for a woman was the house with the white picket fence, husband, and three kids. Even for one as obviously talented as Debbie Reynolds.

Sinatra's also got a male guest in the house, childhood friend David Wayne who blew in from Indiana and has announced his intention of getting in on Sinatra's action. He's left his wife, home, and three kids and is having an early midlife crisis. I think you can figure the rest of the plot from here.

One thing the play on Broadway didn't have was that wonderful title tune that James Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn wrote. Sinatra opens the film with that song before the title credits and Reynolds later sings it in the film. I remember what a mega-hit it was for Frank back in the day. So perfectly suited for him and his style. All I can say is Ring-a-ding ding ding.

Frank and Debbie do well together, too bad they never made another film together. The following year she made one with her husband Eddie Fisher and the demand for the team was underwhelming.

Everyone, but especially Sinatra aficionados should love this one.

The start of this film isn't promising. Another dated 1950s sex comedy with a lot of babes. And then it takes off at a tangent and gets serious, deconstructing the bachelor heel played by Frank. Debbie Reynolds is magnificent as the love interest who is frankly very strange. The scene where she falls for Frank as he plays the title song on the piano, and the scene in her apartment where she declares her love, are unique. Stick with this movie.

This is the first of Frank's bachelor-on-the-make comedies of the 50's & 60's. He is excellent; Debbie Reynolds character seems off-balance and miscast. Audrey Hepburn would have been much better. The movie seems to be too self-consciously hip for its own good. Still, the supporting cast is wonderful, and there are far worse ways of killing an hour and a half. 6/10.

With the wonderful cast that this movie boasts, I really hoped this could have been a better movie. Blame the screenplay. It's the tale of a an urbane, irresponsible and very single male (the perfectly cast Frank Sinatra) being roped into domesticity by a simple and sincere young girl (Debbie Reynolds, who is pretty stiff and unspontaneous here). The message of the movie is that people cannot avoid their biological destiny...that they are happily doomed to meet and mate. Fair enough. That's been the premise of many a great screwball comedy and many great movie romances. The problem here is that everything is so predictable! There are no pleasant surprises in the characters here. All of the performers seem willing and able, but the script and direction are uninspired. The character played by Debbie is meant to be as cute as a button but is only annoying, and Frank never appears genuinely smitten. Even Franks's rendition of the title tune seems careful and sedate. Our couple here seemed destined for a very dull life in the suburbs. (Of course, this may have been an image of love and marriage that American popular entertainment was trying to sell really hard in the fifties. Safe and yawn inducing.)

The tender trap is a Sinatra film, a fifties time capsule. As such, it comes fully loaded with a swinger versus good girl mentality. The woman always wants the picket fence and the man always wants the ultimate bachelor lifestyle (in Sinatra's case, complete with sexy dog-walkers and cheese delivery). So with this sort of fluffy 50's movie, it's easy to scoff and call it outdated and campy, and neglect to consider the fact that perhaps there lingers in it the tragedy of the era. My apologies for melodrama. But in the character of Sylvie (the unforgettable Celeste Holmes) is there encompassed a certain element of poignance that is strange to find in such a film as this.

In the midst of the predictable plot and romantic mayhem sorted out so simply, perhaps by fate, perhaps by unimaginative writing. But in Celeste Holmes is there contained something deeper. A regret, hopelessness, I'll-settle-for-anything quality of the middle-aged (or thereabouts) successful career woman who didn't go for a family right away, and thus finds herself condemned to either "Married men. Drunks. Pretty boys looking for someone to support them. Lunatics looking for their fifth divorce!" or a Sinatra. To see her sitting at a table across from Debbie Reynolds, 21, with all her plan figured out beforehand, claiming that without such precautions a woman runs the risk of spinsterhood. You can't help but feel for the spinster herself as she gazes with quiet desperation at Sinatra. Her last hope.

Yes The Tender Trap had quite a few weaknesses, but in all, I can't help but find it strange and lovely to find such fluff encrusted poignance. Sinatra and Debbie were cute, but when it came down to it, Celeste Holmes was magnificent.