Single Room Furnished

NYC apartment super Pop tells rebellious girl Maria about the dangers the city presents to young women. Johnie (Jayne Mansfield) and her husband Frankie used to live in the apartment but they grow apart. She gets pregnant and he leaves her. She has a miscarriage and changes her name to Mae. There is another couple Flo and Charley. Charley took pity on Mae who's pregnant again and proposed to her. He changes his mind and married Flo instead. Mae puts the baby for adoption, changes her name to Eileen and becomes a prostitute.

Jayne Mansfield tries to do some dramatic acting. This is notable for her death before she finished filming. Her acting is functional. She won't get any awards but she's not the problem with this movie. The directions are horrendous. Director Matt Cimber does little more than point the camera at a stage play. The settings are amateurish. His eye for visuals is lacking. The editing style is boring. Much of the problem is the disjointed nature of the movie. Some of that disconnected feel may be due to Mansfield's death. However it's not covered well at all. The dialog is clunky. It is slow. This is a bad movie.

Jayne Mansfield dons three different guises to play one slow-talking, slightly zonked woman (her idea of being sultry is to dawdle over every other word--or maybe she thinks she's being dramatic?). It's a tacky, flashback-framed fiasco that is filled with two-person scenes, and in every sequence the characters keep saying each other's names: "Hey, Flo?" "Yes, Charlie?" "You know what, Flo?" "What, Charlie?" A tired and amateurish farewell to Mansfield, who, contrary to popular belief, was not beheaded before its release. After perishing in an auto crash, a newswire photo flashed across the globe featuring Jayne's blonde wig next to the crushed car's right-front tire. Rumor quickly spread that it was her head, but rest assured Mansfield's head was attached to her body when she died. *1/2 from ****

I thoroughly enjoyed `Single Room Furnished,' a beautiful film about quiet desperation. The cinematic equivalent to a Graham Greene novel, this darkly daring film centers on Maria, an irrepressible girl in her teens played by the very catching Terri Messina (who looks a bit like Marlo Thomas and Mary Tyler Moore, only hotter) and the desolate trifecta character of Johnnie / Mae / Eilene, played by Jayne Mansfield.

Pop (Billy M. Greene) tells Maria the story of Johnnie's lowly life, as if it were one of Hilaire Belloc's `Cautionary Tales for Children,' against a backdrop of real, unadorned people in their real, drab existence. Director Matt Cimber, in his debut feature film, illustrates the ruthlessness and dreariness of life and how it gleefully pulverizes people who never had a chance. It's not a satirical film, just a bleak soul-shriveler of the cruelest kind. Throughout, Mansfield conceals a depth of softness and vulnerability, hinting that there's always a hopefulness hidden under her sobs and disappointment. The feel-good film of the year this isn't (Mansfield even died before the movie was completed)! But, if you're looking for a quiet tale about human nature and want to see how the majority of American people feel, definitely watch this one!

The answer is yes. The question: Could Jayne act? She did in this one, and was surprisingly good at it too. I saw this movie more out of morbid curiosity than anything else, not really expecting much. I'd read lots of reviews of it, most of them on the negative side. I admit to being a big Mansfield fan so I did have a bit of a bias. And surprise, surprise I did enjoy it. For the most part! I liked her a lot more than the movie tho. I can understand why this wouldn't have been a box-office hit. It's a bit slow at times, and strays off course. The secondary plot involving Charley and Flo confused me. While the actors did a fine job, after a few minutes I felt like I was watching another movie altogether. Their first scene together was WAY too long, and I began to wonder who they were and why were they there in the first place. But after reading that Jayne died before the film completed it made sense. The producers didn't have enough completed film at that point, so it made sense to beef up the secondary roles the characters play, and pad the length of the film to a reasonable length. Not that the actors were bad, they weren't, but I felt that they were out of place here, and that they should have had a whole film of their own. Jayne does a good job here, though admittedly she's no Bette Davis. She was compelling enough to carry the movie. For a while I actually forgot I was watching Jayne Mansfield, and got caught up in the characters she was playing. She was talented. She could act. And while this isn't a great movie it does show a really good actress in the making. It's tempting to speculate where her career might have led if she'd lived. All in all, this is a good if not great movie. You be the judge.

Matt Cimber's "Single Room Furnished" is a dark, atmospheric film about destroyed lives and desperation. It is a wonder that this 60's gem is not a cult classic, as it features an outrageous jazz score, along with the legendary cult icon Jayne Mansfield, in three different roles. The story is amazingly lurid, following Jayne's character 'Eileen' on her downward spiral, through failed relationships, unwanted pregnancies, abandonment, leading her to a sad life of prostitution. The film possesses a hypnotic quality. The cheap, tawdry sets and tacky costumes, along with watching Mansfield move dreamily about her surroundings makes for a surreal viewing experience. I was moved by the operatically sad stories of these people. Because Mansfield died before films completion, an extra storyline was added in to bring the film up to feature length running time. Unlike some other viewers, I found the side story with Charlie and Flo thoroughly enjoyable, and those two had some hilarious lines. The scene where the middle aged Flo gets herself all "gussied up" to meet the beer drinking slob Charlie, in what has to be the most tacky bar/restaurant ever captured on film, only to pull a rotten fish out of her purse, and later snatch off her hairpiece; classic stuff. When watching this, one gets the feeling that they are seeing something very rare indeed. As mentioned earlier, the rousing 60's jazz soundtrack is memorable, and fetches over $100 whenever an old LP soundtrack of the movie pops up on ebay. The production carries a distinct feeling of "nostalgia", a shadowy look into a time now gone. And Jayne Mansfield has undeniable screen presence, and for those wondering, she actually could act, and "Single Room Furnished" is proof. The film is exploitation to be sure, capitalizing on Jaynes name, and her tragic life. But it is not degrading to the star for a moment. There is no nudity, and she is given the chance that she most likely always wanted, to play parts other than "sex kitten". The final scenes of 'Eileen' and her sailor, as she confesses her sordid life to him, and to the audience, are among the most beautiful and haunting images to grace the silver screen. For fans of cult or weird 60's films, and definitely for fans of Jayne Mansfield, this is required viewing. Surprisingly there is a great DVD edition of this obscure title, featuring a beautiful widescreen print. It would make a nice double feature with "Who Killed Teddy Bear," starring Sal Mineo. Also recommended is "The Wayward Bus," another obscure one featuring Jayne in a serious role.