Who Was That Lady?

Delightful marital / spy comedy; Tony Curtis & Dean Martin are an inspired comic teaming (somehow, this was their only film together!), while Curtis & Janet Leigh, who were then married in real life, have a palpable, physical chemistry together. James Whitmore deadpans effectively as the real FBI man, while Barbara Nichols and Joi Lansing almost stop the show (in a positive manner) in the dinner scene. *** out of 4.

"Who was That Lady" is an amazingly creative comedy.Tony Curtis is a loving husband with a beautiful but very jealous wife.His best friend Dean Martin is hysterical! These two men plot to relieve Tony's wife Janet Leigh of her jealous suspicions with the most outrageous fabrications ever invented. I don't want to give away all the fun, but you have to see the number of schemes Dean Martin comes up with and she continually is more proud of her husband, an innocent professor,who was seen by his wife being kissed by a female as she leaves class.Janet Leigh wants to know who was that lady kissing you and why,she then decides to just leave him.So he goes to his womanizing buddy for advise. He's desperate therefore takes some crazy idea and tells her he's doing work undercover for the govt..Some real spy's over hear and trouble ensues.

Chemistry professor David Wilson (Tony Curtis) gets caught by his wife Ann (Janet Leigh) kissing one of his students. She vows to divorce him. He is distressed and recruits his TV writer friend Michael Haney (Dean Martin) to come up with a story to tell his wife. Michael tells an outrageous tale and Ann surprisingly buys it all.

Times have changed. A cheating husband is no longer so cute. In order to update this, the kiss needs to be shown as all student driven. Only then would anybody root for the couple to reunite. As a comedy of its day, one could see where the fake identity comedy gets its laughs. It works with what it has. Janet Leigh is nowhere near the blonde dimwit that she needs to be. Curtis and Martin are playing it with a wink and a smile. It is a comedy from another time.

This is a fairly well made comedy; engaging and fairly lightweight, it would be quite forgettable were it not for Janet Leigh's somewhat animated performance. It is not that the other leads did anything bad, they just didn't do anything exceptional here. Janet Leigh was at the time married to Tony Curtis and this would be the last of five films they made together. In a case of art imitating life (or vice versa) her marriage was almost certainly in trouble by this stage; she was divorced from Tony Curtis about two years later.

I'm just watching this film again on UK TV, broadcast on 'Sony Movies Classic'. The transfer from celluloid to video is mostly OK, but my enjoyment is marred by the sound quality; they appear to have used some kind of auto-sound level control in the transfer somewhere, which has the effect of amplifying every tiny sound even when it is meant to be quiet. Another good film wrecked for posterity then...? Not quite, but almost.

The movie defines the word "farce."

Tony Curtis and Dean Martin are good performers, but the characters they play are pathetic. The FBI "thing" gets tiresome. Janet Leigh looks great, as usual. There are few really funny lines throughout the movie, but the viewer can easily get distracted during "dead zones" of absurd planning and plotting.

The highlight of this movie occurs when the Coogle sisters (Barbara Nichols and Joi Lansing) enter the restaurant. The movie is worth watching if only for this one memorable and provocative scene.

I have rated this movie a 6, but I almost gave it a 5.