All in a Night's Work

No classic but this Joseph Anthony directed romantic comedy is genuinely funny and really deserves to be better known. Dean Martin is at his suave best as the playboy who inherits his uncle's publishing empire after his uncle is found dead in bed with a smile on his face and a girl's earring on the floor and Shirley MacLaine exudes star quality as the girl whose earring it was. Of course, she's totally blameless and as sweet as they come and engaged to Cliff Robertson's vet. Sharply, and very wittily, scripted by Edmund Beloin, Maurice Richlin and Sidney Sheldon from Owen Elford's play, "All in a Night's Work" is a real treat with a first-rate supporting cast that includes Charlie Ruggles, Jerome Cowan, Jack Weston and the great Gale Gordon. Made in 1961, it could just as easily have come out twenty-five years earlier with Cary Grant and Jean Arthur in the Martin/MacLaine roles and Ralph Bellamy as the vet. Hardly ever revived, it's well worth seeking out.

Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine are teamed in a charming romantic comedy reminiscent of the Day/Huson outings. Martin is the playboy heir to a family fortune, who owes his life to MacLaine, who saves him from drowning in a swimming pool. A series of coincidences make everyone believe the young beauty was "involved" with Martin's rich uncle, who mysteriously passed on in his hotel room. Who can blame anyone's wicked thoughts, when MacLaine apparently escaped the old millionaire's room wearing nothing but a bath towel.

This is pure Hollywood fun, complete with that special dose of naughtiness, briefly popular during the early 60s, until that sort of comedy was again frowned upon as tasteless. Enjoy the two Rat-Packers (Martin and MacLaine) in a bit of lavish escapism from Paramount Studio's Golden Age!

While on vacation in Palm Beach, a research analyst from New York City saves a drunk from drowning--in doing so, she ruins her new dress and is seen sneaking out of a millionaire's hotel room wearing only a towel. The rich guy, a publishing magnate (whom the girl works for!), never even sees her--he's dead in his bed. When his nephew (Dean Martin) takes over the magazine empire, he's made aware that his womanizing uncle was seen with a tootsie on the night of his demise who might be tempted to blackmail the company (how they come to that conclusion is anyone's guess). Anemic sex-and-big business comedy is a big step down from "The Apartment" just one year before. "Apartment" co-star Shirley MacLaine (who received an Oscar nom for her work in that film) is back doing the same kind of scatterbrained, breathlessly 'adorable' work she did in all her pictures leading up to "The Apartment". The comic situations are desperately juvenile, such as MacLaine's beau (Cliff Robertson, acting the stiff) coming across the mink coat Shirley acquired after her good deed and embarrassing her in front of his stuffy parents. The screenwriters (Edmund Beloin, Maurice Richlin and Sidney Sheldon, adapting Owen Elford's play) frantically iron and re-iron their story wrinkles, substituting wit with groaning one-liners. It takes one tipsy scene from MacLaine to get an honest laugh, the rest being ham-handed and overplayed. ** from ****

Shirley MacLaine was at her most fresh and unaffected when she went straight from 'The Apartment' to this breezily amoral piece of fluff (set in New York but never actually leaving the studio) which features familiar faces old and new (Charles Ruggles plays Cliff Robertson's father, for example), and reunites her with her fellow Rat Packer and co-star from 'Some Came Running' Dean Martin (there's even a joke about Frank Sinatra); in which she's seen sprinting from a hotel bedroom wearing only a turkish towl for the most innocent but unlikely of reasons.

The image and likeness of Charles Evans as Martin's uncle the late Colonel Ryder - author of the immortal lines "Love is like a wild volcano, seething with dark desire" - dominates the entire film but he's as usual uncredited (although since he begins the film as a corpse he admittedly doesn't have a speaking part).

(At the film's conclusion yet again a bugging device produced clearer sound over sixty years ago than 21st century technology would be capable of today.)

All in a nights work shows everything I love to watch in a movie. Its fun, sassy and has the great one liner, Oh Mr Ryder. Dean Martin and Shirley Maclaine have obvious chemistry in this flick and its just a classic example of how romance used to exist. Although it is a typical mistaken Identity plot for a film of its age it has more wit than others seen at that time. Dean Martin really shows in this film his sophistication as an actor and is at all times Mr Cool. Shirley Maclaine is an actress I have never really watched in the past but she sparkles in this. The ending would have to be my favourite scene, I love this movie and its a classic I can watch again and again.