***Out In The 1950s Romantic Comedy Night-Lauren Bacall’s Designing Woman

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Designing Woman, starring Lauren Bacall, Gregory Peck, directed by Vincent Minelli, 1957    

The last time the name Lauren Bacall was mentioned in this space was when I was reviewing the film To Have And Have Not where she scorched the screen in her film debut joining Humphrey Bogart in doing a hot sex tango of a film-with all their clothes on. Of course that was the wild and wooly wartime 1940s when anything could go, or almost anything, as long as the bad guys go theirs. In the tepid red scare Cold War 1950s thought the role of the myriad romantic pillow talk comedies featured, after a few scraps of course, married domestic tranquility in all its suburban splendors. The film under review, Vincent Minelli’s Designing Woman, puts paid to that premise, except the suburban part, as Ms. Bacall goes through very different paces.  

Here is the skinny. Marilla (played by Ms. Bacall), a fashion designer, meets Mike (played by Gregory Peck), a top notch sports writer in California at some ill-defined party. It must be the California water or something because these two professional from New York City turn into teenage mush and rush off and get married after a couple of days of knowing each other. The problem is when they get back to New York City and their professional lives they find they do not really know each other, really have nothing in common. But fear not love will out. See Mike is one of those crusader reporters who is hot on the trail of corruption in the boxing arena. And the guy who controls that action does not like being under the microscope, not at all. Since he can’t get to Mike (he is in hiding) then he orders his boys to snatch Marilla. That does it as Mike finds that he loves his Marilla despite their lack of common interest. Ditto Marilla. See it was easy, very easy to resolve. And they lived happily ever after.