Word: fright
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...plot collapses around Shirley MacLaine, cast as a girl reporter who infiltrates the seraglio of King Fawz (Peter Ustinov) looking for a lewd scoop and discovers the missing Goldfarb (Richard Crenna) instead. One night, summoned to Fawz for fondling, Shirley rubs down with garlic, dons a fright wig, blacks out her teeth, stuffs upholstery under her skirts and bounces onto the sheik's bed screeching: "Come on, honey, ain't you gonna sing me a dirty song?" He doesn't, but if he did, it would be one of the movie's lesser offenses against taste...
...make clear that the fright is all in fun, this monster rally offers not two but four seasoned movie queens-three of them ready to let down their hair, hips, waistlines, bustlines, or anything else that might suit an unseemly occasion. The tidy one is Actress de Havilland, who flings away her composure but retains her chic. As the murdered lover's widow, Mary Astor offers an ashen portrait of a woman who is not quite dead but already appears embalmed. Oscar Nominee Agnes Moorehead, as Charlotte's loyal drudge is a snarling, scratching sound-and-sight...
...wait invariably makes her nervous. "When I was young," she says, "I was always sure of everything I did. I was sure the audience would love me, and I had to be dragged away from a stage. Now I know more, and sometimes I have awful periods of stage fright...
ABSENCE OF A CELLO. This amusing farce breezes along on the proposition that the corporate image is a fright mask...
Absence of a Cello, by Ira Wallach, is an amusing, though not wildly amusing, farce based on the proposition that the corporate image is a fright mask and that any man who puts it on won't recognize himself any more...