Word: mcmartins
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...only institution awaiting the wrecking ball. The other is marriage. Sally and her glib, skirt-chasing husband Buddy (Gene Nelson) have become pathetic caricatures of the Andy Hardy couple they once were?naivete swallowed by facts. Phyllis and her acrid WASP's-nest of a husband Ben (John McMartin) are glamour gone dry, a wasteland with wedding rings...
Among the guests at the party are Ben Stone (John McMartin), lawyer, author and diplomatic bigwig, who married Phyllis (Alexis Smith), an ex-Follies girl; and Buddy Plummer (Gene Nelson), an oil-rigging salesman, who married Sally (Dorothy Collins), also an ex-Follies girl. We swiftly learn that both marriages are empty failures. Younger versions of the foursome sing, dance and mime their yesteryear courtship rituals. Sally has always worshipped Ben, but we see him making a drunken pass at another old flame (Yvonne de Carlo). Buddy rather brutally tells Sally that he has a girl in Dallas...
...hence the heart tattooed on her arm-Charity continually falls for Mr. Wrong. A leeching gigolo gloms her purse; a narcissistic movie star (Ricardo Montalban) invites her up to his apartment and forces her to be a voyeuse while he makes love to his mistress. A neurotic actuary (John McMartin) asks her to marry him-then turns out to be a zero...
...rest of the cast, which includes John McMartin as Charity's shy suitor and Sammy Davis as a hippie cult leader, leaves nothing to be desired, either. Nor are any of the production details less than perfect. Ralph Burns' orchestrations, for example, are the first in a long time to preserve the integrity of the Broadway originals without once stooping to the Muzak-styled banality that frequently dogs film musical soundtracks...
Occasionally, there is some real fun in Fun City-notably a caricature by John McMartin of a Lindsay-like mayor who listens to bad news while a perpetual smile congeals on his face like a soft-boiled egg. But such high moments are rare, and most of the time the answer to that long questioning title is the movie itself...