jlphotos14
Oct 10, 2014The moment Jane Russell appears with short dark hair in this movieI saw her as an actress who could marvelously play in any picture in the last 50 yearsJane Russell looks and acts as good as it gets.Just seeing her as a real girl with a contemporary hair cut is worth the price of admission.Jane Russell as a real woman will capture your heart.She is charming, adorable and so beautiful as a real woman.I love her so much after seeing her in this pictureJohn Longenecker / Academy Award Winner
theowinthrop
Shown last night on Turner Classic Films, THE FUZZY PINK NIGHTGOWN was based on a novel that was published in 1956. The story is simple: A man has just been released from prison after four years, serving a major crime sentence for something he did not do. The man and his friend are hired by a conniving film studio head to waylay the studio's leading bombshell actress, who has just made a film about a kidnapping, and subsequently "demand" a ransom. Gradually the man and the star get to know each other, fall in love, and various complications emerge (dealing with the man's friend/associate in the fake kidnapping, with the miscalculation of the producer who finds few people in the public believe it's a real kidnapping, and with the suspicions of the Police Detective who has been involved with the man since arresting him in the first crime four years earlier). Like most situation comedies, the central story line makes little real sense. If a man is freed after any time from a prison, either because he was erroneously arrested or because he was guilty but has served his sentence, he will try to avoid idiotic plans that can land him back into jail again. Ralph Meeker was wrongly convicted of second degree murder, and then the real killer was discovered. He is (as is repeated several times) not a real convict (meaning he is not "hardened" - at least supposedly). If so, he certainly would not be roped into such a silly publicity stunt that could be made to look like he is criminal (and end up returning him to jail). Ironically Meeker would shortly play another victim of "judicial injustice" but in a great serious film - he was one of the three soldiers who are court-martial-ed and shot for cowardice under fire in PATHS OF GLORY.His friend Keenan Wynn is a sillier type of mug (Wynn at this time was usually playing side-kicks like Kirk Douglas' friend in MY DEAR SECRETARY or "mugs" like the gangster - with James Whitmore - who is trying to collect a debt from Howard Keel in KISS ME KATE). Interestingly enough, during this film Jane Russell quotes Shakespeare's line "Conscience doth make cowards of us all", and Wynn mulls over the line - making the viewer momentarily think of that glorious duet almost a decade earlier with Whitmore of "Brush Up Your Shakespeare". But KISS ME KATE was a better comedy. Anyway Wynn ends up a voice of reason (!) trying to water down Meeker's bitterness as much as he can. Again it stretches realism to a breaking point to think of Wynn doing this, but he is so disarmingly nice that one roots for him all the same.Russell, as the bombshell actress, is turned into a "Marilyn" clone. This too, like the "Shakespeare" reference for Wynn, makes one think of her appearance a few years earlier with Monroe in GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDS (again, a superior film), wherein she briefly wears a blond wig to disguise herself as Marilyn. But she openly reveals it's a fake to Meeker and Wynn to help them avoid problems with the police (their friendly nemesis Fred Clark). For her pains Meeker just throws her gesture in her face as proof of her phoniness (which it really isn't).As the movie producer/chief conniver, Adolphe Menjou acts as voluble and dyspeptic as he usually does in such roles, but he was also Oliver Niles, producer - friend of Norman Main in the 1937 A STAR IS BORN, and he was the more wolfish but competent Broadway producer in STAGEDOOR (again two other better films). This movie is full of moments that ironically recall better films. Don't get me totally wrong. While not great cinema, or even good cinema, it is amusing enough. Watch the scene where Russell and Wynn get drunk on his eggnog (it's around Christmas time) made from eggs and straight booze. Or see Clark in any scene - especially when he confronts Meeker and Wynn at their "hideout" (he doesn't know it is one) which is too expensive for them to afford. His cat and mouse with them is worth watching, and reminds us of what a fine comic actor he was. Or Menjou telling the police (Clark and an equally unimpressed Milton Frome) and a "Hedda Hopper" clone (Benay Venuta) of how he definitely did not fake a kidnapping for publicity purposes. Venuta hands the bow-beating, supposedly sorrow-struck Menjou a handkerchief to wipe his eyes - which, of course, have no real tears in them!Towards the end, when Meeker and Russell are speeding in Clark's stolen police car (don't ask!) to get to the airport, they go up a road along a small cliff-side mountain that looks familiar to us. They are trying to stop Wynn from collecting a $100,000 ransom fee and fleeing with it to Mexico. The road and cliff are very familiar: they are the same road and cliff that Spencer Tracy and the cast of IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, WORLD drove in the opposite direction, when Tracy's "Captain Culpepper" had the stolen money in his car and was planning to flee to Mexico. I tell you, every point in this film reminds you of an earlier or later better movie!
David (Handlinghandel)
Ralph Meeker looks great. He tended toward puffiness in the all too few movies he made after the great "Kiss Me Deadly." Here he is trim and does a good job (with little to work with.) Keenan Wynn is all right. He played sidekicks -- sort of the Tony Randall of the 1950s.Jane Russell wears the title outfit. She got a bad rap as an actress. She was hilarious in "Gentleman Prefer Blondes" and very convincing in her adventure/thrillers with Robert Mitchum.Here she is OK. Her acting is OK, that is. But she's supposed to be a movie star at her peak and this is a little hard to buy. I remember her TV ads in which she spoke of "us full-figured gals." These came a couple decades after "The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown." But the nightgown, and everything she wears, looks like a maternity frock. She looks big here. In the beginning of the film she wears a long blonde wig. It is monumentally unbecoming. She looks better when she takes it off.Still, the movie is a disappointment. It's always a treat to see Meeker. And the supporting cast comprises familiar faces and is amusing. But the movie is a misfire. Russell and Meeker have no particular chemistry. It isn't touching. And it isn't really very funny, director Taurog notwithstanding.
ksf-2
may contain Spoilers ** pretty good story of a movie star Laurel Stevens (Jane Russell) who disappears, and happens to have a movie opening that very night. Fuzzy Pink Nightgown has some similarities to the more modern "Ruthless People". Directed by Norman Taurog, who directed many Elvis movies, as well as Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis. Also Keenan Wynn (Dandy), who was the crazy Colonel Guano in Dr. Strangelove, has done TONS of films and TV appearances. Ralph Meeker (Mike) had done a mix of TV shows and movies. Fred Clark (the married man from "How to Marry a Millionaire"; was also the neighbor Harry on Burns/Allen TV show) plays Sergeant McBride searching for Laurel. Adolphe Menjou plays the director of the film being shown in the story, and may or may not be involved in her disappearance. The film wavers between a love story, an adventure/drama, and a comedy. Good film, but probably would have been stronger if it stuck to one theme.
