The telltale title card for this film reads ‘A Play by Neil Simon;’ the playwright’s disinterest (or is it contempt?) toward a ‘lesser’ medium right up front. Three unrelated One-Acts sharing nothing but location (more accurately it's Three Third Acts), it’s a near two-hander for a pair of stars to switch gears in three parts apiece. Originally, on stage, George C. Scott & Maureen Stapleton, here it’s Walter Matthau (under three bad wigs) against three different women: Stapleton (unraveling middle-aged couple*); Barbara Harris (middle-aged reunion of former lovers); Lee Grant (middle-aged parents of a bride locked in the suite’s bathroom). Close your eyes and you can almost hear how it could have worked on stage under Mike Nichols’ direction, as if Simon were still working up tv sketch material for Sid Caesar in YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS. But as so often in Simon stage-to-film transfers, it’s gummed up by drab production, tv lighting (Republic Pictures vet lenser Jack Marta; why?), and Arthur Hiller direction that follows every move too closely (like a dog with a bone) when he’s not mistiming comic beats in edits that kill whatever rhythm the actors manage to get going. At one point, even going outside the hotel suite just when we need to build up pressure for the film’s single biggest physical gag. Sheesh.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Though now less known, PLAZA’s original run topped THE ODD COUPLE. Currently a hit in revival on B’way with Sarah Jessica Parker & Matthew Broderick, it had another three-against-one casting gimmick as a tv film with Carol Burnett playing all the female roles against three different leading men.
DOUBLE-BILL: Simon repeated the stunt a decade later in the same three keys (rue, reunion, farce, but flip-flopped the first two traits) in CALIFORNIA SUITE/'78. Less successful on B’way, it’s the better film with Herbert Ross directing.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Simon must have had Tennessee Williams’ GLASS MENAGERIE and William Inge’s COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA in mind for Stapleton’s self-defeating gabby drudge. She’d already played the Inge and would later do the Williams.
CONTEST: What film was playing at the neighboring Paris Theater? Name it to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choosing.
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