This is what happens when you have a Hayley Mills comedy without Hayley Mills – where she’s stuck between the mischievousness of a child and on the cusp of growing up – and a Peter Sellers comedy which doesn’t contain much Peter Sellers. And while what’s left is on the whole endearing in that innocent fashion you could still easily achieve in this Hollywood era, it still comes over, to a contemporary audience, as though there’s something missing and the usual Sellers antics are not sufficient to fill in the gaps.
For the record, Henry Orient (Peter Sellers) is a pompous self-absorbed concert pianist carrying on an affair with married woman Stella (Paula Prentiss), who’s so new to the adultery business it makes her skittish, only meeting up with her lover in Central Park in case, perchance, a suspicious husband is scoping out Orient’s apartment.
He believes a pair of pubescent teenage girls, the more outgoing Val (Tippy Walker), old enough to be seeing a psychiatrist on a daily basis, and the more reticent Gil (Merrie Spaeth), are spying on him because, well, they are, or at least they did, once, by chance when they were galloping around Central Park. So when they turn up in the audience at one of his concerts and bump into him, literally, in the street, paranoia gets the better of him.
While it’s true that Val has developed a crush on the pianist, the real extent of the girls’ growing up involves little more than romantic fantasies majoring on unlikely adventure and conversations about shaving their legs. We’re not talking about slapping on the make-up and wearing daring attire. Primarily, Orient appears as the adjunct to the lives of a pair of girls who have parental issues, Gil minus a divorced father (her fantasies mostly revolve around her dad coming back) and Val minus both parents, who though still married, have abandoned her while they travel around the world.
Most of the time we’re with the girls being kids, leaping over rocks and fire hydrants and the occasional small child on a tricycle, or duping grown-ups into thinking they have taken desperately ill in the street.
Unfortunately, all that drives the story is over-plotting. Orient and Val’s mum Isabel (Angela Lansbury), also of the adulterous persuasion, fall for each other only for the girls to uncover the affair, sending Orient fleeing the country, and triggering various kinds of parental-child reconciliation, before the girls get on with the proper business of growing up and boys and fashion.
Peter Sellers does his best, but this isn’t Pink Panther territory and he’s forgotten the rule about working with animals and children and there’s little any comedian has in his locker that can compete with cuteness. Tippy Walker made only two more movies though one was the lead in counter-culture drama Jennifer (1971). Merrie Spaeth dumped Hollywood and went into politics. Neither of the girls was a particularly good actress and the movie just relies on their personalities. You might be more inclined to wonder why Paula Prentiss (Man’s Favorite Sport, 1964) and Angela Lansbury (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) were wasted in small parts.
Possibly the most interesting name here is director George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969) making his movie debut. Written by Nunnally Johnson (The Dirty Dozen, 1967) and his daughter Nora, based on her novel.
An oddity, and harmless enough, but not one you’re going to be demanding needs reassessment.
The Magnificent 60s 