Cinema: Androgynous Farce

Goodbye Charlie. Debbie Reynolds wakes up screaming. And why not? She is in a man’s bed, wearing a man’s pajamas. When Tony Curtis strides into the room an instant later, anyone steeped in the conventions of boudoir farce knows that her next line has got to be: “What happened last night?” Instead, Debbie gives Tony a hearty, hail-fellow look and asks: “Don’t you know me? Look at me, George. I’m Charlie. I’m Charlie Sorel.”

Transmigration of souls is not the ideal raw material for a titillating comedy, and after the unsettling revelation of Debbie’s manhood, there are few surprises and even fewer laughs in this sex scramble based on George Axelrod’s Broadway flop. Charlie is a rakish Hollywood screenwriter who has a way with other men’s wives. Shot by a jealous husband (Walter Matthau), the roue returns to life in flesh-toned Reynolds wrap, presumably to see how the other half lives. “It’s the Old Testament!” shouts Curtis as the miracle dawns. “The tables have turned—there’s a grandeur about it that’s staggering.”

There’s a tastelessness about it that’s deadly, except perhaps to an audience of bearded ladies. Actress Reynolds, more manic than manly, spouts oddly androgynous jokes about her Jockey shorts, recalls the harem of floozies she and Tony were “making out with” not so long ago, even lewdly ogles the women in a plush beauty salon. While Tony skitters about, fighting the impulse to take his best friend in his arms and kiss him, Charlie wards off the advances of Pat Boone (sacred love) and Walter Matthau (profane). By the last reel, he/she/it has turned up in a more felicitous incarnation. Too late, though. Public apathy is apt to send Charlie off to the boneyard reserved for classic Hollywood fumbles.