Cinema: Nothing to Report

The Chapman Report concerns a flying squad of professional libido snoopers who come to a well-heeled California Kinseyland to investigate the sex lives of a group of quivering matrons. Fortunately, there is only time in the picture’s two-hour progress to study four of Dr. Chapman’s pinned butterflies.

Efrem Zimbalist Jr., playing the doctor’s chief inquisitor, gets involved in the life of one of his subjects. “She’s the first case history I’ve ever allowed to become more than a statistic,” he says. His visa-vis is Jane Fonda, a test pilot’s widow who thinks she is frigid; Zimbalist sets out to prove that she is not.

The rest of the ladies are brought into the business mainly to give afternoon audiences something to cluck over. Shelley Winters carries on a dalliance with a little-theater director mainly to escape the boredom of life with her lummox of a husband. Claire Bloom, a nymphoholic divorcee, goes for delivery boys and straight gin. Only Glynis Johns and John Dehner, as a sort of artsy-daftsy fun couple, manage to bring a whiff of fresh air to the otherwise musky proceedings. While declaiming “I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion” into a tape recorder one afternoon on the beach, Glynis gets trampled by a strapping pro football player, decides that a romp with this animated side of beef would give her a new outlook on life. The romp turns into a beery rout, and she wriggles home to drink champagne linked-elbows style with her still uncuckolded mate. Shel ley Winters is forgiven by her husband; Claire Bloom takes pills; and Zimbalist manages to defrost Miss Fonda.

In the end, kindly Dr. Chapman explains to Zimbalist that while they seem to have stumbled on a viper’s nest of marital maladjustment in their California research, figures show that most U.S. wives are actually awfully good sorts, and the latest local sampling should not be taken too seriously. Neither should The Chapman Report.