Who Was That Lady? (1960)

Toronto Film Society presented Who Was That Lady? (1960) on Monday, August 26, 1985 in a double bill with Send Me No Flowers as part of the Season 38 Summer Series, Programme 7.

Production Company: Columbia.  Producer: Norman Krasna.  Director: George Sidney.  Screenplay: Norman Krasna, based on the play “Who Was That Lady I Saw You With?” by Krasna.  Assistant Director: David Silver.  Music: Andre Previn.  Song: Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen.  Photography: Harry Stradling.  Gowns: Jean Louis.  Art Direction: Edward Haworth.  Set Decoration: James M. Crowe.  Makeup: Ben Lane.  Sound: Charles Rich.  Editor: Viola Lawrence.

Cast:  Tony Curtis (David Wilson), Dean Martin (Michael Haney), Janet Leigh (Ann Wilson), James Whitmore (Harry Powell), John McIntire (Bob Doyle), Barbara Nichols (Gloria Coogle), Larry Keating (Parker), Larry Storch (Orenov), Simon Oakland (Belka), Joi Lansing (Florence Coogle), Barbara Hines (Girl), Marion Javits (Miss Melish), Michael Lane (Glinka), Kam Tong (Lee Wong), Snub Pollard (Tattoo Artist).

Dubbed by fan magazines as the perfect American couple, the very popular husband-and-wife film team of Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh made a total of six films together.  This ideal film couple of the 1950s–he dashing and smiling, she demure and smiling–were already breaking up by the time of Who Was That Lady?–they were married in 1951 and divorced in 1962.  If it is difficult today to fully fathom the impact of Curtis/Leigh as a team–for they are both, individually and collectively, minor leaguers in the company of the major stars in the rest of our series–we should remember that they personified the 50’s like no one else, and the relative  blandness of that decade is perfectly reflected by them, particularly in their best films, the Perfect Furlough (1958) and tonight’s movie, so aptly summed up by the Sunday Express:  “So long as it doesn’t happen too often, there is nothing more cheering in the cinema than a film which is palpably, madly, wittily, mercilessly and deliberately absurd.  Who Was That Lady? fits the description.”

Notes by Jaan Salk