Paul Newman displays again a flair for comedy. Mitchum is offhand and amusing as the super-rich tycoon. She dances, she sings (on one occasion with another voice, dubbed for humor) and she generally cements the episodic frame. She has the figure for the clothes and the sense of fun for the lines. Miss MacLaine is at her best as the girl who succeeds in getting her husbands’ businesses started without trying at all. Reiss, give the picture gloss and sheen, but with a tongue-in-cheek approach that hints it is in fun, not serious or pretentious. The plush settings by Jack Martin Smith and Ted Haworth, with set decoration by Walter M. Leon Shamroy’s CinemaScope-DeLuxe Color photography, with this cinematographer’s distinctive lighting, captures the events faithfully. They tread that delicate line between burlesque and reality the women in the audience know they aren’t anything anybody could wear, but oh! how lovely if one could! In this and other areas, this is the kind of movie Hollywood once made its worldwide reputation on, scorned by the aesthetes, adored by the multitudes. Miss Head has designed a number of staggeringly sumptuous outfits and some that are done for fun, yards of fur, acres of chiffon. Costuming for Miss MacLaine by Edith Head is a major item. The Comden-Green script, inspired by a story by Gwen Davis, is only the thread on which are hung a succession of funny scenes and musical numbers. Bob Cummings plays the psychiatrist who listens to this gaily macabre tale. At the end she is reunited with the one man she said she’d never marry, Dean Martin. Proceeding from his demise, she meets a two-bit song-and-dance man, Gene Kelly, and inadvertently gives him the secret of success. A rich man, Robert Mitchum, is her next husband, and Miss MacLaine’s nuptial gift is a vast increase in his overflowing wealth. She takes up with a Paris-based artist, Paul Newman, and gives him a blueprint for success which he makes into a machine for death. Marriage to the village ne’er-do-well, Dick Van Dyke carefree, penniless happiness until he gets the itch for success and wears himself into the grave scratching. Since the government won’t take her money, she goes to a psychiatrist to rid herself of her anxieties about her fortune, good and bad. The story is told in the form of a flashback, with Miss MacLaine trying to give away some $200,000,000. Each time, Miss MacLaine is a rich widow, and each time, increasingly rich. In the midst of wealth and endearing charms, he departs this life. Unfortunately, he doesn’t live long to enjoy it or her. Every man who takes up with her is rewarded by fabulous success. Shirley MacLaine is the central figure in the Betty Comden-Adolph Green screenplay, a charmer whose attractions include the Midas touch and the kiss of death. 'Star Wars: Return of the Jedi': THR's 1983 Review
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