Taglines: There was this girl in Climax, Nevada.
Kiss Me, Stupid movie storyline. Dino (Dean Martin), the charming and lecherous Las Vegas singer, stops for gas on his way to Hollywood in Climax, Nevada. The oily gas station attendant is Barney Millsap, a would-be lyricist who writes pop songs with Orville Spooner (Ray Walston), the local piano teacher. By disabling Dino’s car, Barney contrives a scheme to have Dino sing one of their songs on an upcoming TV special.
To entertain Dino, Barney contacts the village tart, Polly (Kim Novak), employing her to pretend to be Orville’s wife, Zelda (Felicia Farr), for a night. She doesn’t like Dino, but does love being Orville’s surrogate wife. Dino goes to a bar, where he meets the real Zelda, and they spend the night together while Polly spends it with Orville.
Kiss Me, Stupid is a 1964 American sex comedy film produced and directed by Billy Wilder and starring Dean Martin, Kim Novak, Ray Walston, Felicia Farr, Cliff Osmond, Barbara Pepper, Skip Ward, Doro Merande, Bobo Lewis, Tom Nolan, Alice Pearce, John Fiedler and Arlen Stuart.
The screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is based on the play L’ora della fantasia (The Dazzling Hour) by Anna Bonacci, which had inspired Wife for a Night (Moglie per una notte, 1952), an Italian film starring Gina Lollobrigida. The comic song lyrics were written by Ira Gershwin, using some of George Gershwin’s unpublished melodies.
About the Production
Billy Wilder initially offered the role of Orville Spooner to Jack Lemmon (Farr’s real life husband), whom he had directed in Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, and Irma la Douce, but prior commitments forced the actor to decline. The director then signed Peter Sellers for the role. Six weeks into filming, Sellers suffered a series of 13 heart attacks and was hospitalized in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. Upon his release, the actor returned to England under doctor’s orders. Unwilling to wait while Sellers completed a six-month recuperation period, Wilder opted to replace him and reshoot all his scenes.
The role of Polly the Pistol was written with Marilyn Monroe in mind. After her death in August 1962, filming was postponed while the role was recast. It was later reported that Jayne Mansfield would take over the role, but she had to withdraw from the project because of her pregnancy with future actress Mariska Hargitay. Sometime thereafter, it was decided that Kim Novak would play the role, coming out of a two-year absence from acting to appear in the film.
Billy Wilder approached friend Ira Gershwin and asked if he would like to collaborate on the songs written by Barney and Orville. Gershwin suggested he write lyrics to unpublished music by his late brother George, and as a result three new songs by the Gershwins – “Sophia,” “I’m a Poached Egg,” and “All the Livelong Day” – debuted in the film. The film was shot on location in Twentynine Palms, California. The opening sequence was filmed at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, using a portion of Dean Martin’s actual show and the hotel’s marquee from his appearance there. Some interior scenes were filmed in the Moulin Rouge night club in Los Angeles. The car that Martin drove was his own.
The Catholic Legion of Decency strongly objected to the completed film. Wilder was willing to soften the suggestion Zelda had committed adultery with Dino, but he refused to comply with other demands, and the film was condemned, the first American film to be so designated since Baby Doll in 1956. As a direct result of the rating, United Artists decided to release the film under the banner of Lopert Pictures, a subsidiary previously used for imported films.
In 2002 a print was shown in several U.S. cities containing the originally-shot seduction scene in Polly’s trailer (seen in European exhibition), rather than the tamer replacement Wilder has supplied in hope of satisfying the Catholic Legion of Decency.
Wilder rarely mentioned the film in later interviews, although he discussed it briefly for On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder, a biography by Ed Sikov. “I don’t know why the film shocked people. It’s the most bourgeois film there is,” he declared. “A man wants a career and the person who wants to help him wants to sleep with his wife. He replaces his wife with another, but when he is nearest to success, he refuses it and throws the guy out… The public accepted it better in The Apartment because it was better conceived, better written, better lubricated.”
Wilder also discussed Kiss Me, Stupid in director Cameron Crowe’s 1998 book Conversations With Wilder, citing his admiration for Dean Martin, saying “there was much more, 90 percent more, to him than just the jokester. I am a sucker for Dean Martin. I thought he was the funniest man in Hollywood.” The movie’s use of an unflattering version of Dean Martin (“Dino”) was a forerunner of the current trend of celebrities doing comic send-ups of themselves on film.
Kiss Me, Stupid (1964)
Directed by: Billy Wilder
Starring: Dean Martin, Kim Novak, Ray Walston, Felicia Farr, Cliff Osmond, Barbara Pepper, Skip Ward, Doro Merande, Bobo Lewis, Tom Nolan, Alice Pearce, John Fiedler, Arlen Stuart
Screenplay by: Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond
Production Design by: Alexandre Trauner
Cinematography by: Joseph LaShelle
Film Editing by: Daniel Mandell
Set Decoration by: Edward G. Boyle
Art Direction by: Robert Luthardt
Music by: André Previn
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Lopert Pictures Corporation, United Artists
Release Date: December 22, 1964
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