Taglines: The Husband for sale – bought for $3 million. The Daughter – a virgin eager to make up for lost time. The Novelist who couldn’t live the fantasies he wrote about.
Once Is Not Enough movie storyline. Mike Wayne is a middle-aged motion-picture producer whose career has fallen on hard times. Try as he might, Mike no longer can get a new Hollywood project made. Accustomed to a lavish lifestyle, Mike has pampered his daughter, January, providing her with an expensive education in Europe and everything else money can buy. January worships her father and eagerly returns to America to be with him again.
Needing capital, Mike enters into a loveless marriage with Deidre Milford Granger, one of the world’s wealthiest women. She has already been through multiple marriages and demands that things be done her way. She also is secretly carrying on a lesbian affair. January is devastated to learn that Mike is now wed to this rude, arrogant woman.
Deidre attempts to draw January into a relationship with her cousin David Milford, a ladies’ man who also usually gets his own way. He finally persuades January into going to bed with him, only to discover that she is a virgin.
Unsure what to do with her life, January is advised by an old friend, Linda Riggs, now a magazine editor, to author a book. Linda enjoys a free-spirit life with many lovers and urges January to do likewise. But due in no small part to her father complex, January instead falls for a much-older Tom Colt, a hard-drinking, impotent novelist who is an adversary of her father’s.
Mike bitterly resents the affair. He punches Colt upon catching January in a Beverly Hills hotel bungalow with him. Mike orders his daughter to make a choice between them, and Colt gives her the same ultimatum. She chooses her lover.
Deidre’s demands and insults finally become too much for Mike, who wants a divorce. They amicably agree to one, but their airplane crashes and both are killed. The devastated January turns to Tom Colt for comfort, but he turns against her instead, leaving her to go on alone.
January learns that she has inherited $3 million from her father’s insurance policy to begin a new life for herself. When she goes to tell the good news to Linda, she finds Linda angry and distraught for she was just fired from her job after having sex with her boss who used her. Realizing that nothing is perfect in life, not even in her own way, January is left all alone wandering Manhattan after dark, but with hope that tomorrow will be a better day.
Once Is Not Enough is a 1975 American romance film, directed by Guy Green, starring Kirk Douglas, Alexis Smith, David Janssen, George Hamilton, Brenda Vaccaro, Melina Mercouri, and Deborah Raffin. It was produced by Howard W. Koch and written by Julius J. Epstein, based on the 1973 novel Once Is Not Enough by Jacqueline Susann.
It featured Alexis Smith’s return to the big screen after an absence of 16 years, and Brenda Vaccaro was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and won the Golden Globe award for her role as Linda Riggs.
Film Review for Once Is Not Enough
A film review doesn’t often involve the reader in the same way that the film involves its audience. One scans the review and that’s it. The words stay on the page while the reader goes on to other things. There’s been no emotional connection.With this in mind, I’ve devised what may well be the world’s first audience-participation film review, which, I trust, will approximate the impact of the movie itself.
The review is a multiple-choice test, the answers for which will be found at Loews Astor Plaza and Cine Theaters, where the film opened yesterday:”Jacqueline Susann’s Once is Not Enough” is based on the celebrated novel by (Charles Dickens, Olive Higgins Prouty, Cotton Mather, Anaïs Nin, none of these).It was adapted for the screen by Julius J. Epstein, whose late brother and collaborator was (Philip Epstein, Jacob Epstein, Joseph Epstein, Jason Epstein, Barbara Epstein, all five).
It was directed by a celebrated Englishman whose last name is a color (Redd Foxx, Guy Green, Kid Blue, Shirley Temple Black), the man who earlier gave us the celebrated (“Potemkin,” “House of Wax,” “House of Secrets,” “The Little Colonel”).”Jacqueline Susann’s Once Is Not Enough” is about Mike Wayne, played by Kirk Douglas, a down-on-his-luck Hollywood producer of (films, Kentucky Fried Chicken, tie clasps) whose daughter is named January because she was born in (pride, April, a trunk, none of these).
January, who is 19 years old, has an unnatural attachment for her father, a complex sometimes called (wholly natural, boring, kleptomania). When she returns to the States to visit him, she finds New York immersed in (a garbage strike, pollution, immorality, all three). January is shocked by Mike’s lavish (life-style, new wife, hair-piece).Mike has married Deirdre Milford Granger, played by Alexis Smith, for her money because Deirdre is (the fifth richest woman in the world, crazy about chicken, the best he can do), but Deirdre is secretly in love with Karla, played by Melina Mercouri, an elderly actress-recluse who wears a lot of (ouzo, kohl, lashes) around her eyes.
This kind of love is sometimes called (wholly natural, boring, kleptomania) and was once known as the love that (dare not speak its name, launched a thousand ships, was won on the playing fields of Eton).January, in her turn, makes do with Tom Colt, played by David Janssen, who is (impotent, living at the Plaza, a Pulitizer Prize-winning novelist, all three) and has affection for David Milford, played by George Hamilton, a New York playboy who (has a perpetual tan, uses hairspray, walks funny).Like Mr. Hamilton, the movie seems to have been composed of (whole cloth, snips and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails, press releases). It is (ludicrous, bad, terrible, horrendous). It’s a film that seems to have been made (to warn motorcyclists not to drive fast, under a hair dryer, to make money look boring, to make money, all four).
Once Is Not Enough (1975)
Directed by: Guy Green
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Alexis Smith, David Janssen, George Hamilton, Melina Mercouri, Brenda Vaccaro, Deborah Raffin, Lillian Randolph, Renata Vanni, Mark Roberts, Leonard Sachs
Screenplay by: Julius J. Epstein
Production Design by: John DeCuir
Cinematography by: John A. Alonzo
Film Editing by: Rita Roland
Costume Design by: Moss Mabry
Set Decoration by: Ruby R. Levitt
Music by: Henry Mancini
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: June 20, 1975 (United States)
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