A Major Disappointment

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

What a lineup of top male stars to interact with Shirley MacLaine. There is Bob Cummings, as her psychiatrist, recommended after she tried to give the Feds a hundred million $ or so, that she could once again be poor and happy. She would periodically return to his couch, which could be elevated quite high(why?).....Dick Van Dyke plays her first husband. She married him because he had no ambition other than to remain the proprietor of a small store, and owns a simple little house. Shirley thought she would be happy in that life, with Dick home a lot with her. Her mother, played by Margaret Dumont, had wanted her to marry Lennie Crawley(Dean Martin) , but she didn't love him, and was afraid he would spend all his time trying to expand the local family business empire. For a while, life with Dick went as she hoped, until one day he suddenly got the ambition to greatly expand his business. Thereafter, he became rich, and bought out the Crawleys, but she saw little of him. Eventually, he died of a heart attack.....Next, she took up with a mad artist(Paul Newman), who invented a series of machines that did his primitive painting for him. Eventually, he became rich from these paintings, but then his machines rebelled and collectively beat him to death, leaving Shirley with another unwanted fortune. This was an especially interesting segment, Paul being very funny. Next, she marries a superrich guy(Robert Mitchum)(why?). Eventually, he decides he wants to live a simple farmer's life, and liquidates all his other properties. But, pretty soon, he meets with a fatal accident with his bull. .....Shirley surmises she must be a jinx, and swears she won't marry again. But, she runs into a struggling entertainer(Gene Kelly) and marries him. She gets to do some dancing and singing with Gene, showing off her long slim legs. Her association with Gene is one of the most interesting parts of the film. Gene's character is known as Pinky. Presumably, , this is the reason for the all pink images during the prologue and credits, including a slippery casket that careens around, chasing the pall bearers. Eventually, Gene attracts nationwide devotion. Unfortunately, at one event, the fans stampede and trample him to death......She returns to her hometown and meets up with Dean Martin(Lennie Crawley) again. He's been reduced to serving as a janitor. He's OK to do some farming and share a small farmhouse. But Shirley's now idealic life is almost destroyed by a sudden indication of wealth under their farm. But, it's a false alarm......Shirley wears a countless number of outfits and wigs throughout production......Margaret Dumont, who played Shirley's mother, was in her 80s, and would die the next year. Back in the '30s, she was often a foil for the Marx Brothers.

Badly reviewed, but a big 1964 hit, due to the cast and the radio ad, "What a cast! What a show! What a way to go!" Critics were put off, perhaps rightly, by this large comedy's cavalier attitude toward death, and the lumbering direction of J. Lee Thompson, who never had an easy hand with comedy. As a four-time widow with too much money, Shirley's pretty good, and the Comden-Green script, conceived for Marilyn Monroe, is snug and reasonably funny. Best is the gimmick of depicting each marriage in the form of a movie style: silent comedy (Van Dyke), European art film (Newman), Ross Hunter over-production (Mitchum, the funniest, with an incredible procession of Edith Head gowns), and Hollywood musical (Kelly, dumbing down his own choreography somewhat to suit MacLaine). The leading men basically do what's expected of them, though Newman, sporting a Brooklyn accent, revels in playing nastier than usual. Prominent in the supporting cast, and quite wonderful, is Margaret Dumont. It's very expensive-looking, with perhaps the best De Luxe color I've ever seen, and though it pulls its punches here and there and is frequently in questionable taste, it's an undeniable good time.

If the fans of the various leading men and Shirley MacLaine just attended this film, What A Way To Go was certainly guaranteed to be a hit at the box office. It would have to be to justify the salaries of the cast involved.It was that and more. What A Way To Go is a bright comedy showing the talents of Shirley MacLaine to full advantage, including her dancing talents in the segment involving Gene Kelly. Shirley relates in flashback to a lecherous psychiatrist, Bob Cummings the incredibly rotten luck she's had with her marriages. Widowed four times Shirley is worth over $200,000,000.00. Her pattern is to marry men who are poor with one exception and they become rich and then meet with bizarre deaths. Her husbands in order were Dick Van Dyke, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, and Gene Kelly. Mitchum was already rich, but became incredibly much richer while married to Shirley. He also met the most bizarre death in the film which you'll have to see because it's too funny to reveal.Kelly played a song and dance man who played in a clown makeup. Each of the segments involved a dream sequence where Shirley relates to Cummings that in her ideal stage of the marriage it reminded her of some happy movie genre. In the Kelly sequence it involved a musical and we get to see Shirley dance which she didn't do enough of on the big screen. There is another man in her life in Dean Martin, but how he figures in you have to see What A Way To Go. This was the farewell film appearance for both Margaret Dumont who played Shirley's mother and for Tom Conway who had a bit role.What A Way To Go still retains a lot of the good humor for today's audiences. I could see a remake of it with someone like Julia Roberts being married to Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, etc. They'd have to go some to replace a dancer like Gene Kelly though.

'What a Way To Go' centres on Louisa May Foster (Shirley MacLaine), a widow in black who is committed to a psychiatrist after trying to cash a million pound cheque. She tells the psychiatrist (Robert Cummings) about her 'curse' and bad luck with men, and the remainder of the film is in flashback.With co-stars like Dick Van Dyke, Robert Mitchum, Dean Martin, Paul Newman, and Gene Kelly, it is amazing that MacLaine still shows star quality throughout this film, but she does, and in some fantastic costumes and set-pieces.This is a delightful light comedy, full of colour, energy, and some inspired demises for MacLaine's hapless husbands. Highly recommended.