Under the Yum-Yum Tree (1963)

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Jack Lennon (as Hogan) is a promiscuous landlord who loves to rent apartments to hot prospects, like young Carol Lynley (as Robin); trouble is, she moves her fiancée Dean Jones (as David) in for a platonic "try-out" living arrangement. Mr. Lemmon spends much of the movie lecherously peeping at the young couple, while plotting how to seduce Ms. Lynley.The cast is very nice, but the story is really, really dumb. Mr. Lemmon is a terrific actor, but this role just doesn't work for him; you have to wonder about all of his peeping. This movie might have worked if the Lemmon character were unsuccessfully promiscuous, in a supporting role, and without the peeping (like a Dudley Moore or Don Knotts role). Mr. Jones and Ms. Lynley are very likable, but they want to undress, and tease each other so quickly. The orange cat was a (sex?) joke I didn't get. ** Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963) David Swift ~ Jack Lemmon, Carol Lynley, Dean Jones

Films certainly underwent some massive changes during the 60's. Compare the "chaste" sex comedy of this 1963 movie with the far more permissive and blatant movies of the latter part of the decade. Lemmon plays a relentless, lascivious skirt-chaser who runs an apartment complex called Centaur Apartments. Renting only to women, he says goodbye to former flame Adams and, before he can adjust to it, has rented the vacant apartment to her pert and very attractive niece Lynley. Lemmon can barely contain his glee as he sets out to carve yet another notch on his figurative bedpost, but he's unaware that Lynley has arranged for her boyfriend Jones to live with her (platonically) as well as part of an experimental, pre-marital arrangement! While Lynley and Jones wrestle with their hormones and strive to shield each other from temptation, Lemmon peers through windows and hangs from the roof when he isn't just trotting right through the front door with one of his many, many keys. The goings-on are observed by Lynde, as an envious gardener, and Coca, as his disapproving, cleaning-lady wife. Plenty of predictable misunderstandings and shenanigans take place with opposing sides either vigilantly defending Lynley's virginity or trying to get it taken away. All of it is handled with a soft touch through suggestiveness, innuendo or comedy. Lemmon tackles a very unusual role for him and is at least partially successful with it. He outrageously skulks around like Wile E. Coyote, with a battery of tricks up his sleeve, while appropriately cartoonish music plays. His antics eventually grow tiresome and he overacts with abandon, but it's still fascinating to see him in this light. Lynley was probably never more beautiful than in this film and, most of the time, she's quite appealing. She handles a stock "liberal, progressive virgin" role with skill. Jones (impossibly skinny, especially during the seduction scene towards the end) is charming and endearingly lunkheaded. He and Lynley make a very nice couple. Adams is saddled with a fretful role, but she looks pretty nice and manages a few nice moments. Handsome Lansing, as her new fiancé, has a very thankless part (one which was not in the original Broadway play on which this is based.) Coca is afforded several amusing bits as is Lynde, but Lynde was capable of far more hilarious screen activity than he's allowed to show here. Some of the material was just a tad obvious and tired, even for 1963. The film would have benefited well from a little bit of pruning in the redundant dialogue and more lengthy sequences. Still, it's a very colorful, silly, wacky romp that, if nothing else, makes for a fascinating time capsule of what filmmakers of the era thought (or perhaps wanted audiences to think) was the right way for people to behave. The sets are quite amazing, actually, though patently artificial-looking at all times. The opening credits for the film are really bizarre with a big fake tree hovering over two dancers as James Darren croons the title song. It's amazing how similar Darren sounds to the much later Harry Connick Jr. Incidentally, among Lynley's belongings in the apartment is a Darren LP! Bixby appears briefly as a potential male tenant, given the brush-off by Lemmon. A few years later, Ryan O'Neal, Leigh Taylor-Young and Harold Gould would film a pilot movie intended to set this up as a series, but it didn't come to fruition.

Lawrence Roman's popular stage farce comes to the screen seeming a bit undernourished, with everyone playing 'perky' to perfection but without benefit of any funny lines. With a whole apartment complex full of sexy, single gals, landlord Jack Lemmon becomes fixated on innocuous college girl Carol Lynley, who has just moved in with her boyfriend--a platonic arrangement that has Lemmon up in arms (and on the roof!). A shiny package with nothing inside, and Lemmon visibly strains to give the proceedings some bounce (tough to do since his wolfish character is thoroughly loathsome). The script, adapted by David Swift (who also directed), tries for snappy repartee, but since none of the characters are particularly sharp, the results here lack wit, sparkle and imagination. *1/2 from ****

UNDER THE YUM YUM TREE was one of three films in the middle 1960s that Jack Lemmon starred in that he despised. He had shown in THE APARTMENT and THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES that he was a gifted dramatic actor - an everyman fighting the pressures of modern society, be they big business bosses or alcoholism. Then he did GOOD NEIGHBOR SAM, HOW TO MURDER YOUR WIFE, and UNDER THE YUM YUM TREE. The first two films had good scripts and good productions. He was wrong about them, failing to see they were excellent entertaining (but minor) films. But his contempt for YUM YUM TREE is correct.Based on a moderately successful play, it was a sex farce. Set in a California motel, Lemmon's character (Hogan) is a letch. All he does is think of going to bed with the young ladies who make the mistake of checking into his motel. If they have boy friends or husbands, he sidetracks the males as quickly as possible. He has a machine that makes copies of every key to every suite in the motel, and in one scene (which I always found very detestable) we see him humming happily to himself as he manufactures a new set of keys. When questioned about his still having a key after apparently giving it up to Dean Jones, he tells Jones glibly (and quickly - his delivery is quite fast and annoying in this movie) that he has an unlimited supply of keys.In a sense, the eavesdropping Lemmon, so casually violating the privacy of his customers, is an attempt at a comic Norman Bates. Here, supposedly, the situation is all in good sexy fun. But one can make a case that Norman's attacks on young women in bathtubs were also done out of a sense of sexual fun - only a sadistic one. That Lemmon's character gets a good comeuppance at the end does not help this film at all. It still quite lousy. I don't think Lemmon ever played a less likable character or appeared in a worse movie part.