All in a Night's Work (1961)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Thanks for the memories!

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

While on vacation in Palm Beach, a research analyst from New York City saves a drunk from drowning--in doing so, she ruins her new dress and is seen sneaking out of a millionaire's hotel room wearing only a towel. The rich guy, a publishing magnate (whom the girl works for!), never even sees her--he's dead in his bed. When his nephew (Dean Martin) takes over the magazine empire, he's made aware that his womanizing uncle was seen with a tootsie on the night of his demise who might be tempted to blackmail the company (how they come to that conclusion is anyone's guess). Anemic sex-and-big business comedy is a big step down from "The Apartment" just one year before. "Apartment" co-star Shirley MacLaine (who received an Oscar nom for her work in that film) is back doing the same kind of scatterbrained, breathlessly 'adorable' work she did in all her pictures leading up to "The Apartment". The comic situations are desperately juvenile, such as MacLaine's beau (Cliff Robertson, acting the stiff) coming across the mink coat Shirley acquired after her good deed and embarrassing her in front of his stuffy parents. The screenwriters (Edmund Beloin, Maurice Richlin and Sidney Sheldon, adapting Owen Elford's play) frantically iron and re-iron their story wrinkles, substituting wit with groaning one-liners. It takes one tipsy scene from MacLaine to get an honest laugh, the rest being ham-handed and overplayed. ** from ****

I remember seeing All in a Night's Work when it first came out in 1961. It was at a drive-in movie with my cousins who I was visiting at the time. It was and still remains a very funny film with Dino and Shirley giving some great performances.If this had been made at Universal instead of Paramount All in a Night's Work would have been starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day. Dino steps into a Rock Hudson part as the wolfish heir to a publishing empire. And Shirley, though she invests the part with her own brand of kookiness, is really Doris the eternal virgin. After all she does go to Florida for the sunshine on her vacation.Shirley gets a bit more than she bargained for. After saving a lecherous old playboy from drowning, she has to fend off his advances in the best Doris Day manner. In doing so she stumbles into the room of her boss, the owner of the magazine she works for and Dean Martin's uncle, wearing nothing but a towel.A very officious house detective, Jack Weston, spots her in said towel as she's leaving the room. It turns out that her boss had passed away that night and Weston's beady little mind suspects scandal. The rest of the film is that proverbial comedy of errors.Though it's not heard in the film, Dean Martin did record a song All in a Night's Work for Capitol and he sold a few records of it back in the day. The song fits perfectly in his style, can't imagine anyone else doing it.Gale Gordon and Jerome Cowan play colleagues of Dean's uncle and Cliff Robertson plays Shirley's fiancé, a veterinarian. Dean has a fabulous scene in Robertson's office where on impulse he grabs a dog and takes the poor hound to inside so he can get a line on Robertson. He uses the fake name of Julius Hemmenschlager with Robertson. It's Dino's best scene in the film.And Shirley gets quite plastered while nightclubbing with Robertson and his visiting parents, the stuffy Mabel Albertson and the slightly pickled Charlie Ruggles. Quite a sight to see MacLaine and Ruggles singing the school song of the Kansas Institute for Vetrinary Medicine.One thing does puzzle me. After Weston removes the towel through the elevator door. Just how does a nude Shirley MacLaine get back to her room?

This is one of the funniest films ever made (in my opinion). To not give away too much for those who have not seen it, this mistaken identity farce has Dean Martin, various character actors, and especially, Shirley MacLaine, in fine form. It is one of those rare films that one can watch time after time, and never get bored with. And don't forget, 'Oh Mr Ryder!'

One of the funniest (my opinion only) Dean Martin and Shirley Maclaine movies I've ever seen. I never miss it, when it's shown on cable t.v. Can't understand why after so many years it is "not" yet available on VHS and DVD? I'm still waiting!!! Will definitely become part of my video "library."