Designing Woman

After a whistle stop romance, sports journalist “Mike” (Gregory Peck) marries high fashion designer “Marilla” (Lauren Bacall) but when they get back to his tiny bachelor flat in New York they realise that now the dust has settled, they don’t really know too much about each other. He wants to just settle back down to his own life, and that includes “Lori” (Dolores Gray) who has found out, third hand, about the marriage and isn’t best pleased. Thing is, the new wife doesn’t know anything about her, either, and after an encounter between the three finds her antennae are up and well and truly pointing (albeit in the wrong direction!). Meantime, “Mike” has another, more immediate, problem. He has been writing about bribery and corruption amongst the boxing fraternity and that’s irked the local mafiosi who have put a price on his head. When his editor assigns him a bodyguard and holes him up in a grotty hotel while they finesse the coup de grâce of his story, she gets even more suspicious. Whom is more dangerous - the mob or the wife? It’s quite good fun this with Bacall and Gray making mincemeat of their hapless “Mike”. Peck also seems in on the gag and is a willing participant as things turn to some Harold Lloyd style alley-way fisticuffs. There’s some wit from the script and even if some of her frocks are truly ghastly, even by empresses new clothes standards, Bacall is at the top of her game.