"HAPPY ANNIVERSARY".........SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE? OOOOO!! BE STILL OUR HEARTS.......

Happy Anniversary (1959)    The Hollywood Production Code folks clutched their pearls and practically fainted dead away at this movie........a frivolous, throwaway sex comedy that couldn't even scrape up enough of a budget to film in color.......

              How come?

               Brace yourselves.  Our leading man (David Niven), booze-fueled during a get together with his imperious in-laws, reveals he and his wife (Mitzi Gaynor) screwed each other silly even BEFORE they legally tied the knot.

               Blasphemy........sacrilege........scandal!

               We could put a road sign on this movie, marking it as a highway exit off of  Route 1950's.....and leading to the wild, uncharted  Route 1960's.......filled with twists, curves and all manner of sex-comedy ups and downs.........

                "Anniversary Party"  wobbles like jello as it sits astride the two eras.........it presents Niven as an uppercrust reactionary when it comes to the encroachment of television.....(he refuses to have a TV in the house and when he keeps getting gifted with them, he invariably succumbs to cold rage and kicks in the picture tubes......)

                   But sex?  A whole other story, as Niven's an overheated horndog who tries unsuccessfully to arrange an Afternoon Delight with Gaynor.......(interrupted by their typically precocious kids (Kevin Coughlin, Patty Duke).......and like all 1950's sex-comedy kids, they're barely tolerated by their parents.....)

                  You may well wonder (as we did)........that after 13 years of marriage and two kids, why would Niven and Gaynor's pre-marital boffing function as any kind of a serious issue for anyone?

                    What can we say?   It was the last gasp of 50's prudery rearing its head for one last ..."oh my!" before the films of the 60's would take further....uh.....liberties......

                    Speaking of the couple's children, the movie ends up oddly ahead of its time in dealing with them......Coughlin's shown drunk at the family party and Patty Duke, in a harbinger of #MeToo, rails against adults who playfully smack her behind as a greeting......("why do grownups think my backside's public property?"........just wait about 59 years, Patty and see what happens to adults who randomly smack female bottoms....)

                    2 stars (**) for this odd little time capsule we opened........recommended only for film historians and hardcore fans of Niven, Gaynor and Carl Reiner who wanders through the film making the usual smarmy wisecracks........