GAYE SWINGER??.......CONNIE FRANCIS GOES "LOOKING FOR LOVE" IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES......

Looking For Love (1964)    "I've spent a whole month trying to break into show business!  So I want a husband and babies!"

                      I'm paraphrasing Connie Francis's dialogue here.......but you get the drift.

                      Like the abysmal 1966 "Never Too Late" I posted about a week or so past, this showed up in 1964 already dead on arrival, a 1940's artifact spiffed up in Panavision and MetroColor.

                      Connie Francis, the bubbly, diminutive nightclub chanteuse, was one of those performers born way too late for the golden era of MGM musicals.  Who knows......she might have flourished back in the 40's or 50's, as a kind of minor league, second-string Ann Miller or Debbie Reynolds.......

                       But in 1964?   Both she and this movie looked they stumbled together out of a time machine gone awry........

                         The schizo storyline has no idea what character Connie's playing from one scene to the next..........either a husband-hungry ditz pining for pregnancy.......or a plucky inventor (of the "Lady Valet",( a glorified clothes-hanger).......or a showbiz hopeful who has no trouble stumbling (literally) into TV shows, film sets and celebrities.......

                        And speaking of celebs, a desperate MGM punishes a whole slew of them by putting them in this movie.........an embarrassed Johnny Carson, a perplexed Danny Thomas........and most likely force-marched into the film against their will, the studio Youth Roster of Yvette Mimieux, George Hamilton, Paula Prentiss and Jim Hutton.

                        Hutton's stuck with the brunt of the torture.......as one of the romantic leads, he has to say stuff like "I can't stand a smart aleck broad" repeatedly.    (Material like this led to Hutton's failed career as a would-be Jack Lemmon light comedian.)

                       Loads of familiar, lovable character actors show up, including Jesse White, Charles Lane and best of all, Hollywood's professional hard-hearted floozy Barbara Nichols, playing a actress named.....(and you thought I was making this up)......Gaye Swinger.

                       MGM should have sold off that character name to a movie that really needed it......like "Myra Breckinridge" or "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls"......

                        Connie Francis does sing sweetly enough.........but.as you watch her feeble efforts to swing her arms and hips to the beat of the painfully out-of-date music, you can hear the sounds of both her and MGM nailing the last coffin into her movie career. 

                         1 star(*)....... for any cinema historians who can't live without seeing this at least once......for everyone else, look for love elsewhere........