Discovery of the Wheel

Here's another that's not from Netflix or streaming: The Wheeler Dealers (1963). I actually bought this. I've been trying to rent or stream it for a while and finally gave in. You see, this is the first movie I remember seeing. I was 7 years old, in my jammies in the backseat of the family car at the drive-in. Other movies I remember seeing from those days include Night of the Iguana,  The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Viva Las Vegas, but they're all from 1964. So, assuming I saw all of these first-run (it wasn't some rural drive-in, it was legit), this is the first. And I remember loving it, and I've waited this long to rewatch it.

It starts with oil millionaire James Garner coming up dry on his latest field, so he has to head to New York to raise some capital. At LaGuardia, he has a hard time getting a taxi, so the first one he gets, he buys. He explains to cabbie Robert Strauss that he can buy the cab and medallion for $22,000, including the services of Strauss, and in two weeks sell it back to him for $20,000, and use tax depreciation to offset to expense. See, he's a wheeler dealer.

Meanwhile, Lee Remick is a working girl, living with a girlfriend (whose boyfriend is somehow related to the art world). She's the only broker in an all-male brokerage, and boss Jim Backus wants to get rid of her. So he gives her the Universal Widgets account (who haven't made widgets or anything since the turn of the century). When Garner stops by looking for investment money, he pretends to be interested in widgets because he is interested in her. 

The part I mostly remember is a gallery opening where Remick takes Garner. It's a very Mad magazine version of a hip party, with people in outre costumes spouting pretentious BS. But Garner finds the artist, Louis Nye, who, it turns out, is also an operator. They have a little discussion about the art market, leading Garner to fly off to Europe and buy up a batch of Expressionist paintings. Wheeling and dealing.

I'll leave out Garner's good ol' boy backers, Ray Jay, Jay Ray, and J.R. (played by Phil Harris, Chill Wills, and Charles Watts - but not the drummer). I'll just mention John Astin as the fed who thinks Garner is committing securities fraud. I'll skip the part where Remick gets fired due to a mix-up.

I will mention a scene where Garner meets up with Nye while Nye is creating a painting by wheeling a tricycle with paint on the wheels over a canvas. I mention this because i had remembered this as girls in bikinis covered in paint rolling around on the canvas. I even remembered the painter on a stepladder directing the girls. Anyone remember what movie that's from?

Anyway, I can see why I liked this as a 7 year old. Garner is charming as always, always on top of things, usually with a complicated angle. The level of sophistication was just about right, especially if you've been reading Mad magazine about the fakes and phonies. It wasn't so great for a senior citizen like me, but not so bad either. I enjoyed for more than nostalgic reasons.

In conclusion, now that I've thought about it, I may have seen this on a double-bill with The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze. But I don't remember much about that except for disappointment.