Promise Made, Promise Kept

When I was growing up, I saw a lot of Jayne Mansfield on TV, possibly Dick Cavett’s show. I considered her to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and I kind of still feel that way. I knew of Promises, Promises (1963) as the movie where she went nude. I was assuming it was all a con.

It starts with Jayne in a bubble bath. So she’s nude, but there are strategically placed bubbles. Just like I expected. Then she comes out to talk to her husband, Tommy Noonan, with a towel wrapped around her waist. And there she is. Who would have guessed, in 1963?

Noonan is one of those 50s ad men, with black-rimmed glasses and some neuroses. He wants to get Mansfield pregnant, but hasn’t had much luck, so they go on a cruise. He confides Hilo’s problem to ships doctor Fritz Feld (usually a snooty maitre d’ or hotel clerk), who prescribes a pill to be taken with alcohol. It is an aspirin - he is doing an experiment in suggestibility. So Noonan gets drunk and has a romantic evening with his wife, who is convinced she is pregnant the next day.

But when the test comes back negative, Noonan doesn’t dare tell her the truth. He does tell the doctor that he had the mumps as an adult, and is probably sterile.

In the next cabin are Noonan’s best friend Mickey Hargitay, the perfect male body, and his wife, a somewhat brittle suburban sophisticate played by Marie McDonald. McDonald was once billed as “The Body”, but here is clearly the counterpart to Noonan, just like Hargitay and Mansfield are clearly meant for each other (they of course were married in real life).

Naturally, Noonan and McDonald and Mansfield and Hargitay manage to spend a drunken night with their counterparts. In one version of a standard sex comedy, it will be clear that nothing happened between them, even though they are panicked that something did. It seems like that is what happens here, but McDonald turns out to be pregnant - and Hargitay can’t have kids. Also, Mansfield really is pregnant.

If you like this kind of sex comedy, you’ll probably like this - it isn’t quite Billy Wilder, but it is at least Doris Day. If you like a glimpse of a classic topless pinup, you’ll either like this, or you can find the clips online. My favorite part was Babette, the hair-dresser, played by T.C. Jones, a man presenting as a butch woman. He’s charming and silly. And of course, the great Fritz Feld, whose medical malpractice started the whole thing.