Mama Loves Mambo

Phffft (1954) is a good late example of the Comedy of Remarriage. These movies, where a couple gets divorced and then remarried, were mainly designed to avoid the Hayes Code - if the couple were married, they could fool around. If they were divorced, they could fool around with other people. If they got remarried, audience and censors were happy. But this is also a great Jack Lemmon/Judy Holliday comedy. 

It starts with Lemmon and Holliday at home. He is contentedly reading a sordid detective novel, she is wringing her hands. She finally blurts out that she wants a divorce. Instead of trying to talk her out of it, he agrees. They are both bored, she's restless, and he feels a little trapped. Nothing big, but it's the little things. 

So he goes to live with Jack Carson, his crass, womanizing, single friend. He has a tasteless "primitive" statue in the window, and explains the code to Lemmon. When the eyes in the statue are lit, it means the apartment is being used for a tryst, and the other roommate should keep out. Lemmon isn't interested in that, he just wants to finish his detective story in peace. 

There's a nice little flashback to how they met. Lemmon was a Navy man with his arm in a sling. Holliday is a newspaper writer, looking for a hero to write about. But Lemmon never saw action, spent the war doing accounting, which he's still doing. His arm was strained playing racquetball. He offers to help her with her taxes, and goes to her small apartment. To save space, she had a bed that comes out of the wall with a whoosh. He liked it open, she kept closing it. Finally, he opens it and sits down on it, and ... Soon, he was out of the army, working as a tax lawyer. She was the writer for a popular radio drama. And they got married.

In the present, Holliday tries to learn French and takes Mambo lessons. Carson sets Lemmon up with party girl Kim Novak, which both frightens and somewhat bores him. She's beautiful, but what to talk about? You can guess Carson's answer to that. Lemmon also grows a mustache and gets a sportscar. And learns to Mambo.

So they both have dates one night at the same club, and start mamboing with their dates - and then with each other. It's one of the best dance scenes by non-dancers until the merengue in My Blue Heaven. 

It isn't over yet - Holliday still has to almost be seduced by Carson, and Lemmon has to save the day. But it's a foregone conclusion.

Screenwriter George Axelrod sort of ticks all the boxes for this form of comedy, but does it smoothly. Lemmon plays his role as typical mid-century male salaryman - his occupation fits him for well-to-do but boring. Carson is always good as the crass good-time Charlie. Holliday, however, is fabulous. Although she is a little ditsy, she isn't playing dumb. When she's in the radio studio watching them play her script, you see her silently acting out each line. Another time, when Lemmon makes an innuendo, you see her puzzlement turn to understanding in a flash - That's acting.