One of my favourite Jack Lemmon films - ‘How to Murder Your Wife’ - is about a successful strip cartoonist Stanley Ford (Lemmon) who has set up the perfect bachelor lifestyle with a macho apartment, a butler (played beautifully by Terry-Thomas) regular sessions at the gym, boys’ nights out but it’s a boys’ night out that brings him plenty of trouble. I caught up with it again yesterday.
The setup is that our hero (Jack Lemmon) is a cartoonist who draws himself in his strip as a sort of James Bond character called Bash Brannigan. Before he draws each strip, he actually acts out the scenes with the help of his butler who films and photographs the action.
At a stag do a gorgeous blonde jumps out of a cake (Virna Lisi) wearing a whipped cream bikini. Lemmon’s character immediately falls for her and wakes up with the girl, now his wife, lying naked in bed next to him. The mans, man butler played by Thomas assumes she is another one nightstand and is flabbergasted to find she is the lady of the house. It’s a case of him or her, he moves out.
His man cave soon receives the ‘feminine touch’ and although at first enjoys the Italian cooking of his wife soon the weight he is putting on becomes an issue. Stanley becomes distraught that his perfect bachelor life is in ruins. His cartoon strip is now called The Brannigans, again drawing from his real life and is a massive hit with the public.
The final straw comes when Stanley calls a meeting of his friends at the only place of safety his all-male health club. When his friend’s wife Edna learns of the meeting, she telephones Stanley’s wife and arouses her suspicions about Stanley's activities. Mrs. Ford then sneaks into the club, with the result that Stanley is banned from the club for violating its "no women" policy.
He then beings to think about killing his wife using his daily newspaper cartoon strip, testing his methods with the help of his former butler who is back on board believing all things with soon be back to normal. In one of the scenes, he plans to spike her drink with a ‘goofball’
He then bury her a concrete in the construction yard next door to his apartment. When his wife see the strip at their party, she disappears and it’s not long before readers of the strip and add two + two and come up with five leading to Stanley arrest for murder.
In the court, his cartoons are used as evidence of his guilt and when the trial seems to be headed for a guilty conviction, Stanley takes up his own defence pleading justifiable homicide. Appealing to the all-male jury's frustrations regarding their own wives.
The funniest scene is when Stanley makes an impassioned speech to the jury to acquit him. He draws a dot and tells Mayehoff his friend and lawyer to imagine it is a button, which by pressing he can remove his wife from his life without anyone knowing. Stanley tells him of all the things he would be free to do with his wife gone, and Mayehoff is gradually persuaded.
It’s Hollywood so we know the ending would be happy ever after and even the butler pulls the wife’s mother.
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