El irresistible Henry Orient

Peter Sellers may be the bait, but two girls supply the hook that keeps this coming-of-age comedy in people's minds 40 years on.

Sellers has the title role as Henry Orient, a pianist more interested in practicing his lines than his scales, but the film's focus is on a lonely young Manhattanite named Gil (Merrie Spaeth) and her new pal Val (Elizabeth "Tippy" Walker), two adolescents who decide to make Val's crush on Orient into the secret center of an adventure-filled friendship.

"Henry Orient" is a film of two parts co-existing uneasily at times. Val and Gil's bond occupies the realm of real life, with Walker and Spaeth giving spot-on performances that seem spontaneous and alive to every moment. The best scene in the movie by far, very much in line with the "Can't Buy Me Love" sequence in the same year's "Hard Day's Night," shows the pair running along a city block, "splitzing" over fire hydrants and tryke-riding boys, their eyes alight with joy as they literally rise over their city surroundings. It's a captivating exercise in what scholars would call "pure cinema." If the rest of the film doesn't rise to that level, it never entirely disappoints, either.

Sellers' sequences are weaker. He's actually quite enjoyable to watch, doing one of his best voice performances as a Brooklynite who affects a French-Italian accent to charm the ladies (listen carefully and you will hear his Brooklyn undertone throughout) but he and Paula Prentiss as the married object of his desires seem to be in a completely different movie, playing a broad farce at odds with the real, sometimes gut-wrenching tone of the rest of the film.

This could be a bigger problem but for Elmer Bernstein's lilting yet driving score, featuring one of the most arresting themes I've heard in film, which seems to carry Val and Gil from one delirious moment to the next with complete abandon while allowing room for darker, contemplative passages. Director George Roy Hill had a gift for employing music at the right moment (see "The Sting"), and the score of "Henry Orient" is a secret strength as it skates over the thinner plot elements.

More obviously a strength is the script by Nora and Nunnelly Johnson, which really captures a sense of how young people talk, goofily, quickly and all-at-once, skipping over the stuff that doesn't matter, like when Val and Gil first meet at their ritzy school. Val asks Gil if she likes being there.

Gil tries to be diplomatic: "They say it's the finest girls' school in the country." "I don't, either," says Val.

Or the priceless exchange they have when taking out a cigarette butt they cadged off of Orient's table during a midday stalk. "No filter!" "He's not scared." One wishes the film found more to draw Orient and his youthful admirers together, though the detour into the state of Val's parental relations has merits of its own, especially with Angela Lansbury doing another of her classic nasty-Mommy turns.

While it didn't set the world on fire in 1964 and, like its young stars, slipped off the radar screen too soon after its premiere, "Henry Orient" remains an engaging glimpse at American youth post-Salinger but pre-Beatles. Sidewalk placards still advertise color TV, while a rich girl's idea of rebellious fashion sense involves wearing a plaid skirt with a mink coat. Trends come and go, but feelings of the kind celebrated in "The World Of Henry Orient" live on.

The sixties became The Sixties around the time of this film, 1964. There was a time, believe it or not, when kids played grown-up, instead of the other way around, as is the case today. Two cute girls are venturing from childhood to youth, in a benign Manhattan. They have a crush on a pianist-Lothario who happens to be Peter Sellers. You can imagine the complications - and the hilarity.

What makes this film so appealing is the way it portrays adolescent awakening as a completely unsordid and sweet experience. Yes, there is pathos, when the two discover how adults have turned their world into Henry Orient's world.

Although the cast is sterling all around, Tom Bosley is a standout as father to one of the girls, who helps put things to rights.

If the Kennedy assassination and Vietnam are cultural watersheds, then this film is a refreshing antidote; it gives the lie to the glib put-downs of the era by the current generation.

If you go into this film expecting to see a lot of Peter Sellers, you will be disappointed. Make no mistake, he's in there and he's very funny but this film is not about his character, a mediocre pianist with a penchant for married women. Rather, it's about two 14-year old girls who are making the awkward transition from childhood to adulthood. One of the girls has an incredible crush on Orient and her friend is helping her worship him from afar. Henry Orient is the catalyst for their transformation when they learn a little too much about his "world".

The acting is uniformly fine. Sellers' character is a rat but he's so clumsy and foolish you find him endearing. Angela Lansbury, as the coldly selfish mother of one of the girls, is extremely hissable. It's hard to believe that she's the same actress playing the warm, friendly Jessica Fletcher so many years later. Paula Prentiss is very amusing as Orient's exceedingly nervous married girlfriend. Tom Bosley plays Lansbury's kind-hearted husband. One of the final scenes in the film is between him and Lansbury and their daughter and it's a great one. There's a great deal of superficial dialogue but the subtext is unmistakable and it becomes the climax of the film. The best part is the two young actresses playing the girls. I have a fourteen year old daughter and she acts just like they do (almost anyway, she doesn't jump over fire hydrants). Their portrayal of giddy women/children is what the film is really all about.

Highly recommended.

Such an interesting film, HENRY ORIENT, poised as it is---as other viewers' comments have pointed out---between the world BTB (Before The Beatles) and ATB (no explanation necessary). In retrospect, at least, the film hints at the enormous changes to come. The film-making reflects that, as well: note George Roy Hill's cautious approximations of the Nouvelle Vague in the lyrical running-and-jumping-through-NYC section with Val and Gil. (Note, too, the androgyny of the girls' names...) I read the book many years ago and remember it as a darker, more Salinger-esquire work. But that's not to diminish the playful, often painful strengths of the film. Paula Prentiss must rank high among its charms; as must Tippy Walker. There's inchoate youth for you in those years. Val is as imaginative as she is troubled. The old ways no longer work but the new ways have yet to appear. Elizabeth ('Tippy') Walker is really wonderful, and it's been most interesting (to say the least) and a real pleasure that Ms. Walker has shared so truthfully and fully her memories of the film and a part of her life story with us. I know all fans of ORIENT wish her all the best.

Another pleasure of the film is the way it captures NYC as it was then. Being a devotee of the city, it makes me both happy and sad to see it in its 40-some year old glory. Happy because I can vicariously experience what it was like; sad because it can only be vicarious. I love NYC, it's still a fantastic city---even though Disneyfication has robbed it of so much---but I get a special thrill when I see it like it was in ORIENT.

A lot has changed,yes. Adolescence hasn't, though, and that's why the film continues to resonate. And that's why THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT continues to be watched and written about. That's why we care.

I loved this hilarious movie as a teenager and own the video of it

as an adult. The story of two young girls who sweetly stalk a

concert pianist, played with insane panache by Peter Sellars, is

one of the nicest coming-of-age movies of that era. Set in New

York, her is a surprisingly sophisticated and gentle comedy you'll

enjoy over and over again.

Sellars's clueless, womanizing virtuoso never strikes a false

comic note. He's wildly inventive, never more so than in his

scenes with the gorgeous Paula Prentiss as the way-too-nervous

object of his lust. Playing a married woman who is flattered by his

attentions, Prentiss manages to look glamorous and on the verse

of a nervous breakdown all at once. Why this spectacularly gifted

comic actress didn't make it to the top is a mystery to me.

Angela Lansbury's socialite bitch of a mother is another one of her

classic nasty lady roles. Nobody can look down her nose with the

authority of Lansbury. Yes she got found acceptance and respect

on Broadway and on television, but she was a first-rate character

actress on screen too.

Tom Bosley is sympathetic as Tippy Walker's father and Phyllis

Thaxter exudes motherly warmth as Mary Spaeth's divorced Mom.

The Walker and Spaeth should have had futures as screen

actors. Alas, it was not to be. But they are delightful as the young

girls on the verse of womanhood, with a terrific crush on an

undeserving idol.

Nora and Nunnelly Johnson's script (he of course, a Hollywood

legend) wrote a sharp, funny and observant screenplay that is

respectful of teenagers and the adults. George Roy Hill is not a

great director, but when given good material, he rises to the

occasion as he does here. A real gem.