The Bachelor Party

Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay is perceptive and even a bit daring for its time. This is an unusually sophisticated Hollywood picture from the 50s that contains some terrific acting. E.G. Marshall is very strong as the eldest of the men, but Oscar nominee Carolyn Jones is brilliant in a small, electrifying performance. She can't be in the film for more than 7 or 8 minutes but is completely memorable. She deserved to win the Oscar.

Don Murray is good as a married man coaxed (by his wife!) into attending a bachelor party for a fellow bookkeeper. The wife (well played by Patricia Smith) seems to know the party will test Murray's nose-to-the-grindstone dedication to their marriage. It does -- and reveals a great deal about the other participants as well, especially the prospective bridegroom, who seems to get more emotional satisfaction from friend Murray than his bride-to-be. The ending is sentimental, but moving, too, if you give it a chance, and there's a truly brilliant small performance from Carolyn Jones, probably seven or eight of the most mesmerizing minutes ever filmed.

"Look Back In Anger," which came out on film a year after this, is a far more famous and influential work. Yet it doesn't hold up. The charter of Jimmy Potter, the original angry young man, seems extremely disagreeable. That film is beautifully acted.

"The Bachelor Party," on the other hand, though a far lesser work, does not seem dated. Oh sure: The money is different. The approach to women is antithetical to Women's Liberation. But it's a nice little movie.

Of the Paddy Chayevsky movies from this time, I would rate "The Catered Affair" as the best. Next would come this. Then would be the feted "Marty," which is extremely dated.

Don Murray makes a highly likable main character. The other men are good too. The women don't register so well. And in particular, the gifted Carolyn Jones's role has not held up well: She plays a character called The Existentialist. Murray meets her at a Beatnik party in Greenwich Village -- and a highly improbable one, at that. She doesn't seem Bohemian. She seems like a garden variety kvetch.

But it's an easy movie to like and one I would recommend.

(It seems to me a precursor to the John Cassavetes buddy movies that were to begin a few years later.)

THE BACHELOR PARTY is adapted from Paddy Chayefsky's TV play and is a watered down version of other Chayefsky stories about lonely men and the lives they live--even when married.

It's downbeat all the way, beginning with an office scene where an obnoxious JACK WARDEN monopolizes office routine with his loud personal calls as he arranges for the evening's bachelor party. Reluctantly, happily married DON MURRAY agrees to attend, giving himself a night off from night school studies, although his reluctance is partly due to the fact that his wife is expecting their first child. LARRY BLYDEN just wants a night out with the boys and PHILIP ABBOTT is the soon to be groom, a "Marty" type of guy, shy with the gals, who reveals during the course of the evening that he's not ready for marriage.

The talk is natural, the dialog is very much Chayefsky's gift for simple folks expressing themselves in ways we can all relate to--and yet, the film lacks pace and shows its origin--a TV play that is character driven but not open enough for the screen.

CAROLYN JONES has a brief party scene that she plays well as an "existentialist" mouthing gibberish and for some reason she got an Oscar nomination for what is almost a bit role. Unbelievable.

Summing up: A disappointment, noteworthy only for the sincerity of all the performances with DON MURRAY especially likable and straightforward in his portrayal of the conflicted husband.

Remember in the 1955 film, "Marty," a group of guys keep asking, "So, what are we going to do tonight?" That film as well as this one was directed by Delbert Mann with the writing done by Paddy Chayefsky. In "Bachelor Party" the guys really don't seem to know again what they're going to be doing.

Despite excellent performances by Don Murray, E.G. Marshall, Larry Blyden and Nancy Marchand, this film stagnates. I was almost getting dizzy from the constant subway rides. It was great seeing what the New York subways looked like in the 1950s but enough was enough.

When several guys in an office plan a bachelor party for a nervous to-be-groom, nicely done by Philip Abbott, it becomes an evening of self-examination.

I was waiting for a burst out scene but unfortunately that never came.

Much has been made about Carolyn Jones's brief supporting Oscar nomination bid. As far as I'm concerned, it was much ado about nothing. Patricia Smith, as Don Murray's wife, and Nancy Marchand, as the sister-in-law, gave far better performances as an anxious-to-be mother and sister-in-law whose husband, a doctor, has been cheating on her.

Jack Warden epitomizes the care-free bachelor whose main purpose in life is to chase after women. His life is quite empty as we see at the end of the film. Larry Blyden, who left us way too early, depicts the stay-at-home type who quickly realizes that this "party" is a mistake and that he belongs home. Marshall does a complete turn in acting as the asthmatic member of the group who has to relocate to Arizona if he wants to survive.

The film conveys the frustrations of every day life. Someone should have told the film makers about the frustrations in this film as well.