Cinema: After the Money Rolled In

Wives and Lovers perkily proves that the eternal triangle is still good for laughs. The triangle consists of Author Van Johnson, Wife Janet Leigh and Literary Agent Martha Hyer, who sells Van’s novel to a publisher, a book club, a Broadway producer and a movie company (“Paramount wants it for Burton, O’Toole, Olivier, Loren and Fabian”). Not content with her 10%, she tries to collect the author too.

At first Janet is blind to Martha’s designs. She is preoccupied with what a sudden half-million dollars will buy for refugees from a Manhattan walk-up—a rambling house in suburbia, a grove of fruitwood furniture, a set of leather elbow patches for Van’s new tweeds. She tries gamely to keep up with hubby’s new country squire pretensions. When Van mentions at a cocktail party that he is thinking of buying a 1929 Lagonda (an automobile), Janet chirps: “He’s just crazy about good wines.” Under the tutelage of seasoned Divorcee Shelley Winters, Janet finally sees what Martha is up to, squares the triangle with a retaliatory affair of her own.

Along the way to the happy ending, several scenes are stolen by a disarming cinemoppet named Claire Wilcox. Claire, 8, plays a food faddist who hates to mix up her victuals. To make a snack, she lines up four plates on the table, puts bread on one, lettuce on another, tuna on a third, mayonnaise on the fourth. Then she starts nibbling from each plate in sequence. “It’s a sandwich,” she explains, “only the food isn’t touching.”

Wives and Lovers is a triumph of script over plot. Working with a worn story line, Producer Hal Wallis has managed to make a movie so amusing that it almost needs subtitles to catch the lines that get away during the yaks.