If the fans of the various leading men and Shirley MacLaine just attended this film, What A Way To Go was certainly guaranteed to be a hit at the box office. It would have to be to justify the salaries of the cast involved.
It was that and more. What A Way To Go is a bright comedy showing the talents of Shirley MacLaine to full advantage, including her dancing talents in the segment involving Gene Kelly. Shirley relates in flashback to a lecherous psychiatrist, Bob Cummings the incredibly rotten luck she's had with her marriages. Widowed four times Shirley is worth over $200,000,000.00.
Her pattern is to marry men who are poor with one exception and they become rich and then meet with bizarre deaths. Her husbands in order were Dick Van Dyke, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, and Gene Kelly. Mitchum was already rich, but became incredibly much richer while married to Shirley. He also met the most bizarre death in the film which you'll have to see because it's too funny to reveal.
Kelly played a song and dance man who played in a clown makeup. Each of the segments involved a dream sequence where Shirley relates to Cummings that in her ideal stage of the marriage it reminded her of some happy movie genre. In the Kelly sequence it involved a musical and we get to see Shirley dance which she didn't do enough of on the big screen.
There is another man in her life in Dean Martin, but how he figures in you have to see What A Way To Go. This was the farewell film appearance for both Margaret Dumont who played Shirley's mother and for Tom Conway who had a bit role.
What A Way To Go still retains a lot of the good humor for today's audiences. I could see a remake of it with someone like Julia Roberts being married to Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, etc. They'd have to go some to replace a dancer like Gene Kelly though.
It was that and more. What A Way To Go is a bright comedy showing the talents of Shirley MacLaine to full advantage, including her dancing talents in the segment involving Gene Kelly. Shirley relates in flashback to a lecherous psychiatrist, Bob Cummings the incredibly rotten luck she's had with her marriages. Widowed four times Shirley is worth over $200,000,000.00.
Her pattern is to marry men who are poor with one exception and they become rich and then meet with bizarre deaths. Her husbands in order were Dick Van Dyke, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, and Gene Kelly. Mitchum was already rich, but became incredibly much richer while married to Shirley. He also met the most bizarre death in the film which you'll have to see because it's too funny to reveal.
Kelly played a song and dance man who played in a clown makeup. Each of the segments involved a dream sequence where Shirley relates to Cummings that in her ideal stage of the marriage it reminded her of some happy movie genre. In the Kelly sequence it involved a musical and we get to see Shirley dance which she didn't do enough of on the big screen.
There is another man in her life in Dean Martin, but how he figures in you have to see What A Way To Go. This was the farewell film appearance for both Margaret Dumont who played Shirley's mother and for Tom Conway who had a bit role.
What A Way To Go still retains a lot of the good humor for today's audiences. I could see a remake of it with someone like Julia Roberts being married to Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, etc. They'd have to go some to replace a dancer like Gene Kelly though.