Cartoonist Shows You "How to Murder Your Wife"

When I was a kid, in the days before DVRs and even VCRs, the 1965 screwball sex comedy, How to Murder Your Wife, would occasionally pop up on local broadcast TV. (Of course, this was also before cable and streaming.) Though I saw many classic films on TV growing up, How to Murder Your Wife was one I never managed to catch in its entirety. However, when I noticed the film become available on Amazon Prime recently, I added it to my queue and finally watched it.

The primary reason for my curiosity in this film is that it's about a successful cartoonist named Stanley Ford, played by the great Jack Lemmon, whose profession and comic strip in the film (an action-adventure secret agent series called Bash Brannigan) are integral to the story. The film was directed by journeyman director Richard Quine and written by screenwriter George Axelrod.

In addition to being a cartoonist man-about-town, Ford is a confirmed bachelor who keeps a man servant in residence named Charles (the great character actor Terry Thomas) and lives in a pretty cool upscale multi-level bachelor pad studio in Manhattan. The film is racy for it’s time and it’s why I call it a “sex comedy”—Ford is pretty successful with the ladies and Charles, rather creepily, revels in his employer’s romantic escapades. (I’m glad now I never caught this film when I was young or it would have given me very skewed expectations of life as a cartoonist!)

The film opens cleverly with Ford in the middle of an exotic adventure with foreign-looking villains (one of whom is reminiscent of Odd Job from Goldfinger from the year before) that takes you through the streets and docks of Manhattan, as his man servant takes photos—it turns out these are reference photos for the comic strip. (While I’m pretty sure most cartoonists didn’t go to this extent to achieve verisimilitude, Ford notes later in the film that this is what makes his strip so popular—readers knew Bash wouldn't do anything he hasn't done himself. It's a conceit that becomes important later in the film.)

One morning, after a night of revelry at a bachelor party where a sexy, beautiful blonde pops out of a cake, Ford wakes up in bed with the girl, discovering that, in his alcoholic daze, he had married her the night before—and not only that, she’s Italian and speaks little English! For Ford, this is a tragedy of epic proportions—his man servant Charles even has a premonition about it at home when it happens. He immediately tenders his resignation, reminding Ford that when he took the job, he made it clear he only worked for bachelors.

Of course, wackiness ensues. While Ford seems to settle into the highs and lows of married life—the sex is great and she’s a great cook, keeps house, and takes care of him, she also keeps him up all night watching TV (to improve her English), has re-decorated his bachelor pad, and put a crimp in his carefree routine. As a result of his new domesticity, his comic strip turns into a gag strip about married life called The Brannigans.

Dismayed by what his life has turned into, he is driven to plot his wife's murder without getting caught—but, of course, only in the strip, so that he can return his character Bash back to his bachelor roots and secret agent life. And, in keeping with his commitment to realism, Ford carries out part of his plan in real life (short of actually dispatching his wife, of course). However, when his wife disappears around the same time the strip’s explicit portrayal of the murder appears in newspapers, Ford is suspected of foul play and arrested.

I’ll leave it at that so as not to spoil the rest of the film, but this is where I offer the caveat that the film, of course, is “of it’s time”—an era that popularized the trope that husbands and the American male are hen-pecked and women only want to marry so that they can spend their spouse's money shopping.

Adding to the films' chauvinism is the fact that the wife—played by Italian actress Virna Lisi in her U.S. film debut—doesn’t even have a name, identified only as “Mrs. Ford” in the credits. Without giving anything away, even the film’s “climax” is pretty egregious in this regard—yes, of course, it’s all played for laughs but it is undeniably politically incorrect and incredibly misogynistic given our more enlightened times (and I mean that genuinely without any intended irony or tongue in cheek—though it must be said that my wife mentioned to me that she loved this film growing up). The saving grace is the film’s final message when balance is restored—that love (and married life) does, indeed, conquer all.

That said, I've always enjoyed these 1960s' breezy PG "sex comedies" when I was a kid, such as Goodbye Charlie and Sex and the Single Girl (which Quine also directed, along with another personal favorite film of mine from the period, Paris When It Sizzles). The actors are great and the film looks terrific—Lemmon, of course, is always Lemmon and he engages in quite a bit of physical comedy that is impressive and considerable even for him. 

As for the actress Virna Lisi, while she doesn’t really have much to work with, she is nevertheless charming because her character is genuinely sweet and truly in love with her husband (he comes to realize that he is deeply in love with her as well).

And while, of course, not intended to be an accurate portrayal of cartoonists and comics, I nevertheless enjoyed the representation of the profession. You get to see him at the drawing board and inking. It should be added that the strips in the movie are terrific, done by professional cartoonist Mel Keefer, an experienced newspaper comic strip artist on titles like Perry Mason and Rick O'Shay.

I also discovered years later that one of my favorite cartoonists of all time—the great Alex Toth— did a series of teaser strips to promote the series in the Hollywood Reporter (signed “Stanley Ford,” natch) and include samples of that work below!

Below: Strips for the movie by Mel Keefer

Below: Promotional art for the film by Alex Toth