I really liked this one, it's certainly an underrated Billy Wilder. Yet, I thought it could have been better with Peter Sellers in the role of Ray Walston. Wilder was a couple of weeks into shooting this when Sellers got a heart attack and had to be replaced. Does anybody know where one might have a glance at the Sellers material (e.g. DVD)?
shareOh man, that would be fascinating to see. I doubt it though. Considering how old the film is, the idea of outtakes being available is a bit of a long shot (though not impossible). Doesn't help that the footage would have been discarded as unusable while the film was being made.
Wilder and Sellers had bitter disagreements during the short period they worked together. If Sellers hadn't had a heart attack, it's still possible that he would have been fired. Or that their sour relationship would have killed the film. Who knows? Walston is pretty dull (though the film is still quite good). Sellers certainly has more screen presence (even if it is hard to picture him as a straight man)...
Sorry, I couldn't agree less. In my opinion, Walston is perfect. He really represents the physically most ordinary, slightly choleric, yet likeable character Orville J. Spooner is supposed to be - a more or less (seemingly) insignificant persona living in the back of beyond.
I'm afraid Sellers wouldn't have been able to achieve this effect. He would surely have tried to create a typical Sellers character, including all of his (wearisome) mannerisms, thus upstaging the rest of the cast.
Walston matched perfect with his Beethoven-jersey! :p
shareCameron Crowe asked Billy Wilder in his very late years (his nineties) if footage existed of Peter Sellers in "Kiss, Me Stupid." Wilder said "probably," but seemed to have no idea where it might be.
Old Billy was probably wrong. Even in the age of DVD "extras," finding old footage of movies that were giant classics or hits is very hard to do. I'd wager the Sellers footage is long lost and/or destroyed. About the only hope for finding it is if it is in somebody's garage.
Wilder favorite Jack Lemmon was offered the Sellers role first, but for once, his schedule conflicted (or maybe Lemmon just found this one "too smutty.") Then Sellers took on the role and had the heart attack (indeed, as posted above, after alienating Wilder and other cast members so much he might have quit or been fired anyway.) Ray Walston stepped in.
My main problem with Ray Walston in the part is that "Kiss Me Stupid" clearly was built as a three-star proposition. Walston had been a good character actor for Wilder in "The Apartment," and was about to get hot on "My Favorite Martian" on TV, but he was not a star. Moreover, he wasn't a particularly attractive man, which rather "threw" the story in a way that Lemmon or Sellers in the role would not have. Frankly, its rather hard to buy Novak "falling" for Walston for real so quickly, as she must if the plot is to work.
Interesting: the beauty playing Walston's wife was Felicia Farr, Jack Lemmon's wife. I wonder if she would have played this role had Jack Lemmon agreed to play the Walston part?
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Tony Randall would have been a better bet than Ray Walston.
At "the end of the day," Ray Walston had a few great movie and TV roles under his belt: the Devil in "Damn Yankees," Mr. Hand in "Ridgemont High," the judge on "Picket Fences." Even the Martian, who at least had millions of young fans.
But he was wrong in all regards for "Kiss, Me Stupid." They needed a co-equal star -- or at least a proven laugh getter like Randall (who might have BECOME a star in "Kiss Me Stupid.") Looks and likeability were also issues; Randall had them both; Walston, not so much.
Much as I like "Kiss Me Stupid," its script was fairly heavy-handed sex stuff for Billy Wilder after "Some LIke it Hot" and "The Apartment." I suspect a few actors didn't want to follow Peter Sellers into such a "smutty" risk of a movie, Wilder or no Wilder. Hence, the loss of all those other great possibilities -- Jerry Lewis? The mind boggles. But he might have pulled it off if he behaved himself.
Still, it needed somebody other than Walston in that role. That was like throwing in the towel.
I think Jack Lemmon -- who was offered the Sellers role FIRST, I believe -- was simply overbooked. He made a LOT of movies in '63-64-65, and one of them -- "The Great Race" -- took forever to make.
Still, Lemmon was reportedly a good judge of scripts. He may have felt odd about "Kiss Me Stupid."
Amongst the actors mentioned before, I believe that Ray Walston was the best choice for Orville Spooner.
Ray being short, lean, without conventional good looks, and with a proven track record at playing characters who are excitable and (as flipshoes mentioned) slightly choleric, he was the exact opposite of what Dino first appeared to be — a big, brawny, good-looking, smooth-talking girl magnet.
In any conventional love triangle, Orville would be odd man out, in fact, he would hardly be in the race. Yet, as Dino’s character is revealed, we see him exposed as the worst kind of Lothario. The strength of the Wilder and Diamond script is demonstrated by the fact that in the end, the audience is content to see Orville to win the girl.
In fact, Orville gets both girls. He keeps his wife (having learned, to control his jealousy) and Polly the Pistol leaves Climax, having spurned Dino, even for money. Dino gets only a one night stand with an amateur floosey for five hundred dollars, thus freeing Polly from remaining the Climax Pistol.
Both Tony Randall and Dick Van Dyke had, to that point at least, not displayed the smoldering anger which makes the lengths to which Walston’s Orville goes, believable. Danny Kaye’s usual performance would be too foolish to maintain the character. While, with either Tony Curtis or James Garner playing Orville, the physical disparity between Orville and Dino would be lost. (Would you find it surprising to learn that both Zelda Spooner and Polly the Pistols prefer an Orville who looks like Curtis, or Garner, to a lecherous Dino?)
Luckily, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin were no longer speaking, let alone acting together, in case anyone thought Orville would work better played as an imbecile.
In my opinion, the only other person mentioned who could have played Orville, was Jack Lemmon. (Reasonable, since the part was written with him in mind.) Lemmon would probably have turned in a slightly less irascible Orville, and his looks would be against him, so the contrast between Orville and Dino would be less noticeable.
No doubt, Lemmon would have been the bigger box office draw, but simply looking at which casting best exploits the strengths of the script, in my opinion, Walston was the happiest choice.
An interesting defense of Walston, wmousie. Worth pondering.
Given that Jack Lemmon was in the Wilder movies both before ("Irma La Douce") and after ("The Fortune Cookie") "Kiss Me Stupid," we can figure that he was first choice for the role. I have to believe he rejected it, even with all those other offers on the table, he would have gone with a Wilder role he felt good doing. The real irony is that Lemmon's (beautiful) real-life wife, Felicia Farr, took the role of the cuckolded/cuckolding wife. That would have been something with her real husband in the role.
I rather think that Peter Sellers is the loss here. He was a star by 1964, and I think he would have played well off of Martin and in the service of Wilder.
Though Sellers drew some bad comments in the press from Wilder and Martin after he said bad things about "Kiss Me Stupid," Sellers DID eventually guest on the Dean Martin TV show, and the two men evidently enjoyed ad-libbing off of each other. They would have been a nice pair in "Kiss Me Stupid."
My main issue with Ray Walston is commercial, only: this movie needed three relatively co-equal stars (like Monroe, Curtis, and Lemmon in "Some Like It Hot" -- she was the big star, but the other two were "hot" enough, too). Walston was never a star.
Good actor, though. And interesting in this movie.
Sellers suffered his heart attack in early April of 1964, and you'd have to expect that even had Lemmon been available and ready to shoot straight away, production would have stalled for at least a week. Production for Lemmon's The Great Race began in June and lasted five months, and seeing as Lemmon's How to Murder Your Wife premiered right at a month after Kiss Me, Stupid did, it's likely he was working on that picture, or at least getting ready to do so, when Sellers had to drop out of the production, and Lemmon probably couldn't have finished it in the short window before The Great Race began shooting (and because The Great Race was such a huge-budgeted movie for its time, its production wasn't going to be pushed back to accommodate Wilder). So I accept at face value the story that Lemmon was asked to replace Sellers but couldn't do so because of existing obligations, not because he didn't like the script.
Tony Randall has been suggested as somebody who would have fared better than Ray Walston, and I agree with that assessment. However, seeing as Send Me No Flowers premiered the middle of October 1964, you have to figure that shooting for it was still going on when somebody was needed to replace Sellers. My guess is that Walston was the replacement who could be brought in the quickest, and Wilder, having worked with him in The Apartment, judged him capable, and so he was the choice. I think he's OK in the role, but that Lemmon or Randall would have been better, mostly because Walston lacks the charisma to hold the screen with Martin and Novak.
Frankly, its rather hard to buy Novak "falling" for Walston for real so quickly, as she must if the plot is to work.
But one cannot help but wonder how a guy with Walston's face ended up with a total babe like Felicia Farr!...