MovieChat Forums > What a Way to Go! (1964) Discussion > Robert Cummings as Dr. Stephanson (SPOIL...

Robert Cummings as Dr. Stephanson (SPOILER WARNING)


I love this film, but I have a beef with Bob Cummings' character at the end.

After Louisa tells about the marriages to Edgar Hopper, Larry Flint, Rod Anderson, and Pinky Benson, Dr. Stephenson - out of the blue - proposes marriage to Louisa.

I'm guessing that her entire story of the four marriages was told to Stephenson in one single therapy session. To be sure, I'd have to re-watch the movie and see if her costume changed at all during the therapy scenes.

Considering that Stephenson is a good psychologist who has just finished listening to Louisa's story, I think that his sudden marriage proposal to her strains credibility to the breaking point.

As I said, I love the film. I too have ideas about who could / should appear in a remake, if anyone ever mounted a remake. But I thought that Stephenson's marriage proposal just didn't work.

Am I the only one who feels this way???

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No, you're not the only one. For these reasons:

1) A marriage proposal to a patient would be highly unethical;

2) It suggests that the psychiatrist is money mad, as everyone who Louisa had married got rich; and

3) It makes the psychiatrist appear to be beyond stupid, as all of those previous marriages (coincidence or not) ended with the death of the husband.

I've always been a Bob Cummings fan, but this role required little of him and only made him look silly, while demeaning the field of psychology.

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In a movie in which a guy gets molested and killed by painting machines, and another guy gets kicked through the side of a barn by a bull and flies hundreds of feet through the air to land perfectly in a water trough, you're quibbling about credibility being strained?

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