Linda and I happened to tune into TCM on Friday night just as Ben Mankiewicz was introducing "Cactus Flower". This movie was released in 1969, the year that I graduated from high school, and it was Goldie Hawn's first featured role in a motion picture, and she won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her performance. I suppose that I did see this movie way back when, but I had no special memory of it, and I was glad to watch it on Friday as if it were the first time I was seeing it.
"Cactus Flower" was originally a Broadway stage play written by Abe Burrows. The screenplay for the movie was written by I.A.L. Diamond (frequent collaborator of Billy Wilder). It was directed by Gene Saks, who was fresh off of directing hits like "Barefoot In The Park" and "The Odd Couple". Its stars, in addition to Hawn, were Walter Matthau and Ingrid Bergman. All of that means that the structure was in place for a pretty good comedy film, and everyone delivered.
The story: Matthau played a successful dentist in New York City. Bergman was his straitlaced office nurse who kept everything in line in the good dentist's professional life. Hawn was Matthau's much younger mistress. Matthau kept things from getting complicated with his lady friends by telling them that he was married and had three children. The kicker is that he is NOT married; he never has been. That kept them from pressuring him into marrying them. Complications arise when.....
- A distraught Hawn attempts to kill herself in her crummy NYC walk-up apartment because she realizes that she will never be able to fully have the love of her life
- Her next door neighbor, a hunky young struggling playwright, played by Rick Lenz, smells gas in the hallway, breaks into her apartment and saves her life
- Matthau finds out about the suicide attempt (how he finds out is a part of this whole magilla), and realizing that he doesn't want to lose the beautiful Goldie, tells her that he will divorce his wife
- Hawn then starts asking a lot of complicated questions: When did you decide to do this? When will you tell her? What about the children? This all leads up to Goldie saying that she wants to meet Matthau's wife
- In an effort to quell this pending disaster, Matthau asks his ever loyal Nurse Dickenson, played by Bergman, to meet Hawn and pretend to be his soon to be ex-wife
- At first Bergman refuses to have any part of such a tawdry scheme, but then.....
Well, you'll have to watch the movie to see what happens next. Hawn was charming in her role, and she no doubt earned her Oscar, and Matthau was great as the philandering dentist, but the real revelation in this movie, to me at least, was seeing Ingrid Bergman, the marvelous Ilsa Lund herself, playing a comic role. One of the great dramatic actresses of her generation, she was 54 years old when this movie was made, absolutely nailed it playing this part. Scenes of her pretending to be someone she was not, which included her dancing in a 1960's era discotheque with Goldie Hawn, were simply delightful.
She totally and completely nailed her role. Just because you are used to seeing great actors in dramatic parts doesn't mean that they can't do comedy as well, and Ingrid Bergman proved that in spades in "Cactus Flower".
As the comic complications unfolded in the movie, you could pretty much see how the story was going to unfold, but that takes nothing away from what was a delightful movie. If you've never seen it, try to find it somewhere - it is available on Prime Video and Tube - and watch it. You won't be disappointed.
Three and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander.
And a note on the Passage of Time. Why was TCM showing "Cactus Flower" on Friday night? Because Friday was Goldie Hawn's 80th birthday. Yikes!
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