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Promises! Promises!1963 Jayne Mansfield

Promises! Promises! (also known as Promise Her Anything) is a 1963 unrated sex comedy film, released after the demise of the Hays code and before the MPAA film rating system became effective, produced by Tommy Noonan (Three Nuts in Search of a Bolt). It was the first Hollywood motion picture release of the sound era to feature a mainstream star—Jayne Mansfield—in the nude. That distinction was to have gone to Marilyn Monroe, who shot a nude scene for director George Cukor's Something's Got to Give in 1962, but the film went unfinished after Monroe's death. The first movie featuring a mainstream star fully nude was A Daughter of the Gods (1916) featuring Annette Kellerman, but the Hays code had brought an end to nudity in mainstream American films.

Production

Low on production value, and made for less than US $200,000, the movie banked on Mansfield's nudity. She also sings two songs in the film - "I'm in Love" (also known as the "Lullaby of Love") and "Promise Her Anything". The production went through so much bickering between Noonan and Mansfield that Noonan had to fly in Jet Fore, a crack publicist from 20th Century Fox, to keep peace on the set.

Plotline

Sandy Brooks (Mansfield) is desperate to get pregnant, but her husband Jeff (Tommy Noonan), a television script writer, is too stressed out to make love to her. In an attempt at a sea change, they go on a pleasure cruise and meet another couple, Claire and King Banner (Marie McDonald and Mickey Hargitay). Both couples set out on a drunken spree. They end up changing partners when retiring to their rooms. Later both women discover that they're pregnant, and set out to find whether the fathers are their own or the other's husband.

Nude scenes

Mansfield and Tommy Noonan in the most repeated nude scene of the movie

Mansfield appears undressed in three scenes in Promises! Promises!. These three scenes are repeated a few times in the movie as dream sequences. The first and longest (59 seconds) in a part of the scene where she sings "I'm In Love" semi-nude in a foam filled bathtub, then bends over with her back to the camera. The second when she towels herself off (4 seconds), and the most repeated (4 times) third when she writhes around on a bed (6 seconds). Mansfield reportedly drank some champagne in order to give her the will to get undressed in front of the camera. Though the movie actually showed her only topless, a photo in Kenneth Anger's book Hollywood Babylon shows Mansfield on the set completely nude with pubic hair visible. In a set of photographs published in the Playboy pictorial (titled The Nudest Jayne Mansfield), Mansfield stares at her breast, as does T.C. Jones (Babbette, a female impersonator hair stylist), then grasps it in her hand and lifts it high.
During the 1960s, 8 mm mail order companies sold the nude footage. After Mansfield's death, the documentary Wild Wild World of Jayne Mansfield (1968) included nude scenes from this film and pages from the Playboy pictorial, along with scenes from her other films including Too Hot to Handle (1960), The Loves of Hercules (1960) and Primitive Love (1964).

Publicity

The publicity and advanced blurbs on Playboy put Mansfield's name out as a major box office draw, though reviews of the film were next to disastrous. However, most of the offers that she received were largely of similar skin flicks.
The film was heavily publicized in the July 1963 issue of Playboy, and led to an obscenity charge against Hugh Hefner, the publisher. Hefner was arrested by the Chicago police in June 1963, the only time in his life, and was acquitted by the jury. The jury voted 7-5 for acquittal. Copies of the issue reportedly sold for as much as $10 each. The film was presented for the first time on television in its uncut form in 1984 on the Playboy Channel. A VHS release soon followed but was only briefly in print. On February 14, 2006, VCI Video released the film on DVD with extras such as original trailers and a gallery of stills from the Playboy issue along with never before released lobby cards.

Reception

Promises! Promises! was banned in Cleveland and several other cities, though later the Cleveland court decided the nude scenes in the film were not lewd after all.
Both the original and an edited version enjoyed box office success in places where it was not banned,except for California. Mansfield was voted one of the Top 10 Box Office Attractions by theater owners that year. She received $150,000 for her role (half of the film's budget) and 10% of the film's profits.
The reviews included Los Angeles Herald-Examiner writing - "The film is a bust", and Variety writing - "The only excuse for this shabby self-propelled contrivance is that obviously there is an audience waiting to devour it." Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert wrote, "Finally in Promises! Promises! she does what no Hollywood star ever does except in desperation. She does a nudie. In 1963, that kind of box office appeal was all she had left."

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Full Film,The Mirror Crack'd 1980 Starring Elizabeth Taylor and Kim Novak

The Mirror Crack'd is a 1980 film British mystery film based on Agatha Christie's Miss Marple novel The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (1962). It was directed by Guy Hamilton and featured Angela Lansbury, Geraldine Chaplin, Tony Curtis, Edward Fox, Rock Hudson, Kim Novak, and Elizabeth Taylor.
This crime/mystery/thriller was adapted by Jonathan Hales and Barry Sandler, .
Scenes were filmed at Twickenham Film Studios, Twickenham, London, England, and on location in Kent.

Plot

Set in the fictional English village of St. Mary Mead, home of Miss Jane Marple (played by Lansbury), in 1953, a big Hollywood production company arrives to film a costume movie about Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I with two famous movie stars, Marina Rudd (played by Taylor) and Lola Brewster (played by Novak).
The two actresses are old rivals who hate each other. Marina, who is making a much heralded comeback after a prolonged "illness" and retirement, when she, in reality, has had a nervous breakdown, and her husband, Jason Rudd (played by Hudson), who is directing the movie they are making, arrive with their entourage. When she learns that Lola will be in the movie as well, she becomes enraged and vents her anger.
Lola and her husband, Martin N. "Marty" Fenn (played by Curtis), who is producing the movie they are making, then arrive. Excitement runs high in St. Mary Mead, as the locals have been invited to a reception held by the movie company in a manor house, Gossington Hall, to meet the celebrities. Lola and Marina come face to face at the reception and exchange some potent and comical insults, nasty one-liners, as they smile and pose for the cameras. The two square off in a series of hilarious and cleverly written and performed cat-fights throughout the movie.
Marina however, has been receiving anonymous death threats. After her initial exchange with Lola at the reception, she is cornered by a gushing, devoted fan, Heather Babcock (played by Maureen Bennett), who bores her with a long and detailed story about having actually met Marina in person during World War II. After recounting the meeting they had all those years ago, when she arose from her sickbed to go and meet the glamorous star, Babcock drinks a cocktail that was made for Marina and drops dead from poisoning.
The incident is unfortunate for Marina's mental state, and she is beside herself. Everyone is certain she was the intended murder victim. Once filming begins on the movie, she discovers that apart from threatening notes made up of newspaper clippings, her cup of coffee on the set has also been spiked with poison, sending her into fits of terror.
The police detective from Scotland Yard investigating the case, Inspector Debmot Craddock (played by Fox), is baffled as he tries to uncover who is behind the attempt on the life of the actress and the subsequent murder of the innocent woman. The suspected are Ella Zielinsky (played by Chaplin), Jason's production assistant who is secretly having an affair with him and would like Marina out of the way, and the hotheaded actress Lola Brewster.
Inspector Craddock asks his aunt, the renowned amateur detective Miss Jane Marple, who injured her foot at the reception and is confined to her home, for assistance. The main suspect, Zielinsky, is then killed by a lethal nose spray after going to a pay phone in the village, where she called the murderer and threatened to expose them. Miss Marple, now back on her feet, visits Gossington Hall, where Marina and Jason are staying, and views where Babcock's death occurred. Working from information received from her cleaning woman, Cherry Baker (played by Wendy Morgan), who was working as a waitress the day of the murder, the determined elderly sleuth begins to piece together the events of the fatal reception and solves the mystery. By the time she has collected all the evidence to indicate who committed the crime, however, another death occurs at Gossington Hall, which sadly closes the case on who the murderer in St. Mary Mead actually is: Marina Rudd, who has apparently committed suicide.
In the film's denouement, Miss Marple explains the murders that have occurred. Heather Babcock's story was Marina's initial motive. Ms. Babcock suffered from German measles — a rather harmless disease to most adults, but problematic for a pregnant woman. Heather Babcock innocently infected Marina when she met her during World War Two. Marina was pregnant at the time; the disease caused her child to be born with mental retardation. Upon hearing Heather cheerfully tell this story, Marina was overcome with rage and poisoned her without thinking. She then spread the idea that she was the intended victim, delivering the death threats and poisoning her own coffee. Ella, who made phone calls to various suspects from the pay phone, accidentally guessed correctly, prompting Marina to murder her. As Marina is now dead, she will not be brought to justice. Jason, her devoted husband, confesses to Miss Marple that he actually administered the dosage of poison to save her from prosecution. However, Marina didn't touch the hot chocolate he made for her and rather poisoned herself.
Agatha Christie's inspiration for the motive may have come from an incident in the life of actress Gene Tierney. In June 1943, while pregnant with her first daughter, Tierney contracted German measles during her only appearance at the Hollywood Canteen. Because of Tierney's illness, her daughter was born deaf, partially blind with cataracts and was severely developmentally disabled. Some time after the tragedy surrounding her daughter's birth, Tierney learned from a fan who approached her for an autograph at a tennis party that the woman (who was then a member of the women's branch of the Marine Corps) had sneaked out of quarantine while sick with German measles to meet Tierney at her only Hollywood Canteen appearance. In her autobiography, Tierney related that after the woman had recounted her story, she just stared at her silently, then turned and walked away. She wrote, "After that I didn't care whether ever again I was anyone's favorite actress." Biographers have theorized that Agatha Christie used this real-life tragedy as the basis of her plot for The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side. The incident, as well as the circumstances under which the information was imparted to the actress, is repeated almost verbatim in Christie's story. Tierney's tragedy had been well-publicized for years previously.