I'm afraid that, today, this movie will be misunderstood. People will see it as another dumb Sinatra Swinging-Guy movie with a hep little tune thrown in. You gotta read between the lines with this one: consider the Debbie Reynolds character. She says things like "A woman just isn't FULFILLED until she's married and has children, dontcha think?" Her character has a promising career as a stage singer, but will throw it away toot-sweet just as soon as she can find herself a husband. In fact, her single-minded, frenzied ambition for landing a hubby should send up the red flags for you. The screenwriters, in their own frenzy of sarcasm, have created a terrifying figure in the chillingly perky frame of Miss Reynolds. Jeepers, she even goes to some sort of Homemakers Convention, sizing up the appliances and furniture, husband-hunting in the weirdest way I've ever seen in a movie -- she has several men sit in a easy chair, trying to discern WHICH man best "fits in" with the furniture she's fond of. Uh, the message is pretty loud and clear!
Sinatra's buddy from Indianapolis, the not-coincidentally named Joe (the typical American Shmo, 50's style), loves his wife of eleven years so much that he decides to shack up with Sinatra's Charlie for TWO WEEKS, to do . . . what? Figure it out. This Joe guy, played by David Wayne, is the probably the key to the whole picture, and is certainly contrasted with marriage-and-babies-crazy Debbie Reynolds. We see the results of a good Fifties marriage: Joe hides out, drinking and smoking like a maniac in his swinger-friend's sleazy apartment, whining about his wife's love of wall-to-wall carpeting and the cost of the kids' braces. He begins dating one of the swinger's girlfriends, Sylvia (brilliantly played by Celeste Holm). This Family Man proposes to Sylvia near the end of the picture (she talks him out of it). The hypocrite will return home to his wife in Indianapolis, who will never know how close her husband came to abandoning her. Getting the idea? Sylvia's another key character: in a startling monologue directed at Joe, she talks about how a woman is washed up by the age of 33. There are no available men left (thanks to the emasculating Reynolds types who circle guys like a pride of sharks), and those who are available are nutcases working on their fifth divorce, 19-year-olds looking for Mamas, etc. It's yet another depressing, scathing, indictment of what was going on culturally.
Another great scene is when Sinatra and Reynolds are alone at her parents' apartment. They turn on TV, and watch a bathing couple make out. Panting, Ms. Reynolds switches off the set and opens what she hopes will be a dull art book, which turns out to contain sexy Raphaelite prints. She slams the book closed, only to see a married couple make out from the apartment across the way. Aroused, Sinatra puts the make on her, and she tells him that the other couple have the "right" to do that, because of their state of grace as a married couple. Predictably, the scene ends in a big fight, which is the only way these horribly repressed people can release all their pent-up hormones.
Invaluable as a study of 1950's attitudes toward sex and marriage, *The Tender Trap* will surprise you. It was the Good Old Days . . . and certain moviemakers were none too happy about it. Fascinating.
