Promises! Promises!

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Promise! Promises!

Publicity poster of Promises! Promises!
Directed by King Donovan
Produced by Tommy Noonan, Donald F. Taylor
Written by Tommy Noonan, Edna Sheklow, William Welch
Starring Jayne Mansfield, Marie McDonald, Tommy Noonan, Mickey Hargitay, Fritz Feld, T.C. Jones
Music by Hal Borne
Cinematography Joseph F. Biroc
Editing by Edward Dutko
Release date(s) 15 August 1963
Running time 75 min
Country USA
Language English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile
This article is about the 1963 film. For other uses, see Promise (disambiguation).


Promises! Promises! (a.k.a. Promise Her Anything, 1963) is an unrated sex comedy film, released before the MPAA film rating system became effective, produced by Tommy Noonan (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Three Nuts in Search of a Bolt). It was the first Hollywood motion picture with sound to feature a mainstream star - Jayne Mansfield - in the nude.[1] Reportedly the credit was to go to Marilyn Monroe, who shot a nude scene for director George Cukor's unfinished film Something's Got to Give (1962). The credit of the first movie, with or without sound, featuring a mainstream star in the nude goes to A Daughter of the Gods (1916) featuring Annette Kellerman fully nude in a scene.[2]

Contents

[edit] Success and Criticism

June 1963 issue of Playboy featuring Mansfield on cover and The Nudest Jayne Mansfield pictorial
June 1963 issue of Playboy featuring Mansfield on cover and The Nudest Jayne Mansfield pictorial

Promises! Promises! was banned in Cleveland and several other cities, though both the original and an edited version enjoyed box office success elsewhere.[3] Mansfield was voted one of the Top 10 Box Office Attractions by theater owners that year. She also received $150,000 for her role (half of the film's budget) and 10% of the film's profits.

The film was heavily publicized in July 1963 issue of Playboy, leading to an obscenity charge against Hugh Hefner, the publisher.[4] Hefner was arrested in June '63, the only time in his life, and was acquitted by the jury.[5] Copies of the issue reportedly sold for as much as $10.00 a piece.[6]

[edit] Plotline

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The plot revolves around two married couples who go on a cruise together. Jayne Mansfield (Sandy Brooks) is desperate to get pregnant. But her husband Tommy Noonan (Jeff Brooks), 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 - Marie McDonald (Claire Banner) and Mickey Hargitay (King Banner).

Both couples set out on a drunken spree. The foursome end up exchanging partners when retiring to their rooms. Later both women discover that they're pregnant, and set out to find who the fathers are, since no one is sure who the father is for which baby.[7]

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Nude scenes

Mansfield and Tommy Noonan in the most repeated nude scene of the movie
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 (penned by herself) 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).[8]

Though the movie actually showed her only topless, a photo in Kenneth Anger's book Hollywood Babylon shows Mansfield on the set completely nude.[9] 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.[10]

The nude scenes of this film was incorporated into the documentary Wild Wild World of Jayne Mansfield (1968), along with her other films like Too Hot to Handle (1960), The Loves of Hercules (1960) and Primitive Love (1964).


[edit] Trivia

It reportedly took some imbibing of champagne on Mansfield's part to get her undressed in front of the camera.[11]

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnote

  1. ^ Black, Gregory D. (January 26, 1996). Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies (Cambridge Studies in the History of Mass Communication). UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56592-8. 
  2. ^ Black, Gregory D. (January 26, 1996). Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies (Cambridge Studies in the History of Mass Communication). UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56592-8. 
  3. ^ Dirks, Tim. Sex in Cinema: The Greatest and Most Influential Erotic / Sexual Films and Scenes (HTML). FIlm Site. Retrieved on 2006-11-23.
  4. ^ Anger, Kenneth (November 15, 1981). Hollywood Babylon: The Legendary Underground Classic of Hollywood's Darkest and Best Kept Secrets. USA: Dell (Reissue edition). ISBN 0-440-15325-5. 
  5. ^ Has Hef ever been arrested? (HTML). Playboy Online. Retrieved on 2006-11-29.
  6. ^ Jayne Mansfield Biography - Part Nine: Taking it off (HTML). Bombshells. Retrieved on 2006-11-29.
  7. ^ Brennan, Sandra. "Promises! Promises!", The New York Times, 2006-11-25. Retrieved on 2006-11-25. (in English)
  8. ^ Promises! Promises! (1963) (HTML). Mr. Skin. Retrieved on 2006-11-25.
  9. ^ Anger, Kenneth (November 15, 1981). Hollywood Babylon: The Legendary Underground Classic of Hollywood's Darkest and Best Kept Secrets. USA: Dell (Reissue edition). ISBN 0-440-15325-5. 
  10. ^ Parish, James Robert (May 28, 2004). The Hollywood Book of Scandals : The Shocking, Often Disgraceful Deeds and Affairs of Over 100 American Movie and TV Idols. USA: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-142189-0. 
  11. ^ Promises! Promises! (1963) (HTML). IMDB. Retrieved on 2006-11-23.
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