Let’s Talk About Sex: BOYS’ NIGHT OUT (MGM 1962)

“Sex farces” were extremely popular during the late 50’s/early 60’s. They were filled with martinis, smarmy innuendoes, and smutty jokes, though no sex ever really happens. The comedies of director Frank Tashlin and the Doris Day/Rock Hudson teamings helped popularize this rom-com subgenre. A good example is BOYS’ NIGHT OUT, a humorous take on suburban mores starring James Garner and Kim Novak.

The premise is pretty simple: four friends commute every day from suburban Connecticut to New York City. They are divorced Garner and his married buddies Howard Duff , Howard Morris , and the ubiquitous Tony Randall, who made a career appearing in these type of films. When the “boys” catch Garner’s boss out with his mistress, they start to daydream what it would be like to get their own love shack going, away from their wives and equipped with a beautiful blonde to do their bidding. Garner balks, but soon the boys talk him into finding an apartment in the city. He does, and wouldn’t you know it, a blonde enters the picture. She’s Kim Novak, but what the boys don’t know is she’s actually a sociology grad student doing a thesis on “The Adolescent Fantasies of the Adult Suburban Male”.

This sets the stage for hilarity, as the boys each pick a night to spend in the city with the beautiful Novak. No sex occurs, as Randall just wants to talk (he’s constantly interrupted at home by wife Janet Blair), Duff is content to fix things around the pad (spouse Anne Jeffreys won’t allow it, the neighbors will think they’re not affluent enough), and Morris, whose wife Patti Page is permanently dieting, just wants to eat! Of course, none of them will admit it to the others, instead grinning and making sly remarks. That leaves Garner, who tries to save Novak from her fate as a courtesan. The wives get suspicious and hire private detective Fred Clark to investigate, leading to more hilarious complications and a knockabout ending that finds Garner and Novak together at last.

BOYS’ NIGHT OUT is loaded with Familiar Faces, like William Bendix as a wise bartender, Jessie Royce Landis as Garner’s mother, Oscar Homolka as Novak’s sociology professor, and Zsa Zsa Gabor as Garner’s boss’s (Larry Keating) mistress. Dead End Kid Billy Halop plays an elevator operator, Ruth McDevitt a nosy neighbor, and Jim Backus the guy who rents out the apartment. Its director was Michael Gordon, who also did PILLOW TALK and MOVE OVER, DARLING (as well as the Oscar-winning CYRANO DE BERGERAC). Kim Novak herself produced the film for her Kimco Productions, her first and last in that capacity. BOYS’ NIGHT OUT boosted James Garner’s feature film stock, and he was on his way to movie stardom. Films like BOYS’ NIGHT OUT and others of the genre seem pretty tame compared to contemporary farces, but there’s still a charm about them, of a more innocent time when just talking about sex onscreen was as titillating as graphic scenes of flesh on flesh.