Overview: What A Way to Go! (1964) starring Shirley MacLaine & Dean Martin

See the updated and expanded review of What a Way to Go! by clicking this sentence.

 

What A Way to Go! (1964)
Starring Shirley MacLaine, Dick van Dyke, Robert Mitchum, Paul Newman, Bob Cummings, Gene Kelly and Dean Martin
From 20th Century Fox Pictures

Looking for a laugh? Watch What A Way to Go! (1964). It‘s a satire of Hollywood genres and characters wrapped in a straightforward Rom Com storyline.
Every man that Louisa May Foster (Shirley MacLaine, The Trouble With Harry) marries becomes wealthy and soon dies. Believing that she is jinxed, Louisa turns for help to a psychiatrist (Bob Cummings, Dial M for Murder) and tells him the story of her life. The movie then goes to flashback.

The husbands are played by a smorgasbord of Classic Hollywood stars who unmercifully lampoon popular movie genres/characters.

There’s the Thoreau-loving, boy-next-door, Edgar Hopper (Dick Van Dyke, The Dick Van Duke Show, Mary Poppins); the Bohemian painter Larry Flint (Paul Newman, The Long, Hot Summer, The Hustler) whom Louisa meets in Paris; and café performer Pinky Benson (Gene Kelly, An American In Paris), among others.
There is no shortage of men for Louisa to kill off, but, of course, in the end she lives happily ever after.

Note: Throughout the film, Shirley MacLaine may be found in a variety of chic and outlandish costumes (including a variety of outrageous widow's weeds) by Oscar-winning costume designer Edith Head.

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"Is that your hair?"

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