Film 46/52: They All Laughed (1981)
The three men play private detectives tailing women suspected of adultery, and two of the three manage to get themselves involved with their subjects, and many of the other women they interact with, along the way. Vonna felt Gazzara was way out of his league playing such a ladies man who all the women seemed to be captivated by. Ritter, right in the middle of his star-making run on Three's Company, plays to type as a bumbling romantic, frothing over Dorothy Stratten's character. I've always liked Ritter, and am a particular fan of the film he did just before this (Hero at Large). My enjoyment of this film was in large part based on his performance. The real surprise to me was crazy-haired Blane Novak, who co-wrote the film with Bogdonavich. His quirky character is the one who most naturally and realistically warms up to all of the women.
And while the female headliner is Audrey Hepburn, Bogdonavich populates the film with a variety of attractive women willing to put up with the antics of his male characters (Ritter being the visual representation of Bogdonavich, to be sure, though Vonna associated him with Gaszzara's off-putting older man). Patti Hansen plays Deborah (who Gazzara calls Sam, because he thinks she looks like a Sam), a pretty cab driver who hangs with Gazzara between his other flings. She's really good, and I was surprised to see she only had a few acting roles to her credit (and more surprised to find she's married to Keith Richards!). Colleen Camp plays an extremely (and effectively) annoying Western singer Christy Miller. She looked and sounded very familiar to me, though I couldn't recognize her from any particular role. Turns out she's been in a ton of films and TV shows that I've seen; just nothing that stands out in my memory. Joyce Hyser, who I've been a fan of since her leading role in the teen comedy Just One of the Guys, has a small role as a friend to a number of the other ladies. And of course, Dorothy Stratten (to whom the film was dedicated), the Playboy playmate who shortly before the film was released was murdered by her estranged husband after he discovered she had an affair with director Bogdonavich. That tale was documented in the Bob Fosse film Star 80 (which we came very close to watching for our 'S' movie). I was pleasantly surprised by her performance. She has a naturalism that makes it easy to see why Ritter's character is so infatuated with her (and also surprisingly, she's one of the few characters that doesn't seem to catch Gazzara's wandering eye). I may have to revisit her prior film, the sci-fi romp Galaxina, which I haven't seen in years, to see how that performance compares.
They All Laughed (the title take from a Gershwin song, one of several songs sung by Frank Sinatra on the soundtrack) is very much a New York picture, and Bogdonavich uses the setting well as a backdrop for the story. One wonders how the investigators manage to stay in business (considering they're responsible for as much adultery as they are hired to investigate), but taken as a standard romantic comedy, the film was an entertaining ride.
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