SunnyHello Nice effects though.

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Sabah Hensley This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Jay Raskin The general consensus seems to be that the movie is watchable, but not wonderful. I would have to agree.It plays like an extended episode of a smart 1950's sit-com, something like "Love that Bob" (Robert Cummings).Jane Russell is fine as a tough but vulnerable sexy Hollywood star (is there any other kind?). It is terribly sad that at age 36, this was her last real starring vehicle.She's surrounded by a lot of fine actors, including Adolf Menjou, Ralph Meeker, Keenan Wynne, Una Merkel, and Fred Clarke. Unfortunately, they all just walk through their roles without much enthusiasm. It seems just another day at the office for all of them. Menjou and Meeker starred in Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" that same year, both giving extraordinary performances.Norman Taurog started off directing silent films, made some excellent movies in the 1930's ("Boys Town", "Big Broadcast of 1936"), did good work with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in the 1950's, and ended his career in the 1960's by directing nine (good to mediocre) Elvis Presley movies. He knows how to keep things moving and get some laughs, but he doesn't involve the audience enough in his stories or characters to make himself a great director.One problem in script is that the good guys are lovable kidnappers. It is hard to accept Meeker or Wynn as lovable kidnappers, lovable, yes, but kidnappers, no. The script intimates that Meeker has turned kidnapper to get revenge for an unjust manslaughter conviction for which he spent four years in jail. Yet, this seems just a plot device as Meeker does not seem vengeful, but only taciturn over his four lost years.In one scene Russell mention the fact that Meeker smokes a pipe instead of a cigar and attributes it to him not knowing his part (a kidnapper) very well). It is really the script that doesn't know how to bring the romance in, after the kidnapping. It really is a problem that the acting and direction doesn't solve. Giving Meeker's character a real and specific need for the kidnapping - raising money to save his dying child, for example - could have explained the action better.The movie could also have been better if Jane had acted more sexy in more scenes. She does in a few scenes in the first half only and they are the funniest in the movie.There's a lot of talk in the opening scenes about the cutting of a bathtub scene in the movie that Laurel Stevens (Jane Russell) is starring in. She demands that the censored too sexy scene be put back in or she's quitting. "The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown" needed that bathtub scene. If I ever get a chance to remake this movie, I will put it in.

theowinthrop Shown last night on Turner Classic Films, THE FUZZY PINK NIGHTGOWN was based on a novel that was published in 1956. The story is simple: A man has just been released from prison after four years, serving a major crime sentence for something he did not do. The man and his friend are hired by a conniving film studio head to waylay the studio's leading bombshell actress, who has just made a film about a kidnapping, and subsequently "demand" a ransom. Gradually the man and the star get to know each other, fall in love, and various complications emerge (dealing with the man's friend/associate in the fake kidnapping, with the miscalculation of the producer who finds few people in the public believe it's a real kidnapping, and with the suspicions of the Police Detective who has been involved with the man since arresting him in the first crime four years earlier). Like most situation comedies, the central story line makes little real sense. If a man is freed after any time from a prison, either because he was erroneously arrested or because he was guilty but has served his sentence, he will try to avoid idiotic plans that can land him back into jail again. Ralph Meeker was wrongly convicted of second degree murder, and then the real killer was discovered. He is (as is repeated several times) not a real convict (meaning he is not "hardened" - at least supposedly). If so, he certainly would not be roped into such a silly publicity stunt that could be made to look like he is criminal (and end up returning him to jail). Ironically Meeker would shortly play another victim of "judicial injustice" but in a great serious film - he was one of the three soldiers who are court-martial-ed and shot for cowardice under fire in PATHS OF GLORY.His friend Keenan Wynn is a sillier type of mug (Wynn at this time was usually playing side-kicks like Kirk Douglas' friend in MY DEAR SECRETARY or "mugs" like the gangster - with James Whitmore - who is trying to collect a debt from Howard Keel in KISS ME KATE). Interestingly enough, during this film Jane Russell quotes Shakespeare's line "Conscience doth make cowards of us all", and Wynn mulls over the line - making the viewer momentarily think of that glorious duet almost a decade earlier with Whitmore of "Brush Up Your Shakespeare". But KISS ME KATE was a better comedy. Anyway Wynn ends up a voice of reason (!) trying to water down Meeker's bitterness as much as he can. Again it stretches realism to a breaking point to think of Wynn doing this, but he is so disarmingly nice that one roots for him all the same.Russell, as the bombshell actress, is turned into a "Marilyn" clone. This too, like the "Shakespeare" reference for Wynn, makes one think of her appearance a few years earlier with Monroe in GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDS (again, a superior film), wherein she briefly wears a blond wig to disguise herself as Marilyn. But she openly reveals it's a fake to Meeker and Wynn to help them avoid problems with the police (their friendly nemesis Fred Clark). For her pains Meeker just throws her gesture in her face as proof of her phoniness (which it really isn't).As the movie producer/chief conniver, Adolphe Menjou acts as voluble and dyspeptic as he usually does in such roles, but he was also Oliver Niles, producer - friend of Norman Main in the 1937 A STAR IS BORN, and he was the more wolfish but competent Broadway producer in STAGEDOOR (again two other better films). This movie is full of moments that ironically recall better films. Don't get me totally wrong. While not great cinema, or even good cinema, it is amusing enough. Watch the scene where Russell and Wynn get drunk on his eggnog (it's around Christmas time) made from eggs and straight booze. Or see Clark in any scene - especially when he confronts Meeker and Wynn at their "hideout" (he doesn't know it is one) which is too expensive for them to afford. His cat and mouse with them is worth watching, and reminds us of what a fine comic actor he was. Or Menjou telling the police (Clark and an equally unimpressed Milton Frome) and a "Hedda Hopper" clone (Benay Venuta) of how he definitely did not fake a kidnapping for publicity purposes. Venuta hands the bow-beating, supposedly sorrow-struck Menjou a handkerchief to wipe his eyes - which, of course, have no real tears in them!Towards the end, when Meeker and Russell are speeding in Clark's stolen police car (don't ask!) to get to the airport, they go up a road along a small cliff-side mountain that looks familiar to us. They are trying to stop Wynn from collecting a $100,000 ransom fee and fleeing with it to Mexico. The road and cliff are very familiar: they are the same road and cliff that Spencer Tracy and the cast of IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, WORLD drove in the opposite direction, when Tracy's "Captain Culpepper" had the stolen money in his car and was planning to flee to Mexico. I tell you, every point in this film reminds you of an earlier or later better movie!

David (Handlinghandel) Ralph Meeker looks great. He tended toward puffiness in the all too few movies he made after the great "Kiss Me Deadly." Here he is trim and does a good job (with little to work with.) Keenan Wynn is all right. He played sidekicks -- sort of the Tony Randall of the 1950s.Jane Russell wears the title outfit. She got a bad rap as an actress. She was hilarious in "Gentleman Prefer Blondes" and very convincing in her adventure/thrillers with Robert Mitchum.Here she is OK. Her acting is OK, that is. But she's supposed to be a movie star at her peak and this is a little hard to buy. I remember her TV ads in which she spoke of "us full-figured gals." These came a couple decades after "The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown." But the nightgown, and everything she wears, looks like a maternity frock. She looks big here. In the beginning of the film she wears a long blonde wig. It is monumentally unbecoming. She looks better when she takes it off.Still, the movie is a disappointment. It's always a treat to see Meeker. And the supporting cast comprises familiar faces and is amusing. But the movie is a misfire. Russell and Meeker have no particular chemistry. It isn't touching. And it isn't really very funny, director Taurog notwithstanding.

max von meyerling I remember seeing this picture as a kid but recall only the title. It now resembles nothing so much as a high fifties artifact. The unexplained super deluxe beach house complete with private beach is done up in fieldstone and knotty pine, in other words, fifties heaven. The music is by Billy May, the heir apparent to irrelevant big band music jazzed up in fifties fashion. Then there's the reliable fifties trope whereby the feisty bitchy woman is tamed by the alpha male who it is agreed upon will be "the boss". In fact the pairing is the typical one whereby the designated "good looking" guy (just check out the impermeability of what was considered "good looking" in any other period) gets the girl. We have to go through the whole story to arrive at the obvious, predestined ending. To go deeper, the limited cast of three, (and a few others) captured mostly on one set, functions as a sort of fifties commedia dell'arte. We have the hero (Ralph Meeker), his dumb guy assistant (Keenan Wynn) and the beautiful lady (Jane Russell) who must be tamed. There's even a policeman (Fred Clark) to play straight and a denouement based on switching suitcases.I hadn't remembered that the title, obviously used to lend the picture an undeserved prurient aspect, is a terrible misnomer considering its in black and white. Is that '57 T-Bird being drive at the beginning of the picture fire engine red? Who knows. It just seems odd in the extreme for a film with a color in the title to be made in black and white but it is understandable that in that it was a low budget affair produced by Jane Russell and her husband, former football hero Q back (Cleveland and Los Angeles Rams) Bob Waterfield. Not only was FUZZY shot in black and white, but also in academy ratio and not wide screen. There aren't that many sets either so it resembles independent productions of today. However the crafts people, cameraman, editor etc. were first rate. This picture was a flop when it came out, the last picture that Russ-Field made and really the last starring role for Jane Russell, save for a couple of those weird A. C. Lyles nostalgia fests where vintage actors go through the motions in generic scripts as if it were 20 years earlier and they still had careers.The central character, a spoiled brat ego maniac female star, is relevant today, but the whole thought about kidnapping isn't funny or even amusing anymore, even though the kidnapee turning the tables on the kidnappers story has had a long and honorable history since at least O'Henry and maybe existed in 4th century B.C. Greece. Not recommended except for decoration, fashion, design and American Studies students who need inspiration to do a paper for school.