When It Fizzles

The Art of Love. On the back lot at Universal City, Love creates a cardboard Paris and fills it with evidence that 1965 is a dull year abroad:

As a Yankee painter in Paris, Dick Van Dyke wonders why his canvases don't sell. "What do I have to do--cut off an ear?" he groans. His best friend, an unpublished and unprincipled writer, James Garner, suggests that a dead artist sells better than a live one.

As a stray sex kitten, Elke Sommer jumps off a bridge so that Van Dyke can jump after her, triggering a fake suicide that makes the paintings sell.

As Van Dyke's curvaceous fiancee, Angie Dickinson mourns him on Garner's shoulder and takes the easy way out of every crisis by fainting.

As Madame Coco La Fontaine, proprietress of an overstuffed boite de nuit, Ethel Merman sports pink, green and violet wigs, and shouts insults at anyone who stops by to untangle the plot. Merman's bad temper is understandable, since she has to oversee a series of stale farcical escapades, the last of which has Garner going to the guillotine accused of Van Dyke's murder.

The scenario was slapped together by TV Jokesmith Carl Reiner (The Dick Van Dyke Show). It handily meets the standards of Producer Ross Hunter (Pillow Talk), who treats every comedy as a sumptuously vulgar fashion show.

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