Plane Janes

Boeing Boeing, by contrast, plows leadenly into every error that Male Companion avoids. Its graceless lechery weighs down a comedy about three airline hostesses who share a Paris flat with Tony Curtis. As a prodigiously oversexed American newspaperman, Tony has obviously never met a deadline, but he does keep busy checking timetables, the better to enjoy, one by one, his "fiancees" from British United (Suzanna Leigh), Lufthansa (Christiane Schmidt-mer) and Air France (Dany Saval). "You don't need a housekeeper--you need a Univac," snaps Tony's maid-of-all-work, Thelma Ritter, who schlumps through the premises changing linens, juggling menus, and scornfully polishing off a collection of stale sex jokes.

Based on a long-running Paris and London stage success that crash-landed on Broadway last year, Boeing limps along on the premise that broad French farce means a farce about broads in France. Curtis, faced by a crisis when a new line of jets with extra thrust brings all his airchicks to earth at once, sweats over a role that only suavity could save. He inevitably brings to mind the rather blunt question that one might ask about a fortyish satyr-about-town: not how he does it, but why. As a colleague who drops by to ogle Curtis' girls, Jerry Lewis gives, for him, an unusually restrained performance. Parents who mistake Boeing Boeing for a routine Jerry Lewis kid comedy will find, to their regret, that this is a show the whole family should shun.

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