Late Bloomer

Cactus Flower answers one of the less pressing but more engaging questions facing America today: Can Laugh-In's Goldie Hawn really act? Yes, she can, and so can Walter Matthau and Ingrid Bergman. With that kind of cast, a Sears, Roebuck catalogue could serve as a script, and Cactus Flower is far more than that. Director Gene Saks is no Billy Wilder, but Wilder's collaborator I.A.L. Diamond (Some Like It Hot, The Apartment) is still I.A.L. Diamond, and he knows funny lines when he writes them. Ornamenting Abe Burrows' stage hit (itself an adaptation of a French farce), Diamond outfits his confident cast with a situation as pretested as a lunar mission.

In New York, a bachelor dentist named Julian Winston (Walter Matthau) enjoys the benefits of a towheaded gamine, Toni Simmons (Goldie Hawn). How can he elude the marriage trap? Simple: by telling Toni that he is already bridled with a wife and saddled with three children. Suspicious, the mistress demands to see the wife. Winston persuades his spinster nurse, Stephanie Dickinson (Ingrid Bergman), to pose as Mrs. Dentist. Byzantine complications add a flush to Stephanie's sallow countenance, but the complications are purely formal. Once Bergman zeroes in on a male lead, the light comedienne should pack her gags and go home.

Matthau maintains the posture of a question mark and the consummate frustration of a period that longs to be an exclamation point. Goldie is a natural reactress; her timing is so canny that even her tears run amusingly. In recent years Broadway comedies have not survived translation into film. Although unpretentious, Cactus Flower succeeds on screen, thanks to two old masters--and a shiny new one--who have learned that actors get known by the comedy they keep.

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