A GUIDE FOR THE MARRIED WOMAN
US, 1978, 104 minutes, Colour.
Cybill Shepherd, Charles Frank, John Hillerman, Eve Arden, Mary Crosby, Bonnie Franklin, George Gobel, Tom Poston.
Directed by Hy Averback.
A Guide for the Married Woman is an early star vehicle on television for Cybill Shepherd. Cybill Shepherd had emerged on the big screen in the films of Peter Bogdanovich including The Last Picture Show, Daisy Miller, At Long Last Love. While she appeared in many films, including Taxi Driver, she made her mark on the small screen with Bruce Willis in Moonlighting.
The film has a gallery of character actors from the 70s as well as from earlier, especially Eve Arden and John Hillerman.
The film is one of those television concoctions about love and sexuality – a bored housewife contemplating having an affair. It is all very glamorous-looking – and the title is a throwback to Gene Kelly’s film of the 60s with Walter Matthau, A Guide to the Married Man. Of course, it is no such thing.
The film was directed by Hy Averback whose career was mainly in television, as with this film, but who made a number of films in the second half of the 60s for cinema including Where Were You When the Lights Went Out, The Great Bank Robbery, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas and Suppose They Gave A War But Nobody Came.
1. Title? Comparisons with A Guide for the Married Man? Entertaining comedy? Moralising comedy?
2. Entertainment for the home audience? The tone of the telemovie? The background of affluent Californian society? Audiences identifying with it? The elements of comedy soap opera?
3. The marriage setting, the wedding, the time, the motel, the anniversaries, patterns, children, home and exasperations? The situation comedy sketch of a marriage and its progress? Regress?
4. The focus on Sybil Shepherd: in herself, moods, talking with Maggie, listening, the bet, the look and her change? Moral? Self-knowledge? The influence of her friends? Her work? The fantasy with the author - and its becoming reality? The fantasy of the various men and of her husband? The humorous blend of fantasy and reality?
5. The effect of the experience on her? Talked into the affair? The emphasis on the imagination? The coach, her friend's husband, the underwear salesman, the various husbands etc.?
6. Maggie and her talk, cynicism, real and moralising? The bet? Listening? The others and the parties? Their husbands?
7. Maggie's husband, his work? Relationship with Maggie? Her openness about affairs? His proposal and her rejection?
8. The variety of types and her imagining relationships with them? Their male chauvinist attitudes?
9. The convention - and the comedy sequence with George Gobel? with the underwear salesman and his propositions and amoral stances?
10. The encounter with the author, the relationship in fact, the experience - and neither telling?
11. The confession, the discovery of her husband's affair, her angry reaction?
12. The picture of modern American society? The brittle nature of marriage? The need for both sides to understand each other, be alert? Affairs? The comedy touch to make moral points? An enjoyable telemovie way of moralising?
