Fri 25 Jul 2014
Movie Review: THREE BLONDES IN HIS LIFE (1961).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[6] Comments
THREE BLONDES IN HIS LIFE. Cinema Associates, 1961. Jock Mahoney, Greta Thyssen, Jesse White, Elaine Edwards, Anthony Dexter, Valerie Porter. Director: Leon Chooluck.
When an insurance investigator on the West Coast mysteriously disappears, the head of the firm on the East Coast sends Duke Wallace, Jock Mahoney’s character, across country to find out what happened.
Turns out that the man in question was seriously attracted to blondes, and his wife has dyed her hair that color to keep him, to little avail. It also turns out that the man is dead, in what appears to be a love nest cabin up in the mountains. There are two other blondes in the story, both love-starved wives involved in cases that Collins (the dead man) had been working and closed.
What this is is the kind of movie in which we see just how love-starved the three blondes are, as Duke makes his appointed rounds (in suit and tie) to each of the three ladies in question and in turn, but the funny thing is that he always manages to keep the suit and tie on, or at least he does while the cameras are rolling.
There also is a lot of emphasis on bosoms and bottoms, including those of the secretary of the fellow who heads up the West Coast office, but since she’s a brunette, she doesn’t really count, but I’ll mention the actress who plays her, Darlene Hendricks, just for the record.
I was reminded a lot of the second- or third-rank tier of fictional PI’s in the paperbacks of the 50s and 60s, guys like Johnny Liddell, Peter Chambers and Lou Largo. The budget was smaller than it might have been, though, and the story seems to end just as the money probably ran out.
There is one fight scene that might make this movie worth watching, though, if you happen to watch long enough. It comes quite close to end, and it begins with Duke, or rather Jock Mahoney doing his own stunts (or so I’m told), crashing headlong through a closed door, clear across the room at full tilt, and ramming into the guy inside, uptilting him as well as himself against a stuffed chair and into the wall on the left side of the screen, upon which point they manage to smash up the rest of the room very thoroughly and badly.
It nearly took my breath away, it did.
July 25th, 2014 at 8:17 pm
Mahoney was one of the top stuntmen in Hollywood, standing in for many stars including Errol Flynn in the final duel in THE ADVENTURES OF DON JUAN, often called the most dangerous stunt of its time because there was no way to take precautions and only one take because if it went wrong the stuntman wouldn’t be able to do it a second time and only Mahoney was crazy enough to try it.
I suppose because he plays an insurance investigator here I kept thinking how Mahoney would be as Milo March.
Jesse White has a better role than usual here assisting Mahoney in the investigation.
Save of the bosoms and bottoms this would probably have worked better as a television pilot.
Truthfully the Johnny Liddell’s were usually better plotted than this and Peter Chambers often much better, Henry Kane had a way with words and Chambers a voice unique to him. This reminded me more of that soft core series with the guy with the eye patch on the cover — Steve Harrigan or something on that line.
July 25th, 2014 at 8:27 pm
Yes, I kind of exaggerated a little — well, a lot — in the Johnny Liddell-Peter Chambers comparison. At their worst, the books of either two were much better plotted than this movie could ever hope to be. What I was thinking of was the emphasis on the overly generous endowments and other feminine charms of the women involved, which were always a great part of the adventures of those paperback PIs, and there I think I’m on safer ground.
I also wanted to name a couple of PIs that people might have heard of, not that Steve Harrigan fellow or others equally unknown.
But, yes, your point is well taken.
As for Jesse White, I could have done without him entirely.
July 26th, 2014 at 1:09 am
This reminded me a little of some of the Pete McGrath books, a generic eye if there ever was one. Basil Copper’s Miles Tripp was better than this. Even the Carter Brown’s that were built on some minor sexual theme were better than this.
July 26th, 2014 at 7:57 am
Ah, Carter Brown. Now we’re getting close. I won’t disagree that the plotting in the CB books was better, but we are narrowing in on the kind of story that this film reminded me of, excluding the semi-sleazy (or even sleazy) PI paperback fiction that were really sex novels in disguise.
Just for the fun of it, I looked up Carter Brown in Hubin to see if any of his books were made into movies, and there sees to have been only two of them, both French.
One is a movie so obscure it gets only minimal mention on IMDb: Touchez Pas aux Blondes (1960), based on THE BODY. The other is Blague dans le coin (1963), based on CURTAINS FOR A CHORINE, which was never published in the US.
The latter film must exist, as it has 32 votes on IMDb (but no reviews) and stars Fernandel as someone named Jeff Burlington.
July 15th, 2018 at 3:19 pm
I love this little film. It’s hilarious and unintentionally tongue-in-cheek. As a mystery, it’s not mysterious. Duke Wallace spends most of time making time with the “titular” blondes and ogling Jesse White’s secretary who is actually the most attractive girl in the cast. I always liked White. He spends his time either being Jock’s sounding board or telling him to calm down when his secretary is in his office. After being kicked headfirst down a flight of stairs (a great stunt), Jock reaches into his jacket’s breast pocket for his cigarettes that miraculously were’t crushed when he belly surfed down the stairs. As you wrote, the closing brawl was great although the editing interupts it with shots of Valerie Porter. Television (77 Sunset Strip, Johnny Stacatto) was doing a much better job at this kind of detective story when this was filmed.
November 10th, 2019 at 10:35 am
Thanks for recognizing the secretary, Darlene Hendricks. Gorgeous!