Real Dog

If a Man Answers. "If you want a perfect marriage treat your husband like a dog." That's what Mother (Micheline Presle) says, and Mother, one of those cocksure Frenchwomen, means literally what she says. When her daughter (Sandra Dee) gets married, she gives her some bitchy advice: "Husbands often leave home, pets never. And remember, a well-trained pet is happier."

Yes, but how can the girl make woman's best friend out of the curly haired wolf (Bobby Darin) she is wed to? Easy. She scratches him behind his ears, lets him run on a nice long leash, dresses to bring out the Pinscher in him, feeds him plenty of pink meat and hot mush, gives him a good warm place to sleep. Pretty soon she has trained the poor yap to fetch, carry, make spaniel eyes, sit up and beg for his supper and think all the while what a lucky dog he is. But one day somebody tells him how his wife has deliberately turned him into a lap dog, and he sets up a terrible howl. "I am a hunter," he snaps at his spouse as he leaves the house, "and I still haven't forgotten how to point!"

"Mother!" the wife gasps, "what shall I do?" Mother smiles that shrewd little smile the French always smile when they talk about sex, the one that means: I'm so glad you asked me that, because now I can show you how horribly knowing and worldly wise I am. "Get a lover," Mother says, "or better still, invent one--like I did. I sent myself flowers and got my girl friends to call me. If a man answers.

I said, hang up. It's the click that drives husbands mad."

It's what doesn't click that drives moviegoers mad, and too many things in it don't click--loud. The dog bit is sometimes good for an arf, but Actor Darin and Actress Dee, who are Mr. and Mrs. in real life too, just sort of stand there most of the time and look like Tweedle Dumb and Twiddle Dee. And the production, like all of Ross Hunter's productions (Pillow Talk, Midnight Lace), is in the cheapest kind of expensive bad taste. It's the sort of picture, in short, in which the heroine wears 32 costumes but only one expression: goo-goo eyes.

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