Movie Monday: Looking For Love

We're all Looking For Love!

I came across this trailer ay work last week, never having heard of the film before. Check out the poster, and you'll see the sole reason I was interested: it features an appearance by Johnny Carson, as himself, on The Tonight Show! What the what?

Looking for Love stars singing star Connie Francis (whom Hollywood assumed was a movie star) and romantic copy staple Jim Hutton. Francis plays Libby Caruso (heh), who dreams of being a singer, but can't get any traction. She decides to give up her dreams and get a regular job and land a husband. She meets Paul (Hutton) in a supermarket, and is interested in him, but he's not interested back.

Later, Libby creates a clothing line for women. It starts to take off, and Paul somehow manages to get Libby booked on The Tonight Show(!) to promote it. Libby mentions to Johnny that she can sing, so he has her perform on the show, which finally launches her singing career.

I'll be honest, I didn't care one whit about the main thrust of the film--it's just romantic piffle. I was interested solely for the presence of Johnny, who had just started The Tonight Show two years earlier. You can count on one hand the number of times Carson let him or Tonight be used in any way outside the show itself, so I can only imagine he figured it was a good way to promote Tonight in a big way during its early years. Later on, when talking about this movie, Carson would say "Looking For Love was so bad it was transferred to flammable nitrate stock."

So, how are the Carson scenes? Well, Johnny was no actor (by his own admission), and he does seem a little uncomfortable during the very contrived moment where he invites Libby to sing on the show. But he's still a charming presence, and (IMO) it's a treat seeing this era of The Tonight Show in color!

Unfortunately, this is the only scene Johnny is in. The trailer made it seem like he was practically a co-star (a movie trailer, misrepresenting what the film is actually about? Stop the presses!), but he's gone from the movie after this.

Libby's career starts going places, but she's met with a lot of set backs, both on stage and in her love life. During a live performance on The Danny Thomas Show (whose audience looks suspiciously like the one that attended The Tonight Show) everything goes wrong, leaving Libby a sobbing mess which forces Danny to ad-lib, live on air.

Paul starts to change his mind about Libby, right at the time she starts to fall for another guy from the supermarket, played by Joby Baker (who?). The one surprising thing about the movie is that Libby and Paul don't end up together: rather, Paul then moves on to Libby's roommate (played by Susan Oliver, who in real life later went on to become a director and aviator--where's that movie?), and by the end we have two happy couples, plus great character actor Jesse White playing some bells. There are worse ways to end a movie.

 

Of course, Looking For Love is completely forgettable: it's basically a big sitcom episode, stretched out to feature length. The sets are nice to look at, and there's a lot of famous faces (in addition to Johnny and Danny Thomas, there's also George Hamilton, Paula Prentiss, and Yvette Mimieux!) that come and go. But I think the only reason anyone remembers it all is because of that all-too-brief glimpse of the ascendent Johnny Carson, live and in color.