Designing Woman

The film came from an “idea” by costume designer Helen Rose, and exists mainly to show off thousands and thousands of fabulous outfits. It is a sort of Tracy/Hepburn comic war of the sexes, only with the new cast of Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall. I didn’t know what to expect of Peck in a comedy, I only recall seeing him in more serious roles, but he does an adequate job. He’s a sports writer, she’s a big time fashion designer, they get married without really knowing each other, and then find they have little in common. There was one character I found to be of interest, which is the choreographer of a show Bacall is doing the costumes for. He acts very gay—later he indignantly shows a picture of his wife and children—and Peck and some of his friends do the sort of limp-wrist, eyebrow wiggling put-down behind his back. But when the couple are breaking out of a place where a gangster has kidnapped them, the choreographer wipes the floor with a whole gang of gunsels in a scene that could have been in a Jackie Chan movie. It would have been better if we had been left with the impression that he was gay, but still, not bad for its time.