Strangers When We Meet
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Richard Quine
Kirk Douglas
Kim Novak
Ernie Kovacs
Barbara Rush
Walter Matthau
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
In Los Angeles, writer Roger Altar, who has won public acclaim but critical scorn for his pulp novels, hires architect Larry Coe to design a house based on the photos of a prize-winning house that Larry designed eight years earlier. While shopping at the local market, Larry meets his new neighbor, Margaret Gault, and is rendered speechless by her beauty. When Margaret returns home, her mother, Mrs. Wagner, whom Margaret has never forgiven for committing adultery, states that she knows that Margaret is not in love with her husband Ken and predicts that she also will be unfaithful one day. The next day, Larry deliberately walks his son David to the school bus stop so that he can meet Margaret, whom he calls Maggie, and convince her to accompany him to the Bel-Air site where he is to build Roger's house. Larry, excited by the prospect of building an innovative structure, is pleased that Maggie shares his enthusiasm and has even sought out the eight-year-old magazine article containing the photo of his last major accomplishment. When Larry sends the completed plans to Roger, Roger is fearful that he will be laughed at for building an "odd ball" house and balks until Larry accuses him of pandering to his critics and convinces him to take a chance. One night, while Larry and his wife Eve are dining with Larry's former employer, Stanley Baxter, Stanley asks Larry to design a new wing for a factory in Hawaii. Larry, who longs for his earlier acclaim and fears that life is passing him by, is reluctant to work on such a prosaic project, but Eve, concerned with financial stability, pressures him into accepting the commission. At the bus stop the next morning, Larry invites Maggie to join him at the Bel-Air job site, but she refuses. When Larry admits that he wants to see her again, however, Maggie, feeling neglected and unloved by her husband, whose ardor has dwindled over the years, agrees to meet Larry the following evening. On the night of her assignation, Maggie tells Ken that she is going out with friends, and when she mentions his lack of sexual interest, he silences her. At a Malibu hotel, Maggie confides to Larry that her father was the only other person who ever called her Maggie. After a tenuous start, the lovers finally consummate their affair. At home, Larry sees his wife, washing the dishes and wearing her hair in curlers, and longs for the sexy Maggie. Using the house project as an excuse for spending time away from home, Larry continues to see Maggie. One day, when Maggie goes to meet Larry at a restaurant, she is tailed by a man. Excusing herself from the table to call home, Maggie is accosted by the man in the lobby. Hearing the commotion, Larry comes to Maggie's defense and slugs the man, who then runs off. Although Maggie initially claims that she does not know her assailant, she finally admits that he forced himself on her the summer before. When she recalls the incident, in which she left her door open and took sleeping pills, Larry becomes enraged and accuses her of wanting that to happen. Stung, Maggie drives off. That night, the tormented Larry calls Maggie's house, but when Ken answers, hangs up the phone. When Maggie fails to appear at the bus stop the next morning, Larry goes to Maggie's house, where he is met by Mrs. Wagner. After Larry leaves, Maggie's perceptive mother comments "so now it has happened to you." Concerned with Larry's distance and hoping to draw him back into her life, Eve decides to throw a neighborhood party and calls Maggie to invite her and Ken, but Maggie hedges about accepting the invitation. At the party, Stanley tells Larry that his company was so impressed by his work on the factory that they want him to design an entire city in Hawaii, a project that would take five years to complete and require a move to Hawaii. Demurring, Larry asks Stanley not to mention the offer to Eve until he has a chance to discuss it with her. Larry is shocked by the arrival of Maggie and Ken, and later, alone with Maggie, asks her why she came. Just as Larry writes "I love you" on a sheet of paper, Felix Anders, the Coes's snide neighbor, enter the room and Larry crumples the paper. After the Gaults leave, Felix insinuates that he knows Larry is having an affair and warns him that Eve is also suspicious. When Larry denies the accusation, Felix hands him the crumpled love note. After Eve goes to Palm Springs for the weekend with her parents, Larry unexpectedly meets Maggie at an amusement park, where they have both taken their children. Warning that Felix knows about them, Larry declares that either she wants "more or less," to which Maggie responds she wants their relationship to stay the same. Larry then suggests that they stop seeing each other. Soon after, Stanley phones the house, and when Eve answers, tells her about the Hawaiian job offer. When Larry comes home, Eve, upset, asks why he never mentioned the offer and the two argue. As Larry storms out of the house, Eve tells him not to come back. Larry goes to visit Roger, who, although he has received rave reviews for his new book, is still unhappy. When the womanizing Roger envies Larry because "he is married, has a family and knows where he's going," Larry replies that he is a phony and confides that he has been unfaithful. Larry concludes by saying that although he loves his mistress, he does not want to hurt his wife. He then calls Maggie and arranges to meet her the next day at Roger's completed house. Meanwhile, Eve, who is about to step into the shower, is paid an unexpected visit by Felix, who begins to flirt with her menacingly. When he tugs at her bathrobe, she becomes hysterical and throws him out. As Felix leaves, Larry pulls up in his car and upon finding Eve in tears, deduces what has happened. After Larry slugs Felix, Felix smugly observes that Larry is no better than he. Finally admitting to Larry that she knows he is having an affair, Eve asks him to leave and he takes refuge in his office, located in a wing of the house. Later, Eve enters the office sobbing, and after asking what she did wrong, avows that she cannot live without him. The next day, when Larry and Maggie meet at Roger's vacant house, Larry tells her that he is going to Hawaii to build a city. As they acknowledge their love for each other, they are interrupted by the contractor, who assumes that Maggie is Larry's wife. Saying goodbye, Maggie drives down the driveway and out of Larry's life.
Director
Richard Quine
Cast
Kirk Douglas
Kim Novak
Ernie Kovacs
Barbara Rush
Walter Matthau
Virginia Bruce
Kent Smith
Helen Gallagher
John Bryant
Roberta Shore
Nancy Novack
Carol Douglas
Paul Picerni
Ernest Sarracino
Harry Jackson
Bart Patton
Robert Sampson
Ray Ferrell
Douglas Holmes
Timmy Molina
Betsy Jones Moreland
Audrey Swanson
Cynthia Leighton
Sharyn Gibbs
Sue Ane Langdon
Ruth Batchelor
Dick Crockett
Lorraine Crawford
Judy Lang
Charles Victor
Joe Palms
Tom Anthony
Sheryl Ellison
Mark Beckstrom
Crew
Carl Anderson
Ross Bellah
Ross Bellah
Daroff
Lambert Day
Carter Dehaven Jr.
Louis Diage
Kirk Douglas
George Duning
Helen Hunt
Evan Hunter
Ben Lane
Charles Lang Jr.
Jean Louis
Arthur Morton
Charles Nelson
Richard Quine
Thomas Quine
Charles J. Rice
Morris Stoloff
K. B. Wamsley
Film Details
Technical Specs
Articles
Strangers When We Meet
When news of the Bel Air home's construction was first covered by the press, Columbia studio publicists revealed that it was being built in stages for the movie Strangers When We Meet and that it would be sold after the film was completed. The more persistent rumor, however, was that the house was the future love nest for Kim Novak and her director Richard Quine, who had tried to keep their affair private for years. Gossip columnist Louella Parsons had often intimated that Novak and Quine were an item but New York Times reporter Joe Hyams out-scooped her when he dropped in unexpectedly on the set of Strangers When We Meet and asked Novak point blank, "Your honeymoon home?" Novak replied, "Stop reading the papers, Mr. Hyams. Stop listening to gossip. Richard Quine and I are having a romance; it's as simple as that. Marriage is another matter entirely...I'm not sure I want to get married and I'm not sure it would work out for Dick and me. We have always been bothered by the undercurrent of work running through our long relationship. You know how hard that makes it, very hard." (from Kim Novak: Reluctant Goddess by Peter Harry Brown).
There had always been speculation about the love life of the notoriously press-shy Novak with rumors of past affairs with Columbia studio boss Harry Cohn, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Ram Trujillo. The romance with Quine, however, was now public knowledge but on the set it had different ramifications. In her earlier years in Hollywood Novak had been a reclusive, passive presence on movie sets such as Pal Joey (1957) but now she had gained more self-confidence and was flexing her power as one of Columbia's biggest stars. According to biographer Peter Harry Brown in Kim Novak: Reluctant Goddess, "Her experience on Middle of the Night [1959] convinced her that she was an actress to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, she picked the wrong director (Quine) and the wrong star (Kirk Douglas) upon whom to vent her spleen. Technicians laughed behind their hands one afternoon when Kim seriously tried to give acting instructions to Douglas, who listened with a deadpan face. Off camera, he referred to her as the 'broad Harry Cohn built.' Within days, relations between the two stars became frosty and threatened to divide the company into armed camps. Kirk, usually a model of patience, began complaining about the time it took to photograph Novak from just the right angle, in just the proper light, and during just the right mood. The inference was that Quine was tilting the production heavily in favor of Kim."
In his autobiography, The Ragman's Son, Douglas recalled some of the difficulties in making Strangers When We Meet: "One morning, we were shooting a scene down at the beach. Obviously, Kim and Dick had been discussing the scene, and she was excited about a wonderful idea she had come up with. Apparently, Dick had agreed with her wholeheartedly. I listened to her argument, told her exactly why it was impossible to do the scene that way. She looked at Dick. He looked at me and said, 'You know, Kim, he's right.' Kim went berserk. She ripped up the pages, started to make incoherent sounds, screamed, went nuts. It was impossible to shoot with her for the rest of the day. The next day we shot the scene the way it was written. We got through the picture, and I enjoyed working with her, although I do think that she convinced Richard to give the picture the wrong ending. The original ending in the book, very powerful, was that after our love affair had ended, Walter Matthau, who was playing a heavy, comes to pick her up in a car, and she decides what the hell, and goes off with him. Life goes on. Instead, she preferred to spurn him, pull her trench coat up around her neck, and walk off like Charlie Chaplin. I didn't think that was the right ending, but those are the hazards of working with someone who's romantically involved with the director."
Douglas's recollection of the original ending isn't entirely accurate because HIS character is the one that calls off the affair and tries to make a go of it with his wife and family in Hawaii where an ambitious five-year project awaits him. The ending from Evan Hunter's novel (he also wrote the screenplay) wouldn't make much sense either since the Walter Matthau character was a boring lecher and completely inconceivable as the sort of man Maggie would gravitate toward to fulfill her emotional and sexual needs. The present ending of Strangers When We Meet actually rings true since none of the characters are able to escape their own private hells. So, Novak was right to sway Quine's opinion on the film's conclusion. Novak "would always refer to Strangers When We Meet as 'that great lost weekend.' (Several years later Kim reaped revenge on the actor in Boys' Night Out [1962] by having James Garner chastise a smiling friend with the lines: 'Stop showing off your teeth. Who do you think you are? Kirk Douglas?')."
Strangers When We Meet was one of the last films Novak made for her home studio Columbia - her final film for them, The Notorious Landlady (1962), was released the following year - and it also heralded the end of her reign as a major star. She never again experienced the earlier career heights of such films as Picnic (1955) or Vertigo (1958). Douglas, of course, was still in the prime of his career and following Strangers When We Meet with the Oscar®-winning epic, Spartacus (1960), in which he served as executive producer and star. Strangers When We Meet might not have been a happy experience for either actor and it certainly wasn't well received by critics of its era or the public. It didn't receive any Oscar® nominations either but, regardless of this, the film yields numerous pleasures that were overlooked at the time.
Hipster comedian and innovative television host Ernie Kovacs provides a welcome diversion from the heavy soap opera proceedings as the popular writer who demands a spectacular house for his oversized ego. His character, a borderline lush and habitual womanizer, is a completely improbable character and seems to belong in a different movie but he is nonetheless an amusing and charismatic presence in the film. It's a shame he didn't get the opportunity to explore the film medium as he did television; a fatal car wreck in 1962 ended a promising career. The other great scene-stealer in Strangers When We Meet is Walter Matthau as the loathsome Felix who enjoys baiting Coe with unwanted advice about his not-so-private affair with Maggie. He's rarely been sleazier than the scene in which he corners Eve in her home alone during a rainstorm - "Come on, Eve, I know you want to..." - and the film's final shot of Felix shows him sharing his "wisdom" with his young son as they walk to school, observing numerous housewives along the way, "Love'em all, Brucie, love'em all!"
The film's view of life in suburbia is also fascinating for its candor in addressing marital problems and couples who have resigned themselves to a dull existence together because they don't have the guts or honesty to live the lives they really want. Other films from the same era such as No Down Payment (1957) also explored marital discontent in the suburbs but Strangers When We Meet stands out for its sad truths delivered within a glossy, artificial milieu. It's no wonder the film fared poorly with moviegoers who expected a romantic fantasy and got a dose of Jean-Paul Sartre, American-style. The film could almost pass as a Douglas Sirk melodrama on the order of All That Heaven Allows (1955) or There's Always Tomorrow (1956) and the dialogue is just as self-conscious and ironic. In one scene, Kirk Douglas's character admits, "I'm such a phony. I've got a drawer full of manufactured labels. Architect, husband, father, man. I sew them into my clothes. The suits never fit." The most impressive aspects of the film, however, are Ross Bellah's stylized art direction, the beautifully framed widescreen Technicolor cinematography of Charles Lang (over 18 Oscar® nominations!) which could be cut up into stills and sold in art galleries, and the Bel Air dream house, which we are privileged to see from the laying of the foundation through its construction to its final completion as an architectural marvel - or monstrosity.
Producer/Director: Richard Quine
Screenplay: Evan Hunter
Cinematography: Charles Lang
Film Editing: Charles Nelson
Art Direction: Ross Bellah
Music: George Duning
Cast: Kirk Douglas (Larry Coe), Kim Novak (Maggie Gault), Ernie Kovacs (Roger Altar), Barbara Rush (Eve Coe), Walter Matthau (Felix Anders), Virginia Bruce (Mrs. Wagner).
C-117m. Letterboxed.
by Jeff Stafford
Sources:
Kim Novak: Reluctant Goddess by Peter Harry Brown
The Ragman's Son: An Autobiography by Kirk Douglas
Strangers When We Meet
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
The opening credits are shown over a sequence in which "Larry Coe" drops off his son "David" at the school bus stop, where he first notices his new neighbor, "Maggie Gault." According to a December 1957 Daily Variety news item, Barbizon Productions, owned by Morris Helprin and Alfred Crown, initially bought the screen rights to Evan Hunter's novel. Although a September 1959 Hollywood Reporter news item noted that Chris Robinson was being considered for a featured role in the film, Robinson does not appear in released the film. An October 1959 Hollywood Reporter news item added Herb Armstrong to the cast, but Armstrong's appearance in the released film has not been confirmed.
A May 1, 1960 Los Angeles Times article noted that the Bel-Air house Larry is designing in the film actually belonged to Richard Quine, the film's producer-director. Production notes contained in the film's file at the AMPAS Library add that Columbia produced a half-hour documentary about the building of the house, which was to be shown at trade exhibitions of the manufacturers whose products were used in its construction. Much of the film was shot in and around Bel-Air, West Los Angeles and Malibu. The scene in which Larry meets Maggie at the amusement park was filmed at the Kiddyland amusement park in Los Angeles, where according to local lore, divorced fathers from Beverly Hills took their children. The site was torn down in the late 1970s to make room for construction of the Beverly Center shopping mall.
Strangers When We Meet marked the feature film debut of Sue Ann Langdon and the first picture that Quine produced and directed under his contract with Columbia as an independent producer. Although they never married, Quine and Kim Novak had a well-publicized engagement at the time of the film's production. A modern source adds that Glenn Ford was originally to appear as Larry, but bowed out of the production after refusing to work with Novak. After Ford quit, Kirk Douglas, the owner of Bryna Productions, the company that co-produced the film, stepped in and offered to star and co-produce.
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States July 1960
Released in United States on Video September 28, 1988
Released in United States September 28, 1988
Released in United States Summer July 1960
c Technicolor
CinemaScope
Released in United States July 1960
Released in United States Summer July 1960
Released in United States on Video September 28, 1988
Released in United States September 28, 1988