Directed by actor/director Jerry Paris, How Sweet It Is! was written by Garry Marshall (brother of Penny) and Jerry Belson, based on Muriel Resnik's novel The Girl in the Turquoise Bikini. Another Marshall family member played an important part in getting the film made - daughter Lori had been conceived and her impending arrival gave Marshall the impetus to get back to work after a hiatus. He and Belson, who had worked together in television with Jerry Paris, decided to get into films. How Sweet It Is! was financed by a new production company called National General, who had hired Marshall and Belson to produce the film and to write the script for Debbie Reynolds. Even though they had no producing experience, Marshall's agent Joel Cohen encouraged them to take the job. As Marshall later wrote, "If we could produce a television series, we thought we could produce a movie, too. How different could they be?" There were a lot of differences. As a television writer, Marshall was making $3,500 for a script. He would receive $75,000 for How Sweet It Is!, but instead of being responsible to producers, he and Belson were the producers. Their lives changed as well. Television writing was mostly a day job, with evening hours only dedicated to nights when the TV shows were shot. Now, Marshall and Belson found themselves working at all hours. Despite that, Marshall wrote that "Jerry and I liked the experience on How Sweet It Is! even though the picture wasn't a hit."
Part of the film's failure, according to Marshall, was bad timing. It had been put together years before as a vehicle for Doris Day, but she had dropped out long ago. Marshall felt that the film would have been a big success in the 1950s, "but it came out in 1968. [...] Timing is crucial. Even good writing can't save a movie that's released at the wrong time." Another issue was the title itself. Jackie Gleason had made a catchphrase of "How sweet it is!" and Marshall theorized that audiences went home when they realized that Gleason wasn't in the film.
In his autobiography, James Garner only said of How Sweet It Is!, "Loved Debbie Reynolds. Loved Paul Lynde. Loved Terry-Thomas. Hated the movie." The critics didn't go that far, but they weren't very impressed. Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that while Reynolds was a talented comedienne, the film was too much like a sitcom. Ebert was a young man when How Sweet It Is! was released and he was bothered by the portrayal of the son Davey, who is "supposed to be a hippie or something [...] Hollywood has yet to put a convincing hippie on the screen: They're always too clean or too dirty, depending on whether they're supposed to be good or bad characters, and in either case they're always too square. Not too square to be hippies -- too square to be human beings in their late teens. Pick me your average Chicago high school senior and I'll show you a teenager who wouldn't be caught dead acting and talking like the kid in How Sweet It Is!"
SOURCES:
Ebert, Roger "How Sweet it Is" The Chicago Sun-Times 20 Aug 68
The Internet Movie Database
Marshall, Garry My Happy Days in Hollywood: A Memoir
Marshall, Garry and Marshall, Lori Wake Me When It's Funny: How to Break Into Show Business and Stay There
