A brash, hyperactive exercise in sexual innuendo and bad taste as well as a sixties pop-art time capsule, The Swinger (1966) is the ultimate Ann-Margret vehicle, one that is destined to kill or cure your infatuation with the Swedish sex kitten who made such a dynamic impact on U.S. screens in Bye, Bye Birdie (1963) and Viva Las Vegas (1964) opposite Elvis Presley. In their third film together, director George Sidney, who guided her through the two latter films, creates a cinematic valentine to his star which has the obsessive quality of a stalker's mash note. The one-joke premise features Ann-Margret as aspiring writer Kelly Olsson (Ann-Margret's real-life last name) who tries to get her stories published in the popular, Playboy-like men's magazine, Girl Allure. When her articles are refused because they are more appropriate for The Ladies' Home Journal, she counters with a scandalous fake "memoir" about herself, borrowing sleazy plotlines and ideas from adult bookstore paperbacks. Entitled The Saga of a Depraved Young Lady, Kelly's book creates a sensation but Girl Allure editor Ric Colby (Tony Franciosa), feeling protective of his new talent and secretly smitten, decides to reform her wicked ways and set her on the path to respectability. It all becomes an endless charade with Kelly and Ric both playing bait and switch tactics that create complications within the Girl Allure corporate office and eventually come to a head at police headquarters where Ric is falsely arrested after a vice squad sting raid.

On the one hand, The Swinger has the feel of a TV sitcom run amok with every stylistic device of sixties cinema tossed at you in rapid succession - speeded-up action and jump cuts a la Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night (1964), musical montages featuring still photographs, tilted camera angles, an excessive use of the zoom lens, slo-mo used to ironic effect, comical sound effects and nitwit dialogue delivered without the aid of canned laughter. The movie even playfully sabotages its anything-goes groove to stage a tragic ending - Kelly and Ric die in an explosive head-on collision while racing to meet each other - and then, breaking the fourth wall, directly addresses the viewer with a more preferable, happy ending. Yet, for a film proudly named The Swinger, it is anything but. In its attitude and tone, the film reflects an unliberated, pre-sixties attitude toward women and sex which may be more a reflection of the sensibilities of Hollywood veteran George Sidney (he was fifty years old at the time) and screenwriter Lawrence Roman (who adapted the equally witless sex farce, Under the Yum Yum Tree, for the screen in 1963). You know what to expect after the opening moments of the movie when Sir Hubert Charles (Robert Coote), the elderly publisher of Girl Allure magazine, enters an elevator and methodically pinches the buttocks of three female employees, registering disgust when one of them turns around to thank him and reveals herself to be a matronly, middle-aged woman - what a turnoff! The humor continues in that vein with Sir Hubert periodically chasing various secretaries around his desk as part of his daily ritual or Ric going through a frantic set of isometric exercises before leaping into cold water to avoid sexual arousal or Kelly laughing at her own naughtiness as she pens her phony memoirs, visualizing herself losing a strip poker game, wallowing seductively in bed in her heart-shaped, white plastic sunglasses and pouring champagne all over herself.

The film's broad, wink-wink, nudge-nudge approach reduces everything to the level of a crude, leering sex farce and when Sidney has cinematographer Joseph Biroc train his camera on Ann-Margret's undulating breasts, thighs and bottom during a frenzied dance number, the voyeurism crosses over into dirty-old-man territory and is highly recommended for the latter crowd. Critics at the time said as much with The New York Times critic observing, "This blazingly gaudy color picture....is evidently meant to be a put-down of the lurid sex magazines that lead you to believe that the orgy is a way of life in the United States. But in trying to kid this subject in a snappy, sophisticated way, it is even more gooky and tasteless than what it is trying to kid."

As a star vehicle for Ann-Margret, however, The Swinger is a dream come true for fans of the actress, though in the end the result is overkill. She gets to change costumes, hairstyles, makeup and expressions every few seconds and during her musical numbers, she appears to be accompanied by a wind machine which lightly musses her hair, even during the "I Wanna Be Loved" number, which begins with her singing in bed in a prone position. There is also ample proof of the actress's love for motorcycles on display and an eye-popping paint orgy sequence, prefiguring her chocolate/baked beans/soap suds emulsification in Tommy (1975), where she is rolled and dragged through buckets of multi-colored paint in the manner of a human paint brush. On top of these riches are two elaborate, over-the-top montages, composed of still photographs, that allow Sidney to showcase the many sides of his vivacious star attraction, preening for the camera in a wide variety of poses and situations that are often ill-judged, unflattering and clearly the result of a director who has lost all objectivity in his attempts to deify his star.

Despite a cast of familiar supporting players and character actors in The Swinger, most have appeared to better advantage in other films, especially Robert Coote, at one time a well-regarded stage actor whose performance here as Sir Hubert is a constant embarrassment. As for Ann-Margret's leading man, Tony Franciosa, he is much better known as a dramatic actor and not as a light farceur. After all, he was a former Actors Studio graduate who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar® for A Hatful of Rain [1957] and appeared to impressive effect in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd [1957] and opposite Orson Welles, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in The Long, Hot Summer [1958]. Watching him scurry about in a desperate attempt to wring laughs from his pratfalls and slapstick routines with Ann-Margret (the mutual shower scene, in particular) are particularly painful to behold but for some it will qualify as a guilty pleasure. In fact, The Swinger achieves such levels of awfulness at times that it is truly stultifying and demands to be seen. If nothing else, you owe it to yourself to watch the opening set piece which succinctly sums up Ann-Margret's unique appeal - at least for George Sidney. It is the perfect pre-MTV music video and expect it to show up on YouTube within minutes of TCM's broadcast of The Swinger.

TCM will be broadcasting the U.S. release version of The Swinger. The International release version was longer and included extended scenes of Ann-Margret's strip tease and the "I Wanna Be Loved" number. If the International release version is available, TCM will air that version instead.

Producer: George Sidney
Director: George Sidney
Screenplay: Lawrence Roman
Cinematography: Joseph F. Biroc
Art Direction: Hal Pereira, Walter H. Tyler
Music: Marty Paich
Film Editing: Frank Santillo
Cast: Ann-Margret (Kelly Olsson), Tony Franciosa (Ric Colby), Robert Coote (Sir Hubert Charles), Yvonne Romain (Karen Charles), Horace McMahon (Detective Sergeant Hooker), Nydia Westman (Aunt Cora), Craig Hill (Jenkins, Sammy), Milton Frome (Mr. Olsson), Mary LaRoche (Mrs. Olsson), Clete Roberts (Clete Roberts), Myrna Ross (Sally).
C-81m.

by Jeff Stafford