The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (1971) User Reviews

Bolling Boil-over

[Chase_Witherspoon · 7/10 · 8 January 2010]

Young stockbroker (Benjamin as the glib affectation of a caring husband, a role in which he became stereotyped) has a penchant for peeping, much to the chagrin of his long suffering wife (Shimkus) which eventually drives a wedge between them, and much at the behest of her meddling sister (Ashley). Often criticised for its titillation aspects, this is one of those microcosms of life stories that's funny, raunchy, sad and touching all in a compact hour-and-a-half. The abrupt, overly-simplistic conclusion might attract some ire, but it's not a 'who-dunnit', so by no means a deal breaker.

Not the deep, emotive analysis it probably could've been, but nevertheless entertaining and memorable for a number of reasons. The theme song, while distant and now long-forgotten is a great little pseudo-country tune by Linda Ronstadt, and still among her best. Adam West in a semi-serious post "Batman" role is a casting coup that can't be easily ignored, although his tonal inflexions do occasionally conjure memories of "to the batpole!".

But the real deal is Tiffany Bolling's "girl in the rain" character, which in my opinion, immortalises this picture. Even despite the brevity of her screen-time, her sun-showered radiance floods the frame. She's raw and devastating; the epitome of seduction. The boiling saucepan metaphor adds a humorous texture, but more significantly, the movie turns on this one scene, making it, and Bolling's character, pivotal. Bolling forged a mediocre career in B-movies in the seventies, but this virtually mute cameo, will undoubtedly be her cinema legacy.

Those expecting an intellectual thesis on domesticity and the manacles of modern marriage will be disappointed - this is not the Everest and nor does it purport to be; those just after a movie they can appreciate for its many layers should be kept entertained.

great fun for the voyeur at heart

[gl1550n · 7/10 · 20 February 2005]

Great viewing, and good clean fun! (well not so clean fun) Being a guy with more than a little voyeurism in him, I couldn't stop watching. It is not a great movie by literary standards, but a captivating and comedic look into the life of a voyeur.

This film handles adult mater well without being graphic. So it's a safe movie to watch with your girlfriend. Just don't expect her to like it as much as you will. I can't imagine this film ever being so out of date that it wouldn't be a fun viewing, but by todays standards, a very tame film. Maybe it's time for someone to do a remake.

I loved it, and if you like films like "The Body Double", and "Sea of Love" I'm sure you'll love it too. I'd love to own a copy of it, just so I could share it with others.

"Graduate"-styled irreverence with an overlay of sex, marriage, identity, and analysis...

[moonspinner55 · 5/10 · 15 November 2009]

Deadpan-comic character study from the novel by Charles Webb involving a dissatisfied working stiff (with a predilection for peeping) whose benumbed wife walks out on him while on their vacation; she moves in with her sister and masculinely-neutered brother-in-law, while the husband attempts to woo her back. Though dotted with trenchant observations about what makes a marriage work or fold, this script by Lorenzo Semple, Jr. doesn't have enough meat on its bones for a feature-length film. Without understanding the history of the young marrieds, it's difficult getting a grasp on the sullen, sulking wife or her randy spouse. The celebratory finale seems lifted straight from "The Graduate" (itself based on Charles Webb), while the points being made regarding sexual appetite and the search for identity are all rather obvious. In the lead, glinty-eyed Richard Benjamin offers different facets of the horny, paranoid male, yet he doesn't have the punchy dialogue needed to turn this guy into a microcosm of the sex-obsessed modern-day husband. ** from ****

Lots of fun for any voyeur

[videoguy-1 · 18 August 2001]

This is not a great movie, but one that entertains nonetheless. I have no idea why it is still unavailable on video. Richard Benjamin at his quirkiest 70's best, is a somewhat unhappy married guy who enjoys looking at girls whenever, and wherever he can. He also tends to get caught more often than he'd like. The whole story is a rather poor man's "Graduate" in that the lead is a anti-establishment kind of guy and he hates living in a world of rules he doesn't understand or believe in. So, we follow him on his quest for freedom and sexual satisfaction. It is a fun trip. Movie fans that enjoy watching this sort of time capsule will have a great time. It is a film that is curiously missing from anyone's collection.

Tomorrow Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life.

[rmax304823 · 5/10 · 19 March 2010]

Richard Benjamin is a bored Los Angeles stockbroker whose marriage to Joanna Shimkus is drying up. His only quirk is occasionally peeping at attractive girls, which doesn't help matters at home. Shimkus finally is sufficiently fed up to leave him and stay with her socially mobile sister, Elizabeth Ashley, and her husband, Adam West, in Pasadena. Benjamin keeps trying to win Shimkus back in the face of strenuous opposition from Ashley. Finally, Benjamin divorces Shimkus, tells her he's quit his job, and this wins her back. The jolly couple now zoom off in the family convertible for parts unknown, with Shimkus naked.

I kept trying to figure out why this movie was made. Benjamin's character really IS dull, and the actor delivers the salamagundi of small talk and evasions in the whiny, sing-song, voice of a child. Shimkus is no barrel of laughs either but she so startlingly attractive and sexy that I'd be willing to forgive her. The ending seems arbitrary and, after all this drama, the director ends it on a freeze that's supposed to be funny and isn't.

It occurred to me that this 1971 release was probably shot in 1970, which would make it two years after the rip-roaring commercial and critical success, "The Graduate." That's reason enough, I guess. Even that blissful escape in the convertible fits the template.

As far as the film goes, it's impossible for it to be exactly gripping, what with two mismatched people, one of whom talks about the weather and the other who says nothing at all. O men, O women! But, more than that, it's a little irritating because it's a kind of masculine backlash against feminism. Everything about feminism, insofar as it's represented by Elizabeth Ashley's character, is made ridiculous by obvious exaggeration. She's breathlessly seductive when she's alone with Benjamin, but he sensibly turns her down, knowing not only that it would be sick but that Ashley wouldn't be able to wait to spill the beans to Shimkus. She's got her husband, well, what in masculine military circles used to be described as, umm, "P-whipped." Adam West's dialog seems to consist of repeating two words: "Yes, dear."

There's nothing wrong with puncturing self-satisfied authoritarianism , whether male or female, but this taming of the shrew business was done better in "The Graduate" -- and much better in "The Quiet Man" -- if only because the writers and directors kept their senses of humor and put some zingers into the script. Here we get only apothegms like, "We were never married -- not in any REAL sense." What the hell does that mean?

There is a scene in which a shrink (female) makes a house call to hold a group session with the two couples and it constitutes a demonstration of everything that's wrong with the script. It mocks the shrink, which is okay, but it does so blatantly, without pretense. I suppose it's meant to be comic but it comes off as just immature and mean. Maybe "immature" is the wrong word. Like the rest of the film it's just relentlessly middlebrow and lacks challenge.

And the film is as phony as the shrink is supposed to be. This is a story that highlights the voyeurism of Benjamin's character as symptomatic. Yet the film itself never misses a chance to give us a tantalizing glimpse of somebody's breasts or an occasional terrific derrière. It's like Cecil B. DeMille showing us how ugly the decadence of the Ancients was by displaying a lot of moral terpitude and scantily clothed nymphs for the audience to lap up.

If you expect a pause in the movie, somewhere down the time line, while Benjamin wanders around aimlessly and tries to decide how to solve this emotional conundrum and a love song gets to play on the sound track, you won't be disappointed. The theme song is delivered with a flute, a guitar, and cloying lyrics along the lines of, "Can this be love....?"

There's another annoying scene too. Benjamin notices a sexy babe in a wet T shirt who wordlessly invites him into her apartment for a quick and joyless roll in the hay. Now, this is an everyday occurrence for me, common to the point of being humdrum, but it's hard to believe that Benjamin's timid, wimpy stockbroker has such an adventure. He's ecstatic when he leaves but confused too. He begins talking to himself. When he reaches the sidewalk he bumps into a man strolling along and the man turns and says, "Hah?" That's unbelievable right there. This is Laguna Beach or Santa Barbara or someplace and I defy any pedestrian to talk to another pedestrian on any residential street in the greater Los Angeles area. I swear you could tear your clothes off, leap about like a chimpanzee, and shriek gibberish in the middle of the street and in return you'd get -- nothing, because every eye is glazed over. Talk about your thousand-yard stares.

Nice photography, though. Laslo Kovacs. And some nice scenery. Joanna Shimkus.

The Marriage of Pointlessness and Amatuerishness

[brefane · 1/10 · 14 April 2009]

This pointless, forgettable and meandering comedy-drama was released by Twentieth Century Fox and, like The Graduate, it is based on a novel by Charles Webb. The Marriage of a Young Stockbrocker is the first of only 2 films directed by producer Lawrence Turman; his other directorial credit is 1983's Second Thoughts starring Lucie Arnaz and Craig Wasson, and it could hardly be worse than his debut film. The tone wavers uncomfortably and conveniently, the script meanders as it tries to figure out what it all means, the characters are unexplored, and it leads to an unconvincing "happy ending" with Richard Benjamin and Joanna Shimikus reconciling even though they are no more right for one another at the end than they were at the beginning. Pity Joanna Shimkus who fails even at being the poor man's Jackie Bissett. Better known as Mrs. Sidney Poitier, Shimkus' gives one of the flattest performance I've ever seen outside of the films of Andy Warhol, Russ Meyer, Herschel Gordon Lewis or Ed Wood. She lacks charm, presence, appeal, and personality as does Benjamin who's character is given a pointless, and unexplored quirk: voyeurism. He should have watched this film.

The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker

[mackjay2 · 8/10 · 14 June 2009]

This odd, seldom-seen movie was probably not understood in its day, being a little too close for comfort. Now, more than thirty years later, it can be appreciated for the biting commentary it contains. In 1971, feminism (the bad, overwrought version of it) had recently begun to rear its head and here is a story that plays out the consequences for people who let ideas and strident manifestos go to their heads. Richard Benjamin, in what may be his best screen performance, is an imperfect young husband. He likes to look at women and he even has a tendency toward voyeurism. We know from the start that he's not the dangerous type of peeping tom: when he is almost caught spying on bikini-clad girls on the beach, he runs in terror and seems unlikely to attempt such a thing again. He's married to a model-pretty, if bland, woman (Joanna Shimkus), but he still likes to window shop. Benjamin's marriage is unexciting, the romance has almost completely gone and the couple are stuck in dull routines. Drama flares up when his wife's sister gets wind of the voyeuristic behaviors (we are never told how she, or the wife know about the beach incident). After the wife abruptly leaves him one day, Benjamin is visited by his sister-in-law (Elizabeth Ashley as a unique kind of screen villainess). This woman is a castrating, manipulative, calculating monster. She offers herself to him sexually (but only in an indirect, teasing way) while accusing him of being perverted and in need of psychiatric attention. The scenes between these two actors are the best in the film, with Benjamin using his slightly smirking quality to add dimension to his confused, yet sympathetic character. He's truly brilliant here, and the film would not succeed at all without him. As horrid as her character is, Ashley gives a tremendously effective performance too, one a viewer won't soon forget. She out-acts Shimkus by a mile, but it's what she's doing in the film that make it interesting: this is a woman who has allowed ideas of female empowerment and man-blaming to distort her entire world view. She convinces her sister that she has an unhappy marriage, that it's her (perverted) husband's fault, and that she must get away from him. Ashley's own husband, played with dogged servitude by Adam West, is the example of how the man should be: subdued, and fully controlled by the woman.

After an empty, anonymous sexual encounter and several failed attempts to win back his wife from the clutches of his sister-in-law, Benjamin eventually takes control of the situation in an unexpected way. While not a brilliant work on the whole, there is enough clever writing to make this a fascinating film to analyze for social commentary. The two main performances (Benjamin and Ashley) make it worth seeking out as a forgotten remnant of the early 70s.

Don't Take Stock of this Film-Marriage of A Young Stockbroker 0*

[edwagreen · 1/10 · 13 January 2010]

What an awful, miserable picture this is.

The writing is atrocious. Richard Benjamin is just too simplistic in the role. Nothing, absolutely nothing makes sense here.

After coming back from lunch and viewing his co-worker dead on the floor, Benjamin tries to take stock of his life. Excuse the pun, but it's nothing in comparison to how awful this film is. Benjamin soon proves that he has a fetish for seeing women in the raw. When he is caught by his wife, Joanna Simkus, taking pictures of women in the raw, she flees to her sister's house. The sister is the supposed conventional Elizabeth Ashley. The latter wants to test her brother-in-law out to see how bad he really is. Does she have ulterior methods? Had she, the film might have succeeded

Adam West appears as the henpecked husband of Ashley who finally lets loose at the end.

The scene with the 4 of them having a psychiatrist interviewing them is ludicrous at best.

There is little to no meaning here and the picture just draws one big blank.

How it was and still is

[thguru · 8/10 · 6 April 2009]

I must have missed this one at the movies in the early 1970's. Saw it on late night movie channel in 2009. I think this movie is more entertaining now that it would have been back then. Now that I am lots older and have experienced a lot since then, the impact is larger. the movie plot and scenes are very indicative of society at the time. In many ways, society has not changed. The old story of women bored and confused with life. Reminiscent of the old saying "I am trying to find myself". Women's Liberation causing social and psychological problems within the marriage. Women NOT being empowered and how to get the power with junk psychologist and in control of men. How to make the man weak and into a robot like person. Husbands, go to work, make lots of money, bring it home for the woman to spend and tell you what when to do. Husbands, recycle same thing everyday. Here, the husband is thought of as being "sick" for wanting to naturally look at naked or scantly clothed women. So, what? The controlling women and controlled men characters in this movie are pathetic. The women remind me of all of my ex-wives. See this movie and you will see a mirror of our society even more so like to today. Arousing the emotions of the viewer gives this movie high marks.

An entertaining and intelligent film to watch out for.

[Trevoran · 16 April 1999]

Richard Benjamin shines in the title role as a young man who is disillusioned by his job, marriage and life in general. Joanna Shimkus is attractive and vivacious as his troubled wife, Lisa. Fine support from Patricia Barry as the psychiatrist and especially good are Elizabeth Ashley and Adam West as Benjamin's in-laws. Look fast for familiar faces Ron Masak and Bob Hastings as baseball fans and the alluring Tiffany Bolling is also memorable. A film that Fox should release for sale.