Ask Any Girl (1959)

Shirley MacLaine made her film debut a scant four years earlier in The Trouble With Harry and in her third film, Around the World in 80 Days, co-starred with David Niven. Reportedly they did not get along on the set, Niven felt she wasn't suited for the part of a Hindu princess and after seeing it I think you would agree. MacLaine really made her mark in the following year by blowing all the rest of the cast off the screen in Some Came Running. Had it not been the year for Susan Hayward's I Want to Live, Shirley would have gotten her Oscar back in 1958. David Niven had won his Oscar in 1958 for Separate Tables so both of them were box office then.Seemed only natural team them up again and this time MacLaine is most suitable for her role as a hopeful career girl in Ask Any Girl. Shirley's fresh from the country having made her way to New York in the hopes of getting a career going and/or landing husband. She develops quite a few potential suitors along the way.Ask Any Girl is a combination of Sabrina plus elements of any number of Doris Day vehicles that came out at that time. Eventually Shirley winds up at an advertising agency run by two brothers. Older brother David Niven runs the agency and younger brother Gig Young views the place as fertile ground for female companionship.MacLaine exasperates Niven, she's not real good at anything, but he's given up all hope in Young just settling down and tending to business. He sees maybe MacLaine just might be what Young needs, or maybe just what the elegant, but stuffy Niven needs.The principal players go through roles they were all seasoned veterans at handling. Ask Any Girl is pleasant enough entertainment though looking back I wonder just what the very outspoken feminist Shirley MacLaine thinks of this husband hunting woman she plays here.

This is the film where I first fell under the spell of the quirky heroines SHIRLEY MacLAINE seemed to embody in her early screen roles--and continued to play long after the charm had worn off.But here she's refreshingly innocent, naive, quirky, good-natured and easy to like. In fact, she has to carry the film even though she's playing opposite such pros as David NIVEN (rather stuffy here), GIG YOUNG (casual, relaxed performance), and ROD TAYLOR (always good in light romantic comedies).But it's MacLaine's show all the way as a girl who stumbles into a job at a market research firm run by two brothers, opposite types, one of whom (Niven) decides to shape her into the kind of woman his brother should fall in love with. Naturally, his little scheme backfires and he ends up falling in love with his creation. If you detect a touch of "My Fair Lady" here, you're right.Passes the time quickly in an era where most films did exactly that, lasting no more than an hour and a half.

Just have seen the film and was amused.Because it happened so, that before seeing it on TV a bit earlier I had seen on video "Bridget Jone's Diary"...One film after another one:) It was interesting to see how similar are problems of singles in such different epochs as 1959 and 2001. At the same time something has obviously changed.Freedom in sex matters out of marriage,for example. Or position of a male in the relations...The film is very funny and dynamic, full of wit and doesn't produce sickly sweet feeling. What else is interesting - how plots of some well known plays have been interwoven into the script. "My fair lady" for instance. A Russian film " Moskva slezam ne verit" ( 1979) is worth seeing as one where the same problems have been discussed but at the different cultural background. ...And - as the third part of this " triptych":)- I see, of course ""Bridget Jone's Diary". Two worlds - three countries - four time periods - a lot of characters - much pleasure!!!

What I like about this movie is that the lead character, Meg Wheeler, is innocent and remains innocent. She doesn't look stupid for fighting to keep her virtue and in the end, others respect her for it. Also, society seemed to uphold that and support it. Her girlfriends kept an eye on her and gave her sound advice. The "easy" women didn't come off looking good in this movie at all and the playboys looked superficial. This is a movie I think I will show to my youth group. If only there were more movies like this. How far society has gone since these days. Meg at one point said she came from a line of six generations where the Wheeler women waited before marriage and she wasn't about to stop that trend. Unlike movies like "Grease" where the naive girl becomes just like everybody else (and there's a long, long list of movies that do this, "Dirty Dancing," etc., I felt even better about Meg at the end. Naive doesn't have to mean stupid. Here, there's a strength in her innocence. Well acted, good writing, solid story.