John Craig's Tuesday Night Movie: "When was the last time you saw a good film about a kidnapping?"

An addendum to last week's post on If You want to See Your Wife Again... by John Craig.

"When was the last time you saw a good movie about a kidnapping?"
   "A good one?" I asked. "I can't remember any."

– John Craig, If You Want to See Your Wife Again...

Nineteen-seventy-two could not have been a good year for Ted Bessell fans. That Girl, in which he'd played Donald Hollinger, longtime boyfriend of Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas), had been cancelled the previous year. Me and the Chimp, Bessell's one chance at his own sitcom, had been canned after just thirteen episodes. But then came his starring role in Your Money or Your Wife.

Sure, it was a CBS Tuesday Night Movie, not a feature film. Sure this listing from the 19 December 1972 Fredericksburg Freelance-Star failed to recognize Bessell as the lead, but a fan could see it as a step up the ladder, right?

Broadcast that same evening, Your Money or Your Wife was based on the John Craig novel If You Want to See Your Wife Again..., a comic thriller in which a retired soap star is kidnapped by the writer, casting director, and producer of her old show. The screenplay for Your Money or Your Wife was written by J.P. Miller, who is best known for Days of Wine and Roses.

Your Money or Your Wife is a comedown... for Miller, for Bessell, and for Craig.

Miller shifts the setting from Toronto to New York – Canada has nothing to do with it – which most certainly made for savings. From the looks of it, more than half of the scenes were shot at the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street.

Sardi's figures:

Bessell is well-cast as down-on-his-luck writer Dan Cramer. Miller cuts to the chase in ignoring the novel's brief mating dance with lovely casting director Laurel Plunkett (Elizabeth Ashley). They are already a couple in the first scene. Jack Cassidy is so good in portraying sleazy television producer Josh Darwin that one is left wondering who he used as a model.

The one odd casting decision involves department store heir Richard Bannister. Described in the novel as an athletic blonde Adonis, he is portrayed by Torontonian Graham Jarvis wearing a bad rug.

Elizabeth Ashley suffers a similar fate, appearing in a number of awful wigs, this being the first:
 

Your Money or Your Wife has a run time of one hour and thirteen minutes. Commercial interruptions lengthened the evening's enjoyment to an even two hours.

We people of the future can see it here on YouTube.

I thought the first sixteen minutes were quite good. Miller displays a real talent in making the plot of the first four chapters more believable. The problem is that there twenty-four to go.

The more the minutes tick by the more Your Money or Your Wife distances itself from If You Want to See Your Wife Again... and becomes increasingly silly and slapstick. The climax, which involves a snake, deflection, a storage locker, and one last bad wig is pure 'seventies Disney.

Think Snowball Express or Superdad. 

As per usual, the book is better than the film.

Related post:

"A good kidnapping story always has wide appeal."