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Love with a Proper Stranger was released on 25 December 1963.
Dealing with the controversial subjects of casual sex and abortion, the film failed to find an audience at the box office but was nominated for 5 Academy Awards: Best Actress (25-year-old Natalie Wood's 3rd nomination), Best Screenplay (Arnold Schulman), Best Cinematography (Milton Krasner), Best Costume Design (Edith Head), and Best Art Direction. Steve McQueen was nominated for Best Actor at the Golden Globes.
The Night They Raided Minsky's (William Friedkin, 1968)
poster art by Frank Frazetta
A Hole in the Head(1959)
Funny Lady (1975). Story of singer Fanny Brice's stormy relationship with showman Billy Rose.
This movie really gets by on Barbara Streisand’s charisma as a performer, which is sort of disappointing given it’s a sequel to a movie that celebrated her charisma by - - y’know - - also being good. Still, it’s fine, I guess. There are some fun set pieces overall and Streisand really is pretty incredible in the role of Fanny Brice. It’s just a shame she wasn’t given better material this time around. 5/10.
Love With The Proper Stranger (1963)
Natalie Wood stars with Steve McQueen in the film that would earn her a third and final Oscar nomination, Love With The Proper Stranger.
Nominated for five Oscars in all, Love With The Proper Stranger is an unusual title. It doesn’t roll off the tongue. And the narrative is way underground for an American film in 1963. Love is an abortion comedy (way before Jenny Slate did it) and a love story (it’s got a Say Anything vibe) with an ethnic sort of Moonstruck setting. It’s an unusual movie.
Natalie (who never looked better) meets Steve McQueen at the musician’s union hall to tell him she’s pregnant and needs money for a doctor. He doesn’t have any money. McQueen goes back to the small apartment he shares with his girlfriend and keeps quiet. The girlfriend is played by Edie Adams, who is adorable - great eye makeup.
The film has all sorts of cliches in it. Sayings things like, ‘in the olden days if you didn’t like it, well, you liked it’. Natalie’s character is supposed to live at home until she marries and she is frustrated living with her over-protective brothers and old-fashioned mother.
Her family wants to set her up with Tom Bosley - not as Mr. Cunningham but as the successful Italian-American man living with his mother. Natalie is not interested and is annoyed that they keep trying to set her up and anyway she’s already pregnant with Steve McQueen’s baby so - would you rather…
McQueen arranges for her to have an abortion and it’s a back alley - give me the money - then more money - in a vacant apartment on the cold floor with no running water. So sad. But he doesn’t let her go alone.
Natalie was just trying to see ‘how the world comes to an end every time a flame on the lips comes close to mine - all I felt was scared and disgusted’.
Steve and her try to work things out but it’s rocky and she tells him, ‘and believe it or not - I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with a man who thinks he’s doing me a favor’.
Love With The Proper Stranger is not something I would expect Natalie Wood to be good in because she’s playing outside her type. Working class, Italian, New Yorker. You know I hated it when she played a Puerto Rican in West Side Story. But Natalie does a fantastic job playing a young girl trying to find out what the big deal is all about. And let me just say - if you gotta get knocked up - you could do worse than Steve McQueen.
Love With The Proper Stranger is great work for both leads. Great writing (nominated for best original screenplay) and great style (costumes by Edith Head). A real gem in this study of Natalie Wood films. Watch it.
Love with the Proper Stranger (1964). Angie Rossini is an innocent Italian Catholic Macy's salesgirl, who discovers she's pregnant from a fling with Rocky, a musician. Can these two strangers find love with one another before it's too late?
Sweet and earnest and genuinely intimate, this is a surprising little film that mines the depths of loneliness and connection to tell a common story in a beautiful way. It helps that i’s anchored by such caring and careful performances from Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen. It’s lovely, and heartfelt. 8/10.
