Henry Orient's World

I think I've argued here before that the scene in Dr. Strangelove where Peter Sellers finally shows up as the mad doctor is the moment where his career takes a turn into becoming obnoxiously self-indulgent in his performances. That's probably a bit unfair, however, since he could still be tamed into not being overbearing even when he's the nominal star of a movie such as The World of Henry Orient.

Of course, it should be stated that while Sellers gets the title role, he's not really the lead character. That honor goes to two teenaged girls, who attend the same private school in New York. Val Boyd (Tippy Walker) is the new girl at school, getting let out early every day to see her shrink, although that's only mentioned via a third party. She quickly makes friends with "Gil", short for Marian Gilbert (Merrie Spaeth). Val's parents are constantly busy traveling the world on business, while Gil's are divorced, and she lives with her mother (Phyllis Thaxter) and Mom's "friend" Boothy (Bibi Osterwald).

The two young ladies still like to act immature from time to time, going through Manhattan and just generally having a good time. However, Val can be a bit of a drama queen. One day, the two are in Central Park, and Val peers over a stone. She accidentally catches a glimpse of two lovers sharing a kiss. One of those is Henry Orient (Peter Sellers, as I mentioned), a temperamental concert pianist; the other is married Stella Dunworthy (Paula Prentiss), not married to Henry and worried about her husband finding out. So naturally when Henry catches Val and Gil playing peeping Tom, he's none too pleased.

It's about to get a whole lot worse for him, as he notices the two young women watching him somewhere else, leading him to believe that some brilliant mind trying to discover the affair has sent two "innocent" teenaged girls to follow him around and stalk him. Not that Val thinks of it as stalking Henry, however. She's just becoming one of those fans who is overly obsessed, but without becoming a groupie.

And like teenagers who want to think they're more grown up than they really are, Val decides to start a "secret society" with Gil dedicated to worshipping Henry Orient, allowing them to dress up and go around town basically being relatively harmless. You can, however, understand why adults might have a problem with this. And soon enough they will.

Christmas is approaching, and Val's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Boyd (Tom Bosley and Angela Lansbury respectively) return home for the holiday. Mrs. Boyd finds Val's scrapbook on Henry Orient, and unsurprisingly she's horrified, jumping to a not unreasonable conclusion that Henry might be up to no good. While he is misbehaving, it's not with the two teenaged girls, whom he'd just as soon have be out of his life. Mrs. Boyd thinks that Gil is responsible for Val's behavior, and orders Val to break off the friendship. Everybody else, however, is much more sensible. And perhaps Mrs. Boyd's overbearing nature might have something to do with why Val is seeing a shrink.

If Peter Sellers is toned down in The World of Henry Orient, it's because the role isn't particularly big. Much more attention is given to the two teenage girls, who can be irritating at times, but in the natural way adolescents can be irritating. That having been said, I wonder just how much Val and Gill would get to traipse around lower Manhattan in real life.

Sellers isn't the only one to do well with his role. Lansbury wasn't much different in Dear Heart which came out the same year, and this is the sort of stuff she was quite good at doing. If the movie has a problem, however, it's with the script, which is just too slight. This is another of those movies that really should have run around 90 minutes instead of the 106-minute run time it has.

If you want to see establishing shots of New York as it was in a more innocent time, there's some nice photography here. And if you want some competent and professional actors, you'll definitely get that. If you want something more memorable than watching it and going on to the next movie, however, you'll have to watch something else.