The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown

Some months back, I recorded The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown off of TCM when they ran it as part of a night of Jane Russell movies. I finally got around to watching it over the weekend.

Jane Russell plays Laurel Stevens, a Hollywood star who for some bizarre reason is given a blond wig that looks unflattering on her. Anyhow Laurel's latest film, The Kidnapped Bride, is premiering, and studio bosses Arthur and Barney (Adolphe Menjou surprisingly far down the credits and Robert Harris, respectively) are going to be sending a studio limo to pick her up.

Later that evening the doorbell rings, and chauffeur Dandy (Keenan Wynn) is there to pick up Laurel. The only thing is, when she gets in the car with Dandy and Mike (Ralph Meeker), they don't take her to the premiere. Instead, this is a kidnapping. Mike was wrongly convicted and just released for a crime he didn't commit, and this is apparently his form of revenge.

There's a small problem, however: everybody outide the studio and the actual kidnappers thinks that the disappearance of Laurel isn't a kidnapping per se, but a studio publicity stunt, because what better way to promote a movie called The Kidnapped Bride than to "kidnap" the star! Laurel would like to escape, although she understands that if this kidnapping is portrayed as a publicity stunt, it's bad for her career. On the other hand, she doesn't want Mike to throw his life away, especially after he starts giving off vibes that he's really just a guy who's made a really stupid mistake by kidnapping Laurel.

The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown is very slight stuff, reminiscent of later movies like Too Many Crooks, but with a less well-plotted script and done very much on the cheap. Everybody tries, but the material becomes increasingly grating as it winds toward its madcap ending.

The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown doesn't seem to be available on DVD. But it is currently on Amazon's streaming service, and I'm running out of room on my DVR. That, and the fact that streaming seems increasingly the way things are going, makes me wonder whether a movie like this is ever going to get a DVD release. So if you want to see it, streaming or waiting for the rare TCM showing are probably the only ways to go.