Not part of Kirk Douglas day

This last day of TCM's Summer Under the Stars is dedicated to actor Kirk Douglas, still alive at 102 unless he's died very recently and the death hasn't been announced yet. I should mention that among the movies airing is Town Without Pity at 6:15 PM. It's one that I haven't seen in many years, and seems to be out of print on DVD. Douglas plays a lawyer for the US Army who gets the task of defending some soldiers stationed in Germany who are being brought up on rape charges, accused of having raped one of the locals. The thing I remember most about the movie was the way translation of German was handled, in a very heavy-handed voiceover that didn't work well.

Anyhow, not having looked far enough forward on the TCM schedule to see that Douglas was going to be honored today, a few weeks back I decided to pop in one of the DVDs from the Kirk Douglas box set I picked up a few months back and watch For Love or Money, a 1963 film which shares its title with several other movies. So that's the Douglas movie you're getting a post on today, even though it's not airing on TCM.

Douglas plays Deke Gentry, a San Francisco lawyer and best friend of wealthy playboy businessman Sonny Smith (Gig Young). They're out on their yacht one day when a helicopter shows up overhead, with the equally wealthy Chloe Brasher (Thelma Ritter) as the passenger. She needs to see Deke about an urgent matter involving her daughters.

Chloe is a widow, and provisions were made in her husband's will regarding the three daughters, who are all very headstrong and not about to follow their mother's advice. According to the will, they've got trust funds set up for them, but the daughters will be cut off from the trust funds if they don't get married to people Mom considers acceptable. So Mom wants Deke to convince the daughters to accept him as the new trustee on the fund, and to marry the husbands she's selected for them.

That's not going to be easy. Daughter Bonnie (Julie Newmar) is what nowadays would probably be a social media influencer, except that they didn't have social media back in 1963. She's a fitness/beauty geek who's got $1/month subscribers the accounting of which is bringing her into trouble with the IRS. Agent Harvey Wofford (Dick Sargent) is assigned to the case, and he just happens to be the man Mom has selected for her! Jan (Leslie Parrish) is into beatnik artist types, and Mom thinks she should marry old friend Sam (William Windom). The biggest hurdle, however, is with eldest daughter Kate (Mitzi Gaynor). Mom's pick for her is... Sonny Smith. Finally to make certain things go as planned, Mom has a private detective Joe (William Bendix) assigned to watch everything.

Unsurprisingly, things don't go as planned, and you can probbly guess how. Getting Sonny to meet Kate hits a bunch of snags, and Deke realizes he's beginning to fall in love with Kate. Meanwhile, Jan sees Sonny, and perhaps she's going to fall in love with him instead of Sam. Now, I'd think that Mom should OK with Kate marrying a nice staid lawyer. And if she picked out Sonny as a husband for one of the daughters, why is it a bad thing if it turns out that another of the daughters were to marry him. But that would ruin the premise of the movie.

For Love or Money is formulaic, but it's a formula that works well enough for undemanding entertainment. Kirk Douglas didn't make very many comedies in his career, but he handles the material just fine. The three daughters are nice to look at, and the older stars (Ritter, Young, and Bendix) all fit their roles like a hand in a glove. There's nothing special here, but also nothing wrong.

The Douglas centennial box set isn't overly expensive, and with as many movies as you get, spending a few bucks for a formulaic trifle like this is no waste.