 |
| MGM lobby card |
Penelope: Not merely a bad film with an absurd plot, but one that actively insults the audience's intelligence. I swear I wrote an entire article some years ago about my hatred of this movie, but alas, I cannot find it now.
The plot, in a nutshell: a pampered housewife robs a bank because she is bored and her husband — the manager of the very bank she hath robbed, played by Scottish actor Ian Bannen, who was also far too talented for this dreck — does not pay her sufficient attention. In the end, everybody more or less lets her get away with it because she is just so darn cute, I suppose.
MGM
The college flashback sequence featuring Jonathan Winters as a lecherous professor who refuses to keep his hands to himself is particularly galling, even by the standards of 1966. It is not amusing in the slightest, despite the filmmakers' obvious belief that it should be. It is merely obnoxious and unpleasant. Peter Falk appears as a detective (still a few years away from Columbo) and somehow manages to look embarrassed to be there, which, frankly, he should have been.
Still, with a reported wardrobe budget of $250,000, Penelope did at least provide Natalie Wood with an abundance of glamorous costumes and enough pin-up material to satisfy her admirers. The star herself reportedly disliked the film, saying: “I broke out in hives and suffered anguish that was very real pain every day we shot.”
Natalie Wood was just twenty-eight years old when Penelope was released in November 1966, yet it is difficult to escape the conclusion that much of her finest work was already behind her. When one surveys her filmography, her strongest performances are concentrated between the mid-1950s and the early 1960s. Whether Hollywood ceased offering her the best material, whether she selected some unfortunate projects, fate simply had other plans.
MGM
Natalie did not make another film until 1969 (another wretched sex farce whose only value is the star frolicking around in skimpy outfits), and was not very active at all in the 1970s. Had she not been tragically lost in 1981, perhaps there would have been a triumphant second act. I do believe that had she lived, and if she had chosen better roles and been in a better headspace, she was talented enough as an actress that she could have continued working into old age, as with Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren, and so forth. Had she been really focused, she possessed sufficient talent that a distinguished late-career renaissance would hardly have been beyond the realm of possibility.
Whatever the answers as to what exactly went wrong with Natalie Wood’s career after the mid-1960s, or with the lady herself, Penelope remains one of the clearest examples of a gifted actress being let down by material utterly unworthy of her talents.
🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈
